A Mountain of Gold - Session 1 GM notes
Hii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I started my little experiment today. Here was the pitch:
You, 2-3 other players, 100 dwarves, a small ancient fort, 15 million gold, a dying magical forge, several hungry empires, an endless goblin horde, and a fuming dragon who wants revenge.
I'm planning on running a short experimental game, probably 3-4 sessions, starting September 19, 2026 10:00 AM and running for 2 hours.
This will be played here in the big gay purp!
This is a game about treasure logistics and diplomacy. You have the last dwarven clan under your control, who wrested the hoard of a dragon away a generation ago. The human empires, endlessly at war, covet your wealth, enough to pay their soldiers for generations.
What will you do with the money? How will you use it to defend yourself? How will you transport it safely?
We'll use od&d/chainmail (or some derivative) to deal with conflict and inform the basics of how the world works (very vanilla shit) and the building rules from ready ref sheets for, you know, building. Plan to manage finances, respond to messages, deal with invasions, and oversee the fort from week to week.
I don't imagine this game can take many players, I imagine no more than 3-4.
Please respond to this with your greediest emoji if you are interested, or friend me and send me a message about it
Live greedily!
The two players for our initial session are:
- Sticks, my Dwarven companion in another game (who will also be providing a session report)
- Wolfrian (Cassian from Phaedra a player from my Arden Vul game, an experienced OSR gm, also my youngest sibling)
My goal for the short campaign was to do something experimental and easy to get some practice in running a game in the big purp server.
The game itself is a light mix of King of Dragon Pass and Dwarf Fortress, ran with ready ref sheets and the littlest brown books, and inspired by my time running cataphracts. That's all quite overselling it, as this is the entire game from the player side:
(A little blurry, but there's a section for letters, the current month, jobs for the month, a brief summary of the clan, the treasury, the magic forge, and a map of the outside.)
The game plays month-by-month, with the players making decisions for the last remaining dwarf clan. They have a dying magic forge (using a page from ready ref sheets, the magic user trapped inside has a year before he dies).
The players assign jobs their dwarves every month, deal with folks showing up at the gates, respond to letters, and make magic items with their dying magic forge. The players discussed sending their dwarves out on a few missions and we may just run those with odnd. We'll see!
This went about as well as expected. I knew I could prep a situation without a lot of scaffolding and let the experienced players fill in the gaps, and they did. Using the odnd monster rules, I ruled that the 100 dwarves have a level 6 and level 4 fighter, and these naturally got assigned to each of the players, so when our last player joins, I'll probably have them roll up a character too. Gives them a mouthpiece when needed.
We played through the first 4 months. The game is about gold, and I am ignoring tracking food and similar resources per month. I decided before the game that it would add complexity that I didn't want and I think that was the correct decision.
Is 15 million gold too much? Possibly? It's fun to give the players such an absurd amount and let them figure out what to do with it. It is entirely in coins though and that will be hard to transport in large amounts, which is where the fun is for me. They have a herd of yaks and oxen now though!
I used Monster Overhaul to generate a few merchants. This worked well and was a little silly (the first arrived with cattle, geese, and ivory).
I have a calendar with situations and encounters (usually signs/spoors are given the month before) which worked out well. I am adding and adjusting it on the fly based on what the players do.
It's nice to be experienced enough that I seem confident when making shit up.
I do have a decent amount of prep to do: A local map, a regional map, I need to generate a local wizard or two, and I need a description of what the fort is like on the inside, as well as what the warren of tunnels are like underground.
I also need to learn chainmail or a derivative next time, as a bandit army approaches.
More games need to just give their players a strong position and lots of resources. Actually being able to produce weapons and potions is a rarity in games I play, so this was a fun game to referee.