Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown (Session 2)

We had the opportunity to play the second session of our In Search of the Unknown AD&D 2e campaign last night. My session 1 report is here.

For this session, we were missing Aidan (Millisant) and David (Rory the Small), so the roster was as follows:

• Llombaerth, CG elf thief 1 (Adam)
• Barthalo-gnome, CG gnome fighter 1/thief 1 (Matt)
• Pommernar, CE elf mage 1 (Nael)

We started by recapping the last session (and bringing Matt up to speed). The party had reached the town of Timbershore with a map in hand pointing the way to long lost Quasqueton. There, the party had gathered some rumors, inquired about securing passage on a boat downriver, and recruited Colton, a dockworker, as porter and torchbearer. They set off across the southern farmlands and into the forest towards Quasqueton. On the way, they encountered a handful of hobgoblins, whom Pommernar turned away with a clever use of dancing lights. 

Upon reaching Quasqueton, the party delved inside. They discovered what they believed to be a pair of secret doors, but not how to open them. A pair of magic mouths warned them of what would become of them if they pressed on, which rattled Colton. While looting some corpses, they encountered some goblins. After a tense standoff, they met their leader, Grilk, who was more amicable, and informed them of some orcs to the southeast, led by a priest, who now held many of Grilk's goblins under his sway.

We picked up the session where we left the last one. Grilk invited the party to indulge with him in the "finest ale in Quasqueton", and led them through a dining room (where a fourth goblin was scrubbing lichen off of a carved wood throne) and into a room dominated by a large marble statue of a totally bodacious nude woman.

Grilk passed around some ales. The ale was definitely old and sour and tasted nasty. Llombaerth shared some vinegared herring with Grilk. Grilk confided in the party that a band of human ruffians had recently come to Quasqueton and had also passed through the goblins' territory. They had been rude and bullying, insulting the goblins' food and drink and stealing Grilk's special ring, which he had pilfered from a dead wizard some time ago. Grilk would be much obliged if the party could retrieve it.

This would be in addition to helping to liberate the goblins now under the sway of the orcs, who Grilk said worshipped a stone they believed they could speak to. Grilk told the party that the ruffians had headed north, deeper into the dungeon. The party asked about the secret doors in the previous corridor, and Grilk told them that they only opened from the opposite side - a way for the stronghold's defenders to ambush intruders from behind.

The party asked if Grilk could share any other information about the dungeon, but he said he would feel more comfortable if he was more certain that the party was operating in good faith. If he gave them all the information he had up front, there was nothing stopping the party from killing him and stealing his treasure.

This sounded fair. The party asked if they might be able to benefit from the goblins' hospitality in the future in exchange for helping with either of these two tasks. Grilk was agreeable to this. The party deliberated some, and decided to go after the ruffians first. Grilk directed them towards Narka, just down the hall, who could point them in the right direction. On their way out, Llombaerth left some more herring for the goblins to enjoy.

The party met with Narka, who seemed preoccupied listening at one of the walls in a wide corridor. He pointed them in the direction in which the ruffians had gone. He said there were rats in the walls, and if the party found any, they should club them and bring them back to Narka to throw in the stew pot. The party said they would do their best.

Realizing that all present were demihumans with infravision, the party decided to leave Colton to hang back with the goblins. I made a loyalty test to see if Colton would agree to this, with a slight penalty since the magic mouths had already rattled him. To my surprise, he was okay with it - better to hang out with some friendly-seeming goblins than to go venturing off into the dark.

Without Colton, venture off into the dark is precisely what the party did. They proceeded north, as Narka had directed them, and found two parallel corridors heading east. There were muddy boot prints around both corridors - smaller prints in lesser numbers down the northernmost corridor, and larger prints in greater numbers down the southernmost one. They decided to explore the latter.

Llombaerth, being the sneakier of the thieves, crept slowly up ahead. Rounding a corner and heading north, he spotted flickering torchlight from a corridor that went west. He beckoned the rest of the party to catch up, then went to investigate alone, creeping down the westward corridor.

He heard human voices arguing. It sounded like someone was stuck, and others were trying to find a way to free him. It sounded like people were rummaging in a room on the other side of the corridor's north wall. The light source seemed to be just around a corner up ahead, the westward hallway turning north.

