I agree, fighters are beasts in combat and I think its pretty cool.  I was play-testing a con game and one of the players was a 7th level fighter with grandmastery of bow.  He said at one point "Jeez I'm frickin' Legolas!"   He and the ranger were mowing down enemies.  I't was a beautiful thing.

House rules I am using are a simplefied encumbrance system (based on inventory slots and ignoring items of negible weight), spell point based spellcasting, nonhuman character races, and no XP (everyone gets 20-30% progress to the next level, depending on how much progress was accomplished).

In addition to three of the old players, we got two new ones without any pnp experience, and since I had to explain everything and the two were making their characters anyway, the others chose to make new characters as well. Stats were rolled 2d6+6, assigned as desired. We now got the following:


Love the house rules.  I use 2d6+6 for characteristics.  I like the simplified xp. Spellpoint system?  Which one or original? 
 

The game started with a human corpse floating in the river that runs next to the village, and John and Kendall got up to fish it out. It was a man of local dress and look, who apparently got killed by two arrows in the back, but also carried with him a map that pointed towards a place along the river up in the hills. Sensing something afoot, the party set out to find what place he had been looking for.
Taking a boat upriver didn't get them very fast along, so they made camp for the night and continued along the increasingly shallower river on foot the next day. Towards noon, they came upon the remains of a donkey that had been mostly eaten by pumas. It still had a pack saddle and a rope tied to it, but with no trace of the gear it might have carried.
Less than a hour later, they reached the base of two mountains that marked their destination on their map, wich turned out to lead them to a cave entrance. The first tunnel lead them to a dead end where the ceiling had colappsed, but at the end ofy the tunnel they found a campfire a few days old and the blankets and supplies of three people. The other passage had been supported by wooden beams, which were showing signs of cracking, so the party decided not to mess around with them. Some meters deeper into the hill, they came upon a carved out chamber with an empty stone altar, as well as a hole in the wall, that led into a burrow of some small animals. Beyond the chamber they came upon a creaky rope bridge spanning a large underground chasm. Figuring out who should go first apparently needs to take lot of details into consideration. In the end, Burdie went ahead with rope tied around her, which of course turned out to have been completely unnecessary. Faced with a blocked stone door, they continued through a small crack in a wall and found themselves in a cave full of spiderwebs. John stated that he would burn the webs with his torch and before I could say aything, the two torchbearers already started drawing flames on the map. With such a clear show of intent, I didn't bother with any more questions and had six giant spiders rushing at John and Kendall. Getting an increased number of attacks against enemies with 1 Hit Die is not the joke that it seems to be. In AD&D/OSR, you are expected to face hordes of low-level enemies even at high character levels, and in AS&SH this ability eventually includes 2 HD creatures as well. John just sliced through these things like the madman he kinda is, and I m not sure if anyone else got to make even one finishing strike against the spiders. One managed to bite and poison John, but only did a pitiful 2 damage to him.
Having found a way around the stone door, the group came upon another bridge, this one much sturdier and made from stone. Beyond it they found an ancient tomb, that seems to have been empty for centuries. The small shrine in thecenter of the tomb held a statue of a creature that seemed like a hybrid of a man and and ape, but instead of eyes it only had a single large hole above his flat nose. As the party left the shrine a violent eartquake shook the tomb, causing cracks in the ceiling and clouds of dust. The bridge was completely gone, but so was one of the walls in one of the crypts, giving access to an easily climbable shaft down. At the base of the shaft, the party stepped into knee deep water, which wasn't regarded as a good sign. Taking some steps into the dark tunnels, they came upon the remains of the bridge, and not far from it the corpses of two more human adventurers. Carefully stepping deeper into the flooded tunnels leading from the large chasm, the group eventualy found a passage that lead them to the rope bridge they had crossed earlier, hanging down from above in shreds. However, they decided to continue exploring the flooded tunnels, and as John stepped into a large cavern with no visible ground, he just barely evaded getting grasped by the large tentacle of some water creature. It was then agreed to try another passage for now. After some stumbling around in the dark water, Kendall went ahead to take a close look at a tunnel completely filled with water, and was iimmediately snatched up by a tentacle tht began to crush him. John tried to come to his aid, but ended up only hitting Kendall instead, reducing him to 0 hp. Isayoki won inititive for the next round and healed Kendall back to consciousness. The later made smrt use of his fear spell and just barely survived when the creature immediately released him and disappeared into the deep water. Even though it was pure stupidity and a total failure, this one moment of quick thinking at a second chance to avoid disappearing into the lightless depth forever is one to be remembered. I will exploit this for all it's worth in any future encounters with tentacles.
It was then agreed to give the remains of the rope bridge a try. But back up top, they ran into another obstacle, as the earthquake had crushed the cracked beams that had supported the ceiling of the exist. After one encounter with giant rats from the burrow in the wall, in which John shone again as a slayer of everything that moves, exploring the burrows was abandoned and instead Burdie tried her luck with a small ledge on the side of the chasm, that lead them to another small exit higher up on the hillside.
The party made camp for the night outside the caves and just when they got up the next morning, a dark elf woman approached them from the river bank. She was trailing a group of bandits who had stolen a gem from her. She had previously followed some of the band to a village about one days journey away, but being obviously a foreigner to this land, she didn't dare asking around for the men, as she doesn't want them to learn that she's on their trail. With her trip to this cave having turned out to be a dead end, she asked to hire the party to investigate in the village for her and bring her the gem, if they could find it. The group agreed and set out for their next destination.

