The RPG Files

The Last Star Cairn

Brian Parker — 2024-08-24T12:43:21+02:00

With the hidden threat of The Doomgrinder now successfully eliminated and a grateful Greyhawk Oligarchy consenting to resurrect Astra, the heroes' attention returns to the Star Cairns and the one remaining unexplored cairn.

We complete the exploration of The Star Cairns in an exciting adventure combining equal parts of heroism, brilliance, bravery, stupidity, recklessness and comedy as the heroes once more tread the foothills of The Abor-Alz in search of The Last Star Cairn.

Featuring...

Simon as Andrea - Ranger
Andy as Astra - MU/Thief
Malcolm as Hemegretham - Fighter
Dave as Alvin - MU/Cleric
Alex as Zeppo - Cleric
Jan as Joe - Fighter

Border Watch 7-9

Brian Parker — 2024-03-17T19:21:00+01:00

With the likely source of the plot revealed, the Adventurers head off to The Cragson Mines to see what they can discover in the exciting concluding parts of the Border Watch series.

This adventure was an absolute pleasure for me to run. The players threw themselves into the characters fully exploiting the alignment system as a source of inspiration rather than the often derided 'straitjacket' some describe it as. Coupled with a truly tense final showdown it made for a highly memorable, exciting and fun adventure.

Border Watch 5-6

Brian Parker — 2024-02-28T18:02:20+01:00

Parts 5 and 6 of Border Watch find the adventuring caravan guards struggling on through the Batlet and Barduk stages of the journey, fighting off all-comers and finding some unusual allies.

Border Watch 3-4

Brian Parker — 2024-02-13T20:30:50+01:00

In parts 3 and 4 of Border Watch, the wagon train continues its journey along the border endeavouring to establish the pre-war trade route. The way becomes rather more "exciting" as they travel and some intriguing nuggets of information emerge.

Border Watch 1-2

Brian Parker — 2024-01-28T19:18:28+01:00

Set in Greyhawk, Border Watch is up there amongst my favourite modules. Written by Paul T. Riegel, it follows the activities of a party of adventurers hired on as border caravan guards in an attempt to re-establish a viable trade route in the wake of the recently concluded Greyhawk Wars. The action takes place on the Furyondy/Iuz border and draws heavily on the background of the From The Ashes boxed set, which I fortunately have in my library of RPGs.

The adventurers take to the road on a seemingly straightforward mission in the new post war realities of the border area but as is often the case, there is more to this than meets the eye.

I will be posting these files in shorter batches of a couple at a time. Here are the first two episodes and the adventure preamble. I hope you enjoy re-living this really excellent adventure!

Featuring…

Andy as Solipsis
Dave as Bod
Jan as Rufus
Malcolm as Ryanair
Simon as Sir James Foad
Karim as Snatch

The Doomgrinder 38-41

Brian Parker — 2023-11-03T17:06:46+01:00

The Star Cairns Campaign approaches the denouement as the party set out for The Doomgrinder, the fabled location where our heroes test their mettle against the dark forces working to destroy Greyhawk. Editing these write-ups caused me to relive those adventures and I found myself imagining the party bickering, bantering and fighting their way through the treacherous Cairn Hills east of Greyhawk City. There was something quite gritty about this part of the campaign and I hope I managed to maintain the mood with my heavily modified version of this published module, since like many GMs I wasn't satisfied with the published rationale and wanted something … more, to make a decently epic end to our campaign.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea - Ranger
Andy as Avon - MU/Thief
Malcolm as Hemegretham - Fighter
Dave as Alvin - MU/Cleric
Alex as Zeppo - Cleric
Jan as Joe - Fighter

The Star Cairns 28-33

Brian Parker — 2023-08-14T14:43:34+02:00

The stakes continue to rise as the heroes head to their 4th Star Cairn, featuring extra-planar phenomena, avoiding desert raiders and dealing with rampaging golems as they go. Generally known to us as The Planar Cairn this one managed to top even the 3rd Cairn and its Beholder master for nail-biting moments as we moved out of the early levels and into what felt like more of a mid-level game. The second half of the adventure finds us back in my beloved Greyhawk City intriguing with the group’s contacts and trying to discover who it is that wants them dead so badly.

AD&D 2e continued to support us allowing allowing all sorts of fun and odd activities within the scope of its detailed rules, reminding me of how much I still like this version of D&D even if I don’t use it regularly these days.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea - Ranger
Andy as Astra - MU/Thief
Andy as Avon - MU/Thief
Malcolm as Hemegretham - Fighter
Dave as Alvin - MU/Cleric
Karim as Raven - MU/Fighter
Alex as Zeppo - Cleric
Jan as Joe - Fighter

The Star Cairns 18-27

Brian Parker — 2023-06-18T12:24:05+02:00

The exploration of the 3rd Star Cairn was a highly memorable run of sessions featuring everything from PC death to romance and intrigue to total war. I often hear the exhortation from recent games designers to be a fan of the characters as if it is a new or original idea but back in 2000 I was certainly a fan of this entertaining group as they bravely, stupidly, amusingly, tragically and outrageously tackled the challenges of the formidable 3rd Star Cairn.

