Thursdays in Thracia RELOADED Week 1

04 Feb, 2026

Introduction

If you're not familiar, the post title is a reference to Chris P. Wolf's classic play report series Thursdays in Thracia. That series of posts had a significant influence on how I look at OSR style gaming and adventures, and ever since reading them and [sic] Jaquaysing the Dungeon I've wanted to run Caverns of Thracia.

Jennell Jaquays¹ and Joseph Goodman announced their intention to remaster her classic module over 5 years ago. Sadly Jannell passed 2 years ago of Guillain-Barre syndrome, and was unable to see the tremendous amount of love and support for both Caverns of Thracia Remastered and Return to Perinthos. There were significant missteps from Goodman Games along the way, but they managed to do a fantastic job of both reproducing the original adventure + remixing/updating it for DCC, and delivering a delightful product in a timely manner.

I got my copy of CoT about 10 months ago, and managed to find an in person group to play it with back in December. Coincidentally we're playing every other Thursday, hence the title of this post (hopefully series).

My Game

I'll be running Caverns of Thracia every other Thursday using Shadowdark². Unlike when Chris started his campaign I already have a solid foundation in OSR play and principles, so I will be using some house rules from session 1.

1. Spellcasting checks: Normally when Shadowdark spellcasters fail a spellcasting roll the spell isn't cast and is also lost until the next time the character rests. For my game spells will always cast (even on a 1), and the spellcasting check will determine whether it is lost. Deity displeasure and Wizardly mishaps will still apply.
2. Shadowdark enemies don't use morale out of the box.³ (I was wrong about this!) I will be giving them a morale score and checking morale during combat.
3. Shadowdark reaction rolls are much more likely to have a Hostile result. I'll simply be adding result 0-3: Attack Immediately, expanding suspicious to 6-8, and treating a Hostile roll as "will attack unless the PCs retreat or ameliorate them".
4. Shadowdark has no rules for hirelings, so I'll be slotting in the hireling procedures from OSE and modifying as needed.

I also don't particularly like how Shadowdark's default Deities fit with the setting of Thracia, so I've stolen my own Pantheon of real world Hellenistic, Roman, and Anatolian Gods and Goddesses. I'll probably expand their relationships to each other later, but I'd like to give my players the opportunity to provide input on their patron Deities.

Law

• Mithras - Soldiers, Oaths, Justice
• Dolichenus - Sky, Protection, Animal Husbandry/Cattle
• Vesta - Hearth, Family, Virginity
• Kore - Spring, Growth, Bounty

Neutral

• Cybele - Mountain Mother, Beasts, Cycle of Life
• Hyperion - The Sun, Summer, Sight
• Prometheus - Thought, Science, Deception
• Cabeiri - Iron, Blood, Smithing
• Despoina - Winter, Death, Judgement, Underworld

Chaos

• Dionysus - Autumn, Wine, Festivity, Madness (ritual and otherwise)
• Poseidon - Seas, Horses, Earthquakes
• Trivia (Luna/Diana/Hecate) - Moon, Magic, Crossroads
• Mars - War, Bloodshed, Anger

Dramatis Persona

For session one we had four player characters:

Lalandra an Elvish Priest
Iskios a Halfling Thief
Simon a Halfling Wizard
and Grumble a Half-Orc Fighter

I decided to dispense with any rumor rolls, "how did we meets", or "who's in the taverns" and put them directly in front of the dungeon so we could get right to the point. Not that a megadungeon campaign doesn't involve non-dungeon stuff, I just think it's best that it wait until after the party has a taste of the darkness.

The Ruined City of Thracia

The adventurers travelled inland from the port city of Hanowa and spent the night at a village of descendants of the ancient Thracians. In the morning they continued onward perhaps 90 minutes along a small foot trail, and then! Their first glimpse of the ruins of the once great City of Thracia.

Through the jungle from the trail the party was able to see several ruined buildings: a nearby tumbledown building (house?), the foundation of another building jutting out into a lagoon, and a large half collapsed temple looking structure. The group also noted the crumbling remains of some old streets passing through the ruins. They elected to first search the nearest ruin and soon found an old shield with some notes in dwarven script scratched on the inner side. Before they could examine the writing more closely they heard guttural and whiney speech coming up the road.

