Post by foster1941 on Apr 14, 2008 12:18:39 GMT -6
Got together with the guys from my former game group (plus one player who's a new member of the current (sans me) incarnation of the group) to play an old-school D&D one-off as a tribute to Gary Gygax. This happened now rather than in March because it took us a month to plan and organize it enough to get a full house (6 players + me as DM).
Since it was a Gygax Tribute I ran one of his modules, and thought it fitting to run his first published one -- "The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth" (Wintercon V tournament dungeon, published by the Metro Detroit Gamers in 1976). Since it was a one-off I skipped ahead to the second round of the tournament (the Greater Caverns) since I think that's the more fun of the two levels. We used the full tournament rules (except that I let the players roll their own damage rather than relying on averaged values) and the tournament pre-gen characters (which is something of a necessity in this module because instead of providing statblocks for the monsters it includes a chart showing every character's chance to hit every monster with each of their weapons and vice versa -- if you're not using the pre-gen characters you'd have to reverse-engineer the monsters' ACs and HD which isn't impossible (most of the monsters come out of the various books) but would require extra effort). The module assumes all of the supplements (all of the rules from Supp I, a couple monsters apiece from Supps II & III) + material from The Strategic Review (various monsters, 2-axis alignments) so it really feels more like de facto AD&D than hardcore OD&D, but for a Gygax Tribute game that feel is appropriate so I wasn't complaining too much.
Character sheets + appropriate rules excerpts (magic item & spell descriptions) were emailed to the players in advance -- aside from me only 1 other player had any OD&D experience (though they've all played 1E AD&D and Classic D&D so it's not like they were totally out in the cold). To start with and help set the mood I showed them the map of the Lesser Caverns and described what likely would've happened had we played through them. Then the party read the Graven Glyphs and began the long descent (900 steps) to the Greater Caverns.
Things started out slowly because the players devoted a lot of attention to mapping (which is particularly hard in this dungeon, since it's a natural cavern with lots of dead-ends and irregular angles) and managed to unintentionally bypass several encounters -- they'd made it all the way to the south edge of the map and had taken an hour or more before they had their first actual encounter, with a group of shriekers. These summoned their keepers, a pair of fire giants, whom the party immediately attacked. They did pretty well (the lead giant wasted a lot of attacks on the dwarf, who both had a super-low AC (+2 plate & +3 shield) and only took half damage from hits) and managed to drop one giant and severely wound the second, who surrendered and offered to show the party where his hidden treasure was. The party didn't take him up on the offer and finished him off (which meant they lost out on the opportunity to find a +3 war hammer; oh well...).
One of the fun aspects of the module is that 2 of the pre-gen characters have extremely powerful (but also extremely ego-heavy) intelligent magic swords who both argue with their owners and especially each other at any opportunity. This allowed me to have some fun role-playing even in a heavily exploration and hack&slash-based dungeon. One of the players was able to mollify his sword by giving it jewels from the giants, the other continued bickering with his off and on for the entire session.
More slow exploration finally brought the party to the iron doors they'd heard about from the Graven Glyphs and they found themselves teleported to someplace else. Once again they devoted a lot of effort to careful mapping and made directional choices that kept missing encounters (except for a brief interlude with some green slime) so they'd wandered across almost the entire left side of the map and taken another hour+ before they came to the Dimension Shift room (one of my favorite locations in the module -- a cave with two entrances; depending on which one the party enters by they'll either encounter a group of 4 fighters or 2 mages; the room then shifts back and forth between the two every 3rd round -- the inhabitants know about the shift and will react in anticipation, but the party will be confused and disoriented). They managed to kill off both the mages and one of the fighters before fleeing.
More exploration finally brought them to another iron door and another teleport. By virtue of their careful mapping they were actually fairly quickly able to line themselves up (which could be argued means all the mapping was worth the effort, but I don't buy it -- I think a sketch or trailing map would've served just as well and allowed the game to progress a lot faster) and thought they had figured out the puzzle of the iron doors. They fairly quickly found a 3rd set, but decided not to open them until they'd found all the sets (they were expecting 7; there were actually only 6 because you have to open one of them twice). Alas, by this point we were almost out of time -- I had someplace to be in the evening (Hotel Cafe Tour) and we were playing tournament-style, so I had set a firm end-time (which we still managed to go over by about 20 minutes). A detour took the party into the lair of a Type II Demon and things were looking dicey for a bit (had the demon succeeded in his attempt to Gate in a friend it would've been a lot dicier) but the party won through in the end and picked up 2 cursed magic items (a loadstone and a crystal hypnosis ball) for their trouble.
We chose to end it there; I showed the players the map and pointed out all the encounters they'd missed and what would've happened at the finale had they gotten there. All in all an enjoyable time seemed to be had by everyone (one unlucky player managed to get his character rendered immediately hors de combat in 2 of the 3 big fights -- held by the mages, feared by the demon -- so he probably didn't have as much fun as the rest of us). The tactical play by the players wasn't too great -- they wasted way too much time mapping and exploring around the edges of the level which meant that by the time they figured out the pattern it was too late to really do anything about it, plus they didn't make very good use of their spells and items, leaving a lot of "rounds in the chamber" even when it became clear that we were up against the deadline and there was no reason to save things for later -- plus they blamed their relative failure on the module (scoffing at the notion that it was intended to be completed in 4 hours) rather than their own choices, which bugged me a bit, but those are minor quibbles in the face of a fun afternoon of classic old-school-style play.
