In the following, I will show you the session diary one of the players (PC = Eloi) wrote for one of the troupes that travelled my version of the Wilderlands of High Adventure. I will comment to the best of my knowledge on the DM-processes involved.

Session 1

Day 1 — The adventurers meet in Targnol Port, where a dodgy horse trader offers them a job: „take this great stallion to the royal ranch past the mountains and you’ll get a cartload of money, and some poneys!“. Departure the same day for Maslanta, next settlement west of Targnol Port. In the evening, the strange Shaman („Sitting Wolf“) finds a beautiful sword, spat out by the earth. He offers it to Eloi the Pilgrim.

The major decision in preparing for this troupe’s adventures was the decision which map they would start on. I decided upon Viridistan aka the home of the City State of the World Emperor, because it interested me the most. Where we would start was decided only after the characters were made. The Wilderlands PHB has a lot of regional feats and concerns itself with languages and cultures, so I first needed to know which cultures need to be united for the group to meet. As it happened, one of the Viridian Ports, Port Targnol was the best place. The stallion-mission was just one of several I had in store to make sure they would have a reason to travel across the map. For all missions, I made some notes as to what would happen if they weren’t successfully accomplished. The stallion-mission was a minor part in the growing war with the City State of the Invincible Overlord, I decided. The consequences of failure would not have been felt until two years later, for example. The sword was one of the first things coming out of the random tables, it actually is a major artifact.

Day 2 — After a night in the wild, the companions travel the whole day in the direction of Maslanta, avoiding a flash-flood. There they meet a crazy local druid who asks them to rid the area of a strange apparatus abandoned north of town. Locals complain of the increasing taxes and of the difficult times for trade.

Random table results to not „spice up“ anything, but to model what really happens.

Day 3 — Early morning departure with other villagers to try to salvage big chunks of mountain crystal that are usually washed out by the flash-floods: they score a couple of nice pieces. Further up the river, they discover the apparatus mentioned by the druid. It looks like some strange flying device made from metal tubes and dark dragon-skin. There, they have to fight off some hungry badgers who manage to steal half of the provisions of the travelers. They nevertheless retrieve the apparatus and charge it on their mules.

The apparatus was a hang-glider, and the Druid knew it was form the times of technology, and as such hated it.

Day 4 — Following the northern affluent of the Thistledown river in direction of Tak Shire, the companions get a chance to admire the greatness of the landscape. As on the two days before, Eloi the Pilgrim and Zheng the foreigner spend the evening trying to train the horse of the latter. The noble steed that they are supposed to deliver is still in good shape and healthy. Hatnokeinam (?) and Eloi try to teach a bit of Ghinoran to Sitting Wolf, who seems to hear voices. Later that night, they are attacked by a pair of marauding Black Orcs; easy victory. Hatnokeinam scores a couple of good shots at the orcs.

Oh, yeah, as the Wilderlands are the Wilderlands, the players could not really speak to each other much, as most did neither speak the tongue of the Viridian lands, nor any other common tongue. They settled on learning a smattering of ghinoran as group-language. Took some levels until they really could speak with each other. usually, though, a translaotr chain could be created with at least one member being able to translate to one other member who could translate to..etc. good times!

Day 5 — Leaving the side of the river, they cross overland in the direction of the Tak Shire wood. In the evening, Sitting Wolf notices some disturbance (in the spirit world?) and investigates. A rat swarm attacks the travelers. Burning oil and a trampling horse manage to break the swarm. Fortunately the royal steed is not too badly hurt. Beyond the ridge of the hill, where the rats came from and where the spirits seem to disappear, the heroes discover a step-pyramid.

