Happy Tuesday, everyone! We played Session 4 of Stonehell on Saturday, so its time to have a session report! You can start reading the series with Session 1, then move on to session 2, and session 3. This session report is going to be pretty short, but I made a grave error in how I refereed the game. So I will spend a bit of text ruminating on that and how it was ultimately resolved.
This game we had only 3 players present, so the Dramatis Personae for the session are Veigar, Solvan El'Spring and Fayanna. Additionally we had sort of a late start, as the player of Fayanna had an appointment that kept her from arriving at the normal start time. My general rule is 2 is company, but 3 or more is a party. So the players of Veigar and Solvan and I sort of hung out until Fayanna could join.
Once we actually could begin, the party spent some time catching Solvan up on what happened while they were unhinged from the material plane (absent last game) and then decided to climb the switchback to the small cave openings on the southern wall, left of the large arch with the poem above it.
The first cave they came to was a narrower opening (3-4 feet across) that led into a vaguely kidney shaped room. After a brief peek inside from Fayanna, the party entered the room. Unbeknownst to the group, a large Crab Spider was clinging to the ceiling. Its lair intruded upon, the spider decided to attack from its hidden position.
If you're unfamiliar with the crab spider as an old-school monster, it's essentially a giant hunting spider that uses active camouflage like a chameleon instead of lurking in shadows or building a hunting hole. They get a bonus to surprise when encountered. The party is not surprised. Combat begins.
So the spider drops down. The party decides to stand and fight instead of fleeing and win the first initiative. Veigar, the magic user, attacks with his dagger while the other two attack with swords. But the elf and the thief are unable to land their blows whereas Veigar slashes through the carapace to deal a hefty blow to the arachnid. Green ichor splashes across the dried leaves on the ground. Unfortunately, the spider is undeterred by the blow.
On its turn, the spider bites Veigar, pouncing at him with its fangs dripping with poison. The blow lands and the fangs sink deep into the magic user, but not enough of the venom is injected to be fatal.
On the next turn, the party doubles down on trying to kill the monster instead of fleeing. Solvan briefly talks about interposing himself between the Spider and Veigar, but the Crab Spider goes first. It strikes Veigar again, killing him instantly. The spider is killed in the next moment by Solvan, but too late to save his friend.
The party searches the room, recovers some copper pieces scattered on the ground among the leaves, and harvests 3 doses of spider venom. Then they depart the canyon and head back to Absolution.
Now, dear reader, did you spot the error? The thing that went wrong that resulted in the death of a PC?
I failed to use the "Encounter" Procedure before going to the "Combat" Procedure.
In OSE, when there's an encounter, there's a whole two pages devoted to how to adjudicate it. You can see these rules on the Necrotic Gnome reference document here: https://necroticgnome.com/products/old-school-essentials-basic-rules
Basically, after rolling for surprise I should have then rolled Initiative for the encounter so the players would have a chance to take action before combat broke out - i.e. flee or reposition. Instead, the Crab Spider simply dropped right into the middle of the group, leading to immediate combat. So I basically robbed poor Veigar of a chance to avoid combat.
As a result, the PC died! It was clear to me that the player was upset. Although in the immediate aftermath I understood it to be the sort of normal upset that comes from losing a character. It was only in the day afterwards, thinking about what the player said that I realized exactly how I had messed up.
I had in fact committed one of the cardinal sins of Old School RPGs. I took away a character's agency by forcing them to be in a combat without the rules being applied fairly.
If I had done everything by the book - if the PCs had been surprised by the monster, or if the monster had won the initiative and immediately started combat, then it would have been fair. But as it stood, I had played as if one or both of those things had happened. From there it wasn't exactly a foregone conclusion that Veigar would have died, but without the encounter procedure we wouldn't ever know.
So yesterday I contacted the player and explained myself. That I had made an error and that I wanted to retcon the death. We didn't need to change anything else - the party still heads back to town, the spider's still dead. But Veigar lives. And he agreed!
So alls well that ends well. I don't mind that PCs die in play. But I want for it to be by player carelessness or luck instead of GM error.
Have you ever had to retcon a PC death? Why? Do you think it's wrong to retcon anything, even in the face of a misplay in a crucial moment? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time!
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