2024 D&D PHB Not-So-Shockingly Sets New Sales Record

 

This isn't exactly a surprise but according to the press release posted in this thread at EN World the new PHB is the fastest-selling D&D thing of all time. Alright. That's good for the game and for RPG's in general to a degree and promoting numbers like this is what companies do when launching a new product. It is still a little weird to see D&D treated like a mainstream product - like a videogame launch in many ways. They quote a number of 85 million "D&D fans" and I expect people on the internet to run with that number as though it's the number of people actually playing D&D which we know it is not - because if it was they would have said so. That's a nice squishy number that could include anyone who's played Baldur's Gate 3, for example, and should not be taken as hard evidence of anything.

That said I don't want to downplay WOTC's success here: they've helped to make D&D a bigger thing than it has been in a long time, if ever. They don't get all of the credit, as despite my own lack of interest the streaming stuff like Critical Role clearly had an impact, and they've had some stumbles as well like the OGL thing last year. But, even given the boost from other factors, they a) made a version of the game normal people - casual players - could understand and b) came up with a business model that involved a limited number of books per year that didn't drive everyone crazy or radically change the game - issues with 3E and 4E that limited their success to a degree.

They also appear, at least right now, to be successfully pulling off an edition change that they aren't calling an edition change. One might say "desperately" trying to call it not an edition change. I get it - a new edition is a great reason for people to jump off of the train, especially when you have the mass market audience D&D has achieved. Most normal people are not excited about paying for another set of rules for a game they already play or learning a new set of rules: "Why can't we just keep playing with what we have?" That's a completely reasonable point of view. But much like the videogame industry I mentioned above - particularly with bigger members of the industry - many game companies depend on new editions to make money because the main rulebook is the one thing everybody tends to buy. Games Workshop is the king of this and has been for some time but TSR/WOTC and Paizo are members of this society and I'd say Modiphius is moving in this direction as well. WOTC has not used the word "edition" much at all in their conversations instead using "revision" as more of the go-to descriptive term and bending over backwards to emphasize "backwards compatibility" which ... ah ... sure. It's nice and to some degree correct but I don't know that it's built to let you run a 2014 Paladin right alongside a 2024 Paladin - will the subclasses cross? I don't know yet but I would guess not without some rejiggering on the DM's part. 

Looks a lot like the last one on the inside

I do have a copy though I have not yet read it and have no plans to run it at this time. I made my D&D-type-fantasy-rpg-of-choice some time ago in favor of Tales of the Valiant and I (and my players) are perfectly happy with it. I do figure it's worth going through to see what the new standard will be. I'll post up my thoughts once I do that with comparisons to the prior version and to ToV. 

Outside of interesting ideas from competitors my other issue is the continuing push by WOTC to move towards D&D Beyond as the "standard" way to play the game and consequently the push towards a subscription fee for a tabletop game. I will not be joining this particular bandwagon and while a lot of companies are busy cross-promoting streamers and setting things up on various online tool sets I just have zero interest in playing the game this way so my take on D&D 2024 will strictly be as a set of RPG books used at the table. 

So it looks like 6th edition will continue to be the juggernaut when it comes to RPGs. Not really a surprise and it is nice to see a company making an effort to not instantly invalidate everyone's books for a new release of their game. Time will tell how it all goes but it all looks pretty optimistic for now. I'm going with the Rising Tide outlook here and hoping that continued good news for D&D will help all of those other games we like too, from ToV & PF2 to smaller names like Mutants & Masterminds, Twilight 2000, and Savage Worlds. It's all looking good for now.

