Investigations into a Fantasy Campaign

(other than Pathfinder, that is)

Reading some rulebooks and playing some Pillars of Eternity has me thinking about some other options at the table.

• Re-read RQ2 a while back and got the itch to try it out. I like Glorantha enough to play there but I'm thinking about using Caverns of Thracia for the first run, maybe setting it in a more Roman-type setting than Dragon Pass. For a test run I don't need to overthink the setting.  
• I re-read the 5th ediion D&D PHB too and I feel like I should give it another chance. I was all fired up about Pathfinder and coming off of 4th Edition when I last tried it. I might be more willing to find it's strengths now as simpler and faster definitely has its own attraction again. Thinking about using Thracia here too. Also considering Ptolus, as I haven't run a big city based campaign in a long time. Or I could pick up Temple of Elemental Evil again ...
•  I'm all over the Mutant Crawl Classics Kickstarter and that got me thinking I should really re-read the original DCC and of course that has me thinking that we need to try it out too. I'm thinking Stonehell would be a good fit for it after the initial carnage of zero level.
• Then of course looking over my Stonehell notes, we could have played some Labyrinth Lord at any time the past few years and probably had a blast. 

So many adventures - faster and simpler is huge. All of these games look like a good time waiting to happen. 

The Apprentices vs. Stonehell - Session 3

Our heroes remain one elf ranger, one human cleric, one human monk, and one halfling assassin. Yes, the cleric survived the last session with a roll on the "what happens next" table, just needing some extra time to heal up from his vicious beetle-bite.

Heading out from the camp-cave they explored last session, the party moved along the right-hand (north) side of the canyon. Exploring the next visible cave entrance, things seem fine until the ranger spots mountain lion tracks. Knowing that's a pretty tough customer they decided to move on.

The next cave on the north face has a waterfall pouring out of it and down into a steaming pool. Quite a bit of time is spent discussing who and how to climb up to the opening - how good are our skills? How much rope do we have? How steep is the slope? Eventually this debate is settled and the party ascends the hillside. Now the debate is over entering the cave - some want to sneak but realize that the entire cave mouth is underwater as it pours forth down the hill, making stealth a much trickier proposition. It's also hot. There's some talk about wrapping chainmail in a blanket but the water complicates this solution. Eventually they decide to quit worrying about stealth and just sloshed into the dark, steamy cave.

Inside there was room around the edges to get out of the water. As they were entering there was also some discussion over light sources. As the rest of the group checked the cave the ranger started poking around the edges of the pool with a 10' pole and eventually detected something odd on the bottom of the pool, but could not see anything due to the heat of the water - it was just one big glowing hot spot to his infravision and torches were not showing much.

The monk was quickly nominated to go for an investigatory swim and took some burn damage jumping in but mastered the pain and continued on. He discovered a brass hemisphere at the bottom of the pool with no visible edges and no place to get a good hold. As he was feeling around he also realized that it felt like the water was coming out of this metal object, even though there was no spigot or opening of any kind. Intrigued but unable to move the thing he returned to the party and described what he found. Uncertain of the  significance of this find the party decided to head out and continue their survey of the valley.

The next opening was a carved stone doorway that led to an empty room, but exploring this triggered a low growl from the next room. Approaching, the party discovered a raccoon huddled in the corner. It turned to face them and was foaming at the mouth! Then it attacked, completely failing to harm the cleric's armored leg, and the party failed to hit it as it scrambled among them. Then the assassin lined up his blade and skewered the mad beast, killing it in a single stroke and ending it's misery.

Continuing to explore the party found a fairly extensive complex of rooms. Most were empty but there was a stone throne in one with an open pit in front of it. There was a stone table in another, behind a secret door, and they found some hidden treasure in it. One other room had a sandbag trap and no apparent treasure so they emptied out the sand onto the floor and left a message scrawled in it expressing their displeasure at anyone who would trap an empty room.

At this point there was a pause in the action - more next time!

DM Notes: This was a longer session than last time and a lot of fun even though there was not a lot of combat - it was a good reminder of the fun to be had with the "exploration" part of the game.

The mountain lion lair was empty, but they showed good instincts here in avoiding it.

