DragonFlight 2025: Games and More Games

Ok, this will be a long one, so either grab some coffee or come back when I'm less vociferous. I ran five sessions through the three day weekend, three of Shadowdark and two of OSE-B/X. Had full tables for all, and a lot of good play. Met a few folks, saw a few old friends, and generally enjoyed the scene. 

With five sessions, I'll just be hitting the highlights, and some impressions.

Friday Afternoon: Shadowdark; Adventure: The Howler.

After my recent test-run of the adventure using Shadowdark, I posted it up as my first session. This is the only session for which I pre-selected the adventure. I had a full table, plus a few folks on standby. My intent is to get as many people to the table as I can since picking and choosing games at a con can be a fraught affair. So I ran a table of nine for this game. Which meant that foes were bulked up and hazards slightly inflated to keep up with the crew.  

Cast summary:

• 1 Ras-Godai
• 2 Fighters
• 2 Priests
• 2 Wizards
• 2 Thieves

The party found Gundrin's corpse, and was set upon by the vultures. After emptying pockets, they advanced to the tomb, where the goblins ganged up on them. Shooing them away, they entered the tomb to investigate. One thief scouted into the dark. The purification room had LOTS of spiders, and there was much whiffing. The thief aced his find traps roll and everyone made it down the trapped corridor with no harm. Rains was stabilized and ranted before pointing out the Howler. Light died during the battle, and the Howler absorbed a spell and magic sword to heal (And the players had thought the GM was being generous with those magic items...). The Howler was distracted with other thrown magic items, and set on fire. It fled, leaving the PCs to explore. They dodged a gas explosion from a brazier, and identified mystery mushrooms by taste test. They then found the mummy sarcophagi, and in contrast to the last party, did NOT read the inscription out loud. After discussion, they chose not to risk potential powerful undead. The PCs gathered up scattered loot and carried the two doomed explorers back to town to reveal their fates.

DM Notes: 

It wasn't too bad running a large table. Everyone was a "grownup" and worked and played well together. Of course, there were a couple of players who took a bit more initiative at the table, but not to the session's detriment. I did a rough initiative houserule, with the highest scoring player going 1st, then rotating turns either clockwise or counterclockwise around the table. The enemies went at a selected turn within the combat round, usually at "that water bottle."  I stuck with this system for Shadowdark throughout the weekend. The adventure ran better with familiarity, and I was able to use the Howler to better effect, particularly during the light loss. Accordingly, the players took advantage of its compulsion to lure it towards the strongest fighter before immolating it.

Campaign Journal: Keepin' up at the Keep of Madrual

Who's stormin' the castle?

• Slick-thief
• Fulvus-halfling
• Jax-barbarian
• Rondel-elf
• Plus Various Hangers-On

Some quick retcon to describe the interactions and reactivation of lens at Vansho Reliquary. A significant observation was that two undead knights in residence who were bound to their funerary chamber now had free movement around the place.

Back to the present: The party assessed Toronin as Librarian Grancet repaired and etched the lens with the help of his bound demon. Benedikt noted that they would need reinforcements to hold the hardpoint if the Barrier was to remain intact. Gerhard was dispatched to see if he could rustle up some troops.

In the meantime, Cleric Henry Cee was reminded that he had a Potentially Useful Relic in Sister Sowena's Gauntlet. Donning it and casting about, he located a small mass grave of slain soldiers from the original fall of the Barrier. A handy platoon of skeletal warriors was summoned, arising from the turf, reattaching limbs, digging up rusted weapons. And soon enough, Gerhard returned with a similar platoon of (living) soldiers and Roderick, Fulvus' archer hench. Reunion made, and Roderick was put in charge of the station's defense. The party and others departed as the soldiers and undead set to digging trenches and sharpening stakes.

The group moved north along the West Trade Road. Several towns they passed through were completely depopulated, either by apparent Chaos raids or fleeing refugees. Coming to the small town of Lany, they found that the Beguines led by Sister Isabel were still entrenched with the locals. They were aware of the predations and turmoil along the road, but were staying put for now, as their oath was to aid and heal. The party encouraged them to decamp for one of the recently liberated fortresses, where there were troops and fresh fortifications. 

source

Bella Hoekstra, former second in command at St. Vivinna's Home for the Wayward, caught up with the party (while also conveniently disguised as a beguine). Acroria was in turmoil, with the merchants and clergy overriding the military on the city council. Conflicting commands were going out, and large numbers of incarcerations were occurring for a variety of trumped-up charges. Most of the “wayward children" had either been arrested or fled. It seemed that little aid would come from Acroria, if at all.

With this in mind, the party considered heading straight to Gaerborin Keep, known to be held by Acroria troops, in an effort to sway them to their cause. But securing Madrual, the next node to the north was a priority. The party had never visited the location, and its occupants were unknown. Off we go.

D66 Times Three... A Collection of Hexcrawl Curiosities

Got on a writing bender on Sunday. Bit of a heat wave here, plus trying to get some house stuff taken care of, so made some focused writing time between other tasks. Started with one table, but knew that I'd eventually drag a couple more out of the brain. So why not now? It's something I need to do. Just sit, focus, and drag some creativity out of myself. 

So have three... count 'em, THREE D66 lists of random, perhaps interesting things, to find during one's hexcrawling of the edge of the map.

Meteorite, or frozen fireball? Your call.

Download me here

Download me here 2

Download me here 3

That's 108 random things to stumble upon, for those keeping track at home.

