Session Report - OSE Open Table #12

Party Members

Robin Redwood (Magic-User 2)

Maleneth (Thief 2)

 

Accompanied by: Gorato the Ox (Fighter 1), Losandro (Thief 1)

 

Events

Setting out under an overcast sky, Maleneth (burdened with two extra wheels of cheese) and Robin ventured forth into the Whiterock Caverns in search of the winged apes and Kadmacho's domain. Heading north through previously covered territory, they nervously skirted past the mosaic door into the arena and passed through an archway at the end of the corridor. The room beyond was coated in a thick layer of dust, little had passed through, and a singed door led out of the far corner. Investigating the frame revealed a set of holes bored into the lintel of the door, angled out in a fan-like coverage of the area beyond. The duo plugged the holes with bandages and a torn up sack, then pulled the door open from a distance with a rope - smoke fumed from several of the plugged holes and a few of the fabric bungs shot out like fiery dart as a couple of gouts of flaming oil splashed harmlessly into the dust.

Beyond lay a finely decorated room bearing frescoes of a hooded figure before vaguely apocalyptic scenes, always gathering and/or preserving sources of knowledge. A large marble statue of the same figure stood in the middle of the room, beneath them a lectern bearing the outline of a book. Maleneth and Robin recognised this as Rhilea, the Letter and the Word, one of the Six Divines. They approached a door on the far side of the chamber, but were warned by a voice speaking directly into their skulls that none may pass without adding to the Great Lady's archive of knowledge.

Mike Nash

Backtracking, for no other route lay before them, the party heard the sound of guttural voices - akin to the speech of the Black Talons - echoing down the corridors, but nothing appeared before them. Passing the door to the arena and heading back towards the entrance, they suddenly heard the agonised breathing of the Minotaur, seemingly just around the next corner, and froze. The creature's blindness kept their torch from alerting it and Losandro crept forth to ascertain its position. The Thief scuffed against the stone wall as he peeked around the corner and cam face to face with the creature, but he was able to sprint out of its reach. The party raced away, chased by the maddened bellowing of the creature, and entered through the arena's secret door. They hurled a torch further along the corridor and closed the door as far as they were able - the ruse worked and the creature continued in search of the noise they had made.

Taking a breather, the party explored the great arena where they had previously fought the Minotaur - bloodstains and dragged trails marked the sand among the beast's ever-pacing footprints. They followed the trails, passing a tunnel heading north, and eventually reached a crude hollow dug from the wall at the far end of the arena. The hollow was carpeted with smashed pottery fragments and old bones, torchlight reflected from coins scattered liberally around the place, and the mutilated, decomposing bodies of Brando, Helene, and Georgios were strewn around like ragdolls. Maleneth claimed Brando's moneypouch, holding 160sp, while Robin took Helene's spellbook. Gorato stood watch and Losandro began to gather coins, noting that they were a mix of ancient and new ones. Robin found a peculiar cracked horn, bound with engraved golden rings, and Maleneth hefted a strange axe with its head covered by a leather bag which sloshed as if full of seawater.

Hearing a noise from further back, the party grabbed what else they could - 4 pouches of incense worth 50sp each and 230sp from the scattered coinage - and Robin conjured a Floating Disc. The party loaded their fallen comrades aboard and headed back across the arena. As they approached the northern door, it burst open and several figures tumbled through in a chaotic melee - the Minotaur appeared to be engaged in combat with a maille-clad warrior and 4 spiders the size of ponies. Extinguishing their torch, the party groped their way forwards only to realise that they could cover almost no ground. Re-igniting the torch showed 2 of the spiders smashed to a pulp. Robin blew the horn he had recovered, intending to distract the Minotaur, but instead found that it dulled all sound from him and his companions nearby as long as he blew into it. Taking a deep breath, the Magic-User blew as long as possible while the party raced past the melee. They were joined by the warrior, a Black Talon, as they passed and they were able to make it back to the secret door out before the Minotaur finished with the spiders.