The party hid themselves in amongst the remains of the walls and watched as 5 furred, long snouted, pointy eared humanoids walked along the street to the edge of the lagoon and looked about as if searching for something. A few of the creatures poked spears into the water, but one up them seemed to catch a scent and wandered in the direction the party came from. Iskios and Grumble, acting quickly, each fired arrows at the back of the curious creature, killing it immediately. 3 of the other gnolls (they're gnolls of course) ran to their fallen comrade while the 4th watched from the slab. Iskios took out another gnoll with a well placed shot while Simon turned invisible and ran north making a racket to distract, Grumble made a break for the temple in the confusion, and Lalandra cast a spell in preparation for combat. After a brief running skirmish the gnolls were all slain, Simon took a grievous wound from one of their spears, but Lalandra was able to heal him. After catching their breathe the party turned their attention to the shield, none of them know Dwarven, but Simon using his knowledge of Primordial (shared alphabet) was able to decipher a few words:

"I ????? ???? ????? the ?????? I ?????? ????? ?????? ?????? the Caverns ?????. The ???? side ???? the ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ????? ????? ???? black stone."

After puzzling at what this could mean the party moved on to investigate the larger ruin. Within they found what was once a temple to the ancient Goddess Athena. Beneath a ruined altar they could easily make out wide stone stairs leading down into the dark beneath the earth. Through gaps in the walls of the temple the group also espied a structure made from dark stone, they briefly considered that it might be what was referred to by the shield, but decided not to investigate for now and descended the stairs.

Bat Country

At the bottom of the stairs the group found a large square room (~70' to a side) with passages to the left and right and large heavy iron bound double doors directly ahead. The floor was was thickly covered in guano and the chirping of bats could be heard above. The party slowly picked their way across the room and Iskios took Simon's lantern to peek through the slightly ajar door. On the other side the lantern revealed a long 30' wide hall flanked with columns, unfortunately its lower ceiling meant that the bats were disturbed by the light and began to swarm!

The large swarm of angry bats bit and clawed at the group, dealing minor damage to Grumble and Lalandra. Finding their weapons largely ineffectual against the swarm the party elected to run forward into the hall following a trail through the guano, bursting through a set of doors on the right at the far end.

Once through the party surprised and was surprised by a group of 4 lizardfolk, one of whom was floored groaning in pain, presumably wounded by one of the half eaten giant centipedes littering the floor. After a brief exchange of gestures, pantomime and names Lalandra healed the wounded lizard person. The party offered an exchange of gifts and traded Iskios' crowbar for the leader Thakk's braided leather bracelet with obsidian beads. The lizardfolk then showed the party a secret door behind a sliding panel at the back of the chamber.

The party then found themselves in a hallway that lead left > turning left and right -> turning right. After heading right 30' and turning the corner the group found themselves face to face with a gnoll standing in the hall, who immediately beat the but of his spear against a wooden panel in the wall behind him.

At this point Grumble's player was falling asleep, and I was his ride so we decided to conclude the session there and discover what would happen with the gnoll guard next session.

Things to work on for next time

1. I was under prepped. I had read the first floor of the dungeon, but the room descriptions were all in paragraph read aloud form. I would like to go through and note how much of each room will be revealed by torch/lantern light upon entering and do a better job of doling out information based on how the players move through a room and interact with it's contents. It's been a very long time since I've run this sort of published adventure, but the kinks will work themselves out pretty quickly I think.
2. All my players are story/indie games sickos, which I love, but I need to do a better job of not assuming they're familiar with OSR play loops and conventions. Luckily the text of Shadowdark is well written for people new to the play culture, so they did a great job!

In my next play report we'll see what happens with the gnoll guard and where the party goes from here. I'll also share some stat blocks I'm working on in the style of Warren D's fantastic Punnett squares for monster design post.

Large Groups. Make one check using the leader's WIS modifier.

#session report #thursdays in thracia