I Play, the Older School Than Thou Edition!

I haven't done one of these for awhile... but for today's game we dug down into the deepest depths of oldschool lore and came back with...


RATS ON A STICK.

Complete with raisin noses and pumpkin seed ears. And soy bodies for the non-meat eaters in my group.

Bask in my awesomeness. But not for too long, else I'll have to charge you for it.


... served with a side dish of skewered chocolate-bathed pears, carrots, tea, coffee, and various other snackies.

"Why do I bother eating before I come here?" is a lament not unheard in these parts.

I Play SUNDAY EDITION!

Better game today. I think we may be finished with the Pod Caverns with this group (but who knows if they'll want to go explore the few caverns they have not yet...)

Three things...

One, I keep forgetting to take pictures of my girlfriend's baking before we devour it.

Two, the fat naked goblin woman made me decide that goblin nipples aren't only pointy... they're spikes!

Two B, piercers are joke monsters. All five missed and really, what else have they got after that?

Three, "You have to speak in rhymes from now on," is really, really cruel when you're not playing in any of the players' native language. heeheeheeheehee!

I Play... Friday the 13th Edition!

Ay ay ay, that didn't go well.

First off, the blue (OK, OK, turquoise) bread I baked that wowed everyone so much in Vaasa a couple years back was not so impressive to the Helsinki crowd. Frickin jaded big city types. :P Then there was a bit of trouble since the game was at my place and two of the players got a tad lost on their way so we didn't get settled in until a bit later than planned. And then we started playing...

... and the party demonstrated an absolute lack of cooperation and cohesiveness. This is either the third straight session (or the third out of the last four, I forget) where there has been a PC fatality (nevermind hireling fatalities). In addition to my belief that the lack of overall cooperation has led to two of these deaths, the latest two to die (same ones...) were "senior" members of the party (they've been there every session from the beginning) and the ones that everyone else seemed to look to for guidance. When the last PC fell, a disorganized situation devolved into chaos.

In total, they explored less than a dozen rooms, netted about 90xp/gp each, and face an uncertain future as a party. I hope they get their acts together because I enjoy running for larger parties... it gives so more options for them as far as strategy (and they practice almost none of it beyond a few basics). But if smaller, separate groups end up being what's called for (remember I'm aiming for a West Marches campaign), I can do that too. But a party that doesn't work together will get chewed up by the opposition pretty bad...

The good thing is total Olden Domain playership went up to 9 total participants from 5 different nations.

I Play... GAME NOTES!

No pictures this week, and no game coming on Sunday (I'll be using the break to introduce the girlfriend to the foundations of modern horror... or, stuff I liked as a kid, either or: Halloween, Friday the 13th Part II, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Evil Dead II).

For the second week in a row, there was a PC fatality. This time it was more interesting. The valiant party of 5 (1st level) PCs and 2 hirelings wandered into a cave... and were attacked by 3 carrion crawlers. One by one the party succumbed to paralysis, until only one crawler and one PC remained... and... the PC fell.

I was ready to call it a TPK when a comment a player had made me realize... is one badly injured crawler going to eat everyone before anyone woke up? I checked the manual, because I didn't want to save them from a deserved fate and I didn't want to screw them. Neither Greyhawk nor the Monster Manual (the two references I had with me) listed a duration for paralysis with the monster description. I'd already gone with the "no damage/paralysis only" (I have no idea if the Greyhawk version is different) so it wouldn't be quickly gulping anything.

So I made a ruling. The PCs will begin to wake up... only after one character was dead. The badly wounded critter would definitely begin feasting on someone. I rolled a d8. Each character, PC and NPC, was assigned a number. 8 means reroll. The roll determines who dies.

And... Gnarly the Dwarf, veteran of every Olden Domain session to date, and not far from 2nd level... had his face munched off (easiest place to chow down on someone wearing plate armor, no?).

What an ungrateful bastard I am, too. This past week he had received a Creature Generator he'd ordered online someplace and had me sign it before the session started. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

RIP Gnarly. And that was how the session ended. The rest of the crew awoke during the following several rounds and took down the badly injured critter.

There was also fun earlier on in a moldy room where pretty much every action meant a save vs death by spores, but they'd taken so many precautions that I ruled that they'd fail the save only on a roll of 1 or 2 (just 1 for the dwarves). Watching them take so many chances and roll that 20 sider so many times since the chances were so heavily in their favor... that was really cool and suspenseful. No fatalities there.

