Oops, I con gamed again

I made another one of my rare public appearances DM’ing yesterday at Socal Smackdown in Anaheim. Last year’s session was a big success, and the organizers (wanting more RPG events, especially old school) had asked me to run a game again. I was back and forth about it for the last couple of weeks, but having not a whole ton of other priorities for the long weekend I was leaning towards it. Earlier in the week a player from my regular group was interested, so I said “what the hell” and went for it. Last year I stayed at a cheap hotel near the con, but this time just travelled down there for the session

I did not have a lot prepared, and had not done OD&D since the pub game earlier in this year, but I dove in the last few days whenever I had a few minutes and tried to hammer out a scenario. I pretty much used my Tegel Manor Dynasty setting I did in the pub game; basically a prequel to full blown haunted Tegel Manor. This setting is sort of turning out to be my Ravenloft, a recurring locale with undead, demonic forces, family intrigue, and atmosphere. In a lot of ways I’m inspired by the old Dark Shadows program to give a living family angle to the cursed mansion.

Even though the con blurb did not mention me specifically, there were three people from my pub and Smackdown 2010 groups, so including regular player Terry it was not a total batch of strangers, which was nice.

It was really kind of a wild and wooly session, the 4 or so hours going by pretty quick. There was a bit of over the top dorkery from a couple players, but it was more funny than annoying. My sessions tend to be boisterous and filled with wild laughter. As a matter of fact, one guy who played another game at a table near mine last year and was playing in mine this year commented that he remembered how loud and fun my game looked, and how he wished he was in that session. And again, it was a success and very worthwhile.

I do have to say that campaign play is always going to be my main fun and focus. I just love having time for characters and situations to be developed through ongoing gameplay. For these more or less one shots (although this is the second time running the same character for both Terry and another guy, so I try to collect the character sheets at the end to keep them in case somebody plays again in the future), I just think in terms of several encounter situations and loosely tie them together. There isn’t a ton of time for sandboxing.

Anyway, I’m in my busiest time of the year now, so I doubt I’ll do another public session anytime soon. But it turned out to be another great way to spend one day of a long weekend.

Playing D&D with Pub Stars

I guess if a fortune teller told me a couple of years ago that I would be running a Dungeons and Dragons session in a busy pub, I would have told her not to listen to those spirits again, because they were full of shit. But there I was, at a Santa Ana British Pub, running a sort of Tegel Manor prequel game for seven players, and drinking pint after pint of delicious Elvish brew (Bass Ale).

Cyclopeatron put this together, and it was an interesting experiment. Basically, we took over a back area, slid some tables together, and I did the 5 hour session while Trent Foster ran at another table nearby. It was a stormy day in Southern California, and I really thought I might face the prospect of this falling through if a lot of players decided not to forge out into the weather. I told my regular player and designated driver Terry, and great trooper, to bring along her Mythos card sets in case I had to go ahead and fold whatever players showed up for me into Trent’s session (who was willing to have up to 12 people play).

But as it turned out, I had a full boat. Seven players including Terry. Wow. I think Trent ended up with a couple players less than I had, which surprised me. I think some kind of word of mouth, somewhere, is getting around about the breezy little OD&D sessions I’ve been doing since last year. It was really gratifying to me to have such a great showing.

At Around 11AM the pub was filled with hollering and shouting soccer hooligans, but before long the TV matches were over and it quieted down a bit. We took our time getting characters set up, I ordered up two pints at a time, and tore into some delicious Cod and Chips when it finally showed up. I had a nice cozy booth type seat to adjudicate from, and it was the perfect amount of players for the space we had. Just enough room for everything and everybody.

The pub manager was a hilarious Manchester lady names Jackie, and her often mean and sarcastic attitude in the morning blended nicely with her more warm and friendly chatting in the afternoon when things quieted down a bit. Personally, I think she had tilted a few herself in the back, which is always a bringer of cheery feelings. One of my players that day was also English, from the London area (there was an old London map in the bathroom that he could see his old neighborhood on), so the combination of the Euro accents, pub atmosphere, and rainy day was super conducive to good gaming feelings. It was all quite perfect. After making sure of taking care of Terry’s Cod lunch and a couple of pints for being my designated driver, the day cost me around 90 bucks, but it was well worth it for a great day out. To me this was more fun than a day at Disneyland or Knott’s. Limey manager Jackie said that for next time she might arrange a buffet and some booze discounts to cut back on costs a little.

As far as the scenario, I did a sort of Tegel Manor prequel, set in a time before that mansion become the most haunted place in the world. I used some of the Tegel personalities from the 100 portraits in the Tegel Manor adventure, and had them still be alive, and a family trying to hold off the encroaching curse of the area.

