RL got in the way of my posting notes of our 2nd, 3rd & 4th games here online. Those games were played on 08/22/09, 09/12/09, and 10/17/09. I will make a modest attempt to remedy that.
So to summarize very briefly: In the 2nd game, they escaped from the circular room with 12 doors. I had one player from the first game and three new ones (so three players in the first game and four players in the second), I used a few little tricks to hook them up. This 2nd game was a constantly moving on the run game. At one point our cleric (9 year old girl - and a great asset to the game BTW) found a chest with cubes in it that were about a 2 x 2 x 2 inches in size, black in color and weighing about 2 pounds each. She grabbed three of them and then there was an encounter at the other end of the room and they all had to run for it. (She was investigating the chest and everyone else was looking for hidden or secret doors or was listening at the door in the one corner of the room. It developed as they spent the rest of the game running, hiding and dodging that the cubes shrank to about 1 x 1 x 1 inches in size, changed to a red one, a blue one and a yellow one that were floating the bag that she was carrying them in. More about them later; however, they are definitely not Ioun stones.
Here is a quote from one of the players: "The original adventurers; (I deleted the real names), found our characters in a round room with twelve doors the first game, and this is were we picked up the second game. The room once again stopped spinning and I randomly started choosing doors again to try and find our way out. The first door I picked led to a frosty sub-zero temperature room. The second, a volcanically hot room, and then finally I picked the right door and we returned to a familiar north/south corridor where we met up with our two new adventurers. They had picked up on some of the same rumors that we did which led us here in the first place. I believe the we headed north and then west down a corridor with three doors. If I remember correctly I chose to listen to, and then open the last door on the right of the corridor. There was a table with a couple of skeletons. Some strange force animated one of the skeletons but we smashed it quickly. I can't quite remember what happened next, but I think we heard some orcish voices behind a door and then ended up having to run back east and then south or something. We then went to a stairwell that I remembered and I think we went up a level and then discovered a 20x20 storage closet, and then a room with a strange playing board made for three opponents. I believe that we trekked down more levels and then decided to come back up to the area of the storage closet to rest, and then these hairy guys with big teeth came flying through the door of the "game-room". We killed one I believe and then two ran back into the room."
Then they fled through nearly a mile of rooms and corridors with searchers looking for them all over the place. They finally got away and they passed through a strange opening and ended up out of doors. Again quoting one of the players (an edited quote): "Anyway, we ended up on the outside and planed on constructing a secret base where we could rest and have easy access to the dungeon for our pillaging/adventuring/rescuing." This is where the second game came to a close is when they ended up out of doors.
In the 3rd game, they learned a few things right away about where they were at. They thought at first that they had exited fairly close to where they entered the dungeon. It turned out that they are now in a different world. Three moons instead of two moons, huge 300-500 feet tall trees up here on the mountain side instead of hills with a maximum tree height of 80-100 feet, and down on the forested plains below there are trees that approach a mile in height. This 3rd game had all of the same players as the 2nd game plus one new player for a total of five players. While exploring and trying to figure out how to get back into the dungeon they had come from they entered a new dungeon through an apparent picture on a rock wall on the side of the mountain.
They again ran into many strange things including a weird fountain that they did not investigate much and missed out on some things as a result. Only one person drank any of the water and it turned her temporarily green, so they didn't try anything further. They were pursued by a swamp monster type inspired in part by the Swamp Thing. They purloined some very valuable gems and jewels that were protected by stone creatures that would come to life if you climbed on them. Fought a giant snake from that group of creatures, escaped and then narrowly escaped a stair based trap. With some more encounters and much running, hiding and fleeing, they came to an area they recognized and thought they were close to a way out. This is roughly where this game ended. Also they picked up a new player-character in this world, an elf and he could only communicate with the elf and dwarf already in the party - same language but different elvish dialect. He gradually picked up the common tongue of the human characters.
The 4th game picked up where the previous one left off. This game had all of the players from the 3rd game less one who was sick, so 4 players were present. They soon had a choice of fleeing into corridors they had not covered yet, going back toward their pursuers or entering a portal that was glowing in front of them. They chose the portal, and stepped through. They came out in the middle of the night in as nearly as they could tell a desert. They kept as warm as they could and set watches.
In the early morning before sunrise, they heard sounds which turned out to be dog size ants converging on them in large numbers. They ran! They passed through a sizable oasis and lost the ants at that point. They hiked for miles across barren desert and then left it by traveling into a canyon as the terrain became hilly and then somewhat mountainous. They eventually came to a mile wide river just downstream from a mile wide waterfall. The waterfall pours over an extremely hard shelf of rock and has been unchanged for centuries since it receded back to this point. The water falls nearly a half a mile and the roar can be heard for many miles. The river below the falls continued in a canyon for many miles until the canyon walls completely disappeared to the north and angled away into the distance to the south. The area on either side of the river at this point is partially wooded and very rocky although over the centuries even the rock has become covered with vegetation.
The group found a 50 ft high mound that seemed to be pretty defensible and camped there. They tried fishing but were unsuccessful the first evening. They ended up being attacked by three monstrous carnivorous apes over 12 feet in height. They barely survived this encounter and that is with one of the PCs having a wand (the number of charges left must be growing quite small by now) and my allowing the -10 HP rule. What I do is if you reach between zero HP and -10 HP I then roll a d12, the result is the number of melee rounds in which the wounded person must receive first aid. If you roll a 1 and first aid is not rendered on the very next melee round then death results. It took them two days to get back to full HPs and only that quickly because they have a cleric.
They moved on from there and did some hunting and fishing to supplement their iron rations. During the next day of travel they came upon a hut, a very large hut in a very large clearing and they decided the cleric would go listen at the door while the others stayed back at extreme bow range. While there was no one visibly around there was smoke coming from the chimney. While listening at the door it opened and out came a giant (odd looking fellow, beardless, shaggy head of hair, very muscular, long bodied with very short legs and very long arms, broad shouldered). He immediately gave chase but cleric proved to be a bit faster than the giant and was pulling away. Meanwhile as soon as there was some separation they started shooting at the giant. The giant stops and starts throwing large rocks at them and turned one of the fighters into a spot on the ground but with some really hot rolling they managed to kill the giant. They made a quick raid of the hut but cut it as short as they could since there were four giant beds in the hut. They did make off with quite a bit of gold, silver, copper and a sword.
They hurried away from the site as quickly as they could, as they entered the forest again they looked back and saw three giants entering the far side of the clearing. At this they hurried downstream and then crossed the river which took quite a bit of time as the water varied from 3-5 feet deep and they had to wade/swim across. About the time they had entered the trees on the other side and were looking back from a hidden vantage point, they saw the giants and several very large dire wolf-dogs come out of the trees and track them to the riverbank. The giants seemed to be having trouble getting the animals to cross the river. The party crossed over a couple of hills and came upon a stream running somewhat parallel to the main river. They entered the stream and continued downstream as fast as they could for a couple of miles till it intersected the main river where they crossed over most of the way then went way downstream before coming out on the riverbank they started from. I ruled that at this point they had gotten away.
They camped for the night and then made a push downriver the next day. Hearing sounds of a chase they hid and seeing a man pursued by several orcs they decided to intervene and killed the orcs.The new player-character joined the party at that point communicating by sign language and the few words that they did have in common.(replacing the player-character killed earlier). This is pretty much where game four ended.
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