The Dice Pool

The Editioning, AD&D 2nd Edition, Part 2

Character-work

We’re back in Sigil, dear reader, and it feels like coming home. Long has it been since my players had their characters sneak around its darkened byways and razorvine-choked alleys, avoiding the Hardheads. Years have passed since they were introduced to the Cage’s many factions, wards, points of interest, cranium rats, and, of course, deranged NPCs.

Back then, I took a peculiar pleasure in populating the City of Doors with the sorts of unusual cutters that one might expect from such a cosmopolitan, diverse crossroads. There was the BDSM dwarf who served them up cocktails and information in a leathery sort of club, the down-on-their-luck founding members of the Mundane, a faction who took great pride in their rejection of magic despite its ubiquity, and the gnome mage who filled the street outside his bookshop with lava to prove a point.

The first of those was all me. Pulled him out of thin air when the party said they went into the nearest pub to ask for info. The other two were inspired by one of my player’s characters and by a character presented in the excellent AD&D 2E Planescape sourcebook, Uncaged: Faces of Sigil.

With our latest foray into the city, I have continued on form. I am still taking inspiration, of course, but have particularly enjoyed making the people and places my own.

The first was Trunfeld Three-teeth, (a delightful tongue-twister, particularly for those of particularly Hibernian dialect.) Trunfeld is a “vile-tempered creature of disgusting personal habits,” according his description in the adventure, The Eternal Boundary. He is also a peculiarly intelligent ogre, and he runs the notorious den of scum and villainy known as the Butcher’s Block. The adventure gave me, I think, just enough to build a voice and personality for this character and, let me tell you, I really went for it. Trunfeld stank to high-heaven of sweat, picked his nose and wiped it on the paladin’s breastplate, breathed his hot, rotten breath on them and offered them some unidentifiable stew. Our cleric, Devansh Rao, used a spell to purify their drinks when they were served, and this was entirely apropos. Trunfeld was hanging out with an honest-to-gods demon when the PCs walked in, and they were lucky not to provoke its ire when they made the mistake of interrupting their conversation. I bellowed at them from the depths of my chest for Trunfeld’s voice. It felt good. He cursed them in his cockney rumble and eyed the priest and the paladin suspiciously. Luckily, the presence of the holy-joes was tempered sufficiently by their companions, the necromantic witch and the thieving tiefling, who were regulars in the ogre’s bar. So they managed to strike up a bargain. As he promised to keep an ear to the ground for them, I am relishing the prospect of getting to play this rancid brute again.

The second was Mourner Tom, another NPC given a brief description in the adventure. He is the leader of a band of Collectors. These poor unfortunates scrape an execrable living on the streets of the Cage by locating, looting and transporting corpses they find to the Mortuary. They have a deal with the Dustmen (the faction that runs the Mortuary, also known as the Dead.) He is described only as a down-on-his-luck thief, but the text does provide a few quotes of his. These are what led me to voice him almost exactly as Danny, the drug-dealer from Withnail and I. So if you know that character and his many famously quotable lines, you’ll understand why quotes like this drew me to him:

It’s like they fall asleep and don’t wake up. Very peaceful, that
We might’ve seen ‘I’m but our memory’s none too good.

Hopefully you get the idea. If not, here’s a link to a helpful YouTube clip of Danny:

I didn’t lean quite as heavily on the speech impediment, but I think you get the idea.

Of course, its not just speech-patterns and accents that make an NPC, Mourner Tom was also dressed in a battered top-hat and tatty tails, all stolen from corpses he’d found on the job. And he had his motivations. Unsurprisingly, his was jink, gold, money. He was another helpful one, explaining, after he’d been paid, that the barmy the PCs were looking for was one they’d picked up recently and brought to the Mortuary, since he was dead.

We have a lot more NPCs to meet. There is a good chance that the PCs are going to be interacting with a few more factions and other non-affiliated weirdos over the coming weeks so I’m looking forward to coming up with more unlikely voices and mannerisms.

To the Adventure!

Honestly, it took us a while to get really started with the first session. Some characters were not quite finished. This was largely due to the arcane (pun intended) categorisation of priestly spell spheres and the added complication of choosing an appropriate faction. But, I also wanted to establish some background and motivation for the PCs.

It’s a rather unlikely story, so I think it’s worth telling here. Our paladin, Galermond, having recently completed his training, was asked to leave his temple and, being a little on the innocent and simple side (read “thick-as-plank”) decided he wanted something to spend his small reservoir of coin on. He encountered Devansh Rao, the cleric of Varuna and they went about finding a ruined old temple to that god in the Lower Ward of the city. Small, dirty and crumbling though it was, they decided to devote their efforts to restoring it, as not another temple to Varuna existed in the city anymore. Glaermond was happy to have discovered such a noble endeavour to pursue, but neither he nor Devansh knew anything about money, and they would need that… Enter Trance, the tiefling accountant (thief.) She told them she could help them manage their gold and brought in Aurora, the bariaur witch, who would be happy to occupy the basement and use it to conduct her necromantic experiments (not that she told them that!) And so, out odd party was born!

To begin the adventure proper, I had a typical cockney urchin approach Trance with a message from one of her fellow faction members and ask her to bring friends to the headquarters of the Society of Sensation, the Civic Festhall. There, they met Bendon Mawl, a tiefling with some influence in the faction, who told them they wanted to find a barmy in the Hive who is said to have the key to a very important portal in Sigil. This barmy’s name was Eliath and it seemed like he might have been a wizard. They were offered a cut of the profits gained from this portal. Since the PCs had a church to restore, and they were all out of donations, they jumped at the chance.

The Point Crawl Map of the Hive Ward. Locations include the Butcher's Block, the Mortuary and the Blood Pit. — The Hive Map

They went immediately to the Hive. The adventure provides a point-crawl-style map of the ward on the inside of the DM screen that came with the adventure.

I have to say, this is an old-school design element that is sorely missed from newer modules. It was not at all unusual to get an adventure specific DM screen in the pack with the adventure back in the old days. Wizards of the Coast now want you to pay another £15 or more for the privilege. I have really been appreciating this DM screens actually. Not only does it have several key maps, but it also has all the stat blocks for the major NPCs and encounters in the adventure! Invaluable, tbh. My only dilemma is whether to use the adventure-specific screen or the utter treasure that is the one from he Planescape boxed set. Its got all the Planescape tables you might need, like how the various factions might react to one-another and how spells are effected on various planes, and on top of that, it also has stuff like ThAC0 tables and saving throws.

The outside of the Planescape DM screen. The visage of the Lady of Pain fis the centre-piece. It is the face of a severe looking woman surrounded by a head-dress of blades. It looks like its made of verdigris-tinged copper. — Planescape DM screen outside

The outside of the Eternal Boundary DM Screen. Coppery Green background. A pale, bald dustman pushes a gurney with a sheet-covered corpse in the foreground. The silhouettes of adventurers peek through an archway in the background. — Planescape DM screen outside

Back to the Adventure! Their first port of call was the afore-mentioned Butcher’s Block where they interacted with Trunfeld Three-teeth, to my utter delight. He was able to tell them that barmies (lunatics) and bubbers (drunks) have been turning up dead more than usual and said he would keep an ear out for news of Eliath.

Then they decided to split up. Why? Well, Aurora the witch is a member of the Dustmen, so it seemed like a good idea for her to go and see if their barmy had turned up at the headquarters of that faction, the Mortuary…

Meanwhile, the others wandered the streets in hopes of finding a clue. Before long, they did. They turned onto an alley and found a disturbing scene, a ragged collection of men, gathered over the dead body of some poor berk on the ground, talking about how they should loot and transport him. Before it could come to blows, they discover that this was a crew of Collectors led by Mourner Tom. As I mentioned above, I had a great time playing him and he was able to tell them that they had collected someone matching Eliath’s description recently. Should be in the Mortuary.

Speaking of which, Aurora, perhaps a little nervous traversing Sigil’s most infamous ward on her own, had an encounter of her own. She was faced with a gangly, dancing man bounding down the street towards her, shouting and mumbling and singing the names of the Princes of the Ba’atezu fiends. She noted the names he was chanting but was about to go about her own business when she heard a shriek from the alleyway he had entered. Investigating, she discovered his fresh corpse lying on the cobbles, not a mark on him…

Conclusion

My conclusion so far is that I am having a ball with Planescape,
As I expected. It is one of my all time favourite D&D settings and it gives me free-rein to invent the most deranged little cockneys I can think of.

But we have only barely interacted with the mechanics so far, no more than a spell cast and a non-weapon proficiency attempted, so I am very interested to see how smoothly that goes.

Stay tuned, dear reader!

