Barrowmaze session one
Intro and prep
This was our first foray into Barrowmaze, a module I'd adopted one the fly once when I needed a short, five-room dungeon to fill the back hour of a session, but which I didn't know in any intimate way beyond using a barrow mound on the fly that time, probably 9-10 sessions ago.
I read about 100 rooms and two dozen mounds, mostly lower level stuff. The module is rated for roughly 1 to 5s in Labyrinth Lord & other B/X derivatives, and the party spans 1-4 right now, so the encounters this session were below their level, broadly. (This was the right move to prep, though, since they did eventually take the main beginner's entrance to the maze itself, through the plundered mound with the block and tackle in mound 12.)
Mapping
All the same, I put it on the map, coincidentally near a larger town the party sought to visit. During the Wish segment of our feedback round, and again in discord chat, I heard some excitement to try out Barrowmaze, so I spent the week reading the book more thoroughly and prepping to run it.
I waffled on whether to use Helix as-written, or strip it out and relocate its NPCs to Breakwater Landing, the coastal harbour town the gang seemed to enjoy. I went so far as to make several hex map changes with Hex Kit, trying to preserve as much of the default Barrowmaze setting in my 1 day per hex map scheme, before finally deciding: Helix is gone, Breakwater is the main town (though both Pithole and Bogtown are nearer by a day), so the maze is a little more dangerous as it is remote.
I also made a roughly okay hexmap of the barrowmounds themselves, though I made the mistake of adding markers for the maze entrances, which meant I couldn't show the players. I've since revised this and the map's now player-facing. Roughly 100 ft per hex, not a great map but serviceable. They took a couple notes on the map itself — the parts I revealed w/ fog of war as they explored.
NPCs
I rolled a group of patrons from the Brazen Strumpet thanks to this houserule I found via the tenfootpole forums. I used all the Helix NPCs as-written, and ran a tavern encounter that was serviceable if a bit stretched. They all just live in Breakwater now, including the Ironguard family. Ironguard Motte, which is on the map, might be a fallen fortress or something, not sure yet.
Tech for running the game
Windows has a split screen function, so I used a PDF of the room descriptions in one half, and for the other, mainly Adobe Illustrator for the map PDF, interchanged with the same Barrowmaze PDF open in a separate PDF reader, tuned right to the monsters section. Barrowmaze isn't bookmarked ( >=( ) so this helped avoid page skipping for the unique monsters. I also had OSE open in another PDF tab for non-Barrowmaze creature reference.
In Illustrator I had a token with a light range set up so I could monitor how far the party could see, roughly. Was handy to track their position. I've since expanded the light radius to be a bit more generous and, probably, fair.
The encounter tables, random pits, and graffiti I pre-programmed into roll20 so I could roll them on the fly, and I'm glad I did, as they saw play. Tables of dungeon dressing and random sarcophagi I copy/pasted into notepad++ so I could reference them on the fly, again without losing my place in the PDF, but this was overkill and not needed in session one.
Hex Kit is my mapping program of choice, esp now that I've seen you can add extra rows and colums as you work (I'm dumb). Still, its save features are rough.
How it felt to run
The PCs were overleveled and geared for the start of the maze, but I prefer to try things as-written as much as possible — my removal of Helix notwithstanding — so I let them have the entrance for free, per the module, and explore other mounds, with encounter checks, noise, and so on. It was okay. They didn't get many encounters, maybe only 6 skeletons, who rolled so high on their reactions so as to stroll on by. That was a fun encounter, don't get me wrong, and was a hit for a player in feedback, but the party definitely wasn't challenged, per se.
On the other hand, the two mongrelmen encounters were pretty tense, despite their mechanical outmatchedness. The combination of stealthy, shy humanoids who perfectly mimic weird sounds alongside neutral / uncertain reaction rolls meant a few good moments where the party got weirded out by the mongrelmen's eerie mimicry and fled, spiking the door shut behind them.
Describing the maze itself was tough at first. I'm not used to close, 10x10' mapping, describing that right environment to players, and tracking their position, sight lines, etc. The Illustrator setup helped for sure. Got a bit into the groove closer to the end — two of the party members enjoy mapping the dungeon — but communicating about rooms was tricky, especially when they wanted to withdraw to a particular spot, which they knew from description, and which I knew from a numerical value on a map and my own vague memory of what had just transpired as I juggle many balls.
We also had a tough moment where they were listening at door B, which is a sub door of a room, but I couldn't for the life of me tell which. I struggled with the map and PDF until I finally nailed it down with some certainty. It was tough to read the map in that instance, but most of the time finding the party's position on the map and in the text was well done. And the encounter itself was one of the fun mongrelmen ones, so it obviously wasn't all bad.
Treasure was light. They're in the early stages of the environment. If they spent more time on mounds they could probably find an entrance that leads a bit deeper. They also found some wretched burial alcoves and came up entirely empty. Normally they have at least something in there; I was surprised to find the empty one, to be honest. I hope they have more luck next time.
Conclusion & next steps
Verdict was positive. Getting the swing of navigating and calling out the maze was tough, but they're gonna try a gridded map next time, and we got better as we played. Some fun encounters, thanks to trusting the writing and reaction rolls. The former, because I'm not assuming any creature, even undead, attack on sight unless the text says so, and the latter, because outright attacks are rare when rolling reactions. So we got some weird, tense stand-offs where we could have had combat, and that was fun.
Next steps will be getting them back into the dungeon at the start of the session, without a lot of hemming and hawing! We had about a quarter hour of RP and prep before hitting the mounds, and maybe the same time on the mounds before hitting the maze. I hope they decide to just jump down the hole and charge in. If they do, I won't restock the maze, other than update progress on the trapped mongrelmen; if they go back to town, I'll definitely restock. It's at that point it's at least four days round-trip, which is plenty of time — and will make the decision to leave the mounds a tough one.
I'll also revise the animal feed rules to make them softer. Donkeys have five slots each with saddle bags, and a cart has 10, which means they're spending a ton of slots on rations for the donkeys. We'll probably bundle a week's worth into a slot or something, which will be far more generous than 1 day/slot.
More reading required as well. There are many rooms I haven't read, and I'd like to refamiliarize myself with local politics and deities. That stuff's good fun for flavour, especially with rival adventurers etc, which I'd like to play up. I hope they get deeper in the maze so we get beyond the Area One stuff. Alas, I'm (something of) a traditionalist so I won't force them.
Also, things are deteriorating in Pithole. The Knotsmen have braved the lip of the pit and started taking people. Badict knows, so he and the Madman will journey to Breakwater to tell the party (and flee the Knotsmen)! Omni's cult is spreading to those who remain, as well, and soon perhaps they'll all be gone below the ground..?
I want to keep threads active that the party has touched on. They're interested, too, in Nergal, so I'm going to try to tie all the Nergal, Orcus, and Set stuff to Entropus. Surely Kolls and Vladdis were worshippers of one of the three — probably Orcus, as that's the last stage of the maze — and I'll get to dole that out a bit.
I'm looking forward to the improved mapping by the players, too, now that they'll be using a grid. I'll try to be more precise with my measurements too.
Finally, I'll keep open the d4 caltrops OSE encounter activities — skeleton here — in case we have multitudinous undead encounters I need to spice up. TBH though with encounter checks every other turn, and a wandering monster on 1 in 6, I don't think we'll have too many checks.
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