I ran the first session of my new Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition game last night. How did it go? What did we learn? Did the party of 1st-level characters in the deadly system TPK? Let's find out!
Against Starting in a Tavern
In my previous D&D 5th edition game, we started in a tavern. The first hour was an agonizing experience - I had seeded the tavern with non-player characters who could deliver rumors about the adventures the player characters could pursue. Each player had a few rumors (some had different rumors than others, and a few had the same rumors), and everyone had their own idea about what they wanted to do. The hard part, for whatever reason, was getting the PCs to interact with each other.
I had tried to stress to them that they were adventurers, who wanted to go on an adventure, and that they had come to the tavern to find adventurers to adventure with - standard D&D stuff. After having several NPCs say to each of them something along the lines of "Oh, you're and adventurer? Well, you should adventure with that other guy who said he wants to adventure!", they started to get the message and gathered themselves together. Still, there was one player who, every time I asked what their character was doing, they would say "I'm just existing." Sigh.
Eventually, I had a surly brigand come into the tavern and take umbrage with the PC in question: "Hey, I don't like the way you're just existing! I'm going to come back with my buddies and we're going to rough you up. There's a bunch of us so you should probably find some adventurers to adventure with!" The Dungeon Master does what they have to do to get the ball rolling.
This most likely isn't a problem with most groups. I imagine that most players are excited to interact with one another's characters, form connections, and get to the exciting stuff. But because I'm running this game for the same group, I established the following for this campaign:
- Every PC is an adventurer interested in adventuring. The player is responsible for deciding why. The paladin wants to destroy evil. The cleric wants to spread their god's teachings. The thief wants to steal stuff. The farmer-fighter came to town to sell his crop and discovered they could make 300 gold just by killing a ghost. That sort of thing.
- All the PCs have already met and agreed to adventure together. The good-aligned fighter, paladin, and cleric have somehow - at least temporarily - made common cause with the evil thief.
- Once the players decide which quest they want to pursue, the campaign starts in the town nearest to the chosen adventure site, where they can gather information, provisions, and hirelings, then head out.
This worked pretty well to speed things up.
Agency in the Sandbox
I had five quest locations prepared (a good number for a sandbox, in my experience, though just three or even two would do), so I had each player roll a d6 to determine which quest hook they got, with a 6 being a reroll for two hooks instead of one. They learned about a wizard who wanted to recover pegasus eggs and hatchlings from nearby nest, a cleric who wanted to put an angry spirit haunting a tomb to rest, and the head of a stonemasons guild who wanted to check on a work crew who had been sent to refurbish a ruined tower and had gone silent.
The pegasus quest was the highest-paying, but the good-aligned characters deduced that this would probably entail killing some pegasi, which they weren't interested in doing. Of the two remaining quests, they chose to check in on the stonemasons, which they figured was the more time-sensitive of the two. The drawback was that this quest was three and a half days' travel into the forest and up into the mountains, whereas the other quest was a day-and-a-half jaunt down the road and across some scrubland.
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| The Warlord's Tower is only one hex further than the Whispering Tomb, but because of more difficult terrain, traveling to the former takes much longer than the latter (using Table 74 of the 2nd edition Dungeon Master's Guide for terrain modifiers to movement rate, page 168). |
I reminded the players that this was AD&D, and that the wilderness was extremely dangerous - the more time they spent traversing it, the more likely they were to run into something beyond their abilities. Despite that, they decided to continue pursuing the quest with the longer overland journey.
Getting Help
I let my players know during session 0 that I was designing adventures with a party of six to ten people in mind. Although I only have four players, I decided to do it this way because, as far as I could tell, six to ten is the most common party size recommended by "classic" AD&D adventures, and I wanted to design my own adventures in that vein, rather than tailoring everything to the actual party size (or throwing out balance entirely, which I find dissatisfying despite it being the OSR approach). Similarly, when I design adventures for 5e, I do so with four to six players in mind.
I suggested that each player could make two characters to bring the party size up to eight, but they declined. I then recommended then that they hire two to six hirelings to join them and round out the party.
For simplicity, I prefer 5e's approach to hirelings (5e Player's Handbook, page 159), which is that an unskilled hireling (a porter, a torchbearer, or someone to watch the mule, for example) costs two silver per day, whereas a skilled hireling (someone with proficiency of any kind, including the use of weapons and armor, i.e. someone who will fight alongside the party) costs two gold per day. Since the journey would be three and a half days there and back (seven days total), an unskilled hireling would cost 14 silver, and a skilled hireling would cost 14 gold.
