A Sunday of OD&D in Brandonsford

23 Sep, 2026

Recently my cousin who had been a player in my Shrike game for the last half year asked me to run a long and classic D&D session. Well I love running games and I used to run some pretty long sessions in the 5e days with the longest being 13 or 14 hours long. We picked Blackwyrm of Brandonsford as a classic adventure and the Littlest Brown Book for the classic 1974 rules. And then we met on a Sunday. Settling in, grabbing food (provided by bue and partner who are the best hosts), and making characters took about 45 minutes.

The following characters were rolled up:

• Malakai McTyson the rudest dwarf
• Gudrun Ensslin the halfling veteran (bue)
• Godfrey the god-fearing cleric
• Wendolin von Dunkelwald the elf magician
• F.¹ the elf magician

Besides Bue no one had played OD&D before and F. had never played any D&D. We didn't spend time explaining rules and just started playing. The events of the game are pretty straightforward and what you'd expect from Brandonsford. The party investigated the little village, went to the witch, helped the smith and the alchemist, and eventually traveled to the tomb in search of the sword of Sir Brandon. A couple of adjustments I had decided on before the session were not splitting XP, giving 100 per HD for creatures, and leveling up during the session to give the PCs a bit more tempo.

The dungeon of Sir Brandon's tomb played like a solid dungeon, not too overwhelming for new players. The heavy presence of undead was a great opportunity for Godfrey the cleric to shine. The module has some fun parts like the silver axe that slices through skin. Does it decapitate the dragon or does it something else. Well that is left up to the referee to do a famous OSR style ruling. My own ruling that it would just count the dragon's AC as 9 might have been a little too harsh. Still, the party came out victorious. I did reroll the dragon's HD with d6s which was in their favor. And when Gudrun Ensslin threw the magic citrine into the dragons mouth I ruled the explosion as 3d6 damage. In the end, Malakai McTyson fell to the dragon's bite. Godfrey the cleric then picked up the silver axe and depleted the dragon's last 6 HP with a 6 on the die roll. This was after we had been playing for almost 7 hours already and only taken a quick break after 3h. I completely forgot about the cleric's restriction of bladed weapons. When bue brought it up I told Godfrey that their cleric was excommunicated because of this action. Nonetheless, the party was able to revive Malakai McTyson the dodgy dwarf spending 5000 gp from the dragon's hoard.

There isn't much else to say but that it was a great time. Wendolin and F. were not too impressed playing magic users but that is just the low level wizard experience. (Wendolin did save the party multiple times using sleep.)

We had a great time. It was one of those loud and intense sessions I miss when running online. Sitting in a room, eating snacks, and shouting over each other while trying to kill an imagined dragon just is the best.

We had started at 11:00 and ended the game at 18:00. Wendolin and I arrived home just in time for me to log in for the weekly Arden Vul Weasels session: 3 hours more of old school gaming. And the session was so good that I wished I could have continued playing even more.

Damn I love playing D&D.

Behold these drawings Wendolin made during play: