Post by redpriest on Apr 15, 2008 9:04:11 GMT -6
Refereed my first non-AD&D D&D game this past weekend at CoastCon. Well, my first since just a bit of Holmes back in '80, and I was also a player in a game for a brief time back in '05. Thanks for busting up that one, Katrina. 
When I initially posted the sign-up sheet on Friday evening for the Saturday morning game, I didn't bother setting a number for max number of players. After all, CoastCon is primarily a scifi con with only a few hundred attendees and gaming is just one aspect of the con. After posting the sign-up sheet, I sat in the game room to put the finishing touches on the 12 pre-gen characters. Hoping for 6 to 8 players, I figured that should be sufficient. Rolling randomly for gear and magic items for the characters took approximately an hour, and during that time a dozen or more of the passerby's had some form of the comment, "OMG, is that what I think it is?" I smiled and nodded, "Yup". A couple of young'uns (tweens, cause I can't tell teens from early twenties anymore ) didn't even recognize that what I was working on was D&D.
After the hour spent finishing up the pregens, I checked the posting and there were 15 players signed up, and that was just half of the available slots on the sheet. I then set the limit of players at 15 and crossed-out the remaining slots. I would have allowed the list to grow, but I wasn't up to creating possibly 15 more pre-gens and didn't want to take any upfront game time rolling up characters. We only had 4 hours to play and I wanted the entire 4 hours spent in game time. I pre-gen'd 3 more characters and called that a wrap.
On Saturday morning, 9 of the 15 sign-ups showed for the game. Not bad; no shows are common. Also, with the group being larger than expected, my wife and a couple of acquaintances bowed out.
The adventure was Caverns of Thracia *SPOILERS TO SOON FOLLOW*. I didn't expect them to get past the first level, and they didn't. The only books were the 3 OCE LBBs. The party was predominantly myrmidons, bishops and thaumaturgists, but there was also a dwarf myrmidon and elf swashbuckler/theurgist. Since it was just a one shot, I allowed the elf to act in both classes, but limited it to leather armor only.
The adventurers were sent by a collector to gather as much ancient Thracian junk as they could haul out. That was the entire setup. They started a few hundred yards from the ruins and quickly made for the large foundation at the center. In fact, they didn't even look for any other structures. It's the first one they saw, so they just bee-lined to it. After a cursory examination of the foundation, they quickly established a marching order and descended the broad steps. This would be the last thing that they did quickly for the remainder of the session.
As the group descended into darkness, they decided to go the continual light route. This immediately set the bats aflying and this plagued them for quite some time. Well, after a fairly long time of mucking about in guano and 5' visibility through 3 rooms, the INT 5 myrmidon used his ring of 3 wishes (randomly rolled!) to wish all the bats would go away. Poof! This guy was actually the best player and I would have given him an award at the end .. if I'd had one to give. After dispersing the bats, they encountered the room of giant centipedes, with not much else visible in the room. As they were all ready to attack, the INT 5 myrmidon (Fester Bule) says, "Let's not do this, we're here to collect artifacts, not fight insects." Did I mention that I liked this guy?
So, they skip the centipede room and get ambushed by the lizardmen trying to recover from their hunting expedition. After allowing the lizardmen to stand back and throw darts at them for a couple of rounds, and for some reason I still don't quite fathom, not returning fire or running away,they decide to charge and proceed to quickly finish off the lizzies. Except for one. One of the M-Us thought it would be a good idea to capture it and ask it questions. Since language was a barrier, I used the communication table from room 37 to determine how successful their sign language exchange was working out. After several attempts, it wasn't working out well at all. The lizardman was becoming frustrated and hostile. He was frustrated and hostile, that is, until Fester wished that the M-U was the lizardman's best friend.
After hemming and hawing for far too long during a tournament-y style game, they finally get on the move again and the game pretty much ended with them in the shooting fire/rising demon room with one of their bishops (during a truly stupid manuever) falling into the chasm to the 2nd level.
The age range for the players was late teens to fifty-something. It's harder to get a better spread than that. Except for the dwarf player, who was a total tool, everyone was really trying to git 'er done, with varying degrees of success, but not completely hair-brained. Their major flaw, as I see it, was the amount of time that they spent trying to decide on things, when they knew the game was only 4 hours and had no future ramifications.
The response to the game was overwhelmingly positive, and several people noted that it was nice to play a D&D game that wasn't RPGA.
My 21st century OD&D refereeing cherry isn't decidedly popped.
