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Welcome to the Lost Dungeon of Tonisborg
The very first adventure in a new campaign is always exciting. Especially when you haven't played much, or at all, with the gamers involved. The setting is new for everyone, and despite three weeks of steady toil, there are always questions about lore that the DM has to make up on the spot.
Three fellows that I know from Twitter and knocking around in Brovenloft joined the campaign and created new characters. All were fighters. I'm not sure if they did this on purpose, but it was definitely a first for me!
The Campaign is running on the Blueholme rules, but I modified them a bit to match up with the Zero Edition Dungeoneering aesthetic.
DM NOTE: At the time this post was originally written the Zero Edition Dungeoneering Rules were not publicly available. They have since been published for free on PDF via the Fellowship of the Thing, creators of the Tonisborg project.
Zero Edition Dungeoneering PDF
Back to the blog at hand:
3d6 in order.
No thief class.
Very limited spell list.
Strict 1:1 time. Get in, get the loot, and get out!
We spent a few minutes going over last-minute housekeeping, some rules they needed clarification on, and some interesting requests. Like, can we keep their discord comms private to the Tuesday group?
Can we not publish the Session reports for a couple of months, so the rival Thursday group didn't get the advantage of any intel paid for by Tuesday's blood?
To that end I started a blog series just for this campaign, which you can follow along here: Shadow Over Sojenka. The entire campaign and setting will be available for free on this blog, I invite you to subscribe (or at least check it out).
We started the campaign without any Patrons lined up for the Downtime Braunstein. But I had a good-sized list of NPCs that might fill that role later.
The Campaign Background
My personal goal for this campaign is to put all of the Old School, "BroSR" type approaches to the test. As mentioned in the introductory post:
Philosophy of Old-School Play
As Dungeon Master I will be utilizing all of the classic play methods to establish and reinforce these underlying concepts:
Alignment as Worldbuilding and Game Mechanic
Encumbrance
Morale
Reaction Rolls
Time in the Campaign – 1:1 Time
Level Training
Spell Research
Factions
NPCs ruling Domains
NPCs in charge of Guilds or Trading Houses
Tribes of Bandits, Nomads or Humanoids
Various Religious Cults
Adventuring Companies
Powerful Individuals without Domains and
Henchmen/Hirelings
Each of these tenets will be addressed in more detail in the coming days and weeks. I will also attempt to insert "Designer's Notes" into the upcoming Session Reports, in order to explain exactly what we are doing here, how it works, and how it makes the game better.
For now, we have a brief description, built from the player notes and my own recollections. This report is in no way a "narrative style" story-report. I will endeavor to improve the quality and "narrative" styling of these reports as time goes on.
NOTE: These reports are being published approximately three months after the events in question, so as to maintain the secrecy and surprise factors. They will be published in chronological order. Read the rest of this session reports, and the rest as they are published, here: Welcome to the Lost Dungeon of Tonisborg