Summary
I decided to run the excellent Slumbering Ursine Dunes by Chris Kutalik as a casual pick up game while I am busy with family stuff. Here's how the first of what (I am hoping to be) maybe 3-4 sessions went!Party Members
- Landalf the Fragile - Level 4 Elf (Previously part of my Greylands campaign)
- Verasha - Level 2 Druid (Also previously part of my Greylands campaign)
- "Crunchy" - Level 3 Thief
- Bautzen Wends - Level 2 Magic-User
- Danica - Level 2 Knight
Followers
Spyro (Landalf's longstanding porter and valet); "Mad" Mox (torchbearer and aspiring Chaos Monk); Gigurg the Man-Beast (Porter); Hedviga the Harridan (Woman-at-Arms); Tishomir (A level 1 War Bear) and Jaro (A war-boar)
Session Recap
The group had convened at Kugelberg, the fortified farmstead with pretentions to being a hamlet near the Dunes. After hanging out and chatting with Jaromir, the party ventured forth, through the burned forest and up the staircases that lead over the sand walls of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes and into the dunes themselves.
When the group ran into the centaur toll collector at the foot of the steps they balked at the asking price of 5 GP per person, with Crunchy the Thief deciding to load his crossbow and aim it towards the centaur (specifically, the shell token it was holding). The centaur blew the conch shell he was carrying and got into battle, stabbing and nearly stomping to death the thief, before Danica the Knight begged for a parley and a stop to the fight. The toll collector agreed, scolding the party. As the other centaurs arrived, the toll collector labeled the party as "shit starters", doubled the price for the toll to 10 gp (20 for the thief) and told them to fuck off.
The party then continued exploring south, looking for a magical field of wheat that Danica had heard about, however they instead managed to find a magical field of rye (much to the confusion of everyone involved). They harvested some of it, and in the process a trio of giant lizards made their way towards the party, curious as to what was going on. Verasha the Druid befriended the lizards, giving them food, scratches and just generally enjoying their company. However a shadow in the sky quickly sent the lizards scampering back into thewheat rye, along with the various hirelings the party had, as a pelgrane was circling around. It asked the party to please not run away as it was planning on eating them for an early lunch, and lunged at Bautzen, managing to take a good bite out of him, and also rip a hole in his hat.
Verasha used some of her rope to lasso the pelgrane, successfully throwing a loop over its weird beak and with the help of Gigurg's inhuman strength pull it down to the ground (much to the creature's protests) where Jaro the warboar and the other characters killed it. Happy with their kill the party took trophies from the felled beast - its teeth, eye, claws and head were all severed. Unfortunately, as Verasha looked around for her new lizard friends, they were nowhere to be found!
Perplexed the party kept heading south through the Dunes - Finding a black bear that was lazily meandering through the forest of ironwood and heading south, and eventually running into the old hermit Oldrich. He invited them for some tea and healed up Crunchy and Bautzen while having a lengthy debate with Verasha about the superiority of the Sun Lord over whatever pagan nonsense he perceived her religion to be.
Oldrich also helped give them some directions - he pointed out the bearling shrine to Medved the Master (much to Tishomir's delight, as he wanted to go pay his respects there) and also directed them to the Glittering Tower of the Master itself. Thanking him, the party went to the bearling shrine, running into the same black bear from before. Tishomir went into the shrine, but the honor guard of soldier bears were in a bad mood it seemed, as they told the non-bear members of the party to all go sit down on some of the stones of the amphitheater and just wait.
The party tried to get some information out of them as well as some banter, but the guards were growing increasingly more grumpy and belligerent, so as Tishomir returned from the shrine the party were told, in so many words, to fuck off and they did (noting that that seems to keep happening to them in the Dunes).
When they finally reached the Glittering Tower as well as the actual beach, washed by the sweet Persimmon Sea, Crunchy the Thief (who had been told earlier that the shell tokens they all had were dated to several days to several weeks before) decided to spend time to to gather some more shells, in a plan to make forgeries and avoid having to deal with the stupid centaurs and their tolls in the future.
The party then went into the Tower of the Master, being polite to knock on doors and met Medved himself in his usual state - distracted and completely naked. He chit-chatted with them for a bit (Landalf and Verasha telling him that they had met him before in another world, but he didn't seem to register that...or much of anything the party was really saying). When someone asked if there was anything they could be of service to him, he did immedietly take the opportunity to ask them to murder his cousing Ondrej.
The adventurers, being adventurers, agreed gladly to the job, as well as securing themselves a safe sleeping space in the tower.
With this the session ended.
