Ghoultunnel

Oops, we did it again! What a gathering, what a party, what gaming! Over 50 OSR aficionados from 13 countries present at Schloss Hohenroda. 44 sessions of gaming from Thursday night to Sunday morning. Wargames and D&D, Advanced and Original. A tournament module. An auction of rare and refined RPG items. Vegan food and juicy pork, beer and bratwurst, palinka and slivovitz. Old friends met, and new friends were made. Believe it or not, some participants even managed to catch some sleep!

Among the first time cauldronistas, just to name a few: Justin Todd ran several sessions of his Ransack system (based on OD&D) at our Prismatic Table, while at the Psionic Blast Table and later at the Treasure Type Z Table, Martin M. demonstrated his Im Reich der Nibelungen / Realm of the Nibelungs / Le Royaume des Nibelungs (rules lite OSR). Also, I finally met the Oger in person, a German blogger renowned for his creativity (and banned from RPG forums of lesser refinement, all the more welcome in our midst).

This year, many guests had kindly offered to take some kitchen shifts, so we, the organisers (who also pay the partcipation fee), could participate more in the gaming. Thank you so much! You are the best con visitors I’ve ever met! This is what I played:

Braunstein

Settembrini ran a braunstein game titled Hour of the Jackal for 16 players. I was lucky to participate. My character was the mistress of the merchant’s guild, who wanted to protect trade, except the illegal trade of addictive lotus, and had the goal to become the new mayor of Badwall. Unfortunately, a huge army of jackal men assembled in front of the city and demanded the blood of all clergical members of the temple of Wee-Jas! Hear from the Jackal king how the fight between jackals and clerics evolved. In the end, I actually was elected mayor – of a city humiliated by its own weakness, and the city watch under the control of evil brigands! While my immediate feeling was that I had done little to prevent this political chaos of happening, I later realised I actually had had quite some influence. I had talked the dopplegangers (whom I mistook for the brigand mob) into assassinating the Jackal King! I prevented the city from slipping into total anarchy and prevailed in the mayor election. Victory!

Tournament Module
B/X Blackrazor, last year’s winner of the Best DM trophy, was not physically present this year, yet close to us in mind and heart. He had sent us his unpublished tournament module The Children of the Sea for 6-8 characters of levels 6-8. Six of our DMs ran this adventure, so that we had 48 slots for players to offer. My group had quite a few laughs when pirates tossed player character dwarves down a pit or when monstrous sea-dwellers used their death gaze to kill five of the characters. I take no responsibility for the fact that my players, due to the low amount of treasure retrieved and the highest number of casualties stood no chance of winning the tournament! I am but the humble referee administrating Blackrazor’s challenge.

Im Reich der Nibelungen

I was excited to venture into the magical wilderness of dwarves and giants. For the adventure Gunther must Die, I grabbed the valkyrie character, a proud and independent Burgundian warrior with supernatural strength. 90 minutes into the session, she was killed by a dire wolf. My comrades luckily were much more successful on the further quest, though Gunther had been killed before they reached him.

At least, I could use the remainder of the evening to set up my ambitiuous game for the next morning.

D&D Naval Wargaming

Ever since I read the chapter on galley combat in OD&D Book III, I had longed to play such a naval battle. However, parts of these rules are cumbersome, others like the points of sail are clearly flawed. 1e DMG streamlines and adds some rules, the remainder must be taken from the original Chainmail. All seemed sensible for a historical naval skirmish – complications were of course to be expected as soon as sorcery and fantastic creatures were involved.

To finally bring my vision to the gaming table, I got some 1:600 scale miniatures, and I painted the ships, assembled tokens, and frantically tinkered with the rules, adding some random effects to movement, modified sailing rules, re-worked the ramming maneuver, expanding the types of ships into 6 rates, and so on … Play testing was restricted to a few ship maneuvering moves on a small scale, as I was working on counters and rules until the evening right before the con.

So here I was, with a largely untested grand scenario involving the factions of Hardby/Safeton, Fax, Elredd/Badwall, two player characters from our Wild Coast campaign, the Slave Lords and the Scarlet Brotherhood; 7 small galleys, 11 large galleys, 3 sailing ships; 11 wizards of various levels, 2 heroes, 2 superheros and 4 types of hidden underwater creatures, human and non-human oarsmen, sailors and marines, totaling over 5000 lives at stake.

The players received their ship sheets, secret goals and hidden ally data. A brief introduction to the phases of our naval turns, with a variable number of 2 two 4 move actions depending on fatigue factor expenditure and skill checks for rowing or point of sail and wind strength for sailing, and off you go!

