Arden Vul - Session 1

Welcome to the first session report! I'm going to try to keep these pretty basic and hopefully will not spoil my players too much, if they want to read them too. 

The party

Skeggi Arnbjorgsson, the Elf Thief
Basil Cydones, Archontean Magic-User, member of the Order of Thoth
Lucius Virillius the Archontean Lyan, Hand of the Emperor
Freydis, the Wiskin Cleric of Thor (hireling, played by my dad for this session)

(Archonteans and Wiskins and both human cultures in the world of Arden Vul)

Summary

The date: 2993 AEP, also known as the 8th year of Constans XXV. 1st day of Fourth-month.

Among other rumors, the party had heard the Pyramid of Thoth and a particular basement of a building in the ruined city above were good starting points for fresh-faced newcomers.

The party arrived at the base of the cliffs underneath the great city of Arden Vul. The imperial road took them to the base of the cliffs, with the ruins of Arden Vul 1500 feet above them. They could make out a series of switchbacks that climbed up the cliff, in-between two huge statues of Arden and Vul, the legendary adventurers. A massive waterfall made communication difficult and made the surrounding area slick.

The party searched around the base of the cliff to find secret entrances but didn't find any.

They declined to search the tower at the base and started up the switchback. At the first switchback, Lucius and Basil lost their footing and slipped at a broken flagstone. Freydis and Skeggi luckily were able to grab them both in time.

The party decided that using rope to tie themselves together was the better option, so they did so and Lucius took the lead and pounded iron spikes into the walls, slowing down their pace but helping keep everyone safe.

Around the third switchback, a piece of masonry from the city above fell and knocked the party off balance. Luckily, the rope and iron spikes kept the party from falling.

Between the 3rd and 4th switchback, Skeggi's keen Elven senses led him to notice a secret door on the path. The door opened easily and the party headed inside.

Entering the Dungeon

The door opened up to a cave system. The first room was covered in detritus and refuse from common use, and the floor was covered in obvious footprints, although they were smaller than human sized.

From there, they ventured into the cave system and got into marching order. They came across two decomposing bodies, both a few months old. Both were humanoids, a few feet shorter than human, with dog-like faces and fur and imperial armor that looked to be a few hundred years out of fashion. They found no loot and carried on.

After searching through more passages, they found a bust of a human face (typical of an ancient Philosopher figure) with empty eye sockets built into a small alcove. Skeggi found no traps but did find mechanisms that suggested something was meant to be placed in the eyes.

After leaving the room, the party heard a strange cacophony approaching them. Suddenly, a group of 8 albino monkeys appeared in a turn beyond them and pelted them with shit and fruit and began sprinting away. The party stopped mapping the rooms and began persuing them, curious where they came from.

They passed by a large Archontean chamber with a big door, a large boulder, and chased the monkeys up a long slope and another turn. The monkeys bounded through a small cave with several large rock-like lizards. They dropped meat and sprinted through, leaving the party unable to keep chasing them.

The party headed back the way they came, but at the edge of their torch light were 3 large segmented worms with multiple horrific mouths, heading towards them. Possibly attracted by the noise of the chase?

The party backed themselves into a small crevice, just beyond the doorway to the rock lizards. Lucius kept himself in front (and exposed to the rock lizards to the side.)

Two of the worms rushed forward as Lucius cleaved one through the armored head with his mighty thews and greatsword. Other parties members threw darts to no avail.

The other worm attempted to bite the Lyan and paralyze him. Although he was struck five times, the might of his god kept him safe.

The third worm crawled over the walls and targeted Skeggi. The party was able to slay it before it did any harm. The remaining worm attacked Lucius again, who kept standing after many bites and was now immune to the worm's venom.

The remaining worm was attacked by one of the rock lizards and finished off by Lucius.

The party ran off with one corpse and extracted a use of paralytic venom from its glands. The rock lizards took the second corpse for themselves and were sufficiently distracted.

The party headed back the way they came and encountered three lost goblins who were trapped by the Beastmen (and had plenty of bad things to say about them). The goblins asked for assistance getting back the Arena where they had came from originally in exchange for leading the way. The party accepted.

Basil asked the goblins about a particular mushroom they had heard about (and did not share that they heard the Beastmen were looking for it) and the goblin leader pointed them to a large boulder they had passed during their Monkey chase. Basil was able to use Spider Climb to check the top of the boulder and found a small campsite and a few large mushrooms, not what he was looking for but took one to examine later. 

My take

The entry into Halls itself was a surprise, I forgot that door was there and I didn't prep those rooms beforehand. The game said anyone had a 1-in-8 chance to notice the door. Wasn't sure if that was while active searching or passing by. I started rolling dice for each party member and got a 1 immediately, so I just decided that roll was for the Elf and off we went.