I think these sessions hold the record for the sheer number of emails flying back and forth between players during the week as the players were engaged out of session quite significantly. The whole thing was a challenge for the group and I had my hands full trying to keep up with them during the crazily swinging turns of events. It was a lot of fun to play and hopefully remains exciting to read and is also a reminder of designer, Sean Reynold’s fantastic work creating these locations. It has taken quite a while to ensure the edited copies are plot consistent across the 10 sessions and now I am delighted to share them as we relive the events played out in the spring and summer of 2000.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea - Ranger
Andy as Astra - MU/Thief
Malcolm as Hemegretham - Fighter
Dave as Alvin - MU/Cleric
Karim as Raven - MU/Fighter
Alex as Zeppo - Cleric
Jan as Columbus - Cleric
Jan as Joe - Fighter

Winter's Daughter

Brian Parker — 2023-06-17T19:45:29+02:00

The first of our new series of games using the Old School Essentials (OSE) ruleset published by Necrotic Gnome and also the first that we have played using an online Virtual Tabletop (VTT). I'd been playing in a few online convention games during 2020 and with the pandemic in 2021 the pace really picked up so I managed to gain a lot of experience playing in this medium, enough to convince me that it would be a possibility if I could settle on a particular VTT and get myself organised enough to run some games. Foundry turned out to be that VTT for a number of reasons but a big one is that I can run it as a node.js service for no additional cost beyond the initial purchase on my existing internet server.

We played Winter's Daughter, an introductory adventure suitable for a beginning party with two Rangers, a Fighter and Druid testing themselves in the Tomb of Sir Chyde. Proving themselves up to the test and now a level higher they will continue onto The Incandescent Grottoes as their next adventure.

We are a new group to playing RPG's online but slowly picking up speed aided by OSE's clean and clear rulebooks and supporting VTT materials. The focus now is on playing as much as possible to get the flow of online play working well. I'm having fun and I think the players are too, they're coming back at least. :)

Featuring…

Simon as Angus - Human Ranger
Rachel as Fenella - Human Druid
Alex as Vlad - Human Fighter
Malcolm as Reme - Human Ranger

Invisible Stalker and The Trouble with In-Laws

Brian Parker — 2023-05-09T12:54:16+02:00

A couple of between campaign shorts feature in this month’s update. Both Invisible Stalker and The Trouble with In-Laws are adventures from the pages of Dungeon magazine, a resource which I used a lot for exactly this kind of thing.

Invisible Stalker was a fun one-shot which for a change only took one session, while The Trouble with In-Laws, a more substantial outing originally titled “Mercy Mission” in order to conceal the plot from the players, went on for three sessions. In The Trouble with In-Laws the party demonstrates how not to be a detective as they ignore a huge array of clues and evidence yet somehow manage to stumble their way to the denoument. I enjoy running detective plots and especially city / town adventures but I found myself re-considering a little after this one. :)

The character of D’Ayve is actually Luura who will appear in the subsequent sessions, Dave was unable to attend the first session at short notice so this grumpy DM just plugged in a variant of his name for his character.

Featuring, in both adventures…

Simon as Larry - Human MU
Andy as Llewelyn - Human Cleric
Dave as Luura - Human MU (dressmaker)
Karim as Lello - Elven Cleric
Alex as LooLoo - Human Fighter
Malcolm as Len - Halfling Thief

The Star Cairns 8-17

Brian Parker — 2023-03-26T19:45:42+02:00

Having dealt with the bandit situation in their first cairn the group went on to discover the cairn of The Dedicated Student (sessions 8-17), further exploring the background and rationale of the cairns as they continued their investigations into the history of these enigmatic constructions. Sean Reynold's adventure continues to impress with its imagination and scope as a truly memorable NPC is introduced.

A third very much needed Cleric (Columbus) joins the group as Jan comes onboard for the first time.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea - Ranger
Andy as Astra - MU/Thief
Malcolm as Hemegretham - Fighter
Dave as Alvin - MU/Cleric
Karim as Raven - MU/Fighter
Alex as Zeppo - Cleric
Jan as Columbus - Cleric

The Star Cairns 1-7

Brian Parker — 2023-03-04T15:34:56+01:00

So we reach the beginning of the main campaign, The Star Cairns. This is a fantastic module by Sean Reynolds with separate sub-modules (the different Star Cairns) and many hooks into other possibilities and connections to Greyhawk lore. I would use this as a framework to run games with this group for the next couple of years with their adventures in the southern Domain of Greyhawk around the town of Hardby being the focus of attention. The campaign would run for 41 sessions finishing in early 2001.