The Editioning, AD&D 2nd Edition, Part 1

The Editioning Format

Just in case you’re new here, the Editioning is a challenge that my fellow members of our little, local TTRPG community, Tables and Tales and I have taken upon ourselves (ok, fine, I came up with it and pretty much forced everyone else to take part.) It involves playing an adventure/short campaign in every major edition of Dungeons & Dragons from the original 1974 version to D&D 5.5E, which came out fifty years later, in 2024. We hope to complete this task within about 24 months. So far, we have completed one adventure in OD&D and are close to the end of another in Basic or B/X D&D.

I’ve been titling these posts with the numbers of the weeks of the challenge, but, honestly, even keeping track of which week we’re on is becoming a challenge in itself. So, I’m just going to number them from now on. As such, this post will be Part 1 of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition series. Hope that makes sense, dear reader!

Welcome to Sigil

An illustration of the rooftops of Sigil from the book, Sigil and Beyond from the Planescape Boxed Set. It is entitled Doorway to Sigil. — The enigmatic rooftops of Sigil by Tony Di Terlizzi

What? Are you Clueless, berk? Cutter like you should find out the dark of things in the Cage. Could make a little jink if you manage to sway the high-up men and stay out of the Mazes. Want the advice of an old basher like me? Go chat up a factol, maybe one o’ them Mercykillers or even the Hardheads. They’re always looking for cutters who’ll do some business and keep their bone-boxes shut. You don’t fancy them? Go talk to the Bleakers, maybe. Just watch out for the barmies in the Hive if you go that way. I heard a bunch of them have been put in the dead book of late. Just stay peery on the streets and alleys of the City of Doors, cutter, and if you see death coming for you, just give ‘em the laugh and don’t end up swinging from the old leafless tree, alright?

That’s an example of the type of writing that exists throughout the entire Planescape line of books. OK, it’s not all written like that, but in many parts the voice of a local guide like this is used to inject some really effective flavour. They introduced this sort of patter and unique dialect to set Planescape apart from the more traditional fantasy fare like Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. I Remember the first time I read it as wide-eyed teenaged ingenue. I was immediately drawn in. None of the other settings had ever appealed to me so thoroughly through the voice of the books themselves. This despite the fact that I had spent a couple of years playing the more unique settings of Dark Sun and Ravenloft.

Why? Well, the speech pattern was curiously familiar to anyone with a passing interest in cockney slang, victorian working class dialects and Blackadder. That was me, honestly. So it caught my attention.

Now, admittedly, the portions of the books written in this patter are confined mainly to the introductions and the odd in-character paragraph, but it’s enough to liven up what is normally a very dull business (AD&D modules.)

But, of course, there is so much more to recommend the setting. The factions of Sigil, where philosophical standpoints come to life in their members. Their Cold War or kriegstanz that bubbles under the surface of the city. The Lady of Pain, enigmatic ruler and all-powerful protector of the City of Doors, who sends her greatest trespassers to the Mazes for eternal torment. And beyond Sigil, why, there is only the infinite vastness of the outer planes, the inner planes and every place in between! Every one of them filled to bursting with bizarre landscapes, gods, angels, demons, devils, elementals of every flavour and don’t forget the fairies and other planar beings beyond count or description.

In fact, it can be a little overwhelming. I remember that’s how it felt when trying to write my own adventures for it back in the ‘90s. There were too many options, many of them very lethal and many of them utterly beyond my own meagre abilities to incorporate into my simple AD&D games.

That’s one of the reasons I decided to run a pre-written adventure for this portion of the Editioning.

The Eternal Boundary

This adventure was one of the first produced for the Planescape setting. It’s written by L. Richard Baker III whose other credits include the Planescape Monstrous Compendium 2 and Valley of Dust and Fire for Dark Sun.

I don’t want to provide any spoilers at this point so I’ll only give you the basics that PCs will learn not long after starting to play.

In the Hive Ward of Sigil, barmies and bubbers are disappearing and turning up dead in much larger numbers than usual. The PCs are sent to find one of them, a barmy called Eliath, who knows the dark of a very special portal key. Various factions are at play in the Hive and there is something sinister going on there. The PCs must uncover it is they are going to complete their mission. It will lead them all over the Hive Ward and far, far beyond.

I chose this adventure for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I thought it was a great introduction to the City of Sigil, its Factions, the kinds of strange goings-on they might encounter there and a large cast of NPCs with a fun variety of faction-alignments, personalities and motivations. And second, it was the right length for what I had in mind. I actually think this one might end up being shorter than my recently concluded OD&D game. Of course, I have been silly enough to think such thoughts before, and I’ve been frequently proven wrong so we’ll see how that works out.

Character Creation

AD&D 2nd Edition PHB cover. Its got a horseman on it. He has a sword. — AD&D 2E PHB

Cover of the Complete Wizard's Handbook for AD&D 2e. It is wine in colour. — AD&D 2E PHB

Our Session 0 was an epic crusade deep into the depths of not only the Player’s Handbook but also the Complete Wizard’s Handbook, the Complete Thief’s Handbook, the Complete Priest’s Handbook, Legends and Lore, the Player’s Guide to the Planes, and the Planewalker’s Handbook.

It took over four hours and resulted in a great deal of cursing, misunderstandings, frustrations, arguments, concessions, delight, confusion, amusement, nostalgia, and, finally, I think, satisfaction. The AD&D 2nd edition character creation process could be straight-forward enough. If one sticks to the most simple form of ability score generation (just roll 2d6 for each ability and keep it no matter what,) thus forcing the player’s to choose the classes most suited to their ability scores, forgoes the use of non-weapon proficiencies in favour of the far less complicated secondary skill system, restricts the PCs to options only taken from the Player’s Handbook and sets their game in the most vanilla of fantasy worlds, you could probably create a full party of PCs in an hour or so. But that’s not what I wanted. I wanted my players to have the full AD&D 2nd Edition experience that I remembered with such fondness. I wanted them to be unsure of their choice of class or race until they had a clear vision of a character. I wanted them passing around all those sourcebooks, to get, at least a look at all the various options. I wanted them to not know really anything about their characters until they all came together miraculously in the last half an hour. And that’s exactly how it happened. The character creation system, when you factor in all the optional books, has so many possibilities, dependencies, restrictions, bonuses, minuses, and choice that you simply cannot get a full picture of the character until they are most of the way finished. This differs to such a great extent from modern role-playing games that are not Pathfinder, that I think it’s quite difficult to explain without experiencing it. For a taster, please do check out my AD&D 2nd Edition Character Creation series where I make a Dark Sun halfling Cleric. It takes three full posts and around 6000 words and is, by far, the longest character creation I have ever done on this humble blog.

We ended up with an all-star cast. Our Paladin, Glaermond, completely illiterate but stout of heart and sinew, is the party’s lawful good defender. Aurora, our chaotic good Bariaur magic user, took the Witch kit from the Complete Wizard’s Handbook, and, as a member of the Dustmen faction, has decided to focus on necromancy. Trance, the Tiefling Thief is a member of the Society of Sensation and is driven to experience new things whenever possible. And, finally, Devansh Rao is our Aasimar cleric of Varuna, the guardian of cosmic order and lord of the sky. The players are currently discussing the wisdom of using Devansh’s little church to Varuna as their base of operations and gathering a tithe to fund their adventures in the name of the Great Lord of Order on our discord channel.

This is, potentially, the perfect combination of classes and factions for this adventure so I am very excited to get it started. And that will happen this very Sunday, dear reader. So watch this space if you’re interested to find out where this band go as the delve into the Hive.

The Editioning, Week Eleven, OD&D

The First Ending

Last night we finished up the first of our games within the Editioning, our challenge to play all the major editions of D&D from Original Dungeons & Dragons (1974) to Dungeons & Dragon 5.5 (2024) over about 24 months or so.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating, running and playing this game as referee. I think the ending worked well, and I have gotten generally good feedback from the players.

Playing this very first iteration of the venerable old man of roleplaying games has taught me a few lessons about RPGs in general, D&D in particular and gave me many insights into the OSR.

Illustration from OD&D supplement III, Eldritch Wizardy. A fighter with a aword and shield and a magic user with a glowing wand face-off against a serpentine demoness with six arms and many weapons as a monster attacks from the rear. — Watch Out!

First though, let’s do a quick recap of the final session.

Malfunction

Last we left off, the PCs had discovered the holo-log belonging to the captain of the alien space-ship they had just teleported to. The captain appeared as the hologram of a crystal humanoid and spoke to them. The log described the dire straits the ship found itself in, crash-landed, engines damaged so badly all they produced was the crystalline by-product of their fuel. They had taken the decision to hand responsibility for their escape or rescue to the main computer while the crew went into stasis. Of course, they had already discovered that the computer had re-interpreted its orders to ‘crystal-form’ the surrounding planet to suit the physiology of its makers as, perhaps, escape and rescue were deemed impossible. I didn’t write much in the way of plot for this adventure. In fact, this about sums it up! You can read more about my methods in this respect in my previous post.

