This is Part 5 of my Thursdays in Thracia B/X Dungeons & Dragons Campaign, an actual play of Jennell Jaquays’ The Caverns of Thracia. For more context, start from Part 0.

What Happened

Continuing from Part 4, after the party returned to town after a mostly successful first expedition.

The party that left town for the second foray into the lost city was largely different from the original party. Yam Stevens, a Magic-User, was among them, as well as Toba the cleric. Beyond that it was largely a new collection of adventurers, including a thief named Jek. Five heroes and their hirelings all told.

Upon arriving at the crumbling city, the party decided to investigate the large stone platform (A, above) which had been home to several gnolls on their first foray, including Slam, who should still have been under the effects of a Charm Person spell. The good news was that there were no gnolls to be seen this time, the bad news was that their friend* Slam was also not around.

*anyone who casts Charm Person on you is not your friend.

Set into the center of the platform, a wide stone stairway descended straight down into the soft earth. The party decided to investigate the area on the surface more before they went in. Jek, the thief, volunteered to sneak around the side of the black stone structure (B) that held the underground entrance the party had used on their first foray.

Moving as quietly as possible, Jek saw that the tribesmen had set up a wooden barricade around the entryway, manned with three armored soldiers. During their sneaking, Jek stepped on a rotten log. Luckily, the tribesmen failed to notice the sound among the other noises of the thriving jungle.

The party abandoned that entrance, and explored the ruins to the north, where they found a large stone tablet, carved in an angular, runic alphabet. Yam correctly identified the language as Dwarvish, but because Skubble was not with the party, no one was able to translate it. Yam decided it would be worthwhile to transcribe the runes onto some paper, which took some time.

As the party stood idling, curious predators lay in wait. Two massive spiders, monstrous creatures of the jungle, sprung from the undergrowth! The party was able to dispatch them with relative ease, but Yam suffered a rather nasty bite. Only by the grace of the gods was he spared the effects of the thick, clear venom that oozed from the spider’s fangs.

Gathering themselves, the party returned to the large stone platform, and descended once more into the darkness.

Playing B/X

I only had three players this session, and one of them was new, so the party makeup was substantially different. The session was also a bit shorter than usual, so this post and next week’s might reflect that.

For the first time, I found myself having to really adjudicate Thief abilities in B/X. Thief abilities in old school D&D are a Whole Thing. Honestly, I just wrote out several paragraphs about them, realized I wasn’t halfway done, and that I am going to have to do a entirely separate post just about Thieves, their history in early D&D, and why they are a pain. For now just know that Jek failed a “Move Silently” roll, and so I gave the guards a 2-in-6 chance to hear the resulting noise, which they did not.

Other than that, things were pretty straightforward here. The module indicates that there is a 60% chance of Gnolls appearing on that platform, and because there were no Gnolls, there was no Slam. I figure he is generally with other Gnolls.

The ruins up north indicate a 30% chance of a random encounter, rolled from the table for level 2 of the dungeon. My initial roll, indicated no encounter, but because they decided to stick around and transcribe a tablet that they couldn’t read, I rolled a second time. Hence, spiders. They force a saving throw against paralysis with every bite, which could have gotten nasty really fast.

More on this session next week!

If you want to follow along at home, you can get both The Caverns of Thracia and B/X Essentials at DriveThru RPG.