Zandan Megadungeon Session 4 - Chaos and Bones

   

Characters

• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Leda (Human Vampire Hunter)
• Grismelda (Human Religious Radical)
• Reynaert (Fox Journalist)
• John (Opossum Trapper)

Session Recap 

    Venturing back into the dungeon proper, the party decide to check back on the locked and barred doors they found in the previous session. Going to the room with the well dressed skeleton bouncers they are told very firmly that they really need to leave and not loiter in the area, which they eventually do and simply go around to the other set of double doors. Just as they're pondering how to approach the problem, a solution presents itself - the gaggle of ten Small Folk guerilla fighters that they met two sessions back end up in the room, and after pleasantries are exchange the party recruits them to help unlock and then bust down the doors. 

The racket unfortunately attracts the attention of a group of ghosts that have wandered off from the party, and a young officer with a lot of bravado starts shit-talking the group, and challenges Leda to a dual of sabers. Leda clearly is a lot stronger, however her strikes simply pass harmlessly through the ghost's ethereal frame. She decides to go for a disarming maneuver on his ghostly sabre, but he sidesteps it and plunges his blade deep into her, knocking her unconscious.  Pleased with having show a dirty peasant her place he goes back to his group and they wander off. With all the commotion the small folk had also left the room, not wanting to deal with the ghosts.

Setting up Leda up against a wall to recover some of her lost power, the group start rummaging through the room, which appears to be a combination of a shrine and a storage room, with piles upon piles of old and half-rotten furniture, rugs, wall tapestries and other crap. Reynaert the fox sniffs out some feint signs of magic among the trash and starts digging, while Flake and Grismelda mess around with the shrine. They find that there is a pocket of raw Primal Chaos swirling around right in front of an abstract statue that represents it (how appropriate), and end up with a smooth stone out of the whole thing (later turns out this is a Soup Stone. You boil it in water and it makes soup. The group donate it to the Domovoi camp), and Grismelda spends several turns staring into the chaos statue, her understanding of it growing deeper at the expense of getting rather dizzy and making her less precise in her actions.

Finally, Reynaert digs up a strange shard of crystal which he realizes he can use as an improvised sword. Satisfied with their finds the group pack up and head north to the shimmering staircase that leads deeper into the dungeon. Once they get down to the next floor, the atmosphere is clearly different. 

The walls of the room are covered not with the usual primordial bas reliefs, but instead skulls and bones, millions of them all mortared into the walls. 

They also discover a pair of fountains, one with a deep purple, almost black liquid that smells of sickly sweet rot, and one with a thick, milky-like liquid. Grismelda, in her Goo Drinker way, takes a sip from the black one while Leda takes one from the white. Leda's body is wracked with pain as bone plates burst out and cover her skin. While they are hard and provide natural armor, they also end up messing around with her ability to wield her sabre correctly. Grismelda, on the other hand, simply falls unconscious and can not be woken up.

Leaving Leda to look after her, the rest of the party head up one of the nearby staircases and explore more of the dungeon, taking a while to navigate a room where the bones int the wall are shaped like spikes and make traversing the room very slow. While that is happening, Leda is visited by more ghosts. These ones tho appear to be revolutionaries, communists and freedom fighters, who recognize a fellow soul in her and give her some warnings and advice. They tell her that she and her friends have entered the domain of the Patriarch of Bones, that he claims all beings that have died as his servants and thralls. They also tell her that Grismelda will die from the liquid she ingested unless she is brought to a magician who can heal her.  They reiterate the danger of the Pesoglavi, and confirm that they do in fact work with the Red Caps to liberate them from their fate. 

Thankful for the help and the information, Leda rushes to warn the rest of the group that they should leave (which they do proceeding to slowly make their way back, having only made it halfway through the room of spikes). However as they return to the staircase, they find they are not alone. Grismelda's body is surrounded by four goat cultists, who clearly had plans for her, but when they see the group they attack them head on. Flake scares away one of them, and the rest engage the cultists in some close quarters stabbing and pushing, eventually defeating them and killing all three, taking their goat headdresses for themselves and lugging Grismelda's body back to camp.

They get Anya the Healer, a prominent member of the camp, to use magic to heal Grismelda, and set about doing their down time procedures, happy with the fact that they had taken out three more of the goat cultists and excited to have learned more about the dungeon.

 

 Observations 

    This session was kind of a roller-coaster. Initially it looked like I would have only one player (which is fine by me), then two more joined kind of last minute. As such I let everyone decide if they wanted to run one or two characters, which two players did, but one decided to just use a single one instead. Re-threading previously explored rooms also helped them realize errors in their map, which I had made a point to not correct them on (as their map was not unusable or anything, just not quite correct on the dimensions of the rooms). They almost ended up heading into the cultist territory again because of map misunderstandings, but managed to correct it this time and found the right way. 