Armed with this knowledge about the computer, the adventurers were more determined than ever to find and destroy it. So, they girded their collective loins and prepared to move on through the ship. The next door was jammed so they spent some time using tools to wedge it open. While they did this, another information Assistant appeared to them. They asked it to open the door for them, which it did, but, more importantly, it showed them a map of the whole ship and its current surroundings. In practical terms, this allowed me to reveal the full map to the players on Roll20. This was a blessing as the partial-reveal functionality in Roll20 does not work very well in my experience. It has a rectangular reveal and a polygonal reveal option but, quite often, I find the polygonal one simply doesn’t work. Revealing a curved area with the rectangular tool is frustrating and time-consuming.

The Information Assistant was able to help them further by describing the adjoining chambers, the engine room and the computer and stasis chamber. It told them they could enter that final chamber by “simply passing through the wall.” They didn’t push the assistant on this point. Instead, I guess they decided they would pass through that wall when they got to it.

Having emptied and passed through the partially submerged chamber next to the bridge, they descended to the engine room. Here they discovered a number of crystalline golems running the engines to produce the fuel by-product which they were using to crystalform the surrounding countryside. The golems in this room were not fooled by the bio-hazard suits as the other ones had been so they attacked the entire party. Here they lost another dwarf hireling, leaving then with just one of the humans who’d accompanied them from the start of the adventure and one Dwarf, the leader, Gilda. While the melee progressed around them, Abbiss, the halfling thief and Ilaina, the elven magic user, tried to find a way through the wall, as they heard the approach of yet more golems from the other side of the engine room. Eventually, their listen and Intelligence checks paid off when Ilaina realised there was a connection between the frequency of the sound they could hear emanating from the wall and the ccredential crystals they recovered from the lockers on level 2. They downed the last of the golems held hands and pushed through the wall, crystals first.

On the other side they discovered a circular chamber. The wall was dotted at regular intervals with stasis pods. Each one contained a grey and brittle crystalline being, clearly long dead. In the centre of the room, the computer loomed. It was a 12ft tall, 10ft diameter, iPod-white, capsule-shaped machine with four long tentacles protruding from its carapace. It ‘spoke’ them in a loud and high-pitched form of crystalline speech they could not understand and then it attacked.

Tadhg, the cleric started off strong, throwing a lit oil skin at it. The fire licked at the outer shell and seemed to ignite some wires emerging from a gap in the casing at the top of the computer, but otherwise did no damage. As Siward the fighting man and the hirelings went in to attack the outer casing, Abbiss decided to climb up and examine the cracked area. Meanwhile, Ilaina used her last flying crystal to get up there as well.

The computer was able to use some spells during the fight. I gave it Charm Person, Phantasmal Forces and Confusion but only got to use the first two. It used Charm person on their remaining dwarf, Gilda, to get her to attack the ground based PCs. Ever the gallant, Siward refused to fight back, instead focusing on defeating the computer in the hope that that would end the effect. Siward was also the subject of the Phantasmal Forces. Spells in this game are interesting because they are so imprecisely described that, in some cases, even their effects are not obvious. Look at this description of the Slow Spell, for instance:

Slow Spell: A broad-area spell which affects up to 24 creatures in a maximum area of 6” × 12”. Duration: 3 turns. Range: 24”.

That’s great Gary, but what does it do?
This one stood out to me because I was going to give this to the computer as well before I read it.

Also, our cleric, Tadhg, had reason to use his last spell slot to heal Abbiss at one point. That was interesting for a few reasons. The first reason was that, after Abbiss widened the crack in the computer’s casing even further, Ilaina stuck a few fingers in there and let the innards have the full blast of a fifth level fireball. Unable to contain the full power of that, the casing belched flames out of the crack on top. Luckily, I decided to give them a Save vs Spell to avoid half the damage but this still hit Abbiss for 12 points. (This is another point about spells. Fireball has no Save mentioned in its description, so I had to home-rule that.) Our thief, already hurt from the precious fight and a couple of whacks from the tentacles, needed some healing. Now, in later versions of D&D, Cure Light Wounds, or any Cure Woulds spell, in fact, required the caster to touch the subject. Not so in OD&D:

Cure Light Wounds: During the course of one full turn this spell will remove hits from a wounded character (including elves, dwarves, etc.). A die is rolled, one pip added, and the resultant total subtracted from the hit points the character has taken. Thus from 2–7 hit points of damage can be removed.

Leaving to one side the mercurial and perverse wording of this description, you will note the complete omission of any sort of range. So, I ruled that Tadhg could, effectively use it to heal anyone on the face of the planet. Lucky too, as Abbiss was still on top of the computer and he was on the floor.

The combat continued, both sides hit and missed, but in the final round, all actions were resolved simultaneously so, even as the tentacles reached out to reduce our halfling once more to just one HP, and the Gilda the dwarf pressed the attack against Siward, our heroes hit it till it cracked open, finally reducing the crystal inside to a dull, grey ruin. They discovered treasure in some shiny lockers there in the computer room, and then they used the teleportation pads in the dungeon to take them back to the village.

After that, we did what I always like to do to wrap up a campaign, I asked them for epilogues for each of their character s. I asked one what they would be doing a week from the end of the adventure, one what they would be up to a month later, then a year and finally a decade. I loved what they came up with but I won’t go into it here. I recommend this as a nice way to wrap things up as it puts the final words in the mouths of the players and allows them free rein.

Conclusion

Illustration of a lich from OD&D supplement III, Eldritch Wizardy. The robed undead wizard stands with arms stretched out to either side, hands aglow. — Lich

Illustration from OD&D supplement III, Eldritch Wizardy. A Demogorgon. It has two baboon-like heads, a reptilian body, tentacles for arms, chicken legs and two reptilian tails. — Lich

So, I ran this game while being very conscious of the history behind it. It’s hard to overstate the impact this game has had. It is, arguably, the origin of our hobby, the starting point for the world-beating phenomenon that is D&D today and, as well as that, its the kind of wonky, imprecise, strange love-child of a war-game and nerdy obsession with fantasy and myth.

DD&D never tried to be all things to all people, even though it did include a couple of different options for your combat rules, ie, the combat table in Men & Magic, the first booklet, or the detailed and labyrinthine war-game rules from Chainmail. It gave options but it never pretended to have all the answers. It is the very epitome of the OSR pillar, rulings, not rules. Sure, it has “rules,” but these are clearly only there as guidelines. Just look at those spell descriptions above. Look at the complete lack of mechanics for ability tests. In the end, I imported the roll-under mechanic from Basic D&D to allow for things like Intelligence and Dexterity checks. I resisted doing this sort of thing in the first few sessions. Instead I wanted to try to resolve situations using only the mechanics in the books. But, I quickly realised that, even at the time, OD&D was a work in progress. So many sourcebooks were released to clarify, overwrite, or even ridicule the rules from the first three booklets that it is impossible to ignore the fact that, even those people using the books to play in 1974, were not sticking to rules as written. They were house-ruling it, they were hacking the system and they were adding their own tweaks and options constantly. So that’s the way I began to treat it too. And it only got better as I did that.

One of the things I wanted to reveal in the Editioning was exactly how the game has changed over the decades and how it changed from one edition to the next. I suspect I will find that, over time, the rules became more exacting and less flexible. Of course, that is yet to be seen as we play through the editions. So come back for more insights into D&D and its evolution, dear reader. The Editioning is still in its infancy so there’s plenty more to come.

The Editioning, Weeks Nine and Ten, OD&D

Welcome back, dear reader, to the Woes of Sorrowfield, my homebrew adventure for OD&D. You check out the rest of my posts on this game here. We are playing this as part of the challenge I made up in February, the Editioning, which involves playing every major edition of D&D from OD&D right up to D&D 5.5E as I understand we’re calling it now. This was supposed to take place all in the space of twelve months, but at this pace, we’ll maybe get half way through the nine editions by February next year.

Revelations

So, returning Woes of Sorrowfield readers will be aware that I am creating this adventure myself. I started by taking advice from Gary and Dave. They have a lot of good, if basic advice for the beginning referee in terms of dungeon design, populating your dungeon with monsters, traps and treasure, running wilderness adventures etc. Essentially, I followed that advice until I didn’t. There was a point at which, the stuff they presented in the original white books fell short of my own decades of experience.

One thing that I’ve been quietly proud of is providing revelation and information through simple and, hopefully, not overly expository means throughout the game.

For example, the PCs discovered that a lake and river flowing through the Barrenwood had been polluted with some sort of magically glowing crystal that was turning the whole forest to crystal. Later, once they entered the dungeon, they found living beings, trapped in there, also being turned to crystal in a lab setting. Further down, they found a Flight Practice chamber which allowed them to literally fly around in the air. And finally, on a crashed space ship at the bottom of the dungeon, far beneath the earth and sea they discovered an illusory representation of another world that where flying crystalline aliens could be seen spreading the crystal pollution from high above in the atmosphere “crystal-forming” the surface for their own comfort. There’s more to the plot, but already, without any exposition or need for long diary entries or anything like that, I slowly revealed the nature of the threat they faced.

