AD&D 2e Play Report: Sessions 6 and 7

Last week, we played the sixth session of our ongoing AD&D 2e campaign, but I went on vacation the day immediately after and didn't have a chance to write a play report. Last night, we played our seventh session. This post will serve as the play report for both sessions. The play report from our fifth session is here.

To briefly recap, in our fifth session, the player characters set out on their journey from the Warlord's Tower back to Spiritbrook, with a bunch of armed and armored civilian stonemasons in tow. This was another session of primarily random encounters - a mirror image of our first session. 

The party re-encountered a tribe of nefarious forest people which they met on their initial ascent, and at the urging of the tribe's druid, handed them the evil sword they recovered from the tower. Shortly after, the party encountered another party of very high-level adventurers, the Gladiators of Patience, who told them that they Shouldn't Have Done That, then parted ways with them to go clean up the mess. The party avoided some wolves and owlbears, then ran afoul of a kobold ambush.

Almost every player character nearly died, and the party's hireling, Terris, ran off into the woods. Eventually, Bernhardt Dalton, the cleric, rallied the stonemasons to take up arms against the remaining kobolds, and the party was narrowly victorious.

Decisions, Decisions

With the party barely hanging onto consciousness, they had two immediate decisions to make at the beginning of session 6. Terris had run off during the fight with the kobolds and hadn't returned. Would they go looking for him, wait for him, or push on without him, and risk stumbling into another fight down one hireling? 

The kobolds had attacked in the morning, so the party still had another four hours' worth of traveling time for the day, but they were badly wounded. They could push on, and by the end of the day they'd finally be out of the forest. Or, they could stay put and recover their hit points first.

These decisions prompted a good bit of debate amongst the players, and this is why I really enjoy the complications introduced by using NPC party members, morale, random encounter checks, and varying terrain types (each with their own chance of random encounters). 

Decisions like these are what make wilderness exploration fun and interesting. If the party hadn't included any NPCs, and if I didn't use morale rules, the players wouldn't have to account for their companions acting irrationally, unpredictably, or sub-optimally. They wouldn't have to decide whether or not to risk danger by looking for their lost companion. If I didn't use random encounter checks, none of this would have happened to begin with (unless I arbitrarily decided that it "should" happen, for one reason or another). If settled farmland and forests were treated as interchangeable terrain types, the decision to camp in the forest or push on to its edge would be meaningless.

In this case, I simply told the players out-of-character that there was a greater chance of having an encounter in the forest than in the settled hexes (2-in-10 versus 1-in-10), and that the encounters in the forest were generally more dangerous than in the settled region (in settled territory, there's a chance of encountering a patrol from the nearby town, which is more likely than not to be friendly - not so in the forest). In situations like these, I like to make the mechanics player-facing so that they can make an informed decision.

Ultimately, the players decided to wait and see if Terris would return - but not for too long. They would wait an hour and no more. That was plenty of time for him to wander back. If he didn't, well, they decided he wasn't worth going after. After an hour, they'd press on through the forest until they reached its edge, then they'd make camp.

Terris did not return - I used 2e's rules for getting lost and made a roll for Terris, and it turned out that he was hopelessly lost out there and couldn't find his way back. Poor guy. After waiting the agreed-upon amount of time, the party collected themselves and moved on. They escaped the forest without further incident.

After an uneventful night camping within eyesight of the little farms and hamlets surrounding Spiritbrook, the party traveled the remaining five hours to town - again, without incident - and made their triumphant return.

Town Business

Bernhardt was curious as to whether any priests in town might be able to resurrect the stonemasons who had died on the journey. Keeping in mind my conception of "tiers of play" in 2e, I had decided that the highest-level NPCs in town would be medium-level (levels 4-7), so I told Bernhardt's player that this was not possible. Higher-level priests and other NPCs could be found in the big fantasy city at the south of the regional map, creatively named Southreach.

The party returned to the stonemason's guild and received their reward in gold. The guildmaster expressed his gratitude, and promised that any business the party had with the guild in the future could be done at a discount. My hope is that the players will take the bait and inquire with the guild should they eventually decide to build strongholds, temples, and thieves' dens in the future.

