'Waiting for Gundren' A Summary of Session 7 of Lost Mine of Phandelver

Summary of Session 7: Waiting for Gundren

To stem the boredom and rather than wait around in Phandalin for a week, my players decided to keep themselves amused by heading back to Cragmaw Castle. They felt they had some unfinished business, could perhaps find some loot, and then planned to set off to mop up some other sidequests before heading back to Phandalin and off to Wave Echo Cave.

The best laid plans of mice and men

Noticing the distraction out front as they arrived again at Cragmaw castle our adventures tried once again to sneak in to investigate and maybe snoop around for some magic items. They started off by making their way to the owlbear who this time they set free. Without thinking too much of the consequences … the owlbear proceeded to rampage through castle making lots of noise and alerting all the occupants.

Murder funnel and Lord of the Rings

This time, instead of being able to convince the assorted denizens of Cragmaw Castle that they were King Grol (obvs coz dead) the players had to barricade themselves in the room and fight off a procession of Hobgoblins and goblins as they all came barging through the door. As I described it, I tried to reference the scene in Lord of the Rings where the Fellowship are stuck in the mines of Moria and have to fight a horde. This kind of description and reference can do a lot to set the atmosphere for your players.

Surprising the players!

Whilst they got through 95% of the folk of Cragmaw castle, I made it so the crick and the Goblin Shamen and their cronies didn’t join the fray with everyone else. The players assuming they had cleared the castle where nonchantly wandering through without taking much care. This mean they were ripe for the picking! :)

Absolute panic ensued, including a panic run into the next room which set off the trap. The best result I could have hoped for … however, it turns out my players are now scarred for life. It then took them about 4 hours to search the rest of the castle :S :)

Our players spent the night at the castle, mostly terrified. They even remembered not to light a fire :)