Dread Rock Playtest Session 2 Recap

Cast of Characters

 

Sharaka - Fighter, 1st level, half-orc

Garik Bloodshield - Cleric, 1st level, Dwarf

Dolan the Red - Fighter, 1st level, human

Denthor - Mage, 1st level, human

 

We picked up right where we left off in session 1, using Skype and Gametable as our online virtual table top app.  Gametable really helps expedite gameplay as you can save maps and easily go back in, load the map, and you're ready to play in a few moments.  The group got a great deal of exploration out of the way in this session.  Garik's player really took the lead and did a great job.  I have mentioned him before in my Cormyr Campaign session recaps.  He is the player who tends to wander off on his own at times, however this is usually whenever we play anywhere other than a dungeon.  In the dungeon environment, he thrives as a player. 

 

Sharaka took the lead with his telescopic 10 foot pole, plugging along slowly pushing at flagstones on the floor and testing for traps.  If you've looked on the map for Dreadrock level 1-1, you may recall there is a scythe blade trap leading into the makeshift orc tavern.  Sharaka discovered this loose flagstone on the ground with his pole, and Garik investigated.  Being a dwarf, in 1e rules, he has a 50% check to detect traps in stonework.  I made the roll for him, which he passed.  He could tell by the narrow slits in either wall, coupled with the loose stone, that this was some sort of trap.  He inquired about how high the slits were from the floor, to which I replied, about waist level to a normal human.  He layed down flat on top of the stone, engaging the trap while the others stood back.  The scythes sweeped in from either side of the wall, flying back and forth as a pendulum over Garik's body as he lay on the stone, eventually coming to a stop and hanging in the middle of the hall.  I thought this was a fairly clever way to disarm the trap.

 

They pressed on, taking out the orcs in the makeshift tavern thanks to the aid of a few Molotov cocktail/oil flasks.  They continued along through the area, taking out a few more rooms with orcs, until they found a place to hold up for a few hours so Denthor could rest and re-memorize a spell.  They secured the room and prepared a watch for about 4 hours.  After rolling on the random encounter charts, the first I rolled was a human slave.  As the PCs were in a room, secured and locked, I simply had the slave come to the door and pull on its handle.  Garik replied back in orc, changing his voice.  He heard the pitter-pat of feet run away, and that was that.  The main mission the party was hired to take on in Dread Rock was the rescue of a human female who had taken up to adventuring and ran away from her wealthy father.  The wealthy father hired the group to track her down and bring evidence of her death, or either return her to Dread Rock Bluff alive.  They did not realize it, of course, but had they opened the door, they would have discovered this was indeed the girl, in rags, now a slave to the orcs.  Since Garik replied in orcish, she never spoke and simply ran from the door.  They didn't investigate any further on the matter.

 

One more roll on the random encounter table brought another pull on a door handle from outside the room.  This time, they decided to listen, to which they heard the sound of creatures speaking in kobold.  Garik and Sharaka carefully opened the door, and to their surprise, stood a group of 7 kobolds, in rags and chains, and unarmed.  The leader quickly appealed to the party to let them in, promising they were merely slaves trying to escape, and meant no ill-will to the group.  Garik decided to let them in so he could secure the door quickly.  The kobolds explained they were slaves to the orcs, who had them digging a tunnel to the surface in order to raid Dread Rock Bluff, and the road coming in.  They offered to aid the party in clearing out the orcs, if they would arm them, and set their remaining kin free.  Garik inquired about the slaves, to which the kobolds informed him there were also humans.  The party agreed to arm the kobolds with some spears from the orcs they had previously dispatched in this same room.  Garik mimicked a chant, and told the kobolds he had cast a spell which would result in their instant deaths were they to betray the party.  The kobolds, not knowing any better, believed him (or at least appeared to anyway.)

 

Once the party was ready to proceed, they decided to investigate this tunnel the kobold slaves were digging.  They had the kobolds go ahead to lead the way, and departed the room after resting.  After a few moments, the party, walking in the rear behind the kobolds, heard a click and saw the first 2 kobolds drop.  Sharaka moved ahead to look, and noticed a snapped fish line on the floor, and 2 darts coated with a liquid lying on the ground.  The two kobolds had been pierced by two more darts and died as a result.  Sharaka instructed the kobolds to be more careful and to use their spears to poke ahead on the floor.