I'm honestly not sure how fast the monkeys were supposed to be, given they didn't have any stats. I was running this whole section blind so I didn't even know where they came from. I was relieved when they escaped, although the chase was fun though so I was happy with it.

I thought the fight was a blast. I heard from one player that they were a little confused why things were happening the way they were, but I was okay with that. this was my second Adnd comabt using Huso's amended rules and I like it quite a bit. I intentionally made the combat a bit opaque since I wasn't used to the rules yet and needed to make some decisions on the fly.

What was tough was not being able to find the monster stats immediately. Arden Vul used a slightly different name for the beast in the monster manual during the combat, which I didn't have printed and just had on my phone. Arden Vul usually included a tiny stat block which was helpful but didn't mention that they could crawl on walls. Also do monsters in ADND not have morale? I need to re-read the monster manual. I arbitrarily decided on a Morale for them when things got dangerous (and just used morale from B/X on a 2d6 since that is what I am used to) and it worked fine in the moment)

By the time we hit combat, I had like 4 binders and many pieces of paper I was referencing (as well as the monster manual on my phone) and that was beyond the upper limit of how much my brain can handle. I'm not sure how to fix this for the future. A big one will be getting the next couple levels of the dungeon printed, or just finally giving up and buying the books.

Again, since I get migraines I prefer to use as much physical media as possible when running games, but I'm not particularly skilled at doing so yet. My notes were a mess after the session.

I think I ran everything fine, I ended up doing a lot of reading room descriptions out-loud instead of absorbing it and re-telling it in my words. There was a lot of information I was juggling and I'm looking forward to it become easier and more rules becoming second-nature.

Lucius is a ridiculous character, his massive strength (18/75 I think) plus a great sword meant he was wiping out 3 HD enemies with a single hit. A ton of fun, but the party is in a lot of trouble if he eats it. He definitely took the spotlight in combat, and I imagine that will be the case for now since he is a lot beefier than his companions.

I think everyone got a moment in the spotlight eventually. I'm sure Basil and Skeggi will get more as time goes on and as their class abilities improve.

It was fun having my dad there for an adventure! He got along well with everyone and was happy to be included.

The players decided to map and I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. This initial section doesn't line up on a grid and it was difficult to communicate. I'm going to shift to describing just the current room and not what it connects to, even if they can see it (the chambers in the cave were quite small so the torchlight usually lit up where they were and the rooms connected to it).

Most importantly, myself and everyone seemed to have fun and are excited to play more! We'll be playing weekly so expect to see a lot more of these!

My Arden Vul Campaign - Resources

I am running a campaign set in the Halls of Arden Vul using ADND 1e mostly by the book (using Anthony Huso's interpretations for most things)

You will see session summaries eventually!

I wanted to put together all the different resources I am using for the game. So here you go!

Resources

Original Books

    PHB, DMG, Unearthed Arcana, the various Monster Manuals, this full price list someone made

I originally told my players to read OSRIC instead of the original books but there are too many changes. 

For Unearthed Arcana, I'm pulling out bits that seem fun and discarding the rest. I haven't brought in the changes to level caps or extra races. I am using all the spells because why not. I'm not using the Cavalier class, mostly just because Huso doesn't use it and I am using his automated character sheets.

The game is still somewhat in flux still. It'll keep developing as we play. 

Someone also made a full price list in google sheets, but I forgot to write down the blog post. Thanks random blogger!

Huso's resources

    Blog (and this unofficial compilation pdf), playables, paladin supplement

His blog is really the only reason I got interested in running 1e. I didn't make any changes to the character sheet, we're just using what's there. I might need to make some alternations eventually but it's fine for now. I think it's meant to be printed out which is hilarious to me.

We're also using his new Plurisy of Paladins supplement, based on some classes from Dragon. Its really absurd and extra and I like it a lot. One player is playing a Lyan (LN paladin, the judge) as an arm of the empire and it's going to be a lot of fun.

Halls of Arden Vul

    The pdfs, the maps, the facebook group.

We're using the default setting with a few minor changes, with more to come as time goes on likely. I could just seek out the creator on facebook for every question, but I'd rather just make it my game. 

There's a lot of random maps and images people have made for use from the facebook group that I have grabbed, plus it fun to see random bits of info from the creator.

Personally, I am slowly printed out the books and putting them in binders. I get migraines when looking at screens for too long so I rely on analog for running games (even though I do run games online).

Dragonsfoot

    Gygax's opinions, Footprints zines

I've also been reading a lot of Gygax's opinions, which you can find plenty of on Dragonsfoot. Boy, what a piece of shit. He truly hates women. I do love using systems that he didn't use, like psionics and attack adjustment per AC. It's really enlightening to read more of his words because it becomes more and more clear that any published rpg is: 1. One brief instance of rules that are ever-changing and. 2. Made up of a lot of people's opinions, it's never just one auteur.