One thing that I am sure helped me do this was not over preparing before starting the adventure. I had a vague outline of the plot, the threat and the enemy before we started playing, but I never wrote down any specifics. I was creating new dungeon levels almost week-to-week. Doing it this way allowed me lots of room to improvise and also to play off things the players had said or directions they were planning to take.

As things all came together in the last session, and the entirety of the plot was revealed, I felt it was finally ok to include a small snippet of exposition, a captains log they discovered on the bridge of the alien vessel, which revealed that even the aliens on the ship had not wanted to necessarily crystal-form the PCs’ world. Instead, they were hoping for a rescue after their crash. In the recording, the captain indicated in a few short sentences, that the crew had gone into stasis and left the main computer in charge. It was the computer that decided to start the crystal-forming process, in the interests of maintaining the lives of its makers while they waited for rescue.

Back up

I skipped to the end a bit there, so here’s a recapitulation of the events of the two sessions that led us there since my last OD&D post.

The adventurers continued their experiments in the Flight Practice chamber. Abbiss tried again to fly but continued to prove completely inept. Still, she and the others made it up onto the shelf 10 feet above the main floor after defeating another two crystallised gargoyles. They managed to hit all three buttons on that level simultaneously and received a reward: a rain of gems! But not without the loss of two of their dwarven hirelings. During the fight, Abbiss had her left hand crystallised by one of the gargoyles. Also Siward suffered a crystallised pinkie from an attack.

Next, Ilaina decided to give this flight business a try, and, sure enough, she proved to be a natural at it. She was able to fly up to the hanging platforms in area 3. The first one spiked her and she had a toe crystallised. The other platform simply dropped to the floor far below when she threw a knife onto it.

Abbiss took a close look at the water fifty feet below in the southern section of the level. She realised she could see a gap down there that must provide access to the next level down. They all began to make plans for the descent. While Siward abseiled down and onto the fallen platform which he had thrown onto the surface of the violet coloured waves, Ilaina was able to fly down under her own power. Tadhg, Bryn and the Dwarves all followed Abbiss down the rope and Siward kept the floating platform steady as they ferried themselves across the narrow span of water one after another. Eventually, they all made it.

On the other side of the glass wall holding in the water on the next level, it looked like an aquarium. As they were searching the hall they found themselves in, another Information Assistant appeared and addressed the party members dressed in bio-hazard suits and holding credentials crystals. It informed them that this was the Teleportation Chamber Level and that it could guide them around it and in the use of the teleportation facilities if they wanted. It led them through a door and into and armoury where Abbis picked up a +1 Crystal Dagger and Siward and the dwarves also acquired some shiny new weapons. Little did they know that using the weapons would provoke a Save vs Stone or have a random body part turn to crystal. From the armoury, the Information Assistant passed through another door into a room with an elevator door with and up arrow on it and a number of crystal golems with sword-like arms phasing out of the floor. They moved to intercept the party members with no bio-hazard suits.

The fight started off badly enough for both sides. The golems won initiative but failed to hit anything. Siward hid behind the cover of the control console in the room, along with the hirelings and they generally also failed to hit. Using the advantage of the bio-hazard suit making her essentially invulnerable to the golems, however, Abbiss got a back stab in on another of them. Meanwhile, Ilaina, using her noggin, attempted to deactivate the golems through the use of the console. She succeeded only in turning out the lights, but at least she cast infravision on Siward. Moving into round two, Tadhg, with the same impulse, asked the Information Assistant for help in calling off the golems, which it promptly did.

They followed the IA into the Teleportation chamber. It was able to reveal there the three platforms. One could transport them anywhere on the surface but could only be used once, the second one could transport them to the ship below and the third one was being used by the computer to transport the fuel by-product from the ship’s engines high into the atmosphere from where it rained down like a crystalline bombardment on the surrounding countryside. Ilaina sent the IA into a buffering loop by having it refer to the makers who, it revealed, were all in stasis on the ship. The paradox that it was talking to what it thought were “makers” gave it a bad headache.

They also explored an adjoining room that was filled with crystalline barrels full of the fuel by-product, the crystal corruption that was transforming their lands.

My map of the alien ship crashed into a sea cave - the final level in my dungeon. It looks like a flying saucer with a crumpled hull at the bottom of the map. — Crashed ship map

It took them very little time to decide to teleport down to the ship to deal with the computer. From the teleportation room on the ship, they first went and explored the holo-deck room where they saw the vision of the alien world I described above. And then, after a random encounter with some star shaped crystal drones, they checked out the bridge where they found the holo-log of the captain.

Conclusion

Not just yet. Actually, the conclusion of the Woes of Sorrowfield is definitely coming next week. Looking forward to it! I have a big finale encounter planned. I hope all these PCs survive it. I’ve gotten really rather attached to them.

In other Editioning news, our AD&D 2nd Edition journey starts this evening! We’re going to be playing the Eternal Boundary, a starting adventure for the original Planescape setting. I’ve already warned the players that making AD&D PCs is not like Basic or OD&D. I expect us to take the whole session just to roll them up, choose races, classes, kits, proficiencies, spells, equipment, factions (Planescape-specific but very important) etc. Its been so long since I’ve played this game… Can’t wait!

The Editioning, Weeks Seven and Eight, Basic D&D

The Basic Box

The Shop on the Borderlands has me in its thrall, dear reader. Every Friday, about lunchtime I receive their newsletter, News from the Borderlands, and my wallet doth quake with fear. There is, invariably, a long list of classic D&D titles newly received as stock. They tend to get them in job-lots, so one week, there might be a preponderance of AD&D 1st edition Greyhawk books, and the next there’ll be a dragon’s hoard of DCC adventures. In fact, it has been invaluable in building my collection of D&D books for the Editioning. The vast majority of books that I didn’t already own, came from the Shop on the Borderlands. It’s great. It has an amazing selection of used and new RPG books, from the original OD&D books going for thousands of pounds, to the latest 5E titles, not to mention all the other RPGs they stock. I would highly recommend checking them out, particularly if you’re in the UK. Check out one of my newest purchases in the gallery below. It’s the 11th printing of the Moldvay Basic D&D set. It’s missing the dice and the rulebook has seen better days, but, since I didn’t buy it as a collector’s item or an investment, that doesn’t bother me. I have been using it at the table while we continue our adventures in the module included in this very set, The Keep on the Borderlands!

The front cover of the Moldvay Basic D&D Boxed Set. A green serpent attacks a sorceress in red in dungeon surroundings. — Moldvay Basic

The back cover of the Moldvay Basic D&D boxed set. Shows and describes the contents. — Moldvay Basic

Hard on the Hirelings

One moment, things are going your way. You and your mates have gone out on adventure, sowed seeds of war between rival clans of humanoids living in the Caves of Chaos, gained the respect of the local authorities and have even made a coins along the way. And then, dear reader, the random encounter table just fucks you. We have learned this the hard way, over and over in this adventure. We’ve been unlucky with our encounter rolls most of the time. On our very first encounter, my first PC, Edmund, went down to the very first arrow that was loosed in an ambush of Ospreys. Later, after braving and surviving the storied Caves of Chaos, our resident halfling PC, Lotharia was brutally disembowelled by a griffon while returning to the keep with a spell book delivery. In our most recent random encounter disaster, we lost half of our eight hirelings in an encounter with a troll on the road back from the Caves. We defeated it narrowly and followed its trail back to its stinking, filthy lair, where we took care of some larval trolls too, but not without first losing another of our hirelings.

These were heavy losses, all of them, although, I’ll be honest and say we had a respectfully understated celebration of the fact that we didn’t have to split the xp between all eleven of us…

Anyway, the point is to expect the unexpected in old school play. Also, that the more hirelings you have the more targets there are that aren’t PCs, so that’s been helpful.

Murder and Intrigue

Adventurers! A black and white illustration from the rule book depicting a variety of adventurers — Adventurers!

Events are moving along without us, or, perhaps because of some of our choices. As I noted in my last Basic D&D post, we’ve taken the side of the castellan of the Keep and taken the ears of a number of Ospreys, the rebel band who want to overthrow him. Perhaps, if we had decided to support the rebels instead, the most recent shocking events might have been prevented (though probably at a very high cost in lives.)

In the last Basic D&D post I mentioned we had been attacked by a band of mercs sent to kill my character, Thaddeus Nightbane. After killing them, we proceeded on to the caves of the Shakkelwart Clan of orcs. We spotted and safely set off a trap in the mouth of the cave. This attracted the attention of the guards, who we convinced to allow us to talk to their leader, Baralgus Dorden (no idea if that’s spelled right.) We convinced her to welcome us in and we feasted with them before delivering the arms sent by the Thyrenian Guild. This was a fun scene where we learned a lot and, hopefully, planted some seeds of doubt in Baralgus’ mind regarding her allies, the Barrowdelve clan and the gnolls as well. We gained a RESPECTED reputation with the Shakkelwarts in the process.