 

The party moved on and discovered another door in the corridor.  The kobolds warned the party that the room was an orc barracks chamber, and the party decided to take the orcs out.  They opened the door, which wasn't locked, and managed to surprise the orcs.  Denthor stood in the doorway and cast a sleep spell on 3 of the orcs, then quickly ducked out of the way.  The party stood at the doorway as the remaining orcs pushed forward.  The party managed to funnel orcs out one at a time, using the threshold as a point of advantage.  After taking out 5 of them, the bodies were piled to high for any orcs to proceed.  The remaining orcs in the room turned to flee.  The party then had to spend a round moving bodies out of the way to pursue.  By the time they entered the chamber, the remaining orcs had fled, in an unknown direction.  The party decided to secure the barracks room, and rest for a full 8 hours. 

 

We called the session at this point.  This was the first time any of the orcs had managed to escape the party.  Now knowing of their presence, the orcs have called for reinforcements and are staged with shortbows and nets outside either entrance into the room.  The party will have a rude awakening when we pick back up on Sunday.

 

Post-Session Thoughts:

 

I thought the session went rather well.  So far, the party has only managed to find rooms containing orcs, and have yet to discover a few of the more interesting rooms on the level.  Now, the orcs know of their presence, and things are going to get more difficult for them to proceed.  They really liked the kobold slave twist, and I get the sense they are starting to feel the dungeon environment coming alive.  Looking at the method I used to stock it, I can see I really didn't put in nearly enough orcs.  These are veteran players, and know how to use tactics to their advantage for combat, but with only 4 party members, thus far they have had little problem getting through the combats and traps.  Of course, now that the orcs know they are there in the dungeon, the party has lost the element of surprise.  No more hopping from room to room and surprising orcs.  In fact, it's highly possible the orcs bring out the heavy on this one (that being the ogre prisoner they have for just such an occasion.)  All said, they had fun and I had fun running the session.  We're planning on playing again Sunday night with hopefully another session report soon thereafter here on the blog.

Dreadrock Level 1-2 is Coming...Soon

I've been pretty busy the past couple of weeks, but I have not forgotten about Dreadrock. I have sections 1-2 and 1-3 mapped out already. I am currently working on keying 1-2, which is taking a bit because of the density of the rooms. There must be 50 rooms in this one, many of which are simply empty, but the map is big, so it's taking me a little longer to get it done.

This quadrant will be a bit more gonzo than 1-1, and will feature a scavenger hunt of sorts including finding a dead dwarven adventurer, a demonic looking stone golem, and a hobgoblin king. Oh yeah, there are Carrion Crawlers too...or whatever the OSRIC term for them is...carcass creepers I believe. But it is coming, and very soon. Probably within the next week. I'm currently prepping for my monthly table top Cormyr AD&D 2e campaign, which I'm running tomorrow night. But for those curious, no I haven't forgotten Dreadrock, it's just taking a little longer than I'd hoped. Soon though...very soon.

Skype Gametable Dread Rock Game Recap

About a week ago I asked a few of the players in my group if they'd be interested in running a skype game using some type of virtual table top system, to which they expressed a lot of interest.  After testing out a few different free virtual table top programs, I eventually settled on Gametable.  I simply found it had the lowest learning curve, and was the easiest to use to me.  Last night was our first session.  I told the players I would like to use OSRIC for the game, to which most of them reacted positively.  One of my players, who had stated he would play earlier, decided to drop out once the notion of 1e AD&D came up.  He's an old school gamer, but is more interested in running newer stuff like Pathfinder.  He barely tolerates 2e in our regular table top game, and only does so because it gives us all a means to socialize, so when it came to going further back for a skype game, he simply wasn't interested.

