Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- session 89

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  89 Session Date-  7/24/24

Time Passed-  3 days (7/24-25 rest 7/26)

Roll Call-  Godhard- C7

2x P1 hench

Finnigan- T5

Anjar- R1 hench

Rust- D3

Kenny- MU5

Boyo- C3 hench

Mayfly- MU1 hench

1 Silver Spearman “Lucky”

Adventure Log-  During the downtime Finnigan recovers from the poison needle trap, and Kenny and his henchman mend the found spellbook and cast clairvoyance on the upper levels of the tower while Godhard casts Locate Object to try to find the control panel that controls this Cubic Gate.  The upper levels reveal a ruined laboratory, and the top level has a mysterious and ominous stone floating eye in the center of the room and markings of summoning.  There is a large hole in the roof of the tower.  Godhard’s spell reveals the control room to be in the basement, to the south of the tower.  They elect to avoid the strange stone eye on the top floor and find the control panel to engage the structure to raise so it can fully be used.  They also take some time to examine the strange fungus that produces lamp oil, and discuss ways to make that useful, they collect about 25 portions of lamp oil from the tank.  They remove the lower barricades they had constructed and descend onto the wet muddy tunnels beneath the tower. They check a few rooms and come to a chamber with some locked cells with iron bars.  Before investigating them, Godhard stumbles upon a clutch of ghoul trying to lay an ambush, but the might of his symbol destroys all 8 of them.  They collect a bit of treasure from their lair and move on.   They discover the corpses of some long dead adventurers, and are slowly waylaid by a couple of zombies wandering the tunnels who are also quickly destroyed by turning.  The twisting muddy passages lead to a section of the same strange futuristic design seen in the other subway tunnel structures, it reminds them of the secret area they found that had the smaller cubic gate training area.  Godhard casts Find Traps, and a pit trap is immediately revealed upon checking the area.  Pelor is with him tonight.  They find some rotten stored food and a few still good bottles of fine wine.  Finding no more traps, they hear a humming noise from behind the final door, and open it ready to attack.  They find only a large glass sphere set in a metal stand, it is the source of the humming.  Once all have filed into the room however, a dark shadowy shape begins to appear- of a man in armor with a  great helm and sword.  He holds the sword out in offer of it to the party, but looks particularly shadowy and ominous.  All who regard him are wracked with mystical energy, those that fail to resist age 10 years.  The party is shocked by the transformation, but decides to attack the entity, several magic missiles prove effective, and several magic weapons also strike, even though the creature is extremely hard to hit in melee, it is barely material.  Godhard tries to turn it but it is unaffected, he senses it is not of a divine or undead origin.  It occurs to him that the bless spell may harm or ward off the creature and begins casting it, while another wave of aging afflicts the party.  While this is happening Roland the Paladin reaches out and begins grappling the vision over the sword.  He is just about to grab it, when the vision lifts up his head and removes his helmet, revealing a much older grizzled Roland from another time.  Godhard’s Blass spell lands on the creature and it gives up the sword, loses its dark magical energy and transforms into a holy warrior in silver armor bathed in golden light.  He hands the sword to Roland and it becomes material in his hand.  It begins to test Roland’s will and approves of his alignment.  It reveals itself to be sentient, named Goldfinger, a LG +4 sword with the ability of precious metal detection and magic detection.  The knight nods approvingly at the party and then steps into the glass sphere in a flash of light.  With his disappearance, most in the party recover from the shock of the Vision’s attack and realize the aging is only illusory, but for Godhard, the aging is for some reason permanent.  The vision also leaves behind a pack which becomes material and is filled with treasure and some magic items.  They are pleased, but still have not found the control room and desperately want to return to Bartertown.  They agree to rest, and Godhard rememorizes locate object to again try to find the control room.  They locate it the next day in a small secret room hidden behind a locked and magically trapped door.  Fortunately a find traps spell and dispel magic allow the party to bypass the hazards, and they find the inner control room with its buttons and switches, and remember the sequence they used to raise the other cubic gate station.  They perform the actions, and hear a rumbling as the whole area shakes a bit.  Also in this room are the stash of magic items of what likely was a magic user of some kind.  They find a ring, a dagger, a scroll and some other things.    They decide to go topside to see the status of the structure and see if they can engage the gate.  When they get outside, the structure is fully risen and engaged, the tower is no longer leaning, the sides largely cleared of sand.  However, a giant slug patrols around the structure, keeping to the soft sand but threatening the party and blocking its way to the other tower nearby.  Kenny distracts the creature with a fireball, and it is burned, but it begins returning fire with an acid spit attack, the first attack goes wide, but it begins aiming for another as Rust finds the control panel for the gate and casts into it engaging a travel path back to Bartertown’s gate.  They arrive and the Bartertown guards are relieved of their return.  They all catch the afternoon train back to Bartertown and reunite the spearman Lucky with his comrades.  

