Topic: Tower of the Stargazer con session
Ran Tower of the Stargazer at GottaCon in Victoria, BC this morning, and it was a big success!
Spoilers ahead, if you're concerned about such things.
At first the party looked like they were going to take a very straightforward approach, since the very first thing they did was walk up to the front door and ring one of the knockers without even LOOKING at the door handles. But then they got divergent when they found the two trap doors in the sitting room, and made it down to the workshop with only a brief interlude with a spider. Once they'd found the levitation shaft, they of course went even further down. Through a lengthy process of elimination, they eventually found the correct positioning of the levers to gain access to the treasure, and found themselves with more loot than they could have imagined, and the only opposition they had faced thus far was a spider, some animate internal organs, an angry mirror (#3), and some levers.
It wasn't till they realized that the levitation shaft didn't have an exit on the main level that things got interesting. Rather than attempt to drag 10 fully laden treasure chests up a ladder, they opted to take each chest up to level 3, and then carry it down the stairs (right past the wizard, of course) to the main floor.
At this point I casually mentioned that they had enough loot in these chests that if they took it back to civilization now and ignored the rest of the tower they'd have enough treasure to reach approximately 5th level! But naturally they wanted more, and naturally the player who accepted the ghost's challenge lost the game. And then to top it off, the party's dwarf turned on the telescope (with the crystal in place) and watched the moss critters perform their ritual until he was transported there and promptly eaten.
After that the party wisely vacated the upper level, taunted the wizard a little more on the way out, and drew up plans to start making this tower their home base.