OK, here’s a summary of Gary’s OD&D game ~ Castle Greyhawk ruins/dungeons.
We started as 2nd level characters. My choice was an Elf Fighter ~ Errol, Warrior of the Gnarley Forest. I believe we also had 3 other fighters, a magic-user and a cleric.
Human Fighter – Wigbryte, played by Dan Proctor
Elf Mage – Stick
Human Cleric – Tharan, played by Narl
Dwarf fighter – Duergedin, played by Joe Damiani
Fighter
4D6 drop lowest – re-roll 1s
Errol:
STR 15
INT 11
WIS 13
CON 15
DEX 14
CHA 8
AC 2
HPs 14
+1 BtH
+1 damage
Wigbryte:
S 18
I 14
W 14
D 17
C 17
Ch 13
HP 11
……………………………………………………………………………………..
Gary briefly described the castle ruins and broken walls and outline, and then we immediately descended down spiral stairs into the dungeon. We get almost at the bottom of the stairs – about to walk into a room, when a large spider drops down from the ceiling and bites the lead PC.
He fails his check and dies of poison!!! LOL.
Way to start the game, no? Poor bastard. Heh, he immediately began rolling up a new char while we hacked the spider to death and burned his web. I think we found a rotted backpack from some corpse that fell out of the web and picked up our first loot – 50sp.
At this point, we begin to explore (and map) our way into a complex and large dungeon.
We gather, based on the number of steps that we went down about 1 level.
We had a good mapper in the group and I tried to do some of my own just for more practice but gave up after a while.
Gary set a nice tone/atmosphere and we carefully plodded along checking for secret doors and listening at stuck doors. Heh, there were many doors, almost all stuck – so the main tanks were rolling STR checks to bang open the doors with their shoulders.
And then we opened a door after having to shoulder it and were confronted by some large creatures covered in bear skin clothes with long shaggy hair
We got into the room and had a fierce battle with 3 berserkers. We kicked their asses and continued on our merry way, still checking for secret doors. We weren’t really checking much for floor or other traps (kind of reckless, I know). We only learned later from Gary that we somehow managed to avoid several.
Additionally, we did battle a gnoll and an evil cleric (thanks to Dan for reminding me) and were able to overcome their attacks and pick up a staff of healing.
At one point we heard the whispers of what we thought might have been leathery wings or something. We attempted to locate the source and checking to see if we were being followed, but could find out nothing.
More dungeon exploring – with a few discussions about directions and questions of whether or not we had come down a particular corridor. We did then seem to get our bearings and continued.
We generally were heading north and west.
Finally we found a set of downward spiraling stairs. We went down – this time checking the ceilings and especially when the stairs ended into a large room. We did go down about 40 stairs or so, and figured we hit the 3rd lower level.
Across the room we opened a door and – a large ogre came walking to the door. We backed up and got ready for combat hoping to engage him right at the door so as to block any thing else from coming through.
I believe the mage or cleric tried to cast light at or towards the ogres face/eyes to blind him, but something happened and the spell either didn’t get off or failed, but the light showed that 2 more ogres were behind the first.
Major battle and great fun. I think it was here that I sustained some minor damage – taking 3 points on a hit.
We eventually defeated the ogres and that was the end of the game.
We found 2 chests. One had 600 GPs and a large gem. The other chest had a potion of plant control, scroll of protection from undead and a ring of protection.
I recorded our treasure and Dan Proctor recorded our XP which follows:
XP
20 xp from 1 gnoll
30 xp from one giant black widow
30 xp for the evil cleric
30 xp total for 3 barbarians
150 xp total for 3 ogres
TOTAL 260
Gary mentioned that in addition to avoiding the traps, we did also got lucky and missed a major encounter that has resulted in the deaths of many adventuring parties.
He also said, had we decided to continue on level 3, it’s pretty likely that we would have been killed. I’ll assume that means that there might have been some great magic or weapons on the 2nd level that would have helped us.
Gary occasionally allowed us a brief glimpse of the dungeon map. From what I could tell it filled a page of graph paper. Don’t know if that was an entire floor/level or a section.
The End.
Please forgive my poor journal/recording/summary skills, but I hope I was able to convey some of the fantastic gaming that we had.
Thanks to Gary and all my fellow players for a excellent game.
