Tomb of the Serpent Kings Play Report 01
Game Experience
I started reading about the Old School Renaissance/Revival/Revolution around 2024, after running mostly Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition games for about 5 years. I was drawn in by the style of prep and expectations for play, for sure, but along the way I became enamored with the wicked cool ideas being passed around and fleshed out by the community.
It made me want to:
- design games, but I didn't know where to start.
- blog, but I didn't really have much to share.
My first step towards a solution for both of these itches was: Play more games.
I gathered a few long-time friends who had all played in my 5e games but not much else, and decided to run The Tomb of the Serpent Kings (TotSK) by Skerples. It is designed to be a tutorial dungeon for the OSR style of play - for both players and referees. My intention for 2026 became:
- Try to run TotSK for different players in different systems, to get a feel for what I like in a system, and to practice refereeing with OSR principals.
- Force myself to write play reports, at the very least once a week
The system
I want to try like 1,838 games, but that's way too many. So for session zero I made a faux-corporate slide deck to pitch the games and let my players decide between:
I think the players were bought-in to the concept of playing something radically different from 5e, and their perception was that Cairn was the furthest mechanically, so that was their choice. We finished Session 0 by rolling characters (which is super easy with Cairn) and got:
Beatrix the Hexenbane from the Order of the Bleeding Star
Kong the Outrider who always fights to the death (ominous), and his horse, Sue
Toph the Mountebank who frankly needs to lay low for the moment.
Yew the Local Gravedigger
In the interest of getting to know the characters through the act of play, we didn't establish backstory save for what was included in their Backgrounds.
Session 1
We started with very minimal setting:
- Players came up to the barrow hills north of the town of Blackcrossing
- Shepherd witnessed the earth shaking, found the doorway to a previously sealed tomb
- Shepherd led them within visual distance but would not follow any closer.
We followed the timeless advice of starting at the entrance of the dungeon. The town can always be explored later while depositing treasure or licking wounds, but getting to the interesting part first is exciting. We briefly introduced our characters, and established the vague idea that Beatrix was sent here to investigate by his Hexenbane order (Order of the Bleeding Star), and basically contracted Yew and Kong for their services, with Toph kind of tagging along. Yew's player began worldbuilding immediately, by scratching four tally's into the stone door-frame, to indicate how many people went in.
I found immediately I had to start unlearning the play-loop of 5th edition of:
- DM describing environment > Player describe action > DM Describing outcome
In favor of Cairn's loop of:
- Warden describe environment > players declared actions > Warden resolves actions simultaneously
It's a small distinction but I had to remind myself to get everyone's declared actions a few times before we got into a groove. I appreciate that this is a learning dungeon as much for me as it is for my players.
Just inside, they found several tombs with wooden coffins in them. Inside the coffin, they found a clay statue of a warrior with the lower half of a snake. Some experimentation revealed that the statue was hollow, and there was something rattling around inside of it. Yew and Toph decided together to shatter the statue, which released a noxious gas which was our first interaction with the mechanics (1d6 STR damage)
The rattling noise turned out to be a gold amulet that Toph appraised to be around 5-10 gold pieces in value. Toph and Yew then warned the others and devised a plan. In his backpack, Toph had a sling, so when the other tombs were revealed to have identical clay statues they lifted the statues out of the coffins and shot them from a distance, avoiding the noxious gas. On one statue, Beatrix found a silver ring.
Based on post-game feedback, this was an impactful moment since several players mentioned how much they enjoyed not having to roll for anything, and being able to see everything without a perception check.
At the end of the hallway was a stone door barred with a hefty stone block, held in place by metal pegs on short tracks built into the doorframe. This aroused some suspicions in Yew and Toph, while Beatrix found that it would be a group effort if they wanted to lift it. Yew was certain this door was rigged, and began devising a plan to embed his trusty grave-pully in the wall above the door, attach the barricade to a rope and pully system, and have Sue hoist the stone off of the pegs from a safe distance. Everyone was in agreement that the plan was clever, but Beatrix suggested they try lifting it together, just to see what might happen.
