Tales of Escia
TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 02
Player Characters
Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter
The Premise
As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands yesterday and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.
For the play report of the previous session, click here.
Session 02 - Of talking Spiders and merry Outlaws
TL’DR: The party unexpectedly found a group of soldiers in need of help. Their quest to find an antidote for a poisoned soldier led them to negotiating with a pair of giant black widows and learning more about the goings-on in the region, as well as spending the night in an old thieves guild hideout.
Road Investigation
As was planned in the last session, we began with our party travelling from Margrave Keep to hex 0801.
Hexes on this map are scaled for 24 square miles, so it takes approximately a day to travel from one to the next, unless the journey is impeded by difficult terrain. With hex 0801 being adjacent to Margrave Keep and travelling along the road they came through from Saltmarsh, the party arrived at their destination late in the afternoon.
My dice indicated no random encounter for the day, so they found the location where the webbed merchant cart was discovered without any hold-ups. Being a relatively busy road, any possible tracks since the cart was moved back to Margrave Keep were already mixed with newer ones.
Looking around, Melora and Myr’tacae discovered two things: a female voice screaming in pain, coming from the top of a hill to the west; and an off-road trail, leading to a deeper section of the area to the
east.
With the additional task of looking for the halfling merchants’ missing wife, they decided to head up the hill first.
Landmark Discovery
On top of the hill, the party discovered a ruined tower and a group of five people inside. They were clad in armour and wearing colors they hadn’t seen before at Magrave Keep: a black tower on red ground.
One of them - a human woman - was lying on the ground next to one of three statues, resembling the demigods Aphrodite, Demeter and Hephaistos, and the source of the screams. The four others - three male humans and one male halfling - were standing over her, obviously distressed.
The halfling noticed Merlora and Myr’tacae first and gave his captain a good nudge to the kneecap. My reaction roll told me they’d be wary of the party, but their desperation for their comrade in distress quickly led to them talking about what had happened: Last night while camping, their party was ambushed by giant spiders, with one member ending up wounded and poisoned and another being carried off into the darkness. When asked why they didn’t bring the poisoned soldier to Margrave Keep for
healing, the captain responded that doing so would most certainly lead to the lot of them ending up on the gallows, since they aren’t welcome there.
To the Nest!
Alton Crang the halfling had an idea how to cure the poisoning, but his captain wouldn’t let him try it, because it involved tracking the spiders and extract their venom from their body to cook up an antidote. When Melora and Myr’tacae agreed to help, the captain gave in and allowed Alton and the two other soldiers to go with them. When talking about how to extract the poison, Alton suggested Melora and Myr could try to talk to the spiders, rather than killing them off.
On their way from the tower, Alton shared that he knew where the spider nest was located, because him and his group regularly travel these hills. It didn’t take long for them to arrive at a grove of web-covered dead trees, hidden in a valley.
Standing before the massive Nest, Melora and Myr debated on how to best approach the spiders, with Alton stressing that he made a joke, since everyone knows that animals aren’t supposed to be talking.
Heading deeper inside, the group found remains of spider eggs and
two humanoid sized cocoons. Just as Myr’tacae was approaching the cocoons, two giant black widow spiders descended from the webs and barred her way, demanding to know what they were doing here.
Surprised by the fact that these spiders indeed were talking to them, Melora took the lead and explained the situation. My reaction roll again told me the spiders would be wary but willing to negotiate, so they told Melora that they were only attacking the soldiers because they needed something to eat and that the poisoning of one of them was only in self defense. Melora offered some honey in exchange for their venom, which the spiders accepted.
Too baffled by the spiders’ apparent sentience, Alton forsook any plan to attack them, instead asking to take their abducted comrade back with them. The spiders told him that it was already too late for that, but that they were free to take his belongings back with them. Myr took his broken shield as a token of proof and they left the nest in
(relative) peace.
Return to the Tower
On their way back, Melora and Myr’tacae asked Alton about the halflings’ group and their conflict with Margrave Keep. He told them that the keep originally was property of the Addercapper family, before Lord Brackenwold gifted it to Commander Margrave a few years back. She arrived at the keep with her soldiers and gave the Addercappers the choice of leaving quietly or be executed for insubordination.
Outnumbered, the current head of the Addercapper family, Katerynne, chose the former option and has been living in the hills with her loyal entourage ever since. They make their living by stealing from the keep and its associates, but Alton stressed they only ever take as much as they need and try to avoid violence whenever possible. The reports of attacks on merchans are, according to him, not about them.
Dinner and Goodbye
Back at the tower, Alton started cooking up an antidote right away, while Melora and Myr talked to his captain again. He introduced himself as Molly Fraggleton and invited them to stay for dinner. They could also keep the broken shield as payment, as it would prove to be a helpful piece of equipment, once repaired.
Melora and Molly talked at length about the beekeeping and honeymaking and how it could provide the Addercappers a way to trade with merchants rather than stealing from them. Molly was intrigued by her expertise and promised to at least propose the idea to Katerynne.
When wondering about the untouched offerings lying before the three demigod statues, Molly told the party that the tower was supposedly used as a hideout by the thieves guild, although he and his group have never actually encountered anyone here.
After dinner, the soldiers headed home to their encampment, providing Melora and Myr’tacae with its location , should they ever want to trade or need
their help.
Cellar exploration
After the soldiers left, Myr took a stroll around the tower to look for a good place to spend the night and under some rubble discovered a hidden door leading to a cellar below the tower.
Inside, they found one door that proved too stuck to move, and another leading to a small but hopefully safe enough room to sleep in. During the night they heard the cry of an eagle outside (my rolled omen of an random encounter) and noticed their fire moving in a draft of air. Myr looked for the origin of the draft and found the eastern wall of the room to be an illusion, hiding a passage to another room deeper within. The room, which contained several sleeping rolls and a large chest filled with gold and gems, seemed to have been unsused for quite some time as everythin was covered by a thick layer of dust.
Happy about having found a more comfortable place to sleep and their newfound treasure, Melora and Myr’tacae went to bed.
Closing thoughts
This is where we ended the session, again with 15 minutes left to talk about other things.
We determined the XP gained in the session (1165xp for the gold plus 480xp for exploration per PC) and where they plan to go the next session - further westwards to look for the missing halfling, Pearl.
Overall, the players discovered the landmark (tower ruin) and hidden thing (spider nest) in hex 0801, which just leaves its secret feature to uncover. They also got directions to the secret feature of hex 0902, the Addercapper camp.
Most of the sessions RP vibes were determined by the NPC’s reaction rolls, which I’ve come to embrace for all my recent games, and which proved to generally fall into the partys favor.
I like using the Mausritter reaction table on the left over the actual OSE one on the right, because as you can see, it tends to give even more opportunities to parley with a possible enemy, which serves quite nicely for our type of play.
See you in two weeks. =)
Tales of Escia
TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 01
Player Characters
Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter
The Premise
As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands yesterday and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.
Session 01 - The Beginning
TL’DR: The player characters arrived at Margrave Keep after receiving a call for help in the town of Saltmarsh: they are to investigate a series of attacks on merchants and abductions of the keeps populace. The group got their bearings and met most major NPCS at the keep, before settling down for the night in the sleeping room of the Stinking Ogre tavern. This was a 100% RP session.
Arrival at Margrave Keep
The session began with the PCs arriving at Margrave Keep, passengers on a merchant cart, after hearing of a call for help in the coastal town of Saltmarsh, located about 5 days of travel to the west: The keeps Commander seeks a neutral party to investigate a series of recent attacks on merchants and travelers, as well as disappearances of people in the vicinity of Margrave Keep.
Still flying the banner of Brackenwold, Margrave Keep is located at the northwestern border of the earldom of Albann. Six months prior, the former ruler of the peninsula, Lord Brackenwold, had to give up this part of his land to Count Albann, by decree of the twin emperors of Courland. As part of the division, the hills around Margrave Keep were defined as the new border and for the time being, the keep remains staffed with its former inhabitants.
At the gate, the party was met by Brackenwold soldiers of the Knights of the Golden Promise - remains of Lord Brackenwolds army, consisting mostly of breggles (goatfolk) from the Dolmenwood region far to the east - and granted access to the keep.
The Stinking Ogre
They started to get their bearing around the keep by visiting the local tavern, the Stinking Ogre, meeting the dwarven barkeep Dombo Barkhop, as well as grimalkin noble Madame Pusskin - first claw and ambassador of King Pusskin of Dolmenwood - while talking about their reasons for arriving at the keep.
Mme. Pusskin stated her task of retrieving a lost sword, stolen from another grimalkin noble in the area not long ago. Unfortunately for her, she was the only person around when the task was issued and forbidden to return to court until the sword was found, and had no one to delegate to - until now. She offered 100gp to the party, should they come across the sword in the course of their investigation and return it to her.
Dombo mainly talked about the issues around the keep, as well as warning of the dangers in the surrounding area. As the barkeep, he was the main source of local rumors. He
also showed interest in Melora adding honey to her ale and offered to name the drink after her, should it prove popular with his customers.
