Grim's Knights: Session 1

(AKA  )

I started an Old Gray Box Forgotten Realms game using Old School Essentials (with the Advanced Genre Rules and some house rules) to game a bit with online friends that I wouldn't have the opportunity to play with otherwise on my week off from my Pathfinder 2e game. After a couple weeks of excited discussion, we sat down to our first session last night!

My players will read these posts, so I won't be revealing campaign secrets; but my session writeups are good places to note stuff I referenced, problems I ran into, and rulings I made. Think of this as being more stream of consciousness, showing how the sausage is made as a recap. My players chose to start with the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar, so I'm running FRC1 converted as necessary for both system and being a bit earlier in the timeline as our first adventure.

In Attendance:

-Grim Illance, human knight 1

-Randal Buckman, human thief 1 (player is https://spearsandspreadsheets.blogspot.com/)

-Josiah Illance, human magic-user 1 (player is https://diaghilevsdice.blogspot.com/)

-Respen Eveningfall, elven fighter 1/magic-user 1

So I hadn't really had much of an opportunity to prepare. I've been sick with the flu the past week; I was helping the players create characters and get some details set up. My actual session prep (as opposed to brainstorming and daydreaming) consisted of quickly printing and flipping through FRC1, which lead to some issues as you'll see below!

We slowrolled the introduction, which was fine with me. I had about four or five paragraphs of narrative text in my head (think read-aloud narration), which I didn't want to recite all at once. I can get my players going with little description and I wasn't going to dwell on any particular thing, I just had a lot of little things going on to introduce! When Grim said he wanted to start looking for possible henchmen, I was happy to jump right in. I had totally messed up henchmen versus hirelings in my last OSR game (Advanced Labyrinth Lord) so this was one point where I knew I just wanted to play the OSE rules completely straight. Okay, you find hirelings in an inn.

Eveningstar (and the Haunted Halls) are renowned as proving grounds for adventurers, and we're starting right at the beginning of adventuring season, so it makes sense that there's unattached henchmen around looking for work. It won't be hard to find them. But what inn? FRC1's town listing is sketchy, grab Volo's Guide to Cormyr. Flip through that, okay the Lonesome Tankard fits. While I'm here, what are the PCs paying for rooms? Volo's doesn't have prices, it uses a relative pricing system; so this place costs 2 out of 5 coins. On what scale? Ummmm...2e book, 2e PHB? Okay, that looks to have a close scale. 3 gp for a week, extend that to 3 gp for a tenday.[1] Good. You're all paid up, you'll need to come back with 3 gp each for your next tenday's stay from today's adventure. Let the PCs know.

Back to henchmen! Hey those cool new OSE generators that Gavin just released have hirelings, grab that and punch in some quick numbers - 2 henchmen, I can work with this. Names, I need something a bit more diverse than the usual Chondathan list (FRCS/5e PHB), grab the giant spreadsheet of Ed Greenwood names and pull from that. One's Elryn, one is Kaie. Describe the Lonesome Tankard, describe the hirelings. The PCs approach Kaie first (she's wearing leather armor and has a battleaxe, she's awesome!) and Grim starts negotiating. He's got a great Charisma, he's a human knight, lots of things in his favour. Kaie is level 0, so she's easy to convince. 1 gp a day and a half-share per the text (again, really just want to do this right by the book), and Grim happily signs her along - oh, wait, he doesn't actually have 1 gp to give her. He's a noble, but he's starting off penniless! Josiah his brother squeezes in and signs her underneath him, nails the hiring role, gets his first henchman. Okay, Grim's learned his lesson, and he borrows a GP[2] from Josiah to pick up the other henchman. Elryn is also eager to find himself in the Haunted Halls, and he signs on for the same amount. Add some flourishes to the henchmen stat blocks [3], pass those over to the players to play.

Respen's player arrives now, move ahead to adventure! after we all introduce ourselves. The PCs head out of Eveningstar toward the Haunted Halls along a trail, and come to their first site: the burnt cabin of the dead village witch, Old Meg. Old Meg died awhile back, and her cabin burnt years later; it's now just rumoured as a haunted site by the locals. Well, the PCs won't let the burnt lie, and Randal does poke around in the flagstones. Now, I'm used to running Pathfinder/3.5 or similar where I'd call for a Perception check, but we agreed in our table rules beforehand to follow description and personal action first. The book says her treasures are hidden under the flagstones, and it would probably be dickish to ask which flagstones in particular, and how, so I say he pulls one up and finds it. Inside is one hell of a haul for the first adventuring site: about 15 gp in coins, but more importantly, her old spellbook! Josiah and Respen get very excited at their good luck, and we have a quick discussion about read magic being necessary to read anyone else's spellbook.[4] Randal debates palming the coins, and the party quickly steps out of character to have a discussion about table rules for distributing loot, with the thief opting to play it straight. I make a mistake here, and describe a manifestation of winking feminine eyes in the bushes looking at Josiah. (This gets retconned later after Josiah's player points out my bad assumption.)