As the PCs began lifting the stone, the pegs rose with it. When the block was clear of the pegs, a behemoth stone swung down from the ceiling. Kong tucked and rolled underneath, escaping the hammer. On the other side, Beatrix managed to get hit by just the corner, maiming him greatly. Yew and Toph, being in the middle of the barricade, died on impact.
This was the most interesting moment of the session from both a player and referee perspective. I had tried to set expectations for the players that the dungeon would be deadly, but I wanted to follow the example of telegraphing great danger, since the module gives a failed save either instant death or 2d6+4 damage. Weirdly, I think I threaded that needle at least adequately but we stumbled upon a different issue.
Here's how I telegraphed it:
- I described the door as it is written in the module, with some extra details regarding the exact placement and situation of the pegs.
- Toph decided to look around. I described to Toph that the ceiling stones did not match the rest of the hallway, and that there was a very narrow column of stone brick in the center of the ceiling for about 10 feet emanating from the top of the doorframe. This was intended to be a clue of the lever arm of the hammer. My only question on this aspect is whether this was too veiled and I should have just said you see a hammer hanging above you. My logic was that surely the dungeon designer would have at least tried to hide it a little bit.
- Yew came up with his good plan. I loved this, it was perfect OSR problem solving from my perspective and I would have let it work without a roll.
- I did let them know that this would take a dungeon turn to set up, which may have discouraged them from trying it. I don't regret this, because I think this was a form of giving players full information to make decisions, but they may have miscalculated the risk of a dungeon turn vs triggering the trap.
Judging by player feedback, the real issue we stumbled upon was the dichotomy of Player and Character knowledge. Several players mentioned that they thought Toph was the only one who saw the narrow stone columns, so their characters couldn't act on that information. I think this can be solved in two ways:
- Discuss that it's okay to metagame a little bit in a situation like that, because it's reasonable that they would have seen it too - it's possible I should have just included that in the initial description, even.
- Prompt the players to share information. This is more useful for when the party splits up, but as a ref it's not breaking impartiality to ask if they share the information from time to time.
Beatrix and Kong decided to have a proper burial for their companions in the Snake-men coffins, but did not allow themselves the time to grieve. Beyond the now-smashed door was a grand vaulted hall some thirty yards wide, with a grand sarcophagus in the center, decorated with a painting of a male Snake-man depicted with a scepter of power. Flanking this were two smaller coffins, each with a depiction of a different female Snake-man. Kong's nerves got the better of him and he shot the central sarcophagus with a crossbow bolt, in pre-emptive aggression.
His aggression was met. Crawling out of these wooden containers were three snake-men, with their skin rotted away and their bones clattering and scraping against the flagstones. Instead of running, Beatrix pulled out the Star Metal Mace that bound him to the Order of the Bleeding Star, and was able to splinter most of the Snake-King construct. replacing his crossbow with a longsword, Kong sliced the sinew and destroyed the once rotted corpse.
With their focus on the Snake-King, his two wives caught the PCs; digging into Beatrix's already wounded guts, and slicing at Kong's neck with fierce swiftness. The pair fell in unison, unable to look up at their killers. With one last flailing attack, Kong and Beatrix were put out of their misery.
I made sure the players knew they could go back to town and recruit new party members, but they wanted to continue on one more room at least. The crossbow bolt was a fun example of a ruling. I decided that if he rolled on the upper 50% of his damage die that the bolt would pierce the coffin, and it did, instantly waking the skeleton.
I am very excited to run the reaction rolls and morale checks for Cairn enemies, but the module calls for them to "immediately attack if their rest is disturbed" AND I personally think that fits within the fiction, because Kong did not just disturb their rest, he attacked with a lethal weapon.
This was a good showcase for how lethal combat can be. In terms of mechanics, Kong and Beatrix were both damaged past their hit protection, so they were forced to make saves to avoid critical damage, but both failed. Had the other PCs survived, they could have potentially still won the fight and then revived both of them enough to go back to heal, but since they both went down, they would have either bled out, or the skeletons would finish the job.
The players indicated that they were surprised at the lethality, but were really good sports about it, and excitedly rolled up new characters for next week! This was my first TPK and I was mostly just excited to dissect how it happened. Minus a few tweaks here and there, I am pretty happy with how it went, despite the results.
See y'all next week as party #2 delves into the Tomb of the Serpent Kings!