GrellCon 2026 is shaping up to be something truly special. If you enjoy Classic D&D—from the original 1975 game through the Advanced iterations of the early ’80s, and all the retro-clones they’ve spawned since—then this is the event for you. This is Britain’s only old-school D&D convention. Expect graph-paper mapping, potion-quaffing, longsword-swinging, spell-slinging, all-out classic Sword & Sorcery adventure gaming. Miss it and be forever regarded as a normal-human torchbearer. You peasant!

More than half the tickets sold in a single day, so now’s the time to buy yours before they vanish like your level-3 MU during a TPK in progress. What are you waiting for?! GMs, bring your A-game—I’m told nearly half of all sign-ups have already thrown their hat into the ring. I’m already dipping into the adventure library and prepping a few classic modules that will absolutely savage you.

Oh, and while you’re at it, you can snag a poster of that sweet Grell illustration by the con’s organiser and ENNIE Award-winning illustrator Andrew Walter when you buy your ticket. Click the link below to buy them now.

Grogmeet is not really a convention, but a meet-up of like-minded folks and fans. Everyone I met there was an absolute diamond. This year my buddy James Knight couldn’t make it, and he was sorely missed.

This year Grogmeet was hosted at a new venue, the Brick House. All the games were thus hosted under one roof, and this made the experience much smoother as there was no necessity in having to race around the city to find multiple locations.

The event was sponsored by Chaosium, who are celebrating their 50th year in business. To celebrate, a load of RPG goodies were given away to the GMs of the event. I managed to win a collection of Pendragon adventures, which was pretty nice having just backed their reprint of the Classic Boxed Set. Cheers Chaosium!

Now, onward, to record the great games I played.

Party like it’s 1975: The Original Tomb of Horrors Tournament Dungeon

I finally got the chance to play through the Tomb of Horrors, the world’s pre-eminent FU dungeon. Not only was it ToH, but it was the original 0e tournament module. Six of us turned up to give the dungeon our best shot. We were handed a pile of little brown book pre-gens, of which I selected a 4/4/4 Elf Fighter/MU/Cleric. Chris Sharp was our Dungeon Master, and as we all sat down to select our characters and equipment, we had a fun chat about the different interpretations of multi-classing from the original game. There were no thieves, I believe. This was as old school as it gets.

I was selected to be the caller, and we set off, ready to do as best we could.

Now, full transparency, I have read the 1e Tomb of Horrors module. There are probably few AD&D fans who haven’t. When I was selected as the caller, I made an agreement with myself to try and not use my insider knowledge where possible, and follow the lead of my other players. I also hoped that the LBB incarnation of the module would be significantly different in its design to the 1e version I had read. As the game proceeded, however, I found that my memory of the dungeon was not particularly great. There were certain elements I remembered well (who can forget that giant green satyr head), but there were many elements I had essentially no knowledge of.

Over the course of four hours we stomped through about 50% of the dungeon. Almost getting trapped in a false entrance. Smashing plaster from walls, we found secret doors. We busted up four-armed gargoyles. We found some nice treasures, but most were lost in the FU tricks and traps. The amulets we gained from the gargoyles were lost when a PC wandered through a portal and was teleported to the start of the dungeon without any items, totally naked. We found a ring of X-ray vision, only to sacrifice it to a ring-shaped hole in a wall, thereby opening a door. I opened up some church pews only to get us all blasted by poison gas. A highlight was being shown the original 1975 illustrations of dungeon elements, which were pretty amateur but charming.

This was a great game and a fantastic kick off to the weekend.

Pulpen Heroes

When I was selecting the games from the sign-up sheet, I made sure to choose at least one game I knew nothing about. That game was Pulpen Heroes. The system was a superhero RPG published in 1984 by Games Workshop called Golden Heroes. This particular scenario was based in an alternative 1920s Britain where the Great War had never happened. It was inspired by the pulp fiction of the period. Characters like Buck Rogers, The Shadow, The Spider, and Doc Savage were our fictional touchstones. I’ve never played a superhero RPG before, but I love this period’s adventure fiction, so this sounded like a great way to try it out. Our GM was Mark Willoughby, and once I sat at the table I quickly became aware that not only were the majority of the players at the table old hands with the system, but one of the game’s designers was with us; a gent named Simon Burley.

We started the game by rolling up our Heroes, starting with our attributes, and then a series of superpowers from a random table. We then had to try and invent an origin story that made sense of all of these powers, and that sounded feasible. I rolled: cosmic rays, stun gun, precision strike, and tough skin. The character I came up with had a criminal background, and was once a grave digger and labourer who witnessed a meteor strike. Attempting to open the meteor with his handy spade, he was blasted by cosmic energies as an alien intelligence possessed his implement. Thereafter, he was able to shoot cosmic rays from his tool, and when wielding it could deflect projectiles and strike with it meticulously. And so he assumed the alter ego: The Spade. Everyone else winced at my name choice, and I chuckled.

The game proceeded and we uncovered a conspiracy to import strange lotus flowers into the Empire from the Orient. There was plenty of combat, the kind that has individual initiative and takes a while to get through. But it was all good fun. There was a lot of back and forth between the players who knew the system well. The combat resolution system seemed to involve the rolling of a d20, adding your character’s combat prowess, then adding the target’s armour class. If the resulting sum was 18 or higher, you hit. The number of actions available were equal to a number of “frames,” which essentially sounded like segments in AD&D. We were superheroes, so essentially always had a greater number of frames than the enemy, and always went first in initiative. Given the genre, this made sense. The conspiracy led us to a secret base below an import warehouse, full of cloaked cultists, dope fiends with super strength, and giant man-eating apes. Nice.

It was a fun game, and the combats were pretty exciting. The GM also brought out the original boxed set including original maps. He also had a great collection of pulp miniatures, which were great. I would play this game again.

Tortured Souls Fanzine 1983 – TOMB OF QADIR

When it came to selecting which game I would run this year, it was never not going to be AD&D (Grogmeet GMs can only run one game). I wanted to select something from the rich history of British AD&D, which definitely had its own flavour. The obvious choices would have been an early adventure from White Dwarf, or perhaps Imagine magazine. Then there were the famous D&D zines of the time, The Beholder or Dragon Lords. Finally, I settled on an adventure location from the semi-pro magazine Tortured Souls. Why? It seems the most metal of all of those mentioned. It also seems to capture best the style and tone of what British AD&D was all about: lethality, asymmetry, a wargamer’s eye view, moral ambiguity, mystery and investigation, and finally some skepticism of high-level play. It was these tastes that would partially fragment British game design away from fantasy adventure gaming and towards systems like Call of Cthulhu and BRP generally, eventually leading to the hybrid system Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I also own a copy of Tortured Souls no. 1, so I would bring that with me to Grogmeet and let people flip through it. It has amazing art.

I selected the adventure location, The Tomb of Qadir, which is essentially a desert goblin lair on the ground level, and below there is the eponymous tomb: a linear dungeon filled with deadly traps. The document presents the location as-is, a fairly detailed faction and building, and then recommends the DM design a scenario with it. That word “scenario” shows heavily the influence of RuneQuest at the time, which was built on faction-orientated battle scenarios. If anything, Tortured Souls is a great example of the BRP-AD&D play culture fusion going on at the time. Later issues of TS had dual-statted adventures. The magazine has a shockingly low treasure count as well, which points towards a mud-core play culture that stigmatises level advancement (hello Thatcherite Britain).

When I prepared the module, I decided to create some handouts to mitigate the time it would take to describe the location: a multi-level temple complex with plenty of verticality. I also created a hex map of the surrounding area. Since the temple was filled with 75 goblins, the scenario could easily move into wargaming territory.

Below you can see scans of the original layout map and my handouts, which make the area much easier to understand at a glance. Maybe they might be useful for others.

The hooks I gave out were thus: a high bounty had been offered to recover a prisoner held in the lair, and a sage would pay handsomely for any artefacts or antiques from the temple’s tombs, the history of which was shrouded in mystery.

With that, I generated thirteen player characters of varied race and class, each with a different magic item. My reasoning was to give the scenario win conditions (save the prisoner and collect artefacts), and then allow the players to select the characters they felt would offer them the best odds to do so. I didn’t know if they would carry out a frontal assault, an infiltration, or something else like a flanking manoeuvre. I was ready for them to try anything.

These were my players and the characters they selected:

• Andrew played VURGOYD, Elf, MU/THF 3/4, CN
• Max played MOONMERE, Half-Elf, CLC/FTR/MU 3/3/2, LG
• Gav played BERNARD BRECHT, Human, FTR 4, NG
• Paul played WILLOWLEAF, Halfling, FTR/THF 3/4, CN
• Dan played GOLIN, Dwarf, FTR 4, LG
• Toby played TORELL, Half-Elf, CLC/RNG 3/3, LG

Some henchmen were requested also, and so we rolled on the DMG hireling table. They procured three slingers, four archers, and three sergeants.

To start, we rolled which side of the hex they would enter. Then we rolled random weather. The party approached from the SE, and there was a dry wind blowing from the NE.

To start with, Willowleaf and Vurgoyd marched ahead of the pack, using their good surprise odds to their advantage. Surmounting the high terrain in the east, they observed the temple ruin for a while. Eventually, they decided on cautiously approaching the central hill through the long grass to its north.

On their bellies, they crawled up the hillside of the complex and got a good view of the northern face of the structure. Then I placed my handout on the table and described what they saw. Seeing that there was a large collapsed portion, the two thieves again sallied forth to investigate.

The collapsed area showed no mode of ingress, so Willowleaf drank their invisibility potion and climbed up the interior of the structure onto the flat roof. They soon discovered that the stone wall was porous, halving their climbing odds. Still, they made it, and peered through some arrow slits to observe three goblins with crossbows on lookout.

They came back down and let everyone know. Meanwhile, the dwarf Golin marched into an overgrown garden area to the east and began hacking back the weeds. This was spotted by the goblins, and so the bell in the tower began peeling with a dozen rings.

The goblins were alerted.

The mass of hireling slingers and archers began peppering the belfry, and fire was returned.

The party bashed down a door on the north of the structure, dashed inside, and began to barricade themselves inside. Through another door they heard the gnashing of teeth and the howling of wolves. In the ceiling of their current chamber, they saw a trapdoor, which they began attempting to bash open.

Meanwhile, Willowleaf had climbed back up onto the first level, thrown their backpack loose, and squeezed through an arrow slit. Inside, they saw down through a balcony into the temple’s interior. There were at least two dozen goblins handing out spears and led by a burly bugbear.

Now this was rapidly devolving into a sort of skirmish wargame scenario. The goblins exited through the main doors and began to sweep around the temple, rushing onto the archers on the hill. The party had opened the shutters of their room and were throwing axes, javelins, and flaming oil at them as they passed. Vurgoyd had taken a position from the upper level beyond the trapdoor, but as they moved around from window to window with their sling, they came upon a giant spider hidden amongst some rubble. They were bitten, and the poison did its nasty work. Torell rushed to their aid to cast neutralise poison, and Bernard dashed to their defence with their dancing longsword.

The temple then became surrounded by a mass of goblins, who returned sling fire. A large ranged scrum was developing whilst goblins desperately tried to bash down the doors into the party’s chamber.

Willowleaf, being inside the temple proper and invisible, saw a giant secret door open behind an altar, with another twenty goblins sallying forth, led by a half-orc and a shaman. As they passed, she went beyond the secret door, downward, and using their infra-vision, and plenty of exploration, they came upon a prison room where a poor lad was being tortured. She backstabbed the jailer, killing him, and rescued the prisoner, though discovering him reduced to a babbling idiot bent on revenge against any goblin within sight.

