Monthly Archives: March 2021

Return to the Known Lands Sessions #8 and #9 – Cabin and Cellar

18 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by in Play Reports

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Dates: 11-8-20, 11-21-20

PCs:

Gato (Halfling FM 2)
Osan (Elf F/MU 1/1)
Dorful (Elf F/MU 1/1)
Omes (Half FM 1)

Hirelings:

Arvay (torch-bearer)
Kroenen (Meatshield)

Links to Previous Sessions

LL Notes:

Cabin & Cellar is a small B/X adventure written by Vance Atkins with maps by Tim Shorts (I’m not sure where I got this adventure, it was in my collection of B/X adventure PDFs and I can’t find reference to it on the author’s website). This was a fun two sessions with lots of paralysis, and a ghoul with unusual charm powers. The PCs explored an abandoned farm that was actually home two two ghouls and a burial crypt/root cellar which as written was haunted by two wights. Because this was a party of low-level types, and no one had any magic weapons (and only one silver dagger), I removed the “hit only by silver or magic weapons” special ability. So they were essentially strong zombies.

Session notes:

The PCs heard rumors of an old farmhouse a short ways to the south, said to be the center of a few missing persons cases of late. Mayor Rusticus knew of the farmhouse, and told the party it belonged to the Priggin family at one time, but was now abandoned. He gave the party directions, and they set out the next morning.

After a two-hour hike, the party arrived at the old farmstead. It was surrounded by a low stone fence, inside which was a farmhouse and shed, two brackish pools, and a staircase down to what looked like a root cellar. A man and woman could be seen meandering about the main house. The woman spotted them and waived.

cabin-cellar-ground

The party moved a bit closer, while Omes decided to hop the stone fence and get a closer look. As the woman waived and stared at him, Omes fell under a charm spell, and mindlessly moved closer to her. The others could tell something was wrong – for one thing, they could now see that the man and woman wore tattered clothes, and had an odd, pale complexion. Osan leapt over the wall and rushed to the aid of Omes, but he was too late to prevent the woman from clawing Omes. He fell, paralyzed. Osan grabbed Omes and pulled him back over the wall, even as the man and woman (now thought to be ghouls of a sort) walked back into their house.

The PCs huddled behind the stone wall and hatched a plan to sneak onto the house roof, which was made of peat and in disrepair. They thought to break through to attack the creatures within. They were able to do this, and could see the two ghouls eating body parts at their dinner table, but they did not have enough of an opening in the roof to attack from above. Thinking quickly, Dorful had an idea to force the ghouls out of the house by dropping some oil flasks onto the table and lighting it on fire. This worked, and they then fired arrows at the ghouls from above, killing them. In the house the party found some adventurer’s packs containing some gold coins, a bit of jewelry, a silver dagger and a scroll.

Meanwhile, Omes was still paralyzed, and in the care of Kroenen. The rest of the party decided to investigate the shed while they waited for Omes to recover. Gato entered through the shed’s rotted door, only to be surprised by a large grayish worm with wriggling tentacles that encircled a large mouth. Gato turned and ran, and the worm rushed out the door, surprising and attacking poor Arvay. He fell back, paralyzed, but meanwhile the others surrounded and attacked the worm, quickly killing it. A quick search of the shed revealed some coins and arrows (LL note: +1 arrows) in the refuse and offal on the floor, with half-eaten corpses draped over the rafters.

After a rest, both Omes and Arvay recovered, and the party went to examine the root cellar stairs. Osan descended, finding a trap door at the bottom of the staircase. He lifted it and peered within to see another staircase descending into darkness. Arvay lit a torch and the party descended about 20 feet, stopping at a small landing with a finished stone corridor off to their left.

cabin-cellar-crypt

All was dark, although at one time the cellar was lit by torches, judging from the empty sconces on the walls. The party proceeded left, Osan in the lead. Omes opened the first door they came to on the left, which revealed a short corridor leading to another door. A dead body could be seen on the floor in front of him, Omes searched the body, but found nothing of use, only noting that he appeared to have died by being clawed to death. Opening the next door revealed a tomb, complete with coffin and various knick-knacks that the party surmised were belongings of the deceased. Omes and Dorful opened the coffin,and were not surprised to see a zombie-like creature come to life and attack. Several of the party were wounded by the creature’s claws, but they did eventually defeat it. They gathered what valuables they could find, and proceeded to the next opening on the left. This room was almost identical to the last, except the coffin contained a female zombie. Again the party fought and prevailed, again gathering some meager loot.

The party skipped the alcove for now – they could see it was home to a small statue – and proceeded to the end of the hall. There Osan detected a secret door. Behind it was a crossbow trap – narrowly avoided – and a small room containing a pool of water. Omes took a chance and drank from the pool, and felt invigorated (LL note: pool increased HP permanently). Soon all of the party had taken a drink, and finding nothing else of interest, they decided to leave, investigating the alcove on the way out. The statue was black stone, and depicted a woman in armor. Beneath it the party found a secret compartment which contained a scroll tube. Osan carried it outside and opened it, but when he looked at it it, the runes on the scroll glowed brightly and then exploded. Osan was nearly killed, and poor Kroenen, standing next to Osan, did not fare as well. They gathered his body and returned to Larm.

Swords & Wizardry Forum Updates

13 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in DM Resources, Forum Games

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I was happy to see some activity in the Swords & Wizardy sub-forums of my Old-School Gaming Forum in the past few months, so I wanted to share links to some creations by forum users.

