Berghawk Play Report 20/05/2026 (a Greyhawk campaign set in Berghof)

In-game date: Earthday the 27th of Readying, Common Year 560.  

I’m trying something a little different with this play report. On PigDog’s suggestion, I’m going to focus a bit more on player choices over in-world descriptions. I’ll still use character names though, just in the interest of folks’ privacy! What this means is that it may be a bit less narratively engaging but might give people a better idea of how the session actually went down (vs whatever head cannon we’re collectively building).

I’d checked ahead of time whether the party made it from the Temple of Vecna back to Chiswell without complications. Because they did, the party got to start in Chiswell and get straight to the good stuff: distributing treasure and XP. 

Treasure and XP complications

Because the party had been away from a safe haven for three sessions in a row, I took it upon myself to update the treasure/coin they’d collected, and divide it up. This created a few hitches, because I’d made some assumptions around how retainers had been paid. Basically I assumed that the retainer Arnie, who left after a cave crawl, and before entering the temple of Vecna, would have been paid his share of treasure from the cave crawl. Players had assumed that because he left “mid-adventure” (in their definition before returning to a safe haven) he’d only get his retainer fee. I think that shows the potential complexity of the retainer rule that states that retainers take morale checks “after an adventure” in my view, the cave crawl was an adventure, and a retainer death (Loradile) justified a morale check - which Arnie failed. I should have probably been more explicit about the fact that the retainer still expected his share - something I neglected to mention in pay. It was funny though because I was basically copping the heat for the retainer. Players were as mad at me as they were at Arnie. I basically just said that while I could go through and sort out the math, it would mean we wouldn’t get a game in - so moving forward we’d be more clear about this stuff, but my ruling would stand for this one.

Calculating XP with a rotating set of retainers (and occasionally players) is pretty annoying if you don’t do it every session. Because you can’t just add everything from the previous 3 sessions up and split it evenly. You have to do it session by session. A real ball ache. But at the same time, at the end of the session, nobody (myself included) is ever really in the mood to do the math. So it usually ends up at the start of the session which can slow down play.

Feats of exploration

Another interesting conversation. I’d recently introduced 3D6 DTL’s Feats of Exploration. It’s a way of winning additional XP for exploring and engaging with in-world lore. The nice thing about it is it’s designed to lift up lower level characters. I distributed this “Rules As Written” and only awarded it to players that were present for that game. It did feel a bit unfair but I like sticking to RAW at first so I get an idea of how the rule is meant to work. I’ve found when playing games (especially wargames actually) often rules are a certain way for a good reason that really isn’t obvious from the outset. A lot of rules that people say are unfair are actually quite well balanced, but in ways that only become apparent in play rather than from reading the rule. That's why I’m generally against changing rules before running them RAW.

Anyway some players argued that it was unfair because the player characters are taking the risk of being in the adventure but not getting the additional XP for it. This is due to how we handle absent players. If absent, the rest of the party “plays” that player’s character. And yes, you can die in absentia. It’s a fairly harsh rule, but players do try to keep absent players out of harm’s way. What I found interesting is that this is bonus XP that I only just introduced. Before this the players were all for risking their characters, but the new bonus XP (that nobody was collecting before) made players less keen to risk their character in absentia. Do also think there’s an argument for keeping it RAW, because it means that players get rewarded for showing up. That said some of our players *can* only show up every second week. Long story short, with this one I decided to modify it so that all character (not just the present players) get the XP. It actually makes book keeping easier for me too!