Later this week I’ll post a bit about that Tegel Manor Prequel session, and also about tomorrows Night Below session, which I think will be quite brutal and very likely the last game of the campaign.

Meanwhile, go to Cylcopeatron’s site to see a couple of photos of the sessions from that day.

The Angry Villager Rule

This item on page 24 of White Box booklet 3 really stuck out at me as I was preparing for the OD&D session I did on my birthday:

“Anyone who has viewed a horror movie is aware of how dangerous angry villagers are. Whenever the referee finds that some player has committed an unforgivable outrage this rule can be invoked to harass the offender into line. Within the realm of angry villagers are thieves from the “thieves quarters,” city watches and militia, etc. Also possible is the insertion of some character like Conan to bring matters into line.”

Note the sweet Conan reference. You can imagine Arnold showing up “Ah am He-ah to bring mattahs into line!”

James over at Grognardia sure has a point about old Universal and Hammer horror movies having a load of influence on the game. And here it’s obviously being used as an abstract tool for a DM to bring a douche bag player into line. If the DM does not approve of the slaughter of an innkeeper or the rape of a lass by some social ‘tards chaotic evil assassin, he can drop this sack of bricks on the offending munchkin. Mr. Evil is confident he can take the farmers and milkmaids in the tavern room, but when one of them runs out and riles up the locals you can literally have hundreds of peasants with torches and pitch forks up your power gaming ass! And if they are getting cut down like wheat on harvest day, just have a certain Cimmerian or reasonable facsimile show up to lay down some smack.

It smells of DM “cheat,” but hell, I like it. I need to remember this rule for my 1st edition games.

Birthday Game/Birthday Wishes

I have never made much of a deal out of my own birthday. I for sure usually don’t skip work, and don’t talk it up there like a lot of people do (there are people here with balloons in their cubicle from 8 months ago). I don’t like parties in my honor, and I don’t like discussing my age (after I hit 40 I stopped telling people, at least at work, how old I am) even though most people who know my true age tell me I look at least 10 years younger than I am. Must be all that clean living *cough*.

As it just so happens, it’s a game night tonight, so for the second time in three years I’ll be spending my birthday night with the gaming group. Thank God most of them are drinkers. Anyway, I enjoy DM’ing on my birthday, and tonight I’m going to continue our occasional White Box old school dungeon delve. Some nice relaxing fun compared to the uphill struggle that is my AD&D campaign (a torture of my own design). I just gotta find a way over to Andy’s and home without risking a birthday DUI.

Anyway, I would like to divide this post into two parts, each where I ask your input/experience. OK, first one: have you ever run a game on your birthday, how was it, and did you eventually wish you had just had a traditional birthday party (y’know, a night at the Super 8 Motel with a couple of hookers, a pizza, and bottle of Gray Goose)? Have you ever DM’d or played on a birthday?

And secondly, have you ever made a “Bucket List” of things to do before you die? I haven’t. To travel the world? Outside of some visits to Scotland back in the day, I don’t leave America (although I often hear Amsterdam calling my name). If you gotta pee in the street and poop in a hole in the ground, I don’t go. Date a supermodel? I think that boat passed me by. Get rich? Man, I’m tryin’. But anyway, below are some of my favorite Bucket List items from Adam Carolla’s new book In “50 years We’ll All be Chicks.” I relate very much to the pop culture nature of some of these, and I choose these things to do before I die. Do you have any?

*Disclocate my shoulder to get out of a straight jacket.

*Pull a fake mustache off someone and shout “Ah Hah!”

*Shout “Release the hounds!”

*Stop a crime by throwing something. A guy steals a purse and starts running. I throw a can of corn football style and knock him out.

*Catch a punch and twist the guys hand until he drops to his knees

*Get shot and blow it off “I ain’t got time to bleed”

*Put my hand over the mouth of a beautiful woman to stop her from screaming and alerting the bad guys.

*Punch out my undercover partner who is about to say something he shouldn’t and blow our cover.

*Get kicked out of a casino for winning.

*Have a cape removed on stage.

*Be killed by the person I told to kill me if I start turning into a zombie.

*Dry-shave with a machete

*Drive my car off a pier onto a garbage scow.

*Box a kangaroo

*Fight somebody on top of a moving train

*Pop the locks on an attaché case full of money and slide it across the table.

*Silently communicate/point to my watch underwater.

*Fend off a Kodiak bear with a torch.

*Track somebody. I get off my horse, squat, then do that thing where I pick up a clump of dirt and let it sift through my fingers.

