AD&D 2e Play Report: Session 10

This week, we played the 10th session of our ongoing AD&D 2e campaign. The play report for our last session is here.

To recap, the party scouted out the Wolfkin Tribe camp to determine how best to stop them from raiding local lumber mills. They listened in on a conversation between the tribe chieftain and druid, and determined that there was a divide between the two of them. The party slashed their way into the chieftain's tent, and with a fortunate casting of hold person and some unexpected help from the druid, slew the chieftain easily.

The druid, Feli, told them that the tribe was raiding mills due to a breached agreement with the town of Houndrun. Now that the offending mill had been razed, Feli was seeking peace. He asked that the party negotiate with the town on the tribe's behalf. He also suggested that it would be best to eliminate one of the subchiefs, Noa, who was likely to follow in the chieftain's vengeful footsteps. This would allow Feli to install a new chieftain who he could shape into a more neutral figurehead.

The party agreed. Karven Stone snuck into Noa's tent at night and killed him, and the party crept off into the woods before daybreak. They avoided some giant battling beetles on their way back to town, convinced the lumber company in Houndrun to let the razed lumber mill remain pillaged, and proceeded to collect some rumors about other jobs in the region. They learned about hobgoblins kidnapping villagers near Grimerun, where they already had a forest beast to hunt, so they decided to go there next.

The Long Road (Again)

The party traveled from Houndrun to Southreach in a day without incident. In the city, they briefly stopped in at the Gladiators of Patience's guildhall. The Gladiators were not present (I had decided that they plane shifted to the Bone Lord's Bone Castle in the Gray Wastes to do battle with Him there - I like the idea that the very high-level adventurers are always off doing very high-level shenanigans whenever the party goes looking for them). 

The party left a message for them about Lord Montaigu, the evil wizard lording over the town of Mythshire - as if they didn't know about it already! - in case the Gladiators would want to do something about it. I don't want to set a precedent where all of the big threats and antagonistic powers in the region are taken care of by NPCs before the party ever reaches the higher levels, so I plan to come up with some rigamarole about how the Gladiators don't get involved in politics, or how dealing with an evil wizard lording over a town is some 5th-level adventurer tedium with which they won't sully their hands.

The party traveled another day to Mythshire without incident - no evil adventurers in sight this time, and no indication as to what Lord Montaigu is doing with his newly-acquired pegasus eggs. They continued north on the long road back to Spiritbrook, a three-and-a-half-day journey.

Traveling Merchants (Again)

Along the way, the party had a random encounter with some merchants, again. In an earlier session, the party had encountered some crab merchants, and last session, I thought it'd be funny if they encountered them again. I suppose I could just totally run the joke into the ground at this point, but that wasn't my inclination here. Instead I said "You know, they're merchants. They've got stuff. Anyone wanna buy anything?"

Which of course they didn't. They just came from two towns and a city. If they wanted to buy something, they would have done it in one of those places. Not my proudest moment. I guess I was disappointed at getting this result again and just wanted to move on, which is either a sign that I should have rerolled (sometimes rolling dice is a good way to find out what I actually want to happen), or that I need to think about how to make these encounters more interesting.

A random encounter with merchants should be like any other random encounter - an auspicious opportunity or a potential setback or threat. It could be a chance to buy something the party otherwise might not be able to procure - namely, I'm thinking about magic items, probably at a reduced cost, since the players are always complaining about how expensive they are.

One option would be for every traveling merchant to be an emissary from the Bazaar of the Bizarre - a very video game-y, extradimensional space where magic items of all kinds can be procured. Another option would be for there to be some variability between merchants, which I prefer - these merchants are selling potions, these ones have scrolls, arms and armor, rings, miscellaneous magic, etc. That would be easy enough to determine using the magic item tables.

Another option for more diversity would be to randomly generate 1d4, 1d6, 1d8 items, or something like that. A given merchant might have five items - two potions, a sword, a stave, and a magic book, for example. That might take more time to generate at the table, but could be more interesting.

I could also take the merchants' alignment into account - Lawful Good merchants will only sell to people they view as upstanding citizens, Neutral merchants will sell to anyone, and Chaotic Evil merchants only sell cursed or bogus items and then run off with their ill-gotten gold. This would also let me leverage alignment-based reaction rolls to set prices - the better the reaction, the better the discount, maybe. Something to think about, and likely a topic for a future post.

30 Orcs

The party reached Spiritbrook without further incident and continued onto Grasshold. Halfway there, as they were setting camp, they spotted a band of 30 orcs roving across the farmland. One of the things I love about AD&D is that encounters like this are not only possible, but highly likely. Not knowing the orcs' intentions, the party looked to hide. 

Haymond Baler's player asked what kind of crops were growing around here. Uh, I totally know the answer to that. Why did he ask? He was wondering if the party could hide in there. Great! Always ask the players' intentions. It gives more time to think and make a satisfying ruling. I rolled a d100 and got a 98, so the party was in luck - the local crop provided 90% concealment! They broke camp quickly and took cover.