By the way, I mentioned in a previous post that there was a reputation mechanic built into this module, but that’s not true. Instead, this is actually DM Isaac’s genius addition to it. He was inspired by the Root RPG, and it has enriched our experience of the game. We are actually going out of our way to ingratiate ourselves with particular factions to improve our standing with them, instead of thinking of them all as fair game.

Following this, we returned to visit our other besties in the Caves of Chaos, the goblins led by Sharktroll. We delivered another cache of weapons and armour to them (in fact, this is just stuff we’d picked up from looted enemies, some of whom belonged to this very goblin clan!) We’re hoping for all out war between the orcs and the goblins, and we might get it if we keep pushing this way. The goblins also released some prisoners that our Thyrenian Guild contact, Richard “Dick” Kirkdon, has asked us to retrieve for him.

With that, we set off back to the Keep again. And that’s when we ran into the aforementioned troll. I have to give props to Isaac here once again. Trolls are common enough in D&D and related media, that we generally feel we know them, we might fear them a little given their regenerative abilities and all, but, the knowledge of them makes them a little less scary. Isaac turned this on its head with his sensory descriptions of its look, its smell, its otherness. Scared the pants off us. And then it started killing hirelings. Anyway, that was bad, as I mentioned before, but we did get some treasure out of it.

Back at the Keep, we went first to the Temple of the Holy Sun, where the entire populace had gathered for the funeral of Father Burgoyne. The mourners were giving Tom’s Elf character, Eandril, the dirty eye. We soon discovered that this was because the priest had been murdered by the Castellan’s elven advisor. So, of course, we went to talk to our good buddy, the castellan. After enduring some more anti-elfism from he guards, we were granted an audience. He explained that Cywyn Morningflower, he advisor had been accused by Father Burgoyne of being a member of the reviled Serpent Cult that had once made its home in the Caves of Chaos. In response, the elf had drawn his sword and run the priest through. The castellan had little choice but to imprison his advisor since the murder had happened in his hall and in his presence!

We told him we’d crack this case wide open so he let us talk to Cywyn (genuinely have no idea about this spelling either btw.) Turns out, the elf was just sick and tired of Burgoyne and his constant racism and this was the final straw. He really did murder him in anger. But one other thing came up. The priest had claimed that he had evidence that proved Cywyn’s cultishness and that it was in his chambers beneath the altar in the church.

Next stop, church! I distracted the gathered acolytes while the Anastasia and Eandril investigated the hidden chambers below. They discovered no evidence against Cywyn, but they did find a snake staff and some magical armour and maces, which raised questions more about the church than the elf.

Conclusion

How to use the dice. Black and white illustration depicting some polyhedral dice, a mini, a pencil and some paper — How to Use the Dice

I think there might only be a couple more sessions of our adventures on the Borderlands. I’ll miss it when it’s over. I have grown fond of our little band and and the relationships we’ve built in this place.

I probably won’t miss the random encounter tables quite so much, but even they have introduced elements of true peril and danger to get the blood really pumping.

Back with more soon.

Prepped Prep Posts

I have had a very busy few days, dear reader. Family stuff, work stuff, travel, have all conspired to prevent me from posting anything new this week. Sorry about that, but sometimes, these things are unavoidable.

Instead, I thought I would share a brace of posts from last year. I wrote them as part of Prismatic Wasteland’s Blog Bandwagons and I like what I wrote so I thought I would take this opportunity to present them to you here again:

Prep

Prep Part 2

Please enjoy them again or for the first time.

See you next week!

The Editioning, Weeks Seven and Eight, OD&D

GM prep is play, drawing shitty maps is play, and seeing your players react when they start flying like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, because of something you did, that’s the really good sort of play and you won’t feel half as good about it if some robot came up with it.

iPod Future

I think I first heard this term on one of the Worlds Beyond Number Patreon podcasts. Lou Wilson was taking about his sci-fi influences. The main thrust of it was his fascination with Men in Black. There were a lot of reasons for this but one of them was the design of the MIB HQ. If you remember, dear reader, it was mostly a smooth, white plastic look, with elements of chrome. The WBN crew described it as an “iPod future” design. I don’t know if they originated the term but it was so evocative that I immediately stole the concept for the design of the dungeon in my OD&D game. Well, parts of it anyway. Level 1 was an old ruined wizard’s tower exposed to the elements (or , at least, that’s what it was supposed to look like to any nosey adventuring types,) Level 2 was basically a locker-room/ante-chamber designed to scare off any potential burglars/curious cats. That level was constructed almost entirely of untreated concrete, rather than iPod material since it was a transitionary area. From Level 3 down to Level 5, its iPod as all get out. I even gave the levels and many of the rooms rounded corners, as you can see from the maps below.

Map of Level 3 of my dungeon. It in the chape of an airpod case turned on its side. — Level 3: Crystalline Experimentation

Level 4 of my dungeon. it is in the sahpe of an airpod case. — Level 3: Crystalline Experimentation

Why focus on such a design choice? Well, apart from the point that it sets it apart from other, more fantasy-based dungeons, and unifies the whole thing with a particular aesthetic, which works to emphasise a theme, I found it useful for descriptive purposes. I was able to describe these levels as being clad in some smooth, white, slightly translucent material that the characters could not identify, but for the benefit of the players, when I said the words, “iPod future,” they immediately got it. I even referenced the MIB HQ, which helped even more. I am not interested in being coy and mysterious with my players when it comes to this sort of thing. I want them to be on my wavelength. I enjoy sharing the vibe I’m going for with them.

Crystal Clear

After a short rest in the secret room on level 2, the party decided to tackle the evil in the northwest of the level. They gathered outside a door at the end of the hall. It was not trapped but it would not open easily. They used tools to open it after hearing rustles and squawks from beyond. Once they got it open they were immediately confronted by an angry cockatrice protected some eggs in its filthy nest. Despite the danger of being petrified they triumphed easily, by setting fire to its nest and then cutting its head off. This encounter, was, undoubtedly, underpowered for this party. They are all levels 4 or 5 at this point, so a single 5 HD monster was not going to pose a huge problem for them. However, there was always a danger of instant death. If the cockatrice got a single hit in, and the PC failed their save, they were going to be petrified. That would have been the end for that character. And when the players know that, they still take it seriously. Anyway, They found a bounty of treasure amidst the bones in the room, and took the cockatrice talons as a prize. Abiss then crept through the earthen tunnel on one side of the room. It led out to a ledge in the sea cliff where she was mercilessly battered by the raging storm. She went back inside. As I mentioned on my first OD&D post, if they had wanted to, they could have climbed down to the surface of the sea below from this ledge. It might even have been a shortcut to Level 6. But they would have had a difficult climb, especially as there was a storm blowing outside. Also, they did not know that there was a level below the waves. That’s on me. I think it might have been fun to hint at a submarine area and tempt them to take that plunge.

Instead, the party took the stairs down to the next level. There, they found a large open space. This is where the iPod future aesthetic began. There was a soft glow coming from nowhere and everywhere. Dotted around the chamber they discovered a number of tall, glass cylinders filled with creatures. They examined one with a goblin inside. As they did, they were bothered by a swarm of crystallised insects. The insects poisoned Siward, the Fighting Man and Ilaina, the Magic User, reducing a random ability score by one, before Tadhg, the Cleric did his fire breathing trick again, decimating the swarm in one go.

The swarm came along because of a roll on my Random Encounter table for this level. This is it!

1d6 Crystal Security Drones phase out of the floor: i) Spider Configuration (Paralysis) ii) Bat Configuration (CON damage) iii) Cat Configuration (DEX damage) iv) Humanoid Configuration (Save v Stone or crystallise body part on touch)
Escaped insect swarm: Save v Poison or take 1 point of random ability score damage
Information Assistant in the form of a hardlight hologram of a crystalline humanoid:
- If they interact with it, it will speak common to them asking for credentials
- Can explain the purpose of this level as a lab
- Expresses the requirement to continue the experiments for the makers
Specimen tube trap: Randomly select a party member. They must save v Death Ray or become trapped in a stasis tube that drops from the ceiling. Controls in Room 15 to release.
Stasis Malfunction:
- 1-2 – Creature escapes from Room 10
- 3 – Creature escapes from Room 11
- 4 – Creature escapes from Room 12
- 5 – Creature escapes from Room 13
- 6 – Creature escapes from Room 17
Nothing happens

You’ll notice the list of escapees on the roll of a 5 there. Each of those rooms is a stasis chamber. They contain a selection of large, dangerous creatures, from a chimera to a hill giant, in various stages of crystallisation. The players were lucky that they didn’t roll that one. Instead, while they were on this level, they rolled the insect swarm twice, the stasis cylinder trap once, and the information assistant once. The cylinder trapped one of their dwarf companions, who was rendered inert until they beat the shit out of the tube, releasing him along with some stasis gas.

