Session 100 of Our Grand Campaign
I'd like to dedicate this post to all the chalk eaters out there who insisted that 1:1 time and all the strange rules in AD&D made no sense, that the combat system is impossible, that domain play was "end-game' that no one wanted, that insisted that module play was what the only real thing players wanted all this time, or just play at being players while they suck down endless OSR PDFs but never actually play or run anything.
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| A dojo of the BrOSR! |
Well we made it. We hit 1200 days of actual campaign time. I don't mean we ran the calendar ahead to simulate the passage of time. Those are real calendar days, ticked away like sands of the hourglass, 1 game day for every real day.
Let me head off any of you slack jawed morons who start to sputter about "hOw CAn you PlaY when you havE to TRaCK REAL time in GAmE?" then start another saliva coated thread about how your dungeon delve can't get anywhere because you can only play for 2 hours at a time.
If that's where your brain is at you don't belong here.
You'll notice gaps in the summaries on this blog. I think I started getting down to writing some of the summaries around session #72, and tried to get many in up to about session #93 or so. I can't promise I can keep up with this summary pace. There is often so much happening in our Discord, it's too much for me to keep tabs on all the time. It is incredibly pleasing to keep some sort of record to look back on and remember all of the stuff that we forgot about, like paging through a photo album in your grandparents den, or watching old VHS tapes of your favorite team blasting the hell out of That Other Team back in the day.
A few week ago Dunder Moose talked to me for a bit on the tubez. It was a lot of fun talking about the crazy stuff we've done and the process of gaming we've been trying out. Remember, don't let anyone tell you can't do the same thing and reach new heights. YOU CAN WIN AT RPGS.
A Campaign Summary
Let's take a quick look at what's been happening and where things stand. I'll do quick tour of the biggest movers and players in no particular order.
The Setting
Originally the campaign map was just an import of the Barbarian Prince gameboard. Why is this? Answer: I am lazy and and I am not talented at ideation. Solution: rip off other people.
The second mistake was scale. I set the hex distance at something like 6 miles per hex. This forced a bunch of towns to be readily accessible to the players right away. Big cities were trivial to reach, and I don't think we were able to really get our teeth in to the excitement and danger of multi-day wilderness travel soon enough.
The neat thing about AD&D is that even mistakes like these are not fatal. They're just things that you learn from and then try to improve on. Getting stuff wrong is OK. How do you handle being wrong? Do you double down and insist you were right? Do you huff and cross your arms and pout and say "Don't wanna!"? Or do you choke down that humble pie, admit your flaws and grind to get better? It's up you.
The geography had a large number of settlements along a "valley" between mountainous regions, which soon became known as "The Mupple Vale". I can't recall where this name came from, but I think it was a joke a player made about the biggest city being the "Jewel of the Mupple River". (See a dumb joke became a sticky thing and I love it.)
I only really understood that previously some civilizations had settled here, built up, were destroyed. Yes, it's a post-apocalyptic setting! We'll get into that...
The starter town was called Burmstone and there was a "starter" dungeon nearby, just like Gary said you should setup. I admitted to the players in the first game that "hey there's this dungeon nearby that has good stuff in it" but also left open that if they wanted to go anywhere, they could. The dungeon is part of a rather large area of potential mega-dungeon entrances that to this day no one has ever fully conquered.
Kel, aka The Necromancer, 9th lvl LE human cleric of Arkabal
Kel was one of the original delvers and the player is a crafty wargames enthusiast plus an ACKS enjoyer. That should have been the first warning. Within a the first year he subverted my stupid town and dungeon setups with ELITE LEVEL PLAY and made his own domain. The player also began to carefully build an undead forece that to this date has seldom seen defeat He also built up a stable of supporting PCs and henchmen in pursuit of his own LE empire. We call this Team Evil, which has consistently outpaced any other faction. Now multiple towns are under his dominion. This guy even raised and killed an entire city. BAD NEWS.
