At last - my AD&D campaign has started!

[MerricB]

Back from the Isle of Dread, the group spent the winter helping a local lord fight off giants. That was fun.

Now, back to the original dungeon, the group have spent some time trapped in an alternative castle (Castle Amber), before returning...

My AD&D group, which is currently meeting once every two weeks for sessions of 2-3 hours in length, is finally out of Castle Amber (something that was missed by some of the more stalwart players). We had a new player for this session, which saw them exploring what I’m beginning to refer to as the “Ruins of Loki”. It wasn’t meant to be a megadungeon in the beginning, but that’s what it’s turning into.

The dungeon design is aided by the random dungeon generator in the AD&D DMG, especially when the players wander into sections of the dungeon that they haven’t explored yet. That they did so was entirely due to the group not having the map of the dungeon with them; the player with the map couldn’t make this session, and so the group went straight ahead when they should have gone left, and eventually went down a set of stairs to a level of the dungeon I hadn’t expected them to visit. I certainly hadn’t detailed or mapped it yet. I had two rather interesting new levels drawn up and (mostly) detailed, so what were they doing going down this staircase?!?

Four players controlling six characters turned up for this session, so we had a half-elf thief 1 (new player), a cleric 6, a magic-user 7 and his cleric 5 henchman, and the fighter 6 and his fighter 5 henchman.

The forgetful senior players managed to take the group to a room which they’d explored before, and left behind a trap (a swinging log) which they’d drawn a smiley-face on. It was rather amusing when they triggered the trap and the senior players went, “Oh yes, I remember now!”

This didn’t help them go in the right direction, as they continued to wander in vaguely random directions around the dungeon. A group of orcs proved little trouble, although it was somewhat disturbing that this group of orcs wasn’t part of either of the two tribes they’d met before; this one had the symbol of an eye. (The others are the Severed Hand and the Bloody Tongue, IIRC).

So, they found a staircase, and wandered into the unknown. I frantically flipped my DMG open, and started making rolls to see what they found, whilst making notes in my Book Of The Dungeon. So, they found a room in which there were a few skeletons of humans slumped in a corner (not monsters, just bones), then found a small group of troglodytes, a room with a painted eye, before running into a group of boring beetles that proved a lot more dangerous than they expected; Jesse’s cleric cohort was reduced to negative hit points, and the group had to retreat from the dungeon.

Unfortunately, the group weren’t mapping, and their grasp of the geography of what they’d passed was poor. Really poor. So poor that they turned left rather than straight ahead and went into a new room. Circular, with four entrances all leading to long, disorientingly similar tunnels. Good fun. Unfortunately for my amusement, they lucked out and managed to find the route back out with only a few missteps.

It was the next expedition (sadly shortened) that proved the most amusing for me as a Killer DM. One odd things is that I’ve got quite a different personality as an AD&D DM than I do as a 4E or 3E/Pathfinder DM. I’m a lot nastier and adversarial. Thus, when Jesse decided he wanted to fireball a group of giant rats running at him thirty feet away down a 10’ wide corridor, I didn’t say, “are you sure you want to do that, because you’ll toast your party”. Instead, I let him do it.

The smart player of the group, who turned out to be our newest player, ran for the dungeon exit the moment he heard Jesse start intoning the spell. Everyone else moved back a bit... but not enough. 33,000 cubic feet proved to reach Jesse and the rest of the group quite well. No-one died, but Jesse’s cleric henchman was (once again) reduced to negative hit points.

Of course, that was the final straw for his henchman, who - upon being healed - stormed out of the campaign, never to be seen again. The loyalty of Jesse’s future henchmen is likely to be a lot lower...

Incidentally, three of the players in this game have the AD&D Players Handbooks reprints!

 

[MerricB]

We had six players for this session, surprisingly with no henchmen. Well, that was until the group decided to go to the nearby larger town (Borton, Borston, might end up being Borsby) with Reece’s character, Xury, trying to buy some glowing chalk and Rich’s character, Zarlac, recruiting some henchmen.