Also the party have now breached level 2 of the dungeon! The goo drinking continued, mostly working out well for Grismelda.....until it didn't and she drank what is, effectively, poison. Luckily for her the black fountain does not kill anyone instantly, and as long as there was someone left to drag her back to the camp she would have been fine.

The other thing of note was that there were so many more encounters this time around. Which was curious, previous sessions would go for dozens of turns with one, or even no encounters at all, this one had 4! I also loved that I got to use both of my Dungeon Regulars encounters (those are always on a 7), which I had previously determined would be the small folk squad that are patrolling the dungeon and were thus friendly to the party, and the cultists who were explicitly looking for the party. 

It helped provide some good contrast between friendly and hostile encounters, with a 50/50 split. The ghostly communists could have been an outright kill on Leda and Grismelda, had they been hostile, however the dice were incredibly generous with the reaction roll so instead the party got some information and the lay of the land. One of the players also explicitly mentioning that they liked that they got to learn more about the dungeon itself. 

All in all this was a good, straightforward session, and it's exactly what one wants out of a session in a mgedungeon campaign - some exploration, finding new things, getting good magical loot, fighting some enemies and leveraging previous encounters in the campaign to one's benefit. 

 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 3
Enemies Defeated: 4 Goat Cultists 
Characters Dead: None

Zandan Megadungeon Session 3 - The ghost party

  

Characters

• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Leda (Human Vampire Hunter)
• Rabbit the White (Rabbit Professional Wizard's Familiar)
• Boris (Human Religious Radical)
• John (Opossum Trapper)
• Zlatia (Human Troglodyte) 

Session Recap 

Before the party heads out, they realize they don't really have any consistent light aside from the jar of glowing grubs. Having helped around camp they very politely ask to borrow one of the gas lanterns, which they get with the agreement they should bring it back in one piece and ideally without wasting too much fuel.

Without any clear direction or plan, the group decide to spend some more time exploring their surroundings, heading north west and finding some kind of high-society ghostly party, guarded by a pair of skeletons dressed in incredibly fancy clothes and incredibly heavy armor. The skeletons give the party one look over and immediately know that this ragtag group has no invitations to the party, but through some quick thinking Flake declares that they are actually entertainers. The skeletons don't entirely buy it, but are also not really paid enough to care beyond this, and the group looks mostly harmless, so they let them pass.

At the ghostly party the group tries to socialize and  talk to some of the guests, who are generally polite enough, but seem to not show much interest and get easily distracted. The party is looked over by the stern statue of a skeleton dressed in priestly robes and a fancy crown. Leda, Boris and John all decide to help themselves to the amazing  (if slightly transparent and ghostly) looking food and drinks. They each feel some of their Strength seep away from them, but their Metaphysical attributes become a bit more pronounced. They also are now very slightly transparent. Not as much as the ghosts, but more than they are normally used to.

After spending some time faffing about in the party room they keep exploring the place, finding a staircase leading deeper into the dungeon, and a statue of a one-eyed hunched out crone dressed in rags.Flake examines the statue for magical vibes, quickly realizing that this is an image of the Liho, a powerful spirit of bad luck and indeed the statue gives off majorly bad vibes. Almost to prove his point Leda gets attacked by the very darkness of the shadows in the room as soon as they came in, only barely managing to jump away before it grabs her.

Shaken the group keep looping back towards familiar territory. As they enter the next room (which has closed doors on all sides save the hallway they came in from) the dungeon itself gives off a sigh, a gust of wind seeming to materialize out of nowhere and nearly blowing away their lamp's flame (luckily the glass protects it). At that John just gets overwhelmed with stress and turns stiff as a board, doing his opossum thing of turning dead. The party are slightly concerned, but decide that he'll be fine.

They try and fail to open a pair of rusted up doors, but between the lock and the bar from the other side, they don't have much luck and the group of mostly tiny animal people does not exactly have a lot of brawn to help break the door down.

Heading back into familiar territory, the  group decide to head north-east, into the territory of the goat cultists. However the cultists have been on high alert ever since the encounter with the party in session 1  and so immediately rush them. Rabbit, who's in the nearby room manages to scare one away using some magic, and the group rushes back to try and get away, however the cultists are hot on their heels.

Desperate times calling for desperate measures, Boris takes out one of his makeshift firebombs, lights and throws it at the incoming cultists. The bomb bursts into a flaming puddle on the floor, however it ends up being mostly a show rather than doing any real harm. It does however dissuade the cultists for long enough that the party can disengage and hightail it back to the camp.  

 

 Observations 

Only three players in this session, so everyone got to play 2 characters each instead of just 1. After all the Tunnels & Trolls rulebook would often point out that small player groups with 2-4 characters each is often a preferred way of play, so we're keeping with the spirit of the thing.