The Stormbringers, a mercenary force
These guys are a mounted infantry assault force formed out of the war between a high level paladin in the NW and the beastmen of nearby swamps. It's led by Ove, a rising CN human fighter, and Maximus the Minotaur, a LE Minosian fighter. They have a couple hundred infantry and missile auxiliaries, and are most often recruited by the city of Aeravir to stamp out constant incursions by monsters or hostile foreign powers.
Sometimes the Stormbringers run into serious opposition, like the seemingly unstoppable Terminator Whores (again, that's the name coined by a player) of the Domed City!
The Stormbringers were also instrumental in the defeat of a huge fishman invasion earlier this year, where they teamed up with Kel and others for a final victory.
Aewdil & Mugwump (aka "The Rangers"), Errol (a druid)
These guys are what we might call Team Good. They've made their way flitting between opportunities - either teaming up with the Stormbringers, Kel, or various other groups, even serious dungeon delves, for whatever they can glean. They are currently on a long range return trip from another plane, escorting roughly 2000 refugees back from the wilderness. They've encountered strange lands recently, like the four-armed apes of Appellachia and poncy shirted vampires.
They also befriended a bronze dragon named Bronze Buddy which completely ruined a big battle I had planned. You would think this would have ruined the whole day, but now, the fist pumping and cheering by the players quite loud.
Gerolt (human fighter) and the Night Hawks
Gerolt is a human fighter who started another mercenary group, which is smaller than the Stormbringers, but also boasts a thief, cleric, and illusionist as support henchmen. They have a deep logistics arm, with wagons teams for transport and supply. The Night Hawks were the first group to encounter the dreaded Lightning Towers, a reputed source of lycanthropes that plague the eastern half o the Mupple Valley.
Aearavir
The biggest city of the area and run by a cabal of thieves. At one point the city controlled many settlements all the way to the boundary of Arkala, the next biggest city. After a fishman invasion and destruction of most of the coastal areas, trade collapse and so did the population. Several towns came under the control of Kel and the Arkabalists. Still considerably wealthy and frequently doles out bounties for monsters that pour in from every direction.
Arkala
Formerly the city controlled by Namalan, a 14th level human illusionist, the city fell to the vampire incursion over a year period. This regime lasted until Kel arrived with an undead force to take the city and begin a purge of vampiric control. There is a sewer dungeon under the city that featured Jeff, the Talking Spider, a tribe of Minosians, and of course, a vampire that soon took over the city's leaders. After Kel conquered the city, the vampire(s) fled to other regions...
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| The vampire beneath Arkala |
The Skeksis
Originally encountered as shape-shifters infiltrating towns nearby Aeravir, these things have repeatedly baited the Stormbringers with elaborate illusions and ruses. Recently a force of huge crab-beasts smashed a Stormbringers/Kel expeditionary force near Aeravir. Now there is a constant threat of these things arriving and raiding nearby towns.
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| "clikety-clacks" |
Flick, NG gnome illusionist
Flick is curretly on a long quest to discover the fate of Namalan, his mentor, which meant a long range trek to far off lands and a tower of traps and tricks and shadow creatures, plus an ominous blue crystal. Flick has made a small fortune taking out giant insect nests and dreams of manufacturing chitinous armor.This list doesn't include Mr. Fixit, the dwarf wrestler, or Jeremy, the monk/linebacker who recently was captured by vampires in Appellachia (will he be rescued one day?!). I've also mention there is a graveyard of sorts in our Discord of the fallen over the course of the game. There is a pile of dead 1st level magic-users and even a paladin, Sasha, in that list.
New Addstra
This is the new town spawned by a player's desire to run a mega-dungeon. There are portals in the town that lead to Axion, a plane of existence that is essentially a sprawling maze of rooms and dangers. (Ad I have said this now gives players a chance to bully TWO DMs.)
