Chapter 1: What are these things you call Squishy Eggs?

It is important to new players or role playing games to allow them to get gradually introduced to the game. One easy way to do this is to talk about things that they have experienced in real life and bring that to the game. For instance, in the section below, one player currently got into raising ants in an ant farm. You can talk about any activity that the player has recently been part of.

Improvise on what to say to the adventurers. The adventurer’s main goal is to gain additional information about these squishy eggs, specifically, where to find them. Use the information below to help you. The townsfolk are uneasy about the adventurers standing up. Have the townsfolk motion to have the players sit down.

In the town, there is also Mr.Squish and Mrs.Squish. Feel free to make up your own story with them, as they will appear at various points in this campaign. They are not essential characters, but it's awesome to see kids react when they see a recurring character they know. In my campaigns with kids, Mr.Squish was a fruit farmer and always was trying to chase Mr.Poop to gather manure to fertilize his fruits. Mrs.Squish was always worried about Mr.Squish getting dirty.

Squishy eggs are eggs from stuffed animal-like creatures that live in this world. Though many of the inhabitants in this world are stuffed creatures, few know about how they came to be. Even so, the creatures do know that they are valuable and special. Only the oldest and wisest stuffed creatures know what squishy eggs are and the importance they hold. The eggs can come in many colors, but are always very squishy. In some future chapters, adventurers will be fighting evil stuffed animals. When stuffed creatures perish, they leave behind “puffy clouds” -- which is basically stuffed animal stuffing. Squishy eggs can be sold for high value for special gems. Squishy eggs can also be hatched, but only with time and adequate equipment (which the adventurers will come across in a future chapter). What comes out is a stuffed animal resembling a Squishmallow (I am not affiliated with the company in any way), which will be a pet that grows with your player.

There are a number of things the adventurers can do while in town, however, the priority is to attain something to light up the dungeon to which they would be visiting. As adventurers what do they do? If adventurers are in town for too long (this depends on the attention span of the group), encourage them to go down the hole. Other than this, adventurers are free to explore and do the following (improvise if they suggest other things).

Pick Fruits: In the town, there are various fruits you can pick off the tree. Determine what dice should be rolled based on how the adventurer approaches it. Some ideas for tests results for this would be:

• Critical Success: Whoever said ,"A bird in the hand is better than two birds in the bush" evidently never caught two birds in their hands. As you reached for the berries, another one dropped from the branch above it! Get two nom nom berries!

• Success: Great job! These should be valuable! Get one nom nom berry!

• Failure: You fail to find any ripe berries, maybe you need to wait a few more days.

• Critical Failure: As you reach for the berry, a sneaky snake jumps out and bites your hand! You lose 1 health, but worse, you don't get any berries.

Go to the General Store: In town, there is a person (Mr.Poop, or if you do not prefer this character, any other character in the NPC Sprites.). Be familiar with the items prior to starting. The file named "GeneralStore" will contain the items to which the sales person has in stock for a given Chapter. For seeing in the dark, adventurers can purchase "Illumination Potions".

When buying illumination potions, you can read ,"This odd and curious yellow potion glows a soft light. A whiff of it smells like fertilizer your parents use for their garden! You worry a bit about it, but your desire to get squishy eggs are stronger than your concern."

Hunt for Wood : There are a bushes which adventurers can forage for branches and twigs. Upon a test, they can acquire a stick to which they can use to hold in the dungeon. Sticks last the same amount of time in as illumination potions. The only catch is that they need to light it. This can be done by a wizard using a fire spell, or getting fire from an existing source.

There are plenty of tests you can perform depending on what the adventurers do. For instance:

• Search for a stick, test awareness.

• Pull a stick off a bush, test strength.

So ideas for if the adventurers are searching for sticks would be to test strength. To which you can use the following (Warrior rolls a D6, all others roll a D4).