I really should have prepared much more. This dungeon could have been really great, but mostly it was blindly stumbling around with no clear direction, and I even forgot about a good deal of the encounters I had planned to appear at random points during this exploration.
Next time, I'll be trying to run Agianst the Cult of the Reptile God as straight as I can adapt it. Because the bandits are actually cultists who killed the three explorers who had it on order of their leader.
One thing I want to accomplish is to make the encounters with eldritch forces genuinly weird. And part of this means first establishing a mostly normal world.  Which is the reason the only unusual encounter so far has been the water beast. Using ghouls, zombies, and downgraded carrion crawlers would have been easy in this dungeon, but that would only have confirmed the players expectations of undead and abominations from below being standard adventurer work. I am quite excited about the next game. My goal is to make the cult both unsettling, while at the same time leaving it unclear if they have actually made any contact with a horrible god at all, or are just deluded madmen.

Today I started with an adaptation of Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

The party set out from the burried tomb they explored last game and first returned to their home village to stash some stuff they didn't really need on the road and restock on some other supplies. Having taken the boat up the river paid off on the way back, and they arrived back home in the evening.
The next day they set out for the village where the dark elf Enka had tracked the bandits to, which only took half a day through the open valley along the forest edge. Their first idea was to stir up a few things and get the attention of any accomplices of the bandits that might be in the area. They asked one of the local traders for rare jewels and were quite open with the goal of their visit in the local tavern. One of the village elders warned them to better keep moving the next day, as travelers have been disappearing in the area for some time. The five took a single room with four beds, deciding to have one person stay on guard and see if anyone would come for them.
Later that night, a group of thugs did indeed sneak into the inn and Burdi signaled the others to wake up, who all had their boots and clothes on and their weapons at had. When the first two men came sneaking into the room, Burdi slammed the door shut behind them, separating them from the other two still in the hall. John jumped up and cleaved through the skull of the first man, while Burdi backstabbed the other one in the thigh, making him drop to the ground holding his bleeding leg. Isayoki and Aeoren took care of the wounded man, while Burdi, John, and Kendall went after the remaining two who had fled. They cought up to them at the edge of the forest and Burdi managed to trip one with her bolas while the two large man tackled the other to the ground.
Back in the inn, nobody had shown up yet to see what the comotion is about. It took a bit of intimidation and a punch to the face to get the three surviving man to talk, but eventually they admited to have been hired by one of the bandits to help them with their dirty works. One of them had been to the bandits camp to get a sack of loot to be sold to the fence in the village and was able to tell the party how to get there.
The group decided not to wake until morning, but to set out immediately, even though it was still several hours until dawn. After following a trail into the forest for almost 10 miles, they reached a small swamp located between some hills, where they got attacked by a large scorpion-spider. John hacked off its stinger effortlessly and he and Burdi salvaged it for parts that could be sold to craftsmen.