Stormbringers and the Lair Smash of the Week
In session 100 the players opted to roll out and take on a lair they previously tried to invade. At first glance this seemed to be a regular goblin tribe, but as a DM I reserve the right to utterly lie about first impressions unless facts are verified by divination, etc. And this is really the only way I've found to make lair smashing interesting at all to me as a referee. Yes, you can roll up with your army to utterly destroy the tribe of humanoid dreamers, you fascist bastards, but it's fair play to reveal that the whole situation is anything but what you thought it was.
I don't add elements just randomly - it's been established that something is creating lycanthropes in the area. So when the Stormbringers came up with another one of their "clever schemes" to fool the humanoids, the situation got weird. The goblins are augmented by lycanthrope powers, goblin commandos who were wererats. What do we call these? "Ratlins"? "Gobrats"? In any case the initial combat between the goblin tribe and the Stormbringers was a draw. The Stormbringers tracked the goblins back to a lair which was a mine network in a dormant volcano.
The Stormbringers invaded yet another dungeon with their filthy piles of normal men! Normal DMs worry about fooling players with pit traps. I have to worry about a column of men marching in force down my 10' wide corridors. A 1st level dungeon encounter of 1d10+5 goblins is not a serious threat unless the whole tribe is employing advanced guerrilla tactics.
Of course the goblins are not alone here, and in face the Stormbringers soon encountered a creature of pure wind that seemed to dissolve men in a whirl of sand and dust. Nothing seemed to slow these monsters down, and soon the whole force retreated down the slopes of the volcano!
After rest and refit the Storbringers come back, but this time elect to insert a smaller team of Ove and Maximus, the human fighter Cunning, and a brute squad of Minosians. At first the foray is successful, slaughtering a room of goblins in short order, then a wandering squad of skeletons. Ove used a helm of telepahty of discover the general direction of the tribe's treasure. They made their way down a larger tunnel, only to find a patch of ground covered in oil. Ahead they can see a larger cavern, where they can detect the ambient light from fires or torches.
Sensing a trap, they double back to a side passage where they are surprised by a group of goblin commandos! The attack rolls are not impressive and there is some discussion about if surprise negates shield and dexterity defensive adjustments. The bad news is that the commandos raise the alarm and all hell breaks loose. Hordes of goblins now start to mobilize down the tunnels. The PCs fall back and ignite the oil themselves, which gives them time to focus on the re-routed goblins pouring out of the side tunnels.
The initiative dice finally go the PCs ways, and the multiple attacks they enjoy against the goblins start to tell. The other "flank" of the PCs, including Ove and Maximus alone, manage to finally slay the remaining commandos. I check morale, and I realize that none of the good guys have fallen while several dozen goblins have been killed. The morale roll is a clear "flee in panic".
See the nice thing about AD&D is that you don't have to grind through 23 rounds of combat, even when huge numbers are involved. The way morale works is that the odds of one side breaking become lopsided unless the fight itself is absurdly even handed. So now the whole of the tribe is running for their lives. The Minosians are greatly excited now, as goblins are a preferred food source. The route wraps up in a huge cavern where it's every goblin for itself.
The players lock down the treasure pile. I realize I hadn't generated the loot until this point, so it's time for some dice rolls! I could have used any of a number of online generators (which are actually pretty good and handy tools) but the players usually get amped up about doing this. They start to roll for each treasure chance, with the quantities modified down for the relative size of the lair vs the maximum listed in the Monster Manual entry.
Every single treasure roll came up with NOTHING! The players are really not happy now. They debate trying to locate the wind monsters and seeing if those things have treasure. Not everyone is down with this plan. Eventually they do run into a wandering monster and it's those wind things again, which is preceded with a gust of wind and dust. This is enough of a cue to get out as fast as possible.
What Now?
I don't know what's going to happen. I'm sorry I just don't. The players are unpredictable. There is no meta-plot. The players can elect to do any number of things and some of them have long range plans that will bring additional situations and even direct conflict.
If this sort of thing is interesting to you, DM me on X, @Vomitronz and I'll send you our Discord invite link.
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