Session End: Return to safety

When running a West Marches style of game you often want the group back in safety at the end of each session. This ensures you can start a fresh dungeon delve in the next session with whomever shows up on that day.

We recently started a Barrowmaze campaign and I came up with this session end procedure (still to be tested). It‘s based on Five Torches Deep, but shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to your OS of choice.

When time is running out and you need to check if (and in which shape) characters make it out of the dungeon, reserve five minutes to go through this procedure:

Each character makes an unmodified d20 check. The base DC is 11. See if one or more of the following modifiers apply:

• +1 for every hostile encounter the characters triggered that wasn’t resolved (what’s still out there to get you?)
• +1 if your path out is (knowingly or unknowingly) blocked
• +1 if you have unconscious or otherwise incapacitated group members who you want to drag along
• +1 if you’re encumbered and not willing to let go
• +1 if you’re exhausted and haven’t rested for a long time
• +1 if you’re especially deep in a vast dungeon or if the dungeon is especially deadly (game master‘s decree)
• -1 if the group is united and tries to get out together
• -1 if you made extra precautions to find your way back
• -1 for every other main factor that helps you get out

A natural 20 is always an automatic success; you got out unscathed.
A natural 1 is always a failure; you’re dead or lost to the darkness.

If you rolled a success, you make it out of the dungeon unscathed.
If you rolled a miss, you need to deal with a number of entanglements equal to by how much you rolled under the DC (e.g. if the DC was 16 and you rolled a 13 you need to deal with 3 entanglements).
If you run out of resources before you dealt with all entanglements you’re dead.
If you dealt with all entanglements before running out of resources, you escaped the dungeon.

Entanglements:

• You get rid of 1 entanglement for every d4 HP (level 1-2)/ d6 (level 3-4)/ d8 (level 5-6)/... you’re willing to lose. If this brings your hp to 0 or below you’re dead.
• You get rid of 1 entanglement for every piece of treasure you leave behind. For this, every separate find counts as 1 treasure (e.g. a stash of gold coins, a magical artifact, a valuable object of art). Alternatively, you could evaluate the total value of your share of treasure recovered. Every 1/3 of value of your treasure you leave behind solves 1 entanglement. If you didn’t find any treasure, you’re out of luck
• You get rid of 1 entanglement for leaving behind all your weapons (if any)
• You get rid of 1 entanglement for leaving behind all your armor including shield (if any)