Eventually they made it to the bandits camp about an hour before sunrise and went into a muddy cave leading into the hillside. The first people they encountered where two men carrying buckets to a large enclosure made from wooden planks at the far wall of a large natural cavern. Burdi sneaked up to them and attempted to shot the larger one with her bow, but she missed and John and Kendall charged forward. John took out the larger man with a big axe in a single swing, but the smaller one pulled open the door of the enclosure entirely and out charged five huge war dogs. Even though John and Kendall took them out quickly, the beasts took a big toll on the two, biting John quite badly and requiring the healing magic of Isayoki to get him back up to his feet. As they ventured deeper into the cave, they found large sections of the caves to have been expanded into an underground fortification with paved floors and stong wooden doors. Even though the dogs had made a big commotion for the short fight, most people in the complex seemed to be still asleep. In addition to some storage rooms, the party came into a room occupied by some sleepers. However, one of them had woken up by the barking of the dogs and when he realized that there was a whole group of people entering the room, he turned around and shouted to his companions to get up. But with the three of them still in their blankets and with five armed opponents standing above them, they didn't stand any chance. John got in a grapple with one of the three, who manged to slip away only to get struck down by Burdis hatchet.
The main corridor of the complex led the group to a large hall where the tabled were still covered in dirty plates and some leftover food. Kendall went to explore the kitchen and just barely avoided a cleaver coming at his face, striking down the cook with his staff in turn. At the next corner, the party ran straight into a group of four armed warriors who had been awoken by the noise from the kitchen, but again it wasn't much of a fight.
After a couple more storerooms and empty side caves, the group came upon a most unexpected sight. In the center of a large room the bandits had errected a large tree trunk, which had been covered in red runes, large dead spiders, and human skulls. The next cave had been closed off with a gate made from wooden beams and planks, which had only been secured with a simple knotted rope, and that didn't do anything to block the awful stench of decay from the other side. Finding a pile of rotting corpes covered in orange mold, the group noticed three of the corpses standing upright and shambling towards them. After taking a few slashed at them, it was decided not to be worth their trouble and they all slipped out through a narrow passage in the back of the cave, leading to another one that turned out to be the garbage pit of the bandits, which possibly smelled even worse.

We had to stop there for today, but with two thirds of the adventure completed, we'll finish it tuesday evening.
Setting out for the bandit camp in the middle of the night was a rather unexpected move. But having a fully detailed hex map now, it was easily determined that they would arrive at the cave around dawn when almost everyone inside was still asleep. So even the loud barking of the dogs didn't cause an immediate all out alarm through the whole camp. The lower level will likely get quite interesting.

Almost two months after our last game, we finally continued our campaign today. A basic cave exploration losely based on the Pathfinder adventure "Flight of the Red Raven". One player was absent today and another could play only for the first hour, so for most of the adventure it was just three characters.

John the Younger: Human male Fighter 2
Kendall: Human male Cleric 2
Isayoki: Half-elf male Priest 2

427, 7th Moon, 4th Sun
In the early morning, Isayoki, the junior priest at the village shrine, was called by the head priest Karras. During the night, someone had broken into the inner sanctum but stole only a single object. A simple amulet that belonged to one of the villages founders, which she had taken from a Hag she had killed to rescue her kinsfolk while the men were at war, conquering a territory for the newly founded clan. The day before, a local vagabond named Fox had come to the village. Though technically an outcast with no clan, his mother had been born in this clan and been exiled with her infant child for a crime commited by her husband. The villagers could not take her back, as doing so would have been an insult to the neighboring clan that banished her, but unlike most outcasts the boy was allowed to visit the village on occasion. And now he had suddenly disappeared during the night, at the same time as the relic from the shrine. Asked to keep silence about the matter for as long as possible, Isayoki got John and Kendall to get their gear, while the elder priests nephew would be their tracker to follow Fox's trail.