Bernhardt and Karven Stone, being 3rd-level, were now able to have 1st-level henchmen. The party offered to keep Yinvalur onboard, so he became a henchman of Bernhardt's. Karven looked around town for henchmen and recruited a human thief named Sheyla.

It was at this point that the player of Rozidien Stoneskull, the paladin, decided to remove their character from the game and replace them with Ash, an elf fighter. I wrote in an earlier play report about my approach to switching characters. We hand-waved the tradeoff, quickly arriving at an explanation for one character's departure and the other's arrival. It doesn't really matter to me. We're here to play the game - the players should play the characters they want to play, and my goal is to facilitate that and move on as quickly and easily as possible.

After this, the players wanted to cash in their salvaged equipment and plundered gems for gold. They divvied up their respective shares and converted their assorted coins into more portable platinum coins. Then, they of course wanted to shop.

Adventurers Be Shopping

Whenever my players bring up shopping, I tell them "We're not going to do that now, but think about what you want to buy between sessions, use the PHB for prices, and message me if there's anything you're not sure of." I'm not going to spend game time shopping. I usually offer a one-session grace period after the party has been in town for players to retroactively say "I would have bought that in town" or whatever. Anything to keep the game moving.

The players were curious about buying magic items, and I'm admittedly still on the fence about this. The 2e DMG specifically cautions against (or perhaps more accurately, attempts to forbid entirely) the possibility of player characters purchasing magic items. Unlike 5e, for example, there is not even an attempt made to suggest prices or price ranges for magic items. The DMG points out that player characters probably aren't selling their magic items, so why would anyone else be doing so?

I certainly like the idea that magic items are incredible and that no one in their right mind would ever sell them, but realistically, in my experience, players do sell magic items, all the time. They probably would have sold the evil sword I gave them, if they hadn't handed it over to the NPCs last session. And, I am somewhat sympathetic to the common refrain among D&D players that "We have so much gold, but there isn't anything to spend it on!"

I personally think there are plenty of things to spend gold on, besides magic items - armies, expensive clothes, followers, influence, strongholds, and the like. But, this is a game, and for better or worse, most players like to spend their character's hard-earned gold on things that make their numbers go up or make their characters more fun or interesting to play, and I'm generally okay with that.

So, the question is, how much should magic items cost in 2e? To get a general idea, I referenced the XP values associated with magic items in the back of the DMG (starting on page 183). These values are how much XP a character gets for creating a magic item. Generally, in old-school D&D, 1 XP = 1 Gold. However, in the 2e DMG, in Chapter 8: Experience, it's recommended that rogues (and rogues only) get 2 XP for each gold piece of treasure (page 70), suggesting that in 2e, one could say that 2 XP = 1 Gold (or maybe that's just for rogues).

So, what if we take the XP values for magic items in the DMG and divide them by 2 to get their market value? In that case, a potion of healing costs 100 gold, which sounds right. However, a ring of three wishes costs 1,500 gold, which is absurd.

Luckily, I recently learned about an exhaustive four-volume collection from TSR called Encyclopedia Magica, which seems to catalogue every single magic item from all of the splat books, supplements, and the like, and assigns them gold piece values. In Encyclopedia Magica, a potion of healing is worth 400 gold (which is a bit high) and a ring of three wishes is 20,000 gold (which still sounds low). Well, it's what we've got.

I'll likely use my own judgment to finesse these values a little bit, and in any case, I'm certainly not going to let my players buy items that grant wishes, so that's something of a moot point. I don't want to mess with things too much until I get a good idea of how much treasure the player characters are actually going to accumulate over time - as with many things, 2e gives little to no guidance as to how much treasure to award, so I'm using guidelines from 1e to fill in the gaps (for example, a typical treasure hoard of gold in 1e contains 250 gold per level of the dungeon).