This was all occurring as the battle outside raged on. The archers on the hill were all wiped out. The exchange now became a concentration of missile fire through the temple windows. The party barricaded inside, the goblins outside. The shaman fired magic missiles into some party members, who were now running low on their missiles. But a decisive round came when the shaman began casting, and so too did Moonmere. With spells announced, we diced initiative and it was a simultaneous round. The shaman’s spell was web, Moonmere’s was command. Command was the quicker of the two, being one segment.

“Say the command word now!” I demanded, as the players were all shouting their recommendations to Max.

“Betray!” Max said. And I smiled—a genius move.

I diced the shaman’s save in front of everyone. An 8. A fail.

“The shaman’s spell completes, and he points his hands at the feet of the half-orc beside him. A giant mass of tangled web envelops the group. They are all caught in a web!”

The players roared. The last of the party’s oil supplies were lit and thrown down. A great mass of goblins died in the burning web. The shaman also. But the half-orc chieftain lived. The remaining mass of goblins and wolves failed their morale and retreated back to the desert hills to regroup. The half-orc leader arose and dusted off the blackened silk strands, then, hefted high a huge black maul in challenge.

Golin dashed forth through the window to meet him. The two clashed and began hacking at each other until finally, Torell came to the dwarf’s aid, and cleaved the chieftain in twain.

The prisoner then emerged, hanging onto Willowleaf’s shoulder as the party collected the measly silver coins of treasure. They thence marched off into the desert, victorious.

A great game and no casualties, though if the web had gone into the party’s room, that might have been another story. One player described it as “Meat and Potatoes AD&D,” which I took as a compliment since it was what I was trying to dish out. Several of my players had attended my game at the last Grogmeet, so it was great to play with them again. One player had never played 1e before, but seemed pretty enthusiastic about the system after it was all over, which is a win in my eyes.

Call of Cthulhu with Paul Fricker

After my game I grabbed a bit of lunch and excitedly sat down to play some Mythos Investigation with one of my favourite CoC designers. The sign-up said that this game was to be called ‘The Inn’ Crowd,’ but as Paul Fricker turned up, he mentioned he’d be running something else. I didn’t catch the title, but I believe it’s something in the works for an upcoming book.

Four players pulled up to TNT some fish men or die trying (most likely we would die).

We were handed a stack of pre-gens to pick from. All were professionally involved with Miskatonic University in some manner. I picked a librarian from the Orne Library who also happened to be a paranormal investigator with an unshakable belief in fairies. The others were a groundsman, a divinity student, and a science professor.

It had come to all of our attention that our good friend, one of the professors, had left a queer note with one of his colleagues. The professor wished to have all of his classes covered for the foreseeable future, as he would not be attending the university again. He had given the note to his colleague, and then been seen driving off towards the Arkham woods. We all knew that the prof’s wife had recently died, and so we immediately jumped to investigate, worried he might come to some harm. In his offices, we discovered a book of old fairy lore. The pages lay open to a rhyme, which pointed towards some sort of pact with a fairy queen involving marking runes on three trees.

My character, already a believer in gnomes and fairies (and probably some sort of Machenian), rushed to collect some implements of cold iron. The other characters were more convinced the professor was experiencing some sort of mental breakdown after the death of his wife.

We poured through his papers, and then dashed off to the woods, where he’d last been seen heading.

The first clue of strangeness came when we came upon a woodland path with a strange medieval gargoyle atop an old post. Our handyman PC, a frequent walker in these parts, knew it hadn’t been there only a week ago. Hmm.

We moved on, and soon came upon the body of the colleagues who had alerted us to the professor’s plight. It seemed he had gone on ahead to locate him. The poor fellow was ripped asunder, his entrails gathered on the branches of a tree and spread wide. This oddly seemed reminiscent of the image in the fairy book, which had long red ribbons held aloft by fairies.

Investigating around the body, we found another gargoyle statue, only this one was headless. The interior of the statue was filled with gore. Sanity checks were failed. Characters screamed.

Moving on, we found the glade with the professor, who was a gibbering wreck and yammering on about a wish and the red lady. Soon enough we encountered her, moving betwixt the trees. She came upon us and told us to walk into the light and make a wish. Around us, dozens of these small gargoyle-like creatures appeared.

Paul is very good at increasing tension, and he has a habit of creeping around the table and whispering things your character sees in your ear. A great technique I will steal for my next CoC game.

Eventually our divinity student decided to take the red lady up on her offer. He walked between the trees and made the wish to become king over all fairy folk. Well, within a few moments he started to split open, his flesh spewing a litany of black tubular limbs. Bro just turned into a Dark Young. I ran up to the red lady and thrust my cold iron pitchfork into her chest, but she merely laughed and disbursed into a cloud of black dust.

The Dark Young divinity student charged hungrily from the glade after us, and we were then using the chase mechanics to escape.

We reached the car, and I tried to punch a hole in the professor’s gas tank and push the car towards the charging beast. A bunch of good rolls and this plan was enacted. The car went rolling down the path, a trail of gasoline behind it. The beast was nearly upon us, and as we all hopped into the flatbed truck, a single strength roll to turn the crank laid between us and safety. The roll succeeded, and we drove away and threw a lighter onto the gasoline. An explosion sent the woods afire, yet the beast marched on. Luckily, a good drive auto roll had us escape to live another day. Survivors of the Black Goat of the Woods and down only one true believer.

Great game.

Jewels of the Becursed Cloudmaze

Come Saturday evening it was time for more AD&D. Six players arrived to have a crack at our DM, Andrew Walter’s, latest 1e dungeon. I had arranged before the convention to bring along my personal PC to have a crack at it. Ser Norbor once again marched out towards adventure after being one hiatus from Goldigger Bill’s Greyhawk campaign.

We were told that if we gathered enough treasure to level up our PC, then we could consider our delve a win. A great way to encourage players!

We were shown a side view illustration of a giant mountain. There were several exposed entrances into the mountainside, all at minimum three hundred feet above the ground level. Above that, there was a great wall of light emerging from the mountaintop. Above this, there was a huge plume of cloud, and descending down from the clouds was a mass of roots that grew into the mountainside. We were potentially looking at the base of a cloud castle. Our soul rumour was that those who flew higher than the mountaintop were known to be attacked by invisible assailants.

I was designated mapper, and Chris Sharp became our caller. We were given access to several fly potions and also a carpet of flying that could hold four. We also had several porters and men-at-arms in our employ.

So we set off. The party went up first using the carpet. We formed a beachhead formation on the lowest cliff ledge, then defended the area as our teams were airlifted up. During this time we had our first encounter.

Four slick-looking giant weasels emerged from the tunnel and attacked our rank of hirelings. Their coats glimmered with the promise of wealth. I charged in along with the other fighter of the party, a dwarf. Norbor’s blade sang, and beheaded one of the weasels. Yes, he has a vorpal sword! This marked the start of the mega-weasel massacre.

After slaying the weasels we gave their corpses over to our porters and told them to ship them down for skinning. Then we entered the mountain tunnels.

The main tunnels were twenty feet wide, which always makes me nervous about flanking manoeuvres. We passed a portcullis on our left, which seemed undefended but sealed.

We rounded a corner and moved west, coming upon a large infestation of giant rats. Ser Norbor charged into the fray, attacking five times and cleaving the rodents left and right with the mighty king blade. The curs fled.

Then we carried onwards and discovered the passage was recently bricked up. There was a smaller passage to the north. Whilst investigating the bricked-up area, we were surprised by two ogre guards. The battle raged a few rounds, and I was bitterly disappointed I did not lop off an arm or leg. One ogre fell, and the other made to flee, but we cut it down. Beyond there was a chamber with shells spread over the floor—an alarm system. Our thief went forth and found a dead-end chamber with some pits. Inside were prisoners.

We marched down there, and after talking with the prisoners we pulled them out. There was a royal dwarf and some courtiers. There was also a hulking Amazonian warrioress, to whom Norbor gave his maul and paid one of the men-at-arms a fine gem for his armour, which was gifted to her. Thus she joined our party and told us there were a great deal of ogres on this level.

We broke for a tactical discussion. We didn’t want to muck about with ogres—too dangerous, not enough incentive for treasure. Instead we wanted to find a path up to the next level. We set off.

Soon we found a secret door in a marble chamber. This seemed to lead to another secret door. Listening at that gave us a clue that the ogre lair was just behind the door. We avoided it and moved south.

We found a room filled with strange plants growing from the ceiling with large flower heads. Chris’ PC had a potion of plant control, so with a quick quaff we were through the tangle. Then we saw ahead a lair of giant weasels. We surprised them, and they were all asleep. We had earned a great deal of treasure from those previous pelts, so this looked promising. Andrew, who played our cleric, cast silence on their nest. We walked up, and each of us got to roll on the assassination table. Naturally I missed my roll, but the others succeeded. After a round or two we managed to slay the remaining few and dragged our pelts west.

We found a ledge hanging off the mountain. This one had ropes dangling off. Looking over the edge, we saw human corpses dried to jerky. We cut the ropes to rid monsters of their food but became dismayed when we saw a sack of gold loosened and tumble down the mountain. We left our pelts on the ledge, then marched back inside. We were surprised, however, that our men-at-arms in the rear were being dragged into a trap door in the floor. There, ghouls were lashing out. Our cleric destroyed them with naught but his piety and his holy symbol.

Next we found a seemingly empty room. But we soon found a secret door, and beyond there were three chests, each set into the floor. We were getting flashbacks from the Tomb of Horrors. These were also nasty traps. One gave a plume of hallucinatory gas. The next had a fire trap, which killed our thief. The middle chest had a lever to turn off the traps; naturally, we opened that one last. We did find a load of gold inside these chests, though. We bagged this up and marched back to the ledge. We quaffed a fly potion, gathered our fly carpet, and were off.

In total we gathered over 80,000 gp worth of treasure, the majority being very fine weasel pelts. That was enough for old Norbor to level up. Victory!

This was a great game, and I wanted to explore more. I would encourage Andrew to release his dungeon in the future!

Summary

I had a blast. Not only was there great gaming, but excellent conversation and copious drinking. On Sunday, I also got to play a game of The Fantasy Trip: Melee for the first time, which was awesome. Whether it was drunkenly chewing off Paul Fricker’s ear about how I would run the ultimate CoC sandbox game, or defending the use of chainmail in an AD&D campaign, I enjoyed every conversation.

There were even more Classic D&D games offered than last Grogmeet, and maybe the appetite for it is increasing. That would be good, because there is even more Classic D&D coming to the UK this summer in the form of a brand-new convention … GrellCon, July 4th, 2026! Tickets release soon.

A collaborative megadungeon experiment for the Classic Adventure Gaming community

I’ve been mucking around with Gary’s Appendix A and a large pad of A2 sized graph paper. What started out as a bit of fun generated something that looked particularly interesting. Particularly gameable. Perhaps the first level in a massive AD&D megadungeon. 

Once this was created and I surveyed the size of it, I soon found that I wouldn’t have nearly enough time to key all these rooms. The map sat on my desk for a little while before I had a bit of a brainwave. Perhaps I didn’t have to key this beast alone. After speaking to GusB from the Classic Adventure Game Podcast, I thought I would ask members of the CAG community to have a crack at keying this beast and see what they could come up with!

And so, I’m launching a project that I hope will be both fun and useful for the wider Fantasy Adventure Gaming community: to create Level One beneath Castle CrAG.

