Accidentally Old School

Note: this is a re-post from an older blogging platform. Links may be hinky

It was a rather unique session last night, in that all of the characters survived, but it wasn’t until this morning we got confirmation that all the players did.

One of the group is on vacation but did not let that prevent him from showing up to the game absolutely shattered on cheap Portuguese wine. He put in a good effort, but faded fast. The last ten minutes he was with us was just his chair on video chat. Then his laptop battery died and poof, he was gone.

Thematically, I feel like this was right on point for Keep on the Borderlands.

The game itself was super fun. The PCs hocked the necklace they got last week and used the proceeds to hire a few retainers^1^, having clocked the deadly nature of the Borderlands (and on a meta level, old school play). One of the players decided to run two characters as well. Again, perfectly in line with the module’s advice!

I also decided to fast track their discovery of the Caves of Chaos because this group has done plenty of wandering in the woods in other games and I’m not sure how long I can hold their interest in my old school reset^2^. 

Upon finding the Caves, I read the block text right out of the module (again, the challenge is playing it as written, full stop) and they got to hack and slashin’. They found the goblin cave first, and while it looked like the goblins might parley, steel was drawn and pretty soon the caves were littered with little green bodies. The ogre was, of course, summoned, but the retainers^3^ made quick work of it, and the party emerged from combat mostly unscathed.

Upon discovering that the cave also houses women and children, they had a bit of a moment of conscience and quite cleverly waited for the remaining goblin fighters to run for the battle before tiptoeing their way back to the cave entrance and exiting.

There was still daylight left, so they trudged over to the kobold cave where a PC and a retainer promptly fell into the pit trap (both survived, but barely) and a kobold war party attacked. A couple PCs took some damage but eventually the party came out on top, freed the trapped folks, and started actually sneaking deeper into the cave. One of the thieves nailed their Move Silently roll and they did enough recon to realize that discretion is the better part of valor and heading back to the Keep to rest and recover was the smart play.

In terms of finding fame and fortune in the wilds…I think they cleared about 2gp apiece, though they did get a modest pile of XP for their troubles. 

All in all, a very solid night of old school gaming. Some housekeeping notes as the DM:

• Quest Portal continues to shine as a perfect VTT choice for this game. The scenes and music set a good tone, and there’s just enough token functionality to keep numbers straight without it devolving into a bad video game.

• Planning the session, I wanted to be more diligent in my application of reaction and morale rolls. I did okay in this regard, though the players did remind me a couple of times – mostly out of survival instincts. I also need clarity on when to roll morale: at the moment it’s appropriate or at the end of the combat round. Advice welcome in the comments!

• This is definitely an old school D&D game in that it got a little samey-samey with the combat. I feel like this is about 60% just the way the module is written, but 40% me not doing enough to spice things up. The bad guys could use a few more tactics, yeah? That’s on me.

• Next week I need to lean into the faction play a bit – see if I can get the PCs wrapped up in some intra-cave dweller drama.

• I gotta buy Keep in PDF format. I need to make notes about what’s been cleaned out, but I am loathe to mark up my vintage original module!

At the end of the day, I’m still super glad we decided to play Keep. I think it’s going to pay off for our group^4^ in the long run when we get to the “real” open table sandbox game I’m planning.

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^1^ One of the PCs did more than just hire their retainer…a little dwarf love in the hinterlands never hurt anyone, right?

^2^ One big reason I wanted to play Keep with the Basic rules as written is because I want to go back to the beginning of the game and really understand the fundamentals. I feel like it’s practicing drum rudiments or drilling armbars in jiu jitsu. You have to grok the basics if you want to be able to perform the fancy stuff.

^3^ In retrospect, I may have overcorrected a little from last week’s TPK and made these henchmen a little too badass.

^4^ While introducing ourselves to our drunken player’s wife on video chat, we dubbed ourselves the “Sunday Night Dirtbags,” and for sure that’s going to stick. 75% chance there’s going to be a podcast with that name launching in the near future.