Raven Creek play by post

[ahabicher]

I just launched a play by post OD&D game on Discord, where I try to stick very closely to the 3LBB rules.

The setting is absolutely classic: A small village of no more than a handful of houses, deep in the forest along a small stream called Raven Creek, calls for help: Goblins have killed the inhabitants of three farmhouses, and the surviving locals need heroes.
The area has a couple of points of interest as adventure sites, three of which are known about.
Player choice is sandbox-style.

Play by post tends to be slow, but the advantage is that it can be played on the side, without the need to dedicate an evening. We are one week in, have gotten to know some locals, seen some enemies in the distance, and now 10 player characters and 3 NPCs are forming up in some approximate marching order to set out into the forest.

I try to balance on the shoulders of giants: From some great GMs here on this very forum I have learned that it is a smart decision to let players declare intent but handle all the combat rolls on the GM side, so a combat round does not take three to four days, but only one.
There are fantastic people at the imaginary table, so I have hopes for a fine adventure, to see people level up and to use fighter-multiattack á la Man & Magic as well as, hopefully one day, have some fun with mass battles.

[ahabicher]

The group gathered in the village, collected information, then moved out into the forest.
At the first opportunity the party split in three groups, two scouting parties of three each, 12" move with no encumbrance, and one main group, 6", with medium encumbrance. The scouting parties travelled out until they found something interesting, at which point scouting party 1 engaged and investigated a ruin, found first treasure and fought 2 centipedes. Scouting party 2 found a serious threat and decided to turn back un-noticed to rejoin the main party.
The main party had moved out slower found evidence of enemy activity and hesitated, so Scouting party 2 could catch up with them.

[ahabicher]

The groups found each other again and formed one big party,
then had a tight random encounter that warranted a real blog post:
papierundspiele.com/2023/04/02/wilderness-encounter-standoff-with-unknown-variables/

It is easy to see the grizzled experienced tough guy Old School players: that's those who collect every little nonsense like metal filing shards, dirty old bottelettes, balls of strings, lumps of coal and what have you.

[ahabicher]

The party continued after the encounter with bandits, but sent two NPCs after them to keep an eye on them.
Then they searched for the threat, but it was not where it had been.
Discussing their options, they decided to return to their starting point, where they found the tracks of the bandits passing west, just as the bandits had said they were headed. The party followed them until the tracks of the bandits disappeared from the trail, then searched around and picked them up again going off into the underbrush. One of the NPCs had also left a mark there.

Two of the PCs started following the tracks, then three more followed them, the rest stayed behind.

The forward team tracked the bandits into a lower basin with waterholes and ponds until they found a trip-wire barring the way between two waterholes. The first of them stepped across the trip wire and noticed a hut not far away. The second one experimented with the trip-wire. The 5th saw the 2nd experimenting with the trigger of a trap and decided to keep his distance.
It came as it had to come: Numero 2 set off the trip-wire, capturing himself and 3 and 4 in a net, and triggering an alarm.
Numero 5 hid after the alarm went off, while Numero 1 stayed out in the open and tried to help the captured.

Numero 1 got shot with arrows and died: the first casualty of the adventure.

[ahabicher]

Winning the standoff thanks to a sleep spell,
the party murdered one of the three captured bandits and began going into a torture/murder session with the rationalization that they "needed to find out the important information" from the other two.
Not all players were on board with slow-killing captives, especially humans, given that there was a goblin issue in the area; but also on general principle.
Discussions were had, people distanced themselves from that path of murder,
then one M-U solved the issue with a Charm Person that made any torturing blatantly useless.

Party moral grounding restored, the group returned home with the captives and started bunkering in for the night.
At nightfall proper, six left the impromptu bunker and moved into forward buildings.

Goblins showed up and shrieked in the woods, an attack seemed imminent, the forward group gave up their positions and gathered at one point,
Only one legendary hero ran out across the open field to start lighting torches and sticking them into the ground to level the playing field in the darkness. Stunned, the goblins watched him do his thing before they finally got their act together and went to kill him.

