#stonehell

Stonehell is my pick for the best of the 21st century megadungeons (and is, I think, one of the first in the OSR mode). It’s in two parts, the initial Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls arriving as a self-published print on demand product in 2009, and the second part, Stonehell Dungeon: Into the Heart of Hell wrapping things up in 2015.

The dungeon began as a tyrant’s prison, where the prisoners were forced to excavate their own living space. The tyrant fell, but when the prison was liberated, not everyone left — lots of folks considered the horrible place their home. The top layers still retain their prison-like feel, and numerous former prison gangs have carved up the complex into small warring kingdoms. Deeper levels get stranger. At the very bottom is the lair of a creature of pure chaos that feeds on the negative emotional energy generated by the inhabitants. The more it eats, the more it destabilizes nearby reality. This goes a long way toward explaining why the place is so weird (there’s a casino down there somewhere, and at least one crashed space ship).

Thoughts:

Yeah I kind of sucked at running it, to be honest. I probably should have figured that by the amount of veteran OSR players that left.

Also… just use Rules Cyclopedia. Literally just use Rules Cyclopedia. OSR needs no other system. I’m only partially jesting.

Thirdly, back on the point of me sucking dick and balls: if you’re inexperienced at running dungeons and OSR play maybe don’t pick a megadungeon to run. Stonehell has its own problem of being empty and devoid of treasure early on, so you really should use the dungeon stocking. Due to its one page formatting, you also have to be good at improvising descriptions, something I am very much not. Otherwise traps just sort of go off, and they can be deadly. So either be good at improv or write up in advance.

So in other words, do half the module design.

If I were to do it again, which I might, I would do all of the above. Also it’s really deadly, so maybe start at level 2? I went through literally countless character deaths. Every session had one or two, with a high of three character deaths. I would also just use Rules Cyclopedia. My other option, if I so cared, would be to do it in Dungeoncrashers, since that is based heavily on 3.5 mechanically, and I ran a section of Stonehell in 3.5.

Consolidating all the new character art for my Stonehell adventuring party onto one post.

I've been posting about wanting to run a megadungeon (specifically Stonehell) for a bit, so here's the official post of me looking for players. Come one, come all to the OSR funhouse.

For the system it'll be my inhouse system Advanced Fantasy Roleplay, which is somewhere between Rules Cyclopedia and AD&D 2e, with some additional mechanics not seen in either.

All levels of familiarity are welcome, though if you are new to OSR games, I'd suggest reading this first.

The vtt I use is Owlbear Rodeo for the free lighting engine (that mostly works).

If you're interested, dm me

I mean yeah, probably. But does it dungeoncrawl well? It probably does decently enough for most games. But if you are a dungeon pervert, and if you want to run a megadungeon like Stonehell, then maybe not.

Most obviously is the skill system. I actually really quite like the skill system, but it has a flaw I'm going to get into right now: it's wrong? Kind of? At least for finding secret doors and listening at doors. In theory, by converting the 1-in-6 into a DC for a 2d6 skill check, it would be a DC 10, since that is around a 15% chance of any particular character succeeding. Of course, it should probably be 9 rather than 10 since WWN imposes a -1 penalty to skills if you do not have at least level 0 in them (which you do unless you have it as a skill). I bring this up because this is, according to the system's logic, a very difficult number to get even for a trained professional, despite the fact that this is supposed to happen a sixth of the time.

For reasons I will not get into, elves and dwarves not having infravision is a little bit annoying specifically for Stonehell (iykyk).

However, these aren't why I am debating even using WWN for dungeoncrawling and specifically megadungeons. The reason why I doubt the system for this specific use is quite simple: it doesn't reward that style of play. Usually, you get 3 xp a session just for showing up and doing stuff. You need 3xp to get to 2nd level, and the xp required increases gradually. This is not great, and there are a couple oither systems given for if you don't want to do this, like goal based, mission based (which is similar to goal based), and spending based. Spending based is the closest to what you want, but falls apart since you need to spend everything you earned at the end of the session. Which means no saving up for stuff really. And also technically means that if you escape with 3 sp to your name, you're going to have a much easier time than if you actually did well. Sure you could ignore it. Stars Without Number does have xp for gaining moneys, 5000 credits to your name and you get to level 2, and this number resets and increases by 5000 each time, so to level 3 is 10000 more credits. This almost seems perfect, just replace credits with silver (which is what WWN uses), and gold with silver in the dungeon. The issue is is that I don't know how much treasure is readily available in the dungeon, especially on the first level, so you could have the issue of characters being underlevelled, which is fine I guess but is not ideal.

The session started out with Paladin (replacement for Ranger who got rabies last time), Cleric, Fighter, and Thief (new player). I’m not naming them because apparently you don’t matter.

The party check on the rats from last time, and the cleric dies pretty much first thing in the session. Quickly rolled up Magic User, good stuff.

Magic User, Paladin, Fighter, and Thief successfully find, and don’t get hit by, a dart trap through the trusty 10’ pole. Unfortunately, they don’t continue the use of the lifesaving device down the corridor, and Paladin and their torchbearer fall into a pit trap, which newrly kills the paladin since he took damage earlier.

They find a room with a bunch of junk and find two sets of 50’ rope, and a 10’ ladder. Immediately coming out of the room they see a horde of giant ferrets or whatever and hide in the room while they pass.

The find an area with giant centipedes and run through.

They find a room with a statue of a fish, which when touched spews out poison gas, killing the thief and the paladin. The survivors managed to make it out of the dungeon.

And we still forgot Shock.

This is where Stonehell’s issues come in: it’s really deadly for little treasure. The fish statue that can just kill you? Not guarding anything at all. No reason to interact with the fountain. This is bad because treasure is the primary way to level up in most OSR systems worth playing megadungeons in. It may also be that what I thought would be a non issue in regards to monster THAC0 might actually be a Very Big issue. Unsure.