During the week, I’d picked up a copy of Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms book, which is absolutely excellent. (I haven’t been so excited about the Realms since I got that original box set back in 1987). In it, Ed describes how many of his sessions would begin with the PCs discussing what they wanted to do next rather than Ed railroading them into anything. The trouble with running groups that way is that it requires a lot of information about the world that the players can use to make their decisions, and I’m rather terrible at creating a lot of small details. And then remembering them later.

However, for this session I was quite happy for the players to decide what to do next. And so, off they tromped to Borsby, where Zarlac went in search of henchmen by hitting all the pubs and Xury went to find the local magician, Marley the Magnificent.

Such fine Viking names I’m using here. Having a cheat-sheet of sample Viking names would have been helpful; I’ve just prepared one, but (of course), I’ll probably forget to bring it to my next session.

Marley wasn’t seeing visitors, so instead Xury got to deal with his apprentice, Joshua. And what a fine conversation they had! Joshua was rather scornful of Xury’s desire for glowing chalk, and there was a great misapprehension about what it was he wanted. Xury decided to call it “chalk of illumination” and Joshua decided that it was the type of “illumination” that meant knowledge. I must confess, my use of illumination in such a fashion owed a lot to my childhood reading (and rereading) of Dear Monkey, an abridged version of the Journey to the West. A few things have stayed with me and they came up to torment Reece this session, much to my amusement and that of the players.

Eventually Xury got it all straightened out and, although the initial price was quite high, was able to bargain a sack of Fafnir’s dragon scales for the chalk and - in addition - a rope of climbing. Mind you, it would take some time to get the chalk, but that was the price you pay for wanting a new magic item.

Meanwhile, I quickly created seven possible henchmen for Zarlac to hire, and we went through the recruitment process. Jesse was quite convinced that they all had low intelligence scores, which probably displays a certain similarity in how I role-played them. I did do enough distinguishing between them so that Rich didn’t end up hiring the best one on offer... a neutral evil magic-user with great stats. The alignment would probably have gotten in the way, though. Instead, he hired a fighter and a magic-user (the latter a one-time apprentice of Marley) and we were up to eight characters for the rest of the session.

Reece got inspired at this point, and decided to set up a wiki site for the campaign. I was quite amenable to this (perhaps it would help keep track of some of the minor details like town names that I forget), and Reece started on it as the session progressed.

Along the way, I threw in a couple of rumours that the group could investigate: a rise in bandit attacks and the mysterious disappearance of two tax collectors. The latter was approved of heartily by the group, and suggestions that they should investigate were shouted down; the less tax collectors in the world the better!

However, bandits were something they were interested in tracking down and so they did - an entire band of 90 of the poor fools, plus about ten higher-level bandits. The initial confrontation against a third of the bandits ended rather abruptly for the bandits (save the running) after Latud used fireball against half of them, and then the elven-cloaked Xury went to amuse himself by getting rid of the horses of the remaining bandits. He realised that this wasn’t perhaps the best of plans as they detected him (untying horses is not the most stealthy of endeavours), and was forced to climb a tree to escape them before the rest of the party arrived to save him. Alas, they didn’t take heed of my suggestion to fireball his tree, but the remaining bandits, including one lieutenant, didn’t survive long. Well, long enough to tell the group where their main force was.

Travel without horses made the trip take longer than it should have, but eventually the group found the bandit stockade and attacked it - mainly with fireballs, which made most of the lower-level bandits flee. However, that left the remaining bandits - from levels 3-8 as fighters and a level 8 magic-user - coming for them. Latud engaged in a magic missile duel with the magic-user, and was fortunate enough to win both initiative rolls and slay him before he could fireball the party. The fighters were much tougher, as none of the characters at this session were fighters! Armour class 2 is very, very hard to hit, and the battle took quite a long time. Eventually the group was victorious, but it wasn’t a sure thing.

The group got a lot of loot from this victory, including ten magic items! Of most import was the +2 longsword and the ring of 18/00 strength that Xury took; now the halfling was invincible! Or, at least, he liked to think so.