The actual adventure 

Right! So Mads was keen to celebrate and blow some money on “jugglers, dancing girls and gambling” to honour his God Norebo. I thought this was a good chance to introduce the carousing rules. I’d been meaning to for a while, but until now folks just didn’t have enough gold to make it worth it. We used Luke Gearing’s d100 carousing rules. Not everyone participated but of those who did:

• Sepp the Ranger ended up with the consequence of drunkenly proclaiming he’d get his act together. In game terms that means he can only carouse at half value in Chiswell for the next 6 months. I take that to mean that he rolls a d3 instead of a d6. In a way this is actually sort of a boon for low level characters: you are less likely to roll so high that you have to go into debt. And you also have a lower chance of rolling on the consequences table.
• Mads the Cleric of Norebo rolled a 6 the first time around which was well above what he had in coin and would have put him in debt. But he chose to use his “Turn Luck” ability to reroll and end up with something a bit more affordable (Turn Luck is an ability that replaces Turn Undead in the special cleric class that I’ve written for Clerics of Norebo. I’ll have to share it here at some point, because I’m quite happy with it). Mads still had a consequence though - he ended up drunkenly dictating a mad letter to an old friend from Monmurg: he told him he’s having the time of his life in Berghawk and the friend must come and join his adventures - a fun story hook that I might bring in sometime (as a retainer? A new PC? TBC). I could also play my own minigame to see whether the letter even makes it to Monmurg… we’ll see! 
• Sturm the Cleric of St Cuthbert caroused far more modestly and mainly spent his time discussing the good word. He did not have roll for any consequences. 
• Roland the Fighter indulged in the finer things - food, drink, only the best. His consequence for the night ended up being that he drunkenly demonstrated attacks on the town’s most treasured statue: the unnamed soldier of Adlerweg. After a short RP, he had negotiated that he would pay 500gp in repairs over the next few visits to the city. I rolled on the reaction table (with some modifiers because he fessed up quickly and paid what he could) to see how the town folk would react. They ended up being neutral/suspicious. So not too bad an outcome!

The Dead Letters podcast recently gave a bit of critique of the carousing mechanism - namely that it either totally derails a campaign (because it adds so many serious consequences), or feels inconsequential because the consequences are hand waived to keep on track. I do see that danger. I think we all had good enough of a time with it for me to want to take that risk. But the critique did make me think about how it could be improved. I might write another post on that sometime, but basically I think the consequences that add a really sticky new story element (like a new wife!) should be kept to a minimum and the ones that either do something bad (e.g. injury and stat reduction), or add a hook that players can pursue if they like, but don’t have to, should be added. I’d really like to create a Berghof specific consequences table sometime. It will have to involve at least one dangerous encounter with the Rheenee, but the options seem pretty wide open! 

I’ve skipped the RP elements of the carousing but everyone had a good time playing out the outcomes. We didn’t dwell on it too long but it was a good time, and adds far more to the game than the rules alone might make you think.

The players wanted me to also give them some new rumours for carousing. This isn’t really part of the table, but I think that makes sense. The only challenge is, at the moment I’m a bit low on rumours! Luckily I’d come up with some ahead of time. I think we should probably start a rumours table somewhere so everyone can keep track. I know some DMs insist on the players dong the heavy lifting on that side of things, but it actually helps me keep it together as well.

The side quest that became the main quest

Now, I usually let the players chat about where they want to head next in the GC. This then allows me to prep the next session ahead of time. We’d done this for this session as well - the goal was to visit the Black Water Cairns, a burial site that the Duke had proscribed until recently. But as happens sometimes, the players in the moment decided to investigate a separate rumour that they had been hearing about for a while: the sale of dangerous, drugged cigars from a bandit tower outside of town (a small sidequest that I stole from Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow). I hadn’t prepped that site at all, but luckily, the OSE system is so lightweight, and Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow is so well put together (if a bit light on treasure values) that I was able to run it straight from the book!

The party found themselves in front of the tower - with a roughy 45 minute journey left to get to its front door. They decided to send a vanguard into the tower who would pretend that they’re smoke customers. Usually this might have been a job for the Thief Max Dash but his player wasn’t present so they decided to lean more into the deception side of things and send some higher Charisma characters as well as Konrad the Dwarf - mainly because his plate armour makes him so slow that he wouldn’t have made it to the tower on time in the vanguard! I should add that to get a workable plan out of the party, I gave everyone at the table a chance to make their suggestions, then opened the table to discussion and then picked a caller to tell me the final plan. I’ve found this is a useful way to get a result that can be adjudicated.