I rolled another d100 and got less than 90, so the orcs passed by without noticing the party. The orcs were rabbling in Orcish, which no one in the party speaks, so they were unable to discern what the orcs were going on about. They had come from the direction of the ogre den near Grasshold, so maybe it had something to do with that.

I had actually determined that the orcs were friendly (I got a reaction roll of 10), but I hadn't the faintest idea as to what they might want from the party or what they were doing there, so I was somewhat relieved that the players chose to avoid them.

Concerning Hobbits

The party proceeded through Grasshold, the largest of the towns in the area (which will become relevant later), and then Stormhelm, eventually making their way to Grimerun without incident (it was three days of travel from the orc encounter to Grimerun). 

Grimerun is a small village primarily consisting of halflings. It's located where two rivers intersect, on the edge of a small pond which is in turn on the edge of a huge swamp. It's muddy due to frequent flooding and there are a lot of bugs. This is the first time the party has been to a smaller village, so I felt it important to make those distinctions.

The party stayed at a local flophouse, the Full Lady. The painted sign depicts a halfling woman full to bursting, which I suggested seemed like some sort of fetish the proprietor had. The party talked to some of the locals about the forest beast which had been terrorizing the town, and it was suggested that they talk to Jakayla, a hunter who lived in a lodge in the forest outside the village.

The next morning, the party visited Jakayla, a middle-aged human ranger, who offered to take them to the most recent location where the beast had attacked. Along the way, they encountered some forest people.

This is the fourth group of "tribesmen" the party has encountered during the campaign. Like with the traveling merchants, it seems inevitable that this encounter will come up time and time again, so I'm trying to think of ways it can be interesting rather than simply potentially "problematic". I don't have any ideas yet.

The tribesmen were friendly, and Jakayla was familiar with them, so the party asked if they knew anything about the forest beast. I got a reaction of indifferent, so I decided that they preferred not to say - they were superstitious, and viewed the beast as a demon of some kind which it was better not to speak aloud of. The party accepted this and went on their way.

Luring the Beast

The party arrived at the site of the most recent beast attack - a ten-foot-wide, thirty-foot-deep pit in the earth. Jakayla told them that similar pits were present at the other attack sites. I asked the players to make Wisdom checks, and they all succeeded. They detected an aroma of rotting fruit from within. I asked Haymond's player to make an Intelligence check with a bonus of +4, which he failed. The scent did not bring anything to mind.

Based on the location of the attacks, Jakayla suggested that the beast hunted in a 12-mile radius. The party was not enthused about climbing down into a hole and skulking about in those tunnels.

Instead, they started devising a trap for the beast. Could they climb down into the tunnel, start a fire, and try smoking it out? Probably not, because the tunnel system would have to be huge. If anything, that would only keep the beast away from them. Could they bait the entrance of the tunnel, and lure the beast into a trap?

We started discussing the logistics of doing so. This took a while, but since we were talking about solving an in-game problem, it felt very much like we were still playing the game, and so I didn't mind at all. None of us know anything about setting traps, but we've all seen Predator, which seemed good enough.

The party decided to fashion sharpened sticks from wood in the area, then surround the pit with a giant lasso of sorts, with the sharpened stakes worked into it - a sort of huge mancatcher. They would loop the other end of the rope over a tree limb above the hole. When the beast emerged, they'd pull on the rope to tighten the spiky lasso around it. That sounded pretty good to me.

There's a proficiency for setting snares in the PHB (page 84), so I used that as a reference. None of the PCs were proficient in this particular skill, but I don't like the idea that a character can't even attempt something they aren't proficient in (especially when it's something enterprising adventurers would likely have some idea how to do), so I decided to use the proficiency description as a guideline and let the party attempt it anyway, with a hefty penalty due to their lack of proficiency, of course.

According to the proficiency description, setting a large trap requires 2 to 3 people and 2d4 hours of work. The skill is available to warriors and rogues, so I decided that Ash, Haymond, and Karven could attempt it. When it was time to spring the trap, they'd each make an ability check with a -6 penalty -according to the proficiency description, Dexterity for thieves like Karven, and Intelligence for warriors like Ash and Haymond, for whatever reason. Ash and Karven both have proficiency in rope use, which I decided applied here, reducing their penalties to -4. If two of the three checks succeeded, the trap would work. The players wouldn't know if it worked until the moment arrived. 

While the party got to work, Jakayla stalked off into the forest to acquire some bait, and returned with a skinned rabbit - nice and bloody and smelling like meat.

I totally didn't expect any of this. I'm not sure why I expected the players to go enthusiastically skulking about in the hole, considering their aversion to danger thus far. At first I was a bit annoyed, as it seemed like this was another quest they'd deem "too scary" to pursue, but once we discussed how they would approach the problem and how I would adjudicate the resolution, it was actually quite satisfying. Going into the hole to fight the monster on its turf is the modern D&D approach. Setting a trap like this felt old-school, but I also had the benefit of a weird, highly specific rule to use as a guideline for my adjudication, which made it feel like we were playing AD&D specifically - an unfairly maligned blend of old and new.

