Serpents of Chaos - Delve 1 - Cursed Chambers

Spoiler Alert: If you are playing in the SoC dungeoncrawl, turn back now. Spoilers be ahead.

After a bit of a rocky start due to things on my end (crappy wifi downstairs, company visiting upstairs) I ping-ponged while setting up for the session, then we got right into combat first thing! So our first delve was a wild ride. I had lots of fun, but just like I've been telling people: refereeing for AD&D 1e is a workout. And it feels good to lift.

The party (Corvus the Ranger, Ursula the Thief, Buddy the Cleric, a porter, a torchbearer, and a man-at-arms) left the town-fort of Svargorod and traveled south 5 miles to the dungeon entrance of the Cursed Chambers of Tsennacherib to make it there by noon. They had uncovered a few secrets, one of them being that there were two extra entrances than the one commonly known, so they poked around at those. One of the extra entrances was a tower with a corpse covered in pitch at the bottom, where a magic-user had tried climbing the side and gotten basted by burning tar. The other was a deep, rocky staircase, descending 30' down into the earth.

Choosing the 30' staircase, they made their way into a cavernous chamber with stalagmites. A pile of stinking shite in the corner signaled the presence of some inhabitant(s). They saw a glint of small eyes to the east. Deciding to follow the eyes, they were met with a volley of javelins. One javelin dropped Ursula the Thief, who started to bleed out. A dwarf named Enkidu (Fighter) happened upon the group and joined Corvus and Buddy against their foes.

Six demon-dogs (kobolds) rushed out of the darkness. The party committed to a charge. Spears were used to repel the three adventurers, with much efficiency, while the charging attacks yielded nothing. The party turned and fled, hiding in amongst the stalagmites. Another melee ensued wherein a demon-dog was killed and another threatened into fleeing (I made a mistake here by allowing some party members to charge again before the next turn). 

The kobold leader did not help in the melee fray at all and soon the dogs failed their morale checks. They failed them so bad that they ended up throwing down their weapons and grovelling at the feet of the adventurers. Corvus took the kobold leader as captive so that he could learn their language and the rest were knocked unconcious. The kobold leader seemed willing to follow such beings that displayed prowess in battle. He also mentioned his loathing of "The Masters," who moved his shrine from the deeper levels of the dungeon to the upper level, where they were told to now live and set a guard.

Ursula was saved by Buddy's cure light wounds and the porter took her back to town.

A corridor on the south-west corner of the cavern extended straight south. The party took this route. They came to a door. Then burned it down. Inside was a starving sabertooth tiger in a cage, with a couple levers on the wall. They bypassed it for now and ventured south again. This time through a door that was easy enough to push open.

Here they encountered two prison cells, on either side of a straight corridor. In the west cell was a hungry ghoul, straining at the bars to grab passers-by. In the east was a huge man lying on the floor. Standing over him was a cloaked figure with its back to the party. As soon as the torchlight flooded the cell, the cloaked figure turned around, its serpent-like eyes open wide with suprise. It turned towards the wall and teleported away.

Frank Frazetta

The huge man, who had feigned sleep, immediately stood up and talked with the party. His name was Tobruk and his father was a wealthy beast-herder from Bythunia. He said his father would offer a ransom of a thousand cattle to any person that rescued him from this dungeon. He also had trouble doing simple arithmetic in the next moments when asked about how many of "The Masters" there were, so who knows how many cattle his dad actually had to offer.

The party tried to break him out but was unable to before they needed to head back to town. While passing the caged sabertooth, they fed it a demon-dog, then pulled one of the two levers and ran. The next week, a wounded sabertooth could be seen prowling the hills to the south of Svargorod.

First ever game of AD&D 1e and it was all by the book. Like I said, it felt like lifting weights but the depth of gameplay and richness of all the various rules gave a unique versimilitude. I enjoyed myself immensely and look forward to the next delve.

Serpents of Chaos - Intro

Below is the email I sent out to my prospective players. I thought it best to share this without much editing, just to give the form and function of what our AD&D 1e Rules-as-Written game would look like. Not a lot was included in the way of content, but the "Serpents of Chaos" is a homebrew adventure, featuring a dungeon called the Cursed Chambers of Tsennacherib and a frontier town-fort named Svargorod. 

 

The style is classic swords & sorcery with a big steppe/mesopotamian/near-east influence. I don't have tons of free time on my hands, so sessions are planned to run every two weeks and I am trying to keep things terse when it comes to downtime roleplay. 

 

Frank Frazetta

 

Begin email:

"This is an invitation to a classic dungeon crawl. We will be delving into a 3-level, 100 room dungeon with lots of monsters, traps, and treasure. We will use Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1^st edition (1e). You will create 3 level 1 characters (the two extra are for quick and ready backups in case of death).

 

We will play across Discord. There will be no Virtual Table Top, and a map will only be provided by the dungeon master if absolutely necessary for combat. The party mapper will be creating the main map for the party's use.

 

The hope is that we will have a core group of about 3-5 players. A few others will join when they can. Drop-in play is welcome, if that is all you can commit to. 

 

To make play conducive to this ever-changing party of adventurers, we will end each session back in town. This means that if your player isn't delving the dungeon for a session, they will be missing out on great rewards, magic items, treasure, and XP. During the two weeks between sessions, downtime activities (healing, shopping, hirelings, rumours, etc.) can be conducted. It is expected that once we show up on game night, we are getting right into what we came for—the dungeon itself!

 

Below is a description of the gameplay principles of this dungeoncrawl.

Fantasy Adventure Gaming:

• Exploration. Poke at the world, turn over rocks, uncover secrets. The environment exists for you to peel apart.
• Gamist approach. This is a game first. All meaningful aspects of D&D flow from its mechanics. Roleplaying and dramatic acting are adornment, not the focus. A great description of what this means can be found on this blog.
• Emergent narrative. There is no grand "story" that I have planned. The story is the one that the players create at the table.
• Player skill. Play to win and to use every advantage you can. Apply strategy, forethought, and teamwork and the game will open up to you. This does not mean system mastery—the rules are something you will grok over time.

By the Book

• Rules as written, as much as possible.
• Only material from 1e PHB for character creation (remember this includes encumbrance, ration tracking, healing, etc).
• If the rules are overwhelming (AD&D 1e is a robust system!) I can create your characters for you and walk you through how to use the character sheet. Brand new players are very welcome!
• I will be handling most of the rule-learning, so do not worry too much about knowing much else than what you have to in order to create some characters. We will start out simple and gain mastery as we play.

One to One

• 1:1 downtime. Outside of game nights, in-game time passes at the same rate as real-world time. Downtime activities (hirelings, shopping, rumour-gathering) will be conducted between sessions.
• 1:1 xp for gold. For each piece of gold you bring back into town, you receive 1 experience point.
• 1:1 healing. One day (24 hrs) of rest will heal 1 hit point. Nonetheless, your character should be healed by next session even if they were reduced to 0 or less hp (every two weeks will heal 14 hp and most 1st-3rd level characters have less than that)."