The effort of DMing pretty much wore me out, and reminded me that I don't have the fortitude to DM a regular (or even semi-regular) campaign -- I think once a year or so is more my speed.
Since it was a Gygax Tribute I ran one of his modules, and thought it fitting to run his first published one -- "The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth" (Wintercon V tournament dungeon, published by the Metro Detroit Gamers in 1976). Since it was a one-off I skipped ahead to the second round of the tournament (the Greater Caverns) since I think that's the more fun of the two levels. We used the full tournament rules (except that I let the players roll their own damage rather than relying on averaged values) and the tournament pre-gen characters (which is something of a necessity in this module because instead of providing statblocks for the monsters it includes a chart showing every character's chance to hit every monster with each of their weapons and vice versa -- if you're not using the pre-gen characters you'd have to reverse-engineer the monsters' ACs and HD which isn't impossible (most of the monsters come out of the various books) but would require extra effort). The module assumes all of the supplements (all of the rules from Supp I, a couple monsters apiece from Supps II & III) + material from The Strategic Review (various monsters, 2-axis alignments) so it really feels more like de facto AD&D than hardcore OD&D, but for a Gygax Tribute game that feel is appropriate so I wasn't complaining too much.
Character sheets + appropriate rules excerpts (magic item & spell descriptions) were emailed to the players in advance -- aside from me only 1 other player had any OD&D experience (though they've all played 1E AD&D and Classic D&D so it's not like they were totally out in the cold). To start with and help set the mood I showed them the map of the Lesser Caverns and described what likely would've happened had we played through them. Then the party read the Graven Glyphs and began the long descent (900 steps) to the Greater Caverns.
Things started out slowly because the players devoted a lot of attention to mapping (which is particularly hard in this dungeon, since it's a natural cavern with lots of dead-ends and irregular angles) and managed to unintentionally bypass several encounters -- they'd made it all the way to the south edge of the map and had taken an hour or more before they had their first actual encounter, with a group of shriekers. These summoned their keepers, a pair of fire giants, whom the party immediately attacked. They did pretty well (the lead giant wasted a lot of attacks on the dwarf, who both had a super-low AC (+2 plate & +3 shield) and only took half damage from hits) and managed to drop one giant and severely wound the second, who surrendered and offered to show the party where his hidden treasure was. The party didn't take him up on the offer and finished him off (which meant they lost out on the opportunity to find a +3 war hammer; oh well...).
One of the fun aspects of the module is that 2 of the pre-gen characters have extremely powerful (but also extremely ego-heavy) intelligent magic swords who both argue with their owners and especially each other at any opportunity. This allowed me to have some fun role-playing even in a heavily exploration and hack&slash-based dungeon. One of the players was able to mollify his sword by giving it jewels from the giants, the other continued bickering with his off and on for the entire session.
More slow exploration finally brought the party to the iron doors they'd heard about from the Graven Glyphs and they found themselves teleported to someplace else. Once again they devoted a lot of effort to careful mapping and made directional choices that kept missing encounters (except for a brief interlude with some green slime) so they'd wandered across almost the entire left side of the map and taken another hour+ before they came to the Dimension Shift room (one of my favorite locations in the module -- a cave with two entrances; depending on which one the party enters by they'll either encounter a group of 4 fighters or 2 mages; the room then shifts back and forth between the two every 3rd round -- the inhabitants know about the shift and will react in anticipation, but the party will be confused and disoriented). They managed to kill off both the mages and one of the fighters before fleeing.
More exploration finally brought them to another iron door and another teleport. By virtue of their careful mapping they were actually fairly quickly able to line themselves up (which could be argued means all the mapping was worth the effort, but I don't buy it -- I think a sketch or trailing map would've served just as well and allowed the game to progress a lot faster) and thought they had figured out the puzzle of the iron doors. They fairly quickly found a 3rd set, but decided not to open them until they'd found all the sets (they were expecting 7; there were actually only 6 because you have to open one of them twice). Alas, by this point we were almost out of time -- I had someplace to be in the evening (Hotel Cafe Tour) and we were playing tournament-style, so I had set a firm end-time (which we still managed to go over by about 20 minutes). A detour took the party into the lair of a Type II Demon and things were looking dicey for a bit (had the demon succeeded in his attempt to Gate in a friend it would've been a lot dicier) but the party won through in the end and picked up 2 cursed magic items (a loadstone and a crystal hypnosis ball) for their trouble.
We chose to end it there; I showed the players the map and pointed out all the encounters they'd missed and what would've happened at the finale had they gotten there. All in all an enjoyable time seemed to be had by everyone (one unlucky player managed to get his character rendered immediately hors de combat in 2 of the 3 big fights -- held by the mages, feared by the demon -- so he probably didn't have as much fun as the rest of us). The tactical play by the players wasn't too great -- they wasted way too much time mapping and exploring around the edges of the level which meant that by the time they figured out the pattern it was too late to really do anything about it, plus they didn't make very good use of their spells and items, leaving a lot of "rounds in the chamber" even when it became clear that we were up against the deadline and there was no reason to save things for later -- plus they blamed their relative failure on the module (scoffing at the notion that it was intended to be completed in 4 hours) rather than their own choices, which bugged me a bit, but those are minor quibbles in the face of a fun afternoon of classic old-school-style play.
The effort of DMing pretty much wore me out, and reminded me that I don't have the fortitude to DM a regular (or even semi-regular) campaign -- I think once a year or so is more my speed.