Now, the information assistant is the closest thing to a helpful NPC in this dungeon. It could, potentially, provide a lot of information about the nature of the place, its purpose and even how to work its systems. But, they hadn’t got any credentials when it appeared so there was only so much help it would provide. The one that appeared to them identified Ilaina, dressed in one of the bio-hazard suits they’d found in the lockers on level 2, as one of the “makers” and addressed her as such. They learned from this assistant that all other makers were in stasis in the the “ship” below. It told Ilaina to use the controls in room 15 if she needed to do anything on this level. Ilaina then dismissed the Information Assistant while one of the hirelings was sent upstairs to retrieve the other two bio-hazard suits that they had left there. When they searched the suits, they found a pair of crystals they surmised might act as credentials.

They figured out they needed to place a selection of gems into indentations in the outer wall of room 15 to enter. Rather than making this a true puzzle where they would have to guess the correct combination of gems, I asked for a luck roll, which they succeeded on first time round. Ilaina and Abbiss entered the room and experimented while the others dealt with the second swarm of crystalline flies outside the door. I told them that control pillars rose from the floor as if by magic when they moved close to them and descended again when they moved away. Eventually, Abbiss, with her shorter stature, noticed that each of the pillars bore a mark, or rune, similar to the ones they had seen in the hologram upstairs. She found one that simply bore a down arrow, just like the door they had found on the north-east wall of this level. She removed the gems from it and they went to investigate. They found a now operational elevator there. They all hopped on and went down to Level 4.

Getting High

I had fun coming up with the ideas for this level. I had always planned to have a level of the dungeon where one had to fly to achieve anything. I basically made this entire thing up in the last hour before the session on Friday night though, because of procrastination.

It looked similar to the previous level, except the ceilings were 20ft to 50ft high, and there was a 50ft drop down to the water in area 2. The big crystal in the centre of the space allowed anyone who touched it to fly, but did not imbue them with the ability to do so with any sort of finesse. Only Abbiss, the halfling thief, dared to touch it, and only after she had figured out what the plaque on the crystal said: Flight Practice Crystal. I told Abbiss that she was floating upwards and asked her to decide which way she wanted to go. Then I asked her to roll 1d6. On the roll of 1 or 2 she would go the direction she wanted to, otherwise, she would have to roll another d6 on this table, which would determine the actual way she flew:

Up
Down
Left
Right
Forwards
Backwards

After a couple of dangerous experiments, they decided to tether her so she could be dragged around through the air like a bunch of balloons. They also discovered the effect only lasted about one dungeon turn. As they were testing this out, one of the crystalline gargoyles atop the ledge in the north part of the room came to life and attacked. This encounter came from the random encounter table for this level:

1d6 Crystal Security Drones phase out of the floor: i) Bat Configuration (CON damage) ii) Giant Wasp Configuration (Poison damage) iii) Eagle Configuration (Bleed on hit until healed) iv) Flying Squirrel Configuration
Escaped insect swarm: Save v Poison or take 1 point of random ability score damage
Information Assistant in the form of a hardlight hologram of a crystalline humanoid:
- If they interact with it, it will speak common to them asking for credentials
- Can explain the purpose of this level as an area to practice flight and descend to the lower level
- Explains the nature of the challenges on this level and the importance that flight will have for the makers in the future
1d3 Crystalline Gargoyles on 1a come alive
A splash comes from the water below
Nothing happens

The splash referred to in no. 5 is from the surface of the water fifty foot below the room in area 2 on the maps. It has the purplish tint that other contaminated water they encountered so far had, and swarms of insects above it. It is impossible for the PCs to see from here but just above the surface of the water below, there is an opening that would allow them to get to Level 5.

Meanwhile, there are a series of challenges on this level. For instance, flying to the top of 1b, a tall pillar, and touching it, would reward the flyer with a gem. The other pillar, 1c, has a spiral pattern on it. If the flyer can manage to fly around it in a spiral, they will be rewarded similarly. Meanwhile in the tall section of the level, area 3, they can fly 50 ft up to a couple of platforms. These are more like traps, that, if the flyer is not fast enough, will hurt or kill them through the use of crystalline spikes or abrupt drops.

Conclusion

This is pretty much where we left off with the last session. They haven’t figured out where to go from here and they are not done experimenting on the level just yet.

I can’t quite express exactly how much I have enjoyed coming up with the content, the encounter tables, the traps, the challenges and the overall look and theme of this dungeon. I really should do it more often. And I would encourage other GMs to do the same. Your maps don’t have to look professional, you don’t even have to write everything down, you just have to know how it works.

It feels like a radical act of creativity in these times when you can buy a bundle of maps and tables for a fantasy RPG in their hundreds and thousands, and other people in the space are using AI to come up with scenarios, NPCs, even campaigns. The creation is play too. GM prep is play, drawing shitty maps is play, and seeing your players react when they start flying like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, because of something you did, that’s the really good sort of play and you won’t feel half as good about it if some robot came up with it.

Blades in the Dark, Thoughts

Set-up

I made quite a big deal, last year, about the process of choosing an RPG to play. For months, I perused books and created characters to get a feel for a selection of games. Most of these games I would put squarely in the story game or, at least, narratively focused category. Blades in the Dark beat out Triangle Agency, Slugblaster, Wildsea and Deathmatch Island to name a few.

Once I had decided on Blades, I wrote a bunch of posts relating to the advice presented in Blades and its recent expansion, Deep Cuts. Reading the books and absorbing the advice helped to boost my enthusiasm for it.

We got into Blades well. We had a regular game every three weeks and we found a natural rhythm of having a score session followed by a downtime session. I had always planned to have only six sessions in our Season 1 of the game. This seemed like a reasonable amount of time for all of us to get a good taste for the game, the setting, the system, the characters and the crew.

We had our sixth session last week, so I thought I would take this opportunity to gather my thoughts, lay them out and examine them.

Up-sides

The scores; it’s what it’s all about. Even in the instances where I had no time to prepare and found myself recycling old ideas, we got really into the scores. The players seemed to enjoy the freedom of the narrative-first style that allowed them to fully describe an entire action scene rather than just rolling a die to see if they hit a guy. This bred inventiveness both in-score and out so that they pushed the envelope of what was possible even during downtime.

I enjoyed them because I found I had a curious amount of control over the proceedings. If we had a full session for the score, it was easy and fun to allow the PCs as much leeway and time to describe and indulge in their scenes. Conversely, if time was against us, I was able to push things to a conclusion with the flick of a narrative switch. I used clocks in every score, which will be no surprise to anyone, but, for me, it was remarkable. Looking back, I feel like I could have utilised them more often and to better effect. Almost every score involved just one clock representing the PCs goal and one representing the potential negative consequences. Especially in the final score, it would have been fun to introduce other clocks representing minor peripheral goals or dangers as well, but I didn’t think of it at the time so it didn’t happen. But, what I’m saying is that I like the use of clocks to track eventualities and possibilities. They are easy for everyone to understand and impress on all players the urgencies and exigencies of their situations.

Secondly, I loved the player-characters. The playbooks are iconic and the players loved to lean into them in fun and notable ways. I think the players all became attached to their characters in short order, which was essential since we had only six sessions. The crew became almost a character of its own, especially with its reliable cohort of thugs. I liked that the crew had a sense of ambition. They wanted to become the number one gang in Crow’s Foot, and by the end of the season, they had made significant headway towards that goal, defeating the Red Sashes in a war and capturing their leader. But they also each had their own motivations, religious or “scientific” or naval(?) I think the game itself has something to do with that, with stress and heat and reputation all conspiring to drive them in certain directions. But, I also know that my incredible group of players would build memorable characters no matter the influence of a ruleset so I don’t want to overstate that.

Thirdly, the setting. Duskwall is such an evocative setting. The eternal darkness, the ghostly hauntings, the leviathans and the empire. The nobility, the workers, the weird science and the gangs. It is rich and deep and you would be hard-pressed to fail to come up with interesting things to do in it. But it is not oppressive in its richness. We never felt as though we had to stick to some Akorosi canon. There is a freedom to create parts of the world that you would never get in, for instance, a published D&D setting. But, on the other hand, the books provide a wonderful assortment of factions, places, NPCs and items that can come in handy when you need something specific or general in a pinch. I was rarely left scrabbling for a needed detail. There was always something close to hand.

Up-hill Climb

Light shines down from above on a scoundrel running acorss the rooftops of Doskvol — Light shines down from above on a scoundrel running across the rooftops of Doskvol

But we had some significant issues in our six sessions. Now, some of these are entirely my fault. Some of them are a symptom of having only six sessions to become familiar with the game and some arose because we sometimes struggled to keep our sessions regular. But still, they were there so I’ve got to discuss them.

