I know a couple that have been interested in playing D&D for a while, but never have. They told me that they didn’t know how to play, so I offered to run a one-shot for them.
The Platform
I live in western New York. They live in Indiana, so I suggested we play via Roll20. They made accounts and joined one of the games I have setup there.
The Rules
Ostensibly, the rules were White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game which a freely available re-presentation of the Swords & Wizardry White Box rules, which (in turn) is a retro-clone of the original 3 books of the 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
In reality, the only thing the book was opened for was the equipment/price list and spell descriptions. The rest of the game was played off the cuff. That’s the glory of OSR games. “Rulings, not rules.”
House Rules
I did use a few house rules. For magic, I used the Crowfield Magic System; it worked well.
I also used a different character creation system. A player would roll 3d6 and pick the stat to put it in. Once a stat was picked it couldn’t be unpicked, so the second roll only had 5 possible stats. After all 6 stats were rolled, an additional 3d6 was rolled, and the player could replace the lowest roll with the new one. This allows players to wait for a good roll in their class’s important stats yet prevents every character’s highest stat automatically being in the perfect slot. Though, both players did end up with the highest roll in the prime attribute for their class. Still, it was fun and it worked. I worry about how it would have felt if the dice were being more stingy, however.
The last house rule was about hit points. I stole a suggestion from 1989’s D&D module B11: King’s Festival. The players still rolled, but if they got less than a minimum for their class then that minimum was used. Any adjustment for Constitution was added after the minimum roll adjustment.
| Class | Minimum HP |
|---|---|
| Cleric | 5 |
| Fighter | 6 |
| Magic-User | 3 |
| Thief | 3 |
The Setting
After blathering on about it for a year and a half, you’d think I’d set the game in Crowfield, but I didn’t. Because this was a tutorial type game, I wanted the setting to be more “generic D&D” (if that makes any sense), so I used my Bloodport setting.
The Characters
The dice were rolling hot, and both players ended up with high scores:
| Teena | Zyier | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class | Magic-User | Thief | Thief shouldn’t have been a valid class, but I forgot and we just ran with it. |
| str | 9 | 15 | +1 bonus for Zyier |
| int | 14 | 10 | +1 bonus for Teena |
| wis | 12 | 12 | |
| dex | 11 | 15 | +1 bonus for Zyier |
| con | 14 | 10 | +1 bonus for Teena |
| chr | 11 | 9 | |
| hit points | 4 | 4 | |
| Armor Class | 10 | 11 | Zyier forgot to buy armor. |
The Adventure
The adventure started in the city of Bloodport. I told the players that their characters already knew each other and had been friends for years.
Scene 1: The Tavern
The story opened in Argyle’s, a local pub named after its owner. Argyle (the owner) was a pirate until he contracted an illness that he never quite recovered from.
The characters wanted to order food, but Argyle looked sad and said he couldn’t help them. Only he used a lot more words. “No, lass. I can’t help ya today. We be all out of land fish. Haven’t gotten a delivery in o'er a week now. Tell ya what, though. If ya and ya frien' there be doin' me a favor, I’ll feed ye both for a week!”
I even did a “pirate accent.”
In the end, the characters agreed to take Argyle’s mule and cart to Bomo’s ranch outside of the city gates and return with a supply of land fish.
Act 2: The Ranch
The characters left the safety of the city walls and ventured to Bomo’s ranch. Outside of the safety of the city walls, Bloodport Isle is a wild and dangerous place. Still, it wasn’t that far of a journey, as the ranch is only only a couple miles down the road. The characters made it there with no encounters.
Because of the dangerous nature of the island, Bomo’s ranch is surrounded by a 15-foot tall stockade wall. The fence is 220 yards per side, and the only gate is on the road to the city. The characters met Bomo, a halfling land fish rancher, and gave him a note from Argyle that explained the situation.
Bomo explained in a squeaky voice that he couldn’t spare any land fish at the moment. All his stock were being eaten by foxes. Until the fox problem was solved, he couldn’t help the characters.
The characters heroically offered to help. They kept watch overnight, and sure enough they heard the sounds of a fox digging a hole under the stockade fence. When the fox emerged, I describe it to them.
“You know how foxes look like cuter, longer versions of Pomeranians? With shiny red fur with little tufts of white on the tail and ears?”