Session Notes-  This is the end of Chapter 6.  I never know what a chapter will be about until it is played out and I never know how it will end.  This chapter started with the party having great logistical problems, PCs were all over the map and doing lots of traveling, getting into lots of time jail situations.  The first 2 sessions were basically just sorting out a lot of these logistical situations and rolling out the random encounters and such.  By the end of the chapter, the party had solved a lot of its logistical problems.  They learned to train on the cubic gate devices and now can use them to travel pretty extensively around the map.  They also completed the longterm project of the Bartertown railroad, so now they can avoid that travel/random encounters in that area.  Elite players want to master their game world, its nice to have the option to go out and wilderness explore and draw random encounters, but when each session is beholden to those restrictions and limits access to time spent doing other things, its nice to have clever ways to bypass.  The party has used smarts and creativity to engage the shared goofy lore we’ve developed together to make travel around the map have a lot more options.  They can go to cubic gate locations to access other parts of the map, and use the railroad to avoid that part of the game when they want to.  They still have the option to hexcrawl whenever they want, but it doesn’t get stale by making that the beginning and end of every session.  Don’t get me wrong I’m a big believer in letting the random tables and encounters blossom into full blown adventures that are their own complete session, but it’s just nice to have the option to do other things on other nights around the table.  That's what chapter 6 ended up being about.  Next week Chapter 7!

Treasure and XP-  Monsters- 8 Ghouls 648xp, 2 Zombie 104xp, Vision 1145xp= 1897xp. Treasure- 120gp, 60sp/3xp, 8 Wine 480gp, Scroll 3 spells 400xp, Ring Water Walk 1000xp, Spear +1 500xp, Dagger +2 w Bullseye Light 200xp, Chime of Opening 3500xp, 4000ep/2000xp, 5 Gem 5300gp, Pearl of Power level 2 400xp, Sword +4 2000xp= 15903xp. Total- 17800xp/ 4PCs= 4450xp PCs w 0 hench, 3782xp PCs w 1 hench, 3114xp for PCs w 2 hench, hench get 668xp. Add % bonus if appropriate.

Graveyard-   1 Lt Foot- killed by the Werebear at the rail supply depot NE of Bartertown (session 79)

2 Silver Spearmen, 4 Kazarians, 4 Shortbowmen, 3 Hvy Hobilar- killed by wereboars and wild boars 1 day outside of Bartertown. (session 80)

5 Silver Spearmen, 1 Bowman- killed by by werewolves and a weird blood thing at Outpost 31 North of Bartertown (session 81)

1 Lt Cav- killed by Ogres at the crevasse north of Bartertown (session 82)

Jirel- P1 and Maria- C/A 1/1-  killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s former ruined keep, now taken over by trolls.  Godhard and Harry brought to Death’s door (1 week bedrest) (session 84)

4 Lt Foot killed Amphisbaena at Outpost 31, 8 H. Foot killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s ruined keep.  (session 85)

Finnigan- brought to Death’s Door by poison needle trap in the lower Wizard’s Tower (session 87)

Magic User 1 killed by Giant Rats outside the Haunted Pass, Fighting Man 1 Mercenary killed by Bandits in the Haunted Pass (OD&D)(session 88)

Godhard- aged 10 years by a Vision in the Wizard’s Tower (session 89)

Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- session 88

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  88 Session Date-  7/17/24

Time Passed-  1 Dungeon Expedition= 1 week

Roll Call-  Magic User 1

Fighting Man Mercenary

Fighting Man 1

Hero, Fighting Man 4

Adventure Log-  A lone Magic user enters the village of Stoneash, a small locale on the western part of the map, adjacent to the tip of an east-west mountain range.  Within a few hexes there exists a castle lorded over by a Lawful Patriarch.  He will aid the village, but visitors and travelers who approach his domain will be asked to pay a tithe or perform a divine Quest for the Patriarch.  The mage has recently learned 3 spells and is eager to try his trade as an adventurer.  His pack is laden with coin, and he is able to tempt the services of a mercenary armed with chainmail, sword, and shield.  The mage equips himself with torches, oil, daggers, and some other supplies, and finds a town square seeking news and rumors.  His intellect manages to impress a rather dull but kindly deputy who is quite the able fighter.  He tells him of the nearby locale the Haunted Pass, a 2 towered fortress guarding a no longer used mountain pass that used to connect the castle to the village.  Nowadays the castle must be approached by going around the mountains to the NE.  The deputy says the Haunted Pass has both a reputation of housing bandits and other thieves, but also that it may contain many levels of mazes and passages filled with monsters and treasure beneath.  The mage explains to the deputy that should the Keep be cleared out and fortified, a reopening of the mountain pass could bring prosperity to the village.  He is motivated to bring the mage and his hireling out to the Haunted Pass to investigate. They arrive after a few hours of travel up into the base of the mountain range.  They scout the stout double fortress, and see the southern tower seems to be the one that has an accessible entrance, they approach the rubble outside the entrance and 3 giant rats scramble to defend their turf, the main door adjacent narrowly.  The party readies for missile fire and the mage exposes himself to attack to attempt to hurl flaming oil at the charging rats.  Unfortunately the oil goes wide and the vicious rat clamps onto the mages femoral artery and he bleeds out in seconds.  His body is brought back to the Heros horse and a second Fighting Man steps forward to aid in the investigation of the fortress.  They cautiously follow the pathway of a few slightly ajar doors that the giant rats must have been following.  Upon crossing the main entrance path, they realize that they had just narrowly avoided a pit trap.  The corridor splits north and south, and they go south to a room mostly collapsed, with a deep pit of dirty tepid water at the bottom.  They avoid the pool and make it across the room to a door that reveals a twisting hallway.  They firebomb a room with 2 more giant rats, vanquish 2 skeletons that come to life in a long forgotten room, and stumble across a zombie that may have wandered up from a deeper level.  When they backtrack the zombie, they find it had somehow been released or released itself from a small room hidden by a secret door.  Inside the room they found a peephole  that revealed a medium sized room containing 5 bandits.  The fighting man elected to fire a bolt through the peephole at a guarding bandit, striking him, but not killing him he screamed and ran off down a corridor.  The party then hoofed it around several corridors to get to the door of this bandit room, not being accessible from the peephole room.  When they get there they kick in the door to find the 4 remaining bandits ready for battle and calling for reinforcements.  The party spies a table with a few sacks of treasure on them behind the bandits and engages.  They are slain, but not before the mercenary is cut down.  The remaining 2 grab a sack of silver and one of gold and flee before more bandits can emerge, leaving the merc behind.  They make it back to the village and rest the remainder of the week and divide their treasure.

