The Lady and Tiger

Part 1

Session 2

The party picked up where they left off, returning to the mortal realm with their drive for finding the ring bolstered by meeting the princess and realizing the importance of their quest. They went north and entered Area 9. Noticing the ragged tapestry, they discovered Area 10 and moved to explore the hidden room. Another side note here, I’ve noticed that players really like discovering secret rooms and, although I have had to prod them to inspect their surroundings a little bit, once they get a whiff of secrets existing in the game they go after them like bloodhounds. It’s maybe not as talked about as other elements of dungeon design but providing the party with more places to explore as a reward for exploring works really well in my experience, and it’s made me want to include even more secrets in the games I run.

Anyway, within Area 10 they inspected the moldy table and wondered about how, exactly, it got so moldy. It was another area the dungeon left blank but honestly it’s a much smaller gripe than anything in the previous section. I think the issue I ran into was interpreting the mold as water damage since I would have assumed the wood was treated – again, not a big deal but since mold usually signifies danger it did feel a little weird as it actually poses no risk to the player characters.

Within the drawer the party discovered a book within containing a hint to the puzzle sealing off the ring. However since they already met the Princess this hint was redundant. I would generally consider redundancy a good thing when it comes to hints for a mandatory puzzle but I also think having a mandatory puzzle is probably setting yourself up for a bad time in the first place. Not to mention the Princess, who is simply sitting in a tower and easy to access, provides two pieces of information required for solving the puzzle while the hidden room requiring the party to explore and interact with the game world only provides one.

The party also doesn’t know about the puzzle at all yet, which seems somewhat backwards to me. Instead of opening up with an all but assured fight to the death the dungeon could have instead led with the sealed puzzle room leading to the ring. That way the party is immediately made aware of the obstacle that blocks them from what they came to the dungeon for and can explore the rest of it with more intention.

Afterward flipping through the book and determining it wasn’t something they needed, the party spent some more time investigating the room, discovering the lockbox beneath a loose flagstone and the caved in exit to the northwest. The lockbox highlighted an issue with using Knave 1e for one-shots of OSR content that I had noticed in a prior session. Because players don’t select their character’s starting equipment, a character only has a 5% chance of starting with lockpicks. This means that parties can find themselves unable to interact with locked objects in the dungeon through no fault of their own and that doesn’t exactly seem right. I have been using the optional rule to let characters eschew armor in order to begin with a single random spell so I may do something similar for simulating selecting a Thief PC. This feels like it goes against the core ethos of Knave however. I’ll take a look at 2e one of these days and see if that’s been resolved there, but it’s been point of frustration multiple times now.

While the party was investigating the room, a couple of skeletons wandered in as a result of the random encounter table. The random encounters in Winter’s Daughter tend to not be violent which is good, but it does feel like they lack some oomph. This ties to some of my comments in Part 1 about the lack of tension, but again this may only be noticeable in the GM seat. The skeletons was covered in a slime and were waltzing while levitating off of the floor which makes for nice imagery but doesn’t really require the party’s intervention or attention. The reaction roll indicated that they were nonviolent and invited the party to dance and here I ran into an issue as a result of my choice to run the adventure while also reading it for, essentially, the first time.

The two above blocks are located on the same page but on opposite sides (top left and bottom right respectively). I flipped to the page containing the skeletons in order to learn what they were and determine how they interacted with the party, but because I only did so in order to glance at the text within the Floating Skeleton sub-header, I completely missed the actual effect of the slime. Now this is definitely my fault, especially since slime vapor is bolded (albeit within a parenthetical) but I did feel some frustration as the earlier slime in the adventure seemed to do nothing but serve as set dressing. It didn’t ruin the session but it did reinforce the feeling that, regardless of how an adventure is formatted, giving it a solid read at least once in its entirety is probably for the best. Obvious to many of you, but I picked this up to fill in for a regular session on relatively late notice and so I prepped it much less thoroughly than I normally would.