The group has had a fairly consistent turn over due to people traveling, and as such there was a very interesting dynamic at play where one of the players was around for last session, but not session 1, while the other two brand new. So she could only remember some info that others told her, but not all of it, and between getting confused with her own map (partially down to her own mapping, partially due to me kind of making things confusing the previous session) the group ended up going towards the goat cultists when they had explicitly hoped to avoid them! 

The fire bomb was a hell of a play too. I told the player that if he failed his Precision roll to throw it, the bomb would also hit the party as well, since his targets were basically right on top of them. He succeed the roll only by virtue of the Humans' special ability to succeed on rolls they would miss by just 1 point (a thing I have always wanted to include as a special power or ability in a game), and then proceeding to throw three 1s on the 3d6 damage for the bomb. Still, while it didn't wipe out the cultists (a good possibility), it at least saved the party so that was worth it.

Overall the session was relatively short, as players took the time to chat with the ghost party, but they did explore some more uncharted territory, which does contribute towards the exploration Adventure Points goal, so progress was still made. 

 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 5
Enemies Defeated: None! 
Characters Dead: Also none! 

 

Zandan Megadungeon, Session 2 - Drinking the Goo

 

Characters

• Hoot (Owl Primal Chaos Worshiper)
• Varg (Wolf Troglodyte)
• Flake (Owl Village Spirit)
• Grismelda (Human Religious Radical) 

Session Recap 

During their downtime in the Domovoi Camp, Hoot and Varg get some more info from the "locals". Hoot agrees to spend several downtimes apprenticing and assisting to Anya the Healer, who in exchange will teach him a spell that can transfer the life force from one person to another. Varg learns that Gargaram the half-giant is willing to teach magic too, however in exchange he wants a flask of the black ooze the party found in the hidden shrine on the previous level of the dungeon. 

Further more, two members of the camp, Flake and Grismelda, agree to join the party in exploring the dungeon.

 Heading back up to Depth 0 of the dungeon, and decide to stop in the conical room in which all of them emerged in the dungeon, in order to partake in some corpse pilfering and rummage through the pile of corpses and trash. Hoot manages to find a sword and a decent looking shepherd's axe, Grismelda finds a knife and a strange canteen filled with apparently cool and still fizzy sparkling water, and Flake, for her trouble, gets a pin stuck in her arm.

The group then makes their way to the shrine and Grismelda declares that this is a place of importance to The Earth Mother, and shoves a handful of the ooze into her mouth. The ooze burns as it goes down, but makes her feel more in tune with the unnatural ambience of the Zandan. The darkness no longer feels as alien and concerning. The rest of the party are a bit less enthusiastic about all of it, and instead fill up some bottles, flasks and Grismelda's fancy canteen with the black ooze and head back down.

Returning to Depth 1, they decide to explore the southern side of the dungeon, finding rooms of varying degrees of dampness, a room with a fountain filled with magical water (which Grismelda promptly takes a sip from, only losing a bit of Power for her troubles), and eventually stumble into a small side room with an electric feel of raw magic in the air. 

Hoot, unable to hide his excitement, lights his Chaos Lantern, and in the sickly purple light of the device the group see the swirling colors of manifestation of pure, unformed Chaos. Seeing this as his moment to shine, Hoot performs a spell to invoke the power of Chaos and allow it to take material shape, at which the cloud spits out a fancy looking leather girdle, the only effect of which seems to be to make the already diminutive owl person look even slimmer. 

Flake decide to toss a coin into the chaotic energy, which responds by whipping a tendril of scintillating light back at her. With surprise she finds she know hows how to magically lock doors and containers, and has a bit more weirdness to do so. With this the cloud vanishes, its energies spent and formed into solid reality.

As the group keeps exploring they run into a pair of war bears, seemingly twins, that introduce themselves as Misha and Masha. They seem standoffish and make it clear that they would like the party to get out of their way, not follow them and just generally leave them be. The party take the hint and instead decide to go move a pile of wet rocks in the adjoining room, finding behind it a natural cavern filled with glowing grubs. In the middle of the cavern they spot an odd sight - a greenish blue man with webbed feet and hands, lounging on top of a submerged hut and smoking a pipe. The man introduces himself as Bogdan the Vodnik, and chats with the party, giving them a tour of his submerged home and offering them a jar of glowing grubs (light as candle, but longer lasting) in exchange for a crumpled up cigarette's worth of tobacco that Girsmelda manages to fish out of her pockets. 