From there, the group returned to Jarlston, the town of the Oracle’s Dungeon, and made their way into that dungeon. The group had neglected to bring maps, but they had Reece’s memory, and he guided them down to the oracle and then they went in search of more stairs... which they failed to find. We were getting short of time, so instead they discovered a few monsters to kill: first a group of six ogres. This proved to be a memorable encounter: Xury attacked with superior surprise and killed three of them before they could react. Backstab with +7 to hit, +8 to damage which is then tripled? Oh my, yes. (Reece later realised he should have been rolling a d12 for damage and not a d8...)

However, Xury also has an AC of 5, so when the ogres acted, they smashed him hard. The rest of the group came to his rescue, but Xury had been quite badly hurt by that encounter.

So, when Xury got hit by the troglodytes in the next encounter, he was almost killed. (He then made sure that he was healed!)

The final room the group investigated for the day had a towel-rack and an occupied shower cubicle; a beautiful woman was inside, showering. Latud decided to take all his clothes off and join her. She proved to be a highly adept magical practitioner who was not well-disposed to the intrusion. Latud is still alive, but mostly because I was nice. Xury did try to attack her, but that didn’t go so well, and the group fled the dungeon in some haste.

The Party:
Asmundr (Josh) - cleric 6
Zarlac (Rich) - thief 8
Charles (Clayton) - thief 1
Farin (Lee) - cleric 5
Xury (Reece) - thief 7
Latud (Jesse) - magic-user 7
Jared (NPC) - fighter 1
Alara (NPC) - magic-user 1

 

[MerricB]

I wasn’t meant to be running AD&D this week, but a lack of players for Paul’s 4E campaign saw me volunteering my services for some more AD&D play. Unfortunately, it also transpired that although I had the campaign notes, I didn’t have the dungeon maps. As the maps are a fair sight more important than the notes, it looked like the Caverns of the Oracle would be off-limits this session.

Unfortunately for my players, I had brought in my newly-arrived copy of Rappan Athuk, in the Swords & Wizardry edition. And so that’s where I sent them, with the explanation that the Oracle had revealed that one of the keys they were seeking was in the infamous Dungeon of Graves.

At the time Rappan Athuk was first published in the early days of the 3E-era, I was relatively poor, and was never able to obtain a copy, despite my interest in the work. I later picked up a pdf-version of the 3.5E version, but at the time didn’t need such a work in my games. This AD&D campaign I’ve now been running for more than a year, in contrast, is the perfect place for such a dungeon to exist. And so, sitting on the coast of Ratik, I’ve placed the Dungeon of Graves and that was where the group travelled for this week’s adventure.

We had five players this session:
• Paul, playing Grak, the half-orc fighter 6 who owns a vorpal sword.
• Clayton, who didn’t have his character sheet with him from last week, so created a new elven fighter 1/thief 1.
• Reece, playing Xury, his Halfling thief 7
• Shane, playing Edward, his human magic-user 7, and
• Jesse, playing his human magic-user 7

The first thing they did upon reaching the graveyard, underneath which the dungeon is located, was to investigate the well. (As of yet, they haven’t heard tales of what happens to adventurers who disappear down its shaft). Upon discovering there were large clawmarks on the interior of the well, they wisely decided to investigate elsewhere.

A few grim chuckles were gained from the players upon inspecting a few headstones, and the group investigated the two smaller mausoleums. They were quite unable to enter one of the buildings, but the other’s lock was unpicked by Xury and its contents, such as they were, were investigated. Nothing but rubble, thoroughly looted, awaited the group.

The group paid scant attention to the dwarf statue, taking its inscription as a warning to be paid heed to, which makes a lot of sense given their location, and instead they went towards the main mausoleum, with Latud flying up on his broom of flying for some early reconnaissance. Alas, the gargoyles perched about the top of the building were not purely decorative. Latud was unable to recite the words of a fireball spell on his unstable perch, so flew back down. It was up to the other magic-user in the party. Edward cast a magic missile spell from his staff, dealing a puny 3 damage to one gargoyle.