They Met at a Tavern 11: Shadowdarking JV West's 'The Howler'

Ok, had people show for this session, so things were good.

• Betsy - "Charm" - Dwarf priest (pageboy haircut)
• Candace - "Driznag" - Goblin Priest (Banded helm)
• Seana - "Ad Bather" - Halfling Fighter (Hood w/ ancient symbols)

First, we must note that none of the PCs were over four feet tall. This will be important later. I also provided each PC with a random magic item to bait the Howler.

As I mentioned before, I ported over the monster stats for JV West's "The Howler" to Shadowdark, and wanted to give it a run-thru, since it will likely be a con game, as well.

I've run the adventure before, so I'll go light on the details.

We started off among the barrows and graves with the party finding the body of Gundrin O’Noggin. Some questioning, and I shared that they heard the fellow's name in the tavern and that he was going to poke around the tombs. Probably because that's where kids would go to smoke.

They went through the corpse's pockets, respectably, of course. And threw rocks at the vultures harassing them.

The party listened to their common senses and didn't desecrate any random tombs. The blood and drag-trail led them to the tomb entrance, and the fun could begin.

Driznag caught a sneezing fit, which started the "Howler timer." They found some minor items in the entrance chapel, and poked at the slimy water in the ritual pool. More investigation alarmed a giant spider, which they killed without too much effort.

Into the dart-trapped hallway. Remember, they're short. And crept down the hall, unbothered by the darts firing over their heads. Finding a ranting, nearly-dead Rains Calibrin, they attempted to heal him, and only got more ranting.

And the warning that the Howler was creeping along the ceiling behind them. Battle was closed, and a knock-down drag-out occurred. The Howler alternated between attacking magic items and PCs. The creature's ability to heal from magic energies was quite frustrating. 

The priests attempted turning, but found that the Howler was not undead. Spells failed. Driznag went down but was revived with a healing potion. And finally the halfling made two crits to put the thing down. A vision upon the killing blow revealed the Howler's true nature.

The battered PCs recovered a handful of abandoned items from the temple chamber, and chased off lurking spiders with fire. 

Finding the crypt, they investigated. Driznag knew enough Primordial to piece together the epitaph on the sarcophagus plinth. But made the mistake of reading it aloud as she sounded out the words. Oops.

The mummies arose, attacking and chasing the party from the chamber. The dwarf got zeroed out (plus some CHA damage). The goblin and halfling each went invisible and fled (I'd randomly rolled a Cloak of Elvenkind for Driznag). Satisfied, the mummies returned to their sarcophagi, and the surviving PCs dragged the dwarf free. 

A quick check of the remaining chamber, and mushrooms were found. These did not revive the dwarf, although a third Nat 20 by Ad Bather allowed for a stabilization. 

Fleeing with their recovered goods, the party stopped to recover Gundrin O’Noggin's body to return him to town. And if the mummies somehow arose and started to wreak havoc, well, the party wasn't admitting to anything. It was probably those kids sneaking into tombs to smoke.

DM Notes:

I've reviewed the adventure before, and my opinion is similar after this run. Because of its organization and wall of text style, it can be less straightforward to run than something of a more bullet-style or concise format. And this DM got the pages out of order during the session so had to do a lot of flipping. For the next run, I'll probably pull more salient details into my text document with the monster stats, as well as highlight important bits. It's unfortunate, because it detracts from a good concept and creative monster. For instance, I missed some overly-complWEstex if-then details on the Howler's abilities.

If anyone is interested in running the Howler using Shadowdark, I've put a document with stat conversions here. Note: I realize I've been using the original version of the adventure (no longer available), which is written for a generic D20 system. The adventure has since been revised for Labyrinth Lord/OSRIC, so will easily port over to any OSR-style game, like Old School Essentials. It looks like the newer version has been somewhat reformatted and content updated, as well. I've snagged a current version copy, and have revised my conversion stats and update notes.

And, with the presence of a goblin priest, we established the alignment of "Goblin Lawful."

In other notes, we met up with Jonathan (B/X Blackrazor) Wednesday night to playtest an AD&D tournament-style adventure he wrote for an upcoming convention. Let's just say that we wouldn't have scored well. But we had a fun time pulling the levers and opening doors we shouldn't have.

Campaign Journal: A Question of Tactics, or, Questionable Tactics?

We're on the march with:

• Frederick - Revived thief
• Jax and Goober - Barbarian and reliable sidekick
• And a player to be named at a later time.

Rondel and Slick were off due to work commitments, and Fulvus was doing halfling things.

The party, along with their contingent from Chirath and Lenscrafters(tm) started at Ashryn Tower, with some more lens maintenance. That night, as they prepared to head north, Jax (likely via Faith Perpetual) received another vision, that of an old knight, who let the party know that challenges lay ahead (like we didn't know that), and that those who went before were waiting for them when the time came. Nothing foreboding about that.

Anyway - off they went northbound. While scouting ahead, Fred and Jax came on a small Chaos mutant raiding party, which they dispatched with minor difficulty. Fred finally upgraded to +1 leather. 

They paused at the Vansho Reliquary to reactivate that stronghold's lens and check in with its NPC party (and the undead knights in the crypts). (*Author's note - we skipped this location because the DM borked up his notes. Retconned during the following session.)

Slowed by the entourage, the party snaked north. Another encounter, this time zombies.

howdy