Leaving Bogdan's place (and placing some of the rocks back so people won't disturb the vodnik, who in turn also won't just drown and eat any interlopers that stumble in there) the group decide they've given enough space to the weird pair of War Bears and head back to where they were, finding the regular dungeon shift into an overgrown cavern, filled with shrubs and strange trees. Hoot decides to see if he can get some sap from a particularly larger tree, while the others gather sticks they can use to make torches. As he approaches the tree he suddenly gets surrounded by 10 diminutive people, none looking quite the same as the others, and all wearing various red felt hats. The group brandishes knives and declares that nobody move or else the owl gets gutted.

 After successfully diffusing the situation the party get to talk to the fighters, who are escaped slaves of the Pesoglav mines who have been waging guerilla warfare against their much stronger foe, and are currently on this level of the dungeon to find a recent outpost that they heard the Pesoglavi have established. The party agree to keep an eye out and bring back information or, better yet, bring heads of any pesoglavi they slay. The small folk in turn warn the party to be careful, and to avoid the trap they had set, and then proceed to vanish into the bushes to keep laying in ambush. 

 

Continuing onward the party discover a vast cavern filled with vegetation, and a strange green-yellow light permeating the hazy air. Varg's sensitive nose detects the smoke of a campfire, and the party quickly discover a hidden campsite with several hunters. While Hoot and Varg have never met these people, Grismelda and Flake recognize them as hunters from the Domovoi Camp. The group exchange information and chit chat, and offer to bring some of the meat back to camp, which the hunters are thankful for. Warning them of the nearby ambush, the party pack up as much meat as they can carry and head back, along the way stopping to inform the small folk guerillas about the hunters, and also giving them a bit of meat, which the little fighters appreciate. Without much other incident, the group returns to camp to rest and continue on their activities. Hoot and Varg take a drink from the bottled goo, however they realize that its magic does not seem to affect them when not in the shrine itself. They still present a bottle to Gargaram in exchange for the study of magic anyway.

 Observations 

Second session was a lot shorter than the first (7 hours is....a lot. This one was 4), however the party still got quite a bit done. While there were zero fights and the group have not explored enough of this depth to really get the exploration bonus, they managed to run into various NPCs, and get some minor magical trinkets as they snooped around.

That and of course much goo was drunk, and the player was rewarded by some shuffling of attributes and gaining an ability which they have not yet manifested. Reaction rolls were very key in this session - Bogdan the Vodnik can be a very dangerous enemy if found in a foul mood, but he rolled almost as high as possible on his reaction, and so was genuinely friendly with the weird gaggle of talking animals that showed up at his home, even willing to trade with them.

The group were a lot faster this time around, not lingering in one spot too long unless they needed to, and just generally trying to avoid fights if they could (which was wise, considering they were relatively squishy and not well armed). 

The party again had insane luck with only rolling 1 random encounter for the 26 turns they spent exploring the dungeon! Honestly I never understand when people complain about random encounters in games, I rarely seen any and in these two session so far there have been even fewer than normal! And this is pretty standard 1in-6 chance per turn too! 

Not much else to really mention about the session, except that the way I handle experience (in this case called Adventure Points) in this game leads to odd moments where the entire party have not earned any actual XP (no combat, no exploration bonus), but between all the spellcasting and saving rolls involved in exploring the place characters did get some AP of their won anyway. It's something I am keeping an eye on, since while this is a levelless system, it is important to keep track of just how fast or slow characters can grow, and whether I need to adjust things. 

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 7
Enemies Defeated: None! 
Characters Dead: Also none! 

 

Pesoglavi

 

Taken from Wikipedia, art by Nadezhda Antipova

 

The Psoglav (or Pesoglav as I write it, because it rolls off the tongue better) is a chimeric creature, having the head of a dog (with one eye), the body of a man and the legs of a horse. They also have very sharp teeth made of iron. 

Living in the deep and dark caverns of the underworld, where they hoard precious gems and are known to be man-eaters, digging and consuming the corpses of people, they make for ideal enemies in a dungeon, which is why I use them in mine. Below I present to you stats for using them in B/X and in Tunnels & Trolls. 

B/X or OSE Stats

Pesoglav Feral 

AC:  As Leather (7 DAC 12 AAC)

HD: 3+

Attacks:  2x Claws (1d4), Iron Bite (2d6)

To Hit: +3 

Saving Throws: As Fighter

Description: Feral Pesoglavi are little more than animals, running around naked and attacking anyone they are directed to in a deranged frenzy. They are used as shock troops by the other Pesoglavi, but can also sometimes be found serving as familiars and attack dogs for evil witches, sinister magicians or bankers. 

Pesoglav Warrior

AC:  As Chain+Shield (4 DAC 15 AAC)

HD: 5+

Attacks:  Weapon (1d8), Iron Bite (2d8)

To Hit: +4

Saving Throws: As Fighter

Description: Warriors dress in clothes and armor, often armed with spears, swords, axes and a shield. They too also attack in a deranged frenzy. They serve as the rank and file troops of the Great Wolf and utterly despise all beings that are not Pesoglav, the weak and small among them the most. They delight in torturing and devouring small folk like dwarves, halflings or gnomes.