 

My group is only mostly vaguely familiar with 1e.  We only played it for a brief time nearly 20 years ago before switching over to 2e.  I sent them the PDF of OSRIC, and we spent some time working on character creation, and then installed gametable with some added tiles and pogs, and we were off and running.  The party consisted of a human fighter, a half-orc fighter, a dwarf cleric, and a human magic user (which I was running as a NPC) all 1st level.  I was a bit concerned going into Dread Rock with only 4 characters, coupled with the fact that they didn't want to spend the time or money to get hirelings.  They are veteran players, however, and so they are mostly capable of making the right decisions in the dungeon environment in order to stay alive. 

 

It took a bit of time doing pre-game stuff combined with the fact that for some odd reason, gametable did not save the map I drew up of the part of the dungeon they were starting in, which was about 3 hours of pre-game work out the window.  Luckily the practice of laying out the environments and playing with the pogs wasn't a complete waste, as it allowed me to recreate the dungeon as they explored without too much delay.

 

As to the game itself, it didn't last long, as we got a late start before actually delving into the dungeon.  For those who may be familiar from downloading the first quadrant, the starting area in the dungeon is relatively empty and quiet.  This sort of fits to set the mood as further exploration results in more encounters and more danger.  They managed to get through a few empty rooms, before squaring off with a group of orcs in areas 3 and 4.  They also discovered a dead kobold on a torture rack in one of the rooms, so they know there are kobolds in the dungeon, but they don't know what their role in the ecology is just yet.  After slaying the 6 orcs, and looting them, they went into the hall where we stopped the session.  The next one will open up with a roll for a random encounter.

 

I liked a lot of what gametable had to offer.  I told them up front they'd need to map the dungeon out because as they moved from room to room, I was going to "fog" out the areas they'd been in previously and make them unviewable.  After a bit of exploring, it's easy to get lost in Dread Rock if you don't map it out well enough.  Laying out the area was quick and simple for the most part, and the players soon saw after moving around a few cooridors, how easy it could be to lose your frame of reference with the other areas being "fogged" back out. 

 

The program has some built in dice macros, but you have to make some of them up, which is easy enough.  I trust this group well enough to allow them to simply roll real dice at their computers and tell me their rolls.  Besides, we all like to roll real dice anyway right?  Gametable has some nice looking pogs built in for characters and monsters, but I made some custom pogs to add.  Installation is simple.  You just copy the image file into the pogs folder on Gametable in program files and you're good to go.

 

Overall we had a good time, and the group was really getting into exploring the dungeon and trying to discover its secrets.  I had a lot of fun running it as well.  I'm anxious to see how the group reacts to some of the more challenging sections of the dungeon specifically if they decide to free the kobolds who will aid them in overthrowing the orc tribe.  The plan right now is to play every two weeks on Sunday nights for a couple of hours, as that is when our schedules fit together best.  They are excited about playing again, and I'm even more excited about running the game.

Running Dread Rock Dungeon

Yesterday I posted about possibly getting a skype game going with a few guys from my old gaming group.  Most of these guys are in my table top Cormyr game, but one of them, who happens to be my best friend, lives a few hours away from us.  I'm planning on running them through the first quadrant of Dread Rock to begin.  It'll be a good way for me to really playtest it out with a good group of veteran old school players.  We created characters late last night on skype. 

 

One of my players is running a dwarf with an 18 CON, which in 2e means at 1st level he has ridiculous bonuses to his saves vs poison, staves, rods, wands, and spells.  On top of it all he's playing a multi-class thief with a high find/remove traps and open locks.  And of course, his high CON means he has a huge bonus to his hit points.  I told him his nickname was going to be Seagal (a reference to the film Hard to Kill).  This player was pretty legendary for us back in the day when we went through two underdark crawls back to back in Undermountain and Night Below.  He really shines in the dungeon environment as a player, despite his often reckless behavior in them.  Usually the results are pretty hilarious when he's involved in a dungeon crawl.

 

My best friend is running a specialist mage (necromancer) who happens to hate the undead.  He's making it his mission to hunt down and destroy undead and those who would defile the dead by raising/animating them.  An interesting choice to play considering necromancers can't cast spells from enchantment/charm and illusion schools, which means no Sleep spell at 1st level, which we know is usually the saving grace of any low level mage.  Keeping him alive for a while is going to be difficult.