Hirelings don't earn a share of treasure or experience. Henchmen, which I've decided the PCs can acquire at 3rd-level, get a half-share of treasure and XP. If these hirelings are still with the party when they get to 3rd-level, they can graduate to being full henchmen.
They opted to hire two mercenaries (the fighter had a lot of leftover gold after buying equipment), which I generated on the spot. In the future, I'd probably stock each settlement with two to six hirelings so I have them ready to go. I randomly determined the hirelings' race, alignment, and personality traits, and ended up with the following:
- Terris, a Lawful Evil human. He is suspicious, ponderous, and cynical.
- Yinvalur Sparkguard, a Neutral Good elf. He is generous, depressing, and nervous.
The party kind of hit the jackpot in getting an elf (albeit a depressed, anxious elf). They have better hit points, THAC0, morale, a bonus to hit with bows and swords, near-immunity to sleep and charm effects, and a better chance to detect secret doors (and they can do so without even looking for one).
Getting There is Half the Fun
We assume that the party leaves town under ideal weather conditions, and each day thereafter I roll 2d6 to determine how the weather changes, using this weather hex map, which I got from Goblin's Henchman (I decided to start the campaign during the Spring).
Because the party would be following a river, they would have no chance of getting lost, which was good for them.
Wilderness turns are four hours each. The party can usually travel overland for eight hours (or two turns), set up camp for eight hours (or two turns), and rest for eight hours (or two turns). Table 56 in the 2e Dungeon Master's Guide (page 138) tells the DM when to check for encounters based on the terrain type the party is in. If an encounter check is called for, I roll d10 to determine if one occurs (again, the chance of an encounter is determined by terrain according to Table 56).
Getting from town to the tower took the whole session (about two and a half hours). The party had seven random encounters.
Making Random Encounters Interesting
I decided to use the random encounter tables in the AD&D 1st edition DMG (Temperate and Sub-Tropical Conditions, Uninhabited/Wilderness Areas, page 184) because I prefer them to those in any 2e book.
To spruce up these encounters on the fly, I use Table 58 in the 2e DMG (page 139) to determine encounter distance, and a modified reaction roll table which I find works best for my games:
2d6 Reaction
2-3 Hostile (usually attacks, but might be negotiated with briefly)
4-5 Unfriendly (usually threatens or impedes the party in some way, but can be negotiated with)
6-8 Indifferent (usually ignores the party, but is open to negotiation)
9-10 Friendly (approaches the party, usually looking for something from them)
11-12 Helpful (sycophantically friendly, may even enthusiastically join the party)
The reaction roll is modified by alignment, such that Lawful creatures receive a +1, Chaotic creatures a -1, Good creatures +2, and Evil creatures -2. The modifiers are cumulative, so a Lawful Good creature would receive +3 and a Chaotic Evil one would receive -3. A LG creature is never outright hostile (the lowest they can roll is a 5) and a CE creature is never outright helpful (the highest they can roll is a 9).
After that, any further reaction rolls (for negotiations, for example) are modified by the creature's current disposition:
Disposition Modifier
Hostile -4
Unfriendly -2
Indifferent 0
Friendly +2
Helpful +4
With these tools, I can usually create something varied and interesting on the fly.
The Periled Paths of the Warlord's Wood
The party wasn't even a day out from town when they encountered their first test - a five-foot-long toad, sitting in the river, looking at them.
Rozidien Stoneskull, the paladin, recalled that giant toads in settled areas mostly feed on livestock such as chickens, goats, and sheep, but that they eat the occasional dwarf, gnome, or halfling as well (I called for an Intelligence check here). The party concluded that this toad was eyeing their dwarf as a potential meal, and steered clear of it. Unfortunately, the toad climbed out of the river and started following them.
Haymond Baler, the farmer-fighter, bet he could put out the toad's eye with a sling (making a called shot at -4 to hit) and missed. The toad, which had no intention of attacking them, turned and fled. Wanting to ensure it stayed away, the party hurled sling bullets and daggers at it as it fled (all missing, hilariously). Rozidien chased it down and got a solid hit in for 10 damage before the party gave up on trying to kill it (the toad had 13 hit points). This all took three rounds and only one hit was scored.