Session Notes-  This was a pretty informal showcase of my recent investigation of OD&D and all things mid 70s gaming and fantasy.  I was able to take a few days and sit down with the 3 LBBs and the Chainmail Man to Man rules and a copy of Outdoor Survival for use of the map for a wilderness area and palace to set the village and nearby dungeon.  This locale does have a place on the Nappendixia map, so sessions do have an impact on the campaign and will continue to be part of the Adventure Log session sequence, should the group do this again.  We started with a basic overview of my look at the game, I indicated the small examples of where the books refers to any kind of setting or lore.  It really only is contained in one passage- “descent beneath the ‘huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses’”.  You can see from that one line a much more gonzo or weird fantasy world is connoted over any kind of high fantasy take on the fantasy medieval setting.  We went through the simple process of char gen, which specifically states that the DM should roll the PC stats, but the player should roll the starting gold.  I prepared a document going over everywhere in the rules it gives procedures of any kind for PCs to interact with the game with. (presented here-  OD&D PC Options - Google Docs ) There is clearly a complete game here if you wanted to run it as a zero prep procedural dungeon and wilderness exploration game.  That’s pretty much how it is presented in the books.  In a world where the roleplaying game does not yet exist, people reading this game back in 74-75 likely interpreted the game this way.  They were already familiar with Avalon Hill style chit wargames, which always provided a streamlined rulebook dictating all the ways you could interact with the game to gain a victory condition.  Therse games generally had a combat results table and a time record sheet.  There were roleplay elements in these games in things such as HQ counters that gave the historical generals name, but otherwise had no impact rules-wise. Little touches like this began the very first inklings of roleplay as players could act out the part of different generals and show off their historical knowledge while playing the game.  So this is how gamers at the time were beginning to coalesce into understanding and developing the new field of roleplaying games.  They knew there needed to be a well thought out combat system that had some strategy to it, they knew they had to interact with a game map and account for travel and time, and they had the seed of injecting elements of role playing into a dice game with more concrete mechanics.  The DM’s role is also clearly spelled out in the rules too, 6 dungeon levels, a town map, and a world map are required to begin play.  Now of course compared to later editions of D&D this edition can seem rather primitive and limited, but I think from the perspective of mid 70s gamers there’s so much here.  Just enough procedures to explore dungeons and wilderness, just enough monsters to make for many sessions of exciting encounters, and enough ways to interact with the game through hiring men, luring monsters, mapping wilderness, and saving up to build a stronghold.  This set definitely emphasizes the goal of leveling and running your own stronghold, a concept that may seem trite or too long in scope to many gamers, but at the time it was both innovative, and in line with a wargamers understanding of using a procedural ruleset to gain a win condition, with the ultimate win condition in OD&D being mastering and defending one's own domain in the campaign.  We found in a session 1 scenario with zero prep we were able to develop enough of a world/setting to make it interesting, give options, yet keep it kind of simple for starters, leaving all the room for the game to grow in whatever direction it may.  Clearly, both the rules state this, and gamers of that era would intuitively use lots of great fiction available to draw inspiration from.  We really enjoyed using the Man to Man rules which is 2d6 based, not d20 based.  There is some strategy in the weapons are classed in a scale from shorter quicker weapons to longer slower weapons.  There’s an interesting matrix of how different weapons are effective against different armors, and some weapons grant initiative over other weapons, so there is a bit of strategy and gaminess in the rules that make it fun.  I showed my player the chart and allowed him to pick weapons based on it, but a DM may want to run it by not showing players the chart and letting them figure out which weapons are more effective vs different weapons and armor.  The combats flowed quickly and could be battlematted with actual distances laid out, or more theater of the mind combats, they both moved along.  It should also be noted that the man to man rules are only employed when combatting 1HD opponents or less, and when monsters are 2hd or more the alternate d20 system is used.  In the man to man rules higher level characters are granted multiple attacks vs opponents, giving it a real Conan feel and keeping things exciting.  Also All PCs have d6 hp and 0hp is death so combat is quite lethal.  We saw 2 1st level PCs killed in a 2 hour session.  In all we really enjoyed the session, my player had fun and I had a low stress time managing the game.  There are few books and resources to have to manage and enough procedures to make it so you don’t have to improvise much at all.  I could definitely see in a modern setting this ruleset could get stale kind of quickly, there would be a need for new monsters, but overall there’s a fair amount of mileage that can be gotten from the game and it is certainly very pulpy, a little campy, and a fun nostalgic way to game.  I look forward to returning to some more OD&D periodically.

Treasure and XP-  Monsters- 4 Bandits 400xp, Zombie 100xp, 2 Skeletons 100xp, 5 Giant Rats 125xp. Treasure- 60gp/xp, 100sp/10xp=795xp. 1st level Fighting Man adventuring on Dungeon level 1 gets 398xp, 4th level Hero adventuring on Dungeon level 1 gets 99xp.

Graveyard-  1 Lt Foot- killed by the Werebear at the rail supply depot NE of Bartertown (session 79)

2 Silver Spearmen, 4 Kazarians, 4 Shortbowmen, 3 Hvy Hobilar- killed by wereboars and wild boars 1 day outside of Bartertown. (session 80)

5 Silver Spearmen, 1 Bowman- killed by by werewolves and a weird blood thing at Outpost 31 North of Bartertown (session 81)

1 Lt Cav- killed by Ogres at the crevasse north of Bartertown (session 82)

Jirel- P1 and Maria- C/A 1/1-  killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s former ruined keep, now taken over by trolls.  Godhard and Harry brought to Death’s door (1 week bedrest) (session 84)

4 Lt Foot killed Amphisbaena at Outpost 31, 8 H. Foot killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s ruined keep.  (session 85)

Finnigan- brought to Death’s Door by poison needle trap in the lower Wizard’s Tower (session 87)

Magic User 1 killed by Giant Rats outside the Haunted Pass, Fighting Man 1 Mercenary killed by Bandits in the Haunted Pass (OD&D)(session 89)