The pyramid was the first lair/dungeon that came up on the tables, and I fully fleshed it out before the actual session. I also did read basically all entries for settlements on the map, so that I got a feel for the power structure. I made reams of notes for this. The role of Tak-Shire as pork-source for the Empire was endangered by Black Orcs that were on the rise in the hills.

to be continued…

Technically, we played what these days might be called OD&D1974, but what the players wrote on their notebooks, along with name, as in school, was in fact Ur-D&D, so I went with that. As I have mentioned elsewhere, this small mini-campaign has some specific pragmatic constraints that it must fulfill. As such, I use the Ur-D&D rules as I have been using different D&D rulessets since I started DMing: to represent different eras in my ongoing campaign.
This approach makes using anything apart from Chainmail and the basic set anathema, as this preassumes too much: If there are demons the timeline has already advanced too far beyond the Age before Ages etc.

As I also mentioned elsewhere, I had some troubles in designing the first Dungeon, so I reversed the process and came up with a nice „new“ way of doing it, conceptually and manually. I rolled up the room contents and matched the results one around my central concept and the most important rooms, and so on. That worked better for my way of thinking. Manually, I put the dungeon map into a sheet protector and wrote with erasable markers on the protector to move around treasure, traps, monsters and try out some more configurations and to add notes for room contents, patrol schemes, mechanisms etc. That felt very natural and the creatice juices flowed more freely than with any other method of dungeon creation I tried so far.

My real point, though, is the fact that Ur-D&D is for girls. Quite literally, the reason I chose a different era and rules set was that we would have some more non-adventure gamers joining for the mini-campaign and they happen to be girls. Turns out, my decision was right: The new players could interact with the dungeon environment immideately, without first learning a layer of rules or being patronised by the older hands. Also, the older hands got more creative too, as the shackles of 3.5 went off: the combat order was overturned and turned into a more freestyle affair, ideas were tried that in 3.5 would be usually shot down by: you’d need a feat or suffer -4 etc.
Apart from that, it pretty much played like the D&D we knew, because I already DM as D&D should be DMed. The combats were a little bit more intense, and as I described the dungeon and only put out the map tiles if there was a combat, the dungeon was really explored. The interaction with the environment was highlighted a little more than usaul in our games, but I fear this will wear out fast. As someone elsewhere said: there are only so many pit traps and so mayn creative ways of searching for secret doors before you go back to a simple roll. Apart from that, the most enjoyable part was to DM the combats, as they were about weapon and formation interaction instead of Feat & Spell interaction as it is with our high level games. Ur-D&D will not be much different at 17th level in that regard, but the Chainmail based combat and the high stakes enabled different tactics. In hindisght, this is how our combat was handled, it evolved into that pretty quickly, informally:

a) check for surprise
b) both sides roll 2d6 for initiative
c) he who has initiative has nothing else, i.e. he has the first chance to dictacte the course of the combat round, a true first strike it is not (1min combat etc.)
d) first side acts, declares what they want to accomplish
e) second side frantically describes reactions, if any. A reaction at this time means forfeiting your own action. If weapons are involved the chainmail range classes are used to determine speed of the weapon. For example, Orcs with spears could not be hit as a reaction, but their spears could be targeted. OTOH, if the weapon classes had too high a difference you might get a free strike. Example: spear against Giant Rats.
f) remaining figures act
g) morale checks are made
h) goto b)or end fight

Other rulings that had to be made:
– decision on the exact working of turn undead (undead will cower, but will strike back at anyone except the cleric)
– decision regarding what happens if a healing potion is split among two people (1d3 for each)
– decision what happens on 0 hitpoints (as Chainmail is supposedly realistic, and most casualities in medieval times were from after the battle, you fall down, only a coup de grace will kill you, instantdeath only at -HPmax)
– decision on bandaging (regain 1 HP but only from cuts and only once)
– decisions on grappling, rear attacks and subdual of enemies (half damage and saving throw agains para to remain conscious)

While this is nice and fun, I definitely see why there was an AD&D and a 3.x. Some questions arise so quickly, answers are needed that DO NOT take away the freefrom part. Turning undead would be the most important example, I would say. Handling this ad-hoc and differently each time would be rather strange. And from there it is a slippery slope…I’ll let you know how our house rules evolve.

Discuss!