The Black Talon accompanied them as they backtracked. The warrior had no name, referring to himself as 'Soldier' in Ancient Minoic, but confirmed he was part of Ent Sha Nur's band and had been on a scouting mission in the area until his patrol was ambushed by the Minotaur. The Black Talons had fortified an area of the Caverns against the Swine, and the warrior offered advice regarding the creatures: they are very strong and fierce, will readily use fire, and their weapons are crude but effective, but they are poorly disciplined and greedy, and fear the mushroom folk on the second level. Reaching the room with the strange obelisk, the Talon gave directions from that room to the staircase down to the second level and stepped through the rusted portcullis to the east, effortlessly opening and closing the metal grate. Robin restored his arcane talents at the obelisk and the party continued to the entrance, depositing the bodies of their former comrades outside.

Re-entering, the group headed west from the entrance chamber and Maleneth picked a lock on a door to the south, finding a dead Black Talon lying in a room with a broken word daubed on the floor. Continuing west, the party entered the remains of some sort of tavern or feast hall which was littered with broken wooden furniture and smelt of stale wine. Tracks through the debris and loose feathers showed that the winged apes had passed through here, but while discussing a plan the party were interrupted by three large lizards bursting through another door, each about 5' long with vivid blue and orange skin. The reptiles skittered curiously around the door frame with sticky feet and the party cautiously withdrew to the far side of the room - the lizards, content that they posed no threat, withdrew from whence they came.

Familiar whining voices echoed through the portcullis to the west, and the party came eye to eye with a group of Curselings, sent by Geros to search for treasure, who had become trapped by the portcullis. Maleneth and Robin were unable to budge the grate, but applied oil to the rusted mechanism and tried again, successfully. The Curselings bounced off with a jingling sack and the party found a secret passage leading back to the tavern room, concealed by a plaster facade.

The next room held an old armoury full of rusted weapons and articles of war. Remembering the apes' warning, Maleneth triggered the poison dart trap on the next door from a safe distance. A set of long stairs led down, and near the bottom the party heard a sound like drizzle or steam from the next door, along with a sweet, floral smell. The next chamber was tiled and slick, misted from above by jets of cool, sweet-smelling mist which coated a series of stone couches and tables. The door at the far side was locked, and Maleneth was unable to pick it. Gorato hefted his great-axe and started hacking away, stopping when he heard grating stone speech from beyond. Waiting until the speech faded, he recommenced work and breached a small hole in the wood - in the next corridor stood several winged apes behind a slender brass figure with a porcelain mask. It politely asked that the party cease causing their master a disturbance and regretfully informed them that it would be forced to respond violently if they continued.

Not wanting to push their luck, the party decamped the Caverns intent on holding funerals for their fallen companions and planning their next moves.

Funeral March, John Coulthart

Referee Thoughts

The players misread their own map at first and headed in totally the wrong direction, which was quite funny. It literally had a big arrow and 'THIS WAY TO KADMACHO' on it.

Random encounter distance rolls really worked out for them - the Minotaur was 50' away which was just around a corner, and given it's blind that gave them a chance to avoid it.

The three-way brawl provoked some weird indecision among the players for reasons I couldn't fully understand. They were debating distraction techniques etc. until I mentioned that they could just move past the melee. Perhaps it was down to my depiction of the distances involved - it was getting late in the session and I wasn't feeling my best that day. It did lead to them blowing the noise-cancelling horn though, which was cool.

Similarly, they didn't seem that fussed about grabbing everything not nailed down in the Minotaur's lair, despite me describing all of the things scattered around. The got the most interesting bits but there's still like 1,500sp left in there...

However, their note-taking has been on point - they're remembering warnings and small snippets of information that slip my mind! 

I've really been enjoying describing traps out in the open and seeing what solutions they come up with. It keeps play moving at a good pace and stops us getting bogged down in the details.

Both players said they had fun, which is what I'm aiming for, and they were super engaged the whole session - good feelings all round.  

 

 

Open Table: 12 week retrospective

 Been a while, hasn't it?

I could regale you with tales of getting married and moving to a Scottish island and trying my hand at rearing livestock and potatoes and such, but this is an RPG blog so I will write about something far less interesting.

 

Do not allow him to distract you.

