In my last gaming session, the group was following up from completing the first level of a dungeon and had found the goal of their quest: a magical helmet sought by a dwarf noble. The dwarfs in my campaign world lost their homeland in the war against a demon lord and were living in exile. But the group had found a shaft leading to a lower level, and the prior gaming session had ended with the group weighing their next options. I figured that there were several options: explore the next level and hand over the helmet later, give the noble the helmet and then head back into the dungeon. There was also the possibility that the group could find a way to identify the helmet (a helmet of telepathy, a woefully underpriced magic item in D&D) and then see how that factored into their plans.

As it turned out, the group gave the dwarf the helmet in return for the gold but then asked what it was, and were surprisingly persuasive (Nat 20) in getting him to talk. He told them what the helmet could do, and at that point the group offered to return the gold they had been paid to get the helmet back. When the dwarf refused, the group strongarmed it from him, forcing him to take back the gold (that bit surprised me at this point). He rode off, swearing revenge, and I noted that the group had made a possible re-occurring NPC enemy.

But then, the group says, “well, that lower level looks scary, let’s go back to the town we were in to see if someone can help us with this helmet.” Which, isn’t the strangest thing that could have happened, but there’s a whole level in this dungeon that the group was fully prepared to walk away from. So I’m trying to keep my poker face on as I wrack my brain for some kind of wizard for them to find in the city when one of them goes, “wait, this came out of the dungeon, so maybe the original owner left some notes about it.” Now that is a stretch of reasoning there, but it got them to the second level, where they did find some clues that wizards had been down there. All I need to do now if figure out where an instruction manual goes….