B3 Palace of the Silver Princess & Labyrinth Lord

Today we spent a few hours playing through the orange-cover Palace of the Silver Princess available for free from Wizards of the Coast using the Labyrinth Lord rules. These rules are a "retro-clone game system" designed to take us "back to the basics of old-school fantasy gaming". The rules are dedicated to Tom Moldvay, author of the Basic Set. Check out the nice list of D&D book covers by Robert Fisher to get some context.

The party managed to steal the ruby in the end!


(Flickr)

I had three players. We started with Befin the elf, Darn the elf, and Marcus the cleric, all on first level. Marcus hired three retainers and promised them that they got to keep the padded armor and short sword he bought them if they came along for this adventure.

Befin got replaced by Solarus the cleric, Darn got replaced by Darn the second, also an elf, and Marcus got replaced by Wilford the Worthless. Later Solarus got replaced by Grump the dwarf, Darn the second got replaced by a nameless cleric, and Wilford got replaced by Archibald the Wise, a magic user. We lost count of the retainers we lost. Often the party had as much as nine people in it. Ordinary humans came along for armor and weapons, elves and clerics came a long if they got a share of the treasure. Many a cleric died before being able to cast a single spell. More than one retainer ended up turning into a PC. The system is DEADLY.

The last party got to level up in the caves by popular vote of the players. Not much later they found the lair of a harpy that owned over 6000 gp. Remember how the orange book had many empty rooms that you had to stock yourself. I had added this one myself, thinking that the random treasure I had rolled would help them level up. Well, the nameless cleric ended up on level three, so hopes were up again.

The rules left me with some questions. Maybe somebody can help me out.

• Oil flasks turned out to be the most powerful weapons requiring no to-hit roll and doing an automatic 1d8 for two rounds. I guess the second 1d8 was unnecessary. How was this handled in the old days? I ruled that burning oil worked against kobolds, skeletons, orcs, weird amoebas, harpies, and ghosts.
• What would you think was a fair share of treasure for retainers? I ruled that elves, fighters and clerics would come along for half a share of the treasure. Later, when the party had brought the harpy gold back to town I ruled that they'd also come along for arms, armor, and 200 gp. Ordinary humans would come along for as little as 12 gp (padded armor and a short sword). Just curious to hear how others handled this.
• XP due to treasure was a lot more important in terms of XP than monsters defeated. Did I hand out too much treasure? Consider that the goal of the adventure is a ruby worth 10'000 gp an I had thought that the harpy would make a nice early stop if we did not make it to the ruby.
• Is the attrition rate typical? One player character died in the last fight against the ghosts, so he would have created his fourth character that day.
• The adventure has an encounter with two ghosts guarding the ruby having AC 7. At the end of the book ghosts have AC 1. What should I have used?
• When the party brought back 6000 gp, we realized that one of us had just paid ordinary human retainers, while the other two player character had promised their retainers a share of the treasure. So one PC got to keep 2000 gp and earn 2000 XP where as the others only got to keep 1000 gp and earn 1000 XP. That was weird.

Other stuff I noticed:

• Charm person is essentually permanent unless you manage to save. If you're smart you get to save once a day.
• Sleep is really powerful. We never had the situation that wizards announced their intent to cast a spell and enemies then gaining initiative and the ability to silence the spellcaster.
• As the system was so deadly, Cure Light Wounds was not used a lot. If you got hit at first level, you usually didn't survive.
• The maps were hilarious.
• Monster distribution was not totally crazy. As the orange-cover edition was missing room descriptions for two rooms on the entrance level, I looked at the edition reworked by Moldvay and used Troglodytes. It's unclear how these got into the caves in the first place, however. Interestingly enough, my players did not mind.
• The random encounter list featured some acolytes that were listed as having AC 2. I rolled up four of them, which gave the party awesome plate mail. Yay!
• Soon enough two player characters fell into a 50 ft. pit filled with murky water. The table on drowning specified a 95% for drowning in plate mail. As one of their friends managed to stay outside, I granted them a 10% bonus, but they didn't make it. That was short.
• I didn't like the format with empty rooms where I was supposed to fill it stuff.
• I liked Jean Wells' original story better. Nobody really knows how the castle ended. Nobody really knows why the tinker has a suite of plate armor in his bedroom. Nobody knows where the dragon went. Nobody knows why the two lovers turned into ghosts. I wanted to expand on it for future adventures, I could do that. And none of the Protector magic, none of that happy ending by releasing the lovers from the ruby.

It was fun for a one-day adventure. We'll be happy to return to D&D 3.5 in our next session.

Awesome play report! I'm glad you all had a great time. Old-school games definitely have their charm.

So, was there any controversial hair bondage?

Rechan said:

So, was there any controversial hair bondage?

Click to expand...

Heh. If you look at the player map you'll see that they avoided the decapitus.

I don’t think there are definitive answers to these questions. Even the written rules are only guidelines. So, here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth. (My answers might even be different on a different day.)

I haven’t closely studied the Labyrinth Lord rules, so I don’t know how they might differ from B/X D&D.

kensanata said:

Oil flasks turned out to be the most powerful weapons requiring no to-hit roll and doing an automatic 1d8 for two rounds. I guess the second 1d8 was unnecessary. How was this handled in the old days? I ruled that burning oil worked against kobolds, skeletons, orcs, weird amoebas, harpies, and ghosts.

