Caverns of Thracia Session Report
This is a reflection on a recent session of an ongoing ad-hoc pseudo-open table campaign focused on the exploration of The Caverns of Thracia described in the module of the same name by the late great Jennell Jaquays. I initially began the campaign with the Knave 2e rules by Ben Milton, but I have since switched to using my own system which is a hack of Yochai Gal's Cairn and Chris McDowall's Mythic Bastionland.
What I would call my "home group" consists of a pair of old school friends, my partner, and a friend I have met since coming to university. The default playstyle of the group is quite irreverent, with a focus on problem solving and enjoyment rather than hardcore genre emulation or nitty-gritty setting interrogation.
The session began with me using the Meatshields! generator to see what hirelings were available in town after being inspired by Adam's use of it in his Barrowmaze campaign. This was mostly useful, although the utility was somewhat reduced by the need to replace the names with Hellenic ones at the same time as converting/rolling up stats for my odd-like system. In future, I will either generate the hirelings ahead of time to give me more time to do this or I may bite the bullet and create my own Cairn-ish hirelings generator.
Later on, the party stumbled backward into a longbow-armed guard post of gnolls whilst fighting a patrol of the same faction. They managed to down one of the patrol, causing them to retreat, but the arrows from the rear caused one PC to be slain and two hirelings to be injured. This situation raises a few questions - should the guard gnolls have fled when their patrolling comrades failed morale, and should the arrows from behind have ignored HP and gone straight to STR? The answer I chose in the session was no to both of those questions, firstly because the guard gnolls were in place and attacking from an advantageous position, and secondly because the gnolls were shooting at a fair range towards targets who were already on a combat footing. In hindsight, I think I would rule the arrows as going straight to STR next time - being shot in the back is being shot in the back at the end of the day.
Whilst fleeing from the guard gnolls, the PCs ran past a secret door which had no marked "tell" in the module, something which I am always keen on having, and which was located in an area which was missing a key. This brings us to my key issue with the module: it is very much of its era, with wordy room descriptions and some inconsistent editing. I am currently weighing up the benefits of re-keying the dungeon in a more modern style whilst also adding in certain play-culture specific elements that I like to have such as tells for traps and secret doors. In the session, I improvised a description that commented on the hallway wall style changing to a decidedly more ostentatious style for a few feet before returning to plain plaster. I am happy with this ruling, and I plan to keep on using tells for secret doors in the future: I'd rather players at least get the chance to tackle the issue of opening the doors rather than never know the corridor is there.
The final ruling I had to make that session was regarding an enchanted statue that was retracting into a sub-floor chamber. The players were keen to retrieve the gemstones that made up the demon statue's eyes, and improvised a way to stop the retraction by throwing many iron spikes at the opening. I had no clear mental image of the shaft, so decided that it was possible for an iron spike to stop the descent, just unlikely. I gave each individual spike thrown a 1-in-6 chance to slow the descent, with multiple successful spikes causing a total stoppage. This worked in the players favour, and although I am still not happy with my understanding of the physics/logic of the trapped treasure, I think my ruling appeared even-handed and logical. At the very least, it was an example of my favourite kind of dungeon maths - the sacrifice of equipment for a chance at treasure. So many things in "Door D&D" boil down to this, and it is the heart of the reason I enjoy classic challenge-focused fantasy gaming so much.
To any of my home group that are reading this - thank you for your attendance and patience, and I'm sorry you get cowardly hirelings sometimes. To anybody else perusing this post - please feel free to let me know your judgement of my rulings or your opinions on any other material in this post. Until next time, keep tapping away with those 10' poles.
o7