Audience with the Commander
Afterwards, the group decided to visit the keep fortress and met Commander Malgrave - an ageing, too-old-for-this-shit breggle - and her advisor Woken-Too-Soon - a dolmenwoodian elf - and talked long about investigating the attacks and missing people. Commander Margrave explained why she needs a neutral party: the locals are starting to blame a group of demihumans that are known to have a settlement somewhere in the area and, until recently, regularly came to the keep to trade. She doesn’t have the manpower to start a large-scale search and wants to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.
They advised the group to talk to the locals for more details of the attacks and disappearances and also bid them to keep an eye out for the keeps mage, who went missing a week or so ago.
Talking with the locals
Next, the group went to the merchants quarter of the keep, where they found the local trader Fennig Cornicus - a breggle - arguing with the merchant they arrived with. Fennig had little additional information about the missing people and wares, except that a few days ago, a patrol discovered an abandoned cart southwest of the keep with its cargo untouched, covered in webs.
They then went to the local provisioner, Cori Brandywood - a halfling - and learned that his wife Pearl is one of the people reported missing. Three weeks ago, she went looking for herbs southwest of the keep and never came back. His own search unsuccessful, the guards and soldiers couldn’t be bothered looking for her and Cori strongly voiced his opinion and disappointment of them and was glad that finally somebody showed interest in investigating the issue.
They also talked about the culinary preferences of goblins, since reports involving them reported only stolen foodstuffs, but little else. Cori suggested they buy a pack of rations from him, for themselves or as a bargaining chip.
Having rolled up a whopping 12+2gp after choosing their background and starting equipment, Melora and Myr started discussing the price of 5gp for the rations. Cori, glad that someone was finally willing to look for his wife, took pity on them and offered a payment in increments: 50% now and 50% when they return his wife. The rations still ate up a good part of the groups funds.
Return to the Stinking Ogre
With the day nearing its end, Melora and Myr returned to the Stinking Ogre, and there overheard another group of adventurers discussing a bounty issued by the local guild house: hunt a certain basilisk and earn 250gp.
To save some money, the party decided to sleep in the taverns hammock room, the cheapest option availabe.
Closing thoughts
This is where we ended the session, with 15 minutes left to talk about other things. I briefly explained the downtime rules (we’ll be using Ben Laurences Downtime in Zyan as a base) and we decided on giving the PCs the opportunity to spend a week or more on downtime activities whenever we end a session in a safe haven.
Overall, I think we got a lot done in the relatively short time of play, even if it was a pure roleplaying session. I basically got to dish out every hook and rumor I had prepared for this session, with all of them coming up organically during roleplay - no rolls needed.
It certainly helps that we’re an established play group, every one of us having played with (and GM’d for) the others before. Aside from re-establishing some starting facts, everything went smoothly fast and the PCs already show a lot of character after one session.
The players already decided to go look for Pearl and the location
where the webbed merchant cart was found next, starting their exploration of the surrounding lands.
See you in two weeks. =)
On Bucket Lists and fighting the real enemy: Time Management
The Dilemma
What to do, if you’re like me and have hoarded a lot of adventure modules and settings (not unlike a dragon, actually) and realize you’ll probably never find the time to play them all properly, because we’re not kids anymore and time management became the arch enemy of ongoing longtime play?
In my case, (part of) my current bucket list consists of four things:
- I want to play more Old-School Essentials and collected quite a lot of adventure modules for it.
- I want to run some “classic” AD&D modules like B2 - Keep on the Borderlands, mainly because I enjoy Seth Skorkowskys AD&D reviews a lot.
- I want to run a Dolmenwood game, because I love what Gavin Norman cooked up with this setting.
- I backed Wildendrem - The Valley of Flowers on Kickstarter and I enjoyed reading the book and its ideas.
That is a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Possibly years of play with multiple groups and every organizing issue that may come with this.
Complicating the issue further: I also run a game set in Eberron and I am a player in two regular campaigns.
So, what to do, other than surrendering to fate and accepting that some things simply aren’t meant to be?
The Solution
Now, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here and a lot of more eloquent people have elaborated these things on their blogs before, but here’s my approach.
Pt. 1 - The Setup
Take the best parts and mash ’em together! Luckily for me, all of the above are quite similar in theme and tone, or can be relatively easy modified to fit them. I wrote up a minimalist setting and did what every sensible GM would do: Stuff. Everything. Into. It.
The result is a hexcrawl with a total of 130 hexes, filled to the brim with Landmarks, Hidden Things and Secrets, consisting of adventure module parts, Locations from Dolmenwood and the Valley of Flowers and other things, in a Dune-like setup.
In total, there are dungeons, villages, NPCS, monsters and points of interest from 40 different sources in it. It’s dense.
In fact, it’s almost certainly overkill. We probably still won’t
be able to see everything, but we’ll decide together what we’re most interested in and take it from there.
