Marvellous first Labyrinth Lord game

[elf23]

(Cross-posted from my blog.)

So today, at last, I got to play Labyrinth Lord! I've been absolutely gagging to give it a go since getting the books a couple of months ago, and was excited to be able to arrange a session for this afternoon. Of course, though it's the first time I've played Labyrinth Lord, I've played copious hours of basic D&D as a kid, so it's hardly new territory -- rather a return to and retreading of old territory. And I'm delighted to say it was a great success, everyone had a lot of fun, and I was revelling in the joyous simplicity and openness of the rules - no 'feats' or 'edges' (as they're known in Savage Worlds, which we've played a lot recently)! No copious lists of skills! (None of the PCs ended up being thieves, so there really wasn't a single skill on anyone's character sheet!) Just good, old fashioned, 3d6 ability scores in order, roll for hit points, buy equipment and off we go.

The adventure I ran was also similarly simplistic and old-school in style. The introduction went something like this: "You've been staying in a town which lies nearby to a magical wood. You've heard stories of people going into the wood and getting lost, so you know there's lots of weird and dangerous creatures living there. You've also heard legends of a great army in ancient times getting lost in the wood, and a king's hoard of treasure getting lost along with them, so you know there are riches to be found, for the brave and cunning. You journey into the wood on a sunny day, and after a couple of hours you come to a clearing with a huge old oak tree in the middle. Looking at the tree you notice that it is split down the middle, revealing an interior space which you could step into. Looking into the space within the tree you see a shaft going straight down into the earth with tree roots forming a ladder of sorts. What do you do?" As you can imagine, they ventured into the hole, and discovered a strange subterranean world filled with all sorts of weird, wonderful and deadly things.

Rather than describe the adventure itself, I thought firstly I'd write a few thoughts on the game-play and the rules, starting with character creation. As there were only three players, I let them roll two characters each -- one as their main character, and one as a henchman of some kind.

We ended up with the following assortment:

• Min - dwarf.
• Slippy - halfling (who are rat-people in this vaguely imagined campaign world), endebted to serve the greedy Min for 99 years (far longer than the halfling's expected lifespan).
• Rivain - elf (fey), rolled with that rarest of treasures - a natural 18 Strength.
• Esalai - elf (fey), henchwoman of Rivain. Esalai almost instantly became known as 'Princess' as none of us could remember her real name.
• Bamberry - magic-user (necromancer) with an undead rat familiar.
• Ismelda - dwarf henchwoman of Bamberry.

So only a single human in the group. I'm not sure why they all ended up gravitating towards demi-humans, as none of them have ever played basic D&D before, and I didn't give the demi-humans a massive big-up or anything. It just somehow turned out that way. The 3d6 in order rolling of ability scores came as a bit of a shock to two of the three players, who were experienced with D&D 3, and being able to choose what class they wanted to play, and there were some grumbles, but I reassured them that ability scores don't make so much difference (except for that 18 Strength, which really helped in battles!) and that, realistically, the characters were fairly likely to die anyway.

As I'd disallowed the cleric class (somehow I'm not that keen on the idea of clerics as adventurers), I let them buy healing potions for 50gp, and scrolls of undead turning for 25gp. The party had quite a few of these items between them, and though the undead turning scrolls didn't see any use (yet), the healing potions were life savers, literally. I allowed the healing potions to be used to save anyone at 0 or -1 hit points, if they could be reached by a companion within a couple of rounds. This actually happened twice during this session, so I was glad I'd invented that rule -- I hoped the first session wouldn't be too off-putting and end in a TPK! In the end four out of the six characters made it out of the dungeon -- Min the dwarf met his doom falling into an underground river while grappling with a troglodyte (though the dwarf's final fate is as yet unknown to the other PCs), and Princess was slaughtered by another troglodyte in an ensuing battle. That was a shame, they were both cool characters.

One thing which I really especially enjoyed, which is of course one of the main "selling points" of old-school RPGs, was the freedom of description and action provided by the very loose framework of rules. Rather than dry rolling of skill checks, traps were deduced and disarmed by trial and error -- throwing dead bodies onto pressure plates, wedging bones in cracks to prevent blades flying out, and so on. Each round of combat began with a simple "what do you do"? And of course the answers given were purely descriptive, never touching on the meta-tactics level of more modern RPGs with tons of mechanics-based combat 'options' -- "I move 4 squares then I use my Cleave feat", or whatever. I've been getting a bit fed up of this in Savage Worlds recently, which is a system I'm quite fond of, but still has too much of this meta-level rules complexity for my increasingly old-school tastes.

In the end though the remaining PCs escaped the dungeon with a nice selection of treasure, many areas left unexplored, and a couple of hints at what dangers and treasures lie yet in wait. What more can one ask for? We definitely plan to play again, and see how they fare on a second journey into the magical wood.

[Blood axe]

AWESOME-SAUCE!!
Sounds cool. I hope we get to hear more about your adventures.

[elf23]

Thanks Bloodaxe!

I'll post a proper write up of the story side of the adventure later on...

[velaran]

Cool. Yeah, funny how more 'options' in circa 90's games ends up being less, isn't it? i.e "Can't use it if ya don't got it!" The game sounded really fun, may there be many more!

[Denim N Leather]

Congrats! Sounds like a great experience!

[bat]

Sounds like a fun game, let us know how it progresses.

[elf23]

Here's my write-up of the session from more of a story point of view...

