Six Against Savage Quen!

Here's a quick photo from my after-school club--six set out at low tide to wrest the fabled black pearl from the sunken tower ... but the four elves and their two lion companions will have to outsmart the notorious pirate Savage Quen if they are to win the prize!

Taking a break from a couple months of 5th edition, we've turned back to a much simpler house-ruled Basic D&D, retaining ascending AC and Death Checks for fallen explorers.  Dungeon Crawl Classics, though often a bit verbose and mechanically crunchy for my taste, is easy to adapt on the fly.

Though DCC scenarios are generally pretty short in terms of encounters (if not word-count), we've already played two full sessions in the tower and, given 6th grader focus, we probably go two more until they either achieve victory or taste bitter defeat.
 

Returning to Phandalin

This summer, after a careful look around our Friendly Local Games Stores, I knew that I wanted to offer a 5th edition D&D game in our after school club.  Despite my own preference for older editions, I figured that once my students head off to high school and college, some familiarity with 5e will make it easy for them to jump into any pickup games they encounter.  Also, should some of them be bitten by the bug and decide to teach themselves the full game, 5e can be purchased retail in five different local shops and bookstores.






Though I've run something like 70 sessions of 5e before, some aspects of the system just don't stick with me and I've constantly got to review some bits to stay on track: 

• spells prepared vs spell slots
• short rest vs long rest
• reaction vs bonus action
• 5e spell descriptions vs their 40-year-old analogs
• some conditions (e.g. "poisoned")

To that end I ran my older kid through Lost Mines of Phandelver at home to help me brush up some.  Her quartet of adventurers made swift progress, hitting a few side quests but mainly focusing on locating the Forge of Spells, rescuing various NPCs, and thwarting the Black Spider.  

In fact, perhaps because she cut her teeth on B/X D&D, she was adept at avoiding unnecessary combat and focusing on recon, speed, and stealth to achieve her objectives.  She wasn't willing to risk a confrontation with the adventure's final guardian and so, after a brief but polite conversation, she withdrew, leaving the Forge unplundered.

As the school year kicked into gear, this gave me an idea: except for a bugbear boss, rogue wizard "Iarno the Glasstaff," and the Black Spider, all of the named villains made it through to the end of the adventure unscathed.  Instead of rewinding and starting Lost Mines over again, why not just pick up with my new group of players from where we left off?

I started session one with the group, a company of free swords hired by the Lords' Alliance and Sildar Hallwinter (the new townmaster of Phandalin), acting to support the two surviving Rockseeker brothers.  

Having at long last discovered its location, the pair of dwarves had all but beggared themselves in order to purchase a charter to reopen Phandelver Mine.  This meant that they had scarce resources left to hire laborers, provisions, and equipment.  

But wait!  

The Redbrand gang had left a considerable stock of supplies in their hideout when they were chased out of the ruins of Tressander Manor ... somebody just needed to trek up there and haul them out.  

And rumors that the manor was haunted?  Bah.  Probably just cooked up by the Redbrands to keep the townies away.

Drop a furtive ghoul into the northern hallways (gnawing at the bones of slain brigands) and  and voila!  Instant memorable, creepy, first encounter.  

It became even more memorable when, once the ghoul had brought down the party's cleric and was dragging him off by the ankles, another emerged from the cistern behind them!

One PC fled, two went down, death checks were passed, and thanks to the presence of two rogues in the party (rogues seem to be the new fighters), both ghouls were vanquished.

Session Two: after his arrest, rebel wizard Iarno Glasstaff had spilled the beans to avoid the gibbet.  Among the information he shared was the fact that he had built a lab under the old manor ... in fact, his books and papers were still there as far as he knew.  

Harid, the party's wizard, might profit by getting his hands on some of those books and notes.  Iarno had said something about a creature he called "mad eye," ... but that was probably just to keep profiteers from looting his lab.

The group tangled with the Nothic, and defeated it (just barely), making a third plunge under the manor's ruins to find Iarno's lab.  His old familiar (re-skinned as something much more along the lines of Brown Jenkin) made things interesting, but they got back out with a bit of swag.

-----------------------------------------------------

Overall I'm feeling good about the plan to simply continue the storyline ... following some threads out and fleshing out others (e.g. orc raiders planning revenge for the defeat of their chief's son or necromancer finds something of interest in the ruins of Old Owl Well).

Because of the novice experience level of my players and the increased mechanical complexity of 5e, however, I'm finding that the pace of the game is much, much slower than what I had anticipated, however.  With 5-6 players at the table, I'm really only getting a couple of encounters in for each 90+ minute chunk of play.

Will that pace hold their interest for the longer term?

Will it hold mine?

The Return of Games Club

Tuesday afternoon in the school library about 35 students, grades 6-11, gathered to play silly games.

Along with Settlers of Catan, Castle Panic, Munchkin, Small World and other favorites, two tables hosted RPGs: my older daughter's perennial B/X offering (Keep on the Borderlands) and a 5e game at my table (Lost Mines of Phandelver).

Surprisingly, though she's been at this for years, she experienced a setback during the next couple of hours.