Downtime was the biggest struggle for me. Now this was, perhaps, the part that I can take most responsibility for, but there are elements that we found just rubbed us up the wrong way. So, firstly, about half way through, I decided to start introducing downtime rules from Deep Cuts. I liked these alternate rules. They were largely diceless and gave the PCs a bunch of other things to spend Coin on. I thought they would speed things along a bit more, compared to the original downtime rules. But it introduced confusion more than anything else. Because we had had so little time to get used to the original rules, and I had an imperfect understanding of the Deep Cuts rules, we ended up often very confused about what was needed for any given downtime activity. We often ended up mixing the two rulesets into some unholy abomination that we could never remember at the next downtime. I wish now that I had started with the Deep Cuts rules and used them the whole way through. I think they are, comparatively, smoother and more interesting overall.

But the main issue I had with downtime was the idea of having a separate and overtly different phase of play. The fact that you need to use a completely different set of rules for it delineates it deliberately from the score. It slows things down, it deals with each PC so separately that they are largely on their own for long periods of the game. This meant that the only other person they were interacting with most of the time at the table during downtime was me. This is a significant increase in mental load for the GM. On top of that, each PC has a few notable NPCs and I was responsible for voicing, playing and inventing them almost from scratch. That’s a lot to remember and a lot to do at the table.

And, the mechanics themselves, to me, made this part of play feel like I was constantly explaining the rules of a board-game to the players. All those currencies and meta-currencies, Coin, Rep, XP, Heat, Wanted Level, Status, Stress. There is so much to keep track of and it often feels like shuffling tokens and cards around on a board. I am not a big player of board-games. Given a choice, I would choose an RPG any day. Combining the two in this manner did not endear the game to me. And all the sheets required to keep track of everything go to evidence exactly how much admin is involved in Blades in the Dark. Now, I understand that this is actually a positive for many people. It’s just not for me.

In general, I found that role-playing, as one might traditionally think of it, was difficult to work into sessions of such heavy admin. Even in the score sessions, there is little time for inter-character development, so focused is the whole crew on the goal of the thing. This is, perhaps, a symptom of the style of play I am used to. Generally, in OSR or more trad games, the players are often role-playing amongst themselves constantly and then with me, as the GM, whenever they need to interact with an NPC in the world. Blades requires the players to know what sort of scenes they might want to role-play, set them up with the GM and know when to end them as well. So, that might be our relative inexperience with this type of game showing. But, if I might be allowed to make a comparison, I never felt like this when playing Spire or Heart, which are hardly OSR or trad. It think they sit more firmly on the story-game side of the divide, but we never had any issue with fitting in role-play in our campaigns of those games. I think this is due to the fact there was so little admin in those games. They feel more streamlined to me. Not perfect, by any means, but, perhaps, more to my taste.

Everyone agreed the character sheets were an issue. This was more from the player side than from me. The design of the character sheets is too busy and the text is too small and the little boxes to fill in are fiddly. In general, there is far too much text on them, even though I know the idea is that the player has everything they need at their fingertips. Interestingly, one of the things some players said was that, even with the quantum equipment rule where you don’t have to mark a piece of gear until you say you’re using it, they found the item list restrictive. They would often look at that list when trying to figure out what to do with their turn. Too often, they could see nothing of use, and instead, just defaulted to the usual skirmish or shoot. I thought this was a very interesting observation, that the design of the character sheet or the item list, at least, conspired to stunt their creativity in the moment.

Up-shot

Now, like I said at the start of the last section, its possible that a lot of these negative views are due to the way I ran the game, the irregular nature of the sessions, the limited exposure to the game, but I think its equally possible that I bumped up against it because I have a particular preference for a different type of game.

I confess that most of my best and most memorable experiences with RPGs recently has been with the OSR. Mythic Bastionland, Mothership, Black Sword Hack, Old School D&D. I am rooted in old school play after all. But, then again, I have played other story-games, like Heart and Spire, like Trophy, Root and Dungeon World and I have enjoyed them immensely. I might be forced to come to the conclusion that Blades is just not for me…

I guess we’ll see when we go back for season 2 of the Death Knells.

The Editioning Weeks Five and Six, OD&D

The Woes of Sorrowfield, Sessions Four and Five

The rain won’t stop and the woes keep coming.

As you may have read in my last post on our Editioning, Basic D&D game, my approach to the Editioning is evolving. Originally, I had only wanted one adventure of about six sessions per edition. This seemed reasonable at the time. But, as the weeks go on, I can see that it was never realistic. The Keep on the Borderlands feels like it’s only just now, seven sessions in, getting into full swing in that game, and Isaac, our DM, asked us all about the future of it. We all agreed that we’d like to continue until we got to a natural end point. This is a huge feather in Isaac’s cap. He has been running a fun and fascinating adventure for us, and, despite the character deaths, we all are enjoying it enough to want to continue.

OD&D is in a similar but slightly different spot right now. We have an enthusiastic bunch of players and the adventure is still going into session six. But there is an end on the horizon, at least from my point of view. Since I am making this adventure from scratch, using guidelines from the Original D&D books, I have more control, and have had from the start. The hexcrawl through the Barrenwood took a bit longer than I expected, three full sessions but I don’t regret that at all. I think it was a lot of fun and set the scene for the dungeon nicely. I’m expecting three to four more sessions of this game. And you never know, there might be more in the future sometime, if the players are interested.

So, the general philosophy behind the Editioning is to play the adventure for each edition for as long as we’re all enjoying it, and hopefully to the end to the adventure, rather than enforcing a strict six session limit. I think the challenge has to take a back seat to the players and their fulfilment, after all. This change in approach might mean the challenge takes longer than expected, but that’s ok too! Long may it last, I say!

Dungeon Time

Breandan the Hermit set them on their way, helpfully providing directions through the forest that allowed them to avoid any further random encounters. The party soon found themselves on the coast, not far from the edge of some sea-cliffs, getting whipped by gale force winds and soaked by torrents of rain. The ground beneath their feet was a sucking bog of muck, but they were still able to identify an ancient road that brought them, inexorably to the ruined wizard’s tower they had heard so much about recently.

Level one of the dungeon, the ruined wizard's tower. — Wizard’s Tower Ruins with player doodles

The is level one of the dungeon. It is specifically supposed to disguise the nature of the levels below. The ruined look was designed by the builders of the dungeon to make outsiders think nothing of the place. I even made it so there was no entrance on the ground floor. This is a common trait in Irish round tower design (although, my tower is anything but round.) The idea was to make it easier to store and protect your valuables but making the entrance inaccessible without a ladder or something. Since my ruined tower was just a roofless, ground floor, overcoming this obstacle was trivial for the PCs; they just climbed.

Inside they found a group of dwarves, mercenaries from the south who sought refuge from the elements in the ruins, as they found themselves rebuffed every time they tried to enter the forest. They, too, had heard the call for aid from East Barrens village, it seems. The adventuring party, now two hirelings down, decided to take the four dwarves on as retainers and then set about searching. They had a couple of advantages here, information they had gleaned from rumours and previous encounters. First, they spotted a raven settle into the tower ruins as they searched the perimeter, and they had stories about talking ravens who they should not cross, from he people in the village. Second, they had found Ferris’ diary. Ferris was one of the previous adventuring party to attempt to enter the dungeon. It told them they would need a special handle to enter the dungeon below.

The first thing they did was to try and find the raven in one of the tower’s ruined rooms. When they did, the rumours about talking birds proved true. In classic style, it asked them a riddle and promised them rewards if they could deliver. I had no particular origin story for this raven, and it’s not connected exactly to the plot, I just like the trope and wanted an excuse to have them answer a riddle. It felt very old school. They got it right and were rewarded with a variety of magic items from the raven’s apparently invisible hoard. With that, they left the corvid alone and proceeded to search the level, eventually discovering both the handle and the trap door that opened it. I had popped a Grey Ooze on top of the trapdoor as an encounter, because it was transparent and they could try to grab the trap door through it. They didn’t quite fall for that though. In fact, they defeated fairly quickly, despite it taking no damage from blunt weapon attacks. With that, they opened up the trapdoor and descended the smooth, cement shaft with the inbuilt ladder to the floor below.

Dungeon Level Two

I enjoyed the reaction to my design of the room they landed it. I described it as being all constructed of a singular light grey material, like cement, with a low bench of the same material, a row of lockers along one wall and small, tight chamber constructed of glass with a spigot in it. It took a few beats, but then Isaac asked, “is this a locker room?”

Perfect.

Anyway, they sent the cleric down first since they had heard about a horde of undead down there. Sure enough, after a low humming noise from the adjoining room, they heard the clacking and chattering of skeletons.

I have already written about my idea for this floor in my first OD&D post. Essentially, these undead are projections. As they were defeated more would be spawned in that room, but they would get more and more powerful to kill or frighten off potential explorers.

