Before we begin, the context. This is a group of two, one is new to old school play (Mabub), the other new to role playing in general (Alaine). We are using Whitehack, and right now I'm making an effort to stick as closely to the rules as written as possible (exceptions will be noted as they come up).
We are running T1 The Village of Hommlet. I'd love to run the Caverns of Thracia in the future, so I made a couple of changes. Generally, the Cult of Thanatos is more far reaching and popular, not just a dying religion practiced by backwoods yokels in the jungle. It is still sinister though, and they use the Moathouse from T1 as an outpost on the way to the Caverns. Lareth the beautiful, instead of a servant of chaos, is mid to high ranking cleric in the Cult of Thanatos. He guards the moathouse, and collects supplies and human sacrifices that will be sent over to the Caverns up in the mountains.
I'm also trying to downplay some elements of Hommlet. The whole thing is very high fantasy, and there are frankly way too many high level NPCs bumming around for my suspension of disbelief. I'm planning on assuming that most of the residents are 0 level nobodies, and simply using the map to tell what's around. If the player's are really interested in blacksmith, I'll refer to the key, but overall the village is not that important to me.
Session report starts below.
Two new adventurers, Mabub, the Orcish Bar(d)barian and Alaine, the Falconer have arrived in the frontier town of Hommlet, nestled in rocky hills south of the Italian Alps.
In Whitehack terms, Mabub, the Strong Orc Bardbarian, and Alaine, the Deft Falconer. I describe Hommlet as a small town, but currently growing fast as a strategic last stop before crossing the Alps to the north. Some noble is trying to rebuild the castle to take advantage. The game is set in the real world in the region surrounding a not ruined Aquileia, in the Dark Ages. The slider of history to fantasy will be somewhat up to the players.
Having sought rumors of plunder while drinking at the Inn of the Welcome Wench, our intrepid pair wandered down the road to the old abandoned moat-house. The old bar patrons, as well as the Village Elder, have warned them gravely of a local mystery death cult, worshiping the personification of death itself, THANATOS.
They were more interested in the village than I thought, but learned of the moathouse, the bandits, and the cleric of Thanatos. They also finagled a promise of reward out of the Village Elder, who they learn is aligned with the local pagan druids. (The module's listing of each person's treasure came in handy here!) The module's format here starts to really suck. They want to see the elder, but the key for the elder is "27. WALLED MANOR HOUSE" instead of anything remotely useful.
Alaine entered a meditative trance, channeling her mind into her trusty falcon, who flew above and scouted the moathouse. They spotted a swampy pond filled with giant, predatory frogs near the front gate.
This was the first usage a Deft's attunement slot. Whitehack's class features are built around negotiation instead of being strongly defined. Alaine's player wanted to scout ahead with her falcon, I asked her how it worked, and we decided on her being trained to meditatively link herself to her birds. I revealed the outdoor portions of the moathouse map (using fog of war on Roll20) and also told her of the giant frog creatures in the swamp. This conversation was surprisingly quick and easy. I imagine some other players might be a pain about it though. Time will tell.
Sneaking past the frogs, the adventurers force open the door to the abandoned watchtower at the south end of the moathouse. Despite the telltale gleam of copper from the refuse inside, they were intimidated by the bones, dried animal husks, and giant spider webs. Mabub threw in a torch, and closed the door behind him.
The falcon let them skip the frogs handily. Mabub forced open the watchtower door, quite easily. "Orc" is written under Strength for him, so he'll get 2d20 keep best on most strength rolls (Really, when would being an Orc not apply to Strength?). I gave plenty of clues, e.g bones, webs, dried animal husks, so they kept out. I wanted to avoid any gotchas, so I figured the spider would only attack if they came all the way into the room. They wisely did not. Because of the torch thrown into the watch tower, I think I'll have the spider relocate before their next visit. I probably should have described the burning watch tower on their way out, but I forgot to. I will point out the blackened stone on their return visit.
Mabub and Alaine follow two pairs of fresh boot prints into the great hall. A group of brigands were ready for them, and were holed up in a back room. One shot a crossbow bolt at Mabub as he spied through the cracked open door.
The bandits are said to have scouts at the door 50% of the time, who then run and warn the rest. I made sure to say there were two FRESH boot prints in the mud among all the other tracks. They had one bandit aim a crossbow at the door, while the rest waited with swords drawn around the corner.
The bandit leader, even with his superior force, was in no mood for bloodshed, and tried to scare Mabub and Alaine off with threats and bluster. A bad move on his part, as it gave Mabub a chance to throw him in a headlock and ransom him back to his men.
