Chris Talbot
Canada
Fort Smith
Northwest Territories
Be seeing you... -Alphonse
-
Since RPGG went live, I've ported over a few session reports originally posted on RPG.net, but I had completely forgotten about this. Going back to 2008, it had been three years since I'd last run a D&D game (a five-year D&D 3E campaign that ended abruptly). It was Gary Gygax's death that resparked my interest, but I had no interest in returning to D&D 3E. Instead, I went back to basics...
* * * * *
With the news a couple of weeks ago of Gary Gygax's passing, I suddenly felt a strong urge to pull my old D&D Red Box books off the shelf (the box is long gone) and run a game just for the fun of it. I wanted the nostalgia of my gaming days as a pre-teen, where we just played for the fun of it and didn't worry about such things as theme, plot or even whether the PCs were conforming to their alignments.
I first played Red Box D&D in 1986, but by 1991 or 1992, we'd abandoned this classic style of D&D for AD&D 2E and eventually D&D 3E. I found that with an ever increasing amount of complexity came a decrease in fun for me, so I finally stopped running D&D 3E about three years ago.
Within a day of hearing of Gygax's death, I announced I'd be running what I dubbed The Gary Gygax Memorial Campaign, which would use the old Red Box rules. I got a good response from the gamers I knew, but trying to make schedules work was a big problem. I regularly run Delta Green every other Sunday night, and that's about the only time that works for everybody.
We had to choose a weekday. Originally that weekday was to be Wednesday night (bi-weekly), but after our character creation session last week, we decided to change it to Tuesday. Unfortunately, we're currently running with only two players, but we may be able to add others in time.
Character Creation
The two players able to make it to the Wednesday night character creation session were Rawl and Rich, both of which play in my Delta Green game. Both also participated in my D&D 3E game when it was running, and they still rib me about their PCs stuck in limbo in the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure.
As I did in the old days, I decided to be very strict about chargen. Players had to roll their stats using the standard 3d6 method in order, although if they didn't like their stats, they could scrap them and re-roll them in their entirety.
The dice were with Rawl that night, and he ended up with a fairly solid elf with no attribute score less than 10. Rich, on the other hand, rolled four sets of stats before finally deciding he could live with them. He chose to be a dwarf, but aside from STR and CON of 14, all of his other stats are about average, with his lowest stat being his WIS 8.
Both rolled well for cash and outfitted themselves quite well. I'd forgotten how cheap plate mail was back then, but considering they were going to be on their own at first, they need good ACs.
A minor modification to AC/THAC0
Although I had considered just using the standard AC/THAC0 rules in the game, I decided to try reverse-engineering the game into the one change I really admired in D&D 3E. AC gets higher with more armour and PCs have a Base Attack Bonus (BAB) that increases over time.
This actually proved to be really easy -- so easy, in fact, that I can't understand why TSR didn't do this twenty years ago. Taking out the tables and replacing them with a D&D 3E-esque armour/to-hit system should make the combat flow smoother and replace any THAC0 calculations at the table (my math skills must be far superior to the twelve-year-old me, as it's not as complicated as I remember it being).
The B Series Modules
I considered DMing the game in the style I had when I was a kid, which would have basically meant pulling encounters and adventurers out of my ass and improvising everything. While I'll probably do a bit of that, I decided I wanted to run the B Series modules. The only one I own is B12: Queen's Harvest, but thanks to RPGNow, they're all available in PDF format for $5.
I chose to start with B11: King's Festival and then move on to Queen's Harvest. A quick purchase and print-out, and I had everything I needed for the first two adventures.
If the players still want to continue after we've finished with B11 and B12, I'd really like to go back and play some of the classic modules I never owned or got a chance to play when I was a kid (Keep on the Borderlands being at the top of my list).
To anyone reading this: If you have suggestions for the best of the B modules, I'd like to hear what you have to say.
King's Festival
Last night, Rawl, Rich and I got together to actually begin our campaign. The characters are Heimgar Knobcrusher (originally to be named Heimgar Groincrusher, but halfway through the session, Rich changed his dwarf's name) and Featherlight.
Both were well equipped, but Featherlight was completely broke and Heimgar only had a few gold pieces left after buying equipment.
The adventure is set in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, and I gave them a bit of background information on it. Rich actually has the Karameikos supplement, so I'm probably going to borrow it at some point to learn more about the land.
Arriving in the town separately the day before the King's Festival, both PCs made their way to a local tavern called The Frog & The Flagon, a fairly standard tavern run by a couple of old guys who play board games all day and argue over balance issues (the PCs don't know it yet, but I've named them Gary and Dave -- I think they already suspect what I've done, as Rich asked if they were playing D&D  ). The adventure as written uses a place called the Hungry Halfling, but I really wanted a place that would become a sort of home base for them.
