#moldvay

Character Creation:

I decided that I would go through the process with a player who hadn’t played in a while, but due to this and arrival times, everyone did character creation at different speeds and times. I also think I provided too much information to starting players. I didn’t need to give them the full details on every class, just a short summary. I also think I should have only given 1 summary sheet for each player, I feel making players share some information might have guided them if they were working together on character creation.

I only had time to grant 1 random rumour to a player before beginning. It referred to an area called “the northlands”. Since I did not use this terminology again, the player did not know what the rumour was about.

The process probably took longer than I thought, maybe 40-60 minutes for 4 players. The results were Dante the Cleric Theric the Thief Maximus the Fighter Cuicatl the Magic-User Since the module stated to give additional support to groups with only 3 players, I did not grant any additional items to the party. This I think was a mistake.

Initial Encounter & Town:

The party were on their way to town, I started the first combat encounter. The magic-user cast Sleep, which ended the combat a lot faster than I was predicting. I could not work out if sleep required a saving throw. The players recieved 30XP and and 55cp from this encounter. As well as 3 swords.

The players continued toward the town, and I told them about the basic services on offer. The cleric visited the chapel and was warned of the priest. The magic-user drank a few pints of ale and received additional rumours. One of them was blatantly false. At the time, I couldn’t work out how to convey it sounding true, especially when the player asked for more rumours.

The cleric and the fighter hired additional help from a magic-user and cleric.

These two NPCs were:

Farned of the Great Church, Cleric Glom the Mighty, Magic-User

I should have realised at this point that the party did not have enough fighters. I looked at their numbers and made the thief roll a reaction for the next NPC to hire, I also made the NPC ask for a large sum of money to be hired. In retrospect, I should have given the party more fighters for free. However, the high price for that one hireling (an Ogre called Borc) was explained later as being necessary to pay for the large amount of food an ogre requires.

The party booked a room for the night and rested so the magic-user could memorise spells.

The party embarked on their expedition without any additional purchasing of equipment.

Arriving at the Caves

The journey to the caves was not very eventful. I feel that the process should be expedited. Travelling in the area surrounding the keep is not interesting. There’s nothing that tells players to go off the road. But I did tell the players to find the caves by following the road, through one of the NPCs. I also used one of the NPCs to give the players the basic tips on starting in the caves of chaos (sticking to the starting areas).

Although the players couldn’t really tell the difference between each cave entrance. There was no info there to give them in the module, so I had to improvise. I’m going to add more of that next time. This was a problem as well when the players entered a cave of goblins. There were 3 passage ways, and I couldn’t work out how to distinguish them, and the rolls to listen for noises were bad.

The players encountered a group of 6 goblins, but the retainers were sent to the front lines. The combat was slow at first because we were learning, but it sped up.

I didn’t add much detail to the room though, so there wasn’t much to interact with. Next time I have to at least throw in a table and a few chairs.

The Battle

I feel like player facing rolls helped a lot with this encounter. It seemed to roll ok. However, the players had a lot of bad rolls and the goblins gained the upper hand. I had to consult the rules quite a bit for some things like morale. I also did make any loyalty checks for NPCs. Not sure I should have.

The goblins lost about half their forces, passed two morale checks and began to fight to the death. They killed Farned and Glom. Even with two of them remaining, Cuicatl also fell. I was not prepared to kill a character, but the players did help me and reminded that it had to be a possibility. Cuicatl fell without casting a single spell.

I did not inform the party of Glom’s spells or Farned’s oil and so they did not know to use those, and I did not make them use them, so that was definitely a huge mistake on my part.

After the battle, the party got 30XP and 17sp. Not nearly enough treasure to justify the deaths of their comrades.

The players returned to town and hired new NPCs at a cheapre rate. I rolled insane stats for a fighter which will join them. The player with the magic-user seemed ok and seemed somewhat excited to play the Ogre next time.

Summary

This is a wargame. Players need as much info as possible to succeed. 6 goblins was frightening and dangerous. I’ve got a whole host of improvements for next time, including increasing rewards, the chance of rewards, better telegraphing danger and other clues, as well as some other changes. I’ll definitely add more fighters in next time.

It was still kind of fun though. Characters died but players weren’t annoyed, and I don’t think anyone felt like I was being unfair in anyway, but I should have reminded the thief and magic-user of their abilities.