This will be a collaborative design effort, where contributors submit keyed rooms that I will then collate, edit, organise, and publish as a complete AD&D/OSRIC-compatible dungeon level. Once the text for this level is finished, it will be placed within my existing campaign world and immediately put into play for testing.

I’ve already begun sketching out the lower levels of the megadungeon, and I’ll soon begin inking Level One — so this is the perfect time for the community to jump in and help bring it to life.

What This Project Is About

The goal is simple:
To create a massive and classic AD&D Dungeon Level for the community, by the community.

This will be published as a free resource for others running AD&D or OSRIC.

Castle CrAG: What is it?

The concept of Castle CrAG torn from the heart of Adventure gaming: the Megadungeon below a Castle. This goes back to the formation of the hobby. The linchpin of any Fantasy Adventure Campaign is the multi-level, multi-themed, multi-faction, megadungeon. Think of Castle Greyhawk and Castle Blackmoor. It is something that can sit within a days journey from your campaign’s central city, somewhere PCs of any level can go to delve and gain treasure. A place ripe for adventure. 

For the moment we will be focussing on Level One of the megadungeon. A sort of litmus test to see if the project is feasible. 

The THEME of Level one is FACTION WARFARE. 

The dungeon itself sits below a Ruined Castle constructed during the darkest recesses of antiquity, and is famed for its evil and corrupting influence. The castle ruin proper is currently controlled by a high level magic user and their army of goblins. But this MU has been poisoned through assassination, and their grip on the castle wains. This is by design, for control of the castle ruin is in constant flux.

There are powers in the lower levels of the dungeon who manipulate the monsters of level one, and the castle ruin. They draw them forth en mass, with dark offers and promises. They encourage open warfare for supremacy of the level; for each Winter Solstice, a herald of the powers below – a powerful Anti-Cleric named Kal-Thule – ascends the great staircase (Key 1) to gift the supreme power of level one with a magical item of power. With this, they are granted licence to capture the castle ruin above and hold it for another Solar Year. By this scheme, the powers below have attempted to guard and obscure their plots with a layer of brutal and scheming upstarts. 

The agents of this lower power gain passage through the dungeon with the presentation of a yellow rune, one that all come to respect and fear, for challenging it’s right spells doom.

The nature of these lower powers, and their machinations, are currently not the focus of the project, but they should certainly be in your mind as you design the your factions and denizens. 

The ARCHITECTURE of Level one is as follows: 

• The North West quarter of the map is the FORGOTTEN HALL OF THE FACELESS ONE. This area was once a temple complex dedicated to Nyarlethotep in his form as the Faceless Pharaoh. Though perhaps no cult currently resides here, his statutory may still be present, even if defiled and forgotten. Corridors are generally 20’ tall and made of cleanly cut granite blocks. Arches are square and pillared in the Egyptian style. 
  
• the North East quarter of the map is the QUILL SECTOR. Long ago this was an administratum, but most remnants have been smashed away during constant battles through the years. There may still be some evidence of bureaucrat veneration, though perhaps graffiti mocks this openly. The corridors are generally 10’ tall and walls are barely covered with an ancient plaster, fallen to ruin. Arches are vaulted and capped with the brooding faces of scholars long forgotten. 

• The South West quarter of the map is the HOLLOW OF FORGOTTEN TRUTHS. Long ago this was some sort of reeducation centre. There are hints that an elemental cult or Old Way Druid faction overtook the area and constructed elaborate testing rituals here, but what they were have been lost to the sands of time. Constant war has blanched much of that away. Walls are rough and often constructed of field stone, the ceilings are 15’ tall. 

• The South East of the map is the BLEAK BARRACK. Warrior veneration and tableau’s of black mailed warriors are generally scattered throughout. Alcoves with black candle sconces offer prayers to long forgotten dark warriors, as are their charnel reliquaries.  Ceilings are 20’ tall but vaulted. The walls are generally constructed of small bricks and archways are vaulted with capstones of gargoyle faces. 
  
• The central area around Key 1 are hewn from large basalt blocks, and much foot traffic and evidence of passage are always found. 

Project Guidelines

To keep everything consistent and faithful to the old-school spirit, I’ve established a few ground rules:

1. No AI Use

All contributions must be entirely human-made.

2. Greyhawk-Compatible Tone

The dungeon should match the assumptions of AD&D’s implied setting:

• Fantastical medieval culture
• Sword & Sorcery atmosphere
• Classic monsters, magic, and treasure

Nothing too gonzo, sci-fi, or anachronistic. No new monsters. 

3. Dungeon Level One

If Castle CrAG is a successful project, there may be more levels in the future, a true megadungeon. But for now we will focus on Level One and see what evolves.
When you submit your room keys, please keep monsters, traps, tricks, and treasure appropriate for low-level adventuring.
Don’t worry — higher levels will come later.

4. Licensing & Rights

By submitting a room, you agree to allow me to edit and publish your work . I will publish Castle CrAG under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.

This means:

• You will be credited as the author of your room.
• The finished dungeon may be shared for free, anywhere.
• No one may sell it or alter the final document.
• My editing is for purposes of consistency, clarity, and layout only.

This keeps the project non-commercial, free to the community, and protected from misuse.

How to Contribute

If you’d like to participate, simply fill out the submission form:

This form collects:

• Your room key number
• Your description and details
• Monsters statline
• Your author credit information
• Your agreement to allow me to publish the above. 

The form will send the data to a spreadsheet that can be viewed in real time. This means that submitters can see what keys are free before starting to write and we can avoid duplicate keys.

There are plenty of rooms open — and I’d love to see the creativity of the CAG community shape this doomed, ancient place. Here are the roughly numbered maps. The Map with colours show faction areas of control:

You can view the Live Room keys here if you are a member of the CAG discord: https://discord.com/channels/1159906922032537611/1442569772813389954/1445850914580856832

Join In — and Let’s Delve Together

I can’t wait to see what the community contributes — and I’m looking forward to bringing your ideas to life on the page, inked and ready for the next band of adventurers.

Oh, and Dungeon Levels need empty rooms too! Don’t forget to submit them. 

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS FEBRUARY 1st 2026

The sign-up method at Cauldron is fairly unique. Game slots are released just before they are due to start. A large queue forms at the registration table, and this year the queue took up the whole entrance foyer and hallway of the building. This sign-up method has many merits and is preferable to pre-ticketing (which is what most conventions I’ve attended use). The problems are still the same, however — some desperate attendants will camp for the registration sheets to “release”. This is only natural with any finite resource, but it can be slightly wearisome. If I were to attempt to correct this behaviour, I would have three sign-up tables, three queues, and all registration sheets dispatched simultaneously without any foreknowledge by the attendants of which games they are queuing for. I think this would dampen the camping behaviour, though not eliminate it. Regardless, I camped the line early like a desperate schmuck, and managed to get a seat at a fantastic game.

SATURDAY BLOCK 1: The Blue Mausoleum

Eight brave souls turned up for Gabor Lux’s AD&D dungeon. We picked from pre-gen PCs; I chose a 4th-level Cleric and named him Osmund. Gabor outlined the dungeon’s history: once an imperial necropolis, long fallen to ruin, treasures still buried within. I loaded up on combat spells with a touch of utility.

He gave us two treasure maps: one marked “Lair of the Carnivorous Devourer,” the other a riddle of family names and crypts. Attronarch mapped. There was no caller.

We set off and descended a pillared foyer where skeletal statues held out stony palms. GusB, our thief, dropped a few coins into one hand; the statue’s fist closed, and the coins vanished. We advance, underpaying apparently, because searing rays blasted from the statues’ eyes and frazzled us.

Below, a vast chamber opened, corridors yawning from every wall and a pit at its centre. Thirty feet down, our light caught shattered statuary. Our treasure map hinted at a “pit in the ceiling.” Gabor shrugged when asked him to clarify if this was so, so instead we trusted our gut and set about descending the pit.

Pitons hammered, ropes loose, we descended into another hall, equally vast. Exploring the maze was a joy: twisting halls, stacked chambers, stone doors at every turn, a dungeoneer’s dream.
A chamber littered with wisps of black silk appeared next. Expecting spiders, GusB crept ahead while we braced spears in the hallways behind him. Instead—a warped caterpillar-man lunged, hungry for our flesh. We offered peace; his reaction roll said no. He rushed us, met our spears, and we robbed him of life. The creature’s lair held husks of deformed men in black robes. Cultists, likely. We pressed on, knowing now our potential foe.

By now we were hitting our stride with the exploration. Whizzing through rooms and taking careful glances here and there. 

One vault’s threshold lay guarded by dragon statues spouting Greek fire. Another, a sunken black-tiled room our Augury promised would bring great woe. We found a secret door into far more ancient portion of the dungeon, and Attronarch’s map began to bloom with interlocking levels.

My favourite encounter was a mad dwarf archivist hoarding “treasures” of junk. After some persuasion, he shared useful lore including directions to a cult temple (not the one from our map, we later learned) and a warning of the “black chamber of woe,” which was home to a faceless sphinx statue. Pure Lovecraft. We pushed on.

At the temple, degenerate cultists attacked. I tried to halt their retreat with Hold Person spell but one made its save and escaped for reinforcements. The hoard approached. 

We withdrew into a tight corridor, bracing for the charge. A hand grenade felled many of the degenerate cultists. We surveyed our map, and intuited a potential flanking manoeuvre about to hit us. I cast Protection from Evil on Attronarch’s fighter, who made a desperate rear-guard stand and saved us. The fight was brutal, but we emerged victorious, treasure-laden and miraculously alive.

What a game. Everyone was on fire, and Gabor ran it masterfully. This is what adventure gaming should be. The dungeon’s verticality especially inspired me. Back in England, I began designing my own eight-level dungeon, full of up-and-down interconnections.

Keep an eye out for The Blue Mausoleum—it should see an E.M.D.T. release soon!

SATURDAY BLOCK 2: The Setian Vault

This time I was behind the screen, running another dungeon from my milieu. It was the second time I’ve run it at a convention (the first being Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff). This delve went quite differently from previous play-throughs—and expertly by the players.

The Party

• Alex – Maelros Thum-Kelveth, Human MU 3
• Bäxta – Emeric de Sablecroix, Human Paladin 3
• Attronarch – Gravek, Human Ranger 3
• GusB – Feyric, Human Druid 3
• Misa – Wallace, Human Fighter 3

The players heard rumours: beneath Adder Hill lay a cave system and a strange statue. Local children dared each other to approach it—until a few weeks ago, when some found a glowing portal flanked by golden wands. Whispers also told of a temptress luring men to the caves, and livestock turning up mutilated.

Wallace was a crossover from a previous game at the con (one of Grutzi’s, I believe)—an unexpected but welcome addition. After selecting spells and marching order, they descended into the caves. Bäxta mapped.

Early on they met a giant snake. GusB cast Speak with Snakes, revealing a beast far more intelligent than expected, one that claimed to know how to walk on legs. Very odd. The group prodded and provoked it until it struck. Wallace was briefly constricted, but the party cut it down.

Beyond the lair they found a concealed door leading into a smooth water chute. After testing the slick tunnel, Attronarch sent his ranger down first, where faint light glowed ahead. The rest followed and entered a secret chamber holding a glowing triskelion monolith and a withered figure in a green robe seated on a bronze chest.

It didn’t register as evil—oddly enough—and rose creaking to speak. The undead being offered a bargain: within its chest lay a weapon that could destroy the Ophidian Font, a fountain said to turn men into snakes. The weapon—a reptile-slaying longsword—could end the corruption if driven into the fountain’s maw. In return, it demanded a draught of life essence from the swordsman.