In the late evening, the group reached an unremarkable cave deep inside the forest. Ordering the tracker to stay behind and watch the cave for anyone who might come out, the trio lighted a torch and headed inside the cave. The cave seemed rather unremarkable, but inhabited by all kinds of big insects and other vermin. After heading deeper into the hill, the group came upon a cave covered in a faintly blue glowing fungus. But to their surprise they were not alone, as a hulking figure came from the shadows, covered in splintering bark and brown leaves. While they managed to defeat the creature relatively unharmed, they had an extremely hard time doing any damage to it that would penetrate the tough bark. As they explored further, they came upong a few caves partially flooded by clear and fast flowing water, but having made very bad experiences with creatures hiding under the surface of subterranean lakes, they decided to look for other possible passages instead.

An unexpected find was made deeper inside the caves, in the form of a worn but still mostly intact backpack. One of the straps had been ripped, but it was still tied close. The food inside it was still fresh, but the party only took the additional torches and the rope from it, before continuing to go down the passage. Unexpectedly, they found themselves in a cave, and stepping on pieces of bone that were scattered on the ground, they alerted its two inhabitants. Once they appear to have been men, still waring the stained and tattered rags of their former lives, but their dried husks, white eyes, and black fangs clearly marked them as creatures that have no place in nature. Using his long steel sword, John beheaded the first one with no trouble and then turned to help Kendall and Isayoki with the other one, which he also almost cleaved in two.

Using their newly found rope, they returned to a cave they had discovered earlier, where a steep 6 meter drop kept them away from another passage vissible on the cave floor below. After a few meters, they entered another cave, which was filled up to their waists in pale yellow, and seemingly odorless vapors. Following the main passage, they heard two low voices up ahead, and using the powers of his magical shaman mask, Kendall crept quietly forward as John and Isayoki remained back with the torch. In the pitch black darkness ahead, Kendall spotted two large trolls talking to each other. With the odds of just three men against two trolls, they decided not to risk a direct confrontation and continued exploring more of the side passages of the vapor cave. John and Kendall ran headfirst into a pair of carrion crawlers, who seemed to be just as startled as they were, and desperately trying to keep as quite as possible, a fight ensued while Isayoki stayed back watching the passage behind him for the trolls. While John was able to slay the first of the abhorrent white worms, Kendall slumped down to the ground, but his companion came to his rescue in time. With no idea what might be wrong with Kendall, Isayoki tried to pour one of his antidote potions into his mouth, which did the job and quickly had him back on his feet. Considering their options, Kendall came up with a plan to take out the two trolls. John and Isayoki would climb back up the rope and roll several large stones up to the edge of the drop. Then he would lure out the trolls to come chasing after him and use his new wind step spell to get himself up the steep cave wall in a single mightly leap. The other two agreed and the plan worked out with quite some success. While Isayokis attempts to throw fist size stones at the two trolls didn't do much help, Johns and Kendalls impressive strength allowed them to drop small boulders on the trolls as they were climbing up the ledge. Slaying the first one, as he just made it to the top of the ledge, convinced the other to abandon his attempt and flee back through the vapor cave. Chasing after him, the three cornered the troll in his lair, where an intense battle broke out. The trolls mightly club caused serious injury to the warriors, but from a small passage in the back of the cave two arrows came flying that helped them take down the brute.

Two humans emerged from the passage, which was barely more than a crack in the wall, whose clothing were barely more than rags and who wore old armor that should have been replaced years ago. They had been part of a group that had been exploring the cave almost a week ago, when they found out that stories about the curse of the cave were true and they were unable to find the exit again. They had been separated about two days ago during a fight against a powerful Oni, that seemed to be trapped in the cave with them, and ended up being chased by the two trolls until they were able to hid in the small cave. The group decided to not ask the two about either Fox or the stolen amulet and made their own attempt to find the exit. But it was indeed as the two vagabonds had said. Retracing their steps only got them to walk around in circles, returning to other parts of the caves they had been to before. With nothing else to do, the five continued their exploration of the deeper caves in search for the other outcasts.

