Forlorn Skulk

05/07 Session  Between the 24th and 26th of Coldeven  I unfortunately didn't take great notes of this one, but essentially  some time ago during a particular wild session of carousing, Max Dash the Halfling had been given a deed to a haunted house (the Windler House which I brazenly stole from Nightmare of Ragged Hollow). The gang decided to finally clear it out and claim it for themselves. And they did a pretty good job of it! It turned out the haunting was less of a problem. Mites (which I added in place of the strange rat goblins from the original) had made themsleves at home in the place and the gang had to smoke them out. They fled in every direction like rats abandoning ship; hopefully not to become someone else's problem... The rest of the session was spent pursuing a minor sidequest: Sage Urphantus offered 500gp to find a historic relief that he needed more information about. In game terms this was a blind hex-crawl where the party systematically searched a bunch ...

Here's the notes from the session. Thanks to Magnus for recording! This ran from c.a. 20-25. The recruitung was understood to take a few days, and the players wanted their injuries and caousing disavantages to heal. Notes from me are italicised. Berghof session 22.7.26   We hired a fighter: Margerethe Unkerich Fighter. She has 40 arrows and a bard Simon Gans. - Retcon by the DM. Originally the ranger, Mariat gave us a 1,000gp bracelt . The bracelet is actually worth 8,000 (probably need to go to Chiswell to sell). This is because for AD&D monsters you get AD&D prices. - Cloak of protection +1 to Konrad Staff of striking – limited charges. One charge inflicts 2d6 damage. Giving it to Mads Roland left his Elven boots which Konrad will take Mads took the ring of protection?   Currently the 23rd of coldeven We have been chilling in Kusnia. Travelling to the villa we encounter three fishermen. Frank Fisher who is David Fisher’s son. Giving them a gold piece each, they ar...

I foolishly forgot to keep notes on the adventure I'm about to update on. So I'll just keep it very topline as a matter of record! The events are a little jumbled in my memory but here we go. It must have been around the 12th to 14 of Coldeven. A gloomy day. The party made their way into the Lakside Manor again. This time, they finally found the Skulks. Or rather the Skulks found them! The party had wisely spiked the two main gates before going to sleep. What they didn't know was that the skulks had a secret entrance via the "garbage" room that Mads had been so desperate to burn down eariler. They skulked in at night and strangled David to death before the party could respond. RIP David - he was so close to graduating from a torch bearer to a fully fledged retainer. In the ensuing battle, the party wounded one skulk and charmed the other. The wounded skulk got away but the charmed skulk told the party all about the villa, special entrances etc and told them that a...

>>>Sign up to the Forlorn Mailing List here<<<  It took me a while to get around to posting this. But I've published a an adventure: The Tiger Coast . It's a hex crawl, it's free and it's part of the incredible Antarctic Adventure Jam  by Idraluna Archives .  Writing this was huge for me. I spent a long time studying what people want from an OSR/Adventure game, listening to reviews, reading about dungeon design etc. and then I wrote this thing and honestly a lot of it went out of the window. It was just about writing something and pushing my imagination and output to a new level. Two things really contributed to that: it's a hexcrawl rather than a dungeon, and it's set in the campaign world of Antarctica  Antarctica is a map that Idraluna created which is essentially a hex-ified map of real world antarctica if it wasn't frozen over. Before the jam started, Idraluna had already begun populating the map with his campaign world Zurth, and by t...

It's been a while since I made a Play Report post - a number of game sessions have passed! So just to keep the ball rolling here's an update. Thanks to Keir for keeping notes.  3/6/26 Harassed the Rat – Fergus – released them with Bandits Followed information on the drug dealer connection. Took the civilians back to Town, Chiswell. Carousing. Decided to go to the Skulks. Travelled to Kusnir – got information about a weird Skulk with a glove that was writing on walls. Writing said free the power to combat evil… I am the Sentinal. Weird skulk was sometimes killing, sometimes sparing. Kusnir – walled town, couple of hundred people, mainly fisherman. We are welcomed there and can stay for free. Daybreak on 4th of Coldeven Suns out (Roland is wandering around in a singlet), light clouds in the sky David’s Dad – Klaus (Village Elder of Kusnir), Mum – Jeanette Left the shell out for the Mermedon (i.e. Cool). Foraged 4 lots of Kusnir Nettles. Spoke to the Village Guard (Uschi Sauer – g...

I'm just nutting this out as I go so excuse the stream of consciousness.   Someone on the  Dead Letters podcast  recently mentioned that carousing tables as written don't work very well in-game. For those not familiar with carousing: players can chose to roll a d6 (usually) and spend d6*100 gp partying. Like in real life, going out and partying gives you life experience. Unlike in real life that experience correlates to the amount of money spent (e.g. 600 gold = 600 XP). If the number on the d6 is above your character level, you suffer a consequence which you roll for. On most tables, these consequences are quite out there. The problem is RAW the consequences either routinely create a high volume of campaign altering events, or they just need to be essentially ignored to keep things moving. You got shot gun married? Maybe you just pay off the groom's family and never speak of it again. At that point, it's sort of just a weird side note that's eating into your game t...

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 as...