Llombaerth proceeded, succeeding on his first Move Silently check, and was able to peer around the corner and spot a rough-looking human man in studded leather, holding a torch, with long sword, shield, pike, and short bow. Beyond him, the corridor turned back towards the east.

The party reconvened out of earshot and planned to listen for a bit to see what would happen. Since the people in the other room were being loud, I made a wandering monster check during this time, but nothing came of it. After a few minutes, they heard additional voices claim they had found a way to get their "boss" out of his predicament. They heard the sound of iron grating against iron, as if multiple people were trying to saw through iron bars.

Llombaerth attempted to sneak further ahead to lay eyes on the scene, but made too much noise, and the whole group turned and spotted him (he failed both his Move Silently and Hide in Shadows checks one after the other). There were three men trying to use hacksaws to cut through an iron portcullis, behind which the fourth was trapped. They demanded Llombaerth show himself, and he did. The rest of the party hurried to join him, pretending to be a family of archaeologists mapping the ruins. In the flickering torchlight, they saw the glint of a ring on the fourth ruffian's finger.

(The assumption in B1 is that the player characters will get stuck in this portcullis trap. When I was stocking the dungeon and rolled up a group of bandits in this room, I thought it would be a great opportunity to have one of them trapped behind the portcullis when the party arrived. +1 for B1's room design.)

The ruffians seemed perplexed and a little suspicious, but weren't looking for a fight. The party offered to help find a way to lift the portcullis and, as a pair of ruffians watched them closely, they searched the adjoining room for any tools which might be of use. There they found:

• A box of wooden pegs
• A 50’ coil of light rope
• A 70’ coil of heavy chain
• A 20’ coil of fine copper wire
• 32 unusable mining picks in poor repair
• 15 chisels
• 13 shovels
• 11 empty barrels stacked against the wall
• 8 mallets
• 29 1” x 8’ iron bars
• A 12” iron vise
• 2 broken mining jacks
• 2 two-man crosscut saws
• A mason’s toolbox containing trowel, stone chisel, plumb line, etc.
• A cobbler’s toolbox containing a small hammer, a knife, heavy needles, etc.
• A small barrel of 60 unfletched arrows
• A 10’ long wooden bench

Great stuff here. Pommernar suggested they use the mason's toolbox, iron bars, and his own block and tackle to engineer a mechanism that could lift the gate. This sounded like a reasonable idea to the ruffians. Since everyone in the party was shorter than an average human, Pommernar suggested one ruffian stand on another's shoulders to hammer some iron bars into the wall near the ceiling.

As the ruffians did as they were told, Pommernar told Llombaerth in Elvish to get ready to snuff the third ruffian's torch and attack.

"What did you say to him?" one ruffian asked.

"Oh, just an Elvish prayer for good luck," Pommernar replied.

"Ha, we're going to need it if this plan is going to work," another remarked.

Then, the party launched their attack. I decided that the ruffians would be surprised, so the whole party had a chance to act first. Llombaerth threw a burlap sack over the first ruffian's torch, plunging the corridor into darkness, then went for a backstab with his short sword - +4 to hit for the backstab attempt, +1 because the ruffians were surprised. Llombaerth hit AC 8 - literally just enough to hit studded leather with no shield. 10 damage (5 x 2 for backstab) slew the ruffian instantly.

Barthalo-gnome similarly made a backstab attempt against the ruffian who was holding the other one up (similarly with a +5 bonus to hit), hitting an AC of 1 for 16 damage (max damage with a short sword, +2 for specialization, and x2 for backstab), killing him as well. The ruffian on top fell down. Barthalo-gnome failed a Dexterity check, so the ruffian fell on top of him, each of them taking 1 damage from the fall.

With the third ruffian prone, Pommernar fell upon him with his dagger (+5 to hit again - this time +4 because the ruffian was prone, and again +1 for surprise). He hit an AC of -2 for 4 damage - the maximum amount, but not enough to kill him outright.

I rolled morale checks for the remaining ruffians (-4 because they had lost 50% of their numbers and -2 because they were surprised - they had a chance to succeed, but it was unlikely). They failed. The third ruffian was spurting up blood, feebly begging for his life, while the leader fell to his knees and pleaded for mercy, not even entirely sure what was going on due to the total darkness.

