Experiment 2: Tales of Argosa - Tower of the Eye Terror

"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game." - Gary Gygax

Time for Ruen to kill things and take their stuff. Or vice versa.

Setup

We begin by rolling on ToA pp. 218-219 to find out the adventure's basics.

• Site type: 2 = Tower. We're going straight in so I don't bother locating it on the  campaign hex map, not least because I don't have one.
• Size: Not necessary since we'll create the map as we go.
• Objective: 5,6 - several options here but I'll interpret it as Destroy Sacred Object.
• Reward: 1 = Performed out of obligation. No specific patron reward for us.
• Main opposition: 20 = HD 11+ monster! Good lord. I refer to the monster by HD chart (p. 167); 3 =  Eye Terror, that's a Beholder in old money. This could be a short, fast trip to a Total Party Kill. Theoretically there should be a bunch of them with an Eye Terror on acid as a boss, but I think one of them is enough to be going on with.

ToA's author wisely suggests that at this point you search online for a suitable map and just populate that as you go, but I want to see how the generator works. If I were using it in anger, I'd need to decide how big small, medium, and large rooms are, as well as how long and wide corridors are; but as this is a quick tryout, and we know the place is a tower, there will be four medium rooms stacked on top of each other, connected by stairways, with no subsidiary monsters.

I won't bother you with the actual dice rolls and table lookups for the generator, so let's get into the narrative. I'll drop back into the rules for any combats or other gameplay rolls, though.

Into the Tower

Ruen had learned from his mentor that the old ruined tower six leagues beyond the city had an altar on the top floor, which the old man persuaded him should be destroyed for the greater good. When Ruen asked why the old man hadn't done anything about it himself, decades ago, no satisfactory answer was forthcoming. There were, he was told, rumours of a dark presence; but then, he thought, there always are.

He approached the tower cautiously, fearful of brigands, and noticed that the main doorway was broken, as if from outside. Beyond, the ground floor had a pile of old mattresses, but no sign of any inhabitants otherwise. In one corner, a stairway led upwards.

The walls on the next floor were covered in murals, and when Ruen tried to use his tinderbox to light his torch, the better to see them, it slipped from his hands and fell into a crack in the floor, beyond his ability to reach it. Nothing for it but to continue upwards. 

The second floor featured a fountain centrepiece, no longer functional, but with a bowl still full of fetid water full of wriggling things he did not care to examine in the semi-darkness.

The top floor indeed had a central altar, where the sacred orb he sought sat on a wrought iron frame. Orbiting it slowly, floating some feet off the floor, was a bulbous sack of rubbery flesh with a slavering toothed maw and three eyes on stalks. As he entered, the creature turned to focus on him...

Combat

I don't think either side is surprised; Ruen knew there was something in the tower, and the Eye Terror probably saw him coming through the windows.

Ruen rolls 1d20 (18) vs Initiative (11) and misses by miles; this means the enemy goes first. The Eye Terror is currently too far away to bite (GM fiat) so it fires a random eye beam (Lightning Bolt) at Ruen. It rolls 1d20 (3) vs Int (19) - the roll is less than half its attribute, so it is a Great Success, meaning the spell is extra potent - damage (12d6 for an Eye Terror) is rolled with advantage. The roll is 88 damage, thanks to four exploding dice; Ruen tries to dodge, rolling Luck (12) and applying his Dex modifier (-1); with a roll of 4 he succeeds, halving the incoming damage. Unfortunately, this is still 44, and he only has 28 hit points; he falls unconscious, and is either dead or dying, but we don't know which until someone looks.

Idly curious, the Eye Terror levitates over to the scorched magic user and checks him out with its three eyes. Ruen makes a Death Save, rolling 1d20 (13) vs 10 + the higher of his Con or Will modifier (both 0); there's no-one to help and that is a failure, so he is dead.

The Eye Terror decides, waste not want not, and bites an arm off the corpse. They taste better warm, it thinks.

GM Notes

And now we know why Ruen's mentor didn't clear out the tower himself; there are old wizards, and there are bold wizards, but there are no old, bold wizards.

Combat is essentially B/X D&D with ascending armour class and a few house rules, and I think it's reasonable to assume my readership know how D&D combat operates. It works fluidly enough, but the reduced hit points make it even more deadly - even at maximum level and with all the solo PC benefits, Ruen would have topped out at 34 hit points. Mind you, the Eye Terror would only have had 50-60 as a 12th level monster. I think it would be equally fast in play once I'm used to it; this whole adventure took not much more than an hour, and bear in mind I was learning the system as I went, so lots of page flipping going on.

Each monster has a short custom reaction table as part of its statblock; Eye Terrors are grumpy, can't roll better than "vexed" and are most likely to be "hostile". If they use the same Spellcraft rules as PCs (I couldn't find anything to say they don't), then they would have 12 potential uses of their eye beams in a combat, but I think only one per round; this would make them more vulnerable to a party, as a couple of magic users with decent spells could toast one while it was vaporising the front rank.

The dungeon generator works better with an existing map, since it's good at telling you what's in a room, but leaves you to decide the room's size and shape with very little guidance. That's reasonable, as the author recommends up front that you find a map online. This dungeon wasn't big enough to trigger a Dungeon Event, which might be a random encounter or some other interesting occurrence, but in actual play there's a clock which counts down (actually up, but you know what I mean) as you move around, until something happens. As a bonus, I think this would make a nice group adventure; short, sweet, and requiring some thought as actually fighting the Eye Terror is inadvisable.

Having generated a PC and played through a very short scenario, I really like Tales of Argosa. It's close enough to B/X D&D to give that Old School vibe, but it also feels a lot more like gritty sword & sorcery than high fantasy. It also feels like something that will play really well solo.

I think we'll see this game again, but probably next year, as 2025 is the year of SWADE for me.