The Misadventures of Hareng Rouge

My last blog post was provoked by my own frustration during a recent Dungeon Crawl Classics game. And the realisation that I was a source of frustration to some of the other players. There was a clash of style and expectation, and someone got bitten by a barrel.

That person was not me. I was, however, standing uncomfortably close to them.

Here’s the situation. My party: dwarf tank, fragile wizard, stout cleric, chaotic thief (me), lawful thief and we’re missing our usual elegant combat elf. We are exploring, raiding, liberating perhaps the tower of a long-dead (or long-missing) mage. Things are going well, but slowly. We are looking at Door G in Room 8. Room 8 is a Library. Books. Shelves. Oak panelling.  The other thief and I are running through our Door Opening Procedure (as contained on Cheat Card Number 3). I’m listening at the door with my luck of 17. My theftuous colleague is hunting for traps. So far, all the doors have been identical. Identically bland, except the door that was put there specifically by the Tower’s former owner to draw people into a trap. But we’d found that. The system had worked. Perhaps too well.  I’m about to poke the door with the specially adapted ten-foot pole I had made specifically for poking strange doors in mystical towers when the dwarf sadly declares “I haven’t rolled any dice yet tonight,” and charges the door. Just headbutts it like an Aberdonian fighting for the last cod supper in the Dolphin chipper after closing time.

This did not go well. They rolled a natural 1, fumbled, badly and broke their shield on the doorframe.

I have a loud face.

I probably leaned back in my chair.  I may even have folded my arms. The door did not open. “Okay,” I sighed, “just like last time, I crouch down and carefully open the door whilst someone else pushes it open with a ten-foot pole.”

And we’re in.

Room 9 is a Study, desk, chair, table, art on the walls, a framed magical sword. Oh and a barrel. Just hanging out in the middle of the study. Nothing nefarious about a barrel in the middle of a study. Drawers are checked for traps. Frames are poked. The Cleric puts on my poison handling gloves before wrapping the sword in my second Distraction Cloak. Poke, examine, prod, contemplate. We have moved carefully around the barrel but no one had touched it. Yet.

“What’s in the barrel?” asks the Dwarf. Turns out what was in the barrel was her head but the barrel wasn’t a barrel. The barrel was a Mimic, with my colleague’s head in its mouth. It rolls a critical hit. Four hit-points and three teeth later the Dwarf is sprawled against the wall with the Lawful Thief trying to hide behind her. A perfect time for a backstab. One dead Mimic. I lost my third best dagger in the mimic’s body but I reckon the corpse alone is worth a few drachma.

“Ah,” says the dwarf, laughing, “I see now why you poke things with that pole all the time.”

This is a learning opportunity. For me I mean. The annoying thing could be that the system worked. The procedure worked. The ten-foot pole would have found the Mimic and nobody had to have their head eaten by an Ambush Barrel. But we did laugh about it. Much more than we laughed about the same pole and the same procedure safely finding the trap six rooms earlier. We lost at Strategic Barrel Smacking but won at Playing a Game Together.

I keep telling myself that counts as a win.