Pommernar said he would spare the third ruffians' life if the leader handed over his ring and his valuables. The leader tossed the ring and some coins through the bars. Then, Pommernar killed the third ruffian anyway. Barthalo-gnome, incensed by the ruffians' treatment of the goblins, climbed out from beneath the corpse, marched over to the leader, seized hold of him through the portcullis's iron bars, and cut his throat. 

(We talked about this afterward and discussed how it was not exactly a Chaotic Good thing to do - nor was killing the seemingly neutral ruffians in the first place - but players' blood tends to run hot when friendly goblins are being bullied. Alignment is a murky thing, and at some point I'll probably suggest that one player or another change their character's alignment, but I don't think I'll penalize them for this by way of experience points the way AD&D suggests.)

With the ruffians dead, the party pilfered their corpses and took some choice items from the room with all the tools, then we called it a night. They got some XP for defeating the ruffians, and the thieves got some bonus XP for using their special abilities. They'll get some XP for the treasure they recovered once they bring it back to town.

This was a very fun session. Considering the party had one and a half thieves, a mage, and only half a fighter, they approached this encounter very smartly, using the situation to maximize their advantage. The Chaotic Evil Pommernar seems to be an insidious influence on the rest of the characters, so we'll see if he is able to turn a few of them towards the dark side.

Aidan and David were our mapmakers in session 1, so Matt took over mapping duties for this session. The dungeon is definitely difficult to describe, and it seems that the party lost track of the many corridors and twists and turns somewhere along the way. We'll see if that hinders them at all in the upcoming sessions.

We talked for a bit afterward about how THAC0 isn't really that complicated in practice and how refreshing this snappy combat was compared to something like 5e. The group seems to be enjoying their experience with AD&D thus far. I'm eager to see what they get up to next time.

Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown (Session 1)

We played the first real session of our In Search of the Unknown AD&D 2e campaign last night. My session 0 report is here.

For this session, we were missing Matt (Bathalo-gnome), so the roster was as follows:

• Llombaerth, CG elf thief 1 (Adam)
• Millisant, LE human mage 1 (Aidan)
• Pommernar, CE elf mage 1 (Nael)
• Rory the Small, LN human fighter 1 (David)

I started the session with a bit of housekeeping. First, I explained that we'll be using gold for XP. I'm not sure when exactly XP is meant to be awarded in AD&D, but I really like B1's suggestion that it's not awarded until the treasure is actually safely returned to town, not just in the character's possession. This incentivizes the players to leave the dungeon and return to town to collect XP and level up, which allows me to do all sorts of nasty tricks with the dungeon while they're away.

I'm also intending to use 2e's individual XP awards based on class:

Thus, in addition to getting XP based on monsters overcome, Rory the Small, being a fighter, will get an extra 10 XP per HD of monster defeated in battle. Millisant and Pommernar will get an extra 50 XP per spell level when they use their spells to overcome problems (or, much later on, when/if they create magic items). Llombaerth gets 200 XP whenever he uses a thief ability successfully. Since I'm already awarding XP for gold and rogues get 2 XP for each gold piece of treasure obtained, Llombaerth will get instead get double XP for treasure.

In our session 0, I also had the players roll to determine what additional languages their characters knew. This was amusing, as the characters started out speaking water naga and white dragon, but I decided to roll it back. It's not so much the silliness I object to, but more so the fact that these languages won't be useful in the sandbox I've prepared.

Instead, the additional languages granted by the character's Intelligence score represent languages the characters have the capacity to learn. This is informed by AD&D's suggestion that characters spend downtime with any speaking creature to learn that creature's language:

Naturally, characters have the option of capturing a monster and forcing it to teach them its language:

With all that out of the way, we got to playing.

I explained to the players that they had come into possession of a map pinpointing the location of Quasqueton (the ruin to the south), the former stronghold of Rogahn the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown, who had disappeared while on campaign in the barbarian lands to the north. The stronghold was reclaimed by the wilderness and lost to time, and the characters had reason to believe that the treasures of its mazelike dungeons had yet to be plundered.

I had determined that the town or city nearest to the play area was 150 miles away. The characters had been on the road for six days. I actually rolled up the weather for those six days so I could provide a brief synopsis of their journey to that point. It is Spring (I always start my campaigns during the Spring, because it seems like a natural time to embark on an adventure). The rivers are engorged with rainwater and snowmelt. It had been blustery and had rained for a miserable two days, but had cleared up for the final day of the characters' journey. As they broke camp for the final time, the town of Timbershore was in sight, just over the horizon.