The party makes their way to the Caves of Chaos and after conferring with their goblin allies decide not to mess with the orcs or the hobgoblins and opt instead to explore a new cave. They get to the entrance and hear a loud buzzing coming from somewhere to the right and decide to stick to the left side of the cave system. Moving forward they reach a point where they can see an assortment of bones laid out in patterns. Deciding to be brave and press onward they move into an open area of the cave and run into a minotaur who is busy arranging his bone collection into pretty shapes. When he notices the players he hefts his magic spear and throws it at them but misses. At this point most of the characters decide to run (smart move). My brother on the other hand is playing an Elf that knows the sleep spell which is by far the most useful spell a first level magic user can know. He decides to stay and try and put the minotaur to sleep not knowing that the minotaur is too tough for the spell to work on him. When the spell fails he is immediately crushed by the minotaur. The other players all manage to escape and even nab the magic spear on their way out.

They make it back to town and meet up with the new character my brother has rolled. He gets a really sweet set of stats and decides to play another elf and be the half brother of his previous character. He also just happens to randomly get sleep as his spell and minotaur as one of his languages. Having re-stocked the ranks the party heads back to the caves.

After some deliberation they decide to set up a trap for the minotaur at the cave opening by having the new elf call out a challenge to him. I have him roll a reaction check on his challenge to see what the minotaur does. He gets a 12 on his 2d6 which indicates that rather than be intimidated or enraged the minotaur wants to be friends. Clearly minotaur culture is entirely based on insults and challenges. He invites the elf in to come party. The elf smartly declines saying that they already have a party outside (which was a nice pun given the party of adventurers waiting to murder the poor beast). 

So at this point. Only the elf knows that the minotaur doesn’t actually mean them harm right now but he’s dead set on getting revenge for his fallen half-brother and neglects to tell the party to stay their hand. The poor minotaur is surprised and everyone gets a free round of attacks before he can even get a turn. I think that two of the six characters managed to hit him on the first turn. The wizard and the dwarf are both above the cave mouth planning to hurl things at the minotaur and jump down on him. The wizard fumbles his thrown dagger which is a bummer but not a big deal. The dwarf fumbles his leaping attack and lands flat on his face and instantly dies (I was going to be generous and allow him to not take falling damage if he’d hit). 

Now the minotaur still hasn’t even gone and is just realizing that there isn’t going to be a party. He spends most of the fight lamenting the fact that his new bros are such assholes. The players fight pretty well for the first part of the combat, scoring a few hits and mostly avoiding the minotaur’s attacks. The fighter takes two wounds but is still miraculously standing despite being the only character in melee with the monster. Eventually the halfling, wielding the magic spear runs up and stabs the minotaur in the gut for some serious damage. At this point it looks like there’s a good chance they’ll get out of this with only one character death. 

Unfortunately for them a few good dice rolls on my part change the scene very quickly. The fighter lands a solid blow once more drawing the minotaur’s ire which results in his head being crushed in retaliation. The halfling manages to hold on a little longer before getting his head bitten clean off and chewed.The beast is very wounded at this point so the party decides to press the attack despite having lost half the party.

On the next turn the minotaur rolls a decent initiative for the first time and manages to rush over and smash the cleric in a single blow. Seeing this, the wizard runs off without having landed a single hit with his thrown daggers. The only combatant left at this point is my brother’s elf who had been shooting his crossbow from a tree just above the cleric. Seeing his last comrade die he leaps out of the tree and rolls gets a critical hit dealing just enough damage to fell the monster by shoving his sword down it’s throat. He calls to the wizard to come back and they briefly celebrate their victory together. 

The two decide to make their trip worth while and see if the minotaur has any treasure. They drag the bodies of their companions and the minotaur back into the cave hoping that they’ll remain unmolested for the moment. Then the search for treasure quickly turns up the minotaur’s stash. Upon finding the treasure the elf realizes that he won’t have to share if the wizard doesn’t make it home. And so he uses his highly OP sleep spell on the wizard and then cuts his throat leaving his body with the rest of the party. 

The elf then spends several days carefully avoiding monsters to bring the treasure back to town. He winds up with enough loot to make it to level 2 which is quite the feat for an elf since they require approximately double the xp that every other class does.