I gave it my best Hannibal Lecter impression, which earned some laughs. Bäxta, as the stalwart paladin, agreed and sacrificed one life level in exchange for the blade.

They rode the water chute further down, reaching a bronze grate blocking the way. GusB cleverly used Stone Shape to loosen the frame, and with a few solid kicks it gave way. Below lay a watery tomb, sarcophagi at the base of a waterfall, glowing runes scattered across it.

Rather than disturb the grave, they pressed on. A Dancing Lights trap spell triggered a Magic Mouth. The light took the shape of a fiery man and announced via the mouth: “Dare ye come forth to accept the Geas of Flame?” The group called its bluff and entered. Inside stood a stone statue wearing a fine cloak—until they touched it. It animated, but was mercifully slow; they hid until it crumbled to dust.

Next, they found a door with an intricate locking mechanism. Being on the inside of the vault they could open the mechanism easily. The door swung in and revealed a petrified halfling—likely a thief who’d tried his luck from the other side.

Now in the dungeon proper, they pushed through tricks, traps, and ambushes. At one point snake-children—small serpent-folk that spat poison—flanked them. After several battles they finally reached the Ophidian Font. Knowing their enemy’s habits, Alex sent Dancing Lights down the corridor as bait. The snake-children charged out from a secret door, fooled by the alteration, and were quickly cut down.

Emeric advanced and drove the serpent-slaying sword into the cobra-shaped fountain’s maw. The Font exploded in a burst of light—evil vanquished.

On the way out they revisited the undead druid. Delighted with their victory, he returned twice the life essence he had taken before collapsing into dust.

A brilliant session. This crew utterly devastated the Setian Vault with precision and cunning. Though they never met the dungeon’s new mistress, they ended the power behind her reign. Down with Set!

I’ve submitted The Setian Vault to Fight On! Magazine—it should appear in one of the next issues if you’d like to run it yourself.

SATURDAY BLOCK 3: Attronarch’s Wilderlands

After dinner there was a live auction. I bought myself some nice Otherworld Miniatures but little else. All manner of treasures were being bid on, including a Collector’s Edition White Box and an absolutely massive Mystara haul. Cauldron is the place to go if you want to snag a rare slice of D&D history.

Then word began to ripple across the convention: a sign-up sheet had appeared with space for more than twenty participants. Twenty? Yes, twenty. Cauldron was about to get properly old school, because the mighty Attronarch had offered up a gigantic OD&D game. Even better, the session was going to be canonical within his long-running Wilderlands campaign, which is sitting at around 150 sessions as I write this.

As a long-time on-and-off player in Attronarch’s campaign, I was really looking forward to gaming with him again, and with the other regular players who had come to Cauldron. All of us regulars were gifted t-shirts printed with the iconic line, “Die like it’s Fucking 70’s,” which appears on his player-recruitment posters. We pulled them on and took a corner of the large three-table gaming space. This was the first time I’d rolled dice with many of these guys in person, including Attronarch, so I was genuinely excited.

This was not a regular Wilderlands session. We ended up with something like eighteen players around the table. Watching them all filter in, I wondered how on earth this was going to work. That’s a serious crowd. My question was answered almost immediately as Attronarch took centre stage and explained how he would run things. He was using only the three little brown books and the alternative combat system, and to keep things moving he would resolve combat in DEX bands instead of rolling initiative. He also asked that no one sit on his side of the enormous table. It became clear straight away that he has real experience handling large groups. He held the head of the table with total focus directed toward him. It was impressive, and soon the game began.

Several of us regulars were running our own campaign characters. I was running Gomm, an expert thief, but since thieves don’t exist in the 3LBBs I treated him as a simple fighter and cleric mash-up. The con players were given a stack of pre-gens to choose from. After that we were offered a set of rumours and adventure locations and were told quite plainly that we could do whatever we wanted. The whole session was being run like any other night in the Wilderlands. We huddled up to discuss options. With all these mid-level characters, I wanted to make a real dent in the campaign world. My proposal was to take our considerable force — complete with more wands and magic swords than any responsible group should be allowed — to raid the island citadel of Hara and slay its Barbarian Queen. In my opinion she’s real bad news and could use a dose of justice. This was not a popular option, since Theo’s character has sworn loyalty to the Queen of Hara and is technically her castellan. We voted, and the table settled on exploring the Windowless Tower, reputed home of an artefact of great power.

We set out across the map. It wasn’t shown to us, but Attronarch said he had the region memorised and could track our travel easily. After a few days trekking in the wilds we located the tower: a featureless cuboid structure sitting in a bleak gulley. I used a potion of gaseous form to descend into a nearby crag, which dropped about two hundred feet and appeared to be the only entrance into the caverns beneath the cube. We all made our way down on ropes, and chaos immediately began. We found a huge bell hanging on a chain, and while a group of players attempted to build a human and halfling pyramid to reach it, others wandered off into side chambers. Yes, the party split almost instantly. Before long we met our first threat, a massive purple worm that burst through a set of double doors and nearly swallowed several characters whole.

The energy was high and everything was moving fast. At last the real test arrived: combat with eighteen players. Attronarch read from his DEX list, asking each of us what we were doing. I chose to strike the creature. Others dove aside or attempted to flee. Then Billy announced his action: “I use my wand of fireballs.” The regulars all groaned “No!” in unison. Billy gave a grin like a naughty schoolboy. “I use the wand.” Theo muttered a curse in his direction. This was going to go badly. It did. The wand vaporised the worm and about half the player characters. The first major wipeout of the night. Laughter echoed through the hall. Fortunately, my character had been on the far side of the worm and survived.

Fresh character sheets were handed out, and the new PCs made their entrance by climbing out of the worm’s remains. A memorable debut. The explosion had attracted more purple worms; we heard them rumbling toward us. We bolted forward, and after some Scooby Doo style antics through winding tunnels we discovered a warded section of the dungeon that the worms could not enter.

Exploration resumed. Someone was mapping on a whiteboard, but I was too far away to read it; I spent the time leaning back and enjoying the unfolding carnage, and appreciating how smoothly Attronarch was managing this ridiculous crowd. There were some excellent comedic moments. My favourite was an enormous chained Iron Golem which repeated, in monotone, “I am the Iron Golem of Wishes. Step forward and make your wish.” Premier took the bait and stepped onto the dais. “I wish…” he began, before Attronarch cut him off with, “FOR DEATH.” The golem instantly smashed him into paste. Perfect.

Players wandered in and out. Anyone could sit down and run the gauntlet. The game continued for hours as we descended deeper into the complex. Another standout moment involved a giant mimic disguised as an iron spiral staircase. I nearly died there; after striking it with my sword I became stuck, and it tried to haul me in. It managed to grab Melan’s PC and began devouring him until another fireball from the wand and a timely levitate spell saved him.

As the night wore on, somewhere around one or two in the morning, I found myself struggling to concentrate and had to bow out, stumbling to my room and falling into a 1d6 turn coma (that’s a 0 hp joke.) The game continued well after I left, and I later heard more incredible tales from the hardy few who lasted until the end. Those survivors secured the EGG OF DESIRE, which has apparently been causing all sorts of trouble in the campaign ever since.

This was an amazing and genuinely unique experience. A true taste of early LBB-era play, handled with real mastery. I’ve heard rumours that Attronarch will run another massive-table game next year. It’s the sort of event you absolutely should not miss. Cauldron is one of the few conventions where games like this happen at all. The 2024 Badwall Braunstein was one of my all-time gaming highlights, and now the 2025 Wilderlands Megatable joins that list.

SATURDAY BLOCK 4: Tamoachan Rises Again!

The Attronarch game had been immense, running on until god knows when. We were sharing a room, and I recall him coming in during the sunlight hours. He must have gotten perhaps an hour of sleep before we all woke for breakfast and a bit more gaming. I think I might have raised my head from my cot and called him the D&D Terminator. In retrospect, perhaps the Iron Golem of Wishes would have been more apt. What a guy!

In the morning came the usual Cauldron awards: Best DM, Top Player, tournament winners, and Best Death. The scoring methods were explained to us, and I was awed by the Teutonic Procedure-Craft on display. KLM could learn a thing or two from the Cauldron scoring committee!

We packed up and got ready to leave the venue, but before we did, there was one last chance to game. These final sessions didn’t count toward DM points, which was a shame because I ended up playing in a belter.

I joined Elderthing’s game of C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Elderthing runs games in the ADDKON server, as I do, but his are exclusively in German, so I’d never had the chance to game with him before. I was excited to finally correct that.

I played Cair the Apprentice, a half-elf MU/Thief. We had our spells pre-prepared, and as the game began, we found ourselves in a hidden vault with poisonous gas swelling around our feet. Most of the group were experienced 1ers, so we quickly started using our slow poison and strength spells to buff the PCs’ skills.

Elderthing brought out his exquisitely painted 15mm miniatures, we established a marching order, and started smashing through dungeon rooms. Our goal: find breathable air before the game slot ran out—or die trying.

We did quite well. Only one of us died. We avoided unnecessary combat when possible, but we had to fight a giant slug-god and a Nereid. I took care of the slug-god with a fireball, caving in part of the chamber. The Nereid charmed me and the other male PCs, leaving the girls of the party to handle the battle.

Eventually, we reached breathable air just before the slot ended, securing the win. We probably didn’t take the optimal route, and I likely wasted a bit of time summoning a troglodyte to dig out a collapsed section, but it was all part of the fun. I don’t know if Elderthing scored us, but I’d love to find out. He was a phenomenal GM, running the game with encyclopedic knowledge of rules and spells. That’s the magic of Cauldron: everyone is tuned into the same game rules, which become like a stream we all float down together.

Elderthing has an adventure coming out in the next Fight On! issue, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Old School D&D fans absolutely have to attend Cauldron OSR Con if they have any sense whatsoever. Bring on 2026!

For those in the know, the Cauldron OSR Convention needs no introduction. It is the premier gaming convention for aficionados of early-TSR-era D&D. Over the course of three days we were going to set about conquering dungeons dark, deep, and dangerous — and have a bloody good time doing so.

I had only a few moments to take in the stunning surrounding architecture of the new venue before a random encounter with Attronarch in the courtyard led me to my dormitory. The rooms were small and wood-clad, somehow reminiscent of a dozen ’80s slasher movies misremembered. Exactly which cabin-in-the-woods film it reminded me of is uncertain. These bedchambers would not be dwelt in much, however, for the participants of Cauldron have approximately a 10% chance of being discovered in their lair during the convention. I dropped off my bags before gathering for beer and snacks in the dining hall.

There was a welcome speech by the magnanimous Settembrini. Then I had to dash off and prepare my first game of the convention.

Initial impressions: psionically blasted by an amazing location, awesome people, and overwhelming hype to start gaming. The night would be long — and for some, unending.

Adventure had begun.

FRIDAY BLOCK 1: THE COLISEUM OF THE LUNAR LION

I was DMing during Block One, which was a shorter three-hour session. The game I ran was lifted from my campaign world, only condensed to a single level — just enough for a one-shot I reckoned.

The concept of the adventure is that a Wizard Guild has paid the party to enter a complex to retrieve an item. The item is a scroll case stolen by one of their own rogue agents. This rebel MU escaped into the complex because it is incredibly well-guarded and usually an area of high-level adventure. However, after much research, it was discovered that the defences and traps within the complex were powered by lunar energy. And so, when a rare lunar double eclipse was due to occur, the Wizard Guild sent some expendable adventurers (ahem, the PCs) to collect the item whilst the defences were down.

This is a time-sensitive delve. I explained the nature of the scenario and the party goals to the players:

• Collect the scroll case — but do not open it.
• Do so within five in-game hours because…
• The Moon powers some terrible defences, including an Iron Golem.
• Take every bit of treasure not bolted down for yourself.

The Party

• Attronarch played Gorath Zult, Human Fighter 3
• Markus_cz played Wimble Hornbutton, Halfling Fighter/Thief 2/2
• Niko played Osmund Vire, Human Cleric 4
• Martin played Maelros Thun-Kelveth, Human MU 3
• AndrewW played Zhaelor Quen, Elf MU/Thief 1/2
• Theo played Emeric de Sablecroix, Human Paladin 3
• Billy played Bharak Blackbraid, Dwarf Fighter 3
• Sam played Gravek, Human Ranger 3

The Game

Once spells were selected, the party arranged their marching order. The characters approached the deep stairwell that led into the Coliseum. They’d arrived a little earlier than the beginning of the lunar eclipse. To make use of the time, the thieves crept down into the earth to espy the situation.

There they saw a large underground chamber with multiple tiered levels. At the centre of a sandy pit stood the Iron Golem, cast in the shape of a leonine Type VI demon. It spurted black puffs of smoke upward, and at its feet were several cultists bowed in supplication — their leader holding the reins of a warhorse.

The party hatched a plan to lure the cultists out of the area and trapped the stairs with caltrops and marbles. No luck on this plan, unfortunately. The party descended, carefully avoiding their own traps.

What took place next was a highly tactical battle. I had pre-drawn the area on my Chessex mat and we used minis with each hex representing 3.33 feet. A little different than I usually run the game, but this area was quite complex. On the battlements were archers, and hidden behind the now-inert golem was a fighter on a warhorse.

Battle began — the horse charged — but Gorath managed to slay the charging beast with his set spear before the lance could strike him. The rider fell from the saddle and was soon surrounded. Up on the crenelated battlements, arrows rained down upon the party. Fire was exchanged. The thieves stealthily climbed up to the shooters’ level and, with daggers, ended the threat.

In all, the battle took about thirty minutes and was very tense up to the last kill. These cultists proved tricky due to their unbreakable morale and higher ground. But the way into the dungeon proper had been opened. The party lit their lanterns and decided to climb the eastern battlements and enter through a vomitorium, rather than attempt the large lion-shaped double doors to the south.

The players tensed their jaws and set about tearing through this dungeon as quickly as possible. A DM loves to see it. They passed by many of the time-wasting baits I’d left them — skipping Mythos Tomes and sealed pots of slime — though they couldn’t help but interact with a helmet that had detected as evil. Inside was a Vargouille, quickly dispatched.

Soon the party found a chamber with a bowed floor, its ceiling bejewelled with a hundred moonstones. Brave Attronarch stepped forward, putting his character into the room and summarily falling twenty feet into a pool of water as the floor caved in. Down there, he was assaulted by mud men, but the party got him out quickly enough.

Onward they went, stealing gemstone eyes from statues and avoiding chain-pulling zombies. Eventually, an ethereal statue of a maiden holding a wand was discovered, draped in lush jewellery. How would they capture that treasure? Nobody knew — but they were here for a scroll case, and that’s what they were determined to do!

So onward they went into a nefarious-looking altar room. The cowled figure behind the altar looked up to reveal a skeletal face and silently pointed toward them. All but two of the party were teleported back to one of the starting rooms. The crypt thing charged the remaining characters. The teleported group rushed to their aid, but in comical fashion, Niko grappled the undead beast to hold off its attacks until the cavalry arrived.

After this, the game became increasingly chaotic as the players split into three groups to cover more ground. Real and game time were both ticking away — would they find the scroll case in time?

Eventually, one group did, after an incredibly lucky pick locks roll on a door. Inside they found the corpse of the rogue magic-user laid out on an embalming table. Unluckily, the gem in his fist contained his soul, which lashed out and possessed Billy’s character, Bharak Blackbraid.

Who said dwarves saved well against magic?

I took Billy to one side and gave him the lowdown:

“You are now SHIGAST THE SORCERER. Get that scroll case for yourself, no matter what. Oh yeah — and you have an invisible imp familiar in this room.”

It didn’t take one minute for the players to start wailing on him. Poor lad.

A few lone survivors crawled out of the Coliseum, scroll in hand. Many others had perished at the hands of shadows and imp poison. That’s the way it goes!

This was a very fun game and a great way to kick off the con — the players really kept me on my toes. Should any of my players want to join my campaign, even for a few session or two. Send me a message.

If you’re wondering why I’ve included several illustrations of the dungeon, it’s because I’ll be releasing this adventure as a Pay What You Want document on DriveThruRPG in the coming weeks (when I can find the time to properly edit the thing). All funds raised from module sales will be donated to Cauldron Con 2026! Consider this as good an endorsement of the convention as I can offer! 

FRIDAY BLOCK 2: THE BATTLE OF EMRIDY MEADOWS

After some delicious home-cooked food and several beers — which, of course, all come included in the convention’s price (yes, all you can eat and drink!), I gathered at the wargaming table to partake in a recreation of the legendary battle that lies behind some of Greyhawk’s key dungeons.

I had brought along some miniatures to donate to Nexus in the 1/72 scale that Settembrini and Ghoul use for their Chainmail battles. I was so impressed with last year’s Chainmail Naval Battle that I’d offered to paint up some of my unused miniatures for them. I’d been tasked with supplying some orcs, evil horsemen of the Temple of Elemental Evil, and some medium cavalry for the Kingdom of Furyondy.

Upon hearing I was donating these miniatures, my partner was rather pleased to see me pack that mass of figures into my bag. Unfortunately for her, the convention happened to be selling cheap grab bags of miniatures for five euros a pop, so by the end of the weekend all that freed-up space was refilled and stocked with tiny lead men. (She still hasn’t learned of this shameful behaviour — they sit secreted away in a shoebox in my home office.)

Once all the players were gathered, Setti gave us a fascinating breakdown of the original lore of the battle. After researching Gary’s description of Emridy Meadows and cross-referencing it with known military history volumes from the Gygax library, they’d managed to identify a few likely historical inspirations. One of those was the Battle of Tewkesbury, and when one reads about the preemptive charges by the orcs, it does share some parallels with the Duke of Somerset’s calamitous march at that battle.

I’d encourage Setti to make a post about how he designed this recreation, as it was all very interesting — though the quantity of fine German Pils I drank that night ensures much of it is now lost to me.

There were six players, and each of us selected a division to control. I chose to take control of the evil horsemen, since I quite liked the paint job I’d done on them. I also didn’t fancy commanding the orcs, knowing full well they were going to have a bad time with morale, infighting, and going up against dwarves and elves. The horsemen didn’t have much better odds, for formed across from my vast host was a giant line of pikemen. Why didn’t I opt to control the forces of good? For the challenge! 

I’ve used the rules of Chainmail enough to know that Gygax had a hard-on for Swiss pikemen (with co-morbid lusts for polearms), and they have some absolutely busted mechanics.  Unless I played very carefully — and had some luck — my forces would soon be decimated upon those pikes. I was also given a secret objective that could secure me a personal victory: I had to engage Prince Thrommel in melee and then make away from him and off the board. In the event of an evil-side loss, I might still claim an individual win.

The battle began and we all started taking our turns. The evil side had a plan to begin with, but this soon fell by the wayside as we had trouble organising our lines on the right flank. I pulled my horse tight to the right and requested some screening units push forward to break up the lines of pikemen. This didn’t happen, so I had to throw my own light horse against the pike wall in a desperate attempt to stagger the line and open up an opportunity for flanking.

Evil players began dropping out a couple of turns in, as it was getting late and many of them had been traveling all day. By the end of the battle only myself and the mighty Walid stood against the forces of good. My sacrifices had paid off: as I won a second initiative round, I had broken the lines of pikemen into three separate units and rushed some horse behind them. With the sounding of a horn, my riders encircled the pikemen and crushed them to naught. The right flank of the Furyondy army, its entire detachment of pikemen, were decimated. Bring me back my legions! The printed name ‘Gygax’ on the Chainmail rulebooks before us began to miraculously run with rivulets of blood. 

Walid had summoned a fire elemental, and with it slew the Prince of Furyondy. History had been irrevocably changed! The Temple of Elemental Evil was victorious!

This was a great deal of fun. Settembrini did a really great job of developing and judging the battle. The game went on until after three thirty in the morning. Afterwards I staggered back to my room and collapsed in my clothes into a deep, dreamless sleep. Even the jet-engine-loud snoring inside our bedroom could not rouse me. I was content. 

First day impressions: Raw Adventure Gaming Awe.

In my next post I will cover play reports for Saturday and Sunday. Fight On! 

I expected puns, ponderous mapping, and possibly we would discover if Dwarven women had beards or not. (Spoiler: they do!)

The Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff Convention was in full swing. Competing with my evening slot on Friday was the famed Convention Curry Night, which had its own sign-up sheet. I remember thinking: what game would tempt a player away from the lure of vindaloo and lager?

Well… what’s spicier than a Glory Hole?

I’d picked up the Judges Guild module maybe a year earlier, cheap on eBay. If I’m honest, the title alone sold it. A quick skim revealed there were bits I’d never use. Without spoiling too much, there’s a section where PCs can find garbage cans, baseball bats, and flashlights. Artifacts from a ‘modern’ past.

Still, the core dungeon looked strong. A sprawling mega-dungeon focused on faction play, with rival groups exploring the gemstone mines outside the City State of the Invincible Overlord. That alone made it worth a spin.

I loaded up my event onto the schedule, and soon after Matthew — the organiser of OBWS, lovely bloke all around — asked if he could put a disclaimer on the game listing:

“There is no X-rated content in this game.”

Of course! The idea only added to the absurdity of the module’s name.

Lewis Pulsipher reviewed the Glory Hole in 1982:

“This was a decent idea, for the most part, but inadequately produced.”

How you butchered my boy, Lewis.

Well, I was about to find out for myself. Five players had signed up.

Game Prep

Unlike The Setian Vault, which I wrote myself and have run in my campaign, this dungeon was totally alien to me. I’d selected it before even finishing a full read-through.

I’m confident at winging things, but I sat down properly in the weeks leading up to the con to give it a full comb-through.

And there were… issues.

• It’s written for the Judges Guild Universal System, which is basically D&D with the numbers filed off. No big deal at first…
• Until I noticed the monsters were D&D-adjacent — but not quite. Gargoyles in the module, for instance, didn’t require magic weapons to be hit. “Ettins” were renamed multi-headed ogres and had different stats entirely. There were plenty of unique monsters.
• There are tons of factions, all with plans. But the NPC stats are in one section, and the encounter text in another. Not ideal for con play with all that potential parsing.
• The place is huge. Would this even work as a one-shot?
• It recommends a party with a combined 50–60 character levels. That probably presumed a large table of players with mid-level PCs. I didn’t have that.

But hey — I had sign-ups, and I’m not one to back down from a challenge.

So I said: fuck it. Generated some level 10 characters from osricrpg.com, and slid up to that Glory Hole to show it who was boss. To help the players out, I pre-selected the spells for the casters. I also made notes for segment casting times and durations for each spell. I wanted to minimise looking up rules as much as possible during the game.

