Adventures in a Doomed World: Session 4

The Tunnels of Mothric, updated map

I'm playing Basic Fantasy RPG with a few supplements to turn it into a solo fantasy hexcrawl in the world of Eilobar, a doomed land entering its end times. I'm using the Level 0 Character Tumbler, Hexcrawl Aventures and also 47 Critical Hit Tables to Spice Up Your Game. Starting with level 0 characters I'm attempting to keep them alive long enough to level up from -100 to 1 XP and become actual heroes.

Introduction

Now that we have our party of level 1 heroes, let's take a look at them and flesh out their characters a bit more by using the excellent NPC generator tables from Maze Rats (which is so cheap you should buy it just for the tables).

Urim, male elf cleric and party leader

Age: 84 (young for an elf in Eilobar)

Background: Monastic initiate

Appearance: Chiselled but with some missing teeth

Personality: Jolly

Dinas, male halfling fighter

Age: 30

Background: Ragpicker

Appearance: Brawny with braided hair

Personality: A know-it-all

Gerry, human male fighter

Age: 81

Background: Alchemist

Appearance: Extremely old, towering height with a scarred face from alchemical explosions

Personality: Wisecracking

Fiddling with the difficulty again, I changed monster hit dice from D4s to D6s. in the BFRPG rules they are D8s.

The Adventure

Dinas and Gerry were wounded in the last fight so they all went outside to camp. On their second day of resting, a pack of four wild boars wandered past the entrance to the tunnels (reaction: unfavourable). The party watched them pass and carried on resting.

The next day they went back to the tunnels to explore the next area, beyond the armoury. There were two other doors that led to different areas. They would be explored later.

The door in the armoury opened into a large hall filled with random trash, strewn all over the floor making it hard to move through. Sconces were lit on the walls. A tall pillar stood in the centre and there were some chairs, mostly broken.

They went through a door to the west which led to a corridor. Opening the southern door they found a kennel for dogs. This was also filled with trash, lit by sconces. Nine dogs were in kennels here.

How many are out of their kennels and on the loose? (1D10)

9. All of them!

Reaction: Unfavourable.

The heroes were not immediately attacked so they quickly closed the door behind them. Once they had cleared the dungeon of monsters the dogs would starve anyway.

The room opposite was a huge garbage pit. Nothing of interest there. Crossing the hall again they went east into a corridor.

They opened a door into a common room, filled with trash like the others, with two large pillars in the centre. There was also a secret compartment in the wall.

Does anyone notice it? Urim (elf) on 1-2 on a D6, everyone else 1.

Everyone noticed it except Gerry. It contained 300 silver pieces (30 GP).

Next door was another common room. Lit by sconces, with a large pillar and a treasure chest guarded by a pair of goblins. (The encounter table said stirges again but seriously, fuck those guys).

The heroes got initiative and attacked but the goblins dodged all their strikes. One attacked Gerry but fumbled and fell over. The other missed. Gerry stabbed the fallen one with his trident, killing it. The remaining goblin screamed, dropping his weapon. Hily immediately stabbed it to death. They looted 15 SP and their shortswords plus 6 GP from the treasure chest.

The room next door was a food store containing nothing of interest.

Next they went through the north door in the main hall, finding a library with a pack of sixteen wolves! As they're animals let's roll for a reaction:

Unfavourable.

The heroes went to the food store and took some salted meat, throwing it into the corner of the library where the wolves greedily fought over it. They opened the north door, finding stairs down. They decided to explore the western area of this floor first. Shutting the wolves in the library they headed over there.

They all received another 200 XP for exploring this area.

The western part of the dungeon opened into a long corridor with a T-junction. Opening the first door they found a common room. They all entered, looked around and then Dinas pointed at the ceiling and screamed. Two giant crab spiders, camoflaged in the same colour of the ceiling jumped down. Luckily they had lost the element of surprise against the heroes, but they attacked quickly.

One bit Hily who crumpled to the floor, poisoned dead. Urim, Dinas and Gerry all ganged up on the other spider, but they all missed their attacks. It fought back, biting and killing Dinas. The other spider rushed over and bit Gerry, killing him too. Urim fought back, bashing a spider's face with his quarterstaff, but was immediately killed. All was once again lost.

My Thoughts

Well, there goes another party in a TPK. It's becoming clear that these OSR games really don't care what level your characters are. Dungeon delving is inherently dangerous, so they should expect to be killed if they choose such a high risk career.

I've been reading Scarlet Heroes by Kevin Crawford and it's great. A dungeon/wilderness/city sandbox RPG with built in rules for solo play, where your characters stand a bit more of a chance than in BFRPG. It's even been designed so it can be used as an overlay for any OSR adventure, so I could potentially use the Scarlet Heroes rules for combat and levelling up but keep the hexcrawling and dungeon generation of the BFRPG supplements. I'd even be able to convert the monsters themselves to Scarlet Heroes too.

I'd just have to find a way to start it off as a funnel adventure, since Scarlet Heroes PCs are much trickier to kill than BFRPG's. Thanks to Brody in the comments for recommending it!