During the day, there's a beautiful but not too bright waitress named Esmeralda, but during the night when the tavern's tables are pushed aside and it becomes a common room for sleeping travelers, there's a mean, scarred dwarf woman named Bifficus who keeps everyone in line. It's silly, but it's like the two extremes of how pre-adolescent boys see women. I know it's sexist, but I found it funny -- and it also keeps in the spirit of playing like we did in the old days.
In the morning, orcs attacked and kidnapped the town's resident cleric. The townspeople turned to Heimgar and Featherlight, and the dwarf and elf agreed. A local named Janner led them to the orc cave. On the trail, the dwarf and elf exchanged greetings and names.
Rich took up a faux Scottish accent for his curmudgeonly, insulting dwarf, which got a few laughs over the course of the night.
I won't get into a blow-by-blow of the dungeon crawl through the orc caves, but both Rich and Rawl treated the game with a "kick in the door" philosophy. No, really. Doorknobs are for pussies, apparently. Heimgar did nothing but kick in doors wherever he found them.
In a little over two hours, we got through four encounters -- in one encounter, these two 1st level PCs fought their way through seven orcs and survived (the plate mail and shields kept them alive). In an earlier encounter, Heimgar discovered a kobold hiding out in a storage room. After a quick struggle, the dwarf (who speaks kobold) discovered the kobold was a slave to the orcs.
Well, Heimgar had found several lengths of rope, so he turned one into a leash and made the kobold into his own servant (little more than an upright packmule, really). When Featherlight discovered this (he'd been out scouting -- I should also note Heimgar's alignment is Neutral and Featherlight's is Lawful), there was a brief exchange where the elf took issue with the enslaving of the kobold, but he didn't put up much of an argument. Heimgar claimed the kobold as his own and told him it was none of his business, anyway. 
In the last encounter of the night, the party had already taken injuries from their skirmishes with the resident orcs, and they suddenly went through a streak of bad rolls. They couldn't hit anything, and the orcs were slowly whittling them away. But finally, injured (Heimgar was near death), the demi-humans vanquished their foes and then searched the room. They were lucky to find a sweet-smelling potion, which Heimgar immediately drank. He was lucky it was a healing potion.
We ended just before 9:30 and decided we'd continue this game on a bi-weekly basis.
The one thing we were all amazed at is how smooth the game ran. Although trying to find specific rules scattered throughout the various rulebooks (we had everything from Basic to Master on the table), we didn't really need to look rules up very much. They're really fairly simple and easily remembered. That proves to me that D&D has become far too complicated for its own good. All those extra rules regarding attacks of opportunity, special maneuvers and everything else do nothing to add to my fun and everything to slow the game down. This is my personal opinion, of course. I know I probably have the minority opinion of D&D players. 
We had a lot of fun. We'd like to get at least another player or two at the table, but we're all looking forward to the next session.
Chris
* * * * *
In the first session write-up, I neglected to mention the use of morale checks. Twenty years ago, I hated these things, but I made good use of them on Tuesday night. In every encounter, I made morale checks, and in all but the last encounter of the evening, the monsters failed and either cowered in a corner (the kobold, who had been reduced to 1 hp) or fled from the PCs.
Seeing the "dammit!" look on Rich's and Rawl's faces when I reminded them they wouldn't get XP for monsters that got away was a great moment. They even chased two orcs towards the entrance, with the elf firing off arrows with his shortbow, in the hopes of snagging that little bit of extra XP (he missed both shots).
With encumbrance rules in effect, chasing any orcs running away didn't go so well. The dwarf and elf were reduced in movement, while the orcs were considered unencumbered and had full movement. In total, three orcs slipped out of their grasp (30 XP they won't be seeing ).
Chris
* * * * *
The three of us picked things up again last night. We didn't get another player as expected, but it didn't matter. Things went bad for the party, but we had a good time -- and there's nothing cooler than being able to have a TPK in a session, roll up new characters and be back playing in half an hour.
Heimgar and Featherlight considered trekking their goodies back to the town, getting some rest and healing, and then returning, but they pushed their luck too far. With their kobold captive in tow, they ventured on into another room, where they found an orc with his pet giant spider tormenting a halfling.
The PCs got surprise, but the dice were not with them for this combat. They charged in to try to take the orc down but both failed to hit. The orc and spider turned to fight, and in another round or two, the orc got a lucky hit against Featherstone and sliced him open, doing enough damage to immediately kill the poor elf.
Heimgar managed to avenge his friend by dropping the orc with his warhammer, but the spider proved to be too much for the dwarf. The spider hadn't even taken any damage when it managed to kill the dwarf.
"That was a quick campaign," Rawl said. There was laughter all around. I gave everyone the option to just quit, but both Rawl and Rich were keen on continuing. While chatting, they rolled up new characters. In the hopes of giving them a bit more of an edge in combat, I rolled up an NPC to accompany them (I had hoped for a cleric, but it didn't work out that way).
