Stonehell: A fairly well-known megadungeon that many have already played in or even run.
Recently I joined a crew that went delving there in a B/X-adjacent homebrew system. One fairly important aspect is that the attributes are rolled with 1d6 and they don’t come up with an attribute value, only with the truly important part: the modifier.

How?

A result of 1 gives a -1 modifier, a result of 6 a +1. 2-5 are average and get us no modifier. Simple enough and easier to do than the original: 16,7% chance for either modifier, and no need to look up any tables.

Anyway. The party: the Dwarf Gerion, the Thief Lucky, the Cleric Antoninus, a torchbearer named Hubbub, and two fighters: Smiles and Lencio, both spear-wielders.

No spoilers

This intrepid, and as to this point unnamed, team entered the classic top-level area around the megadungeon and meandered through the region a bit, avoiding any serious confrontations … but picking up a name due to encounter with a fire beetle: “The Beetles” or, more illiterately written: “The Beatles”.

Eventually they accepted the fact that they would not win any prices out here in the overworld, and reached the entrance itself. There they descended into the depth, to the entrance area where groups tend to kind of lose their way and dabble for a few feet ever which way, paralyzed by the range of options. We avoided this trap by simply picking one direction and exploring it without looking back.

We found some magical effects and then noticed that a gigantic lizard was trailing us. We hastened to throw a barriere closed between the monster and us, and managed it very narrowly thanks to a bit of luck with the dice.

It could have gone either way, really.
But as things turned out the lizard remained on one side and we on the other.

However, the true danger was not the lizard – it was our own comrades.

Gas! Gas!

Encountering a weird item that could be turned left or right, our Dwarf swiftly turned it one way, releasing a cloud of deadly gas. Lucky for us, most of us made it out of the room at a run with held breath. One didn’t: Smiles the Fighter became the first casualty of our very careful group when he breathed in those noxious fumes and failed his save. He dropped and lay there. Nooo!

We were still pondering if we should pay the careless dwarf back his reckless folly with a couple of sharp smacks to the face when he displayed more of the same trait. He suddenly grabbed the item again to turn the mechanism in the other direction!

Panic seized the men around him and they ran out at of the room at full tilt to escape before more gas was released.
But no! No trap. Instead, a weird water that felt (on a sip) like it might restore some health and ease pains, maybe even more.

The idea came up to try it on our fallen friend, and so we massaged some of the wyrdwater down Smiles’ unbreathing throat.

And Hooray! It saved him.

Smiles awoke with a start and a gap in his memories.

At that point we had only six minutes of session time left and got reminded that the game would be supposed to follow the 1 day inside = 1 day outside rule. Ergo: We had to leave fast lest we’d be trapped in the dungeon for an unknown period of time!

Lucky for us we encountered no danger on the way. The lizard had wandered off and the way was free. We managed it back to the town fine with no random encounters or mishaps. We sold what loot we had found and collected a (very small) number of XP.

Extra XP

A surprisingly high number of XP, almost double of what we got out of the treasure, was awarded for certain positions like caller and chronicler.
It felt a bit high to me. My own job was one I hadn’t heard of before that as a real formal party role, quartermaster (= party loot bookkeeper).

Stonehell Dungeon is one of the best, if not the best known Megadungeon out there, and for good reason. It is a great place full of varied hazards and opponents and lots of very different factions, so it combines something for every taste.

.

Stonehell with Simpler Rules:

• Part 1 (this here)
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Lost in the Depth