40k Friday - World Eaters 2024

 

I've been working on these guys a lot this year after slowly building up a force for years and learning some lessons along the way. I've had a lot of parts sitting around, some of them painted, but it didn't feel like a cohesive army. After their line update last edition I had to think through how I wanted to handle some things and if I wanted to reallocate or replace anything. Thoughts below:

• The Lord of Skulls is painted and it's still a current and useful model so yes, I'm keeping it in my Khorne force and not moving it to the Iron Warriors - my "normal" chaos army for 40K
• The Maulerfiend is still current and still has a place - now I just need to finish him. I may add a second one too as things like this I like to take in pairs, at least, as it means you might actually get to use them in a fight.
• The Defilers - I have two of these in a scorpion configuration that was a popular option a few years back. I like them, I think they help build out the "daemon engine" options for the army and I think two is enough. I know the model is old at this point but it's one of those things that helped build up the "legend" that is chaos in 40K - especially when this almost goofy/kinda creepy spider-walker-thing showed up in Dawn of War. I like them whether they're "meta" or not so I will keep them and try to finish painting them.
• Heldrake - I have one, it's painted in Khorne colors and while it could use a bit more finishing I love the way the things look. I'm keeping it, even if flyers seem like a forgotten unit in this edition of the game. I've thought about getting a second or even a third at times over the years but I haven't yet. For now it can look good in the display case.
• Helbrutes - Another unit that seems out of favor with the competitive types these day and another case where I don't care. The idea of a chaos marine army without dreadnoughts is just dumb to me so my 3 painted helbrutes from various editions and with various levels of conversion will remain a well-loved part of this army.
• Rhinos - I built and base coated 3 of them years ago as I started putting this force together and now I may finally have time and the motivation to finish them. I bought extra bits and some special bling for them and everything. They are still useful and still the same model so yes, 3 rhinos - another thing defining feature of a chaos marine army.
• Land Raiders - I picked up two of these a year or two back when I saw a bargain deal. They are mostly built and mostly painted but it's not all good work and they have some damage so they need some TLC before I will be happy with them. The big tanks are still useful though, and they can haul any of the infantry in the army and with two of them I am in the sweet spot of "enough" but not "too many or too few" for most battles. 

• Juggerlords - I have a few from old school Rogue Trader versions to the 2E metal ones with the plasma pistol rider to the newer plastic ones - though not the latest Lord Invocatus version. Right now I'm thinking of using the painted plastic one as him and finishing some of the metal ones to use as generic juggerlords.
• Kharn the Betrayer - I have the old metal model built and primed and that's probably what I'm going to use for now. He's a mixed blessing at times, occasionally killing his own troops, but the World Eaters don't get many characters in these newer editions so I feel like he has to be an option. Plus he's been around forever so he's kind of a legend. So yes he will probably be leading the berserker squad that gets left out of having a master of executions.
• Master of Executions - These guys are one of the newer "power" units in the army. Everybody takes at least one and you could take up to three. Considering they  are a solid melee character that grants their unit Fights First ... well, I have 3 of them. I just need to get them finished.
• Daemon Princes - well they split them into "flying" and "not flying" now and while the flying one adds speed and hitting power it doesn't do much else. The walking prince is also mean in combat and adds an invulnerable save aura to buff nearby units which is a fairly big deal - so I built a new ground-pounder for this army and will be painting it shortly to add to the collection of 2-3 flying princes I already had. Daemon princes are fun - I liked the old metal kit (not the original one - that was awful - but the 3rd edition one), I liked the previous plastic kit a lot, and I like the newer plastic kit too. The good thing is that they're all close enough in scale you can use them in the same army and it's no big deal.
• Angron - I have him, he's built and primed but not painted. He's actually the first - and for now only - primarch I own. He will definitely see both the painting and the playing tables.

