Ulflandia Play Report 1-3

This being a (long overdue) play report in our Ulflandia campaign, where the players basically tackle a single dungeon. Initially, there were no pretensions of evolving into a campaign, just to cleanse the palate after playing Willowby Hall. Things then snowballed, and we are now in the double-digit realm of sessions.

The avid reader will notice that this is Goblin Gully, an OSR classic. Used this Toadstool Gully variant instead of the original by Dyson Logos. Of course it ended up being easy to shoe-horn into Ulflandia, since the author of Toadstool was planning to use it in Necrotic Gnome's Dolmenwood anyways, and there are a lot of synergies between Ulflandia and Dolmenwood.

Goblin Gully is placed in hex #4626, in the Coblyns region.

Total play time for the 3 sessions: ~7.5 hours

The Cast

Higgley Halfling 1 (Copernico): cannibalistic gourmand; probably killed a wizard? (wears a wizard's hat and has wizard liver paté); collects ears.
Neem Thief 1 (iagson): suave thief; from the biggest distant city you never heard of; favors the crossbow.
Retainers:
- Calico Dwarf 1 (iagson), stout and with a broken broadsword
- Rana (Copernico), Magic-User 1, an alchemist's apprentice.

Highlights

• Two distracted Goblin sentries on top of the leafless tree, picking their noses and bickering. They spot the group and fire an arrow to Neem which brings him to the ground (0HP), luckily the suave Thief gets to tell the tale (made the save vs. death). This, the first roll of the game! Setting the tone...
  
• Once the two sentries are bested by the group, Higgley questions a captive for details, stealing its bag of "magical shrooms". Giving into his meat devouring habits, the Halfling has to taste the goblin's calf! On the party goes, to the Gully
• Drop halfling down to the bridge with rope. Down there, patroll of goblins approach and spot him! Rana the retainer flings herself down the rope too, doesn't catch the rail, and perishes at the bottom of the pit.
• A series of confrontrations on the fragile bridge ensue, where the party comes out with the upper hand. Then, they decide to descend to the bottom, check that odd frog statue and loot Rana's body. In the process they discover and negotiate with a talking toad, Xaar, to drive off the goblins in exchange of future riches.
• Group gets mushrooms from Xaar the talking toad, that allows them to create a (temporary) clone of themselves. Intellect and instincts of a dog, dissolves at nighttime. This proved invaluable to the group, and served as cannon fodder. The group's number is doubled!
  
• Next room with glue and rope, and a trapdoor going down (Pretty glaring mistake on my end here. There is no trapdoor in the map, just a descending staircase. Oh well...). Fleeing goblins manage to gain a safe position by climbing up the rope (and pulling it up!). At this point the group goes back and forth, unclear on what the next move will be. Players moan and bicker and grovel.
  
• Negotiation with the Goblin Prince. Goblins taken too many losses, and are willing to negotiate. "Want to go downstairs? Sure sure. Great treasure behind big door".
  

the goblin prince. just a negotiating voice for most of the game!

• With a temporary and fickle truce in place, and a goblin mook to guide and oversee them, they descend to the goblins' barracks. This was a temple at some point, there's an altar, a big stone door, and carved reliefs and runes on the walls. Here I stole the hammer trap from Tomb of the Serpent Kings wholesale, and the group solved it by moving the altar!
  
• All Hell breaks loose! Black Pudding released! The "clones" take the worst of it, the group scadoodles out of here fast like the wind, shortly followed by the Goblin Prince & co. Proceeds to add a Black Pudding to the overland encounter table...
  

capture of our Roll20 gaming board

Referee Commentary

• Should have made the bridge combat more realistic, and give the structure a decent chance to break under that duress (with the consequent fall!).
• My players like to overthink and plan zany endeavours. A lot! Sometimes have to push them to reach a decision.
  
• The random mushroom bag obtained from the goblin sentries, with random effects, was an absolute kick. And Higgley would benefit from it for in-game weeks (sessions) to come...
• As a mea culpa, I realize more and more that a shortcoming of my refereeing is not being impactful enough. "Bad" or risky player decisions should get the impartial outcome they deserve. Instead, I tend to get muddled in unneccesary and rocambolesque saving throws, x-in-6 rolls, etc.
• I also failed to make the goblins whimsy and trickstery, instead resorting to the dull cannon fodder mooks stereotype.
  

