So yes, the dollhousing continued, with the declaration of chopping down a tree. So I prompt her to roll a strength check for it - bang - a 2!
So there's an excuse for combat to begin (well, the 'suggestion' of it was adopted...)! My notes have 'Can I do the actions?' listed - I think she started moving the remaining goblins over. Initially I think I proposed that the goblins, being half way across the map, would bust out their short bows since they couldn't reach us in melee. I get a fairly firm no to that (OMG, doesn't she realise she should say 'yes, and...'? LoL! I'm joking - there's a ton of yes going on here already. It's okay for a no to be mixed amongst it). So the lead one is coming in with his scimitar and the furthest one is firing his bow. Neither doing terribly well at it. And yes, when randomly determining who it'll shoot at, we have flagrant 'I hope it's you' comments! Ah, there's that classic D&D - together yet hoping some other party member gets burned first!
And oooh yeah, ray of frost crit on that goblin archer! Now you're a lawn ornament! Well, till you defrost!
I think this time she waited behind me, and I blasted both of them with ray of frost in the end while she did not draw their attention by firing. I guess you try out different approaches sometimes.
Having defeated them, I think there was some more interaction with Metal the dog, as he is to come with us. And with that the village map is done - it promptly gets flipped over to the half castle map on the other side. I think this double map came from a D&D 4e dungeon masters kit, late in 4e's cycle.
Apparently this castle needs villagers! So she gets to placing them in some of the barracks.
But it is at this point that Cobra King makes his first appearance! This starts out as her liking some snakemen figures I have...fine, I'll go look up what it is...yeah, it's a Yuan-ti figure, scimitar held high! Proper cobra hood on the figure.
Not actually having any stats for such a creature, I decide if it comes to it, I'll use a Redbrand ruffian (I think that's the name) from Phandelver's monster section, reskinned as Cobra King. Mostly because Redbrand ruffians are freakin' dangerous, being a 100XP monster that has two attacks! At this point in our career, that's kingly!
Cobra King takes up one of the towers of the castle, while we scuttle in the other way. I'm not quite sure she understands how castle walls work (when viewed directly from above, as they are on a battle mat) as we sort of walk through the walls to get towards the villagers. But it just doesn't seem that interesting to make a fuss about - D&D monsters are pretty well built to work just by themselves. The specifics of the castle don't need to be enforced to have any eventual battle with CK to be fun (in a 'I'm dying, I'm dying!' way!). Possibly if the monsters weren't so self contained I'd enforce it - but I don't think it'd make up for what just having a well designed system and monster has to begin with.
So, we make it to the villagers and she's roleplaying them, that they have no food to survive and don't have any armour. Eventually we go to another room, again on the opposite side of the map to CK, and gather food and bring it to them - in what is more dollhouse action rather than rolling dice or anything. Whatever, why not just let pure freeform be the mode to get the villagers some food, when it's flowing nicely already and she's having fun (and again, it's not going to spoil any encounter latter).
And it was there that we finished up another section. I think I must have said something about having a battle, because although play here ended in us scuttling around like frightened mice in the shadow of Cobra King without fighting stuff, things went crazy next session!
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