As described previously, the party discovered a shaft leading underground from a huge oak tree with a split in it. They climbed down, some daring to use the tree roots as a ladder, and Bamberry the necromancer taking the more secure option of using a rope to descend. At the bottom of the 20' shaft was a sandy tunnel winding into the darkness. The tunnel's walls were riddled with tree roots and moss, and as they lit a torch and passed by, Princess noticed that the moss was crawling with insects and worms. She pointed this out, and Bamberry immediately uttered a few arcane words and summoned a centipede to do his bidding. They soon came to a small round chamber where glowing moss covered the tree roots. As they stood there trying to work out which of the continuing tunnels to take, the mossy roots began to move around. Bamberry sent his servile centipede to investigate, and it was crushed in the forming jaws of a tree root face. Two faces formed out of the roots, and offered the PCs information if they would give them gold in return. Having nary a copper bewteen them, the PCs had to decline the offer, and continued on their way, heading south into a large cavern.

Somewhat daunted by the vastness of the cavern, they turned off into a passage they discovered. As the group filed into the passageway, the last members (Min and Slippy) were jumped by a black shape dropping opportunistically on them from above - a giant crab spider. Both Min and Slippy were very badly hurt by the spider's attack, and used up two of their precious healing potions. The beast was slain by the sword of Rivain, who was then dubbed "the spider slayer". After fighting the spider they re-entered the passage, and found a strange archway carved with skulls through which they'd have to pass, and, rather ominously, a warrior's skeleton lying halfway through the arch. Obviously wary, they began to investigate. After some ineffective probing, Slippy was ordered by his master to walk through the arch, and only narrowly avoided getting sliced in half by a scything blade trap. A couple of the party then jumped through the archway, avoiding treading on the assumed pressure plate, until Ismelda had the clever idea of jamming a bone into the slot where the blade had come from, preventing it from re-emerging.

They next found themselves in a long hall with six kingly statues, and a choice of six doors to follow. Choosing to investigate a door which had an arrow chalked on the floor next to it, they discovered a corridor with walls covered in a strange writhing thorny black ivy. The corpse of a dead adventurer laying on the ground yielded a small amount of coins and a note reading "could the river ghouls be tricked out of their treasure?". Unsure of whether to continue, as the ivy looked somewhat threatening, the party dallied for a while in the passage, allowing a lurking troglodyte to sneak up on them from behind. Only Princess' keen elven ears gave the game away and alerted them to the creature's presence. They spoke to the troglodyte, attempting to get some information out of it. It in the meantime had eyes on the smaller members of the party -- it evidently had a taste for flesh, and in the end could hold back its hunger no longer and lunged forward and grabbed Min the dwarf, who had just offered it some gold coins in exchange for help. The dwarf fought back with his pickaxe as the troglodyte rushed madly towards a nearby underground river. The party raced after, wounding the monster with missile attacks, but were too late to prevent it diving desperately into the river with the armour clad dwarf. Min was seen no more.

They soon found the troglodyte's lair, and two more of the creatures hiding in a secret room full of fish skeletons and junk. Combat ensued, with Princess being savaged by one of the creatures, before they were dispatched by the joint efforts of the group. They cremated the elf's body then and there, and Ismelda discovered a chest of coins amongst the troglodyte's junk, which she cleverly opened with her crowbar, thus avoiding the poisoned needle which sprung from the mechanism.

The party then discussed their next steps, torn between further exploration and retreating with their significant haul of treasure. They agreed to just investigate one more room and a strange red rug which they'd passed earlier, and then to leave. Complications followed. The rash Slippy stepped onto the rug and vanished into thin air. Rivain followed him, also vanishing, while the more cautious Bamberry and Ismelda avoided the rug, which Bamberry identified as having some kind of dimensional magic (presumably a teleporter), and looked into the room they'd agreed to check out. The room contained an odd mystery -- a collection of glass jars containing the corpses of tiny inch-long people, a scroll which Bamberry identified as containing the magic-user spell reduce, and a page from a book written in the fey tongue, which neither could read. Seeing no sign of the others returning, and being chaotic in alignment, the necromancer and his servant returned to the entrance and left the dungeon. They did however have the decency to wait in the forest in case their companions managed to find their way out.

Slippy and Ravain, in the meantime, teleported into the deep darkness of a huge cavern, and both, fortunately, blessed with infravision, had no idea where they were. They explored the cavern, finding a sequence of huge pillars, and then a series of carved rooms. Entering a corridor, Slippy smelled food wafting from somewhere, and his nose led him south. He knocked on a door and was greeted by a small woody gnome-like creature wearing a pointy red hat. The creature turned out to be rather friendly, and even invited the halfling to join him and his family for tea, but he declined, not 100% sure if he trusted the creature. Nonetheless, the gnome gave him good directions to the way out, which they promptly followed.

On the way they came across an odd phantasmal battle, between a warrior and a troll, which the heroic Rivain couldn't help but get involved in. He defeated the troll, with the help of the spectral warrior, who looked flabbergasted at his eternal battle finally being brought to an end. The warrior gifted them with a clue as he parted "a great treasure lies hidden over the water".

After that, Slippy and Rivain traced their way back to the surface, and found their companions lounging in the sunshine of the glade and eating a spot of lunch. The party returned to town, laden with coins, and with some interesting clues to investigate on their return to the dungeon. (The page found with the tiny people was identified by Rivain as being a small excerpt from a story about someone's journey to a land of such micro-creatures.)

(By the way, I forgot to mention before what a brilliant idea the inclusion of an area for a "character sketch" is on the character sheet! We got some works of sheer genius -- Slippy the halfling tipping his bowler hat, and Ismelda the dwarf with a saucepan on her head!)

[hartwell]

Your comment regarding PC descriptions of their combat is right on! In this way LL provides a more enriching experience than more complicated systems.