Last night, we had the second session of our AD&D 2e campaign. My play report from last week's session is here.
Recapping
To recap briefly, the party decided to aid the stonemasons guild in checking in on a missing work crew which had been hired and taken upriver to repair an abandoned tower in the mountains, and to acquire delinquent payments from the guild's client. They had a number of random encounters in the wilderness but eventually reached the tower. On the way they learned that the tower was once occupied by a cruel warlord who waged war on the people of the surrounding forest, and that the hateful spirit of the warlord haunts the mountains to this day. The party met some of the forest people, who were unfriendly, but managed to avoid a fight.
A popular recapping technique is to ask one of the players to give a summary of the previous session. This not only engages the players by allowing them to participate in the recap, but also allows the DM to get a sense of what the players remember and what struck them as important at the time.
I like this technique on paper, but I find it takes considerable game time for my players to recall events. There is often a lot of back and forth between players, as different players recall different things, and between the players and myself, as they ask clarifying questions to ensure they're recalling events as they occurred and in the correct order.
We've tried it a few times, but I find it easier and faster to give the recaps myself. A benefit of the DM giving the recap is that the DM can emphasize any important information that the players learned in the prior session, reinforcing those revelations and making them top-of-mind for the players in the session in which they're about to participate.
For example, in my recap I emphasized the information that the party had obtained from the master stonemason (reminding them what their quest goals were), as well as the information about the former lord of the tower, and the encounter with the forest people (who will come back later). I mostly glazed over the other less eventful or relevant encounters.
Aggressive Negotiation
For the tower map, I used Dyson Logos's Archon's Tower and the dungeons below. I sometimes make my own maps, but Dyson makes great maps that are usually quick and easy to key and stock with monsters, traps, treasure, and the like, so most of the time I prefer to just find something of Dyson's that suits my purposes.
The party approached the tower and were met by a mercenary who spoke to them through a window from the opposite side of the entryway door (the party noted the murder hole above the door).
When preparing this encounter, I rolled an initial disposition of 5 (unfriendly) for the mercenaries (I talk about how I determine initial dispositions in the previous play report). I decided that the mercenaries would try to shake the party off and get them to leave. Because the roll was 5, the party would have five attempts to negotiate before the mercenaries ended the encounter. Because the mercenaries were unfriendly, any subsequent reaction rolls would be made at -2. I describe my methods for adjudicating social interactions, including the number of social "actions" the PCs can attempt in an encounter and modifiers to reaction rolls based on initial disposition, here.
The mercenaries told the party that the stonemasons were fine, that they were refinishing the tower's basement before working on the exterior and were not to be disturbed, that they had sent a messenger with a letter from the masons and payment to the guild a few days ago, and that the tower was private property and the party should leave.
The player of Rozidien Stoneskull, the paladin, asked how they might roll an Insight check in 2e. My snarky answer was that we don't do that in AD&D, but I allowed a Wisdom check anyway. The paladin succeeded and concluded that the mercenary was being shady.
With negotiations going nowhere, Karven Stone, the thief, snuck around the tower's perimeter to find alternative means of entering.
Based on the profile view of the tower, I concluded that it would be just a ten-foot climb to reach one of the lower windows, since the tower is built into a slope. Karven easily climbed this and secured a piton and rope to allow Bernhardt Dalton, the cleric, to climb up behind him (the base climbing rate for a non-thief without any climbing proficiency is 40%, plus 55% for having the use of a rope and wall, so Bernhardt did this easily - climbing success rates and modifiers are listed on Tables 65 and 66 of the 2e PHB, page 161).
Climbing in through the window put Bernhardt and Karven inside the tower on the second floor (at the top of the murder hole). There was a single mercenary stationed there, who was craning his neck to keep an eye on the party below, and didn't notice them come in. Karven moved silently across the room and attempted a backstab, but missed. The guard hollered, and we rolled initiative.
Initiative in AD&D
Initially, I didn't want to use 2e's optional individual initiative modifiers (2e PHB, page 125) in this campaign. 2e uses a simple side-based initiative system by default, but I've always preferred individual initiative because it keeps the action varied between PCs and monsters throughout the round.
The way individual initiative works in 2e is everyone declares their actions at the start of the round, then rolls initiative, and the initiative score is modified by the action the combatant is taking (the weapon speed factor if an attack is being made, casting time if a spell is being cast, and myriad other modifiers which cover a variety of other combat actions), plus other situational modifiers (whether the creature is hasted, slowed, on higher ground, etc.). This is redone every round. It's tedious, but my players wanted to try it.
What I'm hoping to get out of 2e is (among other things) a faster combat system than 5e. This initiative system, paired with the high whiff factor at low levels in AD&D, is not giving me the results I want. I'm hoping this improves at higher levels, when hit probability is better, considering 2e doesn't have as much hit point bloat as 5e.
