The Broken Lands Session 2

The greedy adventures saw opportunity in raiding the cellars and crypts below a ruined wizard tower along the Road of Tombs.

The Party:

• Vanuatu the Vegan (Magic-User 1)
• Elu (Elf 1)
• Steefe (Halfling 1)
• Barak (Fighter 1) - I think I may have this name wrong
• Plus a retainer - Father Mug (Cleric 2 - from Black Pudding #1)

The Adventure (aka there will be spoilers below):

The Tower of Zenopus from Holmes Basic. I am: 1) making some cosmetic changes; 2) adding a sublevel accessed by the hallway going north in the top-left corner of the map; and 3) Since this is no longer located on a body of water, the sea caverns will be changed.

What Happened:

• Before adventuring, Van decides that there is no way he would be willing to sell the huge gem, the Blood Egg, that they pillaged on their last adventure. They then hire Father Mug as a retainer.
• Descending the stairs into the cellars below, the party heads south at an intersection - using the always turn left mode. They enter a chamber and quickly overcome 4 skeletons.
• They proceed through an empty room and enter a gloomy room with piles of rocks and rubbish. They defeat 3 giant rats and then find a silver dagger and a bag containing 50 ep.
• Cautiously exploring a hallway going north they are surprised by two ghouls that attack them from the rear (a wandering monster). Father Mug failed his turn attempt, but the ghouls are defeated thanks to the halfling’s low AC and the elf’s immunity to ghoul paralysis.
• Proceeding into the next room, the party finds two more ghouls gnawing on bones from smashed coffins. Again, Father Mug fails his turn attempt but the ghouls are defeated with abundant missile attacks.
• The party next explores a huge room where the northern wall has collapsed scattering stone sarcophagi into the room. Ransacking the sarcophagi, the party first deals with poison gas, an animated skeleton, and then an animated sword. They find a magic sword, a golden coronet, and jewelry.
• Deciding that this was a good haul they decided to head back to Jekarra.
• Taking the magic sword to a sage they learn that it is Bittercut - a sword forged from the tears from a forgotten goddess.

The Tally:

• Killed/overcame 4 skeletons, 3 giant rats, 4 ghouls, and an animated sword.
• Valuable jewelry
• Bittercut the magic sword (yoiked from Black Pudding #1)
• Vanuatu the Vegan advances to 2nd level!

What Worked Well/What Didn’t Work Well:

• The old school practice of map keeping is working well - one of the players is keeping a rough map. During this session it helped them modestly by planning the quickest escape route (thus limiting wandering monster checks) once they decided to head back to the city. However, in session 3 it became quite valuable for decision making.
• Wandering monsters are working well - I just used the tables on page B53. They provided uncertainty and tension. The fact that they resulted in ghouls just before a keyed room with ghouls was just a nice coincidence.
• I replaced the magic +1 sword with something that has a bit more mystery/backstory/interest (but in the hands of PC's not much of a mechanical impact. Go get Black Pudding if you haven't already!)
• I made a mistake on the conversion of types of coin to gp for experience point calculations. For some reason I couldn't find the table on page B47 at the time. We rectified it by the end, but I told the players not to revised their XP reward (I over awarded them).
• I am using reaction rolls to determine who and how many retainers can be hired at any time. However, I think that the players aren't aware of my mental process when we roll so I may have to walk them though it. This really impacts session #3.

The Broken Lands Session 1

We had our first session of the online Broken Lands game a while ago. Picking from the list of Adventure Hooks that had been provided the party set off for the Tower of Birds.

The Party:
Vanuatu the Vegan (Magic-User 1)
Twig (Thief 1)
Elu (Elf 1)
Buzz (Dwarf 1)
Plus two porters to carry torches and caged chickens in and hopefully treasure out.

The Adventure (aka there will be light spoilers below):
Tower of Birds by Gabor Lux in Fight On! #2
I made a few minor changes - statuary was changed to being statues of Pazuzu and I added Spectral Ravens to location #9 and toned down the laser damage (however, the party never made it to this room).
I also mis-read the map and swapped locations #7 and #8.

What Happened:
The party was dogged in driving towards the top of the tower driving a squawking and flapping chicken in front of them up the stairs (in most dungeons this would have resulted in MANY wandering monster checks).

In the final encounter Twig, the thief, sprinted for the huge gem while the other party members battled the Bird Monsters. He was able to grab it and throw it to Vanuatu the Magic-user (who was back at the stairs) before being slaughtered by the Bird Monsters (he had the magic sword and pegasus helmet). Buzz the Dwarf was also killed. Elu the Elf and Vanuatu (scooping up the gem) made a hasty tactical retreat and hauled ass after the fleeing porters (leaving behind the chickens).

The Tally:
Killed 2 Bird Monsters
The Blood Egg
A sword with a golden pommel
A small statuette of Pazuzu
A small sack with 34 gp
The pegasus helmet and a magic sword remained behind with the fallen.

2,035 XP for the two surviving party members.

What Worked Well/What Didn’t Work Well:
I tried to set up two cameras on my end - one for my face and my viewing (my laptop) and one to show the table, combat maps, drawings, etc. (my phone). However, my lack of technical know-how prevented me effectively setting this up. We defaulted to me just swinging my laptop around to show what I wanted. Also, instead of using the table map I just sketched a lot on scrap paper and held them up to the camera.

Prior to setting out, one of the players asked about a library to do some research about the Tower. I was unhappy with how I handled it.

Hex Stocking Density

For interest sake I pulled out one of my copies of Isle of Dread. For most, it is the benchmark for hex-crawling modules. I wanted to approximate the ratio of hexes-to-encounters. Using the methodology mentioned in my last post there is a 1-in-3 chance of a hex having a monster for a hexes-to-encounter ratio of 3:1 which gives me approximately 133 monster encounters in my 400 hexes.

Just eyeballing the number of hexes on the island, I would guesstimate that there are approximately 400 hexes (has anyone actually counted them? I am far too lazy). Using the numbered island map from the module which as 24 encounters and adding 5 for the number of locations on Taboo Island, there are a total of 29 encounters on the island. Let's round up to 30. I am assuming that all numbered encounters on the map are with monsters which may not be correct. I took a quick look and didn't see any exceptions but I could be wrong. This gives a ratio of 13 hexes to 1 encounter.

My hexes are far more densely populated with monsters than those on the iconic island.  I'm okay with this. One reason I am okay with a higher number of encounters on my map is that it is for an open, exploration focused game in the West Marches style. I want the PCs to go out into the wilderness and find stuff. Also, the there is an explicit social contract that characters will try to return to town at the end of a gaming session so the quicker implied consumption of resources that will result from more encounter will not be an issue.

TSR's Top Five Basic D&D Modules

There is another top five list over at the Dwarf and the Basilisk about his top five "basic" (but actually classic) D&D modules.

Here are my top 5 TSR Basic Modules:

5. Horror on the Hill - A great meat and potatoes adventure and it has a dragon - that is awesome!

4. Veiled Society - My first urban adventure. This and X3 became by baseline for developing urban adventures.

3. Keep on the Borderlands - My first module. A great illustration of a micro-sandbox.

2. Night's Dark Terror - A great sword & sorcery feel with lost races and unknown horrors.

1. Lost City - Also has a great S&S feel. Lost City is a great example of showing a young DM how to do things. It gives some great ideas and fleshes out some of the levels but leaves a lot of stuff up to the DM and gives lots of areas to develop.