Timbershore is a large walled town of about 5,500 people. It had once been a humble village within Rogahn and Zelligar's domain, and paid homage to Quasqueton in exchange for nominal protection. When the valley was threatened by barbarian hordes, it was Rogahn and Zelligar who turned the barbarians to flight. Many decades had passed since, and the village had grown into a bustling town. Rumor is that the town is now ruled by a powerful wizard.

Inspired by AD&D's section on ESTABLISHING THE CHARACTER, I decided to roleplay the party's approach to the town's gate. The guards hailed the characters and demanded they state their business, informed them of the fee to enter (5 copper pieces per head, including the mule), and opened the gates. 

Keeping in mind AD&D's robust system of taxes and fees, the guards looked over the characters' possessions and asked if they had any goods for sale to declare. Since the party is just beginning adventuring, they have very little. Normally I would also point them towards the money changer, but since they were traveling from a city which is presumably part of the same domain, I assumed they are using the local coinage.

The party asked the guard where they might find a tavern to gather some information. The guard gave them rough directions. They had entered town in the High Ward. To the northeast was the Chapel Ward, to the southeast the Timber Ward, and to the south the River Ward. All have taverns. The High Ward is home to town officials and wealthy merchants. The Chapel Ward is mostly clergy. The Timber Ward is home to hunters, loggers, and trappers. The River Ward is traders, dockworkers, and others just entering town from upriver.

The party decided to head to the River Ward in case they could secure passage on a vessel to carry them downriver. As they moved through the High Ward, they wandered through courtyards and gardens and passed courthouses, administrative offices, shops, and guard barracks. They noted a high hill with many rich villas along its slope. At the very top, they could see a large castle overlooking the town.

The party passed through the River Ward en route to the Mooring Post, a tavern and inn which had been recommended to them. The River Ward is noisy and bustling, with many keelboats and barges docked along the wharf. Dockworkers unload the boats' cargo and mercenary guards escort caravans of goods to warehouses for storage. The party passed merchant guildhouses, sawmills, caravan yards, and flop houses before arriving at the Mooring Post.

The tavern was loud and rowdy, but not out of control or dangerous. It was crowded with traders, dockworkers, fishermen, ferrymen, and caravan guards, all drinking dark ale. It smelled strongly of fish stew. Pommernar focused on inquiring about passage downriver while the rest of the party gathered information. They bought a round of ale for the house.

Llombaerth, Millisant, and Rory the Small gathered a few rumors:

• A fearsome spirit haunts the ruins of Quasqueton. It is the ghost of Zelligar, demanding intruders surrender his stolen treasure!
• Quasqueton's stronghold houses a trophy room full of unimaginable valuables.
• A beast or beasts has been stalking the Timber Ward at night. Hunters believe a pack of wolves from the forest to be responsible.

Pommernar met a river boat captain, Colton, who offered to take the party downriver to the southeast lake for 18 silver pieces per head (including the mule, of course), plus 2 gold pieces per day for him. Here I used the 5e rule of thumb. In 5e, passage aboard a ship costs 1 silver per mile, and skilled hirelings (like a ship's captain) cost 2 gold pieces per day. I had not especially prepared for this, so I neglected to use the AD&D rule:

Thus, the smallest river barge or raft would have a crew of 20, plus a captain, a lieutenant, and two mates. It's not clear if the crew is meant to be sailors, oarsmen, or marines, but in this case I would assume simple oarsmen. That's 100 gold pieces per month for the oarsmen, 60 gold pieces per month for the mates, and 100 gold pieces per month each for the lieutenant and captain (360 gold pieces total). I imagine the intention is that these crews are only hirable on a per-month basis, much like other expert hirelings in AD&D, but in this case I would allow them to be hired for just the two days, which would be about 24 gold pieces total. 

This would be more costly if the party expected the crew to wait for them while they explored the dungeon, and in that case the crew would be entitled to shares of any treasure recovered - 25% for the captain, 5% for the lieutenant, 1% for each of the mates, and 5% for the crew. Considering all of this, my lack of preparation allowed the party to get away with a pretty good deal (11 gp for a one-way trip versus 24 gp)!