The Beast Emerges

The party waited around for the beast to take the bait. I rolled a few random encounter checks, deciding that the next one would be the beast. To simulate that the party was trying to attract the beast, I rolled twice and took the lower result (i.e., the one more likely to result in an encounter). 

After a few hours, they heard something crawling around below. A pair of wriggling antennae emerged from the opening, and a chitinous, bug-eyed, mandibled head emerged. Haymond's heart sank as he realized he was face to face with the very thing he had been trying to avoid - an ankheg!

Before the beast could react, the party sprung the trap. I asked everyone to make their ability checks, and two of the three of them succeeded! The giant bug-catcher lasso closed around the ankheg's body. The spikes dug into the creature's vulnerable belly, and the party hoisted all eleven feet of the worm-thing into the air. As the rest of the party leapt forward to stab the creature to death, it writhed and shrieked, and let loose a stream of acidic spittle!

I rolled to determine which of the present characters the ankheg would target, and got poor Jakayla. She failed her saving throw versus poison and was hit with the full burst of 8d4 damage. Luckily, it didn't kill her (I had made her a 2nd-level ranger, but in writing this I'm realizing that I gave her the hit points of a 3rd-level ranger - oh well, I would have loved to describe the NPC melting into a pile of steaming bone. Bernhardt quickly tended to her wounds, and Haymond and Karven held the monstrosity aloft while Ash and the hirelings, Sheyla and Yinvalur, stabbed it to death.

Triumphant, the party hauled the ankheg's corpse out of the hole and retreated. Haymond concluded that this was a relatively young ankheg. There would likely be more of them - and bigger ones, too. The party exited the forest to camp on safer ground and return to the site to try their plan again in the morning.

Second Time's the Charm

On their way back to the hole, the party encountered a stag, which they took the opportunity to kill - bigger bait for a bigger worm. They set their trap again and waited. They didn't have to wait long. This time, they got a slightly smaller ankheg - only ten feet long. The sprung the trap again, and this time they failed. The rope snapped and the ankheg was loose!

Breath weapons have the smallest initiative modifier of just about anything in AD&D - +1, which is faster than even a dagger or darts, which are +2 (PHB, page 125). I rolled a 1 on d10 for the ankheg's initiative, so it went before even Karven, who was using throwing darts (a modified initiative of 4). 

This time the ankheg spat at Ash, who dodged the worst of the stream of acid but still took 10 damage. The ankheg turned and retreated back into its hole - with a speed of 12 (120 feet per round if all it does is move, or 60 if it moves and attacks), it could attack, retreat to the bottom of the hole, and skitter another 30 feet away before anyone could react.

Ash and Karven both considered jumping into the hole after it, but thought better of it. They would return to Grimerun with just the one ankheg corpse, and seek help before returning.

Getting Help (Again)

Back in Grimerun, the halflings rejoiced that the beast had been slain. Haymond informed them that the bad news was that there were more where that one came from, but the good news was that they'd have very rich farmland for the foreseeable future, due to the ankhegs' beneficial effect on the soil! That was all well and good, but it was difficult to think ahead to the benefits of aerated soil when ankhegs were slurping up halflings like boba tea.

The party spoke to Shaelie Bouldershadow, the village's priestess and de facto leader. She gave them a portion of the reward, but pleaded with them to rid the village of the infestation at its root. The party expressed their desire to recruit more help and return to finish the job.

I go back and forth on how I want to handle henchman. One approach it to create a roster of recruitable NPCs in each settlement based on the population and local demographics, which is appealing to me, but tedious. The other way to go is to just say the party can recruit whoever they want wherever they want, which is unsatisfying because it feels too easy. Paladins, rangers, druids, and bards are "better" in some ways than their more basic counterparts, so I want it to feel more difficult to recruit them. It's another problem I haven't really solved.

The party resolved to return to Stormhelm and look for help there. If they're unsatisfied with what's available, they'll go next to Grasshold. Because Grasshold has a larger population (I mentioned that would be important later!), it will have more NPCs to recruit, which means more options. At the very least, I can create curated lists for those two settlements, and fill in the rest as needed.

The party returned to Stormhelm (a day-and-a-half journey), encountering some pilgrims along the way. Normally I'd determine their alignment and what god they worshiped and roleplay the encounter based on that, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood to improv this session, so I handwaved it. The players joked that they were probably more Bone Lord cultists, and I immediately wished I had thought of that.

The party arrived in Stormhelm without further incident, and that's where we ended the session. Nobody leveled up this time - the party really only overcame one challenging encounter, with the first ankheg, so they didn't get much experience. Everyone needs a few thousand experience points for their next level, so I guess this is where the level progression in 2e begins to slow down, which I'm all for. Let them spend a few more sessions feeling small in the world before things begin to pick up.

Ultimately, I still have a lot of work to do in thinking of ways to make the more common random encounters more interesting and breathing life into my settlements, but I really enjoyed the approach the players took here. While their cautious playstyle is sometimes a little frustrating, it feels like they're approaching problems in a way which is more appropriate for the more deadly system in which we're playing, and I'm starting to be satisfied that playing a different edition of D&D actually feels like playing a different game, which is what I originally wanted.

Next time, the players look for help and go on a bug hunt!