But first and foremost, it’s a toolbox. It took a lot of work to fill it, but now it’s ready to be used. Doesn’t matter when. Almost doesn’t matter where. Even if this experiment doesn’t work out now, I can use it again anytime in the future.
The framework is an Excel sheet in my google drive with multiple pages, like this:
It contains everything I need to run a game, aside from individual module texts.
Pt. 2 - Find interested players
Two players of my regular game were interested in trying this out with me. Admittedly, that is a small group, but it helps immensely with time management and getting the game going.
Since they didn’t want to run several PCs at the same time, it poses a challenge when most of the adventure models are designed with a party of 6-8 PCs in mind.
In our Session Zero, I proposed some houserules, like adapting the Luck-Attribute from DCC and thus the possibility to find a downed PC still alive if a LCK-Check was successful.
The latest KNOCK! issue contained an article originating from a blog article by Joseph Manola about playing OSR D&D in a romantic fantasy narrative. Our group liked the concept, so we’ll try it out. The game focus hence will be more on the social side of things, rather than combat, further alleviating the
smaller PC count, although henchmen and helpful NPCs will still be around.
Pt. 3 - Time management
If I’ve learned anything from my ongoing Eberron game of two years, it’s that for us, a regular, bi-weekly date helps immensely with planning when everyone involved knows what day they need to keep free of other activities. Playing remote certainly helps a lot as well.
So, naturally, we’re going with this approach again. We also decided to only plan for two hours of play, leaving more wiggle room if LIFE decides to throw stones in our path. That way, it will hopefully be like watching a movie.
Almost everyone can make time to watch a movie together.
Closing thoughts
This is an experiment. And it’s a fun and promising one. Maybe it won’t work out. But even then, I’ve learned a lot and I don’t regret having put in the work I did. Maybe I’ll start writing session reports in this here blog, further elaborating on elements and techniques I use.
We decided to begin with B2 - Keep on the Borderlands, starting tomorrow. I’m excited to see how it goes. :)
Further reading:
W. F. Smith wrote a brilliant guide on creating hexcrawls over on his blog Prismatic Wasteland: Part 1 & Part 2
Further elaborations on playing in a romantic fantasy narrative by Joseph Manola on his blog Against the Wicked City: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 (To my players: Please don’t read Part 4, yet. ;))
Alternate starting equipment for B/X and adjacent games
I’ll be honest: as a DM I dislike the equipment buying phase of character generation. It slows down the game and players generally seem overwhelmed by the possible choices and not knowing what they could and should buy. Or they end up buying only basic stuff like armor and weapons and then find themselves missing torches, rope or other utility items.
In Mausritter, this is solved by comparing your mouses HP with your starting pips (the games’ currency). X HP and Y Pips gives you Z equipment. Generally, the lower your HP are, the better the equipment is, to boost your mouses survivability and give them something useful to play with. What B/X also notoriously lacks are character backgrounds, their occupations or careers they had before heeding the call of adventure. You know, something to give the players a hint of who this character is and how to roleplay them.
So, for my planned B/X home campaign, I wrote down a list of backgrounds and the range of attainable HP on B/X level 1. Comparing the two gives a set of starting equipment, with lower values getting more and possibly more or less useful items. I also included quite a lot of pets, because what player doesn’t like to have a dog or cat accompanying them? Since reading Mausritter, I also fell in love with slot-based encumbrance rules, with which the list also comes in handy, as it contains 3-5 items (plus possible additional slots from extra bags or backpacks) and still leaves enough space for gathering treasure while exploring the world.
Starting Equipment Table
If you want to copy it, you can find an html version of the table here.
As you might have noticed, there are a lot of possible cooking ingredients in there, because I also recently fell in love with the manga Delicious in Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi) and the idea of making cooking up meals a part of the game. In my game, I’ll be using a variation of the suggested mechanics described by Skerples.
Hello, world! :)
As this years Boggies winner SachaGoat said in his acceptance speech on Zedeck Siews tumblr: “If you’ve shared your prep with a fellow DM… if you’ve contributed opinions on a ttrpg discord or forum… if you’ve read a blog post and have a thought that builds on it… if you have any tabletop advice or ideas … 👏 Start 👏 a 👏 blog”
Sooo, I’ll took his advice to heart and made a blot.im account. This here blog will serve as a playground while I get accustomed to working with github and Markdown writing, so expect things to be rough and change every once in a while. My last experience writing something in HTML was over 20 years ago in school. :’D
Maybe I can find the motivation to write up some stuff regularly. Share my thoughts on RPG design. Write a review or about the prep methods I’m using for my games. We’ll see. :)