Progress Report - Horror on the Hill

I love the Jim Holloway art from this era of Basic D&D

We missed a lot of time with this campaign!  Several of the players are die-hard Eagles fans (go birds), and there was a run of late afternoon games on Sundays or Sunday nights which displaced RPG game nights, so I think we've only played 2-3 times since October when I last checked in on this campaign.  Our cast of characters has reached level 2 and has explored most of the surface ruins of Horror on the Hill and about half of level 1 of the dungeon.

Here are the characters:

• Skargold (half-orc fighter)
• Glo (dwarf fighter)
• Barlow (halfling cleric of Ord)
• Ithior (elf wizard)
• Malad (elf thief)

In Shadowdark, ogres are level 6 monsters, so one of the most dangerous surface encounters was with an ogre (rolled as a wandering encounter) which forced the players to retreat, put down caltrops as cover, put doors between them and the ogre, basically use good tactics to create distance and let them injure it at range before closing to melee when it was weaker.  There are some old school goodies in the module like a hidden sanctuary in the monastery with a magic fountain, and several characters got stat boosts drinking the enchanted water (2 ended up paralyzed for half a day).  Sleep took care of a barracks of humanoids, and then they were down some stairs to the dungeon.

Sleep is proving to be highly effective in a scenario featuring humanoids under the Shadowdark magic system.  Shadowdark is "roll to cast" instead of using spell slots, so if a spell is successful, the caster can try it again in a future encounter.  A few lucky spellcasting rolls and even a 1st level wizard can deploy multiple sleep spells, although it doesn't scale to affect higher level creatures like the classic sleep spell.  The players have rescued a dwarf prisoner, Gareth Ironhand, who was being forced by the hobgoblin king to make weapons for an army the hobgoblins are trying to raise (pictured above - I love the Jim Holloway art of this period in TSR).  The players have promised Gareth they're going to put an end to the threat.  They've also learned the hobgoblins revere a "fire boss" deep in the hill called "Rhazgar", an allusion to the dragon on the third level of the dungeon.

Magic items are fairly bland in old school adventures - lots of shield +1 and sword +1, for instance.  A simple hack I'll do is generate some possible cultures that could have generated the magic item in question, just to give it a modicum of flavor - it's not a well-made shield, it's an archaic shield with a double eagle crest that dates back to the Thyatian Empire, and appears good as new.

I'm running this B5 Horror on the Hill in Karameikos, part of the Mystaran "Known World" setting from the BX and Mentzer sets, so here's a simple table of nationalities for use as above:

Magic Item Flavor:

1. Ancient (Blackmoor)
2. Rockhome
3. Alfheim
4. Old Traladara
5. The Empire (Thyatis)
6. Glantri
7. Karameikan (elvish made or royal court/military)
8. Monster-Crafted
9. The Church
10.  Independent Wizard (Bargle et al)
11. Alphatia
12.  Distant land (Vestland, Ylarum, Darokin, etc)

In this way, they haven't found just a shield +1 or mace +1, but the aforementioned Shield of the Empire or a holy weapon that belonged to the Great Church of Karameikos.  It's low-effort but goes a long way to adding simple flavor to otherwise uninteresting treasures.

At this point I've probably refereed 10 games of Shadowdark between the two campaigns - enough to have a feel for it.  There are a few things I don't like about the system (not fatal flaws, but irritants).  I'll have to put together a gripe post, grognard means complainer after all.  Nevertheless, the system plays really fast at the table - very simple to adjudicate and run combats.  Obviously all OSR systems have this attribute; Shadowdark leverages unified mechanics based on 5E that make it even simpler to operate than the beloved Moldvay.  One of the biggest departures is what I alluded to above with sleep - by dropping Vancian magic, casters can sometimes go on a heater and punch hard.  A cleric (er, priest) can heal the whole group with a series of successful cure wounds spells, or the wizard can put the party on "easy mode" when facing off against goblins and hobgoblins by spamming sleep.  Maybe I'll do a "the good, the bad, the ugly" kind of post on Shadowdark in the near future, because there's a lot more to say.  I'll finish by saying both groups of players have given it an enthusiastic two thumbs up; I know they're enjoying the games and appreciate the system.