After that diversion, the party moved to clear out the dirt and rubble in the collapsed exit, startling a group of lamprey-like creatures and initiating combat. Moreso than the fight that welcomed the party into the dungeon, this felt particularly lethal. The enemies inflict a lasting poison to characters that requires water to clear off (another instance of Knave’s character creation making life difficult for the players) and I ruled that, in the absence of water, the characters could spend a Main Action (effectively giving up their attack) in order to use dirt to rub away at the stinging acid. Things snowballed pretty hard when a member of the party went down but luckily they were able to pull through and prevent any fatalities. The downed PC in question had their health reduced to exactly 0, lucky since characters in Knave only go die when their HP is negative and only go unconscious at 0.

They exited the dungeon through their newly excavated passage and patted themselves on the back for discovering another method of ingress into the barrow. This is another element of OSR gaming that I feel deserves to lauded more frequently- discovering alternate entrances can be just as exciting as discovering secret treasure. This is especially true when the dungeon’s layout actually matters and parties find themselves caring about just how long they have to spend down in its hostile darkness.

After pawning off some of their starting goods, the party got some rest and restored their HP as per Knave rules. Here’s another example of how system affects play, since in Old-School Essentials the characters would have only recovered 1d3 HP upon a single night’s rest and may have required multiple nights. This might not seem like an important distinction, but if the party had instead rested for a week as opposed to a day I would have felt much more pressed to restock the dungeon due to the time elapsed, which could have resulted in a few surprises for the players when they made their next delve!

The players quickly jumped back into the dungeon, entering through the door they’d last discovered. They quickly made their way to Area 12 and came across the twin hound statues guarding the door. This sequence felt a little weird to me, but luckily the players didn’t run into any complications. I don’t dislike the framing of the scene with the old knight’s dog statues guarding him in (un)death, but the way the trap works doesn’t feel right to me.

If the party attempts to open the massive doors without speaking the name of the knight’s loyal hounds, the statues animate and attack. The dogs are chained to the door and can’t leave the room, so parties that trigger the trap can leave (hopefully after winning initiative). But by triggering on the doors being touched, it feels pretty punishing for a dungeon that seems to be aimed at new players. I worry that it can result in the wrong lesson being learned, and the door being locked unless the riddle is solved seems to be a big enough roadblock that adding on a hazard seems unnecessary. Especially because a party with the information may interact with the door first, entering into a combat they have the “key” to avoid. I suppose that may be a bug or a feature depending on your perspective, however.

Regardless, my players quickly identified that the dogs were the same mentioned by the Princess and spoke their names before interacting with the door, avoiding the issue entirely. They entered into Area 13 and swiftly met with the ghost of Sir Chyde. Some party members doubted if the ghost was genuine but after he told them of the ring and gave them his blessing most of their doubts were abated. From there it was a short romp back to the Princess’s chambers and the two lovers were reunited. The ending felt a little abrupt, as there wasn’t a large distance for the party to navigate between the two and there weren’t any real hazards to speak of either. Still, the players enjoyed the finale and were surprised to be offered a single wish on top of the treasure provided.

The party wanted to use their wish to prevent the Cold Prince (the Princess’s father and the fairy lord who waged war against the mortal realms) from threatening the mortal world every winter. The Princess was shocked by the generosity of their wish but unfortunately, as the daughter of the Prince, she lacked the power to prevent her father’s actions directly. In exchange the party decided they really, really liked the fairy mushrooms and wished for a mystical planter and/or seed starter that would work in the mortal world. I was a little worried because the wish put the players on the spot but they rebounded very well so no major time was wasted.

Closing Thoughts

All in all, I really enjoyed running the adventure. The dungeon was a solid length and provided a good amount of knobs for the players to turn but didn’t overstay its welcome. I did feel that it seesawed between danger and safety a bit too much but I don’t think the players really felt that way, so it seems like if it is an issue its almost entirely one on the GM’s side (unless the dungeon becomes a multi-trip destination then you may have to do some work to prevent this from becoming a complaint). I can see why the adventure is recommended to so many although I do feel that, as fun as it is, it doesn’t necessarily provide a great entry point into dungeon crawling since the party hardly had to content with random encounters or maintaining light sources since the dungeon is so short, although the map does contain two loops and has a second point of ingress. I’m a huge fan of the formatting, at least how its used in this adventure, and its given me a lot to think about in terms of how I want to write and prep dungeons for my own campaign. I had a great time, so did my players, and I’d run it again or recommend it without reservations!