Click to expand...

I call for a to hit roll if the PC is trying to actually hit a monster with it. Then they still have to light the oil-covered monster on fire. Molotov cocktail style is going to put the monsters on defensive once it’s lit and ready to throw. I'd be tempted to give them some sort of saving throw.

Throwing oil on the ground doesn’t need a to hit roll, but the monsters are normally going to get out of its way before taking damage. They’ll only take damage if they voluntarily cross it.

What would you think was a fair share of treasure for retainers? I ruled that elves, fighters and clerics would come along for half a share of the treasure. Later, when the party had brought the harpy gold back to town I ruled that they'd also come along for arms, armor, and 200 gp. Ordinary humans would come along for as little as 12 gp (padded armor and a short sword). Just curious to hear how others handled this.

Click to expand...

B2 has men@arms (first level fighters) who’ll work for one silver a day if the employer provides gear and room and board. If the employer doesn’t provide gear, they demand one gold a day.

Second or third level NPCs want a quarter of the treasure!

XP due to treasure was a lot more important in terms of XP than monsters defeated. Did I hand out too much treasure? Consider that the goal of the adventure is a ruby worth 10'000 gp an I had thought that the harpy would make a nice early stop if we did not make it to the ruby.

Click to expand...

What the game is telling you is that the point is to acquire treasure. (It’s a “story award”. It just so happens that the story is: Adventurers acquire treasure.) Playing by these rules, smart PCs will be on the look-out for ways to get the treasure without the risk of defeating the monster.

Personally, that makes a lot of sense to me. I suppose paladins might care more about defeating monsters than taking treasure, but most other adventurers--I would think--wouldn’t be quite so idealistic. And in this game, paladins would be a house-rule. (^_^) (Nothing wrong with that...if you’re into that sort of thing.)

So, if you want a different story, house-rule the XP rules. It’s OK, even Gary did that. Check out the free Castle Zagyg supplement the Trolls have up for some alternate XP award ideas from EGG himself. (They’re for C&C of course, but should be easily adapted.)

Is the attrition rate typical? One player character died in the last fight against the ghosts, so he would have created his fourth character that day.

Click to expand...

It depends.

Smart players will recognize that one hit from a weapon can—as in life—take out a first level PC and play accordingly. Smart players will recognize that some actions are so risky that no amount of hit points can save you—only a lucky saving throw. So, they’ll learn to avoid making saving throws at all.

DMs can give players clues as to the deadliness of particular areas or specific encounters. So the players can make at least partially informed choices.

DMs can also provide opportunities for adventure that don’t require deadly combat, which the PCs might want to take to gain a level or two before venturing into the more risky parts of the game world.

I find it’s up to the players and a DM who is impartial. The DM doesn’t keep the PCs for encountering things that might be too much for them but neither does he try to trick them into situations they can’t handle.

(The last bit is tricky, though, because monsters & NPCs played by the DM will try to trick the PCs. I guess the question the DM must ask himself is: Am I tricky the players, or is the monster/NPC tricking the characters?)

((Hmm...that looks like ye ole “metagaming” issue that I tend to dismiss.))

The adventure has an encounter with two ghosts guarding the ruby having AC 7. At the end of the book ghosts have AC 1. What should I have used?

Click to expand...

I don’t know.

When the party brought back 6000 gp, we realized that one of us had just paid ordinary human retainers, while the other two player character had promised their retainers a share of the treasure. So one PC got to keep 2000 gp and earn 2000 XP where as the others only got to keep 1000 gp and earn 1000 XP. That was weird.

Click to expand...

Per the B/X rules (including B2): Add up the gp value of all the treasure gained. It doesn’t matter who ended up with the treasure; the players choose the division of treasure, but the DM hands out the division of XP. Add the XP value of monsters defeated. Divide this by the number of survivors—PCs and NPCs. Each PC gets a full share of XP. Each NPC gets only half a share. (This means that XP equal to half a share times the number of NPC survivors is lost!)

I prefer to count NPCs as 0.5 a survivor so that no XP gets lost.

As always, adjust to taste.

Charm person is essentually permanent unless you manage to save. If you're smart you get to save once a day.

Click to expand...

Yes, Charm is a very powerful spell. But then, when you get so few spells per day, they should be powerful. At least some of them should.

Sleep is really powerful. We never had the situation that wizards announced their intent to cast a spell and enemies then gaining initiative and the ability to silence the spellcaster.

Click to expand...

The enemies don’t have to silence the caster. They merely have to inflict damage or cause him to fail a saving throw.

But, yes, Sleep—like Charm—is a very powerful spell.

I liked Jean Wells' original story better. Nobody really knows how the castle ended. Nobody really knows why the tinker has a suite of plate armor in his bedroom. Nobody knows where the dragon went. Nobody knows why the two lovers turned into ghosts. I wanted to expand on it for future adventures, I could do that. And none of the Protector magic, none of that happy ending by releasing the lovers from the ruby.

Click to expand...

The two versions are so different. Jean must’ve been Chaotic; Tom, Lawful. (^_^) I find Tom’s too neat and tidy.