I decided to use the monsters as written in the module. I skimmed the NPCs, started making some faction notes, but eventually said: to hell with this, I’ll improvise.

Fast forward to Saint Patrick’s Irish Club. Friday evening. The sun is setting. Dark forebodings. I sip my Guinness. Equally dark. My eyes are dark also, though not through choice. I’m wearing my sunglasses. Why? Because a few days ago I lost my prescription glasses. This is the only way I can see.

Sunnies in a darkened hall probably had everyone thinking I was that guy who wears sunglasses in the pub. Ha! Let them.

Behind my inky black lenses, I had enhanced powers of obscurement.
Witness my ultimate poker face.

Then the players arrived at the table.

“Are you here for the Glory Hole?”

The Party Gathers

• James Knight – Meomesiene, Human Cleric (10), Lawful Good
  Items: Helm of Comprehending Languages, Potion of Invulnerability, +1 Small Shield
• Andrew – Godanova the Spiritual, Half-Orc Fighter (10), Chaotic Evil
  Items: +2 Two-Handed Sword, Potion of Growth, Scroll of Protection from Possession
• Darren – Okar, Dwarven Fighter (7), Neutral
  Items: Javelins of Piercing, Potion of Gaseous Form
• Andy – Kurlacon the Fearless, Human Thief (10), Chaotic Neutral
  Items: …Sweet Water (very useful)
• — – Alin the Eldritch, Human Magic-User (10), Lawful Evil
  Items: Potion of Healing ×2, Potion of Copper Dragon Control, Scroll (Wall of Force), Wand of Enemy Detection

Note: No one picked the Illusionist I’d generated. Bummer. All the magic items were generated by the website. Some characters were luckier than others.

Second Note: One player’s name is missing — he arrived late and I forgot to note it on my record sheet. If you’re reading this, drop me a line!

The character sheets for this session weren’t printed on the fancy fake Goldenrod stock. I kept them cleaner: just the stats, saves, attack matrix, damage ranges, boxes for magic items, and all their prepared spells. Still, despite best efforts, they came out cluttered — as is tradition.

Players picked their characters as they arrived, first come, first served. They also chose from my pool of Ral Partha miniatures.

“I think I had this miniature back in the day!”

As a small bonus, I let the players roll 2d6 light footmen to accompany them.

I then asked the party to select a leader. Andy — with his tenacious thief — took the mantle.

I grew solemn.

“Now, I need at least one of you to step up to be the mapper. It won’t be an easy job.”

No kidding. Mapping this mine would not be a cakewalk.
(SPOILERS BELOW!)

With gusto, Andrew stood and declared he was the man for the job. A brave soul. He had no idea what awaited him.

One last piece of upkeep:
The number of magic javelins needed to be rolled.
The MU needed to choose what type of Elemental he’d try to summon. Earth was the obvious choice.

We had a date with a Glory Hole.

The Goblinoid Massacre

The party strode into the place like Don Juan. And why wouldn’t they, for God’s sake? Look at them — levels dripping off every limb.

After some tunnels, they entered a large hall filled with empty mining crates. Up ahead, they spotted another adventuring party led by an Amazonian warrioress. The party had rolled surprise on her and so hooded their lantern. They watched. They listened. The female leader spoke — something about following a map.

The players decided to shadow them from a distance.

That continued for a bit… until a random encounter occurred (there are so many random encounters on this level — I guess that’s to simulate the crowds of parties and monsters descending into the mines).

I rolled: goblins.

Time to see what the party could do.

In a single one-minute round, the dwarf and the half-orc annihilated all twelve.
Those poor 1d6+2 HD gobbos never stood a chance. Their bodies lay brutalised across the battlemat.

A short while later — another goblin encounter.
You guessed it: more carnage. This time nine goblins. Gone. In under a minute.

“I roll five hits.”
“I roll six”
“Someone pass the man more d10s.”

These encounters caused the party to lose track of the Amazon’s trail. With no Rangers among them, they couldn’t trace her.

Four gremlins jumped out next — and died almost immediately.

The party was descending deeper. They now carried sacks of pilfered silver pieces. Alin the Eldritch hopped into a mine cart and rode down into level two.

Mutiny!

A quick jaunt through this level, it must be said.

As soon as they entered the area, they came upon an elevator shaft.

“Well, we want to go deep in this Glory Hole, don’t we?”

There was a resounding yes.

The lift worked by a set of man-powered wheels. The party demanded two of the light footmen man it and send them down. After a loyalty roll, they weren’t too happy about that. Alin the Eldritch stayed behind with them, essentially strong-arming them into the work.

The party descended in the lift and came upon a Cave Fiend — one of those new monsters. I quickly scanned the monster entry. It had good odds to surprise the party, but no luck on the dice. It sat there, squat and grey, eating two Dwarven corpses. We diced initiative. It took them two rounds to slay it.

Meanwhile, on the upper level, the two men-at-arms were whispering, readying to betray ‘ol Alin — throw him down the shaft! Alin overheard their plans and, with a quick magic missile or three, sent the men to their doom.

Unfortunately, this caused a random encounter, and bumbling into the room came a two-headed ogre who thought Alin looked like a most tasty morsel.

The wizard was snatched up, but a bit of luck with a reaction roll — the two heads started arguing over who got to take the first bite. The rest of the party below managed to race back up the shaft to save poor Alin before he became chow, killing the ogre in a couple of rounds.

Long-Legged Freaks

Torches lit. Their sacks in hand. The party returned down and explored some more. Graph paper was being thrown over to Andrew rapidly.

Through the caverns they trod. Into a huge chamber filled with more of those ore bins. There was a cave bear. That was one-shotted. The party didn’t even ask about skinning the thing. Whatever was going on!

But aha! Inside those bins awaited a nasty surprise: Black Widow Spiders. The Black Widows looked puny in the manual, so I rolled giant poisonous spiders from the MM instead. Aha! A challenge at last.

No.

The party was not surprised. Then some magical flying javelins took off. Magic missiles shot out. The fighter was smashing out three hits in round one. It was over fast. A hit or two from the spider venom was all saved.

Inside the bins was ore. There’s a mechanic for determining what kind. It was Fine Silver. The party took a bit, but it was bulky — and surely there would be better treasures ahead.

RIP Bong, Gono, Bond, Falty, Salty, Arco, and Tarco

The party carried on and soon found another lift. This one went all the way to the sixth level. They descended level by level.

On the way, they encountered their first group of dwarves. There were twenty of them, and the first six ranks fired bolts from crossbows at the party. Each firing, then dropping to a knee. That was nine shots in a round. Did the party take damage? Hardly. They charged in and slew seven of the poor bearded lads in two rounds.

The morale dice demanded the rest surrendered. After a brief back and forth, the party gave them some treasure and asked the survivors to join them deeper into the mine. On their travels, they had found a few veins of precious silver.

A few words were spoken for the fallen dwarves, who were named Bong, Gono, Bond, Falty, Salty, Arco, and Tarco.
Yes, the module names every dwarf NPC.

Deeper Still

It was growing late in the day. The party had now descended all the way to the sixth level. How many times had I described forty-five degree passages and Y-shaped intersections? Undetermined.

The party had slain Cave Fiends, trolls, and a few green gargoyles.

During one particularly nasty combat against gargoyles, Alin the Eldritch had summoned a horde of troglodytes to his aid. Unfortunately, the stench from these beastmen had hampered the party’s own attacks.

But we were deeper now — in both pints of Guinness and shame. How many Glory Hole puns had we made? Never enough.

The party came upon a second Dwarf party, this time led by the exquisitely named Meathead Gilfath. This dwarf joined the expedition with gusto.

Soon the party were breaking through bricked-up corridors, sending their bearded miners ahead. These sounds almost always brought a random encounter, but these trifles were swatted away like pawns from a board.

“Let’s get through these bricked-up passages a little quicker, I have an idea. How much rubble have we excavated?”

It was time for the Elemental to be summoned.

Don’t Lose Control

The wizard Alin summoned his servant from the Plane of Elemental Earth and bound it to his will. With it, they smashed through several bricked-up chambers. The frequency of these sealed portals now led the party to believe they were on the track of a great treasure.

“Okay, you’ve moved twice with the Elemental out in front of the party. Roll a d20 ten times. Don’t roll a one.”

The players gathered their heads around the die. Alan’s player began rolling. He was nearly through them all… when that natural one appeared out of his fist. The table let out a roar.

The Elemental had turned against its master.

The 16 HD creature did more damage than anything else previously. Spiritual Hammers were thrown. Magic javelins loosed. HP was lost. The party were eventually victorious — but at some cost. Plenty of dwarves and men-at-arms were dead. Enough healing spells were used to fix up the party.

The Final Push

With that chaos behind them, the party followed a tunnel into a dark and natural cavern. There, in a high-roofed cave, they came upon the lair of the green gargoyles. The party found themselves pinioned in an archway as the creatures swooped down, ripping the dwarves to pieces.

The fighters had to step up and take the brunt. It was a punishing fight, and one particular gargoyle — bigger than the rest and wielding a magically glowing sword — caused serious pain.

In the end, the party caused the gargoyles great losses and drove them to flee up a large tube in the chamber’s ceiling, leaving behind a huge haul of gold coins — and the gargoyles’ eggs.

These were unceremoniously smashed. A shame, really. They could have made very unique pets in a campaign. Never mind. The victory was deserved.

The party packed up their coins. We had a brief calamity whilst getting back out of the dungeon. Time was running out. We counted out the moves. I rolled the encounter dice.

The party had spent twelve in-game hours in the deepest reaches of the GLORY HOLE, but they had emerged into the fresh Altanian air — richer, and alive!

The Happy Ending

As is tradition, I asked the victorious players to name their MVP. The legendary Andrew won without any contention, for he had studiously mapped the whole expedition and done a fine job.

He won himself a copy of Dray Prescot: 21 – A Fortune for Kregen. Not Appendix N, but a nice DAW yellow spined paperback regardless. Funnily enough, Andrew and Andy said they had just been discussing Kenneth Bulmer (the author). Andy has a great Moorcockian podcast where he focuses on SF and fantasy pulp fiction. I highly recommend it!

Summary

The first day of the Con had come to an end. I was truly knackered, but elated. My attempt at running a fast-paced, high-level AD&D, sword & sorcery adventure was a success. We were laughing a lot. Sheets of graph paper were flying all over the place. D8’s were dropping all over the table as the players also helped me tally up HD with all these monsters we were encountering. It was a blast! 

Will I run the Glory Hole at a convention again? Probably not.

Do I recommend it as a module for your AD&D home game. With conversions and a bit of prepping, absolutely! 

I recommend any DM to run a seat-of-your-pants high level adventure with minimal prep, it may raise your blood pressure, but it will invariably lead to a good time, and plenty of jokes! 

Until next time, Fight on! 

Then I saw it. At the far end of the beer garden, tucked beneath a curtain of dry, brown leaves, stood a lonely glass cabinet. I pushed through the foliage and found the figure within. He was robed in emerald, crowned in gold.

Saint Patrick. Banisher of Serpents.

I laughed aloud. Moments before, I’d finished running a four-hour game of AD&D where the players had slaughtered a nest of serpents and their snake-man kin. Had the old saint lent them his blessing? Or were their level 4 characters simply too powerful for the scenario?

I didn’t have time to ponder theology or blessings. My next session was about to begin, something God’s favoured would not smile upon. I was entering a Glory Hole. I also needed another Guinness.

I was at the Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff Convention, held in the picturesque town of Royal Leamington Spa. The sun had come out to smile on me, but there would be no basking in it. I was grognarding hard, ready to dive into TTRPGs, which require little light; only imaginary torches and enough illumination to read a d20 and a character sheet.