When it came to naming the characters, silliness got the better of us, so the new party consistsed of Testicles the fighter (Rawl), Innocuous Funkybottom the halfling (Rich) and the NPC Fellatio the Stunning (magic user, Sleep as his memorized spell).
We wanted to get right back into the thick of things, so I decided that the town had sent them towards the orc caves to help Heimgar and Featherlight. They arrived at the caves, and we quickly played out the exact search pattern the previous PCs had gone through (mostly so we could just make use of the map and get right back to where we were).
When they found the room where the previous party had died, I decided the halfling had become the spider's meal. As for the kobold, I said he had a one in six chance of escaping from the spider. I tossed a d6 in the air and it landed on the six. Nope, the kobold had been mauled to death by the spider.
The party entered and did battle. The dice were much kinder this time, and the spider quickly dropped to below half its hit points, at which point I rolled for morale. The spider didn't run off and continued to fight until it died. Throughout the entire fight, I completely forgot about the NPC magic user (I really should have put some minis on the table), so he didn't even get involved in the fight.
The PCs looted the room and the previous party's corpses, and then hauled everything out to Fellatio's mule for storage (except the gold pieces they'd found; they kept those on them).
They continued to explore the dungeon. The next room had a pool of water in it, and they fought off a giant ferret and a horned chameleon lizard. Once again, I forgot about the NPC MU for the first round of combat. Although the party took some damage, they managed to kill both the ferret and the lizard, at which point Noc (he prefers Noc instead of Innocuous) pissed in the pool. Not thinking about it, Testicles dipped his hand and head into the pool to search around (finding a skeletal arm with a valuable ring on it).
When he realized he'd just soaked himself with urine-tasted water, Testicles tried to push Noc into the pool, but that didn't work and the scuffle only lasted one round. (Can you believe nobody is under the age of 29 here? )
The last room of the evening was an another battle with three orcs. Damage was taken by the party, and after one orc was killed, another orc managed to cut Fellatio down, ending his short career as an adventurer. The PCs finished off the other orcs, looted the room and Fellatio's body (just like in the old days), and were about to leave when they heard a door slam and another orc appeared at the only exit.
We left off there. Good times were had. We only played for about two hours, and we spent a good portion of the night being silly and chit-chatting.
For next time, though, I think we either need another player (or two) or the PCs need to get some hirelings so they can inflict and take more damage.
Chris
* * * * *
Unfortunately, timing and lack of players put an end to the campaign after only two session. Still, we managed to get back to what I think truly felt like the kind of gaming I did when I was a teenager (for good or for bad ). Rereading this session report from two years ago actually rekindles a desire to run some old school D&D, but with the summer gaming hiatus in effect and a planned return to Delta Green after Labour Day, I don't think I'm going to be able to return to Red Box D&D in the near future.
Chris
-
Young & Lawful Good
United Kingdom
Redhill
Surrey
Support comes in many forms: community involvement, forum posts, submitting data, word-of-mouth advertising, financial donations... All of these are vital to this site, and you have my sincere thanks for participating in any of them.
Currently: banned as per http://rpggeek.com/article/9104203#9104203
-
This is why I love the old D&D! Smooth, easy, and fun. Thanks for the great session reports!
-
James Lowry
United States
Sunnyvale
California
-
Quote: To anyone reading this: If you have suggestions for the best of the B modules, I'd like to hear what you have to say.
I remember B7: Rahasia impressed me at the time, though I need to go back and re-read it to remember exactly why, but it seemed to have an interesting plot. Most (earlier) B-series modules weren't too interesting to me, but B10-12 were after my time. B4: The Lost City has the potential of an interesting campaign, if you want to build things out further. In fact, a campaign as inhabitants of the city wouldn't be impossible for something truly strange.
-
Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
-
Great read - thanks for posting!
-Dave
-
Chris Talbot
Canada
Fort Smith
Northwest Territories
Be seeing you... -Alphonse
-
Wow. I didn't realize this was going to hit so well with people. I wish the campaign had continued beyond those two sessions so I could share more silliness and fun.
Thanks for the comments, thumbs and GG. It's good to know people are enjoying the session reports.
Chris
-
-
Sometimes I miss the simplicity of the older rule sets. There are of course some niggling issues. The frequency of horrible death is one, the gold = xp is another, but you seemed to resolve the THAC0 issue pretty well.
-
James Hutchings
Australia
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
ctalbot wrote: Seeing the "dammit!" look on Rich's and Rawl's faces when I reminded them they wouldn't get XP for monsters that got away was a great moment. They even chased two orcs towards the entrance, with the elf firing off arrows with his shortbow, in the hopes of snagging that little bit of extra XP (he missed both shots).