“Yes,” replied Teena’s player.
“This one doesn’t look like that. It looks like maybe it used to look like that, but it lost a fight to a bear. Its fur is matted and missing in splotches. In fact, its flesh is missing in places, and one eyeball is dangling out of its socket.”
“It’s a zombie fox!” Teena’s player rightly exclaimed!
“Looks like it could be!” I said.
After the sounds of page flipping the player said “Wait! Those aren’t in the book!”
“I know,” said I in my best DM voice.
The players (well, the characters) were infected with “analysis paralysis.” They stood around talking about what they should do, and not reaching any conclusions. The zombie fox, on the other hand, had no such issue. It just headed for the nearest pen of land fish and started trying to get in.
“I think you should kill it,” said Teena to Zyier.
“Me? Why don’t you kill it?” he asked in reply.
“Because I’m trying to find a spell to use.”
Zyier drew his sword and attacked. It took two rounds to dispatch the beast, and never got a hit in on him. The thief scored his first kill.
The players then fell back into their analysis paralysis. They knew that the needed to figure out where the zombie fox came from, but didn’t know how to do it.
I tried to help them out by having another fox tunnel into the ranch, but this one was a skeleton fox. In my mind they could have let the beast take a land fish and follow it to where it took it, but they couldn’t figure out a way to get to the other side of the stockade wall quick enough.
Teena decided she wanted to capture the animated fox skeleton to be a pet, and started reading spells again. Zyier just killed it.
I sensed that they were stuck. In a normal game that was part of an ongoing campaign, I would have let another night go by and see if they had a different plan. But this was a tutorial one-shot game, so I gave them a hint. I fast forwarded to morning and had Bomo suggest that they try to follow the foxes' tracks.
Act 3: The Knoll of the Dead
The tracks led to a huge mass of dead, twisted, thorny vines. The knoll was easily a hundred yards across in a rough circle. It was easily a couple of stories tall.
The characters walked around the vines and discovered that there were four 10-foot opening/tunnels. The openings aligned perfectly with the cardinal compass directions.
The selected the western entrance. They lit their torches and entered. They avoided any of the side passages and came out of the northern entrance, though they thought it was the southern one. They repeatedly asked which entrance they were at and I repeatedly asked them how they were going to figure it out. Finally Teena said she was looking at the position of the sun. Success!
I had been making random encounter rolls the whole time, but it never happened.
Teena (correctly) assumed that they needed to get to the center of the knoll to solve the mystery, and Zyier agreed. The walked around the knoll to the eastern entrance and re-entered. They came to a “T” intersection and rather than turning left or right, Teena decided that the wall ahead was an illusion (it wasn’t) and tried to get through it. The she had an idea.
“Let’s burn it!”
Zyier looked at her in disbelief. “No,” he said. “That’s a bad idea.”
They discussed it awhile and Zyier finally gave in. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he said.
He was right.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m lighting it on fire,” said Zyier’s player.
“Okay,” I replied, “but how?” I was waiting for them to say they were leaving the knoll and lighting it from outside.
Teena dashed my hope. “Put the torch right in that wall we were trying to get through.”
One skill a DM needs is the ability to say “Are you sure?” without using those words. The words I used were something like “So right in the middle of the corridor, inside all the dried vines you’re sticking your torch in the wall right next to you?” You can’t say I didn’t try.
“Yes.”
I had actually predicted that players would use fire. In my notes I wrote “Burning the vine produces toxic smoke. 1 hp/round. CON negates.” In the heat of the moment (pun), I misremembered the note as “1d6 hp damage/turn, CON for half.” This is actually better for the player’s mathematically.
Anyway, the knoll starts to burn. “I told you this was a bad idea,” shouted Zyier as they ran out.
Teena made her saves and made it out alive, but there was no sign of Zyier. She heroically ran back in and dragged him out, making her save time and time again. Eventually i just ruled that she was immune to the fumes.
Once she got Zyier clear, she tried to perform first aid but it was too late. Zyier was dead. There was nothing she could do.
Conclusion
The fire killed everything in the knoll, thereby saving Bomo’s Land Fish Ranch.
Teena survived.
Zyier died.
Remember them the next time you have a platter of Land Fish Fingers.