The library campaign is going well, although I have not written much about it here for a while. The summer was touch-and-go, but now that school schedules have resumed, vacations are done, and seasonal jobs are wrapping up, people are able to attend more regularly.
I also have a new player, a grandmother who has never played before and only knew of the game from some long-ago discussions with a co-worker when THAC0 was probably still the main mechanic.
The party has a town which serves as their home base. They intend to create fantasy WWE as a way to boost trade and earn more coin. So far, they have bought an old warehouse and started finding non-player characters to join their wrestling exhibition team.
In their latest proper adventure, I ended the session on a cliffhanger because time was up, and also they just made a small mistake and forgot about all the clues and confessions about an evil plan involving death. They killed the Big Bad at the bottom of the small dungeon abandoned temple instead of taking him alive.
One warrior dealt a powerful blow, dropping the armored villain in his tracks. They cheered. Then they saw the DM grin wide, and realized... they f**ked up.
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I described how they felt a wave of cold wash over the room, the final runes on the ceiling illuminated, and the cobbled-together statue in the middle of the room come to life. Yes, the party awakened what is essentially an Iron Golem, a monster waaaaaay above their party level. And it is fueled by souls with a mission to kill.
All is not necessarily lost, though. The cleric will be able to use Dispel Magic and Turn Undead to at least slow it down. Other spells and abilities will at least allow them to retreat while whittling it down. They have an assortment of magic weapons and items I hope they use creatively. And the action economy of D&D means their larger-than-typical party size will allow them to put a lot of pressure on it above their individual character levels.
Basically, the To be continued... cliffhanger gives me and the players time to figure out how to not have people die while the adventure stays fun. No deus ex machina here. They have tools at hand. I hope they figure out how to use them.
