A newcomer on this community, I ran Holmes for the first time thisSaturday and I learned a lot.

A newcomer on this community, I ran Holmes for the first time this Saturday and I learned a lot.

Originally shared by Eric Nieudan

21st Century Gamers vs Doctor Holmes
Actual play report with every fucking thought thrown in

Thanks to Greg Gorgonmilk I finally got to read Holmes Basic. I was so enthusiastic about it that I organised a game over hangouts - even on a short notice, I had five players from our amazing French-speaking community. People with different gaming backgrounds, motivated by nostalgia, curiousity or game designer interest. These brave heroes were Magi max Thomas Munier Arjuna Khan Sebastien Delfino and Tiburce Guyard.

tl;dr

- Dwarves, dwarves everywhere!
- The game is great, but needs house rules from the start.
- It was very educational to elfgame like my ancestors did.

Keep reading for actual play and a few rules considerations.

Return to Zenopus

I decided to run Zenopus, the sample dungeon provided in the book, but couldn't resist experimenting with random dungeons procedures. So I set the adventure about 5O years later in my post-apocalyptic setting, and repopulated the dungeon with dog-men and hyena-men (kobolds and gnolls), some more undead (the magic-user died looking for Zenopus' knowledge, but that didn't stop him), a couple of mechanical spiders from the elemental plane of smoke and a band of dust mutants looking for a better hideout. These all came from a mini-sandbox I created beforehand to get a few things going in and around Portown (that's what the pic is).

Character creation

After a short introduction to the rules and the OD&D mindset, we proceeded to roll up characters. As I expected, non-humans dominated the party: we had three dwarf fighters, a halfling thief (I thought these could only be fighters but someone found a reference in the book) and a cleric.

To save time, I proposed they rolled backgrounds on Zenopus Archives' table, which proved a winner. We ended up with a colourful party (a cave dwarf, a merdwarf and a half-orc hobbit) and some interesting character motivation (both the last dwarf and the cleric got the Spy background).

Logistics and information gathering

Before they spent the rest of their gold, the players wanted to know about the dungeon. I explained the setting and gave them common knowledge about the Zenopus ruins. This is when they decided about a backstory for the adventuring group: they were coastal explorers who lost their ship in a storm. Their motivation for dungeon delving was therefore simple: boats are expensive.

Play started with a montage : the characters split up to gather information, buy equipment and recruit another cleric. I was generous with the info and gave them most of the rumours I had prepared, especially the false ones. Since this was a one-shot, I wanted the players to make informed choices.

Tough going underground

They elected to approach the dungeon via the smugglers cave. They got a rowboad from Portown's mayor (who happens to be a much older, Lemunda the Lovely) and sent Marsouin the merdwarf scouting ahead. Another good hunch, as he was able to notice the giant octopus without being snatched. He also noticed some kobolds dismantling old boats on the beach inside the cave (that's room M for those of you following at home). The party decided for a stealthy approach and attempted to row the boat as quietly as possible, hoping the octopus would stay in its hiding hole. I didn't want the first encounter to end in a TPK so I ruled there was a 4 in 6 chance of success.

This is where the ruleset's main flaw kicked in: no all-purpose resolution procedure. Holmes is a system that needs to be patched from the start.

Relying on infravision (which meant the clerics had to be led about) the adventurers landed their boat quietly enough to avoid being heard by the kobolds. They decided to play it safe and explore the southern exit. The passage led them to the river caves, where they found a dead giant crab and (surprise !) a swarm of hungry baby crabs. With half the group still on the other side of the river, the first fight of the night was relatively tense, even with 1hp monsters dealing only 1 damage. In the end the merdwarf lit a torch to frighten the aggressive seafood. (I rolled reaction here.)

Further exploration led the party to the sundial room (area L), where they immediately grokked how to get the mask to speak. They asked it about the dangers they should avoid at all costs. The mask told them about the undead wizard (who they assumed was Zenopus himself because of a false rumour they had heard) and its minions to the east. The party wisely decided to go the other way.

The experience gets less realistic from here. It was starting to get late and we all knew it was a one-shot, so caution was thrown to the underground wind.

One of the dwarves kicked the door, surprising a group of six hyena-men making camp in room H. Some heroes talked about running, but the door wouldn't lock anymore. Plus I think the players wanted to test their mettle against real monsters. The spy dwarf fled by himself, thinking his king wouldn't want to lose all the information gathered. (So, despite what his fellow adventurers said, he was not being a coward).

The rest of the party decided to defend the doorway. As most of the gnolls moved in across the river, arrows started flying. The hobborc thief caught one, survived it but kept firing. He was promptly killed by another arrow. Nevertheless, some tactical action and good rolling kept most of the gnolls out. One managed to get in and killed the cleric (platemail is great, except when you have 1hp). With all the gnolls but the two archers injured, the heroes resolved to charge in after throwing their oil flasks - the center of the room was turned into a fiery hell and both the gnolls were killed. Man, flaming oil is the ultimate weapon in Holmes! After that, the party had no problem dispatching the demoralised hyena-men, shooting some in the back.
Meanwhile, the spy dwarf was backtracking fast. He avoided the crab babies but was swept in the river, barely avoiding drowning and having to lose his hauberk. He managed to swim outside and I decided that he was able to climb the cliff and make it back to town.

We relied on fictional positioning as much as possible, but I couldn't always rule that a character was able to do something. Crossing the river together with enough time and a length of rope was okay, but when a PC crossed it in a hurry and without assistance, I came up with a roll-under mechanic with 3d6. (Why not d20? I don't know. It felt more old school and I figured it would give a better chance to people with above average stats). We used that rule quite a few times during the session.

It was 2am and we called it a night, but we agreed to say that the delve would have ended there, with the characters trying to make it back out (tough break, the kobolds on the beach had found their rowboat) with no treasure and grand total of 160 xp between them... There is a chance the spy would have brought back some help, but we'll never know.

Would I play again?

I don't think so. If I was to run old school D&D, I'd probably go back to the slightly more balanced and actually somewhat organised B/X rules. Or give Blueholme a spin. For the moment, I'm content to run Odd Dungeons, which has the advantage of considerably speeding up fights.

That said, it was a great experience for all involved, including me. I may set up other archeogaming sessions in the future. Also, these last few months I had been avoiding running games for health reasons, and Saturday proved that I'm up to GMing again. I know of a Lost City that will soon be explored again.