I’d arrived that morning, carrying a GW case stuffed with rulebooks and game notes. My belly was hungering for Sword & Sorcery action-adventure. The town made a pleasant impression, but such niceties had to be ignored. The location of St. Patrick’s Irish Club, host of the convention for several years, was charming—great Gaelic atmosphere, friendly bar staff, and dangerously cheap pints of Guinness. But this was no place for comfort. I was preparing for dungeon war.

The crowds had gathered. RPG soldiers had come to crusade. A storm was a-brewing. This leaf-strewn town of Georgian beauty and green lawns was about to be dragged down into the gutter-level of Lankhmarian lowbrow imagination.

I’d enjoyed some chit-chat and met friends old and new, but in my mind I was preparing to inflict… the Setian Vault.

Session One: The Setian Vault

The Plan

The plan was simple. On Friday I would run two full sessions of AD&D, then drink beer.
Saturday, I’d lay back and enjoy a few games as a player—the kind I rarely get to try—and then drink more beer.
Sunday morning, I’d play in a single game before driving home to the South West, where a death metal gig awaited me. And, you guessed it… more beer.

Prep and Pre-Gens

For Friday afternoon’s session, I plucked a low-level dungeon from my campaign milieu: The Setian Vault.

It’s important to bring pre-gens to a convention. Never waste precious table time on character creation if you can help it. AD&D is notoriously tricky for modern players to parse during chargen. They’re used to having all the pertinent information in one place. Reasonable fools.

So, in the weeks before Owlbear and Wizard’s Staff (OBWS hereafter), I generated eight character sheets at 5,000 XP each. I aimed for a spread of single-classed humans and multi-classed demi-humans. Levels ranged from 2 to 4. I made eight in total, giving the six players some choice and a couple of spares in case someone croaked—as can happen. That’s old-school gaming for you.

I’d also painted some old lead miniatures to match each PC, mostly Ral Partha I’d picked up from eBay job lots.

The Party

• Alan — Thalric Greybeard, Half-Elf Cleric/Ranger (3/2)
• Darren — Bharak Blackbraid, Dwarven Fighter (3)
• James Knight — Elyra Vornshade, Elf MU/Thief (2/3)
• David — Verrin Lusk, Human Thief (4)
• Hannah — Emeric De Sablecroix, Human Paladin (3)
• Mike — Osmund Vire, Human Cleric (4)

All the players were pretty hardcore TTRPGers. A few were gents with stories of playing 1e back in the day. James is a regular in my campaign and plays tonnes of AD&D. One player had mistakenly signed up thinking it was a 5e game. I chuckled. This would be different.

The pull of AD&D at cons seems to break into three camps: nostalgia, genuine appreciation, and curiosity. I’ll lean into these aspects more next time I run an old-school game at a generalist con.

The Adventure

I informed the players that they’d heard the following rumours:

• Children often play in a cave below Adder Hill. There is a dark statue within that local kids dare each other to approach. A few weeks ago, some kids reported a large gate had appeared in the wall, flanked by two golden wands.
• Several cattle have been found mutilated around Adder Hill. Drained of blood.
• A farmer swears he saw a host of “naked goblins” roaming the area.

The golden wands intrigued them. The players selected characters. Casters were given ten minutes to pick spells. I generally advise experienced players to run them, especially Clerics, because they must pick spells from the entire list. 

Hannah (Emeric the Paladin) was elected party leader. David took on mapping duties. Miniatures hit the table. A marching order was formed.

We were off to the races.

Exploration Begins

Adder Hill received its moniker due to its resemblance to a snake’s head. Two caves are set into its stony face like eyes.

The party entered the right “eye.” Elyra scouted ahead using her infravision. She soon detected a large heat signature accompanied by hissing. She wisely withdrew.

“I guess we know why it’s called Adder Hill,” quipped a player.

They tried the other “eye.” There, they discovered a beast-headed statue holding a serpent in one hand and an inverted ankh in the other: the symbol of eternal death. The paladin detected evil radiating from it. To the south, the promised gate loomed: carved in the shape of a snake’s open maw, flanked by crude sconces bearing golden serpent-shaped wands that projected cones of light.

As I was rolling for random encounters, a player voiced concern:

“I don’t know about walking through a portal that leads god knows where. We should send something in first.”

Ah, a Tomb of Horrors veteran. A tear of joy welled in my eye. But I corrected him—by “portal” I meant an arched gate, not a shimmering teleportation field. It was a hallway, echoing with the sound of water.

They pressed on, finding a gushing font beyond. Elyra spotted a secret door to the west. Inside was a rank chamber filled with small serpentine humanoids. Combat broke out. The paladin was blinded by venom. Still, he and the dwarf carved through their enemies. A bit of treasure was found. Another secret door was discovered.

Snakes, Statues, & Strategy

This led to a hall with a rotating medusa bust at its centre. Much discussion ensued. Eyes were covered. Tactics formed.

They passed through into a large room with two conical reliquaries. Statues with gemstone eyes flanked the area.

Elyra listened at the reliquary door. The party formed up—except Alan, ever the wargamer, who recognised the potential of an enemy flanking manoeuvre, he pushed his Cleric/Ranger to guard the rear. Smart move. Two groups of serpent-folk burst from the reliquaries to encircle the party. They were soundly defeated.

The PCs pried out the gem eyes and smashed open one statue to retrieve a serpent-shaped wand that functioned like a magical torch. They headed east.

They came upon a room filled with strange urns. Issuing forth from these was the sound of a thrashing sea. Elyra had a listen at a door inside, and the crashing sounds of the waves grew louder and louder until she became utterly deaf. Luckily a spell was to hand to cure the affliction.

Mummy’s Eggs

They came upon a large hall. At its centre: a dais with glowing golden eggs. A diminutive mummy patrolled it’s surface like clockwork.

The party concocted a plan: four players would grab the eggs simultaneously. We diced. Verrin Lusk rolled poorly. The mummy bit him, and as he staggered back the mummy was dragged from the dais, and rapidly expanded to become full size. Battle erupted. The party fled.

As per old-school rules, fleeing characters can’t map. They got lost through the dark chambers, the wail of the mummy echoing after them. After wandering, they found another snake-maw portal, then a clerical office. Within the latter they smashed a statuette and found a scroll hidden inside.

Eventually, they reoriented themselves.

Deadly Detours

A giant spider appeared via random encounter but was quickly dispatched. (The ranger’s surprise negation is a real asset.)

They found the spider’s nest, torched it, and located a secret door leading to clay pots marked with wax seals. Some contained treasure. They left the skull-marked one alone. Very wise, very wise.

Finally, they entered a sloped hallway (angled at 45 degrees). Ten serpent-men were slain. Then they entered a candlelit chamber filled with maps and notes—here, they uncovered a dark plot (no spoilers).

In the next room: giant snakes. Silence was cast at the rear of the room, where a tapestry hid a door.

A Dark Mistress

Beyond the tapestry the serpents queen cast a darkness spell on the corridor. The paladin and the dwarf rushed through the magically darkened space, chasing their quarry. Behind the tapestry, they came face to face with a beautiful sorceress who immediately cast Charm Person on the paladin, bidding him to defend her.

Now we had a duel on our hands: the party leader versus the boisterous dwarf. Luckily for everyone involved, the dice were not in their favour. Many swings were whiffs.

Meanwhile, Osmund the Cleric stepped boldly through the darkness, carrying the magically silenced tapestry. He hurled it at the sorceress, interrupting her next spell and nearly knocking her flat. With the spell disrupted and her surprise lost, the remaining party members surged in and dispatched her, sending her back to her vile master in whatever abyss had spawned her.

Winners

All said and done, it was a successful expedition and a damn good time. The group gelled quickly, the session ran smooth, and the players engaged deeply with the old-school style. There were laughs, gasps, and dice hurled with intent.

As tradition, I asked the players to vote on who they thought was the MVP—the most entertaining or effective player at the table. On the count of three, they each pointed.

The winner was Hannah, who played Emeric the Paladin. Doubtless it was her tactical leadership and inspired (if slightly treacherous) roleplay in defending her newfound dark mistress that secured her victory.

She was awarded a copy of Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman by Gardner F. Fox. Pure Appendix N Sword & Sorcery. Just the kind of reward a paladin might keep hidden under their pillow.

Summary of Session One

The party navigated my traps, puzzles, and monsters with grit and cunning. I was two pints of Guinness down and feeling fantastic. In an hour’s time, I was going where no man should—the Glory Hole.

In my next post, I’ll continue this saga of one of the most fun TTRPG conventions in the UK. Let the blessings of Saint Patrick shine upon you, and never speak the names of abyssal demons aloud!

You can read another play report of mine for Grogmeet 2025 here.

Do you have any advice for running 1e games at Conventions? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Until the next post, Fight On!

Thanks to all the judges for their comments and feedback. My dungeon seemed to be divisive in the scoring, and that makes sense. It is baroque, linear, and wants player characters to die. It falls into the great tradition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons killer modules; assholish, PC-slaying dungeons from back in the day. The kind spearheaded by the likes of Gary Gygax, then perfected by Rob Kuntz. It is also inspired by the ‘world first’ early modules of the Judges Guild – like Citadel of Fire – where an adventure location exists in a milieu; uncaring, brutal, and inflicting woe unto all who discover it.

I sat down to write the Barbican of Blood over two four hour sessions during the Christmas break 2024. I had recently re-read the three little brown books of the original game, and was wistfully day dreaming about the system’s untethered possibilities. Those who have read my ASC II entry and are familiar with the original edition will notice that the upper works use the castle encounters in 0e as their basis, where a Lord will ride out and challenge fighting-men to a joust. I settled on mixing this with a vampire lair as I’m a big Gothic fiction fanboy. I also wanted to use a monster with good reason to guard its lair with ridiculous traps. Vampires, being incredibly protective of their coffin (essentially the key to their immortality), was a perfect fit for the concept. A vampire’s charm ability allowed me the use of a Lord from 0e castle encounters, though transformed into a Renfieldesque slave.

The traps in the dungeon were something of a mental exercise. A test to see how far I was able push my creativity. I wanted to avoid traps like those found in later AD&D modules, and in supplements like Grimtooth. Instead I leaned towards the strange magical traps found in the labyrinths of the early Dungeon Game, circa 1976. I also enjoyed coming up with novel uses of standard spells in environmental traps. I recall the dungeon The Hyqueous Vault was very inspiring in this regard.

My favourite trap in the Barbican is a cursed magical room. In it, all forms of melee will totally miss unless the character throwing the attacks calls out their own name. I had originally come up with this idea whilst rereading Elric of Melniboné by Micheal Moorcock. The impetus for this trap was the scene where Elric battles pig faced creatures, who can only speak a single word, ‘thing.’ In this scene Elric becomes enraged and suddenly starts yelling his own name whilst smighting the mutated chaotic creatures.

Hopefully you Dungeon Masters out there will find the elements of the dungeon useful. Even if you have to get Burroughsian and give it the cut-up treatment.

I will soon be taking the material and ideas from the Barbican of Blood and creating a less brutal, but larger module intended for tournament play.

Thanks to Attronarch and never_plays_elves for reading the dungeon in its early stages. Thanks also to Goldigger who ran a play test of the Barbican, his play report can be found here. The largest thanks goes to Gogon Velvet who illustrated the villain on the cover page, which you can see below.

There are still a few Easter eggs hidden in the text, which are as yet are undiscovered. Can you find them?

