A Year in Stonehell Dungeon

I've served a lot of time imprisoned in Stonehell Dungeon's subterranean corridors. The last nine months of my stint was as Dungeon Master. Before I started running it, I was thrice a player at different tables, the first of which was also my first OSR experience ever. I've now ran it as an open-table game for twenty five sessions.

I've served my time in Stonehell Dungeon.

People ask me how well I like Stonhell Dungeon. They also ask about my experience running an open-table. Perhaps someday I'll make a post about game mastering for an ever-changing pool of thirty players (so far), but this post is mainly about Stonehell.

However, running it as an open-table dungeon has a profound influence on my opinion. It colors my every sentiment, both good and bad. 

There's a lot of both; good and bad. 

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I chose from between three ways to start my campaign. In order of my personal preference back then: Keep on the Borderlands, Barrowmaze, and Stonehell. So, Stonehell was my third choice. 

I tried the Keep first. Its dungeon, the Caves of Chaos, was just a tad too vanilla and too simple for my taste. If Gygax had at least given names and a line of description to his characters in the town and castle—or even just the most important ones—it would probably be our campaign's home base today. Alas, he did not. 

Barrowmaze was a little too verbose for me to disseminate before my attention span faltered. Right or wrong, I felt like I had to read it all to run it, and I just didn't want to invest that much time and effort. Not back then, starting my first OSR campaign, anyway.

With Stonehell, I didn't feel I had to read anything to run even the first session of it. At the same time, I knew I could run it drunk, sleepy, and distracted—not uncommon states of mind for an evening beer-and-pretzels game over the Internet. That level of ease of use at the table is hard to beat.

I wanted something simpler than Barrowmaze, but not so simple as KotB. Stonehell struck that perfect balance. It was just right. 

But it wasn't just right for running as an open-table game.

Treasure was way too "feast or famine." To mitigate some of that, I used a "silver standard" (1 sp = 1 xp; book prices in silver), effectively multiplying all treasure's value by ten. I also wrote a +1 weapon into practically every haul. Beyond that, I added a lot, no different than every DM's review of Stonehell I've ever read. 

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The core issue I have with Stonehell Dungeon as an open table is that there isn't enough bait to entice players to explore the levels. 

Without deviation, players—myself included—were compelled to go deeper rather broader lacking any good reason not to do so. Stronger monsters as gatekeepers doesn't cut it; even the most inexperienced dungeon crawler expects the risk to increase with the reward as one goes lower in the dungeon. 

I can say both as a player and as a DM, it's my opinion that the dungeon is not well designed for a straight-down approach, and I don't mean because of challenge. 

The experience is rather bland. Take the stairs from 1A to 2A and there's not even much of a scenery change. Same with 3A. It doesn't feel like you're delving deeper. Monsters get a little harder, but like I say, that's just not enough on its own to do it.

Since it wasn't designed with enough bait on the hook to get players to explore levels horizontally before descending, it should have been better designed vertically. Delving to lower levels should have been more mysterious, or threatening, or . . . something. 

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From my perspective as a player, and from what I've learned running Stonehell, Barrowmaze does a far better job for an open-table game. I've played about five sessions in Justin Hamilton's Sunday night Barrowmaze campaign on the OSR Pick-Up Games Discord server. 

I could immediately tell I chose poorly when I picked Stonehell over it. 

It has several "barrows," each that serve as a mini-dungeon. Explore the overworld a little, breach a barrow, plunder its gave goods, maybe solve a puzzle or whatever, then go home. End of session. 

That is an ideal setup for an open-table. You hit all your bases almost every game with few lulls of exploration "filler" sessions between scores. Perfect!

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What does this mean for my current Stonehell campaign?

If you can't tell, I'm dissatisfied with Stonehell for an open-table campaign, so let me come right out and say it. It's an amazing masterpiece, wonderfully written, easy to use at the table, and filled with a ton of fun and interesting things for players . . . but it's ill suited for our campaign. I've had a ton of fun game-mastering Stonehell Dungeon, but I'm ready to move on to something different. 

As a year-end review of our campaign, let's get it out of the way first: out of twenty five plus sessions shared by about thirty players, three were pretty bad. One of those was really terrible: the night we got lost exploring on the second level, but nothing really exciting happened. Blech!

By far and wide margin, most nights were "pretty good." You know, nights where everyone had fun and shared some laughs and we were glad we all played. Good times. 

However, six or seven sessions were truly epic. They were the type of session I can say, "This is why I play D&D."

• Ingrid the Dragon Slayer losing her arm in the battle against the giant undead cobra, the heroics to save her, and the tragic death of our campaign's first dwarf just steps from the exit. 
• Keri the Kingslayer earning his title while fighting beside his comrades against the orc chief and his tribe. 
• The intense battle with the water weird in the enchanted fountain that no one ever revisited the whole rest of the campaign. 
• The existential room where the doll was first discovered and later encounters with it. 
• The rise and fall of the party's alliance with the Neanderthals and all the bloodshed it caused. 
• The heartbreak of the "TPK minus one." The slow, agonizing death of every PC and hireling while ascending the stairs to the exit . . . with the greatest treasure trove ever plundered from Stonehell in their grasp. Ouch. 
• The ire of the medusa Lachesis and the illusions of her sorcerer. The courage the party showed when defying both. The victory of their first clash. The vengeance they won. 
• Storming the barbican in a wild, full-frontal assault. Not only surviving, but taking it. All the courage, wit, and luck that epic feat required.

I'm terrified I'm going to forget someone, but off the top of my head, I can recall very fondly characters played by Erika, CC, Josie, RandomWizard, Rosencrantz, King, KingPenta, Pralec, StarBorneHero, Lukas, Graytung, directsun, Modest Mace, and Ragnar. That's only fourteen, so I'm sure I've left someone out! Sorry! Remind me!

Overall, it's been a fantastic campaign. I've had so much fun, so little stress, and met so many great players who, through time, I've learned are interesting people I'm very glad to know. 

The good news is, most of the complements I've heard my players give Stonehell are archetypal features of any good megadungeon. The aspects of our campaign to which they seem most attached can be transplanted seamlessly as we move forward. 

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It's my hope The Undercrypt will be a fun, interesting and challenging multi-level dungeon designed specifically to be played as an open table. That means having several challenges that can be resolved in a single session.

I've been saying it for a few weeks now, but I'm still writing town, which for us will take the shape of the Keep on the Borderlands.

Stonehell will remain in our campaign world. It will physically replace the Caves of Chaos for which it shares a striking geographic resemblance.

The Undercrypt will be located on the same overworld map in the area designed for DM use, the Cave of the Unknown. 

Players can choose where they want to go on a session-by-session basis. 

I hope to see many returning faces after our month-long hiatus. I'm also excited to meet many more new people in the year 2021!

Looking forward to playing again soon! 

— Richard "Stripe" Sharpe

Stonehell Claims its First

Ingrid the One-Armed Dragon Slayer
by her player, Josie

Last night's session is why I play Dungeons & Dragons!

One of the most well-known areas of Stonehell Dungeon is what I call the morgue, rooms 27 and 28 in quadrant 1A: a straight hallway with doors lining the walls. Each door leads to a 10' × 10' crypt. Inside each crypt is a monster roll and a treasure roll. The monsters are weak—especially with a Cleric, and we had two—but it's a grind. The 1d6 treasure roll is 50% nothing, but a '1' results in 1d6 × 1000 dungeon bux—that's a whole lotta dungeon bux! They've cleared half the crypts and made a fortune from great treasure rolls.

However, at the end of the hall is a big scary door. Behind that door is your average "evil temple with evil altar." Skulls and stuff. But, no real danger.

As a player, I was let down by that. So, as a DM, you better believe I put a monster in there—a giant rattler stylized as being undead. I gave it enough venom for one "save vs. death" strike—and it landed.

Ingrid the Dragon Slayer took the hit. She failed her save. Black and purple veins of rot started spider webbing outward from the horrific wound on her left arm. She was doomed. The dice said she had an hour of game time to live.

Ingrid's player took the death roll pretty well, but we all knew how much she liked her character and the players weren't ready to submit to the dice's fate yet. "Can we chop off the arm, Walking Dead style, and save the character?"

"She'd bleed out," was my reply.

One of the players offered that the instantaneous use of a Cure Light Wounds spell could "cauterize" the wound without healing hit points (similar to how it canonically cures paralysis without healing). Iver Swiftaxe, the Dwarf, would perform the surgery with a single swift stroke of Ingrid's own sword, "Dragon Cleaver."

As the rest of the party battled the snake, they performed the field surgery. It worked. The amputation cost eight (max damage) of Ingrid's nine remaining hit points. She was incapacitated but alive.

Just then, the entry doors the players had previously spiked closed started to rumble. A bunch of failed wandering monster checks were attacking from behind! The party was surrounded, caught between a giant undead snake and a squad of nine orcs bursting through the doors!

Kesshut the Magic-User's Sleep spell made quick work of the flanking orc horde; eight of nine dropped and the last fled. Our swordmaster (F3), William, rolled tremendous damage on two attacks and hacked off the rotten snake's head.

If you know the room, you know the quadrant's greatest treasure is hidden there. They were stuffing their pockets, bags, sacks, pouches, and backpacks full of coins. More than 20,000 xp worth of treasure to be divided between the six players. Everyone would level once; half would hit the one-level-per-delve limit with hundreds of xp wasted (Bolek the Acolyte went 1,118 over!). Now that's a haul!

They picked up the limping one-armed Dragon Slayer and started to make their way out of the dungeon, thoughts of the riches, fame, and power all this treasure would buy! The exit wasn't far! Just through the now-empty dragon cave, then past the sign and up the stairs—then home free.

There was only one problem. The dungeon wasn't finished with them.

Ever feel like the dice are supernatural arbitrators? I rolled a wandering monster literally right directly in front of the exit. Snakes! The save-or-die kind!

There was no way around them, only through. They fought well, but Swiftaxe got bit. His saving roll failed him. The evil serpent god would have its victim! He went down fighting, defending the rest of the team. So close to the exit, it was a bittersweet victory when the last snake was defeated.

With heavy hearts, they all escorted Swiftaxe to Snorri Broadshoulders, the NPC dwarf in the nearby dwarven statuary (Room 19). Swiftaxe would be laid to rest with full dwarven honors. Everyone said their farewells.

Missing their dwarven comrade, the party ascended, finally, back to the surface.

On Beginning the Delve Into Stonehell

Map by Erika, who plays our Robber, Nicole

Players in my B/X Stonehell dungeon crawl have explored about half of the first quadrant of its first level in the five sessions we've had. They've met the patrols of kobolds and orcs, slayed the dragon, and—after feeding it a severed arm—talked to the stone head. No one has died.

As for running an open-table, no-commitment game, we've had no "issues," social or otherwise, so far. Everyone has been friendly, relaxed, patient, conversational, enthusiastic, and proactive! When we've played, we've always had a great group show up despite sessions being mainly impromptu.

Both of our last two sessions have had five players. The table is so full of lively personality that I've lowered the limit of seats from six to five. Stonehell better caters to a smaller group, in my opinion as both as player and now DM. Usually, I find five to be the perfect number for online gaming; for this, it's four with three—normally a sparse amount—being good as well.

Of the nine total players, four have attended only one of the five sessions while five have played in three or four games. At least two or three are very enthusiastic to play. Caller is a popular position, a great "problem" to have!

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Treasure, and thus XP rewards, have been very "feast or famine," as I expected having been a player at not one, but two other Stonehell tables. While they had a Cleric in the group, the Thief picked the lock to the stone-door crypt, but only raided one of its tombs and haven't returned since. Their robbery was rewarded with a necklace worth 400 gp. That was a random roll, and a damn good one on a table with a 50% chance of no treasure. It was the same delve in which they found a bag of 3,000 silver coins under a random flagstone in a broom closet.

All three characters that session leveled with the Thief hitting B/X's one-level-per-session limit with plenty of excess. So, we have an adept (C2), Oscar; a robber (T3), Nicole; and a warrior (F2), William. All others who weren't at that one particular session are first level.

Right now, the players are still in an early phase where they aren't making great strides of progress with each delve. Stonehell is a mysterious and deadly place; they're in no hurry to meet their unwitting doom. At the same time, I, as the DM, am by no means pulling at their leash or cracking my whip to hurry them along. A slow-and-steady pace for our first half-dozen or so sessions is fine. We're having fun and that's the most important thing!

However, a faster pace would better equalize treasure rewards. Stonhell has an organic rhythm or cadence. Its drum beats only as fast as the players move in real-time.

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The two times I played Stonhell, both my characters ended up at the fourth level with starter equipment before the game ended. To avoid that, I knew I was going to increase and redistribute Stonhell's treasure. I multiplied the coin value of everything by 10 using a "silver standard" of currency exchange rate (1 sp = 1 xp, prices are in silver). So, that 400 gp necklace they found was worth 4,000 xp.

Also, I sprinkled generic, base magic weapons throughout the level—a +1 dagger has been found.

At the same time, I've strengthened the monsters considerably. In place of a giant gecko, there was a much more fearsome winged draco hiding on the ceiling. Importantly, unlike the gecko with 3+1 HD, A draco has 4+2 HD—making it immune to the Sleep spell. It glided down and was promptly dispatched.

You don't even have to ask: yes, of course the PC took the "dragon slayer" moniker. This is D&D! Well deserved, too. Ingrid tanked two 1d10-damage attacks!

In last night's session, the delvers were attacked by a giant black widow, a dreaded "save-vs-death" monster. It dropped from the shadows of the "spider web chamber's" high vaulted ceiling, but our Magic-User, Kesshut, nuked it with Sleep.

Earlier in the session, Kesshut had the idea to use his mirror to reflect the party's lantern light upward to a high ceiling in the "bat room." That was a good idea, and it was rewarded by finding a gold ring on a high rock ledge. The party thinks it's magic. And cursed. Or not.

As Nicole used spikes and rope to scale the wall, a band of orcs approached to the edge of torchlight. The Dragon Slayer scared them off with pure intimidation.

Who knows what they'll find if we have a session tonight!

Stonehell Dungeon April 23 Session Report: "CC's Character Got Blood in His Hair"

Do you, my dear readers and fellow game masters, suffer from anxiety before running a session? Do you cram in the preceding hours and minutes and yet still feel as if you're ill prepared at the start of the game?

From what I've gathered in my 25+ years as a GM, that's fairly common. It might even be the norm. Pre-session jitters come with the territory.

For the first time since I was a sadistic child Dungeon Master in the early 1990s, I didn't really have any butterflies in my stomach before my impulsive April 23 session running Stonehell Dungeon using Old-School Essentials, a reprinting of B/X, the 1981 edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

That's pretty amazing considering it's the first time I've ran a game in more than a year and I had no previous experience with any four of my players!

There are a few reasons I was so calm. First, I ran the game totally as an impulse. Less than four hours between "Anyone want to play some OSR D&D?" and "Stonehell Dungeon at 6:30!" I was cramming the whole time, copying the dungeon maps from the book (using Sumatra), editing them with GIMP, uploading them to Roll20.net, and setting up the dynamic lighting. My mind was occupied; I didn't have time to worry!

Another reason is that I felt at home as a player in Stonehell, at least on the first level. Of course, it's a lot different on the other side of the table, but it really helped that I had wandered the halls as a player.

Lastly, Stonehell is really easy to run. Michael Curtis's style and format is fantastic for use at the table. You don't have to remember a single thing. You don't have to read ahead. Hell, you don't have to read anything at all before playing! Room entries are a line or two at most.

We had a great time. All four players were totally cool. Erika—with whom I was passingly familiar from the OSR Discord Server—was our caller. She did a wonderful job. I could immediately tell she had plenty of OSR dungeon crawl experience. She, like her three comrades—CC, Jacob and Minalt—were all chill, relaxed, friendly, attentive, conversational, and talented players. Bravo, guys! Thank you for playing and thank you for not making my job a chore. I had fun! Zero stress.

As a DM, I was absolutely perfect and never made a single mistake. Well, maybe not perfect and maybe not "sober" by the end of the session, but pretty close. Somewhat close. Okay, I was soused by 10 p.m., but I still remember the end of the session! Mainly. I remember most of the end of the session.

There were orcs and CC's character got blood in his hair.

. . . Yes, that's my whole 3.5-hour session recap.

Oh! Speaking of CC's character—how about this, BoT readers: that son of a gun rolled an 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, and an eight-freaking-teen during character creation! Okay, so it was AD&D's default method: 4d6, drop lowest, arrange, but still! He put the 18 in CON and the 17 in STR and played a Fighter. WIS was his "dump stat," if you can call an 11 that.

Oh again! Minalt was our mapper. Check out this sweet action:

Hell yeah! No grid lines, even!

Thanks for reading!

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