Ulflandia Campaign: B/X House Rules

1. Introduction and Overview

2. Ulflandia B/X House Rules (this post)
3. Influences, Yoinking and Appendix N

4. Solo Romping

5. Weather, Time, Rumors and Other Minutiae

...

talking about my houserules people end up like this... wonder why

GENERAL & COMBAT

• Criticals: no effect on a 20 rolled (this was the players' choice). 🕇🕇
• AAC: Ascending Armor Class, that's how we roll.
• Maneuvers: attacker gives effect of the maneuver, then do a normal attack roll. The defender then chooses either to accept the maneuver, or accept the damage (before damage is rolled). From here.
  
• Morale: of course we embrace this "optional" rule.
• At 0HP, Save vs Death. On a fail, character is dead, otherwise they are unconscious and need to be stabilized immediately. (Only for PCs and Retainers).
  

CHARACTERS & CLASSES

• New characters get one random impedimenta and one minor magical item at start.
  
• No prime requisite bonus/malus to XP
  
• No Elf PCs 🕇
  
• Halfling: their hiding in the wilderness undergrowth or woods ability of 90% assumes a static/stopped case.

EXPERIENCE

• Overcoming Monsters does not grant any XP. 🕇🕇

EQUIPMENT & ENCUMBRANCE

• Extending the meager B/X equipment list to Equipment Emporium from Basic Fantasy RPG, with referee discretion.
  
• We use Basic Encumbrance.

 

🕇 Rationale: Ulflandia is peppered with different Elf variations and their factions. It would be a disservice to player discovery to just allow them as an option to play. Sword-mage but pointy-eared does not cut it this time around. This can change as the campaign progresses and players grow into Ulflandia.
🕇🕇 These were, in fact, the choice of the players.

The above are fairly minimal. This is intended, as we prefer to change the game as the campaign play progresses. It goes without saying that this post will see edits in the future. Fight On!

Ulflandia Campaign: Introduction and Overview

Index

1. Introduction and Overview (this post)

2. Ulflandia B/X House Rules
3. Influences, Yoinking and Appendix N

4. Solo Romping

5. Weather, Time, Rumors and Other Minutiae

...

What is this?

A summary on how I've been using the NOD magazines by John Stater. Specifically issues #26 and #27, and the land of Ulflandia therein. Dense and numerous, they are! Any of these NOD mags fill about 60% of what I want to have at the table, but then I need to fill in the gaps and tighten things up a bit to run the game. I added some content and modules to spice things up and sustain the campaign, details will be in other posts linked below.

We are using Old School Essentials (Classic! not Advanced) with pre-generated characters, so B/X rules*. House rules to follow in a future post. Players are level 2 right now. This group, my regulars of the Calaveras, has recently been playing Knave, Macchiato Monsters, LotFP. But we settled on "better layout terse B/X" for this romp, lest I finally nauseate them with all this system hoppery.

TL;DR: NOD magazines are a trove of good content. Any of the hexcrawls will give you years of gaming if you are willing to put the extra effort and fill the gaps.

With that said, I have no idea going in if using Ulflandia as a whole is going to work, or not. I can already say it would be an infinitely better product with an additional 5-10 page overview.

This post serves as a "how I got the sausage done". Going down the rabbit hole. Or rather "don't fall on the same traps as I did" when making and running a campaign out of the pre-made expansive hexcrawls of NOD magazine. Given the disparate range of topics, and that this is almost a conscious stream of thoughts, I decided to split it in several posts (will be linked at the top).

Overview

Ulflandia is an island region in the land of Nod (detailed in issues #26 and #27). Former elven and fey stronghold, still contains a significant presence of various fey factions, intermingled with orders of humanoids, orders of knights, pirates, sea monsters, giants, dragons, and more. Ripe for adventure!

 

We get a concise but helpful overview on NOD#26 pg1-6. Good starting point, but too concise, I would have liked to see more of it, as well as other topics covered (weather, rumors, highlighted locations, etc).

 

It clearly draws from classical fairy tale mythology, as well as Arthurian fantasy. Even if I don't own Dolmenwood, as we are all awaiting the release, its similarities with Wormskin zine make the intermingling of both materials a clever idea. Anecdotally, these 2 issues of NOD magazine predate Wormskin by just a few months (released July/October 2015 vs December 2015 of the first Wormskin issue). More on influences and other modules in a later post.

The main island is roughly 25'000 mi2, so the size of Ireland or Georgia, if we assume 6-mile hexes. This is apparently a fine assumption (I consulted with Stater in this matter), even if not explicitly written in the material.