First is a revised assassin class for S&W Complete by Chuck Barchuk, which i think has a great and unique take on poison use. Also, here is a direct link to the PDFs – there is a percentile version and simpler d6-based version.

Next is a handy set of house rules by forum user ratmanof to make S&W White Box a bit more like Greyhawk with variable hit dice, a simplified thief class and greater ranges to weapon damage.

My friend John of Damn Elf Press fame also has a long-running and amazing White Box:FMAG play-by-post “Beyond the Borderlands”. Stop by if you like that sort of thing, and keep an eye out for player openings. Even if you don’t enjoy gaming by PbP, it is entertaining reading!

Musings on Retro B/X House Rules

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in Musings

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Both D&D basic sets in the late 70s and early 80s tried to simplify D&D but of course at the time, what we now think of as “Original D&D” (OD&D) meant the original three Little Brown Books (3LBBs) plus all of the supplements. Chief among those was the first supplement Greyhawk, which changed the game fundamentally into what we recognize today as “core D&D” – four base classes including the thief, variable hit dice and weapon damage, higher level spells, attack routines (claw, claw, bite) and d8 hit dice for monsters.

moldvay-basic-front-page

Moldvay Basic D&D (B/X) in 1981 was an attempt to clarify even further what Holmes Basic had done in 1977, but still used OD&D at its core (both authors were clear at the time on their intent to clarify OD&D). Now, most OD&D clones start with either the 3LBBs as a base (Swords & Wizardry White Box, Delving Deeper, Full Metal Plate Mail), or the 3LBBs plus Greyhawk (Swords & Wizardry Core, Iron Falcon), and work forward, adding some rules and changing others. I think it would be interesting to start with B/X and work backwards to the 3LBBs. To 3LBB aficionados, this gives them the best of both worlds – an essentially complete and coherent base rule system, walked backwards in time to revert some of the ‘Greyhawk-isms’. Or, to put it another way, what if Greyhawk had never been published? How would B/X have been different?

Here is what I envision a “no-Greyhawk B/X” would look like:

  • No variable hit dice – standardize hit dice for all player classes and monsters to d6.
  • Remove the thief class.
  • All weapons do d6 damage (which is already an option in B/X).
  • Monsters no longer gain attack routines. Multiple attacks are fine where sensible (e.g. a five-headed hydra still gets five attacks per round, but a ghoul would do just 1d6 damage as an abstraction for clawing or biting multiple times).
  • Reduce ability score bonuses/penalties to mostly +1 or -1.

Everything else can stay the same, including race-as-class, which is not all that different from forcing demi-humans into one class option. I should mention that Labyrinth Lord Original Edition Characters (LL OEC) does something like this in that it starts with LL as a base and changes the player options to be more like OD&D – but as I noted in my review of LL OEC, it has an identity crisis and keeps much of the trappings of Greyhawk.

So what are the advantages to doing this? You may ask, “Sure Doug, that’s great and all, but why not just play 3LBB D&D”? It’s a valid question. I see B/X as a solid and complete base that fills in the gaps and clarifies many of the rules from OD&D. So why not use it as-is and just tone it down a bit to get to a place I and other 3LBB fans are comfortable with?

Thoughts on Critical Hits & Fumbles in Old-School Games

04 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by in Opinion, OSR

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Over the years I’ve tried various methods of spicing up combat in my old-school games, including using different flavors of critical hits and fumbles charts. Like many of you, I’ve tried them both as a referee and a player, and I can say unequivocally that I dislike most of them.

Initially they are fun – “Ooh your PC tripped and fell on his own dagger… roll damage… oh damn, you’re dead!”…riotous laughter (yes, this actually happened to me). But after a while they tend to get old and samey, and at least in my games we have eventually dropped the table-driven critical hit and fumble charts.

Worse are the charts that describe some sort of debilitating injury, like losing a hand, or breaking a leg. I find results like this don’t mesh well with the intentionally abstract nature of old-school combat, and are difficult to adjudicate. Just how should losing a hand affect a fighter? Do they lose more hit points bleeding out? Is it their weapon hand? Are they ambidextrous? Can they still use a shield?  Maybe they get  -2 to attack rolls forever… but is that too severe of a penalty for rolling badly? Do they get a chance to train and learn how to use the other hand effectively? So now we are adding some training rules in the mix? Bah! Call me a curmudgeon, but that is all too complicated.

What I have settled on over the years is this – if you roll a natural 1, you miss. Even if you can’t possibly miss, you miss. You can make it a flavorful miss if you want to describe it that way, but nothing untoward happens apart from that. If you roll a natural 20, you hit. Even if you can’t hit, you hit (barring magic or silver weapon requirements of course). Further, you do maximum damage. Not double, or triple. No exploding dice. Just maximum damage. Nice and simple, and it still gives players some bit of cool factor for rolling that natural 20 (I also use this rule for monsters and NPCs).

As far as spicing up combat – I think the players should be the ones doing that, enabled by the aforementioned abstract combat and old-school style “rulings over rules” play. They can be descriptive about routine attacks, or try unconventional attacks. “I leap from the ledge and try to land on top of the Goblin’s head” or “I flip the table over and push it into the Orc shield wall”. The variations are endless. A good referee will make rulings on the spot as to when such an attack succeeds or fails and the results.