I decided that the players could buy potions and the like in towns and villages, but for anything else, they'd have to return to the big city. Despite finding a bunch of treasure on their most recent adventure, the players were too cheap to buy healing potions for 400 gold a pop. They simultaneously complained about having a bunch of gold and nothing to buy, and also about how things were too expensive. 

A DM just can't win.

You Can Go Your Own Way: Rumors in the Sandbox

The next item on the agenda was to determine what the player characters would do next. 

The player characters currently knew of two other quests from our first session - one quest involved an evil wizard in another town who wanted adventurers to kill some pegasi and steal their babies and eggs, which three-quarters of the party had already decided was far too sinister for them, and the other quest was to go to a nearby ruin and put an angry spirit to rest on behalf of a local priest, which sounded more palatable.

At this point, I gave the players the option of spending a week of downtime in town to recuperate and gather rumors about other quests, which they opted to do. Each of them received a rumor about a new quest. Ash and Haymond Baler, being 2nd-level, received two 2nd-level quest hooks:

• Grimerun and Shimmerhollow, a pair of villages to the north and east, need adventurers to root out a forest beast which has been preying on foresters from both villages.
• Pondwick, a town to the north, needs adventurers to clear out a nest of giant spiders which have settled on the outskirts of the surrounding farmland, eating livestock and the occasional farmer.

Bernhardt and Karven Stone, being 3rd-level, received two 3rd-level quest hooks:

• Grasshold, a town to the north, needs adventurers to deal with a band of ogres which has settled on the outskirts of the surrounding farmlands and has been carrying off farmers to their lair.
• Houndrun, a town to the south, needs adventurers to deal with a tribe of barbarians who have been raiding and torching the town's logging camps.

A section of the regional map showing Spiritbrook in the far south and Pondwick in the far north. Just above Spiritbrook is Grasshold (with the Ogre Den revealed, since it's close enough to be spotted by locals). Grimerun and Shimmerhollow are roughly in the middle.

Another section of the regional map showing Spiritbrook in the far north and Houndrun in the far south. In between is the Whispering Tomb and Southreach, the big city.

The way I plan quests like these is I have a general idea of what they're about and what level range they're for (again, referring to my "tiers of play" post, either levels 1-3, 4-7, 7-12, or 9-20). Players receive rumors based on what level their characters are, and once they receive the rumor, the quest is "locked-in" at that level, and I begin prepping in detail for when the players eventually decide to pursue it. 

This keeps me from prepping, say, five 1st-level adventures (so that the players have a variety to choose from) when they'll likely only need one or two to get to 2nd-level, meaning that either half the adventures go unused, or the now 2nd-level characters spend an inordinate amount of game time "mopping up" now somewhat trivial 1st-level quests.

Ultimately, the players decided to first pursue the quest involving the ghost in the ruin (because the ruin is right outside Spiritbrook), then deal with the barbarians terrorizing Houndrun (because they want to go to Southreach, the big city, and Houndrun is just south of that).

The Priest of the Crying God

The party met with Reinald, a human priest of the Crying God (store brand name of Ilmater, the Forgotten Realms deity of suffering and martyrdom). Reinald gave them some history about what's known as the Whispering Tomb. 

The tomb was once a burial ground used by a tribe of barbarians to inter their honored dead. More recently, the barbarians came under the supernatural influence of some other entity, who employed them in capturing travelers and farmers upon which the entity performed mysterious experiments. There were rumors that the entity was a wizard, demon, angel, or something else from outside this world.

Eventually, the barbarians rose up against their master, but found the tomb haunted by some lingering manifestation of the horrors done there. They abandoned the tomb again, and now those who venture near it hear cloying whispers in their minds. Reinald believes this to be the spirit of an individual upon whom much pain was inflicted, and he seeks to put it to rest. The party can help by retrieving the individual's bones from the ruin and bringing them to Reinald for a proper burial and blessing, which he hopes will put the spirit to rest.

If the party should encounter the spirit, Reinald warned them that it will do more harm than good to fight it, but he provided them with holy water and blessed their weapons, should they need to defend themselves. He also warned them that they might encounter some remnants of the barbarian tribe, who more likely than not have come under the spirit's maddening influence.