Furthermore, a splitting in different regions is provided (see below), with enough variety to accommodate for lots of campaign starts. Each region gets a couple paragraphs of general description, a 3d6 random encounter table (with the occasional new monster, but no variety or encounter spicing), and a few major settlements listed (and their hex number).

I decided to start my group right between Coblyns and Greenwood at [4626], dropping a starter dungeon there.

Ulflandia regions

Luckily we get a "spheres of influence" overview, with the different factions that shape the land:

• 3 religious orders (Black, Grey and White Friars), with a polytheistic pantheon**
  
• 2 knightly orders (Knights of the Cauldron and Order of the Red Crosse)
  
• 3 magical societies (Blue, Yellow, and Red Mages)
  
• an overview of the ruler, Queen Gloriana of Ulflandia

It seems like enough, but is it? I would have liked to see a more thorough breakdown, with smaller factions thrown in, so that low-level PCs can get involved.

There are also numerous new monsters (in the overview and hexes), and spells (mainly in the hexes themselves). Many of the hexes are also an open invitation to flesh them out. Most of the city-states and towns need more detail and personalities, presented they are but a sketch. Another example is [6608], a wizard's tower, which even if with enough details, I would have to map and significantly flesh out in order to run in the game. This in my view is acceptable, otherwise this would be a brick 400 pager, at the very least.

We also get a map of the different kingdoms.

Ulflandia kingdoms

If we combine the relevant sections ins issues #26 and #27, we arrive at 112 pages of content, and 214 and 184, so 398, keyed hexes. This sounds like a lot, and it is! BUT keep in mind that the hex map is 81 x 50 hexes, so 4050 total, meaning that less than 10% of hexes are keyed (!).

I will caveat that by stating that the majority of the map is water from the Tepid Sea and Mother Ocean, so overland the ratio is definitely higher (still in the low double digit percents, for sure). And the numerous online advice is clear in holding back in adding more material or hex locations. Sparse is perfectly fine! We are interested in adventuring locales, not every little minutiae in between, and best not to overwhelm our players.

Why Ulflandia?

• Ulflandia is an island. It is more constrained than other hexcrawls offerings, but still has a massive size. Surrounding waters promise a romp into the underused sea-faring rules.
  
• Classic Medieval terms. Knights, fey, dragons, mythical beings. It has a lot of what we could call the vanilla elements of fantasy, and is fairly grounded. It is easier to gonzo up a setting than to hold it and tame it back, in my experience.
• Easy to expand. I will have to refrain in this regard, but there are enough empty hexes and blanks to fill to make it our own through play. More importantly, many keyed hexes are an invitation to flesh them out. I'm also looking forward to domain play, hoping we reach that.

One very valid question to throw at this point is why bother with Ulflandia? Isn't it easier to roll your own hexcrawl? (and as a consequence of being both producer and consumer, knowing it inside out). Get to play Patchland would be a great exercise to finally move on with the Gygax75 challenge. Don't get me wrong, NOD is great material, there's a lot to riff of and pilfer for your own games. But here is my reasoning:

1. Using a published setting I have a safety net, in case my creative muscles fail me, or time is scarce. Something happening a lot these days!
2. The material ought to be more cohesive and tied up in a particular flavor of fantasy (medieval, Arthurian). My tendencies err to classic D&D-isms, and gonzo sword and sorcery instead.
   
3. As an exercise, I want to see how my experiment goes when running one of these products as the back-bone of a campaign. Is it possible? Worth the effort? What would I do differently? And I couldn't find any example online of NOD being used this way (if you have a blog post, video, podcast talking about it, please comment below!)

Conclusion

I think that is all for now. Other posts in this series will come as inspiration strikes, or gaps are filled as play in the campaign demands. Hopefully someone gets some else other than me get use out of these. If nothing else, it will be valuable to document things for future reflection.

Because session-to-session play reports are something I don't have time for these days, I will only write a bare bones recap with highlights every five to ten sessions played.

...

* Initial NOD issues are written for Swords & Wizardry, but these ones are written for Blood & Treasure (I think?). Still, compact and fairly trivial to convert, they have the three saves from 3rd edition.
** Even if this is embedded in the tradition of D&D (see the OD&D Cleric), tonally it is a sore point in such a heavily Christianity-inspired setting, with a polytheistic pantheon. In this I echo the general sentiment of deltasdnd, and have mixed them with a class option in-lieu of a Zealot/Acolyte class with skill based abilities (Turn Undead, Healing, Remove Disease, etc.). I haven't done any such drastic changes as to wipe the pantheon and several factions in one swift move, I want to stay closer to the source if possible.