In the end, they decided not to take the boat for their first trip. Instead, they would hoof it on foot to Quasqueton, and reconsider the river passage once they had more gold to their names. While they were there they hired Bronson, a strapping young dockworker, to be their torchbearer and porter.

They had only traveled for two hours that morning to reach Timbershore, so they had 6 hours left of travel in them. It was 10 am. They decided to set out immediately, exiting Timbershore through the River Ward's south gate.

The first day of travel passed without incident. The party crossed the bridge an hour south of town and traveled through the southern farmlands for two hours before coming upon the southern river bordering the forest. This river had no bridge, so they spent another hour searching for a crossing, which they found in the form of a fallen tree. This left them just enough time to plunge into the forest before making camp. It was 4 pm and they had plenty of daylight.

They had just begun to make camp when they heard the sound of stomping boots, rustling armor, clattering weapons, and harsh voices in a language they did not understand. Pommernar correctly identified it as hobgoblin. There was dense growth in the area which would grant the party 75% concealment (I rolled d100 and got 75 exactly, otherwise I would round up or down in increments of 25). Most of the party scrambled to hide, but Pommernar had another idea. He cast dancing lights.

Here's the description of the spell in 2e:

Pommernar decided to create the "faintly glowing, vaguely manlike shape...similar to that of a creature from the Elemental Plane of Fire", then sent it flying towards the hobgoblins (they were 70 feet away, so well within range of the spell). To the hobgoblins, I imagine it looked like a flaming ghost or fire elemental coming towards them. They loosed their arrows at it, which of course had no effect. I called for a morale check, referencing the table below:

With a -8 penalty to their morale check (2d10, roll under) and a morale of "Steady (11-12)", they had a very slim chance of succeeding. The "fire elemental" terrified them, and they fled in the opposite direction, sparing the party from a potentially dangerous encounter.

I really liked the way this played out. It didn't even register with me that the spell was capable of this, and Nael came up with a very ingenious application of it which saved the day - exactly the kind of thing a 1st level wizard should be doing with that one precious spell slot.

On the other hand, I can't help but mull over some failed considerations. For one, the hobgoblins were only 70 feet away - well within earshot of a spell being cast. Also, while the lights took the shape of a creature from the Plane of Fire, they were in the forest, and it wasn't setting fire to anything. It also didn't radiate heat. They probably should have suspected something was up. Perhaps I could have made an Intelligence check to determine if the hobgoblins were able to put two and two together, then a saving throw versus spell to determine if they could disbelieve the "illusion".

Things to consider for next time, but no harm done. The whole party got experience for "defeating" the hobgoblins, and Pommernar got a little bonus for using his spell in a useful situation. The rest of the day and night passed without incident.

The next day, the party continued on through the forest for two hours, then spent three hours hiking through the forested hills where they hoped to find Quasqueton.

They found an overgrown, ruined tower atop a black crag, tall enough to see over the tops of trees, but mostly collapsed, its stone blocks tumbled down the hillside in all directions. It did not look like a proper fortification, but more like a simple watchtower. A treacherous path wound up the crag to a cave opening beneath the tower, choked with roots and vines.

The party wanted to scout around the crag for secret entrances, but the other faces of the hill were too sheer from where they were. It would require perilous scrambling around narrow rock ledges and along knotted roots for handholds. I suggested that they could try approaching the ruin from a different side of the hex on a return visit. It wouldn't be feasible right now because it would require another three hours to hike back down the hill.

The party had Bronson hack away the overgrowth which closed off the cave mouth, allowing them enough room to head inside. They found a wooden door that looked like it had been forced. Carefully proceeding inside, they found a long hallway which stretched into the darkness, lined with alcoves. As they lit a torch, they heard something about 100 feet down the corridor scamper off in the opposite direction. They called out to it, but got no response.

Inspecting the first set of alcoves, they found a pair of stone busts which seemed to depict Rogahn and Zelligar. Upon further inspection, they seemed totally ordinary. At the second set of alcoves, they found muddy footprints leading to and from the alcove on the right. The floor in front of the alcove's rear wall was worn. Nael asked if it was worn in a half circle or quarter circle shape, which I thought was a a very good question (it was a quarter circle). The floor of the alcove to the left was also worn, but less so, and there were no footprints near it.