Now the PCs head further up the trail towards adventure, and I magnify my first mistake with another big one. The local countryside map in FRC1 is not good, and it tripped me up twice this session. Some of the adventure sites (including the Haunted Halls) are off the border, with arrows pointing out towards them. A lot of those sites are on the same trail as the Haunted Halls, including a ruined fortification called the Killing Keep. Nice name, but without it being on the map, it's easy to get their order along the trail mixed up (this information is in two places in FRC1, there's a lot of similar but not quite the same sites, it's not well organized.) So I do! I describe the Killing Keep first and tell the PCs the rumours have told them to go past the Keep to the actual Haunted Halls, but the PCs fixate on the gaping broken portcullis and worn-down curtain wall in front of them. I can't blame them, that is adventure; but I'm not prepared for that site at all, they're starting to argue, and it's not where they promised the retainers they would be. Flip through the pages again - okay, I've got this mixed up, the Halls come first. Admit my mistake, move them to the real Halls.

So FRC1 is written notionally for 2e AD&D. It's very early 2e AD&D, it still uses a lot of 1e trade dress and ideas, and is definitely old-school, but it is supposed to be 2e. Think of it as the introductory adventure for the early 2e FR, and you've got an idea of where it's at. It's evocative and interesting - and also definitely deadly. The PCs are now at the Haunted Halls, and see two openings in the cliff face of the gorge before them. Check out both openings? Okay, the south is musky and dirty, with broken bones on the floor and loud thumping noises. To the north is a pair of closed wooden doors, graffiti on the walls all around them. That graffiti includes some weird painted mark (a harp-like shape with two diagonal lines running instead of the strings) and a note saying "THE SWORDS OF EVENINGSTAR CLEANSED THIS PLACE!" The Swords of Eveningstar (now known as the Knights of Myth Drannor) are the famous adventuring party Grim's Knights are following the legacy of, and I included this graffiti as an obvious hook to get them excited for that legacy. It works, and Randal checks the door for traps and doesn't find any. Respen works up a marching order, Josiah starts his map of the Haunted Halls, and Grim starts carving his own graffiti into the frame.

Remember what I just said about FRC1 being an introductory module for new players? Remember how I said it's 2e AD&D but still pretty old-school? Ed Greenwood was not fucking around with it. An owlbear comes out of the southern opening, barreling towards the PCs from behind! It's looking for blood, and it is going to fight to the death. That's right, your new first-level PCs and new players get a 5+2 HD monster with no possible morale failure as their very first taste of combat. I wonder how many poor bright-eyed virgins lost their innocence on this thing's claws? (Ed even mentions this was his long-running introductory dungeon for teaching kids D&D!)

Now, here's where some learning comes in. A good rule of thumb for OSR monsters is not to name them, but to describe them, which I do. It's an owlbear, it's pretty iconic, so the players recognize it immediately - except for one thing. I describe it as bipedal, and that throws them for a loop. To them, owlbears are quadrupeds! And for a bear hybrid creature, you can really take it either way. When I think of owlbears, I think of this art:

So I think bipedal. We talk it through and agree on it moving like a bear; generally on all fours, but rearing up on two to fight. This isn't a problem, but it is really cool, and one of the things I appreciate about mixing different influences in the OSR, that people have different readings and we can sort this out. (As opposed to running Pathfinder, where there is definitely one canonical answer and no room for doubt.) Now I have a better idea of owlbears for the future!

Having set up a marching order saves them from getting ambushed; the middle two ranks are looking out from the northern opening, and see the owlbear approaching with blood in its eyes. There's been some talk on the OSR discord recently about the difference in power levels and monsters between B/X and AD&D, so I'm cognizant of that. I don't want to use the owlbear stats directly from FRC1, I grab the ones from OSE instead, and a quick HP roll means that the owlbear has 26 instead of 38 hp (that's a big difference for 1st level characters punching way above their weight!) Roll for initiative. OSE Advanced Genre rules basically assume you're using individual initiative, so we are; a bit more complicated but also more interesting. I don't think I played it right; weapon speed and phases should probably interact with the individual initiative system a bit, and I missed that. But it worked okay!