Pesoglav Leader

AC:  As Plate (3 DAC 16 AAC)

HD: 6++

Attacks:  [Weapon (1d8+1), Iron Bite (2d8)] or Howl

To Hit: +7

Saving Throws: As Fighter

Description: Leaders and captains, often operating with ruthless violence (though they will also occasionally just attack in a deranged frenzy if the mood takes them). They are even more cruel and vicious than the warriors serving under them, but also possess a lot more cunning than the usual foot soldier. 

Special Abilities

Iron Bite: If this attack beats the enemy's Armor Class by 5 or more that enemy must immediately make a Save vs Death. On a failure the Pesoglav bites off one of their limbs (up to the referee to decide which one), destroying any armor the character is wearing and causing them to immediately go into shock and fall unconscious. That character will die within 1 turn if the wound is not closed and healed in some way. 

Howl:  The Pesoglav leader opens engagements they're in by emitting a loud, terrifying howl. All living things that are not Pesoglav within a 40ft radius must immediately make a Save vs Spell or freeze in terror, unable to act within the next 1d2 rounds of combat.

Tunnels & Trolls Stats 

Pesoglav generally have about 20 to 22 Monster Rating, with more powerful ones like warriors or leaders having 26 to 30 MR and have Armor 1 to 3. Leaders and their direct subordinates might also known spells.  Similarly to the above, all Pesoglavi have their Iron Bite, and leaders have their Howl.

Iron Bite:  Spite Damage from Pesoglav combatants permanently reduces the Armor of the enemy hit. For every 4+ Spite rolled in a single round of combat, a pesoglav tries to bite off the limb off a combatant. The person hit makes a Saving Roll on Luck (level as appropriate for the dungeon) to avoid it. If they fail they lose a limb, half of their maximum Constitution and immediately fall unconscious and will die within the next turn if not healed in some way. 

Howl:  Used at the beginning of a fight, the Pesoglav leader lets out a terrifying howl. Everyone who can hear it make a Saving Roll on Charisma. If failed they freeze in terror, unable to act in the next 1d2 rounds of combat.

 

Appendix J - Inspirations and Influences

Apparently the current bandwagon was started by Marcia B. and is about people writing a post with their own personal "Appendix N" style of inspirations and/or influences.

Now me, I don't really have a broader one available, as I draw from different sources for different games I want to run, but I already had one written up about the inspiration for my Zandan megadungeon that I just started, so here goes! 

• The Woodland Folks series, Tony Wolf - Broad inspiration as an artist and illustrator, as well as a taste in fantasy, full of both whimsical and yet rational interactions between things. The books also did not shy away from getting kind of dark with death and harm coming for characters. Really good children’s books overall!

 

• Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness, The Coles - Big inspiration for fantasy adventuring with a Slavic folklore theme. Again, a mixture of fun and lighthearted with dark, brooding and dangerous. Also the artistic direction for the Monastery of the Dark One in Mordavia I directly lifted in how I describe the walls of my megadungeon.

 

• The works of Ivan Bilibin, notably his illustration of Pushkin’s fairy tales - A real titan of illustration as far as I am concerned, Bilibin’s art and visual language are stunning and beautiful, instantly recognizable in their mix of bold line work and detailed and ornamented borders. 

 

• The Hill Cantons, Chris Kutalik - Channeling a lot of the same as the above - a mixture of comedic, absurd and yet serious, a genuinely earnest understanding of living in a Slavic country, rare even among the people in those countries, let alone outsiders. A huge, continual inspiration for everything OSR that I do, and also the reason why I have included War Bears in basically every game I've run, save for BSSS. (And I kind of regret not having them there too).

 

• Bulgarian Folk Traditions and Beliefs, Racho Slaveykov - A book on, well, Bulgarian folk beliefs and traditions, written over a century ago and detailing practices and ideas from a century prior to it. The language, now sounding dated and slightly comedic, also conveys the author’s occasional bafflement at his own countrymen’s archaic practices. Immensely funny in places and offering a great example of the weirdness of actual folk beliefs when not trying to be filtered by romantic nostalgia for “the good old days”. 

 

• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, The DCSS design team - Honestly traditional roguelikes in general, but DCSS in particular, have been an inspiration with their dungeon-crawling focused gameplay, immense megadungeons and outright weirdness of what can be put into a fantasy game. Hunting down the tabletop origins of this style of play is what eventually lead me to the OSR, and it was thus natural that my own megadungeon attempt would be influenced by them in turn.

