A number of months ago I started a play by post game that I dubbed “Raven Creek”, with a super-simple premise and with the plan to stick as closely as possible to the original OD&D rules of 1974, also known as the 3 LBBs. Also with the plan of collecting a large party of PCs and NPCs until they can engage the wilderness using mass combat rules, either the classic Chainmail or the easier Book of War, or possibly By this Axe. I have not decided yet, and they are not that many yet.

Speed

Building on my experiences with other play by post games, as a GM as well as in the player’s seat, I chose to take up one of Gary Gygax’ possible (his statements sometimes require interpretation) suggestions to roll all the dice on my end.

(One exception based on a house rule: If a character is struck down to 0 HP, I let the player roll a die to check the results, ranging from death, permanent injury, or bouncing back after a turn of unconsciousness)

Originally I balked at the idea of removing the dice from the table, because I felt that rolling was a vital part of the game and its enjoyment. However, playing characters in three games where the GM rolled all the dice, with three very different play styles (for exampe this one), and reading praises for “Black Hack” where it is the players who do, and the GM who does not roll at all, I noticed that this was a misconception. People can live without dice rolls, surprisingly, and well.

This gave me the courage to dare the same and go out of the proverbial box of common wisdom. The rewards are great, as no time needs to be set aside waiting for everyone to roll: Players state their intent, then the action of the round is quickly resolved, and only one day goes by for a combat round, not two to three.

(Someone on the internet – not actually involved in the game – accused me of taking away the players’ agency by handling the dice rolls, but this is the same minsconception I had earlier: rolling the dice is not agency, it is randomizing. Making decisions is agency. If you doubt this, I recommend trying to let your GM handle your rolls for a session; see for yourself how it feels.)

Gaps in the Rules

It became apparent very quickly though that those who say the 3LBB have “gaps” are completely right.

House rules are a necessity, starting right from the simple question of long distance shots with bow and arrow, or the details of XP distribution, up to how much can happen in a combat round, and in what exact order. Even the lack of many natural enemies in the rules booklets, notably snakes: all these small gaps don’t map with every situation seamlessly and I find myself following my impression of what’s possible but also drawing from Swords & Wizardry (which I have found to be a most excellent resource to fill those gaps!), but also B/X, WBFMAG or BFRPG when a situation turns tricky.

Recruiting and Dropouts

I asked players to join on various servers, and the game runs on a well-organised, well-tended and quite active server, so I had a good number of players sign up and make characters.

Also a good number of players dropping out for various reasons, like RL, or issues with the slow progress of play by post. I had expected this and made the decision early to turn characters left behind by dropouts into NPC allies/retainers, building toward a number that may support the future battles.

Adding new players in a play-by-post is not always easy, because a single foray into the forest can take a month or two of game time. Players exist who turn down any offer of play by post on principle.

Explaining new people popping up has gone well so far, though. In-fiction, the villagers have posted news that they seek heroes all along the North Road, so everyone who shows up can be someone who has read these notices at one point or another and has been on his way here since, only now arriving.

Setting

For a setting, I went to the far north of a decaying empire in a self-made game world that I have used for various games in the past. We have a small village with limited resources (“Vrana Potok”), four hours off the King’s Road through the forest, that called for aid after goblins attacked some of the farms and a suspected curse was experienced in the direction of the old “Witch Tower”

Now, the Empire can’t spare soldiers, they have bigger problems. So the poor villagers ask for heroes and promise them that they can keep what they find on the enemy.

To be sure, the players are not shy to pilfer what they can from the village too, even fishhooks and empty bottles have turned out to be valuable resources to level against the enemy in a true low-level OSR game: Fantasy Vietnam including boobytraps along the edge of the forest.

Emerging Story

The group has gathered and learned some of the vicinity: There are goblins in the woods north, an old haunted castle uphill to the east (“Vrana Keep”), the witch tower to the southeast. Far north along the North Road there is a border fortress of the Empire tasked with keeping the Orcs and Goblins out of the Empire — with mixed success, as evidenced by the very premise of goblin tribes roaming around the village.

Exploration

The group gathered in the village, collected information, then moved out into the forest.
At the first opportunity the party split in three groups, two scouting parties of three each, 12″ move with no encumbrance, and one main group, 6″, with medium encumbrance. The scouting parties travelled out until they found something interesting, at which point scouting party 1 engaged and investigated a ruin, found first treasure and fought 2 centipedes. Scouting party 2 found a serious threat and decided to turn back un-noticed to rejoin the main party.
The main party had moved out slower found evidence of enemy activity and hesitated, so Scouting party 2 could catch up with them.

The groups found each other again and formed one big party,
then had a tight random encounter that warranted an extra blog post:

It is easy to see the grizzled experienced tough guy Old School players: that’s those who collect every little nonsense like metal filing shards, dirty old bottelettes, balls of strings, lumps of coal and what have you.

The party continued after the encounter with bandits, but sent two NPCs after them to keep an eye on them.
Then they searched for the threat, but it was not where it had been.
Discussing their options, they decided to return to their starting point, where they found the tracks of the bandits passing west, just as the bandits had said they were headed. The party followed them until the tracks of the bandits disappeared from the trail, then searched around and picked them up again going off into the underbrush. One of the NPCs had also left a mark there.

Two of the PCs started following the tracks, then three more followed them, the rest stayed behind.

Combat

The forward team tracked the bandits into a lower basin with waterholes and ponds until they found a trip-wire barring the way between two waterholes. The first of them stepped across the trip wire and noticed a hut not far away. The second one experimented with the trip-wire. The 5th saw the 2nd experimenting with the trigger of a trap and decided to keep his distance.
It came as it had to come: Numero 2 set off the trip-wire, capturing himself and 3 and 4 in a net, and triggering an alarm.
Numero 5 hid after the alarm went off, while Numero 1 stayed out in the open and tried to help the captured.

Numero 1 got shot with arrows and died: the first casualty of the adventure.

Winning the standoff thanks to a sleep spell,
the party murdered one of the three captured bandits and began going into a torture/murder session with the rationalization that they “needed to find out the important information” from the other two.

Moral quandry

Not all players were on board with slow-killing captives, especially humans, given that there was a goblin issue in the area; but also on general principle.
Discussions were had, people distanced themselves from that path of murder,
then one M-U solved the issue with a Charm Person that made any torturing blatantly useless.

Party moral grounding restored, the group returned home with the captives and started bunkering in for the night.
At nightfall proper, six left the impromptu bunker and moved into forward buildings.

Night battles

Goblins showed up and shrieked in the woods, an attack seemed imminent, the forward group gave up their positions and gathered at one point,
Only one legendary hero ran out across the open field to start lighting torches and sticking them into the ground to level the playing field in the darkness. Stunned, the goblins watched him do his thing before they finally got their act together and went to kill him.

Too late: The field lit up, those who came to slay him ran into the arrows of humans. The heroic lamplighter got killed by some pretty lucky arrows, but most of the monsters who went after him shared his fate. It followed a long range arrow duel across the field, during which some of the bunker-group also moved forward to reinforce the front.
A number of people on both sides took random arrows.
Then the humans started shooting flame arrows and the goblins decided to return the favour and shot flaming arrows into the roof of the human forward position.
For a moment it looked rather bad, but then another Sleep Spell dropped the goblin flame-archers and doused their appetite for conquest.
And rain started to set in, so the roof-burning looks like it won’t hold.

The group defended the village in a series of skirmishes where the goblins eventually succeeded in burning down the three derelict houses north of the river with fire arrows (while suffering pretty serious losses due to ever changing tactics on the players’ side)

During the days, when the goblins retreated into their lairs, the party began exploring to the east and found a ravine with various goblin caves built into it. They looked for chimneys and blocked those hoping to smoke out the underground goblins, but suffered losses due to local wildlife (giant bugs that live in the sandy ground north of the ravine). They destroyed goblin constructions and retreated.

The next day they returned to the ravine, found out a hidden entrance and went in, charmed a goblin and learned from him that these goblins are not actually the same that fight the village in the night, rather, they are enemies of those. Using the charmed goblin as a guide the group returned home and turned north from there to find the enemy. The goblin ran into a magical trap and died, but the group moved on, followed odd tracks and found a dungeon entrance in the forest, where they suspect goblin magic users.

Dungeon Delving

They killed an assortment of goblins and freed two captives, while several other captives were killed. At this point they found the first batch of serious loot in this game. Before this moment, they had always turned back quickly or stayed in the village to defend, which led to a very low treasure turnout (even by my miserly standards).

The use of dwarven abilities like seeing new construction and night vision proved crucial and the methods of the party are solidly built around their one dwarf.
At the point of this writing, dwarf 1 is wounded down to 1 HP, but a second dwarf has joined the campaign so I expect the dwarf-centric thinking will continue.

Meanwhile, one magic user separated himself from the group and, by his lonesome, made friendly contact with an ogre and began investigating the rumors about a witch in the forests to the south.

The group delved until they came into a dormitory with some tougher-looking opposition and quickly turned back. The tougher opposition slammed and barred the door, locking the party out. Now they have no way to get deeper inside short of hacking down the door with axes, which they decided not to do.

Latrine Loot

They went over the walls inch by inch and found a secondary exit, though: A hidden entrance to a long, narrow tunnel with a side room that serves as a disgusting old latrine. There they had to make poison saves and avoid slipping and falling into the deadly muck, but they managed to overcome these difficulties and liberated an old, disgusting saddlebag with magical loot: elven writing, a locked box, and a wand. A very important find for the magic users, one of which knows the elven tongue and can read the papers.

Problem: Not all of the writ has been collected. Some pages are still in the latrine, so the magic users want to go back there soon.

The long tunnel ended in daylight at an elven ruin, where the forward elements of the party witnessed how goblins coordinated to gather, go around them and cut them off at the exit of the cave.
They waited for the goblins to leave, then inspected the ruins and found a second such tunnel, but cleaner, which goes back in again.

Inside, they heard a goblin forward party that was looking for them, and decided to go back in, in full force, to seek the confrontation — armed with one last sleep spell for the day.

It took some time for them to find out how to open the secret door, but when they did, the goblin forward party was gone. In the meantime, the one fighter who had stinking muck on his armor so his presence disturbed the others chose to go around to the cave entrance aboveground.
The party inside split up, with weaker NPCs checking back to the dormitory of the goblins, while the majority of the party sneaked forward to the exit. There they spied a group of goblins discussing plans on the clearing in front of the cave.
From the concealment of the plants masking the entrance, they shot two volleys of arrows and slingstones at the goblins, felling most of them. Two survivors ran away into the forest, and the party chased them across the clearing with naked blades drawn.

Field of Fire

However, five goblin archers were sitting on top of the hill, and the party ran into some arrow fire. Luckily, their armor turned most of the missiles away, even though three of the adventurers fell – among them one of the two darves.
Three others kept chasing the fleeing goblins into the forest and cut them down in a quick flurry of bladework.

The stinking adventurer fell into the rear of the archers, thus aiding the others by reducing the press of missile fire.
There was also a goblin shaman: One of the human magic users cast sleep and won initiative, so the shaman and most of the archers dropped snoring.
The last archer standing was felled as he tried to flee.

— rules issue: as mentioned above, using a 1d6 table for people who drop to 0 HP, two of the downed adventurers survived with 1 HP after 1 turn of rest, as they received help within two combat rounds. One of them with STR permanently lowered to 3. 1 of the downed adventurers, a cleric, died on the spot. The dwarf got back up with no lasting damage. —

Now the group had conquered the first level of the dungeon, but assumed there had to be another secret entrance directly to the barred level 2.
While two of them retrieved the last sheets of paper and some old dead bodies from the latrine, thereby getting even more soiled and stinking, the dwarves looked for that elusive other secret entrance, and indeed, they found it!

Alas, with most of the party down to 1 or 2 hp this is risky business now. The strongest of the group dare enter, hoping to get the drop on some possibly unsuspecting shamans with good treasure….

Meanwhile, one magic user attempts to win the trust of the goblins’ sorely mistreated, tightly chained riding wolves by letting a group of NPCs feed the fallen goblins to the beasts.
(Yes, the group has split up again – but they have the numbers to do it.)
This is hard and slow work, and the sun is sinking. At night, the forest will belong to the goblins again, and the window of opportunity closes.

near death .. and actual death

Going down into the secret entrance, the dwarf got knocked down by a trap. There was some light skirmishing so the party left him to bleed out for 3 of the 4 rounds he had before he’d die. At the last moment one of them saved him, although the Dwarf’s DEX is now diminished.
Recognizing their weakened state and the approaching night, the party decided to withdraw and go home with loot and the body of Myron the cleric.
While walking, they got followed and harassed by two goblins. One of them managed to shoot down and kill a cleric, but got wounded himself when one fighter dared a difficult duel with the odds stacked against him, but the dice rolled true and the party escaped with no further losses.

back to safety

They reached the village, clocked in a good amount of XP (but divided by a good amount of PCs and NPCs) and found a visiting army unit on night rest here. The villagers and soldiers combined served as a good night watch, especially with the bridge drawn back and big stakes driven into the southern bank of the Raven Creek. The goblins did not engage actively, just blindly shot a number of arrows across the creek into the human-inhabited areas.

The army unit bought some of the magical and rare loot off them in actual gold and in a letter of debt; and they gave healing to four of the adventurers.
The papers the party found they did not sell: they kept them, and the magic users decided to study them while everyone was resting and healing.

moving out fast

The healed-up fighters decided that now was not the time for resting and healing: a good offense is still the best defense, and those not totally wounded should move out again right away on that very morning to finish the job!
The magic users agreed and decided to study their papers at a later date.
Every MU in the party prepared the sleep spell, to counter the goblin’s numerical advantage.

The other party member, a wizard with two henchmen of his own and a penchant for going off on secret private missions, who was investigating the non-related witch issue already, kept doing that: He moved southeast toward the witch tower while the party at large moved back out north.
Only the clerics, all down to 1 HP, and a local NPC ally elected to stay in the village to heal.

The four healing spells from the army unit provided invaluable,
especially with the rolls coming down pretty good and all four subjects getting healed back to max.

The party sold items recovered to the army wizard, but kept the papers they had recovered from the latrine, to investigate later.
(learning spells takes quite some time in old school rules, not jut an hour of attuning. The group never had that much time so far, always moving, always attacking, always in action)
At the same time they bought 24 bandages from the army to patch up wounded people.
(houserule: recover 1d3 of freshly lost HP if bandaging a turn after the loss)

They discussed a lot with the army people and tried to convince them to come and sort out these goblins
[fun! Same attempt earlier when they had met the bandits! Apparently, they will attempt to make every NPC they find go and do their work for them!],
but the army declined: they had their own orders, no time to help with the party’s issues.
However, they promised to report the headquarters and tell them about the local situation.

Separate Ways

The wizard with his penchant for his own solo missions went southeast to check out the witch problem, and most of the rest of the party went back north into the goblin area to mop up what’s left of the recent delve.

The three most wounded party members remained in the village to rest and heal.

North party found four weird sticks planted on the clearing, left those alone and went up the hill.
There they found some signs of abandoned construction. At this point there was also a camouflaged manhole that the party had found earlier. Now the camo-lid was slightly ajar for some reason.

Four of the party decided to go and check that out, open it with bows ready. But one wizard called halt and suggested they open it more carefully with a 10 foot pole.
Which they did.

Fire in the Hole!

That wizard saved their lives: The manhole was boobytrapped with an explosive device, and only their careful approach saved them: The blast threw five party members off their feet, but only one got really wounded, none died.

The party used two sets of bandages on the really wounded guy and on one PC who had lost 2 hp in the blast.
Then they moved onward, and found another sign of goblin construction, which they inspected carefully for traps, finding none.

They scouted onwards, found some signs of digging and avoided the regular path. The way to the smiling cave where they had plundered earlier was all free. The way north to the elven tower they went slowly and looked around for more ruins. Not far from the lookout tower they found a pile of stones and went meddling, sticking poles in it and shining lights into the dark gaps. Thus they stirred up a nest of 1d6 = 6 spitting cobras (borrowed from B/X, because OD&D turned out to have no snakes at all).

They killed the snakes with a big oil bomb, lighting the whole stone pile on fire.
As a reaction, a horn was sounded north of them, to their surprise. They had counted on the surrounding trees to provide enough cover so their big oil fire would remain unnoticed.

Problem: One of the spitting cobras got the dwarf, and he is now blind.

The party looked around to identify the source of the horn blast, but didn’t find it. Eventually they decided to go to the elven tower and delve into the secret tunnels there, the places where they had to retreat from on the day before. They were promptly shot at from the tower (but no wounds were suffered). The fighters stormed forward to attack its door, while one magic user cast Sleep on the tower. He laid low the three goblins inside and four of his fellow adventurers.

After this the group removed the door with some dwarven stone cunning and took one of the goblins prisoner, slaying the others.
The elven tower is finally conquered.

Maze of Traps

Next, after interrogating the captured goblin, they tried to go into the dungeon again to continue their delve from the day before. But as they found out, the goblins had used the night to riddle all the tunnels with deadly traps, and no honest foe to fight presented itself.

The party went in with careful deliberation and unfanged one trap after another, to finally win into the underhalls that they knew from the day before. Dodging several difficult hazards they expressed respect for the goblin master trapper and decided to charm him if they should come face to face with him: he might be an extremely useful asset to protect the village with a ring of deathtraps.

— To be continued —