OD&D Session 010: Humiliated by My Own Dice

     Last night saw the longest combat encounter to date, a staggering 15 rounds broken up into 8 and 7 round brawls respectively, with a small reprieve in the middle. Lotta dice, a lotta deeply PATHETIC rolls from my Chessex set when I was trying to kill the PCs, I will not be using them anymore. Only Gamescience is good enough for me now.

The Plan:

    The players spent some time and money asking around, wondering if anyone had heard of any lucrative rumors. Two came up, some trolls have been seen in the mountains up in Gnome Country, and the Swamp People envoys last week spoke of a wizard in the jungle north of their swamp territory. After much deliberation, the party elected to go troll-hunting. Rolling with a pack of men-at-arms and lair-busting has been very profitable for them, and they like their odds better this way. They loaded up on torches and oil flasks, bought some mules to haul things for them up into the mountains, and set off. On this expedition we had:

1. Dobias, an elf back for his third (NOT SECOND) session of D&D ever

2. James, the fighter with 5 heavy foot and 5 mules

3. Boros the Dwarf, played by the same guy as Akaviri the Elf

4. Sir Gerric the Elf, with 2 heavy foot and 5 mules

5. Figel Narage the Neutral Cleric, with 2 heavy foot and 1 archer

6. Yon the Elf, with 3 heavy foot and 2 archers

    21 men all together, enough to handle small packs but any real warband met in the wilds would need to be avoided. They set off into the wilds in search of trolls and the associated troll cave full of loot.

The Journey:

    They had a few random encounters as they ventured, but in all cases they hid, moved along, or otherwise avoided contact (easy to do in the jungle when encounter distances are up to 240 yards away!). Because of their judicious application of the better part of valour, we will cover them only briefly as they provide world-data, but not play-data yet:

    - On day one they came across a hunting party of ape-like proto-humans. Protruding brows, simian mouths, long hairy arms, these men were not at their home camp, but gathered around a fire eating some kind of roast game. The party retreated into the night and slept without a fire well away from them. 

    - On day three they had to hit the dirt, hiding in the foliage of the jungle as a green dragon circled overhead. The surprise mechanic is such an elegant way of handling stealth I don't know why it got canned from future editions. But it has been established: there is a dragon living somewhere in these hills and this means that there is dragon-treasure somewhere in these hills. The players agree to a vow of secrecy, to tell nobody about this. 

The Trolls:

    On day 5, at around 3 in the afternoon, they found the troll lair. A cave in the side of a mountain, overlooking the sagebrush flats where Pabal the Wizard dwells, outside which sat a hideous troll, surveying the landscape. The searching took longer than they anticipated, and having already crossed the threshold that would put them in time jail for next week's session, the decided to take their time. They set up a watch and simply observed the cave mouth for a few hours. At 5pm the sitting troll returned to his cave, and at 5:30 3 other trolls lumbered out and headed down the mountain towards the sagebrush. It was at this moment the party mobilized to fight. It was at this moment that I was betrayed. 

    The thing with the troll in OD&D is that despite having 6+3 HD, it only gets one regular attack per round. Pair this with a brutal string of very bad rolls from my Chessex set and it turned what could have been a massacre for the trolls turned into the trolls getting massacred. As the party squared off against two, then two more trolls that came as reinforcements, they ended up having a relatively easy time of it. When I rolled the HP for the first 3 trolls, I saw so many 1s and 2s! One troll, despite having 6HD, only had 9 hitpoints! Unforgivable! The party made judicious use of flaming-oil molotovs to keep the trolls from regenerating. 

    We use side-based initiative, and the rule is that the player who rolls for the PCs keeps rolling each round until he loses initiative to me, the DM. The duty of "Initiative Roller" passes around the table clockwise, in theory to concentrate the task into whichever player seems to be luckiest. Well, last night Yon's player beat me in initiative SEVEN ROUNDS IN A ROW before losing to me and passing the initiative die on to Sir Gerric. I persistently rolled lower than 8 on my attack rolls. It was horrible. All I wanted was 2-3 PC deaths, really make them pay for their treasure, but NO they cakewalked me! Terrible. After killing 4 trolls they retreated outside the cave, to set up an ambush for the hunting party that went out earlier (And to get out of the smoke-filled cavern and its stench of burning trollflesh.)

    The 3 trolls that rolled out at 5:30 returned at midnight, and having smelled the smoke and manflesh on the air, attempted to sneak up on the party. Despite successfully evading ALL THREE watchmen from the adventurers, and managing to ambush them from ALL SIDES, I didn't land a SINGLE attack in the surprise round. My life is ruined. In the ensuing melee the party lost a few men-at-arms, but the PCs got away unscathed and killed the three returning trolls and the last one hiding in the cave. They plundered the place and set off back for home. 

    I will say that rolling for lair treasure live at the table is a great treat, I've done it since I ran 5e. Telling the players to roll d100s for each category, having them quarrel over who gets what afterwards, great fun. The players walked away with a good haul of silver and gold pieces, some gems, and two magic items:

    - Figel Narage has acquired a Ring of Invisibility (Woo!)
    - Dobias has claimed a -2 cursed sword (Yikes!)

Afterthoughts:

    The party is plotting and scheming to assassinate Lord Barotha in hopes of creating a power vacuum that will boil over into a Braunstein, pitting humans against the elvish aristocracy that runs things. But they fear that they aren't "Powerful" enough to get away with it, and want to get some sessions in doing lair-busting to level up. We'll see if they can meet the deadline! 

    Gave Dobias' player a ride home after, asked him how he likes the game. My brother and I have known him since we were kids, but this is really his first foray into RPGs. I was very pleased to hear how intuitively he grasped the 1:1 time, if a person doesn't have Conventional Play presuppositions it really is a simple and approachable concept. I do have to brush up on some setting material, he had a lot of questions about the gameworld and the motivations of people therein, and much of this is stuff that I haven't figured out or nailed down yet! 

    We have onboarded more factions, and orders are rolling in with loads of espionage, preparation, and diplomacy. I cannot reveal many details as it stands, to preserve the fog of war, but the things that are simmering now will almost certainly boil over when the next Braunstein occurs. I eagerly look forward to being able to spill the beans on the schemes of my faction and patron players when this occurs. The campaign is picking up steam and I have to be careful not to let it get in the way of my IRL obligations. The energy is palpable, the frenetic enthusiasm undeniable!