ODND Callastor Campaign: Session Two

Things get rowdy and the gang meets both dungeons AND dragons!

Try not to have an aneurism as you figure out level and elevation changes. Go ahead. I dare you.

Alright, now we are cooking - if you want the campaign overview, check this post - otherwise we are diving straight into the opening session of the campaign.

With our system selected and extra print-outs of Delving Deeper v2 in hand at the table, it was time to roll up PCs and go over a few house rules.

I opted to intro house rules as they became relevant rather than try to dump them all on the players at once - everyone was eager to play, and they trust me. If your table isn’t quite ready to put a ring on your finger as it were, it’s probably best to have a sheet or handout of house rules.

My campaign has quite a few, and even if some of them are largely textural, I’ll try to remember to tell you all about them as we go, too!

Character creation at my tables is usually 3d6 down the line - this time I opted to be a benevolent master of the dungeons and allow “3d6 place where you like.” It still resulted in some wildly low scores, but one of the players had lady luck on their side and threw the bones for a 16, so their fighter is a truck.

I like that in ODND a +1 from anything REALLY matters - this is a sword and sorcery game, but magic items are going to be rare and have big impact, so that little bonus from the stat is a nice boost. (I have to admit there is a certain vibe to playing B/X where the adjustments are more common…but thinking about other systems too much while running a long term game leads to ruin, so…onward!)

We wound up with two magic users, which I wasn’t crazy about as we are testing out quite a few house rules around MU’s (and I knew one of my most experienced players would play as one and work with me), but the other person playing one is pretty much a newbie, so I wasn’t sure how that would go.

They both are Chaotic, sort of typical evil sorceror types, who left their master in the city of Aino on the edges of the old and fallen Algol empire, coming to the Free Cities of the Tirvallis River (the big river valley down the center of the Outdoor Survival map), collectively known as the Tirhold, to seek knowledge for their own nefarious ends.

The other two are playing fighters, expats of the kingdoms of the Belenos (northeast area of the map), seeking fortune as mercenaries in the currency driven and morally grey riverlands. Both of them have something like a 5 and 6 in Wisdom, so we aren’t dealing with powerful wills or much in the way of long term planners, here.

Callastor uses bronze sheafs (cp), iron towers (sp) and steel stars (gp) as currency and uses a silver standard, while assuming the prices in the book are still in gp. That is, everything costs 10x listed price when using iron coin, which is what the PCs are largely dealing with in the early game.

The reason I chose to do this is simple: starting players out with all the best gear has never appealed to me or them. They enjoy spending gratuitous treasure on better stuff, upgrading armor, and so forth.

For this reason, my game also has weapon and armor quality, which, rather than go into here, will give a couple examples of so you grasp the concept.

Iron Mail still gives an AC of 5, but gives an extra slot of encumbrance.

(Encumbrance is the average of STR+CON in slots. Going over slots by 5 drops move to half, etc…keeping it fast and simple).

A bronze sword breaks on a nat 1, and has a chance to break when it rolls max damage. Iron swords break on nat 1. Steel swords don’t break. Spears get first attack if it’s first round of melee. Lots of little stuff that will become second nature as we go on.

Spears are cheap and have good reach and can be thrown - very versatile and already extremely popular with the fighters!

Armor and weapon wear and repair is factored into the PCs cost of living between game sessions.

Moving on. We have a pretty solid party, they meet behind a tavern, where one of the fighters is puking, and the sorcerers offer a good split of gold and some cash up front (the fighters are broke) in order to go dungeon diving with them.

Sorcerers began play with a rumor and a map fragment to the ancient ruined fortress of Zhol-Tarath (it sounds familiar to Dragonlance fans!)…

A few wheels and deals with a local magi (think maesters from Song of Ice and Fire) in the PCs current city of Vør, and they also have financial backing to go find the city and take a rubbing from an old sarcophagus somewhere within. (The shield is the second marker!)

Hirelings are retained with pack horses, and the PCs do their first little hexcrawl up into the mountains.

The skill system I referenced in the last article is a list of 15 things that all start at 1 in 6. PCs can spread 2 points into them at first level, and thereafter receive 1 point per level to place. (We are still deciding on training costs or just handwaving it).

Thus, navigation, foraging, hunting and the like enter into the game during hexcrawls, but in this case the PCs are well provisioned and do some searching in the mountains for old waymarkers. Lore skill rolls are made, and the PCs eventually find the huge architecture of the ruined fortress-city carved into the living rock of the Lower Vyr range.

An outdoor encounter (random encounter rolled) leads to some bandits with a few prisoners. Long story short, the bandits get slept and slit by the party save the leader, the prisoners turn out to be an L1 MU and L1 F who join the party for the delve, and the head bandit is spared as he promises to trade his life for leveraging connections for the PCs back in Vør should they need a fence or other skullduggerous abilities.

The delve begins - I use standard procedures and a stroke-inducingly complex and large map I downloaded from Dyson to stand-in for the ruined fortress of Zhol-Tarath. I don’t wanna toot my own horn here too much but I HAVE been DMing since I was 10 and I’m in my early 40’s now, so “winging” a dungeon with a few scratched down ideas for interaction stuff, traps, and a good encounter table is enough to have a blast with.

Statues are smashed, amulets are utilized to unlock secret doors, blood sacrifices are made into bowls and placed in idols hands, skeletons are brought down cleverly by hurling boulders down staircases, secondary egresses are discovered and other doors are spiked shut to protect the backfield and so on.

Finally, the PCs reach the sarcophagus room, protected by an 8’ tall skeleton (Algolian empire confirmed for weird breeding programs for their elite guards - gross), that TOTALLY WON’T COME ALIVE if you mess with the sarcophagus.

“Don’t f*cking touch tha-” ….too late. Another PC bites the dust. First of the campaign. Caldras, we hardly knew ye!

Rubbing is taken, and then the low WIS fighters decide to make ability check to see if their guys are dumb enough to open. One rolls over with 19 the other with 20. They open it. Skeleton giant attacks, they eventually kill it (statted as ogre), and only one PC dies and goes up on the WALL OF DEATH.

New PC is rolled, another fighter with higher WIS.

PCs roll back to Vør, spend a ton of treasure, some level up, but the magic users are a few hundred from L2 and decide (ominous music) to just do a little hexcrawling outside the city to “grind out” a few experience points. What could possibly go wrong?

TO BE CONTINUED.

(Next time: dragonfire, smart uses of 1st level spells, and the city of Vør…my players come back over tomorrow for another long session, with a few different players, so we will just keep this thing going - instead of typing whole sessions I’ll just do episodically as it makes sense and hope to not overwhelm.)

Let me know what you think so far, and I’m happy to answer any questions as always in the comments.

Keep those blades sharp (even if they’re made of shitty bronze)

- CG