With that, the party thanked the priest and planned to set out for the ruin. To get there, they will make a short day-and-a-half journey along the road south of Spiritbrook, briefly crossing some barren scrub at the edge of a withered forest. This is where we wrapped session 6.

Plains Walkers and Dirt Talkers

We began session 7 with the journey to the Whispering Tomb. They weren't far from town when they had their first random encounter - a pack of three wolves, which were friendly. Since the party was still in the settled region outside town, I decided that these were the remains of a pack which had fallen on hard times - they were emaciated and desperate, and trying to steal chickens from a local farmer's coop.

The party saw a farmer in the distance yelling insults and throwing stones at the wolves, who fled in their direction. The party avoided the wolves, but noticed their sorry state. The farmer, Pryor, told them that these wolves had been harassing him for days. Haymond, a farmer himself, recognized that the wolves were hungry - unlikely to attack a large group of armed adventurers, but not above attacking a civilian if it seemed like an easy meal. 

The party loosed missile weapons at the wolves at range, chasing them off into the forest. They had more pressing business to attend to, so they recommended that the farmer talk to someone in town who might be able to help him root them out in their den. Then, they continued on their way.

The party's second random encounter came that night, when Bernhardt and Yinvalur Sparkguard were on watch. Both of them were surprised as a band of fourteen orcs stumbled into their camp.

The orcs were indifferent, so I decided that they were just passing through, and would exchange information. Unfortunately, the orcs did not speak common, and none of the player characters or NPCs spoke orc. 

In my post on languages, I advocated for a less binary system which allows player characters to engage in rudimentary communications with creatures with which they don't share a language. Keeping this in mind, I allowed the players to attempt Intelligence checks (to see if they recognized any of the vocabulary the orcs were using) and Wisdom checks (to see if they could determine the orcs' intentions). Hilariously, everyone failed both checks.

Bernhardt and Karven began communicating with the orcs by drawing pictures in the dirt. The orcs drew a rough image of a ruin speaking to them, then drew warriors in horned helmets emerging from the ruin and attacking them with spears. The party correctly concluded that the orcs had been drawn to the Whispering Tomb, encountered a band of barbarians (which the party expected would be there), were attacked, and fled. 

Surprisingly, Haymond, of all people, once he awoke, managed to pass both his Intelligence and Wisdom checks. He didn't know any orcish, but he connected with what they were saying on some level, and was able to more or less confirm the rest of the party's interpretation of things, and also concluded that the orcs were not likely to attack the party.

There was some debate about sharing their fire with the orcs, but Ash, Karven, and Yinvalur (the dwarf and two elves) noticed that some among the orcs were eyeing them with sinister intent, and decided against it. The party exchanged respectful but wary pleasantries, and the orcs went on their way.

The Whispering Tomb

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and the next day, the party reached the ruin without further incident. Immediately, once they were in the tomb's vicinity, they could hear cloying whispers in their mind.

For this dungeon, I'm using Dyson Logos's Black Skulls Tomb.

As the party approached the tomb, they spotted a humanoid figure with a horned helm watching them. Before they could get close, the figure disappeared into the hillside (on the map, the figure was in front of the northern entrance to the tomb - the crumbling stairway descending down).

Karven successfully snuck over to the entrance into which the figure had disappeared. In the room below, he spotted a group of ten barbarians, who looked like they were preparing for a fight. He informed the rest of the group, and they decided to avoid the barbarians and try the other entrance.

The other entrance had an unadorned stone slab for a door, flanked by a semicircle of four standing stones. Karven saw no means of opening the door, and began to search the area. He found that each standing stone had a lever on the back side of it. After some experimentation, the party concluded that they needed to pull all four levers at once, and the door opened.

The room beyond was carved with frescoes depicting barbarians in battle with humanoid and monstrous enemies. Among the frescoes were carvings of screaming barbarian heads, their mouths a yawning void. In the center of the room was an arrow-riddled human corpse on the floor.

