Hi everyone,

So on Wednesday I ran my first session of Old School Essentials using The Hole in the Oak adventure to get things going.   I won't write out the whole session but it was interesting.  It was done online so there were some technical difficulties but overall it wasn't bad.

The group, knowing each other entered a local town to rest and get supplies.   Their plan was to  stay at the inn The Stone Anchor which has a tavern called The Dirty Mermaid.   While drinking in the very busy tavern they heard tale of this underground lair filled with money and jewels from this table of adventures but the adventures hadn't found the entrance and the main telling the story said he felt the whole thing was just a fairytale.

The PC group spoke with the adventures and even hired the main adventure telling the story as a guide (For OSE a Retainer).   So they went out to get supplies and the thief of the group tried his thieving skills and failed miserably.   The Thief couldn't go back into town so the entire group ended up camping out outside of the town.

Next day they head into the woods with their guide to search for the Hole in the Oak and encountered a giant beetle.   The giant beetle with it's 2d4 bite took down two of the PC's pretty quickly.

So new characters had to be made.   One of the players made their new character fast as was able to run into the remaining players while they burred the dead.   They move along and reach a large river.   The travel west to find a better place to cross and find a goblin guarding a bridge and are told they have to play a toll to get across.

Talking to the goblin the players are told that the goblin knows where the hole in the oak is and will guide them tomorrow to the hole.   They camp out for the night and in the morning are awoken by the other new PC rummaging through their stuff.

That's where we left it for the night.  I figured if I wrote the whole adventure out it would be boring so I decided not to.

Key takeway:  Yes OSE is very deadly and characters with 1 hit point can be taken down quickly
Takeaway 2:  The players came to the conclusion at the end of the session that maybe running away from a fight is ok sometimes.

It was a lot of fun.  Felt very much how D&D played back in the red box days.   Adventures could be very deadly.

I cannot way to run the game again in two weeks.

Two down with the first real encounter? Well done! 

Quote from: Theory of Games on July 28, 2023, 02:44:58 PM
Two down with the first real encounter? Well done! 

Thank you.  I had a player suggest that since they had low hp that I should have cut the damage in half.  But then the world of early D&D is a dangerous place so that doesn't make much sense to me

Quote from: GhostNinja on July 31, 2023, 10:44:12 AM
Thank you.  I had a player suggest that since they had low hp that I should have cut the damage in half.  But then the world of early D&D is a dangerous place so that doesn't make much sense to me

Did they also suggest since they were only 1st level the monsters shouldn't be able to hit them as much? Hopefully you ignored their pleas and crushed them with an iron fist.

Quote from: Brad on July 31, 2023, 02:08:01 PM

Did they also suggest since they were only 1st level the monsters shouldn't be able to hit them as much? Hopefully you ignored their pleas and crushed them with an iron fist.

Of course.  Their characters are still dead and they had to make new ones.   The reasons they died were simple:

1) They went into combat and didnt think whether it was a good idea or not (they did at the end of the game)
2) Their characters attacked and missed.   The monster isn't going to leave them alone after they attacked first

They just know they have to think things through next time.  I mean it was a Giant Beetle with 5 hit points.  One good shot could have taken it out.  It wasn't a creature with 40 hit points or anything like that.