It appears the Slave Lords and Scarlet Brotherhood sought to tempt their enemy into waters where their allies were hidden, but the Wild Coast city state alliance took their time instead to assembly their dispersed squadrons into one large line of galleys.

An air elemental was summoned early by the Brotherhood, which managed to attack an destroy the sails of a troop transporting vessel full of amazon warriors. This sluggish hippo consequently never made it into grappling distance, despite heroic rowing.

The elemental was dispelled, the wind was magically turned only once, and a lot of spectral forces ghost ships summoned and dispelled during the entire game.

After several rounds of maneuvering, the catapults spoke. When the fleets came even closer, a wild melee of ramming, shearing-off oars and boarding actions ensued. With lightning bolts, fireballs and lots of counterspells being cast. Often, boarding attempts were made on rammed or ramming ships before the galleys could disentangle. The decks of ships were blasted with flames burning oil from fire siphons during shearing oars maneuvers. Nixies (exiles from their sweet home waters) grabbed the oars of Magister Als bireme. Ahriman the Sinister, Admiral of Elredd, held his ground on the burning flagship Shadow of Hecate while his men boarded the Brotherhood flag (his account of the events can be found here). Even a coudkill spell was cast to cleanse a galley of slavers and slaves alike. As the Scarlet bro monks were hard-pressed, from their leaders‘ skins something horrible, crab-like but spongy, appeared and rose to the air. Swarms of mi-go, the funghi from space, circled above the galleys and fired lightning from strange wand-like devices in their claws, until they themselves were taken down by magic.

In the end, many ships were sinking or burning, and some had been taken by boarding. The Brotherhood, Badwall (find their tale here) and Fax squadrons had been destroyed. The Slave Lords had their orc-manned liburnae escape, along with a Faxian tricontere taken as a prize. The amazons cheered, as did the men on Magister Al Capones „duckling“ biremes. Four large galleys were distributed as prizes among the city states. The slavers will think twice before scourging the Wild Coast again!

The 8h gaming experience was epic, I was told, though I have to admit I was already exhausted before the lunch break. Luckily, my well-organised rules sheets, outsourcing of book-keeping to the players, movement measuring aids etc., enabled me to carry through with my referee tasks, including Chainmail-battling the boarding actions on the side table.

I have reached my goal of demonstrating that galley actions can effectively be run using D&D rules. The system seems very gameable for smaller skirmishes (say up to 4 or 5 ships). The 21 ships we had seems to be the maximum one should attempt. I may think of a purely deterministic system for quickly handling boarding actions in the future instead of playing them with miniatures on a side table. Certainly, I will publish the assembled rules in some form in the future.

Auction

As last year, we spent an evening of fierce bidding contests. I was baffled by the sight of numerous OSR rarities (and some mean non-OSR anti-items I shall not name) being sold of by their proprietors, who must be acting out of some kind of incurable ennui … I quit bidding on the oversized Judges Guild module collections when prizes rose over 100€, and I did not bid on all those Hackmaster books, as relentless bidders drove up the prizes in haste and fury, but I managed to grab quite some loot to take home, among others the rare Grindhouse Edition of the LotFP rules.

Awards

Cauldron trophies were handed out in our traditional ceremony to honour the Most Valuable Player: Mitch (MVP), voted by DMs and players alike, the most ambitious Hireling Resources Manager: Kalman (HR Manager), an easy but well-earned win for the Slave Lords player, and the best DM: Andy. The latter was awarded for risk-to-reward balance, communication skill and players‘ rating.

Furthermore, the winning team and runners-up form the Blackrazor Cup (tournament module) were granted certificate for their glorious achievements. In reality, there had been 3 teams (Henning’s, Philipp’s and Fabian’s) performing nearly equally well, but hey, someone got to earn these valuable sheets of paper.

As always: The awards are for entertainment. There were so many excellent players and DMs assembled, we must have been close to critical mass for OSR implosion.

I hope to see you all again next year, at a larger location. Meanwhile, B/X Blackrazor is rumoured to be already working on his next tournament module, as this year’s players have proven his challenge to be too soft for the seasoned veterans of Cauldron.

Further chronicles

Cauldron 2024 review page

Die Ogerhöhle

GoldDigger: Day 1, Day 2, Days 3+4

Prince of Nothing

Vorpal Mace, part 1, part 2

Back to the Dungeon

Ahriman’s battle report

Bestia ex machina (organisers‘ team)

Stuffed Crocodile

Im Reich der Nibelungen

Blackrazor’s musings from afar: The European OSR, Czech Mate, Tourney.