In other news, one of my other players is a fantastic artist (I'd seen some of his sketches, but I saw an in-progress work he's doing OH MY GOD)... looks like he's doing stuff for Fight On! now. If that comes together, and the player in my other campaign indeed releases some of his old dungeons as he's thinking of doing, in addition to the Insect Shrine artist Laura doing artwork for the upcoming Fight On! as well... I think I'll have nothing to be ashamed about contributing to this little Renaissance of ours... not only a decent little product that I've somehow managed to get into retail distribution, but getting talent into the creative pool as well. Rock, rock on!

I Play 2: Eldritch Boogaloo!

... ah, from the Sunday game!


The players study their options! This game runs from 2pm - 8pm (give or take) so we're generally more lively... well, when certain people aren't dreadfully hungover, that is! We had three absent players this time, leaving the remaining four (two thieves, a fighter, and magic-user!) with no healing capabilities (bad since last session ended in the dungeon, trapped, and wounded after having just completed A Big Fight!) and low on pure fighting power!

I'm running them through Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, which I'm going to review after they get through it. I've had some harsh things to say about certain bits before, but I think gaming reviews really aren't valid without some actual play to back them up. How something reads often has little relation to how something plays. I expect these guys to finish up next session (which will make a total of 4 sessions in here).

Note my cool custom Basic Fantasy RPG booklet there. Better pics of it here.


The girlfriend was home, so she baked for us (although I do believe the grapes were Elsa's). If I was smart, I would have taken a picture of the cookies and cake before we ate it, but I was rather concerned with the actual game... and eating! Even when Maria doesn't bake something fabulous, I try to bake fresh bread for everyone. When the game is at my place, I like to make sure everyone has a fair supply of nom-noms!


"The hallway continues for 10', and then opens into a 20' x 20' room (you're entering from the left side). In the far left corner, you see a table, around which are huddled four gamers! What do you do?"

I Play(ed)... and Rules/Dungeon Design Commentary!

This is from Friday's game.

You would think I would learn to have the picture taken at the beginning of the session when everyone's fresh (we started this night at 6pm), and not just when people are starting to leave (we played 7 hours) and we look like we're about to drop over. We don't look this zombified normally.


The two new players from last week returned this week, which was good.

Lots of weird happenings this time around. Some non-cooperation (and grabbing treasure for oneself), and realizing that the Purple Lotus gives visions of what happened centuries ago in the location it's huffed, so lots of hallucinogenic drug use happening in this session. Interesting group thus far, and some of these actions would make a bit more sense if there was more of a fluid session-to-session player group (which I hope to achieve since the Olden Domain campaign is supposed to be a West Marches style game), so we'll see how this plays out.

My girlfriend tagged along this time, but didn't play... just sat on the couch behind me there and watched us for seven hours. That sounds insane, but she enjoys watching people and figuring out how they operate as a group. I got a full report after the session and learned things I just don't pay attention to when I'm figuring out locations and who's where and if the monster hears them or... or... or...

I also got an interesting conversation about the nature of the game itself, which I'll address in its own post later on.

A couple things about the actual playing became apparent during this session.

One, the OD&D/Chainmail combat seems to favor numbers over a single powerful creature. After figuring out that the AD&D Monster Manual was more in line with OD&D/Holmes (armor classes, alignments, spell abilities, etc) than the rest of AD&D proper, I decided to use it as a resource for this game.

Now, I'm using original booklets and Chainmail combat, so no variable damage (although I have small creatures, daggers, and hand axes do 1/2d6 instead of 1d6), no variable hit dice, and monsters get one attack per round standard. With d6 standard (with only monsters like ogres, giants, and efreet getting bonus damage) I decided not to give everything bonus damage. d6 standard unless it's very unusual circumstances. I also give full hit points at first level (but NPC hirelings are 0 level get 4-6hp... figure the PCs wouldn't hire complete wimp no-hopers, right?) and rule that 0 hp means unconscious, negative hp equals death. So even a heavy-hitting monster can't kill any PC with one shot. Just knock him unconscious (and not even that for the fighting men or dwarves or those with a constitution bonus). Just my way of not making the game a wholesale slaughter.

(But there was one PC death and two hireling deaths during this session. There very nearly was a lot more PC deaths, but for some lucky rolls made at the table.)

