So I've been dipping my toes into running OSR games and I'm beginning to find that these are basically the only kinds of RPGs I could play that aren't just strictly a wargame with RPG things bolted on, like Mechwarrior Destiny. I don't love rpgs, I never enjoyed the culture and I was more interested in the other things people talked about with them - character progression, but socially being more important than anything else and eventually rising up to stuff like being a noble, leading armies into battle.
In short, a really cool wargaming campaign. Most people don't really seem to like that, and I guess that is fine, but I've gotten a few people interested into the setting that they would like to play in it. So I'm calling the campaign after it's OSR-type megadungeon: Kharmlund, which is in-universe for Long Dark.
Before I list our PCs, please understand that Kharmlund is heavily inspired chiefly by the Black Company, The Elder Scrolls a little bit of Warhammer, I have no mouth and I must scream and so on, but the first floor is meant to be more like a "classic DnD". The Dungeon is massive, I'm at something insane like 440+ rooms, and for those of you that feel the need to say it, I am aware that this is overkill. I mostly just want to build two dungeons: Kharmlund for the megadungeon I can always run, and then I also want to do a blank one with a table of shit for populating the doors quickly for portable games. That's...for another time however, and I'd probably build the table out of heroquest pieces, probably use my tiles I printed out forever ago. Something I can fit into something the size of a small toolbox and have it be a portable fantasy RPG.
Offtopicofftopic. Alright. So the purpose of Kharmlund is that it's effectively a Dwarven hold that on the surface seems like your typical Moria clone, but the deeper you go it's meant to convey that the Dwarves got up to some shit. Like the Dwemer, but several orders of magnitude worse. Anyway, enough lore, let's tell you how our first little session went. Keep in mind I'm somewhat new into this crap so I might not get all of the rules right, I'm more interested in things like Battletech, Blood Bowl, etc.
Anyway, here's the players I have:
Elf and Human Assassin - A good friend of many campaigns. He'll just play anything. He's shrugged and tried out every RPG, miniatures game, or video game I have ever purchased.
- Husband and Wife wombo combo. The husband likes to keep things silly, and the wife likes to keep things S I L L Y but they're great players. Show up on time, give a shit, offer snacks. Love them. Husband is playing a human thief.
- College Room-mate. He's big into RPGs and such. He's very against letting the party turn into the Glanton gang.
- Wildcard lady. I don't know her well but I know she likes to role play. We'll see.
- OTHER husband and wife combo. Husband is playing a Half Elf. I don't know what the wife plays like just yet but I'm very excited to see. The husband will cheerfully turn the party into the Glanton gang (he's very nice irl)
- British guy. He's British, and I don't know how much he'll be playing but we'll see.
- Sweetheart. Nice lady from my college days. Kind-hearted but you know the nerdy kind girl is also the one most likely to be part of a death cult, so we will see, my friends.
-Girlfriend's Dark Elf Illusionist - she usually plays the 5e stuff and is wholly un-used to murder stuff.
Begin....
The party began their journey on a cart to Kharmlund. The party consisted of the Human Thief, the Dark Elf Illusionist, the Half Elf Bard and the Assassin. They'd hired three dwarves as hirelings and after poking around in the city above Kharmlund, called Dveghom, they entered proper, and came face to face with a wight.
Obviously throwing a powerful undead at them in such short order is such a rude thing to do, the party was (pleasantly? I hope :D) surprised to find out it wanted to trade, offering them five pieces of mellinated(mummified in magical honey) person. The confections basically count the same as WFRP fate points: 500 a pop, they're hard to make and such but they allow a free pass on a save or die roll, even after failure. He offered them freely to anyone from a magical race (nonhuman exception is orc) with the promise that upon their death, they would place two coins on the eyes of their dead comrade so he could be used for the mellifcation process.
Then the party set to adventuring, but in three hours they managed to get a whole...four rooms explored! I was really impressed at how slow they were going, to be honest with you. Lots of careful behavior here, nailing spikes in to the ground to keep doors from swinging shut. The main highlights of the session were, upon hearing a large party of...something was approaching them, they ducked quickly into a room where eight ratmen were fighting over treasure. The ratmen were neutral since, while jealous of their treasure, wanted to also live. Kharmlund's denizens understand a "shh". There's far nastier things than just other humanoids. After whatever passed them by, the party backed carefully out of the room, unwilling to fight 7v1 in a tight space with no room to maneuver. They were forgotten by the ratmen, who basically function the same as the Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy - all of them are seething, arrogant, hateful assholes, to outsiders only slightly more than each other. Every one of these not-skaven considers every other living being to be some kind of tool, object for their own advancement.
They found a room with a massive skull that opens for coins and slams shut when given them. Since nobody was dumb enough to try and steal from the large coin stash there, they simply threw a couple coins from their starting gold in and then left.
Final major encounter was a massive contraption the next room over. Smashed ratmen bodies, a pair of statues, both beautiful statues of Vress, the dark goddess of poisoners, witches and any dishonorable killing. There's a huge chest in the room. What to do? After poking around, listening at doors and looking around but not up, they decide to test the room carefully - but seeing if the ratmen can be meme'd into coming in and opening the chest. The half-elf went alone, and took two dwarves with him (they were his hirelings) and returning the ratman room, they find a single survivor - bleeding and gashed, but smug and victorious. After some easy flattery the ratman decides to follow them - after all, he is smarter and better than them, he just killed seven of his fellows - and it's here the bard uses his mesmerizing (its an OSE bard thing) abilities (he played him a song about how much of a badass he was) to transfix and then charm the ratman into looking up to him. Then the ratman was told to go open the chest.
Ssssplat. The top of the room came down like a hydralic press and "mooshed" him, as I described it. The scroll and coins survived, although battered and warped some. Knowing how the chest is trapped, during the reset (the chest began to close again) the party propped it up with a ten foot pole, while caused the trap to half-reset. Then, the thief and illusionist held the chest propped while the Half-elf looted aggressively. All of this, start to finish took 50 minutes in-dungeon time. With 400 gp jangling in the Assassin's backpack, the party took their rest in the Skull Room and after a monster-free Wandering monster check, they left the depths of Kharmlund and headed back.
In town one of them bought a townhouse for 75 gp, not a great price, but it's not that good of a house. The mapper sold the map after doing a memorization challenge. The drow was given two minutes of looking at the Mapper's map and to draw as much as possible - they managed a sloppy but close enough recreation that I allowed the mapper to keep his map. The map was only for like, 4 rooms but the payout was a thousand GP for the map - 250 each. When the wannabe adventurers return to their base of operations and find out it's a shite map, well, they might have an issue. But you know, caveat emptor.
With that resolved, it was session wrap-up. There was much shopping done, and the party did well.
GM THOUGHTS: I really like this game. I have also realized that with the party moving at a pace of 1 room per hour that I massively overdid this dungeon - Kharmlund has 444 rooms. Oh well. We'll see what happens in two weeks.