I couldn’t believe it: no fireball? As a result, the combat turned against the party. Xury was able to use his cloak of elvenkind to hide from the gargoyles, Edward used invisibility, but Latud was swarmed by gargoyles and knocked unconscious, Clayton’s elf was slain, and what was left was Grak with his vorpal sword, which proved enough for the group’s eventual victory.

The group, hurt and in need of healing, packed up and returned to the nearby town of Zelkor’s Ferry to seek a replacement for Clayton’s thief. We persuaded Clayton to create a cleric, Sigtrygg, and after everyone was healed, the group headed back.

Along the way, we ascertained that Shane had actually forgotten to prepare the fireball spell. He fixed that for the next trip, and the gargoyles – which had been replaced – were no match for both Latud and Edward casting the spell on them, although a couple survived long enough to give Xury and Grak a few nasty scratches. Now the main mausoleum was open to the group, as long as they could pick the lock, which Xury could.

The group saw a sarcophagus, and decided to loop a rope around the top to pull it off. After I explained the problem with that (nowhere to attack the rope), the doors slammed shut and locked. Xury opened the lock again, but the doors wouldn’t swing open... and either they were getting shorter or the floor was getting higher! That it was a death-trap was soon ascertained by the party, and they began frantically searching for a way out, as Grak threw the lid off the sarcophagus to be greeted by the sight of a Black Skeleton. He fought it in single combat as the rest of the group searched, and a good hit from his vorpal sword decapitated it as Clayton’s cleric discovered a trapdoor in the floor. The group quickly escaped down that before it too was blocked.

There now was no way out of the dungeon. They had to go forward, and that they did. This first level was mostly abandoned, though with a number of features to examine, and a horrible smell filling the air. After exploring a few rooms – and taking note of the large holes in the walls – they group became aware of a strange shimmering in the air coming up the stairs, inside which was held bones and coins. In fact, it was a gelatinous cube, and it managed to paralyse Latud before it was slain by everyone else.

The stairs proved to be trapped, with Latud springing the trap (fourth to step on the stair, unlucky guy!), and found his foot caught by poisoned spikes: if he tried to extricate himself, he’d poison himself! Luckily for him, Xury is very, very good at removing traps and was able to do so.

Avoiding the next trap to come their way, Xury took a deck of cards from a grinning skeleton, and Grak discovered yet another trap - a pit trap! – as he went to investigate the source of a tapping noise, which proved to be water dripping into a bowl. The party was now properly paranoid, and low on healing.

Heading onwards, they came to a large cavern in which were many rats and a young half-elven woman being menaced by them. The woman ran out of the chamber as the rats turned on the party, but the rats were no match for this group. They went to reassure the woman that they were safe, but discovered that she had led them into a trap; she and her four companions all turning into rat-human hybrids and attacking! Unfortunately for the rats, they were caught in a stinking cloud spell and were then able to be slain by the group – though not before Sigtrygg foolishly ran into the cloud and was likewise nauseated.

The group were able to gain the rats’ treasure: a set of boots of elvenkind and a scroll with anti-magic shell on it. Xury took the boots, very happy to have both the boots and the cloak. He was also able to find a dwarf’s skeleton and its treasure, guarded by more rats, which Grak was easily able to dispatch.

Going back northwards, the group managed to find the dung monster, which began to chase them through the dungeon. Luckily for the group, they had enough time and space to outrun this strange oozy creature, and Xury lucked upon a rat tunnel that was wide enough for them to squeeze through, and which eventually led to the surface.

Feeling somewhat lucky to be alive, and wanting nothing more to do with the dungeon for now, the group headed back to Zelkor’s Ferry for a hot bath.

 

[MerricB]

Just necro-ing my old thread... incredibly, the campaign is still going. It's up to two-and-a-quarter years so far. A lot of play at once per fortnight, but for the past few months it's back to weekly. People join in when they can, and so numbers vary remarkably. We had two late cancellations for my most recent session, so we ended up with only four players, and it's generally about 6-7 players, but it does go higher at times.