It didn't take them long until they were able to hear two shouting voices in the darkness ahead of them. Trying to stay unseen and unheard, they continued forward with care, until they reached a large cave illuminated by more of the glowing fungus. In the center of the cave stood Fox, sword drawn, and shouting at a muscular horned giant with a massive iron club to release his friends, which were tied up in a corner in the back of the cave. Deciding to use the advantage of surprise, the three adventurers charged into the cave, weapons drawn. The oni immediately turned upon them and Fox joined the fray as well. Being almost surrounded, the giant stepped back towards the wall and unleashed a mighty blast of cold, which covered John and Kendall in frost and had them collapsing to the ground. But Fox keep the brute occupied as arrows kept being shot at him by the other two outlaws. Isayoki used the distraction to heal Kendall, who got back to his feet and made an ussuccesful attempt to drive the monster away with a fear spell. When Isayoki also got John back into the fight, things were looking quite dire for the badly injured oni, so he waved up his hands and disappeared into a cloud of smoke.

Drained of all his magic power, Isayoki retrieved some healing potions from his pack for John and Kendall, who were still in bad shape, while Fox and the other outlaws freed their bound friends who had been captured by the oni. Fox urged everyone to get out of the cave as quickly as possible, as he had the key to finding the exit, at which he presented the amulet that had been stolen from the village shrine. Deciding to play along for now, the group followed Fox and his men out of the cave, who in possession of the amulet found the way out without problem. Once outside safely in the early night, it was time to confront Fox about the amulet. His friends had gone to the caves in search of the treasures that might have been left behind by their ancestory after she had killed the hag. When they never returned, he began to ask around for more details of the cursed cave, and discovered the the ancestor was the only person who had ever made it out of the cave, and the only thing she returned with her was the hags amulet. Unwilling to let his friends be trapped forever, he made a gamble and stole the amulet from the shrine and try to rescue them from the labyrinth. Now that they were save, he no longer needed the amulet and was willing to return it to Isayoki. All they wanted now was to leave the area and stay away for a couple of years until the whole affair was forgotten. Being completely drained of magic and facing a group twice their size, it was decided to allow them to leave without any punishment for the theft. However, the group would make camp outside the cave, and with the amulet in their possession, they were free to go searching for the hags treasures and find their way back out again.

The next day, the group entered the caves a second time and continued to explore deeper into the pasage where they had fought the two carrion crawlers the previous day. As the continued onward, they experienced a strange sensation of the floor slowly tipping beneath their feet, but looking both back and ahead, the floor seemed to be almost perfectly solid and level. As they pressed onward, the effect got stronger and stronger, until they were almost sliding down an invsible slope that got increasingly steeper. After a few dozen meters, the passage opened into a large circular cave, and a large hole in the center forced them to crawl along the steeply angled floor to not be pulled into it. However, the floor of the room looked to be completely flat, but when they tried to crawl around the hole, it felt much more like they were clinging to the walls of a large funnel. Several passages were leading into the strange cave, and climbing up one of them had them reach the lair of the hag. Even though 200 years had passed, the vile creature still lay on the ground, her severed head next to hear, with no sign of decay on the corpse. Searching the area for magic revealed that the whole place was filled with faint magical energies, which seemed to be slowly flowing towards the pit. Hoever, there was also a magic dagger, a dozen magic arrows, and several magic potions found on the dust covered and rotten shelves. In an attempt to learn more about the strange environment, Kendall took one of the wooden chair in the room and pushed it out into the passage, until it suddenly tipped over and slid along the level floor with increasing spead until disappearing in the hole in the central cave.

With the treasure of the hag in their possession and the oni still being around somewhere, the three decided to leave the cave and return to the village. There they would gather more of their allies to return for a monster hunt to clear the cave of all remaining creatures.