Nappendixia Camapign 2.0- session 87

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #-  87 Session Date-  7/10/24

Time Passed-  3 days (7/10-11, rest 12th)

Roll Call-  Godhard- C7

2x P1 hench

Finnigan- T5

Anjar- R1 hench

Rust- D3

Kenny- MU5

Boyo- C3 hench

Mayfly- MU1 hench

20(1) Silver Spearmen

Adventure Log-  7/10  During downtime, Godhard did some Divination spells on some of the locations the party has been delving for treasure and experience.  He is trying to better assess the risk vs reward of the various adventure locations the party has recently found itself at.  They are still seeking that big treasure score that has been eluding them for many months.  He gets some information on the Undead Subway Station, The Wizard’s Tower, and the Crevasse Dungeon, and the party asks him to divine about the North Station for  comparison.  He does that and also Kenny casts Clairvoyance on the circle of stone wagons in the desert, and Godhard later divines that location also.  Kenny sees no activity in the morning at the stone wagons, and based on all the data Godhard has gathered, they ascertain that delving the Wizard’s Tower will possibly be the most lucrative.  Rust announces that he is now trained to move the party 3 cubic gate stations due to his new training gained at North Station.  They look at the cubic gate map and though they never have been to the location, they see that it is 3 stops away and attempt to try to travel via the gates there.  They decide to take 20 of their silver spearmen, along with the 9 party members.  They also check out the newly completed Bartertown railroad, which travels on rails out to the cubic gate and back to Bartertown once a day.  The train was launched on the day after Bartertown Independence Day.  They take the morning train on the 11th and arrive at the gate at noon.

7/11-  With the new train to the Cubic Gate, rail travel is ½ a day and avoids any random encounters, and the party arrives promptly at noon.  Master is apparently obsessed with keeping the train running on time.  The party has never been to the Wizards tower, they have heard many legends and rumors of it and considered trips there several times, but this is the first time the party can use Rust’s new training to use a 3rd level spell to travel 3 stops on the route directly to the Wizards Tower.  He fires up the cubic Gate and the party and men at arms assemble on the platform.  The party passes through first and after the first silver spearmen passes through the gate it begins to flicker and fritz out, the next troop that attempts to pass is roughly shoved back onto the platform wondering what happened to the 10 who were able to pass through.  The 10 who make it through land on the other side of the magic gateway but the platform is at an odd angle and covered with piles of sand.  The platform is much larger here, and built on top of it is a 3 story tower, it leans at an odd angle but remains intact, its front door largely free of sand piles.  But the end of the structure that houses the circular gate when activated is partially buried in the sand, exposing only about half of the gate's area, and thus limiting the amount of travelers who could pass by that amount.  The gate does not seem active from this side; it seems only partially engaged or perhaps damaged somehow.  They will have to find out before using it again for travel.  As they gaze out across the landscape they quickly see within ¼ mile a second tower, this one taller, likely 4 stories in the near distance among the sand dunes.  They decide to investigate this tower connected to the gate first, and find the front door locked but Finnigan quickly picks it.  The main floor of the tower is mostly open, a receiving room of sorts, with a fireplace, scant furniture, and 2 spiral staircases, one leading up and one leading down.  They listen at both and hear nothing, and elect to go up.  Godhard casts detect traps and begins viewing the stairs and 2nd level.  The second floor they find a sitting room and 2 doors closing off 2 other rooms.  Behind the second door the spell reveals some sensation of a trap in the room.  The other door is searched and kicked open, revealing a musty old library and a crystal statue that animates and attacks upon opening the door.  It is quickly dispatched however, with 2 magic missiles and a few hammer bashes.  The shattered tiny shards of crystal litter the floor.  Kenny begins picking up the pieces and examining the musty texts, finding one that may be repairable and have some magic in it.  In the other room they find what could be the bedroom of the mage or scribe who kept the library next door.  They find a secret compartment in the floor beneath the bed, and in it Finnigan finds an iron lockbox.  Checking it he misses a poison needle trap and collapses near death, he is revived with a laying of hands form a paladin, and is able to fight off the poison just enough to survive, but still be in need of 1 week bedrest.  The party listens at the third floor and hears nothing.  Based on the locked condition of the tower, they hope to rest and recover here so Finnigan can get back on his feet and the party can complete clearing the tower and hopefully figure out how to reactivate the cubic gate.  