Some DMs give XP for monsters that run away. I'm not sure what the official rule is.
-
James Hutchings
Australia
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
Smougman wrote: The frequency of horrible death is one, the gold = xp is another
I find that character toughness + XP for killing = being punished for making good decisions, and rewarded for making stupid ones.
-
-
I'm absolutely with you on Basic D&D being far ahead of modern iterations for ease of play - but the big plus for me is that it allows your imagination to fill in the blanks, which is so much more fun that looking up tables and memorising rules. I think the influence of video games has a lot to answer for here. I tried to get back into it recently and really enjoyed it.
The background here is that I joined a bunch of guys who were playing a 2nd ed Ad&D game with a lot of house rules. It was great to get back into D&D after about 15 years absence and I was really grateful for the opportunity to join a long-running campaign with guys who had known each other for years and who were about my age (30-40). However I found their house rules essentially broke the game - combat was totally imbalanced and took far to long to resolve. Being the blow-in I didn't want to beat people over the head with rule books so I decided the thing to do was to offer to DM a session and see how they like it playing with the standard rules.
I dug up http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/46673/in-search-of-adventure and picked http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/47500/horror-on-the-hill out of it. This thing is a pure dungeon bash and a Doug Niles classic. I thought it would be ideal for my purposes because
1) LOTS of combat,to show them the simplicity of core D&D fighting
2) Low level so they could use throw-away first level characters
3) Levels that would fit on my battle mat so they could see how much more fun it is to use minis so that everyone knows what's going on at a glance
4) Nostalgia. Basic D&D, memories of playing it as a teenager, the box art, the whole thing turns this unique light on in my head and I just love it.
Not to say that the rules are perfect, and indeed at the outset I went with a few basic changes - I should have ditched the THACO thing, but I didn't want the experience to be to alien to what the guys were used to. However, I took some of the pain out of being first level. Each char started with double the maximum hit points. I gave clerics a spell at first level and more equal to their wis bonus, and something similar for magic-users (not elves). Plus I ditched the memorisation rule. If you know a spell, you can use it. I think this encourages players to cast some of the spells that have more situational uses, rather than turning wizards into magic missile guns.
I thought of a bunch of other changes (including using 3ed saving throw system - the basic one just breaks as you go up levels) but seeing as this was possibly just a one off, I concentrated on being prepared and running a great session.
It went really well, and everyone really enjoyed it. To my delight, the groups regular DM totally agreed that the standard combat system was better and has adopted it for the campaign, so mission accomplished on that one. I think the only thing that figured as a minus for some of the guys was the lack of variety in character classes as compared to AD&D, but I'm thinking a conversion to something like the advanced Labyrinth Lord would be easy enough. As it is, it's difficult to find time to run two campaigns but the desire is there I think.
What I really enjoyed as a DM was the spontaneity and the ability to ad lib a lot of stuff. I enjoyed making calls on the fly, and everyone could see I was doing things fairly and it made for swift, rulebook free playing. I especially enjoyed making up vivid, bloody descriptions of monster deaths. At one point a charmed bugbear ripped the arm of one of his fallen comrades in order to beat the living shit out of goblins that were attacking the party...
If anyone's interested in a session report, I'd be glad to describe how the adventure went, and how I improvised a lot of stuff - including what to do when the fighter decides he wants to empty a flask of oil into his mouth, hold a torch under his face and attempt to wipe out some stirges with an improvised breath weapon attack....
-
Young & Lawful Good
United Kingdom
Redhill
Surrey
Support comes in many forms: community involvement, forum posts, submitting data, word-of-mouth advertising, financial donations... All of these are vital to this site, and you have my sincere thanks for participating in any of them.
Currently: banned as per http://rpggeek.com/article/9104203#9104203
-
Heartworm wrote: If anyone's interested in a session report, I'd be glad to describe how the adventure went, and how I improvised a lot of stuff - including what to do when the fighter decides he wants to empty a flask of oil into his mouth, hold a torch under his face and attempt to wipe out some stirges with an improvised breath weapon attack....
Please do submit a session report! Not only would we love to read it, but you'll get  for your trouble too. 
-
-
Happy to oblige! Guess it's best to put it in its own thread?
-
Young & Lawful Good
United Kingdom
Redhill
Surrey
Support comes in many forms: community involvement, forum posts, submitting data, word-of-mouth advertising, financial donations... All of these are vital to this site, and you have my sincere thanks for participating in any of them.
Currently: banned as per http://rpggeek.com/article/9104203#9104203
-
Exactly right. Each RPG and book in the database has its own set of forums, including a "Sessions" forum. I'd suggest posting your reports under the module to which they relate if the session relates to a particular published adventure, or otherwise in the Sessions forum of the RPG itself:
http://rpggeek.com/forum/413128/basic-dungeons-dragons/sessi...
-
|
|