The party spent some time trying to figure out if there were secret doors here and how to open them, but found nothing. Rory grabbed the bust of Rogahn and tried to use it as a battering ram on the rear wall of the alcove to the right, but only succeeded in damaging the bust and making a lot of noise.

They continued down to the third set of alcoves, whereupon a pair of magic mouths appeared. They yelled: “WHO DARES ENTER THIS PLACE AND INTRUDE UPON THE SANCTUARY OF ITS INHABITANTS? ONLY A GROUP OF FOOLHARDY EXPLORERS DOOMED TO CERTAIN DEATH. WOE TO ANY WHO PASS THIS PLACE - THE WRATH OF ZELLIGAR AND ROGAHN WILL BE UPON THEM!” The mouths cackled madly in unison and then gradually faded from view. This again made a lot of noise, and rattled Bronson, who suggested that maybe they should listen to the mouths. The party attempted to assuage his fears, but didn't seem to help.

At the end of the corridor, they found the site of an old battle. Three adventurers and two barbarian warriors laid in disarray on the floor (except for the wizard, who was impaled to the wall by a sword). The party began searching the bodies, when suddenly two goblins emerged from a door and a passage just ahead, with weapons drawn.

The players' map of the dungeon

Pommernar spoke to the goblins in the language of Evil. The goblins warned the party to leave, as this was goblin territory. Pommernar warned them that one of his companions was a powerful sorcerer, at which point the goblins called their boss, Grilk. I'll have to remember for the future that you're not really supposed to be able to have conversations like this using alignment languages.

Grilk was more congenial, and spoke the common tongue. He told the party that he wanted no quarrel with them, and agreed to let them plunder these corpses in exchange for their services. Some of Grilk's companions had fallen under the sway of a tyrannical orc priest to the southeast, who turned the goblins into fanatical slaves. If the party would help Grilk's companions, then things could be copacetic between the party and the goblins.

The party collected some minor treasure from the corpses (7 gold pieces and a ring worth 10 gp). Grilk invited them to share the goblins' ale and stew ("mostly rat meat and moldy cheese").

We had played for 30 minutes longer than we had agreed to, so we ended the session there. Overall, I think we had a good time. I've never played with any of these people before, so I'm simultaneously learning the players' names, the characters' names, and also learning to recognize the players' voices so that I know which character is doing what. Honestly, that has probably been the biggest hurdle so far!

We're on a roughly every other week schedule it seems, so hopefully I will be back with another play report in two weeks!

Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown Session 0

I've had a hankering to test out my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown. I enjoy coming up with these sandboxes for their own sake, but the intention has always been to actually run them. 

Since the beginning of 2025, I've aspired to play more games more often with more players and to run these games with less effort. Specifically, I wanted to run games other than D&D, run more modules instead of original content, and run the same modules with multiple groups of players. Work smarter, not harder, more bang for my buck, and all that.

I've sort of done that. Instead of D&D, I've run Mörk Borg, but only Mörk Borg. I've only run published adventures in Mörk Borg, which is less work. But I've run only a few of those modules for multiple groups. I've played a lot more systems since making my resolution, and have played in those games with a wider variety of referees and players. So I have been running a game other than D&D and have been playing lots of games other than D&D. I've been spending less time prepping for the games I have run. For the most part, any effort I might normally put towards preparing for and running games has instead gone towards the blog

D&D always calls me back sooner or later, and with how much time I've spent writing about AD&D this past year plus my newfound interest in classic TSR modules, it only felt natural to try running one of these modules in the system that has always appealed to me as a nostalgic and quaint artifact of the hobby's history. So, I'm going to run a B/X module in a 1e sandbox using 2e rules. It should be fun. Why 2e? Well, I explained myself a bit here. This time, I'll be bringing along all my newfound knowledge of AD&D's intended vibe from my obsessive analysis of 1e.

The upside to running B1 is that the dungeon is done for me. The downside is that I can never make anything easy for myself, so of course I had to embed the dungeon within a sandbox filled with high level NPCs, strongholds, and monster lairs which all take a ton of additional work to detail. Fortunately, I'm almost done. Once it's finished, I can run this sandbox with as many different groups as I like.

