BAD Dungeon Master

Well maybe not bad, and I suppose technically I'm a Castle Keeper.  Our two other players showed up yesterday, a former student of our host (who plays in our 2e game), and her father.  Big daddy rolled up a Monk (this will be the fist monk played in a game I'm running) he named Yoda; while former student chose to be a Ranger she named Kel. 

The party so far:


Pink = Illusionist/Druid (which I tried to talk her out of)
Black = Rogue
Zianna = Paladin
Yoda = Monk
Kel = Ranger

And they are all elves but Yoda who wisely chose to be human.  Like most gamers I haven't played with many women, and I've never ran a game with women, so to have three in one party is extraordinary I am, however looking forward to it.


We started later that usual and with creating the two characters we didn't have a whole lot of time for gaming.  We ran through two encounters from Keep on the Borderlands, the brigands that I kind of forced them into, and the lizardmen because the group chose a poor location to spend the night.  The party soundly defeated the brigands, with a good combination of muscle, spell casting and role playing.  The lizardmen almost wiped the party out.  Yes I attacked them at night, and since in C&C elves only have twilight vision not the typical AD&D infravision the party was kind of hopeless.  I approached from two sides, one group ran a foul of warning traps set by the ranger the other came in quietly from the left flank.  Mostly the party was smart they waited to see what the lizardmen would do, once the main group attacked Pink cast light and combat ensued.  At the same time Black knowing there is something going on to the left flank goes to check it out, fails his hide check, and gets jumped.  I role a natural 20 so poor Black is knocked unconscious.  What followed was the absolute worst string of rolls by a party that I have ever witnessed, round after round of rolls under ten by almost everyone.  Finally Kel takes out one then two Lizardmen, Zianna falls (much to my chagrin), and Yoda and Kel clean up.  As encounters go the brigands should have been much more difficult, but horrible rolls by the party and one luck shot on my part could have easily turned in to a TPK.  Hopefully lessons learned by CK and party.