The owlbear is some 80 feet away, so people get an opportunity to open up on it with ranged weapons and spread out a bit. Arrows land, magic missiles go thump, the owlbear is getting softened up pretty well. But Kaie doesn't have a missile weapon, and she's a bloodthirsty acolyte of Tempus. She screams a battle cry and rushes forward. [5] The owlbear meets her and slices her right open. She yells out a final blessing to Tempus[6] and perishes instantly. (We had a short discussion as to whether retainers were entitled to the extra death protections PCs have, and decided that 0-level ones are not.) Rest in peace, Kaie of Tempus, 0-level human retainer. Grim is the only one remaining with any real armor on, and he's hesitating between running and getting into melee. Not very knightly of him, but his brother Josiah with similar dreams of knighthood does find his own heroism. Josiah has no spells left, no armor, but he does have a ranseur that he is unproficient with, and he rushes into melee with the owlbear, swinging wildly - too wildly to any effect. I make sure to check with Josiah's player, pointing out that bracing the ranseur against the owlbear would be much more effective, but he's dead-set on doing the right thing "in character motivation." Pshaw.

This does get Grim a little kick in the ass, and Grim rushes closer! But he can't make it that round, so he instead tries to throw his sword at the owlbear - and hits Josiah in the back of the head instead, giving him a concussion! (He actually hit Josiah determined randomly, dealt enough damage to take Josiah to 0 hp, and our dying rules say he was weakened with a -4 penalty to everything until he gets some healing.) This is not going well! Respen has also rushed into melee - since he was spellcasting he wasn't wearing any armor, but his fighter levels do give him sword specialization, and he does carve chunks out of the owlbear. A few lucky rolls (the dice were not in the owlbear's favour) and the owlbear only lightly claws Respen before the elf guts the beast. Somehow, thankfully, the entire party survived without any major casualties.

People reorganize themselves and I take a couple minutes to think through how the retainers react to this. Kaie was a bloodthirsty fanatic of Tempus (had she survived she would have been a cleric), so dying in battle was honestly a good thing for her. I decide that applying a penalty for retainer death would be inappropriate, but Elryn is overwhelmed by seeing violence and adventuring death for the first time. He's on his hands and knees gagging, and I make Grim roll a loyalty check for him. Grim succeeds, and at Grim's urging, Elryn wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve, stares into the shiny lion for his day's work, and insists he's good to go on.[7]

[1] Quick FR calendar rundown: 12 months, each 30 days; each month is divided into 3 tendays of ten days each. No names for days in the tenday (just the fifth day this tenday, or the 12th day of the month). Four extra holidays that don't belong to any month, also a leap day every four years. This exactly matches Earth, and that's intentional.

[2]In our country of Cormyr, this is a lion. (I was calling it a dragon, but that's my mistake; dragons are your Waterdhavian gold pieces.)

[3]Using two-axis alignment; they need human ethnicities (I assumed Chondathan, but I really should have rolled per Races of Faerun); and then also deities as appropriate. Kaie is a 0-level henchman with 2 hp, a battle axe, and leather armour. She's totally a follower of Tempus!

I think I'm fine with players playing their henchmen; I'll let them know if something is really out of character, but it makes my end easier with less to keep organized.

[4]Way later in 3e we get a "mastering spellbook" check from Spellcraft in Magic of Faerun that allows you to prepare out of someone else's spellbook, but I don't think that fits very well here. Read magic to read someone else's spellbook, percentage chance from Advanced Genre to see if you comprehend it, scribe it into your own book so you can memorize it for daily preparation.

[5]OSE's combat rules have a charge option in the Advanced Genre rules that gives you an attack bonus for an AC penalty, but no actual ability to move more than your regular speed in a turn, even if that's all you're doing. This was really tripping people up in this fight; I'm not sure if I played it wrong or if this is something I should house rule. It feels weird that you can't move longer if that's the only thing you are doing.

[6]I should have looked the wording for this kind of thing up in Elminster's Forgotten Realms but I was kind of tired of checking books with my fingers in like five different places already.

[7]I'm torn on whether making 0-level retainers check for "adventuring fortitude" after their first blood is a good idea or not. It fits the Realms well, it's supported by the loyalty check test in OSE, but I can see it being frustrating that you'd maybe lose a retainer for doing nothing wrong off a check in a successful scenario!