 

Open Table antics

Post-COVID lockdown I took a long hiatus from RPG-related stuff to focus on my non-imaginary life, but over the past couple of years the hooks have started to sink in and draw me back. I ran a few games: a solo Delta Green scenario with my wife, some online Mothership one-shots, and finally an online multi-session run of Wolves Upon the Coast with friends which eventually fizzled due to scheduling issues. All of them were great fun, and then the sickness was upon me once more - I started having ideas.

Enter, the Open Table.

For those unaware, an open table is a regularly scheduled session slot where players sign up in advance. A persistent group is not needed and players can join as and when they're available/feel like playing. The structure lends itself well to 'West Marches'-style play, where parties declare an objective in advance and then return to a safe haven at the end of each session, with time passing in real time between sessions.

I recruited players to a heavily house-ruled Old School Essentials game through a combination of physical posters and posts in local Facebook groups (sadly the island I live on uses Facebook as a primary form of advertising, information sharing, and general communication). The game has been running for almost 3 months and I wanted to get some of my thoughts and observations written out, as much for my own reference as for providing advice to others thinking of running such things.

TL;DR - it has been an excellent experience and I don't know why I didn't run these before. 

 

The Aims

Run a fun and welcoming game where players can attend as much or as little as they want, with a focus on introducing new players to the hobby. Present a coherent and compelling fictional world which draws the players in and encourages them to act as their characters, rather than piloting a set of numbers on a character sheet.

 

The Players

Total signed-up players: ~20, some signed-up via email and some have joined the WhatsApp group used for game discussion and session planning.

Total players who have joined sessions: 13, 10 of whom have attended multiple sessions, 7 of whom I would class as 'regulars'.

Most of the sign-ups and regular attendees are women. Most are either totally new to or have minimal experience of tabletop RPGs. Player age ranges between teenage to middle-aged, most falling in the mid 20s - mid 30s.

The players have all entered the game with a high degree of trust in me as the Referee - I have been extremely careful to preserve this, mainly by always explaining my rulings and reasonings and inviting feedback. All players have expressed an enjoyment of the game up to press - all contribute snacks and £1 per session towards the hire of the room that we use, and I cover the remainder. Several character deaths have occurred and have all been taken in good humour, I believe as a result of this trust holding.

Players have generally acted in a fiction-first way and displayed impressive creativity when interacting with the game, using items, abilities and their wits in clever ways to confront and solve problems before them (my particular favourite was a player who, when confronted with a wide crack in the floor of a room, dropped a torch into the chamber below and affixed a mirror to the end of a 10' pole as an improvised reflector to illuminate dark areas further away). A few have expressed a more mechanics-first attitude, and have queried things like monster HP and abilities in mechanical terms, and have asked to perform general search/perception actions rather than directly interacting with scenarios before them - this has generally been minor and I have encouraged the fiction-first approach embraced by most players, largely through continual requests for task & intent statements.

The group has been very interested in learning more about things in the world, performing research in downtime, asking questions of NPCs regarding the local area and history, interpreting text sources found within the game, and remembering snippets of previous rumours and information gathered to help inform their decisions going forwards.

Several players have embraced faction dynamics, leading the party in performing a (largely) bloodless coup against a previous employer and taking over their organisation, and assassinating the leader of an opposing faction with the aid of a treacherous underling who was willing to make peace with them.

Some players have occasionally gotten distracted during sessions, but the majority have been laser-focused. The distraction hasn't caused issues yet, but I'm keeping an eye on it - if players are ending up on a waitlist while an active player isn't giving the game their full attention then I'll take steps on this.

The party wildly oscillates between cautious planning & a 'fuck it we ball' mindset, and I can't tell which mood will prevail at any one time. Both have been extremely enjoyable, the former lending itself to clever plans which either work out as intended or lead to shenanigans, and the latter having about a 50/50 split between glorious victory and grim fighting withdrawals (both producing excellent war stories).

No player has expressed an interest in learning the rules of the game (OSE). I have presented it in largely a black-box style, where they have character sheets to record information but I will tell them the rolls to make in a given situation. This was not my intention, but it has thus-far worked - see the comment about the high degree of player trust - and I am keen to try it in future games. Players have been quite happy to self-police their own encumbrance limits and draw out their own maps (I break out a dry-wipe board for specific combat positioning).

 

No distractions!