While I'm running this campaign, two other games alternate from week to week at the same time. A Rifts campaign, and a Pathfinder campaign. (The PF was 4E last year, but they finally decided to move to something different). Players from both of those games participate in mine when they're free.

The funniest thing that happened recently was Shane, who normally is involved in both the other campaigns, decided to research the find familiar spell. It only took him seven weeks and 10,000 gold! Sometimes, spell acquisition can be brutal in AD&D. He had to play another character (his henchman) while his PC was off researching. Mind you, with PF and Rifts starting up again, he's been busy with them, and so his character is free again!

The report on the latest session follows, just in case anyone is interested:

AD&D – The Frost Barbarians – session 66(ish)

The up-and-down numbers of my AD&D player base saw only four players attend this weekend’s session. I wouldn’t be utterly surprised if I’m dealing with ten players next week; it’s that sort of campaign! The regulars of Jesse and Tait were there, along with Tim and a new player, Mike. Mike rolled up a fighter, and so we had characters from 1st to 9th level at the table. Yes, working out the best encounters for this group was going to be challenging!

They decided that instead of venturing into the Caverns of the Oracle – the standard dungeon for the campaign – they’d go to the local town of Jarlsby, and look for some missions there. This is always a problem for me as a DM; I’ve got to quickly work out some NPCs who can offer them work! And the actual nature of the missions… now, that I find challenging. I really need to create a set of basic missions that I can choose between when the group decide to get away from the dungeon-delving. So, I worked on the old standbys for the area: guarding caravans, causing trouble for the frost giants, or seeing the local lord about his rebellion against the Snow Barbarian overlords. The group chose the last option.

One of the ongoing threads in this campaign – well, as much as it has ongoing threads – is the domination of the Frost Barbarians by the Snow Barbarians. The Frost Barbarians in this campaign have had a rough trot. A long time ago now, in 1991, TSR released an adventure that had the Frost Barbarians finding the five swords that would release their god from imprisonment. I ran that adventure back then, with my brother’s character, Brunak (a frost barbarian) in the starring role. Of course, it was all a trick and so, by the end of the adventure, Brunak had been set up as a puppet king by a false god. Jeremy and I didn’t do much role-playing together after that, but we did establish that Brunak did escape and the false god was cast down.

In this game, I’m not using the standard Greyhawk gods. Well, not the ones for the barbarians at any rate. Instead, I’m using the Norse gods – Thor, Loki, Freyr, and Odin. The game does inherit from the official world the idea that the chief of the barbarian gods is imprisoned. Thus, Odin is imprisoned. The ultimate goal of the characters is to free him. Which is why they’re looking for the keys that will unlock the portal of Bifrost.

However, when some of the more experienced players can’t attend (especially Rich’s Thief 10 and Paul’s vorpal sword-wielding Fighter 8), they either do low-level dungeon-crawling or trouble me for other plots.

The game isn’t all about recovering Odin. The Great Kingdom, always interested in disrupting the Barbarians, has sent a group of Knights of Hextor north to cause trouble. The Barbarians, like the Vikings of old, also go on raiding voyages and voyages of trade. With winter closing on, they’re getting home, which is why the need for caravan guards has increased. Frost Giants, Ogres and other dangerous creatures have been raiding the barbarian settlements. And, of course, the Frost Barbarians don’t like their Ice Barbarian overlords, which was the thread that we first addressed this session.

I’m basically running it like this: the local Lord is recruiting people to his side to overthrow the Ice Barbarian Prince who is on the Frost Barbarian throne. Every so often he needs to smuggle someone out of Krakenheim, and he asks the PCs to do that for him. So, they got to rescue a high-level cleric of Thor this session. There will come a time when it becomes more than that, but we’re still in the early stages.

The journey to Krakenheim takes two days. On the way there, they ran into a priest of Loki and his followers. This was just an excuse for a little role-playing of the chaotic kind; he wasn’t threatening at all, instead exhorting the players to be free and to cause trouble, sentiments I expect they quite agreed with, especially given the content of the adventure. There’s a lot of Loki in the Caverns, and he’s likely to become more important later on.