The Loud Mouthed DM

I've never had a review of my DMing style appear anywhere, and I haven't had a photo taken of my game table since the 80's (I think).

Well, here is a very rare example of both. Bob "Cyclopeatron," who sat in for my Socal Smackdown OD&D session, posted briefly about it and you can check it out over at Cyclo's blog.

This is the first time I have ever been referred to as a "Loud Mouth" in a positive light, and I thank you Bob! Just remember, me drinking makes my voice louder - and you drinking makes my voice sound louder to you!

Cyclopeatron reminded me too that this was an old school session with some historical significance. There were a few guys present who got into D&D in it's ancient past just like I did, and I was glad for their presence. Considering the prominance of board games and miniature battles at this con, it may actually be a bit of a miracle that this session occured at all!

Again, thanks to everyone who was there. I'm really glad that session happened, especially considering my current shakey confidence in my own regular group.

Cheers, guys

Weeee! Me and OD&D!

Before it gets later in the week and into a possible Mutant Future session, I wanted to post about the OD&D game I did for the group last week as a little alternative. My eyes are a bit bleary, as I sat through three full length movies over the weekend in addition to the usual tons of TV, reading, and video games. The Sci Fi Academy happened to have three screenings scheduled, including a 3D screening in a Beverly Hills Rodeo Drive office building Sunday afternoon. So I saw Eclipse (lame as hell with a moment or two of cool, but my +one was a fan so she thought it was the best movie ever – Team Edward, no doubt), Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (out on DVD right now actually, the Academy gets foreign films months after they are out, and even if you aren’t a suspense/mystery fan YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE. Rent it next time you’re at Blockbuster), and Air Bender in 3D, which despite the 3D adding nothing of value, was actually a pretty good time at the movies. Lots of actions and wild visuals. The setting would make a great game.

Anyhoo, so I popped OD&D on the group. Dan, a total dice-aphobe when it comes to stat rolling, was beside himself at the thought of 3D6 in order. The others took it in stride, and with a slight bit of generosity (I let them roll two sets in order, with the option of a third set rolled, or a best 3 of 4 elimination roll on one of the stats of the first two). Nobody came out a total Elmer Fudd, and a couple of them had some decent above average stuff.

So, I’m doing White Box plus Greyhawk, but even so there are few options. Andy was the only one who did a single class, a human cleric. Desperate Dan worked up a nice little fighter/thief dwarf. Both Paul and Terry did up elvish fighter/mu’s. With Greyhawk involved, I let them operate simultaneously in both classes.

Only took a half hour or so to get rolled up, named, and supplied, and off they went. Now, in my 1st edition games I usually put a ton of stuff into character set-up. I want to know as much as possible about the character before we begin. But for this it was “OK, off we go” without really worrying about where anybody comes from.

The setting is 200 years prior to my current 1st ed games, and that puts it about 70 years before my very first game in that world as a kid. So this is well within my world’s “Age of Dungeons.” I thought it appropriate, because I pretty much started on White Box with Greyhawk, so I set it closer to that retro time when all we did was dungeon crawl in my world. Sort of a full circle via going back in time.

Anyway, I don’t want to give away too many details of the actual gameplay because of the event I’m doing it at next month, but things went by much faster than it in my usual game. Everything just so nice and simplified. Few adjustments, just raw “up and at ‘em.”

After an hour or two I was like “Ok, I could just ditch 1st ed. All together, stop over thinking things, and go simple from now on,” but that wasn’t what I really was trying to do. In the long run, I think I would pine for nice, complicated AD&D. But this was a nice, hassle free change. Talk about phoning it in!

And I even went with a more traditional combat set-up, rather than my going in Dex order method. I basically did a spell-missile-move-melee thing that actually worked better than I thought. It is very possible I will go with that for my AD&D in the future. There ended up being several combats in the actual three or so hours of play, and they all went fast and furious. The party made out ok, getting a few hundred gold, a couple of magic items, and they all survived despite a couple of bites from poisonous foes. What surprised me most of all what the party taking stairs down to the next level as soon as they came across it. They fought a foe or two of higher level, and still came out only mildly scathed. At games end, they did what any old school party should do – they left the dungeon to camp for the night.

It was a lot of fun for me, and I think the gang liked the change of pace from my usual high adventure crap. Dungeon delving for its own sake. Nice. I think things will go well at the event next month, although it will be as many as twice the four players I had for it this time (Ben was out of town, hence the reason for the alternate game). But I have a good feeling about it.

