Heroes of Hommlet (Overview)

Written By Ned Leeds

Project Overview:

Heroes of Hommlet is a hybrid solo actual play RPG and audio drama. In the vein of such masterpieces as Tale of the Manticore, Tales of Mystara, Legend of the Bones, Legends from the Fireside, Stories from the First Watch and Swords Against Madness I will combine the dice driven actual play and an audio narrative to drive an (hopefully) interesting story. Some basic guidelines for my project that might be different from the above listed works.

  • I will use Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, by E. Gary Gygax

  • I will stick to the 3 core books unless something is really necessary from the survival guides or Pelor forbid Unearthed Arcana

  • I will be playing a published adventure, the greatest one of all time actually, The Temple of Elemental Evil. While I won’t be on rails necessarily, I will endeavor to fulfill the core quests.

  • My game is set in Greyhawk. The greatest of all settings.

  • The audio only portion won’t feature the dice rolls. I will narrate only, and not refer to game rules directly. Though it will all map back to the actual play (on YouTube).

  • I will advance the characters through the slavish devotion to experience points as instructed in the dungeon masters guide.

  • I may steal the ability score advancement scheme used in Tale of the Manticore, mostly because it’s very fun.

Other than that I’m mostly winging it. My initial house rules are:

  • Lowering a few of the utterly useless 1st level spells to 0-level cantrips. Notably Read Magic.

  • Beginning my characters with max hit points. Not because I’m concerned about them dying but mostly to avoid the time consuming work of character generation and re-introduction. After 1st level however the dice will dictate everything.

  • Cleric spontaneous casting. A cleric may convert a spell on the fly to Cure Light Wounds by making a Wisdom ability check. If he fails the spell is lost for the day.

  • We won’t be using the weapon vs. AC rules.

  • We will use the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log rules for attack and defense adjustments.

  • We will occasionally use OSRIC when I can’t figure something out and need a ruling.

So most of the content for this project can be found on the YouTube channel. But occasionally it might be useful to post content here. Character sheets, house rules and other documents.

I am on my 5th recorded ‘cast and have begun work on the audio portion. I’ll post my initial character sheets here on this blog as PDFs for anyone interested.

Ned Leeds
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