Ah, Anderas, you're right, I missed a couple game reports here. I can't remember if I didn't think the games were interesting enough to warrant a report, or if I just got busy with "real" life.
But anyway, my group is back to playing on Tuesday nights now! So I thought it seemed fitting to finally update the thread.
We did a nice little run of the Witch Lord Trilogy (aka Quests 12-14) over the last few Sundays. My heroes are pretty well-equipped at this point, so Quests 12 and 13 were no trouble at all for them. They just whipped right through all those skellies and zombies; I don't think I got any of them down to less than 3 BP. I finally got to have some fun in Quest 14 with the full-power Witch Lord, but they fought valiantly and sent him on his way, in a puff of smoke, with his tail between his legs, or whatever.
So, we've (more or less) completed the original questbook! For the first time! I never got past Quest 5 or 6 when playing this game as a kid. Hooray!
Moving forward, I've decided to run them through Return of the Witch Lord before Kellar's Keep, after reading through all the comments about how much easier RotWL is, and after seeing how easily my heroes blasted through the undead in the Witch Lord Trilogy.
I also wanted to beef up the undead a bit, so I made some new house rules and last night we ran through the Plague of Zombies to test out the house rules before starting the official expansion.
First of all, Plague of Zombies is a pretty damn good quest in its own right! I think it would have been difficult for my heroes even if I hadn't amped up the danger with house rules. The mechanic in PoZ that lets "living" monsters return as undead monsters was a fun and dangerous twist. I had to constantly assure my group that this was not an ongoing house rule, but part of the quest as written.
Highlight reel:
Schmidt the Dwarf fell in the pit trap surrounded by Orcs and that was the end of him!
When the magical treasure chest transported Miranda the Elf to the room full of undead, she used her Ring of Return to transport herself back to the staring point of the quest. Pretty resourceful, that one...
When they found the hallway containing both the door to the Deathmaster's room and the exit door, they had a choice to make and, disappointingly, they chose the boring option. With one Hero down and no more healing spells or potions, they opened the Deathmaster's door, saw he was in there with like six zombies, said, "Nope!" and headed for the exit...
And this old Zargon almost thought he was set up for a TPK! Oh well... If the Deathmaster is still alive, who's to say he won't join forces with the Witch Lord and pop up in a later quest?
I wanted to keep my undead house rules simple and in the spirit of the game; to make the undead a real threat, but not a guaranteed TPK. So here are the house rules I'm keeping into RotWL.
1) Undead monsters block with White Shields. They're already dead, right? So they should be a little harder to put down.
2) Mummies, as the strongest undead (or the least decomposed, let's say
), have a chance to rise again, but a little weaker. So, when a Mummy is killed, roll a combat die. On a Skull, the Mummy is destroyed. On a White Shield, the Mummy returns as a Skeleton. On a Black Shield, the Mummy returns as a Zombie. And, of course, a Mummy will not return if killed by a Fire Spell, Holy Water, or the Spirit Blade.
There were a couple other house rules I tried that were overpowering or over-complicated; I think just those two are enough. I also finally started using the Evil Wizard Deck for real, so I think I'm going to enjoy that.