Session Notes-  So this session I told the players that I had noticed how much content has been created from all of our session play, rolling on the random tables generates a lot of stuff, and a lot of it has kind of been ignored over many sessions.  I asked the players if they felt this was a problem or detriment to the game.  I also offered that if there was some aspect of the game, something that had come up over the course of play and they were wondering/wanting for some kind of resolution to said topic they could tell me openly or privately, and I would invest some time in figuring out how it resolves.  None seemed too deterred by the fact that so much content gets generated in play, and much of it gets ignored over time.  Overall they felt the content generated is much more of a feature than the bug of having to ignore some of said content.  Now a more astute and time friendly DM may have more time to keep many balls in the air in the background, I simply cannot.  I have time in my week to run the session, calculate the xp, write and post the session report, and respond/follow the downtime chatter on the Discord.  They seemed to not expect a bit more from me; they all were quite happy with the sort of multi-directional shape the campaign has taken.  I guess this is some evidence of the pulpy, episodic nature 1:1 time play produces.  What the players seem to enjoy is the following-  they like a well-adjudicated but fast moving game that is basically RAW and will sometimes pause to get in the weeds on a ruling, but also tempered with some on the fly decision making.  They like interacting with character advancement, maintaining a stable of PCs and henchmen, training them, hiring troops, maintaining those costs, building constructions, and casting information gathering spells on downtime.  They use the chat largely for downtime activities, but also like a bit of leeway to declare/resolve some downtime stuff at the beginning of sessions.  They enjoy the 80s scifi references I have thrown into the campaign in as gonzo of a style as I can, and they like seeing things play out in 1:1 time and managing all of that.  Now granted this is the sentiment of my regular players who have stuck with the game for a while now.  There are certainly players no longer with the game who were less committed to this style of play.  But I think it demonstrates at least what this game has been able to achieve and focus on after what is approaching to be a 100 session campaign.  It certainly has more staying power from both a player and DM perspective than any other style of pay I’m aware of.  

Treasure and XP-  Monsters- Crystal Statue 101xp.  Treasure- 400sp/20xp, 200gp/xp, Scroll Protection from Lycanthropes 1000xp= 1521xp/ 4PCs=  380xp each,  with one hench 323xp, 2 hench 266xp, hench gets 57xp each.  Add % bonus if appropriate.

Graveyard- 1 Lt Foot- killed by the Werebear at the rail supply depot NE of Bartertown (session 79)

2 Silver Spearmen, 4 Kazarians, 4 Shortbowmen, 3 Hvy Hobilar- killed by wereboars and wild boars 1 day outside of Bartertown. (session 80)

5 Silver Spearmen, 1 Bowman- killed by by werewolves and a weird blood thing at Outpost 31 North of Bartertown (session 81)

1 Lt Cav- killed by Ogres at the crevasse north of Bartertown (session 82)

Jirel- P1 and Maria- C/A 1/1-  killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s former ruined keep, now taken over by trolls.  Godhard and Harry brought to Death’s door (1 week bedrest) (session 84)

4 Lt Foot killed by Amphisbaena at Outpost 31, 8 H. Foot killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s ruined keep.  (session 85)

Finnigan- brought to Death’s Door by poison needle trap in the lower Wizard’s Tower (session 87)

Nappendixia Campaign 2.0- session 86

 Nappendixia Campaign Session Report

Session #- 86 Session Date- 7/3/24

Time Passed- 8 days (7/3-7/10)

Roll Call-  Finnigan- T5

Rust- D3

Anjar- R1 hench

20 Lt Foot

10 wagons

Adventure Log-  In the days leading up to Bartertown Independence Day, the wagons and workers return from the expedition to recover building materials from Outpost 31 led by Rust.  He was able to befriend the strange amphisbaena snake that was lairring at the Outpost and entice it to patrol the area while the crews worked in exchange for a small lair to be constructed for it.  The wagons returned laden with wooden boards, metal sheeting, nails, screws, hinges and all kinds of good building materials totaling 3500gp worth of goods.  Times are good in Bartertown, the threat of the headhunter orcs was avoided with no sign of their return.  Auntie and Master seem to have a renewed alliance in the aftermath of the void left by Papagallo’s factions departure.  The Day of Independence is festive, and the party mostly rests and enjoys the ceremonies.  Godhard, Rust and Finnigan all manage to procure some fireworks that are much more in demand this year than last year.  It seems the rumors of all the neat ways the party has employed the fireworks over the course of the last year has trickled into the populace and increased demand.  Of the revelers that enter the Iron Quarter to The second day of travel the party encounters a large horde of over 300 goblins.  Perhaps they have been emboldened by the seeming lack of monstrous presence on the Nappendixian badlands.  For whatever reasons, the party spots them amongst the scrub at 150 yards and loses initiative to them, but their short stubby legs cannot carry them into combat at this distance.  After a few rounds of the party trying to flee, they get enough distance on the goblins that they seem to give up on pursuit.  Fortunately even the wagons are faster than the goblins and they do not have to be abandoned.  