Too late: The field lit up, those who came to slay him ran into the arrows of humans. The heroic lamplighter got killed by some pretty lucky arrows, but most of the monsters who went after him shared his fate. It followed a long range arrow duel across the field, during which some of the bunker-group also moved forward to reinforce the front.
A number of people on both sides took random arrows.
Then the humans started shooting flame arrows and the goblins decided to return the favour and shot flaming arrows into the roof of the human forward position.
For a moment it looked rather bad, but then another Sleep Spell dropped the goblin flame-archers and doused their appetite for conquest.
And rain started to set in, so the roof-burning looks like it won't hold.

[ahabicher]

Learning experience:
I had never noticed that the 3LBB make no notice of missile ranges.
The only hint is in the Sea Combat section, saying "All missile fire, including the various forms of catapult fire, are as in CHAINMAIL."
But they need a tiny bit of tweaking and clarifying.

[ahabicher]

Update:

The group defended the village in a series of skirmishes where the goblins eventually succeeded in burning down the three derelict houses north of the river with fire arrows (while suffering pretty serious losses due to ever changing tactics on the players' side)

During the days, when the goblins retreated into their lairs, the party began exploring to the east and found a ravine with various goblin caves built into it. They looked for chimneys and blocked those hoping to smoke out the underground goblins, but suffered losses due to local wildlife (giant bugs that live in the sandy ground north of the ravine). They destroyed goblin constructions and retreated.

The next day they returned to the ravine, found out a hidden entrance and went in, charmed a goblin and learned from him that these goblins are not actually the same that fight the village in the night, rather, they are enemies of those. Using the charmed goblin as a guide the group returned home and turned north from there to find the enemy. The goblin ran into a magical trap and died, but the group moved on, followed odd tracks and found a dungeon entrance in the forest, where they suspect goblin magic users.

They killed an assortment of goblins and freed two captives, while several other captives were killed. At this point they found the first batch of serious loot in this game. Before this moment, they had always turned back quickly or stayed in the village to defend, which led to a very low treasure turnout (even by my miserly standards).

The use of dwarven abilities like seeing new construction and night vision proved crucial and the methods of the party are solidly built around their one dwarf.
At the point of this writing, dwarf 1 is wounded down to 1 HP, but a second dwarf has joined the campaign so I expect the dwarf-centric thinking will continue.

----

Meanwhile, one magic user separated himself from the group and, by his lonesome, made friendly contact with an ogre and began investigating the rumors about a witch in the forests to the south.

[eldrad]

Cool post. Seems like a true Old School game.

[ahabicher]

Sept 24, 2023 11:09:49 GMT -6 eldrad said:

Cool post. Seems like a true Old School game.

Thank you for that high praise!

[ahabicher]

The group delved until they came into a dormitory with some tougher-looking opposition and quickly turned back. The tougher opposition slammed and barred the door, locking the party out. Now they have no way to get deeper inside short of hacking down the door with axes, which they decided not to do.
They went over the walls inch by inch and found a secondary exit, though: A hidden entrance to a long, narrow tunnel with a side room that serves as a disgusting old latrine. There they had to make poison saves and avoid slipping and falling into the deadly muck, but they managed to overcome these difficulties and liberated an old, disgusting saddlebag with magical loot: elven writing, a locked box, and a wand. A very important find for the magic users, one of which knows the elven tongue and can read the papers.
Problem: Not all of the writ has been collected. Some pages are still in the latrine, so the magic users want to go back there soon.

The long tunnel ended in daylight at an elven ruin, where the forward elements of the party witnessed how goblins coordinated to gather, go around them and cut them off at the exit of the cave.
They waited for the goblins to leave, then inspected the ruins and found a second such tunnel, but cleaner, which goes back in again.

