Bradley Keep - Session 1

Bradley Keep is the name of my Labyrinth Lord sandbox campaign. The goal is to highlight some of the best that the OSR community has to offer.

Date: Sunday February 19, 2012

Adventurers:

• Dorf the Dwarf (Dan)
• Stikky Fingas - Human Thief (Allen)
• Torthorn - Human Cleric and Behemoth - Boar Hound (Dave)
• Graelyn Thorn - Human Magic User/Cleric (John)
• Dalia the Just - Gnome Fighter

After a few minutes to let the players introduce their characters, the crew set east from "The Realm" looking for fame, fortune, and glory to the east. Man once had firm control over these lands, but over time, many of the strongholds of law have collapsed into chaos. Bradley Keep is one of the last bastions of law under the rule of the king. 

After a few days of travel, the group came upon The Heavy Betting Giant, a serviceable inn providing food and shelter to weary travelers, as well as the farmers and laborers living in the region. The party immediately notices a group of less than savory types at one of the tables towards the back of the room. They attempt to interact with the group, but quickly realize these ruffians would best be left alone. As the evening continues, Dalia performs a song for the patrons, and the group quickly wins over both the owner and patrons of the inn.

The ne'er-do-wells loosen their tongues as the liquor continues to flow. The party overhears an argument over whether or not Del Lorenzo was going to show up. Stikky immediately perks up, as he recognizes the name. Del Lorenzo is well known in certain circles for staging ridiculous break-ins...and now he's late. These guys were supposed to be breaking into an abandoned, lightning ravaged, wizard's tower to the north. They plan to wait a couple days for Del Lorenzo, and if he doesn't show, they'll investigate on their own. 

The party decides to jump the claim first thing in the morning and get directions from the tavern keeper, who is happy to oblige. He warns them that the locals steer clear of the area. The group hired Larvay as a torch-bearer/porter, Linus the Courageous, a human fighter, and Gail, a cleric to join them. In the morning, the group of 8 head to the Tower of the Stargazer, just as the sun crested the hills to the east.

After an uneventful journey north, the group began investigating the area around the tower and discover the body of a man. Stikky immediately recognized the corpse as Del Lorenzo. Everyone was a bit intimidated by this discovery, particularly given DL's reputation. The group quickly entered the tower and discovered two entrances to the basement. They successfully navigate a secret door and end up in the in some sort of grim laboratory. Dalia noticed some strange mirrors in the back of the room and managed to survive some strange effects. Unfortunately, she wasn't as lucky when she got to the forth mirror and her duplicate exited the mirror and challenged her to mortal combat. Unfortunately, the party could not react in time, and after a few poor roles, the doppleganger overtook the gnome, striking her dead.

The party used a strange lift to enter the basement of the building finding a huge treasure hoard behind the a deadly energy field. After some trial and error with the levers in the corner of the room, the party secures the treasure, only to realize there is significantly more than they can carry out of the place. They leave Larvay and Gail (two retainers that had just met the previous day!?!) to guard the treasure while they investigated more of the tower.

On the fifth floor of the tower, they discover a huge telescope that allows them to view the surface of a far away planet. After fiddling with that for a while, they descended to level 4 and investigate a library. Finally, in the final room visited, a ghost materializes at a table and challenges them to wager their soul in a game to access to the Eldritch Library. Torthorn overcame the ghost (we went head to head with a game of Zombie Dice and the player beat me fair and square). We decided to wrap the game as the characters entered the library.

What will happen next? Will the retainers still be in the basement when they return? How will they get all the treasure out? What else will they discover in the tower? What will they find to the east?

I think all the players enjoyed the game. Running Tower of the Stargazer as an introductory adventure put a different spin on an opening game. There is very little physical conflict in the module. Only a few monsters exist in the module. The fun comes from the investigation of the various objects and devices found within. It was a novel experience for most of the players, as they were always expecting a physical threat to be behind the next door.

If you've read or played Tower of the Stargazer from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, please reserve any commentary or spoilers for a couple weeks, because my players are likely to read this and still have a few floors to investigate.

Bradley Keep Begins Sunday

I'm finally getting back behind the screen this weekend and I'm quite excited about it.

At the release of 4e, I decided it was time to try my hand a Dungeon Mastering again. Regular readers will know that I had a huge lapse in gaming throughout most of the 90s-00s. Even when we did play D&D "back in the day", we never really got too deep into it. The desire was there for me, but not the means. We just couldn't get ourselves organized enough to do it properly.

That 4e campaign ran for a few years, and eventually we were all feeling completely burned out with the system. As I got more involved with the hobby, and started to read more blogs, I discovered all sorts of games out there. Savage Worlds, Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX), Hackmaster, Call of Cthulhu, and, of course, the OSR titles all caught my attention. As a group, we decided to take a break from 4e on Tuesday nights. I also opened up the opportunity for the players at my table to run some one-shot type adventures. Allen ran Call of Cthulhu, Dave ran D&D Gamma World, I ran Mutant Future, Labyrinth Lord, and HEX. We had plans to get back to 4e, and we tried, but the little remaining luster had really worn off.