I've recently read Old School Essentials and am tempted to lift the Tom Moldvay Basic rules for initiative (declare actions > side-based initiative > morale > movement > missile attacks > spell casting > melee attacks), but for now I'm sticking with trying to do it the 2e way until I'm certain that the system doesn't work for me. After all, I'm running 2e because I want to see how the system runs - I don't want to start changing things after two sessions.
Kicking in the Door
While Bernhardt and Karven dealt with the guard upstairs, Rozidien, Haymond Baler (the fighter), and their hirelings rushed the door, smashing it open (an open doors check, with a -2 penalty because the strong wooden door was wedged shut from the other side, and a +3 bonus for the extra bodies contributing to the effort). On the other side, the party was met with eight additional mercenaries.
A fight ensued. Bernhardt used his mancatcher to snare the guard upstairs and pull him so that he fell into the murder hole and plummeted 20 feet to his death. Karven and Haymond each took a spear wound for maximum (6) damage.
Mercenary Morale
Using 2e's morale rules, I started checking the mercenaries' morale after the first casualty. The penalties are pretty severe (2e DMG, page 98) and can snowball quickly, so the mercenaries failed their morale checks pretty consistently and began retreating deeper into the tower. 2e doesn't limit attacks of opportunity when combatants flee, so the PCs were allowed free attacks against every mercenary which fled. All told, four mercenaries were killed, two were subdued, and three fled. The fight felt deadly and ended fairly quickly after the first casualty, which I liked a lot.
Bernhardt used two spell slots to heal Haymond and Karven. With a Wisdom of 16, Bernhardt gets two extra 1st-level spells slots (and, at 3rd-level, two extra 2nd-level spell slots), a luxury which isn't afforded to wizards, but makes clerics' spellcasting capabilities a bit more robust at low levels.
The party looted the bodies - they have a cart, which I failed to point out they could not bring into the mountains with them (because there are no roads or trails leading to the tower) and they are insistent on selling every piece of chain mail and every shield and spear, which, fine, whatever.
They then took some time to explore the tower before pursuing the mercenaries.
Exploring the Tower
Bernhardt and Karven climbed a very tall ladder and found a locked chest, which contained the mercenaries' payment, as well as a contract between their leader, Oskar, and someone else named Gwenda. Karven bribed Bernhardt into letting him keep the bulk of the platinum they found and keep it secret from the rest of the party.
Next, Karven snuck up to the top of the tower and found a harpy and some giant ravens nesting in a heap of branches, bones, viscera, and treasure. The party discussed this and decided to pursue the mercenaries and locate the stonemasons before dealing with the harpy.
Random Encounters
All of the aforementioned activity (negotiations, fighting, and exploring) took time, which I tracked in roughly ten-minute turns. All told, the party had spent about an hour in the tower. I rolled six encounter checks, and ended up with one random encounter.
After stocking a dungeon, I create a d100 table which lists all of the creatures in the dungeon and their relative frequency. In this case, I rolled cultists, who are hiding in the dungeons under the the tower. I decided that the fleeing mercenaries had alerted them, and a few of them had come up to dissuade the party from their current course of action.
The cultists were waiting for the party when they opened the next door. They told the party that they had no quarrel with them, that they paid the guild for the price of the masons' lives and that they were not permitted to leave until they had completed the ominous "great work". The cultists serve someone called "the Bone Lord".
The party got the jump on the cultists and struck first. One cultist fled and was killed, and the other promptly surrendered. The party questioned the surviving cultist and learned that the masons were being held in a dungeon three floors below, but that some of them were already dead. They knocked the remaining cultist unconscious and continued down below.
Delving Deeper
There they found a throne room lined with black banners depicting a white skull on a triangle trimmed in silver, tomb niches piled high with bones and skulls, an imposing throne, and a tunnel carved into the back of one of the niches.
The Bone Lord is Myrkul, the evil Forgotten Realms deity of death. I've toyed around with making my own pantheons in the past, but I like a version of D&D that is a weird mélange of Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk gods, factions, and the like. It just doesn't feel like D&D to me without Red Wizards, the Zhents, Iuz, Vecna, and the like.
The party proceeded through the tunnel (the throne was magical, but they didn't investigate it enough to figure that out - perhaps I should have telegraphed it somehow), past another locked door, and found themselves in a long pillared hall. Another group of cultists was here on watch, and turned to menacingly face down the intruders.
And that's where we wrapped. We played for about two-and-a-half hours and got in some social interaction, combat, and exploration. As usual, the combat took the longest and felt like the biggest drag on the game. I'll be keeping an eye on that and looking for ways to make it run smoother in the future, with the initiative problem as my foremost concern.
Will the party figure out what nefarious plots are underway at the tower? Will they save the remaining masons? What's the deal with that harpy? Tune in next time to find out!
No comments:
Post a Comment