I had actually rolled a friendly reaction for the toad. What does that mean? Probably that it wanted food. Had the party been able to cast speak with animals or some similar spell, who knows what ancient knowledge the toad would impart upon them? We'll probably never know.
While the party was camping on the first night, they heard the howls of a pack of wild dogs nearby in the forest. There was some concern they might be attacked by wolves, but the dogs were indifferent, so the encounter passed without incident.
When the party set up camp the next day, a mother grizzly bear and her four cubs wandered into camp. Most of my players have played Baldur's Gate, so they knew not to trifle with a bear at 1st-level in AD&D. Bernhardt Dalton, the cleric, opened his barrel of salted herring and left it for the bears to eat while the rest of the party backed away.
I had determined that the bear was friendly, so it was happy to eat the party's food and rummage around their camp before wandering off. Some ranger is going to have to put that bear down sooner or later now that it knows to associate humans with food, sadly.
The following day, again while setting camp, a group of about a half dozen foresters wandered into their camp and asked to join them (they were friendly). The party shared their quest with the foresters, who confirmed that they had seen a caravan of workers traveling up to the old tower about a week prior. The foresters mentioned that they hadn't seen any work being done on the tower exterior, but admitted that they mostly shunned the place for its nefarious reputation as the former seat of a bloodthirsty warlord.
These foresters were in fact wereboars, which I hinted at by having them behave somewhat crassly and by peppering the information they gave with bits about how they smelled the party from downriver or about how the old tower smelled foul. The players didn't pick up on it. Luckily, wereboars are neutral, or this encounter could have been much nastier (the encounter roll was "Lycanthrope", and I rolled "Wereboar" on the lycanthrope subtable - wererats or werewolves would have been another story entirely).
That night, Karven Stone, the thief, who had stayed awake and hidden in the bushes to keep an eye on the foresters, noticed a strange light in the forest. He sneaked off to investigate, but stepped on a twig, and the light suddenly went out. It reappeared shortly after, softer, and seeming to beckon to him, but he decided not to follow it. With an Intelligence check, he recalled that ghostly lights sometimes appear in wild, forsaken places and seek to lead hapless travelers to their deaths.
This was a will-o'-wisp, and its reaction was hostile. It absolutely could have flown straight into the party's camp and roasted all of them easily (it's worth 3,000 XP, so a level 7 monster by AD&D standards), but I decided not to start my campaign that way. I decided that the will-o'-wisp would only attack if someone wandered sufficiently far from camp, which Karven nearly did.
The ghostly light spooked the wereboars, though, who decided not to continue hanging out with the party that had attracted the attention of something like that. They backtracked down the trail again and camped elsewhere.
Later that same night, a group of forest-dwelling tribesmen approached from the darkness. They were unfriendly, suspecting that the party were mercenaries hired by the new lord of the tower. The former lord, I decided, had long ago waged war against the tribe, so they were suspicious of any armed individuals in the area. Haymond, with 17 Charisma and a +6 reaction adjustment, managed to convince them that the party meant no harm.
The tribesmen relaxed and agreed to exchange information with the party, albeit briefly. They claimed to have seen armed guards and shadowy figures around the tower, but no workers. When the party described the light, the tribesmen postulated that it was the hateful spirit of the old lord of the tower, and something to be avoided.
I had determined that the tribesmen were actually Neutral Evil. I wasn't sure what this meant at the time, but am thinking now that they're another faction in the forest vying for control of the tower. I'm thinking that they may show up again after the party clears out the tower, to take it for themselves. Whether that means killing the party or simply threatening them to never return is something I'll have to figure out between sessions.
The next day, the party spotted a hill giant wandering the forest. The hill giant is worth 3,000 XP, so just as deadly as the will-o'-wisp. Luckily, it was indifferent to them, so they chose to avoid it and did so easily. After that, they reached the tower without incident.
All in all, I had a great time improvising these random encounters, and it made for a satisfying session of wilderness exploration and social interaction with minimal combat. I think it firmly established for the players that the world is a dangerous place for them right now.
Next session, they'll have their first dungeon crawl. Then, it's back down the mountain. In the meantime, I've made note of where all the random encounters occurred and will update my map with approximate locations for each monster's lair, in case the players decide to go looking for them.
Will the party survive the tower? What happened to the masons? Will they have seven more encounters on the way back to town? Will the giant, tribesmen, evil spirit, wereboars, mama bear, or giant toad show up again? Will they make it back alive? Tune in next time to find out!
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