Convention: Preparing for the Cauldron 2025
Coming Friday I will be in Germany, playing and running some old-school Dungeons & Dragons at Cauldron, “an OSR Euro Con.” The con will run for three days, and has agenda absolutely packed with great games.
I will be running three OD&D games using little brown books only:
- Friday Block II The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor
- Saturday Night Block Conquering the Barbarian Altanis
- Sunday Block I The Darkness Beneath Megadungeon
In preparation I have organised a Judge binder with player reference sheets, adventure notes, pregenerated characters, and player handouts. A bit more on the process below.
Selecting adventures to run
I prefer bold, energetic, and fast play, especially so at in-person conventions. Likewise, I am committed to run a game for any number of players that show up. One? We'll have one-to-one, with single player running a whole party. Twenty? Everybody gets a character and I switch gears to use procedures that are quicker to ensure underworld exploration and combat run smooth.
Following the above, I enjoy playing challenging adventures. Likewise, as a Judge I enjoy running adventures that offer challenge. On Friday night I will run The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, an old Judges Guild classic. Completely unbalanced, surprising enemies in surprising places, and tough as nails but ultimately fair. Some have asked me how do I plan to complete it in allotted time (four hours, but since it is a night slot we can keep on playing until we fall asleep). The answer lies in the opening and where the party will be entering from. And that I will share during the game. Players should expect total violence and merciless carnage.
On the following day I will run a session of our ongoing Conquering the Barbarian Altanis Wilderlands campaign. Four players from our campaign will be attending the con as well, and this will be first time we play in person together. Of course, this session will be open to everyone willing to subject themselves to the savagery of the Barbarian Altanis. Exact focus of the session will be decided on the spot, but it largely depends on what happens in our campaign before the con. I do have two very challenging—and relatively obscure—adventure modules ready just in case. Players can expect total freedom and opportunity to leave a lasting impression on an ongoing campaign.
Finally, on Sunday I will run one of the levels from the community-driven Darkness Beneath Megadungeon. This will be an adrenaline fueled race against time, in a hostile environment that is scarier and meaner than the monsters themselves. Players should expect to think quickly, act decisively, and have little time to weep for their losses. As a bonus, everybody who attends will get a discount code for Fight On! zine.
Preparing supporting material
First, I must express total and complete gratitude to the organisers for providing me the essentials needed to run the session: battlemat, markers, wiping cloth, minis, tokens, and dice. It means a ton not having to carry all of that.
One of the reasons I prefer running OD&D at cons is because of how lean and fast it is. It is mostly rolling d6s and d20s, options and spells are limited (just compare Cleric spell lists in Men & Magic to the one in Greyhawk), there are only three classes, and contains only the most essential procedures for running underworld and wilderness adventures. Perfect!
I created four Judge reference sheets by combining material from OD&D Reference Sheets, Ready Ref Sheets, and few pages I have written myself. They contain attack matrices, saving throws, key procedures (especially monster reactions and NPC reactions), surprise rules, durations, monster intelligence, and few other pieces of miscellaneous information I find useful. To be fair, I rarely reference these sheets since I know the rules almost by heart—it is more about having them at hand to avoid wasting time going through the booklets.
Fighters are super-simple so they get no references. Players with Clerics and Magic-Users will get a single-page handout with all spells they are capable of memorising. Since all pregenerated player characters are of fourth level, that means they can only memorise spells of first and second level.
At the beginning of the year I rolled-up eighty fourth level characters (70 actual characters, since elves can pick if they adventure as Fighting-Man or Magic-User I count). To facilitate quick distribution I prepared a numbered index, so I can quickly ask for player's preference, random number, and hand them out the appropriate character record.
Since sharing a blog post is a bit inconvenient for an in-person game I made a simple original-inspired character record sheet. Top third contains class, race, level, alignment, languages, attributes (including ranking), hit points, armour class, movement, saving throws, appearance description, and traits. Everything is concise to allow maximum player improvisation. Lower two thirds are divided into armour, weapons, hirelings & mounts, gear, coin & treasure, encumbrance, and space for notes. The latter also has quick reference for dwarves, elves, and hobbits. I printed the sheets on yellowish paper for that extra touch.
Choosing games to join
Running games and playing in games is mutually beneficial. Not to mention fun too. There is a ton of games offered, most AD&D, some OD&D, and few retroclones too. Having to pick between several awesome sessions is a sweet problem to have.
On Friday I plan to join Dreadlord's Coliseum of the Lunar Lion. After that I will run The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor. I will begin Saturday with Gabor Lux and The Blue Mausoleum, follow up with The Setian Vault another game by Dreadlord, and finish the day by running Conquering the Barbarian Altanis. On Sunday there is only one slot, and I'll be running a Darkness Beneath Megadungeon level then.
Looking forward to next weekend. And if you are attending come say hi even if we don't play in any of the games together.
#Convention #Cauldron #OSR #FightOn
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