One Campaign Ends, Another Begins.

We have a group of 7 people meeting roughly every other week to play DnD. Our first campaign which lasted roughly a year ended a month ago. I played a druid and we had a banging good time. We were using a house ruled version of 1st edition. Druids have a tough time in 1st edition. I wasn’t useless, but struggled some to find creative ways to pull my weight.

So now, I am running the new campaign. Again we are playing 1st edition, I am pulling in a few house rules from other systems. Shadowdark has some cool dungeon delving rules and the hex crawl rules from The Dark of Hot Springs Isle are getting integrated.

Our campaign started with the PC’s camped a short distance away from the entrance to some caverns that their mentors delved into roughly 6 days ago. The PC’s were either training with or mentored to the adventurers. The group who went into the caves were on a mission to retrieve some rumored magical books. The PC’s were given instructions to return to Banners Reach if the group did not return after 7 days. Other info the group had - this place was dangerous, there were supposedly other groups searching for the caves, and the group knew of a gnome community which was available in an emergency.

I felt like I was pretty clear this place they were outside of was dangerous, however in they went. Fortunately for them their mentors had cleaned out quite a bit of the danger. After two sessions of trying to find clues to what happened to their mentors they decided to head back. They went to the side camp they had set up and were promptly attacked by a squad of norkers. The battle was a close one, but they pulled it out. That battle pretty much convinced them it was time to head back.

On the way back they stopped off at the gnome community and also lost a couple of wagons and horses to a rockslide. They are now safely back at Banners Reach and ready to get into more trouble.