At Harald’s birtday party Claudia and I met a nice couple that we managed to get interested in role-playing games. We finally managed to get together today and play!
I had practically no time to prepare. I looked at my options.
The Ancient Academy was an entry in the One Page Dungeon Contest 2009. At the time I suggested this entry for the category “Traditional”. The map is clean and simple. It has enemies and allies within the dungeon: spiders, goblins, dwarves (always nice), cultists, undead, and green slime. Also, skimming the text immediately suggested an adventure hook: finding the magic hammer I had spotted as treasure in one of the rooms. I also appreciated the fact that most of the rooms are empty but there’s almost always something to do or find: explore a pool, find two potions, a spell book, a battered shield, a statue of a frog man.
We started with character creation using 3d6 in order, my own Character Generation Shortcuts, B/X Headgear, and the Random Hireling Generator. It was short enough to be fun and long enough to provide funny hats, random items and traits to improvise with.
Character Generation Shortcuts
I really should add more classes to the *Character Generation Shortcuts* – today I would have liked thieves on that list.
One of the players ended up with a map so I decided to make it the map leading to the ruins of the Ancient Academy. It was purported to be a map to the resting place of Herr Franz von Hammerstein, famous wielder of the magic *Ogrehammer*. Finding it naturally ended up being the mission for the day.
In the end the party escaped with two hireling lost and presumed dead, one player character with a broken foot (using the Death and Dismemberment table), a spell book, a potion, a shield, a mace, a chain shirt, and two silver pieces, on the run from six skeletons, without having discovered the whereabouts of the magic hammer.
Six skeletons are tough. All three players wanted to keep playing. 👌
(German session report on our campaign wiki.)
German session report on our campaign wiki
#RPG #Old School #1PDC
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I’m glad you guys had fun with it! It’s really interesting hearing about different groups experiences with that dungeon (there’s been a few) and what monsters were encountered, what treasure was found, and when they left the dungeon.
– Stuart 2011-02-23 16:50 UTC