The waterfall cave was an exercise in reminding them that there are not a lot of skills in this game - just tell me what you want to do and we will see if it makes sense. After the climbing was worked out the next debate was over sneaking with no sneak skill - which I pointed out that they had a monk and an assassin and  the ranger and cleric were not going to have a better chance than they would. For whatever reason they were very concerned with this and then totally dropped it. Then we had a discussion about light and whether someone could hold a torch in a shield hand - the answer here is yes, until combat starts - and who should carry it etc. We also had our first usage of a 10' pole! A very sensible one! 

There is a story about the brass hemisphere that emits hot water but there was no way they were going to figure it out this early. We will see if they remember it later on. The monk diving into hot water and trying to move the metal object spurred a quick review of the opening credits to "Kung Fu" and some speculation if he had tattoos before or after or if he now just had burn scars on the inside of his arms and whether they could find some aloe in the valley.

The battle with the raccoon lasted all of two rounds and was the only combat in the whole session. Best line after the fight: 

"I'm going to go check his bed" 
"What bed? This isn't Narnia, he doesn't have a bunch of little raccoon-sized furniture in here."

This earned me an annoyed look from the birthday boy that turned into a snicker as the brother took up the theme and started throwing in his own narnia contributions. It was pretty funny after this rather rapid fight.

Exploring the the rest of the place brought back the opening doors and searching for secret doors parts of the rules. The stone table ("no there's not a lion strapped to it" - pause, cackles) provided the only treasure of the night. 

The sandbag trap really annoyed them as it was at the end of a series of empty rooms on a night with one combat and one small treasure:

 "So it's a bag full of sand? On the end of a hanging rope tied to the door?" 

-Quick checks for secret doors, searches for treasure, nothing is found -

"Who would do that?!"

So they emptied it out and wrote a message in common as described, and decided they would check back every once in a while to see if anyone answered.

It was a lot of fun but I'm hoping they actually get to the main dungeon next time and start really digging in to the meat of the adventure.

The Apprentices vs. Stonehell - Session 2

This was a short session as it was already late when we sat down to play. Apprentice Who was already headed for bed so this was once again just Blaster and Red. Blaster's cleric recovered from his beating in session 1 and Red rolled up a monk of all things to replace his dead fighter.

They decided to explore one of the caves on the opposite side of the canyon. Inside they found a dirty room with a message written on the wall that only the elf could see - something about jewels! Beyond this they had a passage to the left, a passage to the right, and a door straight ahead. They went for the door.

Breaking open the door they discovered a storeroom - crates, barrels, and the smell of mildew. Ransacking the room (like any good adventuring party would) the ranger managed to discover some green slime on one of the crates and so the party got a quick lesson in hard cures as they figured out that only fire was going to stop the stuff from consuming the adventurous elf. Somewhat annoyed by all this (and the lack of loot to be found) they moved on to the right and found a largely empty room that had been used as a campsite. Then they went back down the hall to the last unexplored room.

Approaching, they notice a red glow ahead. Unsure what this might mean the halfling assassin tried to sneak down the hall to take a peek but completely failed at this and the rest of the party was only too happy to point this out. Plan B was "charge" so charge they did! Into a room with a large beetle eating a goat - a beetle with a red glow coming from it's underside, lighting up the room! Battle begins and the beetle charges the party to drive them away from its meal, ripping into the cleric and dropping him in one chomp - ouch! Blows are exchanged and the party manages to slay the insect with no further casualties. They decide to camp there for the night and pick up again the next day.

DM Notes: Did you know Advanced Labyrinth Lord Monks have a percentage chance to kill anything they hit? I didn't until Red pointed it out to me - where did that come from? It's a small chance, and at first I thought it was only applicable when they stunned an opponent but the example makes it appear as though it applies to every attack. Weird. 

The flame chalk message confused them a bit as they assumed the jewels would be in this room complex, not somewhere else in the dungeon. Once they hit the main door I think this will start to clear up.

The green slime was fun as they have run into it in 4E in the moathouse but the rules are different so they weren't sure what to do with it here but they figured it out without too much damage.

This was a short one but they had fun and cleared out one small cave section -  the surface level seems to be good for this kind of thing as it has lots of little areas that exist as their own thing and enabling the party to come and go. Hopefully we will get time for some more this weekend. 

The Apprentices vs. Stonehell - Session 1

(Prologue is here)

I told the Apprentices what I was thinking - that it would be nice to have another fast-D&D option - and they agreed. Apprentice Who was sick so he sat out this round but Red and Blaster were ready to go.