Once in Krakenheim, it didn’t take them long to discover where the priest was being held under house arrest. Large house, garden around back, but other dwellings on each side. And a couple of guards out front. Seeing no way to get in but the front door, the group chose to distract the guards with illusions – it caused one to go investigate, but the other stayed there. So, silence on the guard, and they then attacked and neutralised both of them, leaving anyone inside none the wiser.

That lasted until Tait stuck his head into the house and saw six more guards. He retreated, and the guards inside prepared for his attack, putting the priest into a closet (see Let’s Kill Hitler) and calling for their magic-user back-up. In deference to the low-level members of the group, I made sure none of the opponents were too high level – nothing says, “I hate you” like a 7d6 fireball against a first level PC! So, sleep and stinking cloud were about the extent of this magic-user’s skills. It wasn’t all that hard for the group to rescue the priest, but then they had to leave the capital. If they’d attempted to leave right away, they would have managed it. However, they decided to lay low for a day!

This meant that when they did decide to leave, the Prince was well aware of what had happened and had his guards on high alert. The party needed another way to escape. After discarding a few options, they decided to contact the Thieves’ Guild. Of course, Krakenheim has a Thieves’ Guild. It’s a sword’n’sorcery world! It might only have two thieves in it, but any time there are thieves together they form a guild! In any case, the thief they contacted seem to know the Baron of Jarlsby, and so – for a small fee – they were all able to escape by a smugglers’ tunnel. Oh, and they ended up leaving their horses behind. They have a horrible time keeping their horses in this campaign!

I don’t always follow the “one encounter on any travel” trope (expressed so well in Order of the Stick), but it’s useful at times, especially when you need to up the action. So, at the midway point of the journey back, a raiding party of ogres led by a troll came to the village they were staying in. This combat allowed Jesse to cast his fireball spell, and the ogres were swiftly dispatched.

The priest delivered, we still had more session to fill. Frost giants raiding farms? Seems fair – and another source of experience for the new members. Mike equipped himself with a bow, and the group went hunting giants. Finding the giants’ lair wasn’t that hard – a large cave – and only two giants with two winter wolves were there, but they were approaching the group from different directions. Jesse’s fireball failed to kill one, rocks fell amongst the party, causing little damage (throwing rocks is a giant thing!) and soon the melee was underway, with Tait very definitely in the firing line. The amount of damage a frost giant can do – 4-24 – is incredibly high in AD&D terms. It’s incredibly likely to fell a first-level character in one shot. Tait has more hit points than that, and so didn’t go down as I hit him. He also has a good armour class! Spells dealt with one of the giants, and the fighters slew the other. The winter wolves did some good damage with their icy breath weapons before also falling.

The group found no money, but did loot a few magic items from the lair. Including a ring of protection +4 AC, +2 saves, which will probably cause some trouble. I let the dice fall where they may when rolling up treasure for this campaign; in that manner, Paul ended up with a Vorpal Sword, and Reece once ended up with a Ring of Contrariness!

And that was the session for the night. We ended it a bit early, but we didn’t really have time to play through yet another small adventure.

Making sure I have the resources for the next session will take up a small amount of time this week. I really need to have a small selection of quests available for when the group decide to go Outside The Dungeon. One book that will help me with that (in a true swords’n’sorcery fashion) is Cities, a supplement initially published by Midkemia Press (yes, the guys who played D&D with Raymond E. Feist). My edition is the Chaosium reprint. It has a lot of fun encounter tables for city encounters, as well as some tables for randomly generated missions. Is there anything else like that out there?

I also need to print off a copy of Viking names and put them into my binder; if only to help the players come up with character names! (Yeah, I need them as well!) I might even draw up maps of some of the towns they visit! Well, perhaps. If they keep visiting them, reference material so they are similar between visits seems like a thing to be desired.

We’re over two years into this campaign at present. I had this vague idea of winding it up and running the original Dragonlance adventures this year (in AD&D), but I’m having too much fun with this campaign to really consider that at present. Yeah, I might miss the Dragonlance 30th anniversary, but having a campaign that continues to attract people seems to be a good thing not worth throwing away.