Stonehell Session 1
What an incredible first session. Due to some scheduling issues not all of us could make it online. So change of plans, we decided to play in person. This was just a couple of our very close friends and we thought it would be more fun this way. Queue the pizza, drinks, and dungeon synth!
It has honestly been a long time since I've played a game in person. I miss how interacting with people over a play pretend game can be so much fun. In all seriousness, I was a bit nervous. But after a short intro to the setting, I found my footing.
Okay so tools that I used for this session. Main thing that I used was the dungeon exploration procedures from Necrotic Gnome. This allowed me to keep track of the flow of the game and know when to roll of random encounters. It was cool that my players were following the sequence of play without me having to break it down. I try not to shove procedure in their face, that's my job to keep track of that. Beyond that procedure sheet, we just used Delving Deeper and the module Stonehell.
This is my first time really 'running' a retroclone. Especially something like ODnD. Which seems to have a bad rep of being too 'complicated' to modern audiences. In my opinion, I think they're just lazy to do simple math. Regardless, I made sure to change some of the abstraction that we would worry about. This was gone over in our session 0. (I might post our rulings sometime? Maybe folks would like that). For anyone reading this (I'm sure this is old news to some), for the love all that is mighty, please please run a session 0. Set expectations, and player expectation, you'll thank yourself later. Without my players understanding that things might go poorly for them, they might have looked at every encounter as an opportunity to fight. Of course you can't talk your way out of some fights. Like Ghouls or Skeletons. But other situations, you might be able to use the environment in the fiction.
OK enough rambling, let me go over how the session went.
Our party for this session: Serafina the Fighter, Joel Osteen the Anti-Cleric (This was to be ironic), and Ashton Moonstone the Thief.
The surface
Stonehell has a couple ways to get a campaign started. One of which would be to go straight to the first room and first floor. The second, start with the players on the surface. I went with having my players start on the surface. The idea would be to have them get comfortable with the dungeon procedures. Move through rooms, worry about resources, and try to map the area as they go. In all honesty, they walked past a lot of it. There wasn't much for rewards, but the interactions would have been interesting. The Gatehouse was mildly explored. They did interacted with the Goblins by the fire. Which went poorly.
I rolled low on the reaction but they were never hostile. So instead I had them play out as though they were extremely defensive. They did just lose their homes after all. The attempt to coax them didn't pay off either so at the end of the interaction it was left with bad taste in the Goblin's mouth.
A hireling was sent went up to Coal's cave (Coal is the name of the black bear). PCs just saw the cave opening and decided they didn't want to be the ones to make the climb. I ruled it as a regular dungeon turn to make the climb since it wasn't too high. I wasn't sure if Coal would be there so I rolled a die of fate. Yes. Ok well in the module Coal isn't immediately hostile so maybe it'll be ok on the reaction. Snake eyes. Welp, I figured to roll to hit the hireling. Missed entirely. The hireling took a tumble down the cliff side and landed by the PC's feet. Bruised but not hurt. My solo brain took over, Coal saw that there were more people down before, huddled together no less, and rolled another reaction. The question I was trying to answer is, is Coal going to follow? Thankfully, for the PCs, the answer was no. Coal roared and turned back to his cave.
After the hireling facing death, the party decided to explore a little more before heading further west in the canyon. One of the Ruined buildings housed a statue of St. Ras. Joel the Anti-Cleric decided the best thing to do, would be to desecrate the statue as much as possible. Me as the GM, figure that St. Ras would be really pissed off. So maybe instead of a blessing, there will be a curse bestowed on Joel. Opposite effect of the written blessing.
The party continue west from here. After the incident with the black bear, they thought they had enough of random caves. They hang out by the spring to the northern part on this canyon, then venture west to the entrance of Stonehell.