• Chaos Spawn - I have a few uncommitted models sitting around. I will probably dedicate a pair to the force as they do have some utility as objective-achievers in the later versions of the game.
• Jakhals - don't have any of the new kit and have had a long-standing policy of "I don't play chaos marine armies to run normal human cultists" but I can see some utility here considering they are ridiculously cheap points-wise. I am leaning towards converting some AoS Blades of Khorne troops I've had sitting around for years to build a couple of squads as they look suitably barbaric and are already in-hand. 
• Eightbound - this was the hot new unit they introduced for 9th and there are two versions - Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound - which are way too similar looks-wise and game stats-wise to get really excited about as separate miniatures but they do look suitably gnarly and they are definitely "meta" for this edition so I have two boxes I will probably be building as Exalted. I have not even started this yet.
• Terminators - the other Elite type squad for the World Eaters they are in a weird place. The other two god-specific armies have special terminators but the world eaters do not. I don't know if they will stay that way, or if special termies will be coming along later, or if the eightbound are supposed to fill that role entirely. Much like the helbrute situation I don't like the idea of a chaos marine army with no terminators so I'm going to build some, probably 10, and then I suppose they will potentially become Iron Warrior auxiliaries if we get some special Khornate terminator squad later in 10th or in 11th. 
• Finally - Berserkers! - The heart of the army! The most melee of melee marine options ... if you're running a World Eaters force without berserkers you're doing it wrong! This month I finally finished 30 of them that I had been working on this year. I am using the old berserker kit because I have a bunch of them so I decided to rework them to remove the power fists  - no longer an option - and add on some 3rd party eviscerators that I liked since that's the new heavy melee option. I had to rejigger the number of plasma pistols in a squad too since that changed. Hopefully, since GW has locked in on making squad options tied directly to the kit options, this mean I should be good for at least a few years.
  
  The new kit looks fine but I already had these so I did not want to replace them all. Besides the 30 I finally finished, I have about 20 more of the old ones and then one more squad of converted loyalists, mostly space wolf parts, that should make for a good squad too. That takes me to 60 total once I finish them and that's the most you can take in the latest editions of the game so I am done after that. 

Things in the army that I do not have yet:

• Predators - I have some spare predator tanks on the shelf so I've been thinking about adding one to the force. I don't know how long they will remain a part of the army rules-wise but it's not always about the current edition and more guns would be handy.
• Forgefiends - I do not have one for this army and I am not really sold on adding any. I think the maulerfiend is a better fit here but you never know. 

The shelf is filling up

The other consideration here, one I have been paying more attention to lately, is that I don't care that much about rules for the current edition. Editions come and go but I keep my armies so as I build or rebuild them I am trying to keep them usable in pretty much every edition. base sizes may change here and there but if that's the biggest issue it's really not that much of a problem. If a unit disappears from the codex I'm not going to toss it - I may play 5th edition again someday and it will be waiting on the shelf when I do. It's just something to think about if you plan to make something a "lifetime" army. 

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session5: In the Dungeon of the Moathouse

 

We begin with a round of stew and stories back at camp as the ranger and the paladin and the fighter all utilize their backgrounds to buff the rest of the party - this is a Tales of the Valiant thing where some backgrounds get a nifty ability to add temp hit points by various means. Beyond the mechanics this has added some fun during exploration and combat as party members speculate on what's going in to the Paladin's chili pot next.

Note: This is the DM's take on the session. For an in-universe player's perspective on the thing click here.

As we sit in camp the party eventually realizes that there is an 8th figure seated at the fire - Inigo Vulnstack, a roguish elven associate of Braeden's (the ranger) - has appeared seemingly out of nowhere and offered to join the group's expedition. With the ranger vouching for him, the rest of the group accepts - another sword will no doubt prove useful.

This was the session where one of my regular  players who has thus far been absent was finally able to join us and so we worked him in as quickly and simply as possible, which turned out to be pretty damn appropriate for the character he created. The relationship with the ranger was invented on the spot to be fleshed out later. This was probably the least painful way to bring in someone new and a bit of a surprise to my players as I have dropped in new characters in far more complicated ways such as being carried off in a sack by beggars, as the only intact statue outside a basilisk's lair (where a convenient stone to flesh scroll was discovered), and via the traditional found chained-to-a-wall-upside-down-and-naked approach  - but I went easy this time.

As the day dawns Bubo the Owl familiar plays recon drone again and surveys the moathouse from the air. They poke around the upper level a bit more finding an empty tower and an abandoned hideout of some kind in the main hall but soon enough it's time to head down the staircase and into the dungeon.

