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)