The Game 

Old-School Essentials Classic with house rules ripped from OSE Advanced, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Wolves Upon the Coast, and AD&D 1E. The rules are quite simple, and as mentioned above, run in a black-box style - this was unintentional as I assumed the players would show an interest in learning the game systems, but it has been an incredibly liberating experience as it ensures the players are interacting with the game fiction as directly as possible while I handle the (simple) mechanical load. Combat is where the vast majority of rolls occur and the players have embraced their characters' fictional positioning - they know that flanking and ganging up on enemies is a good way to win, but don't seem to care about the specific +2 modifier for each melee combatant outnumbering the other.

I'm running a megadungeon sandbox and the players have only just entered the dungeon itself - I added a ruined town with some small starter factions and points of interest and they absolutely ate this up, with the first two months being almost completely occupied by exploring different ruins and engaging with the faction dynamics. I'm hoping this bodes well for exploring the dungeon.

I've been gradually introducing elements of the game as we go. Hirelings have become a key element of the game since their introduction, which I didn't expect. The players have been happy to trade treasure and XP for increased survivability in fights. This has also let me be more explicit with telegraphing - nothing gets their attention like exploding a hireling into red mist. Several party members are starting to dabble in magic-item creation, which will be interesting to see going forwards.

There have been a few 'dud' sessions where the party has either not gained any treasure (they spent their time interacting with a strange machine, partially powered up an ancient golem and spent ages asking it questions), suffered near TPKs (don't run into a goblin den and let them encircle you), or combined the two (exploring the dungeon and heading through a secret door into a Minotaur arena, and having to make a fighting retreat with casualties). These have been embraced as part of the game, either because they're happy to spend time digging into the mysteries of the game (questioning the robot), they realise they made a mistake (charging in without a plan), or because they recognise that sometimes you just have bad luck (the Minotaur). In the latter cases they know that I've acted as impartially and fairly as possible, so their response has been to take stock of the situation and prepare for the next round. We also use rules covering Feats of Exploration, and giving fallen PCs a funeral allows you to divide up their XP, which helps to reward exploration and takes the sting out of coming back to town with empty pockets.

The out-of-game WhatsApp group has worked well for organising sessions, but I'd prefer something with threading abilities to delineate things like downtime activities, planning discussions etc.. I play in several Discord servers but I find the platform horrible for useful discussion and information organisation. I currently use a Google Site for recording session reports, player character rosters, discovered lore etc. I'll need to look into this further, but may just have to stick with the current setup as it's where people currently are.

Prep is incredibly easy - I used the Two Week Megadungeon method to knock out several levels of the dungeon, and with a quick message from the party telling me what they're aiming to do in their next delve I can make sure that everything is set up and ready. The dungeon basically runs itself, faction aims drive their expansion and contraction in different areas based on their interactions with the party, and re-stocking zones is a matter of rolling on a few tables. Combined with a simple ruleset this means that my mental load is massively reduced, and running weekly sessions floating between Thursday-Saturday has felt like almost no effort at all.

 

The Minotaur, before things went really wrong.

General Thoughts

I've loved every second of running this, and hope to continue it for as long as possible. I think I've met the initial objective of creating a fun and welcoming game to introduce newbies, with a focus on the fiction of the game.

I genuinely think my Referee-ing skills have improved. I still need to work on making NPCs more distinctive, but running a game seems to be second nature at this point. Having the mental processes mapped out to make and record rulings for spot situations has helped massively. 

I was surprised at how many of the players were brand new to the hobby, but having thought on it I imagine most folk who play RPGs will have found a group that they game with regularly. The new players have been some of the most creative and fun of the lot, and I hope I'm setting them up in good stead to play in other games in the future.

Recruitment has hit a bit of a wall recently - I'm hoping to broaden the pool of players a bit more, or at least get some of the sign-ups who haven't attended a session to come along to one.

Having a discrete objective for each session helps keep things focused - I'm looking forward to opening up play into a hexcrawl as the characters progress.

Running the game as a black-box, despite it being unintentional, has been a real eye-opener, in a good way. The game has ended up almost being a not-quite Kriegspiel, and I'm definitely keen to try running something more explicitly that way. Death to the system, long live the game.