Wilderlands One-Shots: The Survivor of Thracia

Background

I ran an OD&D one-shot at the local gaming club for a group of players that were willing to give older ruleset a try. Three players rolled two characters, and one player rolled three.

Character creation took around 30 minutes, and the game session took around three hours. We played legendary Caverns of Thracia. Everybody quickly picked-up the rules and the game flowed smoothly.

See end of the post for more on preparation.

Adventurers

In alphabetic order:

Character Class Alignment
Andre the Pious Fighting-Man Lawful
Bojan Bakrovic Fighting-Dwarf Neutral
Catalina Magic-User Chaotic
Clarisa Cleric Lawful
Keith Cleric Lawful
Lindon Cleric Lawful
Serene Fighting-Elf Neutral
Wilhelm Popovic Cleric Lawful
Xander Magic-User Neutral

One sunny day in the Barbarian Altanis

Adventuring party of nine finally found the fabled Lost City of Thracia. For the past day they've been trawling through lizard-men infested swamp. Most trawled waist-deep; Bojan had to do so at nipple-height.

The party approached the ruins from the west side, exiting the swamp southwards. Carefully inspecting the closest ruined building revealed little of interest. The largest building, what once used to be a temple, dominated the vista. Alas, it had no visible egresses sans the breakage in the walls caused by overgrowth.

Lindon, secured with rope and held steadfast by Wilhelm and Bojan, approached a dilapidated well and peered down. A lone torch burned at the bottom of the deep hole. The dwarf estimated the depth to be between 60 and 100 feet.

Scuttling alongside the temple wall, adventurers proceeded north, investigating their surrounding. Andre the Pious, or the Tenfoot Pole Bearer, led the way tapping and checking for traps. He was asked to inspect the largest crack in the wall, which he was happy to do.

Climbing up the tree trunk allowed him to peek into the ruined temple. Lo and behold, a staircase leading into darkness was visible. Just like four hyena-headed humanoids. Andre dropped back, and the party formed battle ranks by the fissure.

Two gnolls emerged and clashed against the front rank. One of the hairy beasts swung its mighty battle axe, landing it straight between Keith's ears. His head burst like an overripe watermelon. Clarisa the Cleric soon suffered a similar grisly fate.

Bojan and Lindon revenged them in quick succession, murdering two gnolls. A brief exchange of blows ensued with the surviving gnolls, which soon gave up and fled, leaving a bloody trail leading down the stairs.

“Chase them!”

“Wait! My mule!”

Catalina stayed behind, trying to get the mule to climb the tree trunk and enter the ruined temple. Others gave chase and followed the gnolls underground.

Lighting a lantern revealed a large chamber filled with rubble and debrief. Everything was caked with faeces of varying dryness. Blood trail led east. Up north were large double doors, ajar. To the west was a dead end, and to the east a corridor. Looking up, the dwarf spotted hundreds of bats—source of brown material coating the floor, no doubt.

“Let's slow down.”

Adventurers continued their pursuit, albeit now proceeding carefully, tapping the ground with the ten foot pole. A turn, and a turn, and then another turn, and then yet another! But this time, there were closed doors, and blood led to them.

“I have a plan.” Bojan announced whilst taking out his trust iron pitons. Then he knelt by the doors and begun hammering them in, one by one.

Andre watched guard over the north corridor. Alas, he was taken by surprisingly ferocious charge of four gnolls lead by a squat man with doberman head. Wilhelm reinforced the fighter, checking the beastmens' charge. Alas, that spelled doom for the cleric and soon he was nothing but bloody mess.

“Look how pathetic they are! Capture them all!” dog-man barked at the gnolls. One of the adventures understood him, and promptly conveyed the message to others.

Partially spiked doors were constantly banged on; as if something or someone is trying to force the open. Adventurers kept hammering in pitons, preventing the doors from being forced open.

Focusing the efforts on the dog-man soon produced results. The beast was a great swordsman, but it could not withstand adventurers' superior skills. Andre's blow forced the monster to the ground. Bojan ensured it dies an agonising death by brutally severing one of its limbs.

At this moment the party obviously had an upper hand. They rallied and pressed on against four gnolls, slaying two. Remaining two fled down the long corridor. Lindon beheaded the dog-man's corpse and left it in front of the spiked door. Just so beastmen know who they are dealing with.

Once again the party gave chase, but soon gave up after running down several hundred feet long corridor slopping downwards.

“Let's go back and check the double doors?”

“Sounds good.”

Spiked doors were still jammed shut; the captives were still banging to get out.

Passing through the double doors revealed a thirty feet wide, long corridor. Two lines of columns ran along, derelict but still structural sound. Andre ran up to fetch Catalina. The rest pushed on, finding a fissure in the corridor.

Bojan took a look; it was deep, but too scraggy for anything human to climb up. Further north was a pile of rubble flanked by two doors. Left were shut, right were slightly ajar.

Serene took a look.

Two yellowish reptilian eyes looked back at her.

The doors swung open.

Two naked lizardmen with clubs greeted the party.

Behind them was another lizardman tending to a wounded one on the ground.

The elf was knocked unconscious in a single blow.

The lizards grabbed her body and begun to drag her into the chamber. Andre tried to shut the doors, but left that and tried to wrestle Serene's body instead. Alas, lizardmen were stronger.

“Onwards!”

Party forced their way into the room and total chaos ensued.

Bojan was brutally mauled. He collapsed to the ground, with severe headache. The only thing that saved his life was his amazing greathelm. With last ounces of strength he crawled to his crossbow and fired it.

He missed.

Xander the Magic-User suffered traumatic brain injury, courtesy of yet another club wielding lizardman. He lied prostrate.

Andre the Pious delivered the killing blow to the biggest of four lizardmen. But there was no celebration to be had. Catalina gasped as spear was driven through her abdomen. She collapsed to the ground, lifeless.

“Get out! Run!”

Andre yelled at Lindon.

Cleric nodded, and withdrew from the chamber.

Andre took lit a torch.

Then he smashed an oil flask upon the backpack of his fallen comrade.

He knew damn well that backpack was full of flammable flasks.

And then he hit it, hard, with a burning torch.

Lindon could see a ball of fire blowing out of the chamber.

Silence and smell of burn flesh followed.

Turning around, the cleric opened the west doors.

An abandoned chapel.

A long ruined statue of unknown god.

Lindon said a silent prayer.

And then he got the fuck out of the dungeon.

Preparation notes

I decided to used just the little brown books since they have less rules. Since I didn't want to be the bottle neck (e.g. have players wait for me while I'm explaining something to another player), I prepared a series of player facing reference sheets:

I also printed original reference sheets for myself:

Player sheets were well used during the game, and everyone was able to quickly make several characters. I did not used Judge facing reference sheets, since I apparently remember more rules than I was aware of.

For The Caverns of Thracia I (1) prerolled four encounters for first two levels, (2) prerolled % if someone is somewhere for ground and first level, and (3) wrote down 20 rumours on pieces of paper to hand out.

I also noted vertical connection on my maps. There was no need extensively prepare, since the party can't delve too deep in one three hour session anyway. I did reduce monster hit points, though, since they were obviously rolled with Supplement I and variable HD. So I reduced everything to uniform d6 HD.

That was it, an hour or so of prep.

Final words

The session was enjoyable, and players did great for their first foray into Thracia. Great future awaits Lindon, no doubts about that.

#Wilderlands #OneShot #SessionReport

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