The order was:

Wave 1: Skeletons – I rolled up 19 of these, but with a cleric on the party they made short work of them
Wave 2: Zombies – I only rolled up four of these, but their appearance out of then air in room 6 alerted the players as to what was happening
Wave 3: Ghouls to up the ante with their paralysing touch
Wave 4: Wights – these bastards always scared the shit out of me as a kid playing this game. It was devastating if they managed to suck a level of experience out of your character. I mean, you worked so hard for that!
Wave 5: Wraiths – similar to the above but even tougher

Room 6, where the undead spawned, contained four crystal orbs that hummed and glowed when a new wave spawned. So the PCs figured out immediately that they needed to disable them to stop the undead. That’s what my players did, but there were other options.

In the secret room 7, there was a series of control consoles. They managed to find it by noticing the strange vent in the wall and removing it. On each console was a series of indentations, and in each indentation, a gem was placed. These were valuable cut gems, but they were also used to control things on that level. They controlled everything from the lights to the hard-light undead projectors. With a little experimentation, they could have used these controls to disable the undead waves.

The room also contained a holographic projection of a crystalline the humanoid. This was a simple prerecorded message, which, if they could have understood the language, would be telling them how to use the consoles and their purposes. But the Magic User had already used up her Read Languages scroll, so they’re just going to have to figure it out for themselves.

A couple of other things in room 5, I put some bio-hazard suits in the lockers which will act as magic armour of sort, giving bonuses to saves, and I also left a futuristic looking wand of Detect Magic. I did this because the Magic user always wants to use that spell but not really at the expense of a precious spell slot. It also gave them valuable information about the undead (they emanated illusion magic, not necromantic) and other parts of the dungeon.

In room 6, They noticed difference in the surface on the floor in front of the iPod-future, translucent white double doors. The Fighting Man in the party used his ten foot pole to poke that surface and set off the trap beneath, a lethal spray of tint crystal shards exploded upwards, making his ten-foot pole into a nine-foot pole. He did manage to poke the doors which opened to reveal a stairwell leading down.

Conclusion

They are not quite done on this level. When we left them, they were still mucking about with the controls in the secret room. And they had detected an evil presence to the north west (room 8.)

Even after they make it to the next level, where things become even more sci-fi, they have a ways to go.

I’m still really enjoying the creative endeavour of building and populating this dungeon. I went into it only with the map, the outline of the plot and the general themes. I have been adding details as we go along so I can respond to things the players say or do. Maybe this is not quite in the spirit of the Original D&D, but I find it works very well, so I’ll stick with it.

The Editioning Weeks Five and Six, Basic D&D

Taking Sides

The Keep on the Borderland wants you to commit to a faction, become their champion and do quests for them. Or, at the very least, it wants you to pretend you’re doing that so you play one faction off against another. We got deep into these politics in our latest session.

Losing Friends and Making New Ones

The image of the Keep on the Borderlands on the back cover of the adventure, showing a large keep at sunset, a group of adventurers running up the road towards it. — The Keep

We have been growing in the esteem of various factions and drawing the ire of others for the last few sessions. For instance, as I mentioned before, we have ingratiated ourselves to the Castellan of the eponymous Keep, but, we have decided to go against the Ospreys, the bandit-like rebel band who want to overthrow our friendly Castellan. With that in mind we used an osprey feather and a secret handshake to convince a group of these bandits we wanted to join them. This turned into a fight, of course, since they came in force and, although we only needed to capture one of them for questioning in the keep, we couldn’t separate them. This all worked out in our favour as we came away with not one, but two prisoners, one of whom was a high-ranking lieutenant. But one of them escaped the ambush, no doubt returning to Lord Osprey himself. I’m pretty sure we’ve ruined any chances of being best buds with that guy.

Anyway, we went back to the Keep for some carousing and continued making enemies and rivals. Our DM, Isaac’s carousing table has not necessarily been very kind to us so far. This time proved to be even worse than the last. The only thing that happened last time was that we woke up in the street. This time, my thief, Thaddeus Nightbane, got barred from the Blue Wine Tavern for being a know-it-all, Tom’s elf, Eandril, managed to get into a duel with the keep’s armourer and Lotharia, Charlie’s halfling, pissed on the spell book of Thaumic Juggernaut Billiam Asda (is that right, Issac?) Now, we had a bunch of booze back in our apartments so I didn’t mind getting barred too much and Eandril won the duel, impressing the armourer so much that she offered us discounts. But Lotharia? Well, the only way we could satisfy the Thaumic Juggernaut was to quest in search of a replacement spell book. So, we took ourselves off into the mountain woods in search of the Hermit, Dimblemist. It wasn’t too hard to find him, but we wanted to get out of there as quickly as we could. The frog-like man gave us all the ick. Anyway, we traded my ill-fated first character, Edmund of the Sun’s old holy symbol for the spell book. Dimblemist hung the symbol on his pet puma’s collar, oddly enough. They both seemed pleased with the result.

Dimblemist the horrid little hermit in his tree home.

It was on the return journey that we ran into a random encounter. A griffon attacked a shepherd and his flock right in front of us on the road. The shepherd was already a goner by the time we got there, so we decided to try sneaking around to avoid a fight. No such luck. The bird-brained pussycat spotted us and attacked, making short work of Lotharia. She was rent asunder by the beast’s great talons. I’m sure it would have killed us all if we hadn’t had a small army of hirelings with us. So we defeated it with sheer numbers. Poor Lotharia, we barely knew her! She was only the second PC fatality. I’m sure there will be more to come…

Anyway, we returned to town with the replacement spell book and poor Lotharia’s corpse, in an effort to glean a little sympathy from Thaumic Juggernaut, Billiam Asda. Surprisingly, he paid us 100 GP towards the funeral costs. We later heard that Billiam had Power Word: Deathed a man in the pub for shit-talking his mum or something. Counting ourselves lucky, we wrapped that session.

Ethics in Business

Look, this is a game, alright? I want you all to remember that before you judge Tom, Charlie and me on the paragraphs below. Especially as, you know, we’re just doing what our characters would do or whatever.

We buried Lotharia and greeted Charlie’s new PC, Anastasia, Cleric of the Sun and newest member of the Company of the Dark Sun (we change the name from the Company of the Summer Sun after Edmund died.) Soon after we received a visit from Richard Kirkdon of the the Thyrenian Guild, a group of merchants with a base of operations in the Keep. They had been paying us for Osprey ears and, unsurprisingly, were very happy to hear with had ambushed a bunch of them and taken prisoners. Dick paid us 900 GP just for being cool. He then offered us a small fortune to find some of his mates who had been captured by the hobgoblins in the Caves of Chaos and, oh yeah, to deliver a shipment of arms to the Shakkelwart Clan of orcs, also of the Caves of Chaos. He even paid us a third of the fee up front. We agreed, and bid him farewell.

Now, Thaddeus Nightbane’s immediate instinct was to sell out the Thyrenians to the Castellan for arming his enemies. He saw it as a win-win, especially as we had already been paid so much for doing nothing. But the other PCs talked me around. Several other plans were thought up and shot down. We considered damaging the shipment and delivering it to the orcs, thereby damaging their relationship with the Thyrenain Guild. We thought of just destroying the shipment and telling Dick we delivered it. In the end, after a debate that consumed the lion’s share of the session, we decided to deliver the shipment as requested, but also to deliver another shipment of arms and armour to the goblins we’d made friends with earlier. The idea was that, if both sides were well armed, they might just weaken each other enough to make them both easy pickings for the keep’s forces, thereby increasing out standing with the Castellan and earning the rest of the gold promised us by the Guild.

So, off we went, back to the ravine containing the Caves of Chaos. As we were scouting out the best way to approach the Shakkelwart Clan’s caves, we encountered a few representatives of a rival mercenary group, known as the Great Company. They took one of our hirelings hostage but we managed to defeat them despite that. In searching their belongings, we discovered they had been contracted to find and eliminate Thaddeus Nightbane!

Conclusion

Less and less am I concerned with the mechanics of playing the game, now. We almost never need to refer to the rules or even question the way things work in Basic D&D. Its fair to say that “basic” is the right word for it. Your characters are simple, the rules are straightforward and everything that isn’t spelled out can easily be ruled upon by the DM.

More and more am I invested in the occurrences of the adventure, the faction play, the NPCs and the quandaries we are presented with. We are figuring out what we want from this whole caper and we are also figuring out how the various groups involved can help or hinder us. It is bringing the Machiavelli out in us quite a bit, whether we’re lawful, chaotic or neutral. And it’s very fun.

The last session we played was Session 7, which is one more than I thought we’d be playing for this whole adventure. Isaac asked us if we wanted to continue until we reach a reasonable end point. This obviously sticks a spanner in the works of the Editioning plan, but I had already come to the conclusion that if we were having fun with it, we may as well keep playing. I’m coming to the realisation, actually, that we won’t get through an adventure in each edition in a single yer. More likely, it’ll take two. And I’m fine with that because, right now, I’m enjoying it so much!