7/6-  After avoiding the goblins and traveling to the ruined keep and resting, they search the keep in the morning and find it still empty.  The engineer they brought with them begins to rig up a pulley system, and a group of largely undamaged 2 foot square blocks are found amongst the rubble.  They take the rest of the day and manage to distribute 30 of the massive blocks onto the 10 wagons.  They depart the following day and make the 2 ½ day journey back to Bartertown.  On the last day of travel, they encounter a herd of wild herd animals, similar to water buffalo.  Rust and Anjar use their nature wisdom to calmly approach the herd and identify the alpha of the group.  Then a successful speak with animal and animal friendship spells win over the alpha, and he is convinced to follow the druid and relocate the herd to some prime natural lands near Bartertown.  Rust agrees to manage the herd and cull it appropriately to maintain its balance, and provide Bartertown with a new food source.  They get the animals settled and return to the Iron quarter with the stones, considering what to do with them.  

Session Notes-  This was a solo session, only one player attended and we kept it short and light.  It was quite fun.  I had nothing prepped other than it was Bartertown Independence Day and I rolled out a city encounter for the day and for the night.  I went with the day encounter since most of what the party did was procuring information and items and prepping for travel.  The roll actually was a Gentleman, but there was a 20% chance of it being a Gentlewoman, with some guidance as to how to run each variation of the roll.  It really does give just enough to run the encounter, another win for AD&D 1e random tables.  The session was just giving the 1 player the time and freedom to do whatever they wanted.  We had already resolved the salvage mission with the snake taming, but in this session we came up wit haway to determine the value of the salvage, and to give the player opportunity to inquire about some surrounding factions like the nearby slime cultists.  It can be a big gamble going out adventuring as a solo, often resources are low, and something like 300 goblins can become a problem quite quickly.  Nonetheless smart play ensued, the procuring of the herd animals as a food source seemed worth some xp for the value of the food asset brought in from the wilderness.  I gave ¼ xp, the same I do for turning undead, so I treated the 4 HD water buffalo as 1HD and the PC chose to split that between the ranger and the druid which made the most sense.  This may have been a shorter session, but all of the play was generated by 3 rolls on random encounter tables, and each result had just enough guidance in their descriptions to give the DM direction on how to run it with 0 prep.  This style of play can only be refined through practice, you have to put in the reps before you really start getting full mileage out of the books,  and it’s well worth the journey.  I can truly not ever see a reason to go back to freeze time story gaming.  That type of play only has one inevitable result- burnout and loss of interest resulting in a suspended campaign, but with the promise that the next campaign would be that way.  That’s a little more negative than I’d like to get in these session reports, but I’ve just seen it too many times, when the onus is solely on the DM to create an endless series of hoops for the PCs to jump through it’s unsustainable, and you simply have to ignore way too many of the coolest features of AD&D.  

Treasure and XP- 1300xp shared by Rust and Anjar for taming the herd animals and relocating them near Bartertown as a food source.  

Graveyard-  1 Lt Foot- killed by the Werebear at the rail supply depot NE of Bartertown (session 79)

2 Silver Spearmen, 4 Kazarians, 4 Shortbowmen, 3 Hvy Hobilar- killed by wereboars and wild boars 1 day outside of Bartertown. (session 80)

5 Silver Spearmen, 1 Bowman- killed by by werewolves and a weird blood thing at Outpost 31 North of Bartertown (session 81)

1 Lt Cav- killed by Ogres at the crevasse north of Bartertown (session 82)

Jirel- P1 and Maria- C/A 1/1-  killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s former ruined keep, now taken over by trolls.  Godhard and Harry brought to Death’s door (1 week bedrest) (session 84)

4 Lt Foot killed by Amphisbaena at Outpost 31, 8 H. Foot killed by Trolls at Wardoof’s ruined keep.  (session 85)