Inside, they heard a goblin forward party that was looking for them, and decided to go back in, in full force, to seek the confrontation -- armed with one last sleep spell for the day.

[ahabicher]

It took some time for them to find out how to open the secret door, but when they did, the goblin forward party was gone. In the meantime, the one fighter who had stinking muck on his armor so his presence disturbed the others chose to go around to the cave entrance aboveground.
The party inside split up, with weaker NPCs checking back to the dormitory of the goblins, while the majority of the party sneaked forward to the exit. There they spied a group of goblins discussing plans on the clearing in front of the cave.
From the concealment of the plants masking the entrance, they shot two volleys of arrows and slingstones at the goblins, felling most of them. Two survivors ran away into the forest, and the party chased them across the clearing with naked blades drawn.

However, five goblin archers were sitting on top of the hill, and the party ran into some arrow fire. Luckily, their armor turned most of the missiles away, even though three of the adventurers fell - among them one of the two darves.
Three others kept chasing the fleeing goblins into the forest and cut them down in a quick flurry of bladework.

The stinking adventurer fell into the rear of the archers, thus aiding the others by reducing the press of missile fire.
There was also a goblin shaman: One of the human magic users cast sleep and won initiative, so the shaman and most of the archers dropped snoring.
The last archer standing was felled as he tried to flee.

-- rules issue: using a 1d6 table for people who drop to 0 HP, two of the downed adventurers survived with 1 HP after 1 turn of rest, as they received help within two combat rounds. One of them with STR permanently lowered to 3. 1 of the downed adventurers, a cleric, died on the spot. The dwarf got back up with no lasting damage. --

Now the group had conquered the first level of the dungeon, but assumed there had to be another secret entrance directly to the barred level 2.
While two of them retrieved the last sheets of paper and some old dead bodies from the latrine, thereby getting even more soiled and stinking, the dwarves looked for that elusive other secret entrance, and indeed, they found it!

Alas, with most of the party down to 1 or 2 hp this is risky business now. The strongest of the group dare enter, hoping to get the drop on some possibly unsuspecting shamans with good treasure....

[ahabicher]

Meanwhile, one magic user attempts to win the trust of the goblins' sorely mistreated, tightly chained riding wolves by letting a group of NPCs feed the fallen goblins to the beasts.
(Yes, the group has split up again – but they have the numbers to do it.)
This is hard and slow work, and the sun is sinking. At night, the forest will belong to the goblins again, and the window of opportunity closes.

[ahabicher]

## near death .. and actual death

Going down into the secret entrance, the dwarf got knocked down by a trap. There was some light skirmishing so the party left him to bleed out for 3 of the 4 rounds he had before he'd die. At the last moment one of them saved him, although the Dwarf's DEX is now diminished.
Recognizing their weakened state and the approaching night, the party decided to withdraw and go home with loot and the body of Myron the cleric.
While walking, they got followed and harassed by two goblins. One of them managed to shoot down and kill a cleric, but got wounded himself when one fighter dared a difficult duel with the odds stacked against him, but the dice rolled true and the party escaped with no further losses.

## back to safety

They reached the village, clocked in a good amount of XP (but divided by a good amount of PCs and NPCs) and found a visiting army unit on night rest here. The villagers and soldiers combined served as a good night watch, especially with the bridge drawn back and big stakes driven into the southern bank of the Raven Creek. The goblins did not engage actively, just blindly shot a number of arrows across the creek into the human-inhabited areas.

The army unit bought some of the magical and rare loot off them in actual gold and in a letter of debt; and they gave healing to four of the adventurers.
The papers the party found they did not sell: they kept them, and the magic users decided to study them while everyone was resting and healing.

Meanwhile the fighter player who had earlier tried to manipulate bandits into fighting the goblins for the party now hoped for the army unit to do the same.
Alas, that was not to be, as the army unit had its orders and left to move on to the northern border fortress.

