Another weekend has passed, and once again we got in some gainful gaming.

Friday was my Castle Greyhawk campaign, and the group finally managed to locate the goblin caves where the prisoners they’d been searching for were held. They’d have found them earlier, but they actually believed the goblin who’d told them that another group of humanoids had taken the prisoners…

Before they entered the goblin caves, they discovered a pretty girl dressed in ninja (well, thief) chic hiding in a bush near the goblin cave. She introduced herself as Melissa; the captured merchant who Gromley was trying to rescue was her uncle. She offered the group 100 gp each to rescue him, rather than trying it on her own. Gromley, ever a dwarf, eagerly accepted.

Once inside the goblin caves, they did, at least, try to negotiate with the goblins. When that didn’t work, they negotiated again – with swords and spells! That worked a lot better, and they even managed to avoid falling into a pit trap.

The main chamber of the goblins was next, and there the party laid waste to all the goblins: man, woman and child. Of course, the women and children were mainly collateral damage from all the fireblasts that the wizard was throwing around, but these things happen in war. One goblin surrendered (his name was Lumgol), and – surprisingly – didn’t immediately betray the party, but instead led the group to the prisoners. He had a well-developed survival instinct.

If the first couple of combats had taken a substantial amount of time, this next combat, which – on paper – was the most difficult, took the least time. The group got Lumgol to lead the goblin guards towards them, past a alcove where the dwarves hid and waited for them. The ambush worked perfectly. The goblin sergeant, a mad berserker of a goblin, never got to act and fell dead from several well-placed blows, and his fellow guards followed very quickly.

The group found the prisoners and released them – the merchant, and the son of the Knight. The knight himself was not present, and his son had no idea where he’d been taken. They also found a goblin female, part of a tribe that lived in the ruins of the castle above. Ever the matchmaker, the group chose to let her and Lumgol pair off and let them go together to the other tribe.

Rather than endanger the prisoners, the group set back to Greyhawk to collect their rewards. The priests of Rao were very happy to have the Knight’s son back, and so forgave Peggy’s Wizard the remainder of her debt; however, Gromley wandered into trouble when he entered the Black Dragon Inn to find Melissa: the untrustworthy wench killed Hornblower the Merchant with a crossbow and fled! There’s some intrigue going on here, but the party doesn’t quite understand it yet. Gromley was extremely upset, of course, and who knows what the Thieves’ Guild will make of it!

On Sunday, we continued with the Keep on the Shadowfell campaign. For once, all the members of the group were there – Greg, Josh, Adam and Nathaniel. We managed to progress through four encounters, including a big trap encounter that was really fun. It’s always fun seeing a dragonborn paladin in a washing machine!

The final encounter, against a bunch of undead, took much, much less time than I expected, in the order of 20-30 minutes. The group just worked fantastically together, keeping in a good defensive position and laying waste to the zombies and ghouls that attempted to slay them. That’s our 7th session of Keep; we should finish it next session as there are only 2 or 3 encounters to go. I think it’s been a pretty good module, all things considered, although I really would appreciate more descriptive text about the rooms. Despite the furnishings appearing on the map, they all seem very bare in play. Castle Zagyg does much better at describing rooms.

Oh, and last night, Agricola arrived! Hooray! I celebrated with a sequence of solo games which saw me bomb out terribly in the 5th game. I’ve written up a pictorial session report on boardgamegeek.com, if you’d like to see the game. Agricola is a superb Eurogame, playable with 1-5 players and very scalable as well.