Zandan Megadungeon, Session 1 - So it begins

 

Characters

• Luna Berryfang (War Bear Bogatyr) 
• Hoot (Owl Primal Chaos Worshiper)
• Varg (Wolf Troglodyte)
• Igor Lazarovich (Human Solar Priest)

Session Recap 

The party consisting of Igor the solar priest, Hoot the owl Chaos Worshiper ( already quite the the pair), Varg the Wolf cave dweller and Luna, the Bear Bogatyr (normally not a combination available, but allowed due to nobody spotting the error early enough) awoke in a conical room flooded with blood red light, upon a pile of corpses and junk. No memory in how they got here, and no way out in sight, they proceeded to explore the mysterious dungeon they had found themselves in.

 In the process they ran into a pair of old ghosts and their nobleman son, who tried to fight them after freaking out, but the party easily dispatched them (later in the session also destroying the nobleman's remains by shooting him with his own pistol, and finally banishing the ghosts), ran into a strange overgrown cave filled with plants that defied any actual categorization (and also having a mysterious pit leading down into the darkness of the dungeon) and explored a giant mural on a wall, which hid a secret compartment under the giant wood stove that the nobleman lived on. Luna used her unnaturally cold paws (a side effect of he magical blue ice hair that she started the game with) to pick up the incredibly hot iron case which contained some good weapons and a fancy hat.

The stove itself was quite ornery, belching flames at anyone who tried to approach it.

The party however decided to avoid the impressive double bronze doors leading further into the dungeon, instead deciding to circumnavigate it by going through the obvious side tunnel. In that obvious side tunnel Igor the priest, who was at the head of the group, stepped on a trip wire and a whole mess of pots, pans, knives and other metal junk fell on his head, knocking him out (12 hits out of 12 CON). Luckily the party were in no immediate danger and managed to drag him out, and let him rest a bit to regain his consciousness, but for the rest of the session he was effectively a walking vegetable, unable to really do much except slowly shuffle in a direction and just offer advice in a weak voice. 

I do, Bateman. I do. 

The group decided to instead explore the rest of the floor, finding a hidden compartment leading behind a curious pair of locked metal doors, where they discovered a shrine to some kind of unknown deity, its statue eroded and smoothed by the into a vague shape. They thought better than to drink the strange magical black ooze belching forth from the two cauldrons near the statue, but grabbed some in a bottle just in case. 

Eventually they made their way down the shimmering staircase and into the proper first floor of the dungeon. Finding themselves in a round room with three doors, they decided to take the one with least signs of being used regularly, finding themselves eventually in a natural cavern, with a warm welcoming fire and nine rather odd welcoming people, each dressed in slightly worn out clothes and wearing goat-themed headgear. The people invited the group to sit and rest, gave them some food, and eventually through the conversation the group said they would like to see the Goat that these people worshiped. Willing to oblige, the goat cultists lead the party into the following cavern, where they had two wood posts with manacles and giant splatters of dried blood. At that point the intent was obvious and a fight ensued. 

However with Igor being incapable of doing anything, the group was badly outnumbered 9 to 3, and while Hoot blasted away a cultist with a bolt of chaotic energy, Luna was not really able to withstand the overwhelming numbers and eventually got brought down and stabbed and slashed repeatedly. This however gave Hoot and Varg a chance to disengage and run away, taking potshots with chaos bolts and pistol fire at the cultists, some of which gave chase.

The party ran back into the room with the staircase they came down to, and Varg used magic to seal the doors behind them, stopping the cultists for a moment. Using Hoot's magical chaos lantern they set up an ambush on the stairs, killing another cultist, but the rest would not follow them up, instead retreating back with their fallen comrade.

Heading back down the two animals tried to follow the group's obvious blood trail, but instead saw a side passage of the dungeon, running into a palisade manned by a middle aged woman and several people with rifles. They instantly noticed Hoot trying to peek behind the corner and once they were sure he's not danger welcomed him and Varg in, explaining that their camp is guarded by a powerful Domovi (a house spirit) they call The Host, who in exchange for a gift of the nobleman's fancy furry hat and a nice pipe and tobacco welcomed the two into the camp as his guests and thus provided them with the protection of his magic. The session ended, with the two finally at a safe place and able to rest.  

 Observations 

Well, finally! After a year and a half of writing this goddamn thing I finally started up my megadungeon campaign. The ruleset currently used is a modified Tunnels & Trolls, which so far has worked fine in any game I've used it. We'll see how long it handles over a longer game, but for now it does the job.

The group was only 4 people initially, as it's a three day weekend here in Bulgaria, but I expect more people to be joining from here on out. The players generally seemed to be on top of things, though a bit slow in making decisions. Of note they managed to find the secret shrine on the entry floor of the dungeon, which I did not expect them to do, but also failed to Drink the Goo, so they get points docked off for that one, hah! They also had truly insane luck with encounter rolls on the first floor, never getting to see the guardian of that floor, but feeling its presence with the scent of dog breath, blood and rotting meat haunting them as they explored. 