The party correctly concluded that the room was trapped, but neither Karven nor his thief follower, Sheyla, could find the source of the trap. Bernhardt tried rolling a barrel of pickled fish across the floor to no effect. Karven carefully removed the corpse from its place on the floor and found that doing so reset a pressure plate. Concluding that this was the source of the trap, Karven pointed it out to the rest of the party and they navigated around it.

Opening the door at the far side of the room, the party was met with a trio of glowering barbarians. Sheyla, who had been told to stay back and watch for enemies coming up on the party's rear, let out a whistle as the remaining seven barbarians emerged from the ruin's other entrance to cut off the party's escape. In seconds, they were surrounded.

The barbarians' leader, Niclaus, accused the party of coming to despoil his ancestors' resting place and plunder their grave goods. The barbarians looked maddened and ready to attack (their reaction was unfriendly). The party did their best to convince Niclaus that this was not the case, and that they intended to remove the bones of someone who was not of the barbarians' tribe, in order to put an angry spirit to rest.

In order to placate them, Bernhardt offered to prepare the barbarians and wholesome meal of pickled fish, rice, herbs, and cheese. The barbarians, who had been living in a ruin drinking old grog and eating desert food like reptiles and bugs, were uncertain, but intrigued by the offer (I rolled an indifferent/neutral reaction). They would tentatively indulge in the party's food, but they would watch Bernhardt to ensure he did not poison them, and if they weren't satisfied, they would settle the issue with trial by combat.

At 3rd-level, Bernhardt took the cooking proficiency, which allows him to prepare "a truly magnificent meal worthy of a master chef". He put that to use here. The barbarians indulged, and the savory meal sobered them somewhat. They would allow the party to proceed, but would be waiting when they emerged from the tomb, to make sure they didn't take anything they weren't supposed to. 

Niclaus suggested that what they were looking for was probably in the secret vaults in the depths of the tomb - that's where the outsider entity made its lair ages ago, before Niclaus was born. He took them to the tomb's other entrance (the room where the barbarians had originally been), where the skeleton of a barbarian king sat upon a throne. Under the skeleton's hand was a switch, which opened the secret door in the middle of the stairway connecting the two entrance rooms. With the secret door opened, the party proceeded cautiously inside.

There, they found a grotesque scene - the room had been modified to suit some alien or monstrous entity. The air was musty and damp, a mist floated above the floor, and the floor, walls, and ceiling had been covered with a papery, slimy crust (think like a wasp nest or a xenomorph's lair). In the middle of the north wall was another featureless stone slab - a "secret" door (not really "secret", but with no discernable way of opening it).

When the party approached the door, the whispers began to intensify. Ash and Haymond both tried to push the door open. The whispers reached a deafening crescendo. Haymond had to make a saving throw and failed, taking psychic damage and recoiling from the door. Ash, being an elf, had a 90% chance to be unaffected by the psychic effect. He centered himself and blocked out the whispers, felt a psychic connection with the door, and willed it to open.

Beyond, the party found a skeleton hung from the ceiling with iron shackles. The skeleton wore a helmet on its head which looked like an alien device, with an array of lights, widgets, and doodads. At the skeleton's feet was a pile of gold coins, gems, and potions. 

The party concluded that this was the body they were looking for, and thought better of touching any of the treasure. Bernhardt said a prayer and laid out a fine cloth on the floor. Karven worked on carefully freeing the skeleton and gently laid it down on the cloth. Bernhardt bundled the skeleton in the cloth, and the party turned to leave the room.

As they exited, the whispers intensified again. The mist along the floor and shadows in the corners began to coalesce into spectral figures. The whispers finally became coherent, and made an accusation of the party: "Madness! Thieves! You have come to steal my knowledge! My secrets! You will die like the rest!"

This is where we ended the session. Ash reached 3rd-level this session. He gets a THAC0 improvement, more hit points, a weapon proficiency, and nonweapon proficiency, and improved saving throws.

Next session, the party will have to make a run for it, try to placate the angry spirit, or stand and fight. If they make it out alive, they'll return the bones to Reinald in Spiritbrook and complete the quest. Then, they'll be on their way on a long journey south.