The familiar thing may turn into a serious annoyance at some point as it feel more like a Shadowrun rigger thing than typical D&D fantasy as there's no limit on duration or distance like there would be with a spell. Basic 5E familiars were only good out to100' or so - this came up in a prior campaign - but ToV's ritual makes some significant improvements. In general I play with an attitude that the bad guys don't care about your pet rat or bird or whatever until it attacks them but I will probably be keeping an eye on this one for AoE spells and things to interrupt Bubo's ridiculous efficiency - he ain't flying 100' overhead in a dungeon. There is also a lot of humor tied to him now too as it was noted that if he just had a printer option he could spit out a map after doing recon of an area ... then the dot-matrix sounds start coming out and the whole group cracks up. 

My party managed to completely miss the giant spider hiding in the ruined tower because they were very careful about opening the door to it, looking in, but never stepping in, and then closing the door and walking away - even after noting that they saw shiny coins on the floor!

They also let the bandits get away as I had the main bandit lair close and lock the main doors as they saw the group approach. My guys did not try to force them, and then left overnight so I had the bandits sneak out using their escape route. I do have them lurking in the area for a hopefully fun ambush next session but right now as far as they know whoever was in the moathouse just ran off.

Heading on down into darkness various light spells are cast and stealth is employed here and there and a trash pile briefly investigated but as they begin exploring a set of dungeon doors and torture chamber they spot zombies - then more zombies, and more zombies! Reinforcements appear from behind each door until they have fought 12 zombies in all! Recovering from the fight and searching the area they are also apprehensive about what might come through the other door but they do find a secret door and ladder down hidden side one of the columns. 

I could have adjusted the zombie encounter to spring all of them at once but I stuck with the original script of two more zombies from each cell in succession each round because I just like it and it's a little more memorable. With a 8 PC's no, they were not likely to be in serious danger but i wanted to play it out as written. I did use the Monster Vault version where they have a chance to stay standing unless hit really hard and some of them did manage to last longer than they should have.

They do eventually press on though and find a small room with a very slippery floor and ... another door. After some moments of physical comedy here involving bad rolls and heavily-armored-low-dex fighter types they do eventually get themselves organized and open up the other door into the bedroom of a large, angry ogre. Battle commences!

But poor, poor Lubash only lasts two rounds as Xyzzifax the wizard pulls out the Lesser Wand of Petrification he looted in the dungeon outside Saltmarsh and zaps the ogre with it. Lubash promptly fails his save - a Con save no less - and is now Restrained. Undaunted he throws javelins at the party in the doorway as they take shots at him. Then at the end of his turn he fails his save again, and on round 2 he fails it yet again and turns to stone before their very eyes.

Now this was a bit disheartening for the DM as he is supposed to be a tougher encounter but this wand took him out fast. Even if he had made a save or two he was running out of hit points fast as that condition gives attackers Advantage on all attack rolls and gives him Disadvantage on all attack rolls. So it was turning into a very one-sided fight regardless of his actual petrification. Thankfully this item only has 1 charge so it's a 1/day item with a small chance to crumble after it is used but what can I say - they picked a dangerous target and with a little bit of luck they managed to neutralize an otherwise dangerous opponent. 

After this there was exploration and looting and more poor word choices as the heroes discovered another secret door with a staircase and landing ... and some prisoners! Information is gathered and thanks are offered, and they decide to escort the new acquaintances back to Hommlet and safety. 

So far it's so good though I will say there can be a lot of overhead running 8 PC's ranging from 1st to 3rd level. It's manageable for now it just means we run a little slower than we would with  4-5. Right now I am not dramatically changing up encounter numbers even with this many characters in play - I am just working in the Monster Vault versions of the creatures and I will probably work in some other monster book sources as well as the game goes on. I expected more variability in turnout but so far that has not happened. I may tweak some wilderness encounters - since they are mostly later additions anyway - but  once they get to the temple proper I probably won't need to as they don't do stealth well and will probably be pulling in chunks of each level as they start fighting through them. If it gets too stupid I will make some changes but I don't want to punish them for doing well - I just may need to do something to balance out the numbers a little more evenly. Back in the early days 8 PC's was not terribly unusual but 8 5E type PC's are quite a bit more capable then what we had back then. I'm not doing anything yet but I might as things develop.

There was a ton of laughing this session as it felt like we finally had the whole band back together and we were cracking up at inappropriate humor all through the run. It was a lot of fun and that helps to keep these things going.