The session was quite long, 7 hours total with only about 20 minutes of actual break in the whole thing. I normally avoid running sessions this long for weekly games, but it was important for the party to find a safe haven so that their characters don't simply get lost to the dungeon's dangers, and I figured I'd give them a bit more leeway on the first try. Luckily they succeed, after unfortunately running into a trap which took out Igor in a single roll, and then bumping into the goat cultists which, while not dangerous by themselves, tend to have advantage in numbers. Smart play (running away) helped this from being TPK, which it absolutely would have been as the party's toughest fighter got torn to shreds in a single round, taking over 60 hits with her 18 or so Constitution. 

Luna specifically was quite interesting, as the player rolling her up did not actually notice that War Bears can't be Bogatyr, and I decided to just keep it rather than have them roll something else. Add to that the ice blue hair which was a magical item she started with, and that war bear had big "Anime Protagonist" vibes about her, unfortunately dying in a glorious fight to protect her friends. 

All in all the session I think went well, the players ultimately did achieve their goal of finding a safe place to leave their characters between session, allowing new characters to start there. Also exploring fully the entry level granted a hefty 100 adventure points to the party as a whole, which I rule that all characters joining from now on get them as a start, thus avoiding the issue of someone joining on session 5 and being way behind as previous floors have already been explored and the AP for that being claimed. Thus I also think this makes for a good catch up mechanic, a useful thing in a semi-open table setup where people come and go. 

Map by Luna's player

Session Stats

Rooms Explored: 15
Enemies Defeated: 3 Ghosts, 4 Goat Cultists
Characters Dead: 2 - Luna and Igor 

How I prep my games

Weird Writer suggested this as a topic/challenge for a post, and I think it’s a good idea, so here we go.

Preparing a Campaign

I’ve run three short (~a dozen sessions each) OSR campaigns so far, along with smaller games along the way. I am also in the process of preparing for a megadungeon-focused campaign right now, though it has taken quite a while longer than normal due to life.

Step 1 - What is this going to be about?

The first thing when preparing a campaign for me is to figure out what the hell do I, as a referee, actually want out of it. For example my BSSS campaign was focused on two elements: Seeing how the minor variations of OD&D compared to B/X change the pace of a game, and running a hexcrawl. In my second Greylands game run for my partners the goal was to see how much I can strip back the basic elements of play while still having an enjoyable weekly game. In my current prep I am building a megadungeon from scratch and I also am interested in seeing how sustainable that kind of campaign is over a longer period of time, plus I am testing out Tunnels & Trolls as a ruleset and seeing how sustainable that is as well.

Step 2 - Assembling initial materials

Once I have an idea of what I want, I start to assemble tools and materials that I might need to at least begin the campaign. That usually involves creating a map (and as such also a vague sketch of a setting to provide context), populating it with points of interest (usually pre-published dungeons), writing up any house rules that I will be using and then getting into the weeds of smaller details - a compact setting primer, a player-facing booklet to be used at the table for easy access to the house rules, a spreadsheet to track character and player rosters, in-game calendar, stats about the game etc.

This step can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to, well…months and in the current case over a year and a half.

Expanding on the above listed elements, here is what I find important about each of them.

Rough Notes - I tend to just use a single Google Docs file when I do this, but better methods might exist for others. I make a document about the campaign where I throw every single idea, house rule, setting information or anything else that I would need for it. The file is rarely organized, and I simply use it as an initial repository to make sure i don't forget something. The most useful thing from this notes file is a running list of things I still need to prepare, and things that I have prepared, as well as writing things before I can then copy them into the setting primer or players document.

Map - An OSR campaign needs a map. The locations you will be exploring need context, whether that is a map of the part of the world or a map of the singular dungeon you will be playing in. In all of my campaigns I have created the overall map myself, as I have a specific setting in mind, however I often use pre-existing maps for dungeons by using modules that I feel fit the overall vibe I want. In the case of my current prep, it means drawing and stocking the map of my megadungeon myself.

The BSSS campaign map.

 

 

This is the revised version of the Greylands map. Version 1.0 looked even rougher.

Modules and Points of Interest - I select at least one, usually between 2 and 3, dungeons that I will be using as the initial locations for the campaign. In my Grelyands campaign that was Dyson’s Delve, in my BSSS campaign that was a map from In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe that I then modified to fit the pseudo-Messoptamian setting of the campaign.

I rarely, if ever, use a module straight as it is without changing something to it. Usually it is simply re-flavoring enemies and encounters to fit the setting better, sometimes adding or changing the treasure available if I feel it is not appropriate for what I want.

Points of interest that I tend to create entirely myself are the “safe” zones - towns, villages, forts etc that I have put on the overall map.