[ahabicher]

## moving out fast

The healed-up fighters decided that now was not the time for resting and healing: a good offense is still the best defense, and those not totally wounded should move out again right away on that very morning to finish the job!
The magic users agreed and decided to study their papers at a later date.
Every MU in the party prepared the sleep spell, to counter the goblin's numerical advantage.

The other party member, a wizard with two henchmen of his own and a penchant for going off on secret private missions, who was investigating the non-related witch issue already, kept doing that: He moved southeast toward the witch tower while the party at large moved back out north.
Only the clerics, all down to 1 HP, and a local NPC ally elected to stay in the village to heal.

The four healing spells from the army unit provided invaluable,
especially with the rolls coming down pretty good and all four subjects getting healed back to max.

[ahabicher]

The party sold items recovered to the army wizard, but kept the papers they had found.
At the same time they bought 24 bandages from the army to patch up wounded people.
(houserule: recover 1d3 of freshly lost HP if bandaging a turn after the loss)

They discussed a lot with the army people and tried to convince them to come and sort out these goblins
[fun! Same attempt earlier when they had met the bandits! Apparently, they will attempt to make every NPC they find go and do their work for them!],
but the army declined: they had their own orders, no time to help with the party's issues.
However, they promised to report the headquarters and tell them about the local situation.

[ahabicher]

On the next morning, the army went their own way, the wizard with his penchant for his own missions went southeast to check out the witch problem, and most of the rest of the party went back north into the goblin area to mop up what's left of the recent delve. The three most wounded party members remained in the village to rest and heal.

North party found four weird sticks planted on the clearing, left those alone and went up the hill.
There they found some signs of abandoned construction. At this point there was also a camouflaged manhole that the party had found earlier. Now the camo-lid was slightly ajar for some reason.
Four of the party decided to go and check that out, open it with bows ready. But one wizard called halt and suggested they open it more carefully with a 10 foot pole.
Which they did.

That wizard saved their lives: The manhole was boobytrapped with an explosive device, and only their careful approach saved them: The blast threw five party members off their feet, but only one got really wounded, none died.

The party used two sets of bandages on the really wounded guy and on one PC who had lost 2 hp in the blast.
Then they moved onward, and found another sign of goblin construction, which they inspected carefully for traps, finding none.

[ahabicher]

They scouted onwards, found some signs of digging and avoided the regular path. The way to the smiling cave where they had plundered earlier was all free. The way north to the elven tower they went slowly and looked around for more ruins. Not far from the lookout tower they found a pile of stones and went meddling, sticking poles in it and shining lights into the dark gaps. Thus they stirred up a nest of 1d6 = 6 spitting cobras (borrowed from B/X, because OD&D turned out to have no snakes at all).
They killed the snakes with a big oil bomb, lighting the whole stone pile on fire.
As a reaction, a horn was sounded north of them, to their surprise. They had counted on the surrounding trees to provide enough cover so their big oil fire would remain unnoticed.

Problem: One of the spitting cobras got the dwarf, and he is now blind.

The party looked around to identify the source of the horn blast, but didn't find it. Eventually they decided to go to the elven tower and delve into the secret tunnels there, the places where they had to retreat from on the day before. They were promptly shot at from the tower (but no wounds were suffered). The fighters stormed forward to attack its door, while one magic user cast Sleep on the tower. He laid low the three goblins inside and four of his fellow adventurers.

After this the group removed the door with some dwarven stone cunning and took one of the goblins prisoner, slaying the others.
The elven tower is finally conquered.

[ahabicher]

Next, after interrogating the captured goblin, they tried to go into the dungeon again to continue their delve from the day before. But as they found out, the goblins had used the night to riddle all the tunnels with deadly traps, and no honest foe to fight presented itself.

The party went in with careful deliberation and unfanged one trap after another, to finally win into the underhalls that they knew from the day before. Dodging several difficult hazards they expressed respect for the goblin master trapper and decided to charm him if they should come face to face with him: he might be an extremely useful asset to protect the village with a ring of deathtraps.