Ooooo this is a good one. Are your wizards Gandalfian or Potter-esque?
I have a feeling which way this one will go in an AD&D crowd but gotta say, I am an avid Potter fan too. Read the series in my 20s and then again with my kids. Absolutely love it.
But no one will replace the space reserved in my heart for The Grey Pilgrim
its probably my friends and i rolling some dice
Funny meme on the 1e Bard. The class certainly got a makeover in 2e. Who has had experience with them to report on in AD&D?
and not a one of them wearing a decorative suit of bikini pseudo-armor
I can only imagine hosting a campaign here. A man can dream...
Today I’m starting a solo AD&D 1E campaign. So far, I’ve gone down into a dungeon with a single level 1 character and, obviously, zero henchmen: Aldith Stommere, a human warrior. I tried searching for traps but didn’t find any, and I managed to open a door after two attempts. I wedged it open with pitons so I could flee if necessary. Then I moved down the corridor with a lantern I bought in the village, probing the floor with my hands every ten feet looking for traps, only to come face to face with a group of five fucking kobolds!!! Luckily, they’re surprised, but I’m going to try negotiating and running away first. Otherwise, if I need to reach the door from earlier, I’ll fight those kobolds as a last resort, because I know Aldith is going to die before I even get the chance to create more characters.
AD&D 1E Solo Session 3
I had an absolute blast with this solo session, it was amazing. I played AD&D 1E strictly RAW. As a reminder, during the second session Aldith Stommere spent more than a full day traveling through the countryside of Polaris toward the city of Zonreiryd. She slaughtered part of a herd of cows and ate meat from one of them.
So this was Session 3, my favorite one so far.
Aldith arrived safely in the city of Zonreiryd. After flirting with a few people in a tavern and resting there, she recruited a second adventurer: Elarkein, a little nod to Mordenkainen. He was an old man in a blue traveling robe carrying a staff. He had enough money to buy water and food so that he and Aldith could explore Castle Zonreiryd.
The two adventurers descended side by side down a staircase of dirty limestone from the city sewers of Zonreiryd. They arrived in a space 20 feet wide and 30 feet long facing west, containing two exits upstairs and two arched openings cut from blocks of stone: one in the south wall and another in the western wall. The room was damp and smelled of stale bread.
Aldith crouched to the floor and crawled through the room for one full turn searching for any light source, but there were none. During those ten minutes Elarkein stood in the northeast corner of the room near the stairs, ready to cast the Sleep spell he had memorized against any hostile entity. Aldith became tangled in dense spider webs and found no source of light.
The two adventurers decided that Elarkein would light a torch and hold it in his left hand while continuing to carry his staff in his right. Aldith walked to his left with her two-handed sword ready while her shield hung on her back with leather straps.
At this point they had already spent fourteen minutes inside the dungeon. I should note that I was tracking time and movement strictly in a notebook and on sheets of paper.
The two adventurers decided to head toward the southern arched exit after spending three rounds examining the spider webs for traps. They entered a dark passage dimly illuminated by an unknown source of light. The corridor ended to the east at an iron-banded oak door and continued westward. It measured 10 feet wide.
Elarkein tapped the ground ahead with his wizard’s staff searching for traps, as well as the walls on either side. There were no traps. The group carefully moved westward, though the marching order changed: Aldith now advanced first, ready to react immediately, while Elarkein illuminated the way from behind.
The corridor stretched southward for 40 feet before turning sharply 90 degrees west and continuing another 80 feet toward an unprotected white birchwood door.
The two adventurers listened at the door. Aldith had to remove her armor first. After several minutes of listening and a successful hearing check, they heard nothing. Elarkein set down his staff and opened the door only to find a wall of granite blocks mortared together 10 feet ahead, extending northward for 60 feet before ending abruptly.
We lost thirty minutes just taking this route. Even though the passage beyond the white birch door also extended southward, I decided the adventurers would retrace their steps to the starting area. They did so, and by applying the “by the book” movement rules, since movement speed is multiplied by five in familiar areas, they made the return trip in only a few minutes.
So the two adventurers returned to the starting chamber, avoided the spider webs, and took the western opening instead. It led into a large dark room that took several turns to fully explore and search in order to visualize properly. The chamber measured 30 by 50 feet and resembled a filthy dumping ground full of small rats and garbage. There was an arched opening in the southwest corner.
The room appeared to have once been some kind of Greco-Roman-style pool because of the stagnant basin of water in the center.
We extinguished the torches and rested for ten minutes while remaining alert, since we had already been down there for an hour. Elarkein lit a new torch and the adventurers performed a second examination of the room searching for anything useful.
Aldith found a nearly edible chicken. It seemed too good to be true, so Elarkein with his staff and Aldith with her sword carefully prodded both the chicken and the ground for traps, and surprise! There really was a 10-foot-deep pit trap.
