Tales of Escia

TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 05

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 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 05 - Goblin BBBQ (the extra B is for BYOBB)

TL’DR: Beagle-Kobolds! A Cooking Mini game! Goblins and Kobolds bonding over food! This session had it all.

BBQ preparation

We decided to turn back time a little and start the session a short while after the battle in the goblin caves, instead of the next morning, to play out the baboon BBQ.
As the food still took a good while to prepare, the party decided to pay the kobold caves on the opposite side of the ravine a visit, to possibly get more information about the goings-on at the demihuman encampment and the whereabouts of the halfling merchant’s wife.

Kobold Birthday Party

Dandelion led them to the entry of the kobold caves, where they found some small wooden signs with “Kep owt” and the like written on them, but no guards to greet them.
Heading deeper into the dark and narrow cave, which barely allowed the human-sized PCs to walk upright, they soon heard celebratory noises from deeper within. They followed the sounds to the camps’ common room, where the light of their torch revealed a gathering of 17 dog-like humanoids sitting around a table, with an eighteenth sitting on a chair placed on top of it.
Although nearly blinded by the torchlight, my reaction roll was in favor of the party, so I had the head-kobold, a beagle-like fellow with silver fur approach them. The celebratory mood clearly being an advantage for the party, he asked them if they came to also celebrate Snoots (the kobold on the chair) birthday. Smitten by their doglike appearance, Myr’tacae and Melora played along and joined the celebrating kobolds, which were just about to start howling a birthday song for Snoot, who was shifting in her chair - visibly uncomfortable, as one does in such situations - waiting for her ordeal to be over.
Melora and Myr’tacae awkwardly joined in the “song”, both characters’ successful Charisma checks preventing them from making fools of themselves. Afterwards, they talked at length with Ukba, the silver furred kobold about what happened at the goblin den and proposed the kobolds could join in the feast, building a bond between the two as-of-yet indifferent to each other clans. Ukba meanwhile complained about the kobolds’ relationship with the orcs living right above them, their newfound agression towards each other and smaller races being the reason for the kobolds’ seclusion in their cave. He could confirm the sighting of the hooded man, adding that he never saw him arrive or leave and another kobold chimed in to report his sighting of white clothes, possibly a robe, and a symbol resembling a sun, star or moon underneath the wide black coat.
All the while, Myr’tacae was distracted by the kobolds’ cuteness and proceeded in petting a few of them, and Melora could hardly hide her excitement as well. Snoot asked Ukba to join the goblins feast as a birthday present, a wish he couldn’t decline. After filling a big sack with ingredients from their own storage, Snoot, Ukba and nine other kobolds joined the party in returning to the goblins cave.

A Bonding Moment

Once they arrived back at the goblin camp, the goblins and kobold quickly bonded over their mutual interest in food and the goblin king Redwing, ever the opportunist, quickly seized the moment to officially invite the kobolds to join the feast to celebrate the victory over the baboons and their newfound common ground.
While preparing the food, Melora and Myr’tacae joined the cooking crew to help and make sure they definitely got something edible on their plates. This prompted a quick cooking mini-game inspired by Prismatic Wastelands recent blog post.
The player characters succeeded in cooking something surprisingly tasty, using mostly ingredients from their own rations and the kobolds supply, and as little baboon meat as possible.
The celebrations went on for a long time this evening and Melory and Myr’tacae, along with most of the kobolds, fell asleep among their newfound goblin friends.

Scouting the Hill

Come morning, the party decided to get a better picture of the lay of the land. Moving around the ravine and its surrouding hill, they made note of the different cave entrances, before heading to the main entrance to the hobgoblin lair to continue their investigation for Pearl’s whereabouts.
Their scouting efforts seemingly didn’t go unnoticed, because they found a female hobgoblin waiting for them at the entrance. Inticing them to follow her, she went on to a spot hidden from the entrance’s view, waiting for the party to follow.

Closing thoughts

After last sessions’ chaos, this one was more on the calm side. The kobold birthday party was a welcome surprise and helped to bring them and the goblin clan closer together. The players have now unlocked both of their races as available choices for future character creation.
Escian kobolds are the dog-variant, while escian orcs are the pig-variant, because I like their appearance in Dungeon Meshi, and it reminded me of my childhood, especially Zelda’s Moblins in the animated series and older games. Plus, I am a dog owner, and it’s fun to have the kobolds behave just as silly as my beloved Leia. :D

Behold, my own personal Kobold.

While planning the campaign, I knew I wanted the players to have the possibility to cook with different ingredients. As written in my post about alternate starting equipment, I am using Skerples Monster Menu-All for descriptions and food effects.
I originally planned to use the Dungeon Gourmand supplement by occultesque.com mentioned by Skerples, but the site has since been taken offline and after reading Prismatic Wastelands aforementioned blog post, I found the Yahtzee mini-game more fun to use. I did change it to all kind of ingredients using the same d6 size though, so the players have a higher propability to actually trigger the positive effects. I like the idea of a growing dice pool by using more ingredients to increase the chances of, or even enabling beneficial dice combinations in the first place. The players liked it too, so I’m sure it won’t be the last time I used it.

See you next time. =)