Switching from Corsairs to Dolmenwood, we had a good session 0 I think. We have 4 characters, of which 2 are from the Dolmenwood setting directly, one from OSE and one from the expanded player options (a review here):
- Friar Henry Moon, human. I need to get which saint he follows and a few other details. Dolmenwood class
- Dwarf: LozeBelle Nightmail ("Belle" as the layer took pity on my ability to pronounce things). OSE kindred. Thebruiser of the group, but was a tailor before taking up adventuring.
- Breggle Elrod Bumble, Magician. The player even used the random tables for characteristics and fun things. Dolmenwood kindred
- Changeling Keir (from the OSR Advanced Player Options). Offspring of a mortal and a doppleganger. They were a frost sculpturer in the land of Fey but decided to see more of the world from their human parent.
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| A Breggle, from the Dolmenwood Player's Guide |
It took us a while to get through the character generation, but I do that pretty much old school: roll stats straight as-is. But I do allow 1 extra roll to replace any roll, and the Dolmenwood rules allow for a 2 for 1 replacement, where you can take 2 off one stat to add 1 to another. But I decided to start at 2nd level after reading the initial adventure I wanted to run, as well as allow the magic users (magician and friar) more than a single spell.
I also allowed the players to pretty much equip themselves as needed and still roll for gold. I figure a level 2 character will have picked up the basic weapons and armor by now. And things can get dangerous enough in old school games anyway.
Two of the characters, Belle and Keir, have worked together before: they have run the crab apples from the orchard to Castle Brackenwold for Zoemina Ladle. The NPCs are from the Dolmenwood Campaign book, but the job stuff came from the party backstory generator. It gives me some potential hooks later if I need them.
The friar is from the Old Abbey, a destroyed and ancient abbey. Actually, from an unnamed village nearby as the Abbey is in ruins and only inhabited by a few people. Think I'll get back to the Settlements book and roll it up just to have that. He is all the way over here due to dreams he has been having the last few weeks:
A valiant or courageous PC is visited in a recurring dream by a beautiful elf lady,clad in white. In the dreams, the PC falls in love with the Lady, and awakes with a deep yearning to be with her. After some weeks of experiencing this dream, the PC has a second one: venturing into a burial mound, opening a coffer, taking a ring from the finger of a skeleton, and bringing the ring to the Lady. At the end of this dream, the Lady tells the PC that the tomb is a real place, and that a magical door to her realm is located there, in the lower level. She (falsely) promises her heart to the PC, if they can retrieve this ring that was stolen from her in ancient times and bring it to her. She reveals the location of the tomb and says that one who bears the ring can enter the magical door in the lower level that leads to her realm in Fairy
The Breggle, a native of the Dolmenwood, has his own reasons to be here: he is getting paid to return a ring from a burial mound. He'll get paid 1000 gold to get that ring. Elrod has a map of the burial mound, and it is a couple miles from the Giant's Nose, a tavern run by an older Dwarf.
And that is where we started the adventure, all 4 in there after a storm had come through, destroying Pierogi's gardens. The four adventurers, not knowing each other yet, are persuaded by a bit of gold and some free meals to go up the nose.
After getting shrunk to about 1/2", they are hoisted up the nose on a stick with cotton to prevent splinters. The first part of the journey is climbing up some mucus-slimed hairs, but no one falls. They do meet an Elf heading down, Fern Evergreen. They talk briefly, and he manages to gracefully bypass the party. They find some of the brown mold here, before getting to the first ledge. They get to a ledge and manage to find some of the glowing spores. But they also find 4 snot creatures. There is a battle, but with the dice rolls, 2 of the creatures were fighting Keir, and 2 against Belle. The fight went well, though Keir and Belle both got hurt. Friar Henry Moon cast a healing spell and healed up one (and sadly, my notes are far too sparse to remember who got hurt the most).
After getting shrunk to about 1/2", they are hoisted up the nose on a stick with cotton to prevent splinters. The first part of the journey is climbing up some mucus-slimed hairs, but no one falls. They do meet an Elf heading down, Fern Evergreen. They talk briefly, and he manages to gracefully bypass the party. They find some of the brown mold here, before getting to the first ledge. They get to a ledge and manage to find some of the glowing spores. But they also find 4 snot creatures. There is a battle, but with the dice rolls, 2 of the creatures were fighting Keir, and 2 against Belle. The fight went well, though Keir and Belle both got hurt. Friar Henry Moon cast a healing spell and healed up one (and sadly, my notes are far too sparse to remember who got hurt the most).
Seeing a rope, which is an old vein, they get a rope they have, and start climbing to the next level. Belle slips but manages her saving roll. so is just left swinging a bit. They notice that there is a bit of a breeze, and wonder if the giant is still living. Climbing up, they encounter some of the nerves hanging off the roof of the nose and are attacked by some stinging things. Elrod has managed to climb up, and they defeat the 2 vicious plants that plummet out of the nose. Which is not even noticed by Pierogi and Franklin as it stayed thee same size so got blown away by a mild breeze. But our heroes get some of the stinging nettle before getting off on the top-most platform. There is a small crack leading up, to where the last ingredient was at. The air was stale, but Belle climbs up.
Poking her head out of the floor, she sees a glowing giant starting to stride to her. "Leave me!" he yells, club starting to swing. He hits her and somehow I managed to roll max damage for the it. But Belle gets out of the way, and the others pop up and we have a battle with the giant. Keir gets hit at least once, and everyone gets enough hits in to defeat the giant's spirit. The friar did try and turn undead which, sadly as the giant was a few levels above, had no effect as his roll was not good enough. Had the battle lasted 6 rounds he could have tried again. But they managed to kill the spirit, and gather the lace seeds.
They climb back down, and enlarged to their normal size, and get some good food, some gold, and 170 XP each (I think - I need to remember to write down XP in the notes!) And this was where we closed off the initial session.
Thoughts
I think they enjoyed the game - we also got to use more of the dice which, well, we are all dice goblins. Some of the things we had to read a bit on: one of the magician's spells, after re-reading the description, did not work like the player originally thought. We did a retcon on that turn as we are all learning the rules. Fortunately, one of the other players also has the books, and is a great GM so that helped to get help and have more than 1 person looking things up.
I slightly modified the Giant's Nose thing a bit but it was mostly the same. It was a bit difficult to understand how to get the map working as it is more vertical than horizontal so hard to figure that for a few things. However, it was a silly introduction to the game, and I wanted something mostly non-lethal to get a handle on some of the mechanics. And I've read the adventure we'll run in a month a few times to get a feel for that. And I even found the minis and have them all in a single place for that game. Hopefully that will be fun.
And I made cupcakes.
NPCS
Franklin - a human druid who lives somewhere near the Giant's Nose,
Pierogi Poundflour - Dwarf owner of the Giant's Nose
Zoemina Ladle - human female, owner of the Roost, "a fantastic treehouse inn is nestled in the boughs of a trio of old beeches"
Fern Evergreen - Elf met in the nose