The first part of the experience was making characters. I told them 3d6 in order. There were frowny faces but no real griping other than "you know that means we're going to suck, right?". I tried to gently push them forward with the whole "part of the fun is overcoming the odds with a less than perfect character" D&D dad speech but it's clearly not a huge plus in their opinion. I did give them the chance to swap two attributes around, and that made them pretty happy - briefly.

We are playing advanced Labyrinth Lord so we have all the races and classes from AD&D and Blaster was shocked by the stat requirements for a Ranger. Subsequently Red was shocked at the Paladin - "Who has a 17 Charisma?" was the comment I believe.

Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Campaign

Apprentice Blaster was subsequently shocked to find out that Elves cannot be Rangers! His favorite race can't be his favorite class! SMACK! Welcome to the good old days son! Actually I used to think that was stupid too so I eased up here and pretty much let races access to class = race access to subclass as well. We'll figure out the level limits and stuff when it matters.

Anyway we ended up with an Elf Ranger (surprise surprise) and a Human Cleric for Apprentice Blaster, then a Half-Orc Fighter and a Halfling Assassin for Apprentice Red. They have names but we will not concern ourselves with those names until they reach 2nd level.

Couple of interesting things here:

• I like the idea of the halfling assassin so I allowed it. between this and the elf ranger thing I decided to just go with the tentative class = sub-class general guideline for now. Plus the advanced LL assassin doesn't have all that gray area stuff around what the table is for - it specifically says it's a chance to flat-out kill something under a couple of easily-met conditions. 
• Half-Orc fighter ... those were fairly popular back when in some of my circles, a very traditional choice and with no prompting from me
• Clerics - My background for the religions in this world is different than what I usually run and pretty loose so I told Blaster to make up whatever god he wants his guy to follow and tell us about it. He and Red immediately say "Talos" and start singing something from Skyrim and just tickling the heck out of themselves so apparently I need to play more Skyrim to start getting the jokes. 

This was all arranged very much on the fly so as they finished up character creation I handwaved a lot of travel time and said they headed straight for Stonehell when they left the great city of Dragonpoprt, bypassing the local town  in order to get right to the dungeon.

I'm sure it looks something like that

Stonehell is located in a box canyon which is walled off by a 20' stone wall, kind of like Helm's Deep without the fortress part. It's partially collapsed but the central section with the gatehouse is still intact. The canyon has some cave openings ala Caves of Chaos, plus there are some terrain features inside the canyon too - in short there are a lot of places to check out before entering the dungeon proper. They stopped to read the graffiti on the outside of the wall (treasure promises, warnings, etc.) and then went inside.

First stop was the first entrance on the left - empty, empty with big stone thing in the middle of the floor, then NOT EMPTY! Yeah, skeletons! A few minutes later and the skeletons are smashed to bits around the room and no one died!

Small, rubber skeletons, apparently - like these!

Encouraged by this they decided to check out a small wooded area and they manage to surprise a group of brigands waiting in ambush! A very one-sided fight breaks out and the brigands go down faster than the skeletons did, though they manage to get in a few licks in on the party.

Backtracking a bit they decide to enter a cave when the ranger notices some bear tracks and they hear a low growl form within -  a bear growl. Realizing this is likely the lair of the local mascot and good luck charm they decide to back off and check out some other options.

Heading up a nearby trail the neophyte heroes come upon a new cave with non-mascot wildlife - wolf tracks! They charge in and the wolves attack! In a flurry of vicious blows a wolf is wounded but the cleric goes down in the first round. Shocked back into reality a hard fight begins and goes on for 8 whole rounds, taking out all 4 wolves and only claiming the fighter's life along the way as an additional cost. The now somewhat less cocky party gathers up their things and heads to the nearest town, to bury the half-orc, help the cleric recover, and recruit some help.

Oh it wasn't THAT bad

DM Notes: Hey, I tried to get them to check out the hireling rules but they were not interested. All went well and they used appropriate caution until the wolf episode and well, hopefully they remember that. 

• The binding wounds rule worked well so we're definitely keeping that. 
• Assassination is not a hugely useful ability at first level as quite a bit of the time a backstab is enough to kill your target anyway - Red kept asking about rolling for assassination until I finally told him that you don't a special table to kill things with 5 hit points. Then of course with the wolves he really didn't have a chance to use it anyway.
• They got distracted trying to parley with the brigands until I reminded them that they had surprised the goons and that talking to them first would automatically skip past that. They opted to attack instead. They did track them back towards their lair, so that could be an interesting development for next time.