When I initially posted the sign-up sheet on Friday evening for the Saturday morning game, I didn't bother setting a number for max number of players. After all, CoastCon is primarily a scifi con with only a few hundred attendees and gaming is just one aspect of the con. After posting the sign-up sheet, I sat in the game room to put the finishing touches on the 12 pre-gen characters. Hoping for 6 to 8 players, I figured that should be sufficient. Rolling randomly for gear and magic items for the characters took approximately an hour, and during that time a dozen or more of the passerby's had some form of the comment, "OMG, is that what I think it is?" I smiled and nodded, "Yup". A couple of young'uns (tweens, cause I can't tell teens from early twenties anymore ) didn't even recognize that what I was working on was D&D.
After the hour spent finishing up the pregens, I checked the posting and there were 15 players signed up, and that was just half of the available slots on the sheet. I then set the limit of players at 15 and crossed-out the remaining slots. I would have allowed the list to grow, but I wasn't up to creating possibly 15 more pre-gens and didn't want to take any upfront game time rolling up characters. We only had 4 hours to play and I wanted the entire 4 hours spent in game time. I pre-gen'd 3 more characters and called that a wrap.
On Saturday morning, 9 of the 15 sign-ups showed for the game. Not bad; no shows are common. Also, with the group being larger than expected, my wife and a couple of acquaintances bowed out.
The adventure was Caverns of Thracia *SPOILERS TO SOON FOLLOW*. I didn't expect them to get past the first level, and they didn't. The only books were the 3 OCE LBBs. The party was predominantly myrmidons, bishops and thaumaturgists, but there was also a dwarf myrmidon and elf swashbuckler/theurgist. Since it was just a one shot, I allowed the elf to act in both classes, but limited it to leather armor only.
The adventurers were sent by a collector to gather as much ancient Thracian junk as they could haul out. That was the entire setup. They started a few hundred yards from the ruins and quickly made for the large foundation at the center. In fact, they didn't even look for any other structures. It's the first one they saw, so they just bee-lined to it. After a cursory examination of the foundation, they quickly established a marching order and descended the broad steps. This would be the last thing that they did quickly for the remainder of the session.
As the group descended into darkness, they decided to go the continual light route. This immediately set the bats aflying and this plagued them for quite some time. Well, after a fairly long time of mucking about in guano and 5' visibility through 3 rooms, the INT 5 myrmidon used his ring of 3 wishes (randomly rolled!) to wish all the bats would go away. Poof! This guy was actually the best player and I would have given him an award at the end .. if I'd had one to give. After dispersing the bats, they encountered the room of giant centipedes, with not much else visible in the room. As they were all ready to attack, the INT 5 myrmidon (Fester Bule) says, "Let's not do this, we're here to collect artifacts, not fight insects." Did I mention that I liked this guy?
So, they skip the centipede room and get ambushed by the lizardmen trying to recover from their hunting expedition. After allowing the lizardmen to stand back and throw darts at them for a couple of rounds, and for some reason I still don't quite fathom, not returning fire or running away,they decide to charge and proceed to quickly finish off the lizzies. Except for one. One of the M-Us thought it would be a good idea to capture it and ask it questions. Since language was a barrier, I used the communication table from room 37 to determine how successful their sign language exchange was working out. After several attempts, it wasn't working out well at all. The lizardman was becoming frustrated and hostile. He was frustrated and hostile, that is, until Fester wished that the M-U was the lizardman's best friend.
After hemming and hawing for far too long during a tournament-y style game, they finally get on the move again and the game pretty much ended with them in the shooting fire/rising demon room with one of their bishops (during a truly stupid manuever) falling into the chasm to the 2nd level.
The age range for the players was late teens to fifty-something. It's harder to get a better spread than that. Except for the dwarf player, who was a total tool, everyone was really trying to git 'er done, with varying degrees of success, but not completely hair-brained. Their major flaw, as I see it, was the amount of time that they spent trying to decide on things, when they knew the game was only 4 hours and had no future ramifications.
The response to the game was overwhelmingly positive, and several people noted that it was nice to play a D&D game that wasn't RPGA.
My 21st century OD&D refereeing cherry isn't decidedly popped.
) because they may be more, in some sense, sophisticated. There are now well over 30 years of dirty tricks in the adventure design toolbox, and that alone could give one pause before entering that supposedly innocuous room.
I'm hoping to play OD&D for the first time at LGGC this summer (so far as I recall, never played OD&D otherwise, discounting Holmes).