Stonehell Session 3 (January 23rd) — Same Campaign, Entirely New Party

 

On January 23rd, we held the third session of my Stonehell campaign. The really interesting thing about this session is that none of the three players present had played in the previous two sessions. Same continuity, completely different party composition.

Because the earlier party had already cleared the gatehouse and was working on the valley level prior to the holidays, I had a hired guide take this new group directly to the dungeon entrance. Between the holidays and a death in the family, my games had been on hold long enough that I didn’t want to waste time re-treading old ground.

There were supposed to be three other players as well - veterans of my Stonehell campaign - but one got sick, and the other two were stopped by the massive blizzard hammering Oswego County to our immediate north.

So this entirely new party - too poor to hire any retainers - went into the deep dungeon on their own: a fighter, a magic-user, and a thief.

They ran into a few weird things down there. No spoilers from me.

They had a pair of combat encounters. The first one they handled like pros: not a single hit point lost.

The second encounter was one they chose to initiate. They had a good plan, and they felt like they needed to push through that area to get where they wanted to go, following some vague directions they’d been given. But the dice turned on them hard. Their Orcish opponents passed three morale checks and dropped two-thirds of the party to exactly 0 HP, with the third character going down to around -2.

I ruled that the Orcs were impressed by the party’s fighting skills and attitude, and took them captive instead of finishing them off—intending to ransom them.

A few days later, the situation ended with a prisoner exchange at a neutral site.

I didn’t punish the magic-user for hitting -2, beyond giving him a cough. It is cold and flu season, and he’d just spent time in an Orcish jail. This is the one pass he'll get from me.

First Blog Post of 2026

 

Mixed Bag of a Year

To say the least.

This was my last full year as a landed baron in the SCA, so I’m “retiring” into more gaming. Pretty much the only game I talked about over the last year was my much-anticipated Season 3 of the Black City Vikings campaign. It never got off the ground. More or less DOA - too many people said they’d be there, and then only two actually showed up.

I took some advice and started looking for gamers rather than SCA folks to fill the seats around my table. It’s a little leaner, but I started a new Stonehell Dungeon campaign during the holiday season, which is probably the worst time of year to launch a new D&D game. I’m running it with B/X. It was designed for Labyrinth Lord, back when that was the darling of the OSR, so it fits together well. I’m using OSE books at the table, though, because using the 1981 originals feels pointlessly, and potentially, destructive to those artifacts. We’ve gotten two sessions in so far, and it’s going well: a good mix of older players returning to the style and younger players who actually prefer it. A couple of veterans of my previous campaigns, but mostly new blood.

Tim Kask died. That pretty much signals the end of an era. I only knew him through social media, but we got along well. We shared a lot of values. I respected the hell out of him even when I didn’t fully agree with him.

My father-in-law died too. We found out yesterday. He lived alone and hadn’t answered calls or texts for a couple of days, so the sheriff did a wellness check and found him dead. He’d been planning to sell the house in the spring and move into assisted living. He’d had a couple of strokes over the last few years, so it made sense—but he never wanted to leave the house he built and raised his family in. So maybe this is a win for him. He got to end things on his own terms.

Rest in peace, Martin La May.