AD&D Session 1 - AD&Chainmail

The session began with 2 hours of character creation. Embarrassing, but it was our first time. Everyone here had only played 5e D&D, except for me who had also tried out some solo dungeon crawling. The party ended up being a paladin (!), magic-user, and a thief. Encumbrance was by far the trickiest thing to wrap our heads around. Almost everything we saw was backwards to what we were used to, which will be a preview of things to come.

The session started with the magic-user on 5 hit points and the paladin & thief on 3 hit points. Ideal!

I'll be honest I was a little eager to get things rolling so after the party was generated, I plopped them in the dungeon, ready to get going. 

Real picture of me

 

Our not-so-main characters entered the dungeon with 3 pikeman and 3 short bowman, managing to blindly sniff their way straight to the main attraction, a secret door at a dead end, opening into a 6000 sq ft U-shaped dilapidated court room, inhabited by some humanoids.

Advancing relatively quietly towards the centre, the group was alerted to a handful of humanoids wielding axes and spears, squealing and charging them. A couple of arrow shots later left 3 monsters standing, checking morale and succeeding, continuing their charge. And simultaneously alerting the camp behind the monsters...

Because their movement was equal to their pursuers, the party reached the door, comfortably set up their pikemen, and nervously waited for the charge. Thanks to my reading of Gygax's Unearthed Arcana, Appendix T: Pole Arms, I masterfully deduced that a pike was longer than a spear without even consulting the book. A true savant.

I forgot to mention that in this edition, orcs were pig-headed, so me mentioning their squealing was not expected.

3 fresh shish kebabs later and the drove of orcs behind the initial charge caught up to our group in the door. Succeeding their morale check, they too politely spring boarded onto the sharpened pikes. Another 5 dead orcs later and the party was sitting pretty, not at all expecting the 2 ogres and 20 orcs which were the 3rd wave. Wisely, they withdrew and closed the secret door. It turned out it was a 1-way entrance and the orcs didn't even know of this door! Well now they did...

Our party went to Blackbird and inquired on their ability to hire mercenaries for an army. I was stunned that we would play out a Chainmail battle in the FIRST SESSION! In order to snatch this opportunity, I told the party they could roll 7x 1d100 (DMG p30) to see the available mercenaries and it would take 1d6 + 1 = 7 days to find them all.

A few lucky results gave something like 80 potential mercs, of which they could afford 20 heavy foot (pikemen) and 10 shortbowmen, the latter of which had 1 serjeant. The paladin could command the 20 footmen, being a level 1 fighter. Because the original 6 mercenaries had time to spread rumours of a small army of monsters, a condition of employment was the promise of 25% of all treasure found in the chamber (remember this wording).

All too fast, they return to the dungeon. They announce their actions: Open the secret door to the megachamber, quickly rush out the footmen and then the archers. The paladin would be on the left half of 10 footmen, the thief on the right half of 10 footmen, and the magic-user between the infantry and archers. Sound idea, lets see how it works.

Well as we found out, how it works is that the orcs also get 7 days to prepare. Being very linear in thought, they would expect enemies to come from the same door they left. Extremely correct. As such, a huge boulder was placed above and after the secret door, ready to be released on any intruders. Which is what happened, resulting in ~7 pancaked pikemen, all from the right half.

No time to waste! The paladin shouted orders to continue and thankfully with his +30% from charisma, managed to get the army into position. The orcs were arranged similarly, two stands of 10 orcs each, with an ogre on each wing. Roll for initiative!

Disclaimer: I was relying on my memory for the Chainmail rules. The only thing I really forgot was the morale rules, which I improvised by using the AD&D morale rules. Oh well.

So this was it. A real Chainmail battle, fought on session 1, on a table, with figures, all completely randomly generated! The humans won initiative, finalised preparations and mostly just prepared for a charge. Which was wise, as the orcs' blood was up and although many died from those pikes, pig-instinct demands revenge. Arrows rained in from the shortbowmen as the orcs charged. What were these animals thinking?

The dice explained that the orcs somehow squeezed through most pikes, annihilating the rest of the human's right flank, leaving the thief alone. To be fair to the thief, there wasn't much backstabbing to be done in this situation. Because this was such a small scale, I allowed some light casualties from a charge into 15' pikes, around ~2 in this turn. The human's left flank matched the orcish right, so I ruled ~3 casualties on each side.

I decided to 'zoom in' on PCs, who would be singled out by the ogres. Now, the ogre on the left swung and missed at the thief and the ogre on the right copied his buddy vs the paladin.

A couple more turns resulted in the human's entire footmen unit being wiped out, leaving around 7 or so orcs on the right. Smart positioning launched arrows into the left orcs' side while the infantry was engaged, so only the orcs' right wing remained. The left ogre also fell under the arrows, having only 13HP. The orc's right flank finally succumbed to arrows, leaving the right ogre (24 HP) vs 3PCs and 10 shortbowmen who couldnt shoot into melee. 

A couple more rounds left the thief and magic-user on -1 and 0, both from the same hit, which I interpreted as bleeding out. The paladin cinematically launched his goedendag at the ogre, killing it.

All orc women and children in the camp were slaughtered (no XP or treasure from them)

Treasure in the chamber amounted to:

- 1000 cp

- 1000 sp

- 2750 ep

- 390 gp

For a total of 1820gp worth of treasure. XP for the 30 orcs + 2 ogres was 600 or so.

After some more exploring, the party quickly found the idol room, a 20 metre tall statue of Ghetrug One-Eye. A quick desecreation and some more exploration later (STILL no random encounters) landed them in the treasure room of the orcs:

- 5238 ep

- 48000 cp

- 3000 sp

- 100 gp

- 1x gold tiara with gems worth 5000gp

- 1x Potion of Fire Resistance (immediately & foolishly fully imbibed, so no gp and no XP for it)

- 1x Potion of Speed (not identified)

Total value: 3104gp + 5000gp tiara + potion

At this point the 10 archers were still with the party. The serjeant shrewdly set aside 25% for his men, ignoring the fact that this wasn't in the chamber and swiping much gold from the party #EliteLevelGoblining. I still counted all the found gold as XP, but they only pocketed 75% of it. Of the above loot piles, the party made off with something like 2500gp + the tiara + the potion.

All of this was sold in Blackbird, causing immediate notoriety. XP was 3053 each, the paladin got +10% because of his 17 strength. Just barely, everyone could level once, and the thief had enough XP from this adventure to reach level 3! A successful level up means the players named their characters. A stellar session. Took around 6 hours total.

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9/04/2022: Day 1 - Initial foray into the dungeon. Found 30 orcs + 2 ogres. Killed 10 orcs. Escaped.

Day 8 - Returned to dungeon with 30 mercenaries. 20 of which were killed in along with 20 orcs and 2 ogres. A lot of treasure.

Day 15 - Paladin and magic-user will finish training (level 2)

Day 22 - Thief finishes training (level 3)

Uther the Paladin (Gallant 1 --> Keeper 2). HP: 16

Zamzibal the Thief (Rogue 1 --> Footpad 2 --> Cutpurse 3) HP: 17

Fabio the Magic-user (Prestidigitator 1 --> Evoker 2) HP: 11

Graveyard:

20 heavy foot (pikemen)