It was a promising run and they were amazed that we got that much exploring and fighting done in the time we were actually playing. That's a good way to start and next time we should accomplish even more as we won't have quite so much character building to do. 

Labyrinth Lord and Stonehell

So ... went a little retro over the weekend. Why?

Sometimes, after months of running 4E, as much as I like it, the pace of 2 or 3 encounters per session wears a bit. I'm in the mood for something faster. In the past this usually prompted another trip to the Caves of Chaos or Quasqeton with the Apprentices, but at this time last week I was seriously looking at playing another round of Next ... with the Caves of Chaos and some hope of moving on to the Isle of Dread which is also a part of the playtest packet now.

But ... the boys still have a bad taste in their mouths from that failed experiment last year and I don't want to have to argue them into a game. I've tried having them read it before but since it's a LOT of text and "it's a test version" reading it loses out to talking smack to their friends on XBOX live. Also, I've spent a lot of time in the Caves and it might be nice to have something totally new to explore for all of us.

Poking around online turned up some possible options but then I ran across Stonehell and after reading some reviews and flipping through the preview I decided to make an impulse purchase. It's big enough to run for a long time but I don;t need to keep up with 30 pages of notes for each level - that almost-one-page-dungeon format it uses hits a sweet spot for me for this kind of game. I went ahead and printed out the upper section but I suspect I could run it from an iPad if I needed to.

Then I got to looking at what OSR system it used - lord knows there are enough of them out there these days. Ah, Labyrinth Lord - OK, I have that, it was pretty much Moldvay Basic, right. Flip flip flip - yep. Ah, but I don't really want to go back to Elf as a class, we already have that in the B2/B1 game. Ah-ha, Advanced Companion. It's an adaptation of the AD&D races and classes to fit into B/X type games - that should do it. My main motivation here is that I don't want to have to do any conversion work to run this - I'm doing enough of that on the 4E campaigns. I want to run it as-is and see where things go without that extra layer of processing/preparation that comes with  a conversion.

So I had an adventure and some rules - what else is out there? Couple of cool things:

• The B/X headgear table - hey, we're going all the way here. I want the Apprentices to understand it's OK to have fun with this and not be too serious.
• Meatshields - the henchman generator! I can't tell you how much I like this thing - it's funny and in the spirit of the game and all that stuff and I hope it stays up forever.
• The Labyrinth Lord combat wheel - I remember the AD&D combat wheel that came out in Dragon and once I put that together I stopped using the charts completely.It's a handy thing to have. I haven't put it together yet but I expect it will be a big hit when I do.

I'm sure there are others but these 3 stood out to me.

I also added some house rules:

• Jeff's Carousing Rules - I finally get to use these!
• Chop When They Drop - because everybody likes Cleave
• Dutch Courage - because it helps
• I use Claw Carver's binding wounds rule because I like it better than my old one: Immediately after combat a wounded character may receive “first aid” to restore 1d4-1 hit points lost during that combat. This healing may be administered by the character him- or herself (if conscious!) or by a companion.
• And Shields Shall be Splintered, of course.

Splintered!

Characters die at -10 hp (it was good enough for AD&D it's good enough here) A failed "save or die" roll does not cause instant death but drops you to 0 hit points and you immediately begin the death spiral of -1 hp per round until aided or you reach -10 and die. This applies to poisons and death ray type effects. Petrification still turns you to stone, Massive damage still does massive damage, etc. Someone hit by poison can be stabilized at 0 hit points but cannot regain consciousness without a potion or spell effect to neutralize the poison. 

Level drain effects allow a saving throw and drained levels return at one per week, assuming you are not turned into a wight during the battle. 

Also, I added a tweak for weapon usage: Using two weapons gives the user a +1 to hit, using a weapon two-handed gives the user a +1 to damage. At one point I tried out letting the two-weapon user roll 2d20's and use the highest but that was too much. I think toning it down to a +1 should make it interesting without overpowering the thing. The two-hander bonus helps bump up those weapons just a bit to make the player feel like he's made a choice that matters without overpowering that option too.

Anyway there is the thinking and the rules tweaking - next up is the action report.