The Gem and the Staff 1 -- Erik vs Tower

(img courtesy of Wikipedia)

Here is my after-action report on my first run-through of the Dungeons and Dragons adventure module O1 - The Gem and the Staff. My plan is to write one of these when each of my players runs through, and at the end I will post my parting thoughts. I will try to avoid any spoilers in these reports.

My opinions on the module may seem inconsistent through this, I am going to be posting these as I go. I will probably also post some (spoiler) thoughts on how I would change it, and maybe write up how to change it for d20.

I stumbled across reports of this module online, in some OSR blog or another's comments. Module O1- The Gem and The Staff seems to be commonly held as an example of a one-player module. I don't know if, or how many others might exist.

I picked it up used via amazon for nine dollars (including shipping), so it seems to be very commonly available, even though it was published in 1984.

The Module requires the "expert set", according to the included map/dm's shield, but I was able to run it using Mr. Mentzer's Basic Set and Labyrinth Lord (just the to-hit tables and saving throws). Labyrinth Lord would probably be enough.

I used the od&d saving throws and thief skills, but converted to ascending armor class.

The module is time-limited, and is designed for competitive play by including a scoring sheet, which allows 33 possible points, weighted towards intelligent and sneaky play. There are two adventures included, and I plan on running each of my players through both of them.

I am trying to avoid spoilers in describing this, so please forgive any vagueness. The Tower is designed to be a challenging, but not completely unforgiving adventure. There are a number of obstacles requiring percentile rolls, and in many cases failure means the player will need to try an alternative method of solving a problem. Dead-ending is a very real possibility if the dice are in a bad mood, especially if combat occurs.
In one case I deviated from the rules, allowing one reroll on picking lock. Under original rules a thief may not retry a lock or trap until they have gained a level of experience.

Erik vs. Tormaq's Tower

Today I ran this module for the first time for Erik, a team-mate at work and a player in my regular 3.5 game.

We set out to play over our lunch hour, and managed to finish just under that time. The module has a listed 30 minute (actual) time limit, but it took about 35 minutes for Erik to finish -- he completed the module, but did not do anything which had a point value after the limit had elapsed.

Setup went smoothly, and we had started playing within about ten minutes of being settled down with the material. I did not bother using minatures, and the map book provided worked extremely well. Covering the unused side of the page was suggested, but there was only one real spoiler on any of them that I noticed.

I am trying to avoid spoilers in describing this, so please forgive any vagueness. The Tower is designed to be a challenging, but not completely unforgiving adventure. There are a number of obstacles requiring percentile rolls, and in many cases failure means the player will need to try an alternative method of solving a problem. Dead-ending is a very real possibility if the dice are in a bad mood, especially if combat occurs.
In one case I deviated from the rules, allowing one reroll on picking lock. Under original rules a thief may not retry a lock or trap until they have gained a level of experience.

Erik played, in general, very well. He struggled with a word puzzle(which cost him time), and he missed a few opportunities to improve his odds of success. He scored 14 out of a possible 33 points. He blamed the dice we were using (not his regular ones) for much of his misfortune.

Erik:

Having never played DND pre 3.0, aside from a brief 2nd edition stint in which i was unconscious the whole game. (who sends a level 1 good ranger into Zhentil keep I mean really?)

This was a nice look at "old school" DND. It certainly is a big deviation from today's version where there is a roll for everything. It was definately a different playing style. You had to really pay attention to all the details of the descriptions otherwise you would miss something important. I missed out on some things because I didn't hear the description right. Which brings me to a note, in 3.0 you can be reasonably sure you find everything there is to find if you roll a high number on your search or spot. However I quickly caught on in this module that I wasn't going to be getting any information unless I started asking questions about my surroundings. There was no, "I roll a 20 on search what do I find in the room", no sir.

Another thing of note is, don't make the GM ask you what you are doing. Describe exactly what your action is. Any time you give the GM lisence to determine what you character did is a time you can be thrown into an unforeseen consequence ie trap or some other catch. So if you think your character is moving silently say so, or if you imagine your character is checking for traps all along the way be sure to follow that up with a description, or your liable to be making a lot of noise and setting off traps.

Anyway, in summation this module is a proponent of Roleplaying and intelligent thinking over Roll playing and hoping you get above 13 on that d20.