Barbigazl: Part Zero Notes

[Written by Peter A. And illustrated by him too. This here is Hongur.]

Introduction: DM’s notes

When one of my oldest friends announced that he was leaving NZ to live in the UK, and that he would be visiting town soon and wanted to play an old-school D&D game for old time’s sake, I was really pleased. Paul was fun to play alongside, and knowing he had a love for Dwarves (mainly through Warhammer games, as I recall), I looked among my own module notes for something I could fit to a Dwarven scenario. The logical candidate was Gundolar, a mission for a dying Gnome King to reclaim the lower chambers of his kingdom. It was essentially the Hobbit, set in the Mines of Moria, but with Gnomes for Dwarves and a giant moth-creature for the dragon. Unlike Paul I’d not been a Dwarf fan, although in more recent times – certainly since re-reading the Hobbit, I’d discovered what I’d been missing in all those years of dismissing them as short guys with horned hats who mined stuff. So in a real sense the Dwarven Renaisance was mine as well as theirs. Barbigazl, the converted scenario, would be my tribute to them!

The scenario is simple, and the back-story relatively straightforward – the Dwarves have reawakened to claim what they see as theirs, and there’s a hint that they’re starting to fight among themselves again. Barbigazl is like a Dwarven Eldorado – not everyone believes it actually exists, but there’s enough legend attached to the place to make its discovery very profitable. Where I did complicate things was in the size of the contingent – both in Playing characters and Non-Playing Characters.

I had three players lined up for the game with another (Jamas) to join us later. Paul’s brother was another player I’d shared games with, and it was his characters who came to the story last. In hindsight eight PCs of medium to high level (all under level 10) is easily enough, but to temper their influence and outnumber them physically the idea was always to have Hurin’s retinue be larger and more loyal to their king – because I had plans for Hurin and the Dwarven trait of overreaching
one’s self. The back story of Nikulburg actually came from one of the last games I’d played, in which my character (the thief) had been killed ‘off-stage’ by the DM (Paul’s brother). I’d never liked that decision, taking the power out of my hands, but I lived with it, and a subsequent Wish spell in one of Paul’s games offered the opportunity to reintroduce bits of the past into the game. I thought it worked! I didn’t expect Paul’s brother to bring the villains of the last piece into
this game. I hoped it would work out.

We had two nights to play it out in, with the chance of another night in a month’s time. The game wasn’t complete by the time we kicked off, but it didn’t seem to matter, as due to the huge size of the party, play ran very slowly indeed!

[END]