This does mean that even normal men ganging up on the largest creature (if it doesn't have a special attack) is going to win if they're willing to take a few casualties. And I like that. I never liked having classes NPCs in every village and I wondered then how any village could possibly survive against even a low hit die creature in the wild. Every farmer would be eaten by an ankheg, etc. But this "gang up" thing makes sense. OD&D has an "angry villagers" rule, but I think the rules as I'm interpreting them create their own Angry Mob option. Getting a few dozen villagers with pitchforks and torches and heading up to talk to the evil wizard and his monstrous creation might not be an insane thing to do after all...

For the Creature Generator plug, I also created an squid-like creature with four mouths with a special attack that involved the four mouths engaging in harmony singing to sonically stun anyone who hears it... and while it bites, three mouths is enough to maintain the singing. I put this in the castle's music room of course.

The lotus zombies (zombies with the lotus plant so intertwined in its corpse that whenever it's hit, a cloud of purple lotus drug sprays the attacker, and the same but with a save bonus when the zombie hits) were another creation inspired by the Creature Generator but with the exact details filled in by me.

The other thing I noticed... since this entire "Sunken City" environment is supposed to be a beginner's area, even though I put nasty monsters in places (the monster that made me look at the above situation was a roper, which 5 1st level PCs + 3 0 level hirelings were able to defeat with only 1 or 2 - I forget - hireling casualty/ies), I'm not yet really presenting wandering monsters that much, and when they do appear, they are directly from a keyed area.

So the players search everywhere, everything, full sweep, every single nook and cranny. There really isn't so much organization or urgency to their exploration. "This room. That room. Then the other one." The castle has a total of about two dozen towers which are more or less identical. And they search every one, each level, one by one.

It gets a bit tedious, but it's my dungeon design that's to blame. I follow the general guidelines of having 1/3rd of the locations contain a monster and 1/3rd containing a treasure. Not always the same locations, either. And in this particular case, with what the castle is, and my background explanation for why the stuff is there, the treasure isn't spectacular or spectacularly hidden in most cases. Add that factor to the lack of wandering monsters, of course they're going to sweep every inch of the place.

Future locations will encourage more keep moving and less we set up shop on this level and clear the mother out. But in ways that the players can take advantage of instead of merely being victimized by. Options and empowerment will be the order of the day, but maybe a bit snappier. ;)

Another thing I noticed is that I'm playing it fast and loose with the locations (abandoned/haunted castle), but the rooms are "real" places... barracks, kitchen, bedrooms, etc. But I don't have the places fully detailed down to every last broken cabinet and such. I just give rough descriptions.

But I also don't have a thief class, and I'm trying to encourage "role-played" exploration. Not just "I search the room," but, "I check that thing." Base success and things found on what the players say, not a die roll. But with rough descriptions given to the players, that's not very possible. It isn't so much a problem in dungeon settings, where there isn't so much "real world" baggage. But the remnants of an inhabited, civilized structure? Yeah, it runs into issues.

So there are a couple things to address to make gameplay quicker paced and more immersive that I will be working on.

They did manage to find a pile of treasure though. A lot of them are almost... almost... to level 2. Remember that Holmes suggests 7 to 14 sessions between each level.

I Play

Finished up another game a couple of hours ago.


The Olden Domain's involvement so far now: 8 people from 4 different countries (including me; the referee counts!).

This was also my friend Oona's (far right) first ever role-playing session. If someone's going to complain to me that they are bored and have nothing to do on game day... well... I get them in the game!

And this group is the most treasure-phobic bunch I've ever seen. There is treasure in these dungeons, I swear! But the two players that have participated in all three Olden Domain sessions have less than 300gp each, total, to show for it. Maybe next time they'll find the real hauls...

I run for my other campaign on Sunday, but it's back at The Dungeon so no in-session pics, unfortunately...

Also, I got a fun little package in the mail today...


I can has author copies! It's a good feeling to make something yourself and hold it in your hand, and it's another good feeling to hold something in your hand that you made that someone else financed. With the Creature Generator, I got to have both experiences. I've inquired to Goodman Games as to what would be fair play as far as what I can do with them, but I'll tell you right now one of my ideas involves the word "contest." We'll see, stay tuned, and keep making crazy monsters to befuddle your players. Like tonight's Purple Zombies I threw at my players... and came one casualty away from committing a TPK!

A Fox in the Chickenhouse

We had a game today with five players, and I took a really awesome picture of "The Dungeon," but I'm not allowed to post it. Seems that even though we have permission to play at one of our players' place of employment, putting that up on the web might not be so good an idea...

Damn.

But it was a fun session, bringing back some NPCs that we hadn't met in months, starting a quest to reunite with a few more...

And the big damn fight where my die rolls sucked so bad that they steamrolled the competition.

See, there was this mushroom forest in this large cavern, and at the far end of it was this brownie that kept a bunch of caged foxes. He offered to show the party how to get to the place they needed to go, but they needed to hunt the monster that had been killing his foxes...

... and that monster was a giant chicken, of course. Able to lay eggs that instantly hatched man-sized chickens ready for combat.

The shining moment was, waiting in ambush (with a lit torch perimeter to allow missile fire), the ground started to shake... just like the build-up to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

A bit goofy, definitely shaking the players out of "standard fantasy found here," but also a bit ominous.

And when the thing charged... I couldn't hit anything! The players' tactics to be able to pepper with missile fire, combined with an effective blinding Light spell, made sure the outcome was never in doubt. My inability to roll well for initiative, or to hit anything with a 10HD monster (blinded or no!), or to roll more than a 1 for damage when one of the insta-chicks hit... made sure there wasn't even much of a threat, either.

*grumblecakes*

Next week we'll be doing a module that I've criticized in the past, and I want to see if it plays differently than it reads. This dungeon will be the way to... The Valley.

Of Howling Shadows, if I may telegraph future events to my players that read this blog. Things are about to get weird.

I Play

The Olden Domain's involvement so far now: 6 people from 4 different countries (including me; the referee counts!).

Tonight's reinforced lesson was... put the official equipment list online so people can spend their treasure without taking up gametime. Make pre-selected equipment packs so starting players can pick one and be good to go. Character creation is a snap, but sorting out everyone's equipment today took around an hour. Again. That kind of thing shouldn't happen, even if it shows the players are taking that sort of thing seriously. So effort will be made to drastically cut that down in the future.

I was also late to the session because I went to see The Wrestler (and I forgot that the running time of the movie doesn't mean anything when they have 20 minutes of ads and trailers before the movie but after the listed showtime). argh. But it was worth it. The Wrestler is absolutely the best movie ever made involving pro wrestling, and it's so true to life (and all of the wrestling promotions featured in the movie are real, as are most of the wrestlers) that it's heartbreaking... because I don't watch WWE or TNA, when I have money to spend on wrestling, it's on independents, at the level the movie features or smaller. The parts you will think they make up are probably the things closest to how things are. I know people who put themselves through that (but have never been backstage myself, so take that for what it's worth)... The style they chose to shoot the movie gives it a documentary feel, as well as putting you in the ring with the guys and showing that even though wrestling is "fake," they put themselves through hell out there.

It's very uncomfortable viewing, and I don't know if it would be more uncomfortable to people familiar with everything shown in the movie (hell, I've bladed for a class project) or people who don't know anything about wrestling (yes, they really do cut their foreheads open with razor blades to bleed!) and are just going to see a critically acclaimed movie.

I'm really glad my inquiries into getting trained to be a wrestler in 92 and 97 never got far.

I somehow fit a movie review into my RPG blog. Awesome! But it is relevant for our purposes because a theme of the movie is holding on to the past too tightly for too long, so... on topic. Yeah. Sure. :D

I Play

It started as just another game session.


The session was going so well, it looked like 1980s game ad copy!


... but judicious and aggressive refereeing won the day and those cheerful adventurers finally learned the true meaning of pain and defeat!

I Play

It wasn't quite an all-nighter, but the first session of The Olden Domain was a nice, small affair, struggling to remember that the rules I'm using here aren't the same that I've been using... ay ay ay those Chainmail initiative rules. :D

The Olden Domain's involvement so far now: 4 people from 4 different countries (including me; the referee counts!). One of the people in the pic is in my regular Sunday group, the other two I met for the first time tonight.

This whole photo-of-the-group thing came up during the last TARGA conference call (can you believe such a thing would have me as a superhypersecretpowerful innercabalcircle member?). We out here in the blogosphere (now that's a Pauly Shore movie I'd pay to see) and forumlands aren't just bitching and moaning and ranting and drawing lines in the sand and braying like a mule about these ancient game fossils.

Well, actually, we aren't. I think it's just me.

Point is, this isn't an internet phenomenon. We're playing these games in real life with actual people who are not also blogging and posting on the forums and being involved in the scene.

And at my house, we're also baking for them.

So I encourage you to snap a pic of your group during a game, and say to everyone, "I play!"

I play.

... and I play in a land where all the men are bearded, and all the women are redheads.

This week anyway.

Photo by me, which is why I'm not in it. Not that you guys want to see me in another photo ever again. ;)