Phaedra - Session 2

Cast of Characters:

• A: Phalecia, low born cleric of Hekate (Cleric 1)
  
• Ct: Theoden, coked-out wizard (Magic-User 1)
  
• Ds: Gymothy, thief (Thief 1)

Adventure: Hole in the Oak

Rules: Old School Essentials: Basic Fantasy*

Date: 5/20/2023

*mostly

 I'm jumping back in my Phaedra session reports, back to the first session that really launched the campaign to where it is today. I started writing this months ago and just want it out the damn door already.

Play Summary

We begin near the mansion of Mattluke Kathar, local exotic meat connoisseur and general rich backwater eccentric. The party had heard Matt was hiring adventurers to descend into a dungeon nearby in Pan's Forest to collect as many types of monster meat as they could find, and they would be paid for each unique portion they brought back. The party agreed and Mattluke passed along information where they could find a down-on-his-luck fighter who was looking for work.

The party found Kargor Viperhand, layabout former duelist, passed out in a barn in a farm nearby. The party promised him a share of treasure and Kargor agreed to join them.

The four set out to the location they were given, and descended into a hole in the oak tree marked on the map. They ventured in and wandering through some rooms. They learn some secrets from some polite faces carved into the tree roots that surrounded the tunnels nearest to the entrance. 

They discovered a home-y little area nearby, and wandered in. Inside they met Ramius, a kindly goatfolk, who offered them tea. Only Gymothy accepted. After a few minutes of polite conversation in Ramius' sitting room, Gymothy dropped his tea cup and fell unconscious. Phalecia leaped toward Ramius, intending to fight him barehanded and knock him out, but was knocked-out herself.

Kargor and Theoden pulled out their weapons and Theoden managed to stab the goatfolk, killing him. Two voices cried out from inside of the goatfolk's home and Theoden cast Hold Portal, preventing the other goatfolk from entering the room. 

As Phalecia and Gymothy recovered, a giant, mutated ogre wandered past. The aura of the ogre caused several members of the party to spontaneously develop permanent skin rashes and blemishes. The ogre mentioned it would pay good money for any live halflings or gnomes it could eat, and left.

The two downed members recovered around the same time, and the group left before the Hold Portal spell duration was ended. They backtracked and explored a new section near the entrance of the dungeon. Phalecia look into a mirror near a statue of a hunger and saw the face of the hunter in the reflecting blow it's hunting horn, and the session was over.

Reflections 

Ol' Ramius saved my campaign.

 

A little hyperbolic, but I credit this devious fellow with kickstarting my campaign and giving it the energy to continue on to today. They talked about this encounter for weeks. I remember my brother A saying that he was telling his co-workers about their amazing adventure and the stress of that scene. 

 

Everything lined up to extremely tense action, and the magic-user being the one to save the day by stabbing Ramius was so fun, plus his one use of Hold Portal being the thing that saved everyone. Couldn't have planned it better.

Character creation

I remember this being a bit of a pain again. All three players this time we're new to the system and my campaign. I had some experience at this point at rolling characters but telling people what goes where was still a pain in the ass. I still don't have a better solution than having people roll their characters with dndcharacter.com, and that has its issues that I'll talk about eventually, probably.

I descrbied this process in my notes as "excruciating"

I also had the magic-user choose a spellbook from Beginning Spellbooks by Warren Denning in Knock #3, which gives 4 different options of starting spellbooks, each containing 3 level 1 spells and 1 level 2 spell, each with a thematic grouping and neat spellbook name. Theoden chose "Practical Application of Ethereal Energies", based off name/vibe alone.

The Players

Jumping back a little more, given these players eventually from one of two regualar groups as the campaign goes on, I wanted to talk a minute about them. 

I pitched this game as one-off, just try out this rpg I want to run for people. 

This group consists of two of my siblings (A and Ds) and our family friend/adopted sibling (Ct).

I have no idea if using identifers for players is all that helpful, but given each evetually goes through multiple characters and I want to focus on talking more about player dynamics than in-character session notes, its helpful to me sofar, but I don't love the format.

A is *notoriously* difficult to schedule with. He's the eldest of my slblings, always busy with work or projects. My dad ran dnd for us when we were younger, which was our mutual first experiences with rpgs. He's gotten the chance to play at times in his life but I don't think he's ever played in a campaign before this. A is a key players because I can trust him to just make decisions and lead the way if people can't make a decison. 

 Ds is younger than me and loves Dimension 20 and has played a decent amount of 5E. He's one of my always-available players, if I want to test something out for just want to play something *right now*, which happens occasionally. He *loves* to role-play, and reliably his characters are weird or out-there.

Ct, importantly for things that continue to happen as we play, is brand-new to rpgs.

Tools

I made a few differences to my gm tools during this game. This was the start of my trials with Arnold K's Underclock. I also had OSE's Rogue's Gallery on hand and summon an extra hand (good ol' Kargor) to hopefully prevent another TPK like last session. 

Side note: Love the Rogue's Gallery. Each character is interesting, has just enough story, and has unique items and equipment. I think each one has at least one non-essential trinket, which is something I start doing for my players later in the campagn. Some of the random bits of lore end up getting incorporated in my campaign later on, which is now my favorite way of expanding my world.

I also used a table or two from Tome of Adventuring Design to give a little more direction to my players for Hole in the Oak, which is where the exotic meat connoisseur comes from. Mechanically, he is meant to function similarly as the antique collector rumor from Caverns of Thracia (pays ~5-100 gold for each artifact found) but for monster meat. Eww. I tried to make him fun and weird, and I think it was fun.

Oh, I also used Bandit Keep's unarmed combat rules. I happened to have them on hand and they were great for this tbh.

Dungeons

This really was my start to learning how set the scene well in a dungeon, which is a constant struggle. I also just don't like Hole in the Oak, at least I enjoyed it less the more I ran it.

I think if I understood the whole "Mythic Underworld" bit a little more, I would have liked it better. It just felt scattered and too random for my tastes. I don't need a dungeon to have a cohesive story, but I just wanted more connective tissue. It would have helped a lot for one of my first times running an OSR-y dungeon.

Also the Underclock was brutal on the players, in this session and the rest in this dungeon. I retired it after this. Being more experieced now, I am sure I could tweak it a bit more, but the rate of encounters was just too hard for 4 level 1 PCs in this dungeon. Although it did lead to fun some occasions, but mostly just lead to a total party kill.

But that's for a later session. Take care!