So, six hours later...

[Warning: Possible Stonehell spoilers below]

The Stonehell party consisted of 3 players with 2 characters each, one was their primary and the other would be their secondary, in some cases this ended up with a master servant thing going on. The party was:

Boris, Human Fighter (Female, played by Amanda)
Ms. Gentleman, Human Magic-User (aka Ms. G, played by Amanda)
Jesus, Human Cleric (Played by Dave)
Tarquin, Elf (Played by Dave as a MU)
Agent Smith, Human Paranormal Effects Administrator (MU played by Giz)
Manservant, Halfling (Played by Giz)

The players had heard about how fatal older editions of D&D (and its retro clones) could be, and armed with this knowledge were incredibly cautious.... Ish. Manservant insisted on crowbar-ing every door he came across and Boris was a bit of a bimbo but they bumbled on quite well; meeting Dwarves, sleeping Orcs and generally performing a bit of murder whilst their enemies were sleeping.

At one point Boris found a rat with a name tag (which read: 'Precious'), instead of killing it she took the sleeping rodent and muzzled/hogtied it, runing it into her unofficial pet/mascot. Later the party surprised me by being ambushed by a group of orcs and wisely running away, back to their Dwarven 'allies' who took care of the mess.

There was a long period of exploration in which we discovered that I could roll more than a 1 when it came to rolling for the Hp of some cobras and the party eventually made it to the caves section killed some kobolds and took their precious guano.

Their next encounter with kobolds was random and was another work crew carrying mops and buckets, there was a brief roleplay encounter that left Giz twitching with the urge to kill everything in the room and put their eyes out. I obliged him when he fiddled with the cracks in the same room and lost his 10' pole for his trouble. Giant Centipedes were by far the most dangerous foes the party encountered with Agent Smith hitting the deck unconscious before the party fled into the fountain room.

They rested and then headed down and around to reach the entrance and then went back to the fountain room with the intention of heading through to the centipede room. Then Boris decided to touch the fountain (perhaps because I pointed out that whilst they had been in this room they hadn't 'explored' it) and activated the poison gas trap. She survived by Manservant and Jesus bought it.

Fortunately Jesus would return d3 days later, assuming we don't get smote for blasphemy.

The party (deciding against the centipedes) then went to the wheel of fortune room, which was always going to be a giggle. Ms. Gentleman pulled the lever first, I rolled up 'Wisdom' which I had dubbed the Exp bonus and went straight up to level 2. Agent Smith pulled the lever next, got the Bloody Eye and was instantly struck blind.

The last room dealt with was the crypts which the party raided in style, hacking down the few monsters there were (including no less than 2 ghouls) and finally gaining some good treasure for their troubles (about 600 gold and a magic item, which I ruled was an elven sword +1) and most of them reached level 2.

The party then fled the dungeon and went back to the town to spend some time carousing, healing and getting the sword identified. Due to their carousing several characters went up to level 3, in no small part due to the large sums of gold they had randomly acquired.

All in all it was a good session, and now that I have a handle on the rules I think it's time to do a little 'brewing' with them; I'd like to expand the spells list a little so that characters can have a few more interesting spells at level 1, especially for the cleric, who was relegated to doing very little. I'm also tempted to use Jeff Rient's carousing rules and I could also do with some reaction tables (given that I just fudged it this time).

All in all though, given we started character gen at 2.30pm and finished at about 9pm it was a damn good session and one of the longest I have ever run, so in short, it will be occuring again.

Next week is World Top; involving the party's stint in Zendicon and possibly the arrival of a new ally.

Zen and the Art of Dungeon Structure

I had to write Stonehell 1A out by hand for today's session, which was fine, Amityville Mike used only two pages and whilst there's alot to get down on paper (39 rooms) its simple, concise and still has flavour. I slipped on the reggae stylings of Dub Side of the Moon and took a couple of hours to work through it.

This also has the advantage of making me more familiar with the dungeon, I'd read Stonehell 1A but hadn't really absorbed it until I wrote it out myself. There's something about the process that just made it make more sense to me in my head and I think it's given me a little more appreciation for the way the encounters come together in some areas (specifically around room 16) to create an implied narrative.

So the encounters are ready, the traps are primed, the monsters are recieving their final pep talk and Stonehell is go. A report will be filed laterz.

Tomorrow's Session and Stonehell

So another week and we wind up for our sunday session and the players continuation through Zendicon, which may this week involve heading into the depths to look for a way out. Personally I'm looking forward to it, but I think this will be the last 'module' (for want of a better word) in the World Top Campaign for a while given that Gareth is foaming at the bit to run his space campaign and I'm all psyched up to run something 'old school'.

However it should be noted that I have never ran anything older than 3rd edition when it comes to D&D and whilst I'm picking up Microlite74 for the endevour, a system that seems to bridge the gap between OD&D and 3rd ed. quite adequetly (and simplifies encumberance; thank god), I'm not really in tune with a system which relys so heavily on my ability to make a ruling instantaneously, and so I think I need practice.

Help is on hand though.

Amityville Mike's Stonehell dungeon comes highly rated by people who know what they're talking about and seems like an interesting old school adventure that I'd like to run, and given that Rachel will be absent from next weeks session; it might be a good idea to run Stonehell 1A and give me and the players some experience of what old school gaming is really like.