The two adventurers decided not to linger there and quickly walked side by side toward the southwest exit, which opened into an empty 20-by-20-foot room. The floor was sandy, and several holes in the ceiling opened into the sewers above. Through those holes faint rays of light filtered down. Some dripped water while others dropped dust into the chamber.
There was an arched exit to the north and another to the west. We took the western exit, which led into an identical room except that it contained smashed cabinets. We searched it and found nothing, so we returned to the previous chamber and chose the other path.
We entered a dark rectangular room measuring 10 by 20 feet, completely empty except for another arched opening to the west. We took it and arrived in another identical room.
We made several searches for secret doors before finally discovering one in the northwest corner. We tried pivoting it, pulling it toward us, pulling it the other way, and opening it from both sides, but what finally worked was lifting it upward. The mechanism triggered with a heavy grinding sound.
We immediately entered a brightly lit room illuminated by lanterns and smelling like wet dog. Judging by eye, the room measured around 20 by 40 feet. There was a row of four columns ahead of us, with debris and broken wood scattered everywhere, and then, damn it, kobolds came rushing out.
Five kobolds. Naturally, we were surprised. They won initiative.
During their segment they advanced toward us, but each of us stood on opposite sides of the columns. As soon as our group could act, Aldith fired her crossbow at the kobold approaching her and killed it instantly.
Elarkein cast Sleep on the group of kobolds and every single one of them fell unconscious.
I thought for a moment about whether we should kill them in their sleep, but we decided to spare their lives instead and searched the area for loot, recovering a dagger and some rations.
Then it was straight back to the sewers and up to the surface to re-enter the city of Zonreiryd. That’s where I stopped the session.
The game was fantastic. I used my dungeon map, an incomplete and minimalist encounter key just enough to make the level function, and a whole bunch of random tables for all sorts of things. It was really cool, and I decided to use my notes to flesh out and properly develop the new first level of Castle Zonreiryd.
When my friends eventually explore it, they won’t have the map, so they’ll have to cartograph the dungeon from my descriptions. Everything will be unknown and left to discover for them.
Sam has got himself some pretty heroic attributes and choices to tout.
I’m recreating this level of my dungeon in an outrageously over-the-top 1950s pulp sci-fi style. It’s intended for fairly high-level OSRIC tournament play. It’s very clearly inspired by Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
If I end up publishing it as an OSRIC tournament module, would anyone perhaps be interested in helping me with the illustrations, creating a blueprint-style version of the module, doing the layout, and publishing it as a free PDF?
*(I hope this isn’t inappropriate or coming across as self-promotion.)*
Hey guys, the Kickstarter for my new adventure is coming to a close. Stronghold of the Mad Dwarf is a classic dungeon crawl into madness, designed for 4–6 characters of levels 1–2 for AD&D 2e, Shadowdark, and 5e.
Explore a long-forgotten cursed dwarven trading post buried beneath the mountain, confront the twisted remnants of the Elderhorn clan, uncover the fate of Melric Elderhorn, and retrieve the lost Tome of Many Verses.
Packed with new monsters, traps, magical items, and old-school dungeon exploration.
Thanks to everyone who’s supported and backed the project so far.
AD&D Toolkit(https://adndtoolkit.com) is a collection of tools for DMs that integrates seamlessly with digital Character Sheets. It is not a VTT. Its a digital assistant for DMs and Players. It greatly enhances both in-person and online play by speeding up and automating the more interesting, yet cumbersome mechanics of AD&D. Toolkit supports First Edition(1e), Unearthed Arcana(1e), and Second Edition(2e).
Read what others have to say about it.
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We are one of the largest AD&D(1e and 2e) discords. Our discord serves as the community hub as well as offering support for the essential companion application, AD&D Toolkit. Our discord connects Players and DMs in finding groups to play with, as well as serving as a resource for people new to AD&D or Toolkit.
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- greatly enhances in-person games as well as online;
- great tool for guiding less experienced DMs and standardizing table mechanics;
- characters can manage their inventory, equipped gear, spellbooks, spells-for-the-day, XP and level(s), age, weapon proficiencies, languages, all on their Character Sheet;
- automatic calculation of Encumbrance and Movement rates;
- storing and automated selling of loot with Buyback rates established by the DM;
- calculating Surprise in each encounter;
- calculating Pursuit Evasion;
- time tracking across a Campaign;
- automating impactful but tedious systems like character disease contraction and monthly expense calculations;
- standardizes protocols for esoteric systems like custom spell research;
- DM image sharing feature to provide visual enhancements to gameplay;
- randomized weather that factors in terrain, climate, and season;
- a custom, built-in Sound Effects board for spells and combat!
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AD&D Tookit: https://adndtoolkit.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/EvjygRDvat
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dnd1e
I created a Random NPC generator for 2E.
This excel based NPC generator will create up to 6 fully flushed out single class NPCs up to Level 20.
Let me know if you find it useful or if you run into any errors.
This will likely require Excel 365 but it may work on other versions I did not test that.