There was some desire around the table to check out Hackmaster and we asked Dave's buddy Jonathan to come in and run a few sessions. The few sessions turned into a few months, as our group's positive attitude really impressed John. He wanted to keep gaming with us, and suggested we wrap up the Hackmaster session and move on to Labyrinth Lord. The plan was to bust out as many of the classic TSR modules as he could. John is great DM, with a lot of experience (but a very busy schedule), so I was happy to give up my seat behind the screen to play with him. So far, we've cleared Castle Caldwell, rescued Princess Silvia, and started investigating a haunted house in the Saltmarsh.

We decided that we would open the world up to anyone in the group with the desire to run...just take the new set of characters off in a different direction, essentially.

Starting this Sunday, I'll be in charge of the Borderlands to the east of "The Realm". I planted the keep from B2, out there, but tossed everything else. I want to show off what the OSR community has to offer, and hopefully in the process, learn a lot more about adventure/dungeon design. Instead of the Caves of Chaos, my players will have to contend with the Stonehell Dungeon. In addition to the lizard men in the swamps, they may stumble upon the Fane of St. Toad. In the burned out ruins to the south, the Inn of Lost Heroes may appear. The Grinding Gear and the Tower of the Stargazer should feature promising, assuming they wander into the right hexes. The hexes from the recent issues of Loviatar will populate another region. Zogorion may even make an appearance. All that, without even touching the list of available AD&D compliant modules.

It will be my first time offering a hex based adventure, and probably the first time for most of my players to play through something like that, too. Although I have plenty of material to fill out the "interesting" stuff on the map, I look forward to improvising what else might be found in any given place.

Wish me luck!

List of Available AD&D Compliant Modules

Got a hankering for some old school dungeon delving?
Have a game coming up soon and you need something to toss at your players?
Stumble across your old D&D books in the attic while putting away your x-mas decorations?
Has the announcement announcement about the WOTC reprints of the 1st Edition AD&D books gotten you all hot and bothered?

Check out this great resource: A list of AD&D compliant modules. Lots of free stuff available. All sorts of adventures for all levels. This isn't bootlegged copies of the old modules. This is currently produced stuff that is still in print! Check it out...

http://tinyurl.com/ADDmods


(I did not pull this list together. Just sharing someone's hard work with the community. Us old-school types like to share.)


UPDATE: Share this file with anyone you see fit. No credit as to where you got it needed or expected, as per the original posters request.

Upcoming Games

I haven't been behind the screen in months. I asked my buddy Jonathan to come over to introduce Hackmaster to my regular Tuesday night group. He's been playing Hackmaster for years, and it seemed best to get a pro, rather than trying to muddle through the extensive rules on our own. He had so much fun playing with the gang, that he asked if he could stick around and run some Labyrinth Lord for us. Everyone enjoyed his style, so we went for it.

The plan is to run a fairly open game, where players can rotate in and out as necessary. It also opens up the opportunity for others to take the reigns. Jonathan is planning on running a bunch of old TSR modules in a fairly static universe. We started with Castle Caldwell and Beyond, clearing the castle for a local merchant. That was a fairly successful venture, so we moved on to cleaning of "The Dungeons of Terror"® and rescuing Princess Sylvia. It's been a deadly affair (16 casualties in just 4 sessions), but we're all having a blast. I think we're heading off to learn the sinister secrets of the saltmarsh next. When I was playing as a kid, we didn't really do many modules, so it's nice to get to delve into some of the classics now.

I'm going to be starting up my section of the game soon, hopefully running on Sundays, and occasionally taking over the captain's chair occasionally on Tuesday. My plan in to run a bit more of a sandbox, out in the borderlands east of the area Jonathan is operating. Right now, I'm debating between a keep or small settlement as a home base. Since the primary game is focused on the classics, I plan on populating my region with some of my own ideas, and some of the best that the OSR has to offer -- Stonehell Dungeon, the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Modules, Small Niche Games Modules, Fight On! and whatever else I stumble upon (or rediscover in my RPG PDF directory). Eventually, I'd love to take advantage of Vornheim, Carcosa, and Isle of the Unknown, but I feel like they are all a little "out there" for our current playing style. There is always the opportunity to step through some sort of portal and end up in an alien world (both literally and figuratively), so they may rear their heads at some point.

I'm itching to get this underway, and I'll try to keep the blog updated as I move along.

Watch me talk about Darves Hill

Tim aka Samwise7 runs the Darves Hill Labyrinth Lord game at GASP. He asked his primary players to talk about the game and his DM style. The first video is Jeff and I talking. The second video is Tom (with Jeff and I piping in off camera). Tim does the interview.