• • • 6 is rolled. Critical Success. You pull on the bush hoping for sticks and you find a pile of sticks! These sticks? It will kill! But for now, they will be good to catch fire. Player finds a bunch of sticks, they can take as much as they want, given they have an inventory limit.

    • 3-5 is rolled. Success. You manage to pull out a managed stick. It's light! Gain one stick.

    • 2 is rolled. Failure. You muster up all your strength and couldn't even gather up a small stick. Maybe time to buy illumination potions.

    • 1 is rolled. Critical Failure. You roll up your sleeves to ready yourself and slip and fall. You sit up and notice dried grass around you. Perhaps it'll light the dungeon as well! You begin to reach for it, but as you reach, a gust of wind blows it all away.

Once a player have sticks, they can light them at the campfire or through the wizard's magic. They need to pass a dexterity test not to get burned by the fire. Lost one health if they fail.

Once a player had gatherer items to see in the dark, they can proceed into the hole on the map to the next section.

The final monster to this Chapter / dungeon is a monster called a Frogamal. The frogamal is a monster which steals eggs from other creatures and possesses the unborn egg with the frogamal gene. The creatures which are born out of this method is controlled by the frogamal.

While underground, remind the adventurers that they will need to use illumination potions or have a light to see.

There is not a lot of story / reading in this section. This section is mainly about battling and fighting monsters.

The adventurers can battle the frog as expected. Players will get gold for each monster they kill.

There is a good deal of frog with 3 eyes in the bubbling pool. Before they move out, the Wizard or Ranger (with fire arrows if they have them) can light the pool on fire! If you have a Ranger or Wizard in your group, you can have them test for awareness or intelligence.

A test for intelligence might look like:

• • • 6 is rolled. Critical Success. You muster all your brain power and a spark lights up! However, this is not only a spark of imagination or memory, but a real spark! The spark flies towards the green pool and lights all the frog animals on fire!

    • 3-5 is rolled. Success. You manage to remember your teachings from Wizard School. A bit of fire on the pool will go a long way.

    • 2 is rolled. Failure. You tried to remember what the rhyme was in Wizard School that talked about green pools of water. Was it ,"Pools of green, they be mean?" Nah, that wasn't it. You scratch your head trying to remember, but don't.

    • 1 is rolled. Critical Failure. All those years of not paying attention at school finally caught up to you. You fall down and cry because you know you cannot remember. Loose one turn.

The area has a green pool to which, if the adventurers bought empty jars from Mr.Poop or Mr.Pee can fill up the jars with acid with a test of dexterity.

• • • 6 is rolled. Critical Success. You managed to fill up all your empty jars with the green liquid.

    • 3-5 is rolled. Success. You manage to fill up an empty jar with green liquid before it burns your hand off.

    • 2 is rolled. Failure. You inch carefully, trying to avoid the splashing of the pond, but end up not having a chance to safely get the green liquid.

    • 1 is rolled. Critical Failure. As you carefully dip the empty bottle in the pool, you have an uncontrollable sneeze which not only caused all the green liquid to spill on the pool, but also some to splash on your arm! Lose 1 health.

This section also introduces our dungeon salesperson, Mr.Pee (which you can change if you don't like this character). Mr.Pee sells items for more expensive, but at least you have access to those items in the dungeon.

Once the adventurers kill all the frog monsters, read the next section.

The adventurers may have a conversation with the Frogamal, however, the Frogamal will never give up it's squishy eggs that it's about to possess.

There are a lot of things the adventurers can do:

• They can pick up the broken spears on the ground to fight the Frogamal (or stab the spears into the ground, pointy side facing up).

• Throw jars of acid at the Frogamal.

• Attack the Frogamal.

All of the above will require tests for attacking of performing the actions, improvise on the action and outcome. Kids will think of numerous things here that it's impossible to document all of it. In the end, the battle with the Frogamal is tough, but give players chances since this is their first time.

Once Frogamal is gone, read below.

There is no way the players will win this battle. Have them battle until they have nearly no resources.

Read below.