I want to mention that I leaned heavily on the dungeon as mythic underworld stuff to get my player in the right mood, so a big tip o' the old school hat to Philotomy

And wow, the last several months I have gotten to do a lot of alternatives to the usual 1st edition campaign. A year ago I was only dreaming of a chance to do my old Champions game world a bit, and a bit of Mutant Future. I’ve been getting that. Now a bit of OD&D for grins and giggles. Damn, the sky is the limit. Maybe I’ll get to inject some Call of Cthulhu into the group before too long after all! Dream big.

Defining an age: “The Age of Dungeons”

When I first began my long running game world (that is, came up with a name for the land my first dungeon and nearby tavern were located in) that I still use for my ongoing AD&D campaigns, I was around 13 or 14. At that time I was still using White Box, plus had only recently acquired Greyhawk and Blackmoor. Dungeon crawling was still the focus of my games, just like everybody else.

Fast forward around 30 years or so, and I’m still running games in that world, “Acheron” (Yeah, Acheron is the type of name for a world that a kid would come up with alright). But the “time of dungeons” has long past. Some 120 years or so had passed in my game world since those first “tavern n’ a dungeon” games, and the types of adventures had changed.

As my main city, Tanmoor, become more detailed and more adventures took place there, it became the place where most things happened. The city was about to enter a time of Renaissance. Characters went up in level and became famous, hobnobbing with the royalty and other famous personages and NPC’s that were around. There were quests, errands, and sometimes even wars that characters took part in, almost all of it in one way or another connected to Tanmoor and the crown. I didn’t really mean to go the “high adventure” route that newer editions of D&D was shooting for. It’s just that characters being more heroic and epic in scope, beyond dungeon crawls, had become more appealing to me.

In many ways I was running these campaigns like superhero games, with characters swiftly going from 1st level noobs to major, world altering adventurers. As I’ve said before, I think that a combination of girls being in my games in the past, plus my comic book collecting background and love of superhero level antics, led away from the maiming and crippling death dungeons and into a world or more derring-do.

So, as it turns out I’m going to be running a bit of OD&D soon. Not just at the “Minicon” event next month, but it looks like I’ll be getting some practice with it tomorrow night. We need an alternate with Ben still out of town (and the 1st ed. game right now needs it’s resident MU), and Mutant Future is supposed to be for when Terry can’t make it on game night. At the last game Terry and Paul were interested in my tales of good ol’ White Box D&D, so I’m going to try out a session of nice simple “Elmer Fuddist” D&D on them.

Although I really only need a village and a nearby dungeon, I gave some thought to the world this would take place in, and decided to make it Acheron, my long running game world, but set about 200 years in the past of the current time period in games. That would put the new OD&D setting at about 70 years prior to my first Acheron sessions as a kid when I first got D&D. As it turns out, this is pretty perfect. As a kid all we did were dungeons. Nice, nonsensical “mythic underworlds” that PC’s trudged through Fudd-style. So I started to think of a time period when there were more weird dungeons in Acheron. A time when the lands were strewn with them. Money grubbing wannabe adventurers in the lands had their choice of deathtrap dungeons to delve into. That was D&Ding to us when we were kids, so what better time period than the period of my first games?

The current decades are known as a time of great heroes and epic adventures, and I have often described to my players a time period 500-600 years ago that was another epic time, when many of the current gods of my world were still mortal warriors and magic-users. So I decided that the time about 200 years ago was sandwiched in between these more heroic times, and itself was known as “The Age of Dungeons.” Rather than heroic figures, adventurers were more born of a time of greed and lust, when tales of great treasures and glorious magic seeped out of the mythic underworld places. The sons and daughters of farmers, blacksmiths, and even scholars set out with dreams of schlepping out cartloads of gold from the underplaces. Not all of them returned, but enough did to inspire others to delve.

Don’t get me wrong, every now and again in my games there have been and still are weirdo dungeons. They are just rare. Hell, when I started my current group and the current 1st ed Campaign almost two years ago, the whole plan was to get them up a level or two and get them to a dungeon. But, typically, things went to a more epic, politically relevant direction and they ended up in The Night Below setting. Still there. But there are a couple of other dungeons I have that are a permanent fixture In the city of Tanmoor, and will be encountered again no doubt. Both of these city dungeons are based on old Flying Buffalo Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures; Mirror World (a mirror with a dungeon in it), and Naked Doom – not so much a magical dungeon like Mirror World, but a sort of dungeon obstacle course (that you of course start out naked in). But like I said, visits to these places were rare.

Regardless of recent and distant past, I seem to be going through a “dungeon phase” like I haven’t since I was pretty much a kid. I’m gonna ride this pony while I can.

Next: The Economy of the Dungeon Age