This is part 3 of my retelling of last weekend’s Sword and Wizardry Quick-Start game we played at our monthly Geekout. Part 2 can be found here.
Skellies!
After jamming open the portcullis in the room to the north, the PCs advanced to another room filled with 6 animated (and armed) skeletons! As soon as the PCs approached the room, the skellies charged!
Now without a battlemap, we started using sheets of paper to represent both rooms and the passage between. PCs moved in a 3X1 formation, blocking the entry of skellies in their room. Once again, a classic Old School moment occurred when Orvat (Fighter) realized that you could hit monsters from the behind the cover of a dwarf!
The Skeletons were dispatched in less than 5 minutes (both real time and game time). The room had a strange shape so the PCs started exploring the nooks and crannies. Thanks to the sharp eyes of the Elf and the Dwarf, a secret door was found!
DM aside: For those saying there is no skill system in Classic D&D, there is an embryonic one: almost everything can be accomplished if you roll at least a 1 on a d6, some races have bonuses for specific conditions. So everyone has at least a base chance of 1/6 of performing anything, I call this a skill system 🙂
Bamf! Hey what happened?
So the secret door opened on a looooong corridor leading eastwards. It turned northwards into a teleporter trap. Nothing big, the teleporter shifted the party about 40-50 feet further down the corridor, messing with mapping a bit. I had fun describing the layout of the area toVince, only to tell him he must have gotten my instructions wrong and telling him to redraw.
That was enough for the party to investigate and they discovered the teleporter trick and managed to step in between both teleporter spaces… only to find nothing of interest.
That knwoledge became real important in the end game later…
DM Aside: Had I read the adventure before, I would have shifted the PCs further away, missing the next room in the corridor immediately, giving the PCs a little exploration reward for finding the teleporter’s trick.
Hey who broke wind?
The next room they visited was a tricked room. It appeared to contain a vast treasure but entering in it triggered a magical wind that shut the door and sent PCs with low strength scores flying on the room’s walls. Fortunately, Orvat was the one to open the door and he resisted the wind’s effect. While all light sources of the party were once again snuffed out, Orvat managed to fight the wind and make it to the middle of the room. The hoard had disappeared but a chest filled with Lycantrophe fighting treasures (Silver jewelry, Silver Weapons, Wolfsbane, etc) was found.
I guess that being at the right place at the right time is all part of the S&W experience.
Gobbos!
The party made it’s way westward and discovered an empty room with a descending staircase.
Chatty: In the classic game, each level had an average difficulty. The deeper one went, the harder the challenges in them were.
Anne: Then I say we stay on this level!
Chatty (Seeing that there was no level 2 in the adventure): Good call!
The PCs took a south exit, working their way back toward the exit. They opened a door to a roomful of goblins (8) who all drew their sword. The party won initiative and the PCs rapidly spread lantern oil (D&D’s Napalm since 1974) on the spaces in front of them.
Rolling ‘intelligence roll from each goblins, 2 managed to run on the oil. One fell and skidded into a wall. The other stayed steady on the oil and attacked. On the next round, the PCs lit the puddles of oil and the goblin was gently roasted. Then Orvat used the Grappling hook trick (again!) and dragged a goblin into the fire, cooking it too.
That was enough, all remaining goblins grabbed their bags of gold and fled westward, leaving an easy to follow trail of spilled gold pieces.
That was a cool fight. Like PM said in his post, the lack of skills in classic D&D is made up by the MacGuyver-esque hardware that dungeon Crawling PCs have. This is giving me ideas for other games!
So the PCs gave pursuit.
Dr Shaman!
The PCs chased the goblins up to another room filled with more goblins and a shaman, the tribes’ leader. Faced with 12 angry and scared goblins, the party opted for a time honored, and somewhat lost art of D&D.
Parley!
Aniamo (Dwarven Fighter), the party’s only goblish speaker discussed with the shaman. The Goblin tribe was in the dungeon to raid it for gold and were all scared of the nearby western room filled with evil talking magical statues. The Shaman was ready to not attack if PCs could investigate room for them. The party seemed willing but I (and therefore the Goblin) could see that they were scheming for some sort of large payment.
That’s when the Shaman cast Charm Person on the dwarf, and she missed her saving through.
Goblin: I give you 40 gp, good price!
Aniamo: Of course my good friend, consider it done. (To party:) Okay guys we’re going to help these goblins, let’s go!
Rest of party: We’re what now?
Aniamo: No time to talk! Go!
Ahhhhh, good old Charm Person.
And so our heroes approached the hall of talking statues…
“No time to talk! Go!” – I love it!!
.-= Alex Schröder´s last blog ..Parrying =-.
Nice. But when he throws his grappling hook through the fire to catch a gobbo, shouldn’t the rope start burning?
.-= m.a.´s last blog ..Szenen einer (Schlüsselszenen-) Ehe =-.
Actually I forgot to write it, but I had the rope burn down after he pulled the trick… of course, he picked the hook up after it cooled and attached it to his now 46 feet of rope… 🙂
I am reading this series with great interest, because I am hoping to run the very same dungeon tomorrow. It will be my first Old School Geekout since 2e. You are helping me prepare!
I read the teleporter trick differently: it reverses their direction. If they enter the trick going east, it teleports them 180 degrees, so they proceed west. The teleporter only activates when they enter the room, so passing back over the first teleporter on the way out doesn’t trigger it.
@Kevin: Duh! That’s what you get when the DM reads diagonally between encounters! That makes a LOT more sense. Thanks!
@Chatty: Looks like you did a pretty good job interpreting the adventure on the spot. And your idea of moving the entrance to the windy room inside the teleporter trick is a nifty alternative, especially if the treasure in that room were larger.
Reading S&W is making me think about my 4e game a bit. I’m interested in applying the Perception skill like the 1-in-6 mechanic, which is probably how it’s intended anyway, but not how we’ve been using it.
This is one of those attitude things I find that slips between the cracks in explaining games and how they are played.
See, I stopped playing D&D decades ago to work with a different ruleset, as some of the rules of AD&D were rubbing me the wrong way (and if anyone asks if I played the later incarnations, the answer is that I tried them but they were worse for what my game needed, but yes, I did).
So though I use a different ruleset, your adventure still reads very similar to what I still run, albeit with about 1/2 the rolls.
The mapping, the exploration, the parlay (hell, my social mechanics are almost as big as my combat ones) might feel to many a breath of fresh-but-ancient air.
To me, this is still the ‘feel’ of what I play today.
Anyway, I’m enjoying it immensly.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Rules for Magic =-.
@Kevin: Playing S&W also made me rethink the way I play 4e, especially the assumptions I’ve built in my DMing style ever since I started playing 3e 8 years ago. Since I have at least one player that’s an explorer in my group, some of the tropes of classic D&D should work their way in my games.
@LV: I too remember well what bugged me about AD&D. Many of which are now gone with 4e… except that I do miss some aspects of how the game was played … and I’m slowly identifiying them and working them back in my game… For instance, I miss the MAcGuyver aspects of resolving problems. That’s totally compatible with a skill heavy-system,provided you tell players that any given puzzles in the dungeon can’t be solved with skills.