Notes on the Weird that Befell Drigbolton

While scanning through the posts in the Necrotic GnomeDiscord server earlier this week, someone asked for advice on running the Dolmenwood adventure The Weird that Befell Drigbolton.

How fortunate! I happen to be running a pair of players through that adventure, currently. And nothing gets me in the writing mood more than the belief that I might help someone. So I offered to share my notes.

Rather than clog Gavin Norman's lovely Discord server with lengthy back-to-back posts, I will consolidate my thoughts in this post. In the future, I will likely 1. write a summary of my players' escapades and 2. offer a review of the adventure. But for now, I will focus on the preparations I made to run this wonderfully weird adventure.

Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for The Weird that Befell Drigbolton (hereafter abbreviated as TWtBD). Unless you intend to run this adventure as a referee, you should stop reading here.

The beautiful cover of this adventure, drawn by Andrew Walter.

PART 1: THE MAP

The first thing I would like to share is a map I made of Drigbolton's surroundings. A large part of this adventure involves the players exploring Bolton Moor. Although the adventure's map fits neatly into a single six-mile hex in the north of Dolmenwood (specifically Hex 0702), it does not have a scale.

This lack of a scale makes it difficult to track time as the player characters travel between locations. By making it difficult to track time, this adventure also makes it difficult to know when to use the zany random encounter tables included at the back of the book. As Gygax himself said in the Dungeon Master's Guide, "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.” And keeping track of time in this adventure is especially important, given how things progress and develop over the course of several days.

To solve this problem, I subdivided the six-mile hex into 1-mile hexes. I shifted a few locations slightly to ensure only one major location sat within each hex.

While running this for my players, I allowed them to move three hexes per hour while on a road, two hexes per hour on open land, and one hex per hour in rough terrain (forests, swamps, and hills). Expressed in terms of time, a road hex takes 20 minutes to travel through, an open hex takes 30 minutes to travel through, and a hex of rough terrain takes an hour to travel through.

The map I created is below.

A map of Drigbolton's surroundings, divided into 1-mile hexes.

Knowing that you might be playing on a virtual table-top (or just don't like my colored-pencil drawing), here is another version I made using Hextml.

A digital, 1-mile hex map of Bolton Moor.

PART 2: THE HAMLET

Another area I remapped was the hamlet of Drigbolton itself.

The adventure itemizes each building in Drigbolton, noting the inhabitants of each. This is par for the course. This method of keying villages goes all the way back to T1: The Village of Hommlet.

However, I've always found such keys only marginally useful. One reason is that it doesn't help make a village feel alive; villagers hardly spend all day in their homes. So although the house-by-house key may help me, as a referee, know where each villager lives, that information is really only is relevant at the outset if the villagers all line up at their own doorsteps like the von Trapp family when the PCs pass through.

Secondly, it also does not help me provide a narrative description of the village. A house-by-house key is too granular. Just using this map, if the PCs approach from the north, I would say to them, "You approach the village from the north. You see two houses to the right (J and C), and another house by the well (K). Other paths lead to the left (F and I), right (D), and ahead (the rest of town)."

YAWN. How boring.

When I think of running a town, I tend to think of it like a room in a dungeon: I want to give 1. a general overview in one sentence, 2. one or two relevant details, and 3. two or more interesting things for the players to explore. This map does not help me do that.

So I created the map below.

The reason I like this map is because it "chunks" the information into discrete "zones" that I can provide to the players. It gives them specific places to go - almost like a point-and-click adventure game gives you specific things to click on.

Now, were the players to approach from the north, I could say:

"You arrive at a hamlet of about a dozen wooden cottages gathered along a river. It looks like a sleepy village suddenly come alive; gaudy, colorful flags decorate every building. To your right you see a large, wooden structure - like a hall or barn or something (if after dark, they would hear music there). Straight ahead the path continues past a well, around which you see a cluster of houses."

Now the players have a general idea of the village, as well as two potential directions to head in. They can either check out the barn or proceed to the well. If the village were more "normal," I might describe all its "zones" at once when the players arrive. But Drigbolton in this adventure is far from normal, so I run it more like a dungeon.

I should add that 1. a roster of villagers (independent of where they live) and a brief description of their appearance / personalities is helpful to have. I have not posted that here. And a random encounter table for the village would be cool. I haven't had time to write one myself, but I think it would be a great way to make the village seem alive.

PART 3: KNOW YOUR STAR-METAL

Another piece of advice I would give is to know 1. where the goal(s) of the players is/are and 2. how they might get to that goal. That may seem obvious, but I failed to do that.

Because we are running this adventure as a "one-shot," I asked my players at the beginning of our first session what "prompt" they wanted to start the adventure with (out of those provided at the beginning): salvaging star-metal, finding the Black Book, or uncovering the Arch Mage. They chose to search for star-metal.

That was fine. But after they made their choice, I quickly realized that I did not have a comprehensive list of where all the star metal was. I knew they could find it as part of a random encounter. I remembered reading that there was star metal in several places around Drigbolton, but I couldn't remember specifically where - and the book refused to tell me. The references to star-metal are buried within the dense prose of the adventure and not highlighted or "called out" in any way.

I therefore began our first session rather "in the dark," hoping my players lucked into some star-metal. I was going to discover it just as much as they were 😂

Needless to say: after our first session, I then went through the book and highlighted every reference to star metal I could find.

The other two prompts - finding the Black Book or uncovering the Arch Mage - are more straightforward. They just require the PCs to go to the Laird's house. Any villager in the hamlet can point them in that direction. However, I don't want someone else to repeat the same mistake that I made.

So, for your ease of reference, the player characters can find star metal:

• In the vegetable patch behind the Oath House (pg. 28)
• At Nob's Spinney, tangled among the brambles (pg. 36)
• Around the barn at Bolton Bog (pg. 38)
• With a result of 12-15 on a d20 in a random encounter check (pg. 46)
• POSSIBLY in the mouths of "moon-eyed" creatures, brought as offerings to the star (pg. 18). The text vaguely references this, but doesn't specifically call it out as a "find."

Also, just as a minor detail: the text says star metal fragments are valued "at five times their weight in gold" (pg. 2). The adventure also says that star-metal fragments are worth "50gp per pound of weight" (pg. 57). This conversion would imply that ten gold coins weigh one pound.

However, I use a conversion rate of 50 coins per pound. I consider it to be more believable, based on this post at the Dungeon Master's Workshop. So I said that star-metal was worth 250gp per pound, not 50.

That is an INCREDIBLY nitpicky thing that only I care about (probably). But I just thought I'd mention it.

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And that's it: all my notes and advice on running this fantastic adventure. I hope it is helpful for you 🙂