Circe's Rune, session 1

I'm about to wrap up a mini-campaign based on Jeff Rients' one-issue campaign idea. Not just the concept (squeezing every creative drop out of one issue of Dragon as the basis of a D&D campaign), but actually stealing his ideas. 

It has also been an experiment with a different playing style for my group. Most of them are used to creating their PCs with the DDI character builder. I made them create their characters together, and used mostly random elements. 4d6-L for stats, straight down the line with no trading. I came up with a random chart for races available. They didn't get to pick a class right away, either.

The PCs woke up in coffins--an elf, an eladrin, and a dwarf. They had no memories and no abilities beyond their basic stats and racial traits. They broke out to find themselves in a mausoleum with something further in trying to beat the door down. Everyone noticed they had tattoos of a strange rune (the mark of Circe).  They escaped into a graveyard surrounded by an iron fence with a wolfsbane wreathe. A huge shaggy werewolf finally burst out of the mausoleum and they elected to fight instead of run--and they beat its ass. They realized he was dazed by the wolfsbane so they pinned it to his chest, so smart play and lucky dice helped three 0-level PCs take down a 4th-level monster. By then two vampires were approaching (one looked like Nosferatu, the other like the girl from the Ring) Did they flee? No! Back into the mausoleum!

They split up. The elf found some gold and a magic hammer in the family tomb. The eladrin ran into some underground catacombs and was chased by Nosferatu, with his hypnotic red eyes. He eventually clawed his way through dirt back above ground. The dwarf faced off against Ring-girl's spider and wounded it, then beheaded the vampire with a shovel. Finally, everyone escaped the graveyard and headed toward the lights of a nearby town.

I was expecting everyone to run, so I had to improv everything inside the mausoleum. I certainly didn't think they would defeat the werewolf so easily, but then I had given him a strong weakness (ideas stolen from here).

More sessions to follow...