Last Sunday, I ran the first session of a PFRPG one-shot called Escape From Fort Nurovd for members of the SyncRPG community. It’s a short prison escape adventure designed to be played to completion in 2-3 hours as a no-commitment way to get into a game, try out SyncRPG, and murder some hobgoblins.

Characters start out at first level, stripped of all their gear, locked in a cell in a hobgoblin prison camp. It’s super easy to get a character ready to play: All anyone has to do to join the game is fill out the character sheet, join one of the “Nurovd” games on SyncRPG. I’m planning to run the one-shot for a new batch of players every Sunday at 4:30PM PDT (GMT -7). To talk to other players or see the Google Hangout invites for the sessions, join the Fans of SyncRPG community on Google+.

In the first playthrough, the players awoke in the cells to find a drunken hobgoblin guard passed out on a nearby bench. Vulmar the suli monk, Erranous the human cleric, Tumoon Sky the half-orc fighter, and Ri’ash the halfling rogue whispered to each other while breaking out of their cells and looking for anything nearby to use as a weapon. After bashing the passed out guard’s skull and taking his weapons and armor, they bumped into three other guards on patrol: two swordsman and one with a longbow.

Besting them, they proceeded down the hallways until they found room lined with cells. Other prisoners called out to them from behind bars as the party engaged an inquisitor of Chax, god of devils and hobgoblins. The inquisitor sent his allies to engage the party while shooting his longbow and calling upon unholy energy to heal himself. Things weren’t looking good until they closed the distance and took him out. After the fight, the party freed several humanoid NPCs from their cells and armed them with weapons dropped by the hobgoblins.

Walking past statues of a pit fiend and a giant hobgoblin warrior, the party did battle with a cleric of Chax and two acolytes. The lesser priests of He Who Binds blessed themselves with the profane strength of their Overlord and engaged Vulmar. The cleric scoffed at and walked past the monk, engaging the rest of the party and their new NPC allies with a spiked chain.

Their enemies slain, the path clear, the party left Nurovd, their fates their own. The entire session was recorded and hosted on YouTube:

CR 2 Hobgoblin Cleric of Chax 0 Toggle Statistics XP 600 Hobgoblin cleric of Chax 3 (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide)

LE Medium humanoid (goblinoid) Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +2 DEFENSE AC 11, touch 11, flat-footed 10 (+1 Dex) hp 29 (3d8+12) Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +5 OFFENSE Speed 30 ft. Melee mwk spiked chain +5 (2d4+3) Special Attacks channel negative energy 4/day (DC 12, 2d6) Cleric Spells Prepared (CL 3rd; concentration +5) 2nd-cure moderate wounds, hold person (DC 15), produce flame 1st-bane (DC 14), burning hands (DC 13), murderous command (DC 14), protection from good 0 (at will)-bleed (DC 12), detect magic, guidance, read magicDomains Fire, Evil (Devil) Domain Spell-Like Abilities (CL 3rd; concentration +5) 5/day-fire bolt (1d6+1 fire) Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. STATISTICS Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 15, Cha 13 Base Atk +2; CMB 4; CMD 15 Feats Spell Focus (enchantment), Toughness Skills Intimidate +3, Spellcraft +3, Stealth +5; Racial Modifiers +4 Stealth Languages Common, Goblin SQ hell's corruption

Gear Combat Gear scroll of augury, scroll of cure light wounds; Other Gear mwk lamellar (steel) armor, mwk spiked chain, silver unholy symbol of Chax Source: Escape from Fort Nurovd, © 2015 Overworld Digital Publishing

The short dungeon was designed using dungeon tile geomorphs by Kristian Richards that are freely available on SyncRPG.com. It’s pretty much a straight line from encounter to encounter, and it took less than five minutes to snap together and apply the dynamic lighting and vision-blocking layer. The CRs scale linearly: The drunken hobgoblin is a CR ½, the guard patrol a CR 1, the inquisitor CR 2, and culminates with the clerics at CR 3. Action packed!

I’ll be running this one-shot every Sunday for a while, and I don’t want it to get stale, or for players to know exactly what to expect on their playthrough. I could stat up different hobgoblins and monsters to make for interesting encounters for each session, but with SyncRPG, I can save myself some time by using creations from other users. I can easily search for hobgoblins, or monsters that are traditionally found underground, or for all creatures with CR 3. I can keep each session fresh with new, interesting encounters by searching SyncRPG and dragging in the new tokens.

If you’re interested in seeing a character or monster you’ve created fight against some PCs in a recorded session, add it to SyncRPG and tag it “Nurovd.” If you do, I might run your NPCs in an upcoming session, and do my best to kill PCs with them! Every week before the session, I’ll search for NPC tokens with that tag, and swap out the encounters for whatever new ones look the most interesting. With direct Herolab XML importing now available, it’s just a few clicks to get a character from your mind onto SyncRPG, and into the games of GMs around the world.

If you’re feeling creative, upload something today! Nate’s already added a Prison Doctor that I’m considering working in next week!

Discuss 'Social Dungeon Experiment: Escape From Fort Nurovd' on the SyncRPG forums