House Rules - I have yet to run an OSR campaign without extensively tinkering with the ruleset I have chosen in some way. In some cases, like the Greylands it was fairly standard B/X(or OSE) with some simple house rules. In BSSS I effectively wrote an entire hack for OD&D to make it do what I wanted. In my current T&T wave I have also extensively redone and renamed elements in the ruleset to make it do what I want.

For me a campaign is always a good excuse to tinker with rules and mechanics. I enjoy seeing how changes in a magic system, or even the dice used for HD, can affect gameplay. While I do not consider any rules text, even the ones I write, to be beyond adjusting and ignoring if needed during play, I do like seeing how tweaks result in broader behaviors and changes during the game.


Setting Primer - Players always ask for some kind of setting primer, so I try and write a few words in very broad strokes about what they might actually need to situate themselves within the game. It can vary - the Greylands game had a very bare bones one, the BSSS game had a rather more detailed one both here on the blog and also sprinkled throughout the player booklet. My current megadungeon one, being focused entirely on the dungeon, has only a few broad paragraphs of setting, the rest being conveyed entirely through character backgrounds and items.

Player Booklets - Because I enjoy making these, in my in-person campaigns I always have a player handbook kind of deal. A collection of the house rules, character information and other things that players might want to look up during play, that is not part of the general rulebook that I am using as a chassis. My BSSS one became quite a bit more extensive as I changed enough things to necessitate it. These don’t have to be physical books of course, a simple google docs or pdf with the relevant information are also useful, and in fact I make a habit of collecting such for other people’s games as I find them endlessly fascinating to flip through.

Spreadsheet - I have found that any campaign I run benefits greatly from having a Google Sheets document for the campaign. That one contains, at a bare minimum, a character roster with relevant information (level, experience, player controlling the character, any notable powers or notes), a quick session recap calendar with both real life and in-game dates for the events, and then usually auxiliary tabs for stuff like hirelings, classes unlocked by the players (if I am doing that), stats for the campaign (I do love me some campaign stats!) and so on. 

The BSSS spreadsheet/roster

Other Materials - That varies from campaign to campaign. I like to usually have a list of names to use for NPCs and/or PCs; a character sheet (either a suitable preexisting one, or a custom one that I make myself); item lists (if not using a default one from a book); reference sheets to put in my DM screen (if needed)

Once I get all of this assembled I print out maps, modules and other reference sheets, booklets and other material, putting them in plastic sheet pockets and those in my referee binder. My binder always has extra character sheets, the world map I’ve made and whichever dungeon or module I am currently running. With all of that out of the way I then begin organizing the game itself (first two were open tables, third one was a closed family game) and begin.

Preparing a Session

Once the campaign gets going the prep I do from week to week changes significantly. I make a point to establish a solid groundwork (as you can see above) so that I have to do as little as I can between sessions, though even then I’ve found that it sometimes becomes too much by the later sessions.

Keeping the sheets up to date - Most important thing to do, and I usually do that after that week’s session, or at absolute latest the next day. Update everyone’s XP totals, changes in character, date, a quick session notes recap for my own sake (I do not keep any real notes during play, so I simply remember everything and write it down as it is fresh in my mind).

Setting reaction and dungeon restocking - The main and often hardest part of the week to week session prep - modeling how the world reacts to what happened in the previous session. Restocking or changing the dungeon(s) if needed, seeing how any factions or power players move in response to the actions of the player (if they know them) or advance their own schemes (if they’re unaware what the players are doing).

This has often resulted in me feeling incredibly overwhelmed as the fictional situation becomes more complex, with multiple factions and dungeons involved. I’ve yet to really get better at handling this, although discussions on discord have lead me to a potential solution which I will attempt in my next campaign - Making a list of any potential reactions or changes by factions, and then rolling a die to see which single one actually happens for the next session.

Preparing additional material - I always make sure I have a clear idea of what players plan on doing the following session (and I tend to hold them fairly firmly to any decisions made), and if that involves exploring new locations or following up on hooks that I have previously set, I then go through the various modules or adventure sites that I have prepared for the campaign or at least earmarked to use in it, and then either simply reread them and do any final adjustments, or if it is something completely new I go through the process similarly to how I do in campaign prep, and read through and edit the text with any changes or re-flavoring I need to make it fit.

Updating binder - I take out material that I will not need for a session and replace it with print outs of stuff I will. Binders get way too heavy and unwieldy fast, so I try and keep mine to the bare minimum if possible, especially considering I am usually also carrying my dice, player booklets, rulebook(s) and other materials when running.

In total I find that short of being swamped by too much reactivity from the world, my weekly session prep involves on average half a day of work, at most a day if I have to prepare something else. My hope with my next campaign is to streamline week to week prep even further, by restricting the play space to a single large dungeon.