Half-hour dungeon - and the guard-room without a guard.

The afternoon called for a D&D (specifically, Whitehack) session with the kids and their friends. I'd had plans for them to revisit the portion of the Devil-Warrens they investigated a couple of weeks ago, but an accidental upside-downing of the second-level map in transition to the table last time out meant that some detailed retrofitting of corridors and rooms was required.

So, rather than get all fiddly with graph paper, flip mats and dungeon tiles, I just scribbled some caves on one-inch graph paper and fitted them together to make a smallish cavern complex leading to an outdoor section that I scrawled on a flip chart.

The governing idea was pursuit. Although the PCs were charged with destroying a wight who had struck some awful pact with the Lords of Chaos, they made their initial entry into a "guard room" from which the guard was absent.

That set up a nice dynamic: the point being that the guard would return at some point. As the PCs had to cross a fast-flowing subterranean river, with an enticing portcullis and lever arranged at one end, they spent a lot of time faffing around once they were past the guard chamber. Then, when they were attacked by orcs from deep within, they panicked when the orcs started shouting "Bruglod! Where's Bruglod?"

Bruglod, a beefy bugbear, had gone hunting in the hills outside. And when the PCs heard him coming, with half the party still stranded on the far side of the river and a troll clawing at them through the portcullis, we had a terrific set-up for a panicky, fast-paced chase scenario.

Where THE HELL is Bruglod?

The PCs released the troll, which eventually dispatched Bruglod and then pursued them deeper into the orc-warrens.

The climactic encounter with the wight was enlivened by his summoning creatures of chaos from some demented dimension. My Hordes of the Things chaos hordes featured as swarms of chaotic beings - all multiple attacks, huge hit points and low AV and AC.

Using multi-based miniatures in RPGs works pretty well. There's something satisfying about a big block of things crawling across the table. It's an idea I'll revisit at some stage with multi-based hordes of goblins or the like.