I read through a bunch of the Footprints zine. It was fun and I'm going to pull a few things from it. Really, I was on the look for an expanded equipment list since ADND seems focused on magic items and weapons and less on miscellaneous items. I might end up pulling in BFRPG's big equipment supplement.

That's all I am using for now. Next up should be the report from our first session, which was a ton of fun and went entirely in a way I didn't expect. Take care!

Campaign Updates

Hello! It’s been awhile, I thought I would give updates on all my various campaigns.

Arden Vul

I’m starting an Arden Vul Adnd 1e campaign.

my short-lived zine idea cover

I finally am free from the burnout I felt after cramming 1e into my head to run a game for my dad’s birthday earlier in the year. I am now actually excited about running it again.

All my prep is done for the first session. We’re going to sit down and make characters together soon, since we have to all learn how to use thebluebard’s helpful but confusing automated character sheets.

We’re going to be running it pretty much by the book plus all of the blue bard’s input and changes. 

We’ll see how it goes! I’m hoping to be able to write session reports for it like Vivanter has been for his micro-campaigns. 

Phaedra

My main campaign is on hiatus. Two of the players weren’t able to commit any time recently and I really need a break from it. 

I loved running it since it’s mostly my siblings and it’s been great to see them regularly but god the scope of the campaign is too big. I added faction turns and complex relationship maps and a big hex crawl and it was too much. They do like the political stuff but I don’t know how much they loved the hex crawl. It made their last big adventure feel big but was it worth the hours and hours I spent writing it? Probably not. 

The last thing we did was a big non-lethal tournament and that was fun. It wasn’t perfect (I think the rules were too convoluted) but it was fun and I gave out a bunch of loot. We also stopped the campaign with the characters feeling like they are now major players with their faction, which is a fun place to be in.

I felt great relief at being done for now. I’m not sure what picking it back up in the future will look like. 

Shattered Horizons

Shattered Horizons is the big group open-table discord server shepherded by Hilander. It’s a reboot of Shattered Coast which eventually people lost interest in. 

It’s been fun, most gms (but not all) made hex crawls. I started a big dungeon. It’s the first dungeon I’ve made myself in a long time, definitely my first ‘OSR’ dungeon.

The dungeon is the Tower, an impossibly large tower that floated down from the heavens a few months ago in game time. I also wrote the Forest region that the Tower landed in. The Forest was pretty simple to write and it’s been used in games I’ve played in by Vivanter to great success. 

Also I created my favorite monster the Long Rat (it’s like a Giant Rat but it’s Long instead) for the dungeon and I love them. There’s now a breeding pair in the home village. 

My goal for The Tower was to make a big, interconnected dungeon one small area (8-10 rooms) at a time. All the areas I’ve worked on are all on level 1, which is connected by an underground river. There’s 3 completed areas right now (the Tainted Settlement, the Lower Catacombs, and the Goblin Warren). I’ve got a few more areas I want to complete before moving on to level 2.

I’m trying to use a few sources for each area to make mapping and stocking easy. I’m using the monster overhaul for creature and area ideas, plus a map or two. I used a dyson logos map for the Lower Catacombs and the Tome of Adventuring Design for the Goblin Warren and the next area (the Water Treatment Plant).

I’ve found with the Goblin Warren that I *love* drawing my own maps and will probably be doing that more. I can fit in a lot of detail in the maps that make running it a lot easier. It’s been much easier to describe rooms from a mix of my drawings and secondary text than text alone. I can also do things like draw a goblin-scale accurate trapeze that I would struggle to render with words.

Making the dungeon has been something I’ve been trying to work on a little bit everyday. I really don’t know if this pace works for me though, It’s something I’ve started dreading and avoiding in the last week. 

I’ve ran 3 sessions in the dungeon so far (2 with my playtest group and 1 in the actual server) and the slow pace of the games is not helping my interest.

Part of it is that I really don’t like main draw of the server, which is being able to play any ol’ glog class that’s been published on a blog. I bitch about this a lot but most classes aren’t playtested or balanced and some feel waaaay stronger than others in ways that makes my blood boil in games. Having no control on people bring to my table sucks. I dread doing combat encounters because there’s no set way people make monsters so I have no idea if what I am running is strong or weak or what. 

The general concept of the server is cool (a bunch of gms running games in a shared world) but it turns out that requires collaboration and I’m kind of a controlling bitch, you know?

Luckily I do like *playing* on the server, at least. 

Anyway, I think that’s enough bitching/reflecting for now.