 

I have one more player that will be joining us, but we're not sure what he'll be playing at this point.  I'm going to run a Fighter NPC with the party, and of course, I'm sure they'll opt to shop around for some hirelings.  I'm pretty anxious to give Dread Rock a spin in actual play.  I understand quite a few people have downloaded the first quadrant to run in their games.  If you've been running Dread Rock at all, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, so feel free to drop me a line at robertchandler AT gmail DOT com, or just comment here on the blog somewhere.

Preview: Dreadrock Dungeon Level 1-2

click to enlarge

Here's a quick preview of level 1-2 of the Dreadrock megadungeon project.  I still have to clean it up, and key it.  This one will feature a higher empty room vs monster ratio than level 1-1, as this quadrant's population isn't as dense.  I'm hoping to have it keyed up and compiled into a PDF by this weekend.  That large octagonal "room" is actually the ruins of the ancient dwarven proving grounds arena.  That large cavernous looking area is actually a chasm which drops down several levels with a stone bridge stretching across, which the dwarves used for mining and moving ores and precious metals to the top level for working in the forge.

Updated More User Friendly Dreadrock Dungon Level 1-1 PDF

It came to my attention, that the version of level 1-1 of Dreadrock wasn't exactly user friendly. I went in and adjusted the image, along with the room numbers on the map (as my hand writing scanned in is difficult to read). I also added some notes about the dungeon as well. I think you'll find this version MUCH easier to read, print, and work with in your game. Lesson learned.

Updated download for Dreadrock Dungeon Level 1-1 PDF

Dreadrock Dungeon Level 1-1 Download

As promised, here is the first PDF download for Dreadrock Dungeon Level 1-1. This is the first of four planned quadrants that make up the whole of level 1 of the megadungeon. Included in this is a small preview map for easy cross referencing, a dungeon key with all 45 rooms keyed, a wandering monster table, restock table, trap legend, and a high resolution map for printing.

In the future I plan on releasing a full PDF collection on the dungeon, its inhabitants, and some background on the dungeon itself, some of which I've already posted here on the blog. I hope you enjoy the first taste of Dreadrock.

Dreadrock Dungeon Level 1-1 PDF Download

Dreadrock Dungeon - A Preview of Level 1-1

Click map to enlarge to high-res image

Here's a quick sneak peek into the first quadrant of Level 1 of Dreadrock. I am in the process of finishing up the key and putting it into a nice little PDF for download here, which I hope to have complete by the middle of the week.

This area is where adventurers will start out in the dungeon. This quadrant is the current home of the orc tribe I described in my previous entry, the Rakshir Orcs. As such, the density of monsters vs empty rooms will be a bit higher for this section. Of course, feel free to use this current map and key it however you like.

Area 1 is the entry point, via a dimension door from the tavern in Dreadrock Bluff. Naturally, you could replace the dimension door with a stairwell from a ruined keep, or a cave, whatever your preference.

**edit**

Note: This is only the first of 4 planned sections that make up the entirety of level 1 of the dungeon.  There will be multiple entrances into the dungeon in the other sections as well as multiple entrances to level 2 in those subsequent quadrants when I map them out.

New Project: Megadungeon - Dreadrock Dungeon

"Woe to ye who delve into the halls of that forsaken place. Abandon your Gods for even they dare not enter The Rock"

I'm officially announcing my new project here; Dreadrock Dungeon. So what exactly will this entail? A large scale megadungeon spanning at least 3 levels which will keep those greedy players of yours adventuring for months and months.

I'm planning on releasing the megadungeons here on the blog divided into quadrants in PDF form complete with room and area descriptions, random encounter tables, treasure, and of course the ever important monsters, tricks, and traps, along with a brief synopsis on each area, its denizens, and possible adventure hooks. Once the project is complete, which I don't anticipate for quite a while, I would like to collect them all together into one POD book possibly through Lulu.

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting entries here and there with tidbits on the design process, the various factions within the dungeon, etc. I have already mapped out the first quadrant, and plan on keying it up and putting it in an easy to review PDF within the next week or so.

This megadungeon will be compatible with most older editions of AD&D, as well as OSRIC and will be released under the terms of the OGL.