My first such adventure of 2025 was Grogmeet, a meeting of – as the name suggests – a bunch of grognards. I’d like start my documentation of Grogmeet by giving a shout out to James Knight, who brought this fine and genteel meeting of minds to my attention. Cheers James! 

Grogmeet is self described as a casual meet-up for fans of the entertaining Grognard Files Podcast, and not really a gaming convention in the purest sense. However, with over twenty games on offer over a long weekend, with many different game systems being played, I will go so far as to say that it was indeed a convention, and a fine one.  

I booked my ticket in December and as a GM this cost me £5. Not bad. I decided to run the most recent dungeon, to give it a good play test with some fresh eyes. This dungeon is called the Haunted Bordello, and I hope to release it as a module later this year. I soon realised that I needed to whip up some sort of advertisement art for sign-ups. So with a hurried ten minutes, lo and behold, witness my last minute poster for the game. Marvel at its wonky aspect ratio:

The Manchester based event took place across two lovely locations: Whitworth Locke (a fancy hotel), and Fan Boy Three (a very nice hobby shop I have visited once before). I grabbed my dice, books, and binder and headed out on my three hour train journey Friday morning. 

Friday

When I arrived there was already a tournament style game of Call of Cthulhu unfolding. Unfortunately this game was already sold out when I signed up, and during my arrival I soon became aware why. I witnessed several tables of grognards playing a massive combined scenario designed by Call of the Cthulhu 7th Edition designer Paul Fricker. All manner of chaos was unfolding before me; players were being dragged off to one side and given secret notes, then returned to different tables. From my observations, it seemed like there was some sort of mind swap invasion going on by the Great Race of Yith. It looked like heaps of fun, and I was more than a little disappointed I couldn’t get involved. But there is always next time! 

Later that evening I played in a Delta Green game ran by a nice guy named Wid. I believe the scenario is something published by a third party and Wid had altered it. Us player characters were all trapped in a snowed in gas station somewhere in rural America. There was a corpse in the bathroom, and some sort of computer next to the cash register running streams of random numbers. If you’ve not played Delta Green before, it’s basically Call of Cthulhu meets the X-Files, and sure enough, soon after the game started, shit started getting spooky fast. Over the course of the game we found ourselves trapped in the gas station with laser sights trailing us from beyond the road. Corpses started animating and spinning in the air. One of our team soon became mind controlled by the incessant numbers on every communication device. We had to solve the bizarre download coming in from beyond Sirius, before we all kicked the bucket. We did so, and somehow with not one of us dying. Huzzah! 

This game was a lot of fun and it reminded me why I enjoy horror games as one shots.

Later that night there was much boozing and chatting at a local pub, and I got acquainted with some great guys. I got talking with a few guys who run a long term Tunnels and Trolls game that I’d love to play at the next event. The socialising was definitely a highlight of the weekend. The only down side to these events is that there is never enough time. You can’t play all the games on offer.

Saturday

Saturday morning I woke up with only a slight hangover and mooched my way over to Fan Boy Three for my first game of the day; A new Call of Cthulhu Gaslight scenario GM’d by Paul Fricker. Paul asked us not to talk too much about the scenario, as it was a play-test for a future book. What I will say is that it was a great distraction from my hangover. There was much sawing off of shotguns and chairs thrown as improvised weapons. I will apparently get a play-test credit on the document when it is released, which is always nice. 

Come midday I had to rush across the freezing gulf of the city for the start of my own game. I grabbed a sandwich and a snickers bar and managed to scoff these down with not a moment to spare. I set up my table and my players began filtering in. I handed out my nifty fake golden rod character sheets and we all introduced ourselves. I gave out a few hooks to the location and we were off. Playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

The Haunted Bordello

There was Malitar Kreen, a half-orc fighter/assassin. Eljas Tammi, a human fighter armed with a glaive. Helmut Scond, a lithe half-elf thief. Then cunning Fulrad Falk, a human illusionist. Finally there was the human cleric Isto Jantuten, worshiper of Ilmatar the Mother Goddess.

The characters arrived at the wailing wood after travelling across the vale of Tarn. They soon heard in the distance some strange barking wails they had heard rumours about. Ghosts? Who knows. They marched through a woodland trail and soon discovered a bluff with an old ruin atop it. The half elf thief climbed up alone and stole a gander. He returned with news that a few rough looking men were sat in the round tower at leisure. The party climbed up and surrounded these fellows. After the illusionist tried to hail them, the party lost their edge of surprise and the bandits nocked a few arrows. Charges were made. Arrows were loosed. The party slew two of them outright. The other one fled down a trap door and into a nasty arrow trap. 

After some searching on the ground level they found a second entrance into the dungeon. A coal shaft of some kind. The thief tried to descend it but slipped in the rough soil, and tumbled down the slide and into the nest of three nasty badgers! With his weekly rations thrown to the ground he managed to get out without so much of a nip. The party then went down into the dungeons proper.  They found the pleasure rooms of a sinister Bordello, long abandoned. After a bit of snooping around they found a secret door in a wash room. Beyond this there was a viewing room with many one way mirrors overlooking several boudoir. Inside was a shadowy figure of pure malice. After watching him for a while they learned he roamed from mirror to mirror. The thief took a chance, sneaking past him. He managed to steal a scroll from a shelf at the far end of the room. And narrowly avoided contact with the apparition. The party went on exploring the rooms. Unfortunately, a turn undead attempt in one of the bedrooms caused the shadow to attack through the mirror, slaying the offending cleric.

They continued on a little, killing a squad of goblin guards and two orcs fighting over a halberd. Falling into a pit trap sent them back to town for a few days rest. Later they returned to the Haunted Bordello with a new companion; an elf fighter/magic user. They had an interesting encounter with a complex portcullis trap that took the life of their illusionist. Finally they found a fine throne room, and broke the chair from the floor only to be attacked by a mess of giant rats. No match for their power, the party slew the rats and carried their treasures back to town. And glory to them says I! 

It was great sharing my enthusiasm for 1st edition. Some of the players had played the system as kids, and it was like a hit of nostalgia for them. Some had never played the game before. And others were regular AD&D enjoyers. Some of the players expressed excitement that we actually got to use the grappling table and the lift gates percentiles, which made me chuckle. I also now have a real appreciation for the golden rod character sheets. Using them to roll up the pre-gens forced me to take closer looks at carry capacity and non-lethal combat rules. Good stuff.

After my game I went back to the station for the long journey home. There were so many interesting games on display at the event, that I can’t wait to go for the next one to try out something new. The verdict is in, Grogmeet is a hell of a lot of fun and stocked with great people. I look forward to the next one!  

See, over the last year I have been experiencing all sorts of weird symptoms; fatigue, dizziness, headaches, and brain fog. It’s been steadily getting worse. The more I exert myself, the worse it’s gotten. I’ve been forced to drop many interests and hobbies. I’ve not been able to do quite as much as I used to. I’ve been forced to prioritise the small amount of leisure time I do have when not resting. If you would’ve asked me three months ago what could possibly be the cause of all this fatigue, I would have shrugged and felt frustrated. I’ve just been soldiering on as best I can. I’ve been forced to make hard decisions on what to do with my time. So I’ve prioritised gaming with my friends, learning Ad&d, and reading and writing fiction. That’s all I’ve really been able to muster outside of working my day job. A lot of the time I’ve just been zombified. So I haven’t really written anything for this site, and I haven’t put any more modules or materials together in publishable form. 

I did, however, have one excursion. In October this year I attended the Cauldron OSR convention in Germany. I can say with no exaggeration, it was one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life. I met many interesting people there, and got to meet the men behind so many internet handles I’ve become familiar with since learning and playing Ad&d in the last two years. I made some amazing memories at the convention. I got to meet some of my good friends from my gaming group in person for the very first time. We’ve been playing Ad&d together for over a year and half now, and for a lot of that time we played twice a week. I made new friends there as well. I got to play in epic games of Braunstein, and a huge naval battle using Od&d and chainmail rules. I even slew two dragons. All these things I won’t soon forget.

The whole time at the convention I was struggling with my fatigue. I managed somehow to power through with a little help from beer and pure grit. Gaming has become something of a distraction for all these issues I’ve been experiencing. Something which allows me to put the symptoms I’m suffering to the back of my mind. I love playing old school D&D. I love the challenge of it. I love the idiosyncrasies of the rules. I like emergent adventure. I like the fact I can be cunning, and think outside of the box. I love that the rules allow for that. I love the camaraderie of adventuring with other like minded gamers, guys who want to score a big haul and beat the odds. Guys who want to win. Honest to god Grognards. I love the amazing talents of dungeon masters who create whole worlds, who can really test my metal. I love the whole thing. So at Cauldron I was able to push myself through the fatigue and keep on adventuring.

When the convention came to a close, there was a ceremony of sorts. All the participants gathered in the grand hall of Schloß Hohenroda and the organisers handed out prizes. Then we came to the Most Valuable Player award. That’s when I heard my name called out. I was in total shock. I never expected to win such a thing. Perhaps my enthusiasm for the game had really made an impact on those around me. I accepted the award, kind of flabbergasted. It now rests on my mantelpiece, its a big cauldron with MVP etched on it. I’m looking at it right now as I write this, and it makes me smile. 

The truth is, the day before I flew from the UK to the convention, I’d been laid out in a huge metal tube in a hospital radiology department. Some technician had been taking magnetic images of my brain. I kind of guessed the results weren’t going to be great. This was the second scan I’d had in two weeks. When I got back from the convention, I just crashed out. I was euphoric from having such a great time gaming. From meeting so many awesome people. From meeting my friends in person. But there was a letter waiting for me on the kitchen counter. So before I totally passed out, I just had to opened it up. 

When you read the words brain tumor, you kind of freeze up and go cold. It doesn’t feel quite real because those words are from procedural TV shows and news reports. They aren’t meant to refer to something inside your own head. But there it was in black and white. My first thought was; so does that mean I’m going to die soon?

I’ve had a few more tests since then. Apparently these kinds of tumors are 99% benign. The major complications with them are that they can mess up your hormones and if they get big enough they can crush your optic nerves and make you blind. Luckily both of those things have not happened to me. My hormones are within normal limits except for my cortisol levels, and my vision is currently unaffected. Which the doctors seemed a bit surprised by. As of writing this, I’m awaiting the hospitals decisions for what my treatment will be. Most likely there will be surgery to remove it. This is that quite likely to resolve my symptoms and within a short space I time I might well return to normal. The probabilities are in my favour. Like any good gamer, I always ask the probabilities before I make a roll.

So I just wanted to make this post to explain that this blog is not dead. It’s just on hiatus whilst I’ve been unwell. I’m still gaming. I’m going to keep gaming so long as I’m able. I love it too much not to. I will be back here and writing soon. Post surgery, I think I will have a lot of sick leave mandated. 

I want to thank all the guys I’ve gamed with over the last year. Particularly Niko, Bill, Magnus, and Brett. You guys have helped keep me sane during one of the darkest years of my life. Let’s all get our characters to the highest levels imaginable! I want to say to all the Cauldron / ADDKON guys, thanks for running an amazing convention and for giving me something to look forward to next year. I managed to get Cauldron 2025 tickets and I will be there. I also want to give my appreciation to Gary Gygax, for his genius, and for his writing a set of rules that have totally enraptured me and captured my imagination, and attention. In my darkest hours, his works have kept me busy, entertained, and sane (but not when I attempt a grapple!) 

I will return to this blog soon. 

Mitch.