Still, this was an interesting situation to adjudicate. I had to make some measurements on how long it would take for the rearguard to arrive. I think in a more trad game they would have arrived when dramatically appropriate. But this being an OSE game, I wanted it to be more "real" and thus be more about time management and risk vs reward. So I told the vanguard exactly when the rearguard would arrive, and measured time quite closely. Additionally, I had to make a reaction roll for the bandits. I decided they would receive a fairly heavy negative modifier, because it was night time, they aren’t nice guys, and they were not expecting guests. And indeed the reaction roll failed. But again, Mads used his Turn Luck skill to prompt a reroll and just scratched by. The bandits shook everyone down for a fair bit of gold and let them come in and smoke the cigars known as “Ghost”. They also made the vanguard give up their weapons at the door (although a bit of quick thinking allowed Sepp to keep his knife). I’ll say, I think NORH could have done a bit more with the effect of the cigars. Unless I missed it, there’s no real danger of addiction, and there’s no stated effect other than maybe being able to speak to the dead on a very lucky roll. I winged that part a bit, giving those who indulged a -1 to Dex (in retrospect I would have given them a -1 to skill checks and to-hit rolls instead) and additional -1’s depending on how much they smoked. The funny part of the cigars being relatively harmless is that in a sense the party were really just rolling the local weed dealer. I did have a few moments where I wondered who the real bad guys were (“luckily” there is some child labour involved in harvesting the cigar leaf, so I think it was the bandits). 

To cut a long story short, the rearguard arrived just when the bandits had warmed enough to the vanguard to show them around the den. A fight broke out between about 10 bandits and the party, and the vanguard tricked the bandits into thinking they were on their side. This gave them the jump on a few bandits. I thought that maybe the party would struggle with the volume of bandits, but we have quite a few members in the Stone Smashers now, and some are level 2 - so it was quite an even fight. Trollsmyth's Shields Shall be Splintered! Rule  also goes a long way towards keeping character alive. In addition they were fighting at a cross section of tunnels and blocked off the bandits in a way that made it hard for them to use all of their attacks each round. The thing that really turned the tides was Feuersicht deploying the sleep spell when things got a little dangerous. It was interesting to watch Feuersicht deliberate over whether or not to actually use his spell. I think when we first started playing the MUs would have just dropped their spells asap. But nobody knew what else was in the den, and that made this spell a valuable resource. 

Another interesting turning point was the debate over what to do with the sleeping bandits. The party decided to kill them and only keep two who’d been tied up and agreed to parley. Sturm, the Cleric of St Cuthbert argued that letting them go would just invite revenge later. They‘d been given a chance to drop their weapons and refused, and they were bad people (who kept child labour). Mads the Cleric of Norebo on the other hand said that Norebo punishes those who kill anyone who is defenseless - he sees it as unsporting. This reminded me that I need to familiarise myself with the values of the Gods of the two clerics to see whether any of this will have repercussions. It also made me think, having a little chart of some sort to consult about deity-specific morality could be helpful!

Because the den was basically cleared of bandits, and because it was late in the day, I made the somewhat unusual decision to just give our mapper the whole map with numbers (It’s a 5 or 6 room den). The party then told me how they wanted to approach it and I let them. The bandit leader - a wererat almost got away. To keep it simple I gave the party members who went ahead a chance to grab him, and I gave the members who stayed behind one Dex roll to do the same. I only let the member with the best Dexterity do the roll to keep it simple and interesting. And lucky him - he succeeded! So the adventure ended with someone grasping the flailing wererat, and the knowledge that Wyrm of some sort waited for the party in the room where the Ghost Weed is grown…