Level 1
This was it, Stonehell. Time to keep track of torches and move through this maze one room at a time. The party decided to work in a clock work fashion from here. Choose the North West Route and go from there. Getting to the first cross roads, they run in to the sign that reads "Da Dragon's Den". With a sudden interest, the party moves west. For me this part of the map was weird. But I interpreted that they enter the bottom cave. They run into the 7 kobolds that are walking from the northern cave. Reaction roll was very positive and thankfully the Anti-Cleric had Kobold as one of the languages they knew. After trying to proselytize the kobolds, they pointed west and made many mentions on "hoomans take care of Dragon!". The party agreed to see what this "dragon" is all about. What they run into is a giant gecko.
At this part, I was at a loss. The module only gives it 22 HP. Nothing else for HD or morale or AC. I winged it and gave it 8 AC. Hoping it wouldn't be too easy of a challenge. A close call with the fighter Serafina and nearly a death blow to Ashton the thief. The party is rewarded with 80 copper coins and a circlet worth 1,100 GP. A mighty hoard hoard indeed. They also cleave the giant geckos head as a trophy.
The party wishing to be lazy, decide to call out to the kobolds to come over. I figure the kobolds would be too cowardly so I rolled for a random encounter chance. This time with much higher odds(1-4 this time instead of just 1 out of 6). A low number was rolled and the random encounter was 10 giant rats. The party still hurt from the fight with the gecko, decide to back away from the rats and use the body of the recently slain gecko as a distraction. This was clever and let this happen successfully without any dice rolls.
Back in the tunnel where the kobolds were, the party hand over the head of the gecko's head. The kobolds who are quite delighted reward the party with rations and bandages. No treasure of their own to give, but much appreciation. I figure this would affect future dice rolls for kobold reactions from here on out. From here, the party moves south.
Nothing notable happened for a couple of rooms. They do get to the room with the dry fountain. They look at the hallway south. Almost figuring to turn back. The Fighter, Serafina, says that she specifically looks at the dry fountain an not touch anything. I figure I'd give a hint on the trap. I explained that there are nozzles in each of the fish's mouth. The sound of creaking metal like some old pressurized canister. In order to trigger the trap, the fountain had to be disturbed. So the Thief felt that it had to be disarmed. In my head knowing they can leave well enough alone, I just had Ashton roll a D6 for one of the skills. A very high roll so that meant success. The fountain from this point on is disarmed.
Back tracking to the new crossroads discovered, the party moves south. They run in to a locked stone double door. Not having any key nor means to pick the lock, Serafina and Ashton wanted to try their crowbars on the door. Acting together on this, I asked if they wished to try to hurry to get the door open or to take their time. There was no sense of urgency, taking their time it is. One dungeon turn later and the doors were open.
I knew this area is a crypt so I changed up how I described the stone work and smell, hoping that the party would pick up on the sense of decay. But with caution in the wind, Serafina and Joel started to open doors down this hallway. After some combat, Joel finds a magic item. The module describes that it is a minor magic item but I didn't have the rulebook the module was based off on hand. So I flipped through the treasure table in Delving Deeper. Initially, my thought was to use the generator to see what Joel finds, but as I saw the miscellaneous magic items instead. At a quick glance, this looked minor enough to figure out what Joel found. A Helmet of Telepathy. Oh great, this is the best item an Anti-Cleric could get. Well, I see a lot more gaslighting in the future. Serafina finds 6 gems worth 100 GP each.
This is where we ended today's session. I couldn't think of any reason to say the party doesn't return to town. Especially since they had plenty of torches and were only on the first level. The best thing I could think of that everyone rolls a D6. If it landed on a 1, then some resource would be lost. The party splits the treasure, and rest in town.
Overall, I really enjoyed running Stonehell so far. Using Delving Deeper to run the game has been really fun as well. It was a lot more easy than I thought to come up with rulings on the spot when I wasn't sure on something. And my gut reactions seemed to pay off. I'll post next week after our 2nd session!
tags: #osr, #odnd, #dnd, #stonehell, #delvingdeeper