Tim has a whole bunch of other really cool videos on youtube where he reviews games, talks about games, and posts game audio. Check out  his channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Samwise7RPG

 

5-year Re-Anniversary

About 10 gamers circled me on Google Plus (find me --> G+ Link) today, and it kind of inspired me to return to this sorely neglected blog. I'm going to give this another shot and see if I can get it up off the ground again. I was in the process of writing most of this as an introduction to new folks in my gaming circle on G+, but it felt a bit personal and long winded, so I'm morphing it into a blog post instead.

I did a little research and some number crunching and I realized that this past Saturday was my 5-year Anniversary of getting back into gaming! Pretty exciting, right? Extra cool, because, by coincidence, I spent the entire day playing RPGs at GASP Game Day -- a Call of Cthulhu one-shot, first game of a Pathfinder campaign, and the continuation of the Darves Hill Labyrinth Lord Campaign.

Anyway, here's a little extra background info if anyone is interested.

I got into D&D via the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and playing the Dungeon board game with the   neighbor across the street. He was a bit older and ran us through live action dungeons in his backyard. We used cardboard tubes for swords. Nothing like a yard full of 8-year-olds playing a boffer larp without even knowing it, right? Unfortunately, that awesome neighbor moved away before he got around to playing real D&D with us. Eventually, I got the Mentzer box set on my own. We tried to play, but without that older brother or neighbor to teach us, we never really got very far. Another friend had some of the AD&D books, but his older sister went whack-o Christian and made his parents throw away his books (and accused us 12-year old burgeoning headbangers & punk rockers of being Satanists, which we thought was pretty cool at the time). We also tried to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Palladium Fantasy RPG, and I remember rolling up Rifts characters, but I don't think we ever actually understood how that was supposed to work. Unfortunately, we could never manage to get a long-term campaign off the ground.

Fast forward almost 20 years (of wishing I could play some D&D) and we finally put a group together to play 3.5 D&D. I also started following some blogs and discovered the OSR. I was really relieved that the game I spent so much time reading (and not enough time playing) as a child still had a strong following. I enjoyed 3.5 for what it was, but there was something about that old school style that really drew me in. I drank the Kool Aid and started buying 4e books, which lead to me running a 4e game for almost two years. During that time, I got more into the OSR stuff, and purchased copies of the Swords & Wizardry White Box, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and other OSR products. Back in October 2010, I started attending the local gaming club, GASP, just to get the opportunity to actually play Labyrinth Lord with some like-minded folks. I turned my home group on to the OSR stuff and we dropped 4e like the ton of bricks it became. Right now we're just starting out a new LL campaign and it's going great. I'm still playing in a 3.5 Ravenloft Campaign and just started in a Pathfinder campaign at GASP, too.

Over the past 5 years I've managed to play 3.5 D&D (player & DM), 4e D&D (player & DM), Call of Cthulhu (player), Lamentations of the Flame Princess (player), Hackmaster Basic (player), Aces & Eights (player), Hollow Earth Expedition (GM), Swords & Wizardry White Box (DM), Labyrinth Lord (player & DM), Mutant Future (DM), WOTC Gamma World (player), Stars Without Number (player), Deadlands Reloaded (player), Savage Worlds Fallout (player), Spellcraft & Swordplay (player), Pathfinder (player), Spirit of the Season (player), Castles & Crusades (player), and Dark Heresy (player & GM). I possibly missed something in that list, but that covers most of them...

Most importantly, I've met a lot of totally awesome people, and had some amazing adventures. Sincere thanks to the following:

• First, to Brad F, wherever you are, for putting us through all those crazy "dungeons" in your back yard. 
• Mark R, for being willing to DM that D&D 5 years ago and Curt G, for posting about D&D enough "on the board", to convince Mark to run 
• All of the "Friends of Milo", we should do a reunion game someday. I wonder what Tordak is up to these days... 
• Dave 8C for almost always "being there" and always being open to trying something new 
• Allen for almost always "being there" and finally giving me the opportunity to play Call of Cthulhu 
• Tim and John at GASP, for being so damn friendly with the new guy and allowing me to join in your games 
• Geoff at Phantom for listening to my weirdo stories and selling me awesome product 
• All the other friendly folks I've had the opportunity to game with over the past 5 years!

Okay, this is feeling a bit sappy, and probably a bit long, so I'm going to wrap it up there. Hopefully you'll see some more posts out of me in the near future.

Poor neglected blog...

Poor poor neglected blog. I had such high hopes for you in 2011, but I've been wasting my time with the dreaded television too much.

Lots of stuff going on in the Gutter Cult game world. I gotta get back in the swing of things with this here blog, I suppose. More soon.