I'm definitely patting myself on the back for making this sandbox very small. Even at just 25 hexes and nine keyed locations (one of which is already done for me, more or less - real B1-heads know), this has taken me weeks to prepare. It would be significantly more effort to do the same with my sandboxes for B2 or (especially) B3, which are two and three times as large, respectively. If this one goes well, though, we'll see...

I've recruited five players from the Prismatic Wasteland Discord server, and we'll play for about two hours any Wednesday on which we have a quorum of at least three players. I want this to be a casual drop in/drop out kind of game, so I wouldn't mind recruiting a few more just so players can skip sessions as needed without worrying that their absence will mean the game is cancelled for everyone else. Maybe as the campaign picks up speed, we'll draw in a few more by word of mouth. 

I'm hoping to publish regular play reports as a way of not only recording the experience (which in hindsight I've found extremely beneficial for my last 2e campaign, short-lived though it was), but also as a means of boosting the campaign's signal. If I can make it sound fun, maybe more people will want to check it out.

Our cast of characters so far includes:

• Adam (playing Llombaerth, CG elf thief)
• Aidan (playing Millisant, LE human mage)
• David (playing Rory the Small, LN human fighter)
• Matt (playing Bathalo-gnome, CG gnome fighter/thief)
• Nael (playing Pommernar, CE elf mage)

What's this? No clerics? Evil characters? This seems like a disaster. How did this come to pass?

Well, my players are exceptionally game for discovering their characters via random character generation. We rolled randomly for ability scores (3d6 in order), race, height and weight, starting age and maximum age, alignment, starting spells for mages, and even handedness! 

We don't have any clerics because only two players rolled a Wisdom of 9 or higher, and they wound up with 14 and 15 Strength respectively, so understandably they wanted to be fighters instead. 

No one has an ability score higher than 15, and one character's highest score is 13. No one has any to hit or damage adjustments from Strength or hit point adjustments from Constitution, only one character has an AC adjustment from Dexterity, the most intelligent mage can only cast up to 7th level spells, and two characters receive penalties to saving throws versus mind-altering magic due to low Wisdom scores. 

No one rolled good enough scores to be a paladin, ranger, specialist mage, druid, or bard - apt because these are meant to be exceedingly rare.

Regarding Evil characters, I explained that I don't mind if player characters are Evil, so long as they're not disruptive. AD&D strongly implies that characters have free reign to slaughter villages of peaceable elves, raid merchant caravans, and enslave intelligent giant beaver children. That's all solid gameable material rife with complications, and I wouldn't mind exploring it. There will be tension between the characters, and that's fine - alignment changes and lost levels are at stake, after all! As long as the Evil characters have goals which drive play and the players aren't Evil to one another, I'm comfortable with it. Being Evil is fun sometimes.

The players really enjoyed rolling for their starting and maximum ages. They learned that new human fighters are 16 to 19 years old, whereas mages are 26 to 40. It takes time to study to become a magic-user, and they're adventuring with people who are essentially children (every other human class besides illusionists start at 18 to 25 years old). They also learned that humans can live to be 130, whereas elves can live to be 750 years old. It's hard to imagine this ever coming up in play, especially in the course of exploring just a small sandbox, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Lastly, spells. We have two mages in the group, Millisant and Pommernar. Both know read magic (they must, to be mages). In addition, Millisant knows charm person, detect magic, and protection from evil, while Pommernar knows burning hands, dancing lights, and erase, a spell that allows you to...erase two pages of writing! Okay it can also erase glyphs and explosive runes and the like, which could come in handy, but wow. Each of them can prepare and cast just one of these spells each day, then they are reduced to feebly wielding their daggers, darts, and slings.

One benefit of having two thieves in the party is that they can specialize. Llombaerth leans more towards sneaky stuff and skullduggery whereas Bartholo-gnome is specializing in finding and removing traps and opening locks. Since AD&D's thieves are relatively inept at their skills at early levels, this is beneficial to the party overall.

In the next few weeks I'm hoping to publish not just play reports with details regarding my behind the screen process, but also more general posts describing how to develop a sandbox beyond its initial conception. I've done some considerable work to bring this one to life since originally posting about it and am excited to describe what that's been like. I'm also hoping to eventually run this same sandbox with the group that played in my past 2e game, so hopefully there will eventually be two different series of play reports detailing two different groups' approaches to the same content.

I'm excited to play this game and see where it takes us.