This part was tricky to rule. First I rolled initiative, which is how the bowman got off a shot. Then it was the bandit leaders, turn, then the rest of the bandits, then the Mabub and Alaine. The bandit leader ran towards the door to attack, then I remembered I hadn't rolled any reaction. Whitehack does not have a reaction procedure, other than rolling against charisma and interpreting the quality. It's hard to come up with a fair outcome to that. So, I decided to use a standard B/X 2d6 reaction roll here, and got a friendly reaction. I had him stop his men and, instead of attacking, try to intimidate the party into leaving as soon as possible (pretty nice thing for the leader to do, right?) So I skipped his and the bandit's turns, and Mabub decided to grab the bandit leader and put him in a headlock, and of course he got a critical success. I ruled crit success on grapple means that we skip the target's saving throw. Mabub successfully takes the leader hostage.
The men, as it turns out, were abject cowards, and seeing their leader so quickly bested, bolted, but not before hinting about their buried treasure. After some roughing up, the leader spilled the beans and ran away, and our adventurers procured a chest of modest treasure.
I have the bandits here be unsure what to do. The party asks questions about the treasure, and the bandits won't talk. I mention that one glances nervously towards the rubble, to hint at the treasure buried there. The party picks up on it. Alaine threatens to kill their leader if they don't comply. I decide here to make a morale save (In Whitehack, morale defaults to normal saving throw). The bandits, fail, so they decide to abandon their leader to his fate, and run if with whatever treasure they happened to be carrying. The party beats up the leader, learns about the monsters to the south and west, and take his stuff. They then dig up the treasure from the rubble and let the leader go. This part had a lot of ad hoc rulings, but having a couple of rules on hand (Charisma checks, reaction rolls, and morale saves) gave me something to fall back on without just improvising randomly. These rolls worked very well to keep the scene moving.
Mabub and Alaine, then carefully tread downstairs, and seeing a ceiling dripping with putrid green slime, lit it on fire and burned it all away.
I tried to give a good warning about "green mucus dripping from the ceiling." They defaulted to burning it, which burned it away over the course of a turn. I'd been rolling for random encounters the whole time, but still hadn't gotten any. Considering the module has multiple entries for spooky noises on the encounter table, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do an initial roll first? I'll have to double check that.
They then passed through a set of two doors with suspiciously greased hinges, and were met with the imposing figure of the dungeons ogreish guardsman. Lubash the ogre turned out to be in a hungry mood, and seeing that the two weren't dressed as his employers, decided to devour at least one of them.
The freshly greased hinges did a good job of putting them on edge. They were picked up right away that this place must be lived in, but decided to press on.
And a pitched battle was fought. Mabub's face was smashed with a rock. Alaine charged with her sword only to be rebuffed by thick, lardy skin. The ogre lost a good chunk of his intestines, but still managed to smack Mabub and Alaine's heads together like a pair of coconuts.
Mabub went for the killing blow, only for his blood-slick axe to fly out of his hands. Alaine's sword finally found purchase in the ogre's tough skin, and brought him down. They stole his treasure chest and scarpered back to town.
The party managed to win the fight with Lubash. Two 1 HD adventurers vs. a 5 HD ogre is no small feat! They lucked out with a low HP roll. I have to reroll all the HP in the adventure anyway (a HD is d6 in Whitehack, instead of d8). There were fumbles on all sides. For Lubash's fumble I had Mabub get a free attack (Whitehack's version of attacks of opportunity). For Mabub's fumble, I used a player fumble chart. It's just 6 entries, more of a jumping off point. Entries are things like, "Enemey gets a free attack" or "Environmental hazard." Mabub got "Drop weapon." I'll see how useful that chart is in the long run, but when I need no fumble seems obvious, it helps me come up with something. I did something a little non standard in this fight. Lubash had two attacks I rolled to hit for both of them without rolling for damage on one turn, and since they both hit, I decided he would try and slam Mabub and Alaine's heads together. A fun result of using a more abstract combat system. Luckily he got a 1 on both damage dice!
The more experienced player told me that was the most tense combat he's ever had in an RPG. He seemed skeptical of the old school style at first, but I think he's turning around.
The first expedition was a success!
Deaths and Injuries: None!
Treasure Procured:
325 copper coins
3 silver coins
2 bolts of fine cloth
a set of fine crystal pitcher and goblets
a box of ivory
4 mysterious arrows (unidentified)
Silver standard here. Arrows are +1 arrows.
Experience Earned:
328 for treasure
600 for slaying an Ogre
464 experience each!
I'd like to introduce some carousing rules at some point. Not sure if I should stick to my guns on adhering closely to rules as written in that regard though. I think I'll let my player's know that it's an option. We'll see how interested they are in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment