Grim Schneider

Using Chainmail to Kickoff a AD&D campaign

The Situation

While visiting my mom she surprisingly asked to play D&D. This was a surprise as she has played maybe 2 or 3 times in the last 20 years. Luckily I had my AD&D 1e books with me, so I was able to use the appendices to throw something together. So my mom and my wife sat down to the scenario I have laid out below.

The Hook

The players were told that they had been pressed into service by the local king. Goblins were invading the kingdom from the badlands to the southeast. He'd sent lieutenants and sarjeants to rouse every able-bodied man in the local thorpe. They were ordered to delay the goblin forces as long as possible. The goblins had to be slowed down until the kings men arrived and could engage them. There were 2 players, each got a roster of 12 men (1 lieutenant, 1 serjeant and 10 light infantry). They had ability scores for each and were told they'd been issued leather armor and spears.

Their task was to defend the territory against an invading force of goblins for as long as possible.

They immediately engaged the goblin forces, 10 goblins in each attacking unit. We used the mass combat rules from Chainmail/Old Lords of Wonder and Ruin and simultaneous resolution.

Predictably the goblins routed the infantry in the first round (they have a hit scoring advantage). The players were allowed to pick which infantry men died in the battle. The more seasoned player suggested to the novice to pick the ones with the worst stats to die first. A good suggestion. One player ended up with 7 potential characters and the other with 6. I told them they could turn any and all of them into PCs, but to only pick two or three at the moment. The lieutenants and sarjeants had to return to the king.

Here we had an interlude where we turned the infantry ability scores into actual characters. The starting gold was treated as a reward for extraordinary service from the king. Most of this was paid in equipment, and the rest paid in actual gold. They made 2 fighters, 2 magic users, a cleric and a thief.

The First Foray

The 2 fighters, one magic user and a cleric came on this foray. The magic user had enough extra gold to hire and barely outfit a light footman, who also went along.

I finally cracked how to get a completely coherent, completely random Appendix B terrain map (I'll detail my method for everyone in a few days). They started out in the remnants of their thorpe which was in the process of rebuilding. The thorpe was in forest and supported some nearby logging camps. They were told that A) the goblins had invaded from badlands to the southeast, B) there is a cave to the southwest people had been talking about, and C) they could explore the forest to the north.

They opted to go to the cave to the southwest.

No random encounters were rolled for the days travel, or for the night they camped. The next morning they wandered into the cave. They randomly were surprised by 2 hobgoblins, though 6 more were in the room nearby. The Hobgoblins took out the 2 fighters during the surprise round and the first combat round. Things were looking pretty dire for the PCs. The magic user had memorized sleep however and rolled high enough to put all 8 hobgoblins to sleep. The cleric healed one of the fighters and the other had his wounds bandaged by -1 hp. From there the PCs hurried to kill all the hobgoblins before they could wake up. Rolling for the hobgoblins indicated this was their lair. I may have messed up the rules, because I'm still not clear on treasure for random monsters living in dungeons. Because of this I only gave them 3 rolls on the gem table and 49 gold. The PCs grabbed the gems and gold and high-tailed it back to town, making it by that evening, again without any random encounters.

They spent 3 days resting, healing and using the gems to equip and hire more light infantry.

They decided to head back to the dungeon with their stronger force of PCs and infantry.

The Second Foray

They headed back to the dungeon once they were all healed up. This time they set out in the morning and went straight into the dungeon that evening. Their reasoning was that it was dark in the dungeon anyways. After exploring a little further than before they ran into a nesting site of kobolds. There were 12 fighting kobolds, a bunch of young and eggs. This time they were not surprised and the magic-user immediately cast sleep, putting 11 of the rat-lizards to sleep. The fighters managed to miss their attacks, but the cleric and a few light footmen dispatched the one conscious kobold before destroying all the rest quickly.

The PCs once again ransacked the kobolds. I gave them Qx3 this time, due to a closer ratio of kobolds to the wilderness numbers. This netted them 11 rolls on the gem tables. Not unreasonable given that kobolds are skilled only at mining and reproducing. They ran off back to town with the gems. Each PC ended up with nearly 900 gp from a few high rolls on the gem table.

Now they have a little dilemma, how much to save for levelling training and how much to spend on hiring more or better infantry.

Analysis

This was an experiment in framing D&D as a wargame from the first moments of a campaign. The players didn't react with any surprise or excitement about the battle that began their careers. Still I think it was a success. They did immediately work to hire as many infantry as they could afford and treated hiring a large force of fighting men as a priority and worthy use of their funds. Enough so they already have to weigh their options on A) hiring more footmen, B) saving gold for level training, or C) improving their own equipment.

In any case they want to get immediately back into the field to raise more gold and expand their power base. No adventure hooks are needed here, they are already starting to set their own goals from the first session. And as a bonus I ran the whole thing off the random charts in the DMG.

I'll take that as a tremendous success.