1. I don't really run for new people, randoms, etc. With the occasional addition or subtraction every few years, I pretty much only run the game for my cluster of IRL guys, which (depending on the session) ranges from 3 to 10 players. We've been gaming together for nearly 15 years (mostly 2nd edition AD&D with some gaps filled and improvements made from 1e), and have a lot of cooked in assumptions about the game. As we begin this exploration of the original game, I have to be on high alert that we are actually playing the game as written, and not a hybrid Ur-D&D that exists in our collective consciousness
2. We are going to be playing using 1:1 time (Thank you Jeffro!), though I have set up the initial adventuring environment to make this easier on the players to start, namely that the first big adventuring locale is only a half hour away from the "Starting Town" (More on this later), so that provided they aren't too banged up in need of healing they will be able to run the same characters every week for a little while. Boiling the frog slowly, as it were.
3. We put it to a vote and the players decided to use the D20-based Alternate Combat System instead of the Man-To-Man rules from Chainmail. On the one hand, I am a little sad, I love d6s more than any other dice, on the other hand, this makes it fairly straight-forward for the players, they already know how to roll a d20, check for modifiers, and roll damage on a hit. It is likely that I will be eventually introducing Weapon vs. AC via either Greyhawk, AD&D, or Wight Box. I'd like to hold off on variable weapon and hit dice, but I suspect the allure of other Platonic Solids will call to us in time.
4. This initial session doesn't cover a lot of adventuring, as the first hour or so was taken up by character creation. OD&D is different enough that this process took a fair bit of "Wait do we include this?" "What does this stat modify?" etc. Nonetheless, we managed to get 18 characters made (3 characters each for 6 players) in an hour, not too shabby. Future characters will definitely be quicker to make now that the players know the basics (I know this for a fact because two characters died and were replaced with new rolls in about 3 minutes)
SETTING THE TABLE
I kept the "World-Building" to an extreme minimum, restricting myself to only fleshing out the player options and for each such option keeping things into a single tweet in length (Read them HERE if you CARE). The main thing that really happened is that I watched Aguirre, The Wrath of God in German for the first time, and the three-fold overlap of German Language, Spanish renaissance aesthetics and the overwhelming vileness of the jungle. So I set up a colonial expedition from a hybrid Conquistador/HRE nation, headed by the fickle and vengeful Count Barotha Carvalloman. The elvish aristocrat has set his sights on restoring to operation a colony that lost contact with the empire 130 years ago, and has brought a massive galleon of mercenaries, wizards, sages, holy men, slaves, workers and camp followers to see to this quest.
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| If this isn't an adventuring party I don't know what is |
SESSION 001: Scouting Gone Sideways
The session began with the expedition ship, the Junebug, breaking through the fog and beholding the New World for the first time. Huge mountains and hills, covered in dense jungle, teeming with life. Jutting up from the jungle not 100 yards away from the coast was a ruined keep, the gothic spire completely overgrown with foliage. The tide was low, and the expedition leaders called for volunteers to scout the ruins of the colony. Naturally the players took the request, along with some other groups of npcs whose scouting efforts occurred "Off-screen".
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| I'm willing to bet there's a King Kong somewhere around here |
The party consisted of
1. Chad McChaddic, a fighter with 18 strength
2. Carlos Marcolos, a dwarf with aspirations of establishing a dwarvish workers commune
3. Clovis, a disheveled cleric
4. Seamus, a fighter hoping to send money back to his family farm
5. Corrigan Franchese, a Magic-User with few discernible characteristics
6. Yon, an Elf who has decided that wearing armour is more useful that casting at this time
The rowboat hit the beach and the party advanced towards the colony, electing to inspect the watchtower closer to the shore before approaching the keep. After some work clearing debris from the stairs, they were able to climb to the top and get a birds-eye view of the ruined colony. Contained within a boundary wall, the colony surrounds the keep on all sides, and despite being contained must have at one point been home to people numbering in the thousands, many of the ruined houses have rotted timber frames and stone foundations that would have been 4 or 5 stories high. There's evidence of fires, but more concerning is evidence that the keep is occupied. The gate has been re-built using craftsmanship far too crude to have been the work of indentured dwarves.
It was at this stage that the cleric spotted a figure scrambling into an alleyway, with the body of a chimpanzee and the head of a wild boar, wielding a hand axe with a glimmering golden blade. The party chose to advance towards the keep, and this would nearly be their undoing. Positioning some archers back from the gate, Seamus and Carlos stepped forward and knocked on the gate. Based on the pig-faces, Seamus took a chance and called out in orcish, to see if they were amenable to parley. They were not, and a successful surprise check on the part of the orcs led to a combat that, had the dice fallen differently, could have been a TPK before first-round initiative was even rolled.
But the dice were merciful, and after a few rounds of combat Chad McChaddic and Carlos Marcolos lay dead along with 3 orcs. Some orcs pursued the fleeing party, but a few remained to break down the dead PCs for easy transport, Bone Tomahawk-style. Corrigan was well ahead of the rest of the party, having fled a round before his compatriots. Clovis was less encumbered and while he wasn't faster than the orcs, he was faster than Seamus and Yon, and that was good enough for him. Yon, seeing the futility of running away, shed his breastplate and helm, and once free of the iron armour cast Sleep on the advancing orcs. A risky move but he managed to get away with it.
It was during this stage that Carlos and Chad's players had rolled new characters and arrived on the scene, a nearby scouting party heard the commotion and came to aid the party. So it was that Thargaret Matcher (A staggeringly low-IQ fighter played by Carlos' player) and Bard (A cleric played by Chad's player) did bravely come and bravely assist in the slitting of sleeping orcs throats. The orcs had gold-bladed weapons on them, and while the gold was of low purity and merely plating on the blade, it was enough for the party to walk away with 60-150 experience from the session. If they put gold on their blades, the party reason there must be a lot more gold in their lairs.
Injuries among the survivors were minimal enough that by next Wednesday the characters will be healed up and ready to go again, so no Time Jail is occurring yet. I suspect it will at the end of next session, though, as the players have elected to leave securing the town to other mercenaries for the time being and accompany a higher-level wizard on his passion project, rowing up-river to seek the rumoured Temple-Library of Shuga-Koth, which lies a few days into the jungle.