Below is the first session writeup for our Stonehell Labyrinth Lord campaign…written by Rachel. I’ve got this tagged as Session #1a since it was our first “Stonehell” session so to speak but our second with these characters (or most of them at least).
We picked up with Bambi, Charity, and Pedro having “fled” the goblin caves leaving the looted bodies of their companions behind.
My comments in brackets and italics as usual.
Warning: There are potential spoilers for Stonehell below.
After our Back to Basics session, I decided that we’ll keep playing some Basic D&D…albeit the Labyrinth Lord version…for a bit before getting back to Savage Worlds and Hellfrost. I picked up Stonehell Dungeon by Michael Curtis and that is what I’ll be running instead of Keep on the Borderlands…actually something of a combination of the two. For a couple of good reviews of Stonehell, check out the review at Grognardia and A Paladin in Citadel. I don’t recall any spoilers in either review but if you’re worried about such, don’t read ’em.
Potential Spoilers for Stonehell Dungeon below the break!
So we’ve had some changes to our player lineup, a short break due to my travels, ended our last Hellfrost session on a bit of a sour note, and had a visiting player from out-of-town joining us. I didn’t, given this situation, want to run the normal Hellfrost campaign but we certainly wanted to do some gaming since Pat, our visitor, doesn’t really get to game much (if at all) in those lovely North Carolina mountains that he now calls home. So…what to do?
[This entry is from Kathryn. RJ and Todd missed this session. Drew came over again and played Skuli while Jamie played Taranis.
My GM comments in brackets and italics as usual.
Spoiler Alert: There is a small amount of carryover from the Hellfrost Encounters Book 1…encounter #7 to be specific…from last session but most of this session was all homemade. It was, however, inspired by an old AD&D (2nd Edition) module called Temple, Tower & Tomb…mostly the map but even that was significantly altered.]
[This entry is from Thomas and is from the Journal of Karaphos…which means all the names are spelled wrong. I’ve added the correct names.
RJ and Jamie missed this session. Drew came over again and played Cuðbert.
My GM comments in brackets and italics as usual.
Spoiler Alert: Some portions of this session borrow from the adventure, Stolen Land, by Paizo. I’ve borrowed some locations, etc. and changed to protect the innocent. One encounter is also from the Hellfrost Encounters Book 1…encounter #8 to be specific.]
[This entry is from Jamie. Thomas missed this session. Drew came over again and played Karaphos (and did the old coot justice too)…pretty soon he’s going to have played everyone’s character at least once!
My GM comments in brackets and italics as usual.
Spoiler Alert: Some portions of this session borrow from the adventure, Stolen Land, by Paizo. I’ve borrowed some locations, etc. and changed to protect the innocent. One encounter is also borrowed from the Hellfrost Encounters Book 1…encounter #10 to be specific…I say borrowed because I hadn’t read the encounter for a couple of weeks and wasn’t planning on using it. However, as you’ll see, it was “needed” so I just went with the general feel/flow of the encounter rather than the specifics.]
[This entry is from Robert. Both Jamie and RJ missed this session. Todd took on Cuðbert while Kathryn and Cliff’s son, Drew, came over to play Skuli. Robert was offered Cuðbert to play since his new character would not be coming into play right away and I did not know when he would come into play but he declined.
My GM comments in brackets and italics as usual.
Spoiler Alert: This session was largely taken up with an encounter from the Hellfrost Encounters Book 1…encounter #8 to be specific.]
[This entry is from Todd. Both Rachel and Kathryn missed this session. Jamie took on Wulfwynn while Kathryn and Cliff’s son, Drew, came over to play Nissa.
My GM comments in brackets and italics as usual.
Spoiler Alert: Some portions of this session borrow from the adventure, Hollow’s Last Hope, by Paizo. There are also some potential spoilers for two of the encounters from the Hellfrost Encounters Book 1…encounters #4 and #18 to be specific.]
[This entry is from Thomas and is a journal entry by Karaphos. Karaphos is a rather forgetful old man who makes up names for those that he can’t remember (or bothered to learn in the first place). Those pretty familiar with the campaign won’t have trouble figuring out who is who but for everyone else, I’ll put in the correct names in italics and brackets along with all my normal GM comments.
Spoiler Alert: Some portions of this session borrow from the adventure, Stolen Land, by Paizo. I’ve borrowed some locations, etc. and changed to protect the innocent.]
A couple of quick notes…a bit on a minor deity in our campaign and homemade Rune Bennies.
One of the characters in the game, Cuðbert (played by Jamie), is a priest of a minor god (spirit?). In the Hellfrost Player’s Guide, rules and guidelines for creating minor gods are provided and the various Region Guides provide lots of wonderful examples of minor gods in the setting. These minor gods are great for GMs They add more variety and allow the GM to “personalize” stuff in the game without worrying about the canon of the established (i.e., written about) major deities. They are also great for players that want to come up with a character concept that doesn’t quite fit with any of the major deities.
Cuðbert is exactly one such character. Jamie had a basic character concept and he and I bounced ideas back and forth to “actualize” his concept in the game. At first, we worked on coming up with a new Arcane Background but, eventually, we settled on using the rules for minor deities…something, in retrospect, we should have just done in the first place. Below is the stat block for Gaupa…we haven’t written up any fluff yet.