At her table she hosted two new players and two vets.  Familiar with the attention spans of her audience, she chose (wisely) to keep character creation quick and tight (3d6 in order), and rather than 3d6 x 10 gold for starting money she offered the players a couple picks from a stack of index cards, each listing some interesting gear (e.g. "climbing spikes and a coil of rope" or "a shortbow and 12 arrows--one explosive" or "a spearman retainer").  


Likewise, rather than have them roam the outer bailey of the keep until they decided to try and rob the place, she started the action right at the mouth of the cave-studded canyon.  After mucking about in the Shunned Caves for a bit, her crew rolled into the minotaur cave and the typical craziness ensued.  

Though she dangled the option of retreat, the badly tattered party went toe to toe with the bullman and, to her surprise, prevailed, finding their way out through the bugbear caves ... at which point her most vocal veteran player declared that he was bored with caves and wanted to game "in the woods or something where I can go wherever I want or go to town and mix up different stuff to make potions like we did that one time."  

Repairing to the keep, the group soon declared that the location was also "boring" and left, looking for a big city where they could buy more specialized gear.

Now on the face of it, this may sound like the perfect segue to hex-crawling, wilderness adventures (which is, after all, the "X" part of B/X play), but she assures me that this is NOT what the player actually had in mind.  Rather, having gamed with this gent for over two years, she believes that he's thinking about a highly structured, plot-driven adventure, similar to a short DCC scenario she adapted and ran for him and some friends once (which happened to be set in a frozen forest).

Here's the rub: she's spent the last couple weeks of summer break preparing Keep on the Borderlands, with plans to tie it into Curse of Xanathon and the Dwellers of the Forbidden City and, with a fresh load of advanced classes this year, doesn't necessarily have the time to scrap it all and plan something else.

What to do?

Continue offering the game she is prepared to run and let the "market" of the 30+ players in club come and go to find their own gaming "sweet spot" or should she try to tailor what she's prepared to her current mix of players?

There are certainly pros and cons to each approach.

At the moment, she is leaning toward a collaborative approach in which she talks to her players more about what they would like the game to be and tries to emphasize some elements (being awesome, making potions, getting quests, dumping quests without consequences) and minimize others (mapping, exploration for its own sake, dungeons).

She may even re-skin the Caves of Chaos as an archipelago, replacing tunnels with forest trails and rooms with clearings and settlements ... we'll see ... 

There's a tension between the type of game she would like to run and the (shifting) interests of her players.  For now, she's chosen to prioritize the relationships and helping please others above trying to emulate a certain aesthetic.  I can respect that.  I'm interested to see if her young players can as well.

Wrapping Up Summer Games Camp

Last week we wrapped up another two weeks of summer games camp at a local high school.  Here are some highlights:

• FIVE former students returned to help run tables--these volunteers really make camp a breeze and let me focus on the action at my own table.

• WEREWOLF (the party game, not the RPG) was the clear crowd favorite this year.  Run in groups from five to 18 kids, this became the "go-to" game when we had 15 minutes to kill.

• SHADOWS of BRIMSTONE was a hit both weeks and I got to show off the first set of minis I've painted in 15 years

• D&D, in a variety of incarnations, but mainly with a B/X spin, had strong participation both weeks.

• MICE and MYSTICS, which is basically Descent Light with a cute theme, maintained a loyal following and the campaign story-mode was well supported by our morning session / afternoon session structure.

• AYE DARK OVERLORD is incredibly loud when played with middle school gusto.  They had fun with it, but I'm kind of glad its over.

• KING of TOKYO, SMALL WORLD, ADVENTURERS: PYRAMID OF HORUS and SMASH UP continue to hold their own.

One of the more interesting developments of the week was the core of repeat-customers: kids who have attended up to four previous sessions and who are coming back for more as they move toward high school.  

Because they were already familiar with most of the games, these players had a distinct edge in the four-team tournament format that we used--victory in our morning or afternoon break out games could earn points that were used to buy resources in our week-long meta-game.  

These players also had some pretty strong personalities, and I didn't necessarily want to see them dominate their teammates, so I took a gamble and placed all of the veterans on the same tournament team.

To offset their experience, however, I increased their challenge level--rather than play as a standard nation in what was essentially a week-long, combined RISK-lite / Catan game, the veteran players would take on the role of The Plukish Confederation, a collection of allied, island city-states.  

Owing their modest population, however, the Plukish team would not be allowed to assemble military units like their neighboring nations!  Instead, their victory would have to come strictly through trade and diplomacy (routes open to their competitors too).  

By mid-week it became clear that they were up to the task, and they went on to form a monopoly over key goods, effectively placing all three other teams in an economic stranglehold.  

Their competition could have broken out of the Plukish monopoly and embargoes, forcing them to relent, but ONLY if they were able to set aside their own border wars and territorial disputes long enough to collectively pressure the veteran team with coordinated military might.  

This, however, was not to be the case and nationalist rivalry and suspicion kept the other three nations from exerting the unified pressure necessary to bring Pluke to heel.  The veteran team, despite never fielding a single battalion all week, won a resounding economic victory!

A very satisfying week--it was great to see so many kids come back for analog gaming and to see them grow in leadership, social skills, and strategic thinking.