The Message
The plot clue from Bladestar was the message intercepted by the party from the haunt spirit of the messenger of Iuz directing the recipient to search for the Star Cairn sites in the lower Abor-Alz foothills to the south of the Plain of Greyhawk, where they might uncover the components of the three-part deadly weapon so desired by the evil dictator and oh… untold riches and secrets too. At least we think that’s what he said… There was only one way to find out so the party took passage on a southbound Rhenee barge and sailed off to investigate.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea
Andy as Astra
Malcolm as Hemegretham
Dave as Alvin
Karim as Raven
Alex as Zeppo

Bladestar

Brian Parker — 2023-02-19T17:46:23+01:00

After the adventure of The Sentinel the group returned to The City of Greyhawk to celebrate a mostly successful conclusion. Raven in particular, rather pleased with himself since he had acquired the eponymous item and is now the proud wielder of the magical glove.

In Greyhawk City the party will encounter the adventure of Bladestar, written by Louis Prosperi and published as part of the Treasures of Greyhawk collection originally in 1992 in support of TSR's ongoing development of The World of Greyhawk as an official AD&D 2nd edition setting. The plot hook of the secret message intercepted by the party in the denoument is the signpost to the next series of adventures when the party will explore Sean K Reynold's fascinating Star Cairns which will be the core of the campaign adventures run by me in the next few years but until I manage to reconstruct the message from the depths of the RPG Files we continue with the detective mystery set in the streets and alleys of Greyhawk City… Bladestar.

Featuring…

Simon as Andrea
Andy as Astra
Malcolm as Hemegretham
Dave as Alvin
Karim as Raven
Alex as Zeppo

Brian Parker, February 2023

Pre-Bladestar - One Winter's Night

Brian Parker — 2023-02-16T11:30:38+01:00

At this point in late 1998 the Clarshh's Sepulchre group were encountering The Sentinel (UK2 TSR module) courtesy of Dave as the DM so I was getting a chance to play my newly rolled up first level druid, Keswick. From memory I was convinced that the next adventure would be me running Bladestar, which sows the seeds for an ongoing narrative and campaign based around the characters first rolled up for Clarshh. After rummaging through the RPG files it turns out that Dave must have taken a break during The Sentinel since I have a one shot adventure (2 sessions) with new characters run by me at the end of November 1998. So before Bladestar, I present a short seasonal incident featuring newly rolled up characters, One Winter's Night.

Featuring…

Talon played by Simon
Blok played by Andy
Ozone played by Alex
Bumbletum played by Karim
Academius played by Malcolm

Brian Parker, February 2023

Clarshh's Sepulchre completed

Brian Parker — 2023-02-11T21:35:48+01:00

Bruised and battered the adventurers staggered back to The City of Greyhawk, loaded down with loot and amazingly all of them made it, although it was a close run thing for both Alvin and Raven.

Re-reading and editing this years later I was surprised to be reminded of quite how awful 1st level characters in AD&D 2e are at fighting in general. Given basic armour and protection spells, they are not too bad at resisting damage but they are quite terrible at actually hitting anything, the illusory troll in the village being a prime example and even 25 years later I can still recall laughing rather too much at their frustration in this encounter.

All in all we had sufficient fun and I got my feet back under the DM's table again and warmed up enough to be a tolerable DM after having had quite a break from the experience. I would however be taking a bit of a break from DM'ing to play instead since we were lucky enough to have a few DM's in our group so if I remember correctly Dave took over with the same characters for his next adventure, The Sentinel which is one of the excellent TSR UK modules. It would be 1999 before we would finally start my next game, Bladestar, an urban adventure in The City of Greyhawk.

Brian Parker, February 2023

Clarshh's Sepulchre

Brian Parker — 2023-01-29T01:53:14+01:00

Session 1 of Clarshh was in March 1998 and began in Greyhawk City.
It was written by Willie Walsh and published in Dungeon magazine 53.

I hadn't run a D&D game in years at this point and certainly hadn't DM'ed AD&D 2e before so I opted for a romp through the wilderness with a search for a hidden tomb as the main feature in the hope that it wouldn't get too complicated. I have edited the text a little to tidy it up but left the mixed up tenses and nervous prose style since (I like to think) it gradually got better with practice.

We started with the following players…

Simon playing Andrea
Karim playing Raven
Andy playing Astra
Steve playing Galen
Dave playing Alvin

Session 3 added…
Alex playing Zeppo

Session 5 added…
Rachel playing Cassandra

Brian Parker, January 2023