When the group ran into the centaur toll collector at the foot of the steps they balked at the asking price of 5 GP per person, with Crunchy the Thief deciding to load his crossbow and aim it towards the centaur (specifically, the shell token it was holding). The centaur blew the conch shell he was carrying and got into battle, stabbing and nearly stomping to death the thief, before Danica the Knight begged for a parley and a stop to the fight. The toll collector agreed, scolding the party. As the other centaurs arrived, the toll collector labeled the party as "shit starters", doubled the price for the toll to 10 gp (20 for the thief) and told them to fuck off.
The party then continued exploring south, looking for a magical field of wheat that Danica had heard about, however they instead managed to find a magical field of rye (much to the confusion of everyone involved). They harvested some of it, and in the process a trio of giant lizards made their way towards the party, curious as to what was going on. Verasha the Druid befriended the lizards, giving them food, scratches and just generally enjoying their company. However a shadow in the sky quickly sent the lizards scampering back into the
Verasha used some of her rope to lasso the pelgrane, successfully throwing a loop over its weird beak and with the help of Gigurg's inhuman strength pull it down to the ground (much to the creature's protests) where Jaro the warboar and the other characters killed it. Happy with their kill the party took trophies from the felled beast - its teeth, eye, claws and head were all severed. Unfortunately, as Verasha looked around for her new lizard friends, they were nowhere to be found!
Perplexed the party kept heading south through the Dunes - Finding a black bear that was lazily meandering through the forest of ironwood and heading south, and eventually running into the old hermit Oldrich. He invited them for some tea and healed up Crunchy and Bautzen while having a lengthy debate with Verasha about the superiority of the Sun Lord over whatever pagan nonsense he perceived her religion to be.
Oldrich also helped give them some directions - he pointed out the bearling shrine to Medved the Master (much to Tishomir's delight, as he wanted to go pay his respects there) and also directed them to the Glittering Tower of the Master itself. Thanking him, the party went to the bearling shrine, running into the same black bear from before. Tishomir went into the shrine, but the honor guard of soldier bears were in a bad mood it seemed, as they told the non-bear members of the party to all go sit down on some of the stones of the amphitheater and just wait.
The party tried to get some information out of them as well as some banter, but the guards were growing increasingly more grumpy and belligerent, so as Tishomir returned from the shrine the party were told, in so many words, to fuck off and they did (noting that that seems to keep happening to them in the Dunes).
When they finally reached the Glittering Tower as well as the actual beach, washed by the sweet Persimmon Sea, Crunchy the Thief (who had been told earlier that the shell tokens they all had were dated to several days to several weeks before) decided to spend time to to gather some more shells, in a plan to make forgeries and avoid having to deal with the stupid centaurs and their tolls in the future.
The party then went into the Tower of the Master, being polite to knock on doors and met Medved himself in his usual state - distracted and completely naked. He chit-chatted with them for a bit (Landalf and Verasha telling him that they had met him before in another world, but he didn't seem to register that...or much of anything the party was really saying). When someone asked if there was anything they could be of service to him, he did immedietly take the opportunity to ask them to murder his cousing Ondrej.
The adventurers, being adventurers, agreed gladly to the job, as well as securing themselves a safe sleeping space in the tower.
With this the session ended.
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Observations
I am running SUD using Old-School Essentials (makes sense, it was written for B/X after all) and allowed players from my OSE campaign to just use their previous characters, with others making new ones. The character generation was the same as in my Greylands game, which is why characters all started at 2nd or 3rd level.
SUD is a delight, with so many fun NPCs and interactions to have, and the players seemed to have an enjoyable time bantering with the various denizens of the Dunes, while also still trying to stir shit up as is appropriate for adventurers. The session was kind of short, but honestly that felt okay. This is very much a time-filler game, and as such it works absolutely perfectly to just let you have a space to explore, fuck around with, and do stuff.
I don't really have much in the way of gameplay observations, except that this reminded me why I like the Hill Cantons as a setting so much, and made me seriously consider revisiting my own knock-off version of it (The Greylands) from my previous campaign, and expanding it...also hopefully making it a bit more of my own in the process.
SUD is a delight, with so many fun NPCs and interactions to have, and the players seemed to have an enjoyable time bantering with the various denizens of the Dunes, while also still trying to stir shit up as is appropriate for adventurers. The session was kind of short, but honestly that felt okay. This is very much a time-filler game, and as such it works absolutely perfectly to just let you have a space to explore, fuck around with, and do stuff.
I don't really have much in the way of gameplay observations, except that this reminded me why I like the Hill Cantons as a setting so much, and made me seriously consider revisiting my own knock-off version of it (The Greylands) from my previous campaign, and expanding it...also hopefully making it a bit more of my own in the process.
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