Book Review - Defining a Galaxy

 

I only became aware of this book  a year or two ago, picked it up last year, and finally read it this summer. Bill Slavicsek is one of the names that jumps out at me when I see it on a game because he has worked on some that I really like. He is mainly known for working on the d6 Star Wars RPG - the first one - and that alone would be enough to earn a spot in my personal RPG hall of fame so the chance to read his memoirs, in effect, of working on that one and the subsequent Star Wars games was an easy sell here.

I will go ahead and say it: I was a little bit disappointed with this one. I was expecting or at least hoping for a fair amount of detail on the process of developing that first set of rules and the first sourcebook - which set a pretty high standard and influenced everything that came afterward from names and locations and Star Wars lore in general. It's hard to over-state the impact that sourcebook had on the Star Wars universe we came to know and it's hard to overstate the eye-opening impact those first d6 rules had on RPGs. In this retrospective though I think we suffer from it being written 30 years after the fact - a lot of the details get fuzzy after that much time and I totally understand that but it was a little less than I  had hoped. There's a fair amount of "what" but I was hoping for more "why".

That said this is still definitely worth a read if you're at all interested in d6 Star Wars the game, West End Games,  or in the history of RPGs in general. The stuff about how the game to be, the licensing effort, the ads, and Greg Costikyan working through versions of the rules are still quite interesting. There was time pressure to get a certain amount of material out during the tenth anniversary year of 1987 which is something people may not think about decades after the fact but deadlines always have an impact on creative works like these. 

The research process for the Sourcebook is pretty well laid out and he  does call out how this was before the internet so a lot of it was  physical in-person work at Skywalker Ranch which is also interesting.  There is a long chapter about the various  sections and entries in the book and this is probably the author's greatest contribution to the setting so this is where we get the most information. 

There is some discussion of the early adventures and the Galaxy Guides and this is also rewarding for the true fan. 

Then we move into other work at West End - including Torg - and eventually we get into a move to WOTC and the new license for a new Star Wars RPG. I played a fair amount of d20 Star Wars so this was interesting to me as well. This part of the book runs up until about 2011 and then we close with some notes about subsequent Star Wars  things including Bill's tweaks to the d6 system he made for a con game he ran in 2017!

So there is a lot of good information here. It has a generally positive tone and doesn't spend much time with any personal axe-grinding or disparaging other designers or co-workers - it's a pretty upbeat  account of a career tied very much to Star Wars in various ways. 

I was hoping for a little more but it's definitely worth your time if you're a fan.

40K Fridays - Blood Angels 2024

 Despite a lot of other distractions these last few months I've actually managed to make some decent progress on the Blood Angels. In April I mentioned some bikes, a Leviathan dread, a bike chaplain, a a jump-pack captain all as in-progress and all of those except the chaplain are finished and in the case now. In June I talked about some assault marines and a Redemptor dreadnought as in-progress at the time and I am happy to report those are finished now as well - see Mr. Redemptor in that photo up above. 

The biker chaplain is the one that is dragging out in a perpetual state of "almost". This is the downside of operating a home for wayward Blood Angels - part of it was nicely done but a lot of it looked good from a distance while having a lot of sloppy little errors all over the place and those are very challenging to fix when you're trying not to screw up the good parts by adding new mistakes of your own. This mean every little section has to be checked and re-checked to clean up the lines because every time I look at it I see something else. It probably would have taken less time to finish if I had just painted it from scratch myself but them's the breaks.

I took a pause from the Sons of Sanguinius for a couple of weeks to finally finish some World Eaters - more on them in a future post - but there are more coming. Down the road - once I finish that damn biker Chaplain - I am aiming to clear most of the backlog of death company and sanguinary guard. This is of course just in time for GW to release new death company and sanguinary guard. Ah well. I still like the old sculpts better, for the most part and I am trying to edition-proof my main armies so I can go back and play, say, 5th Edition if I want. That said, I do want to build up a modern-looking force so despite the very mixed reception amongst BA players I went ahead and pre-ordered the new army boxed set. 

The new box is death company focused with a bunch of assault intercessors - jump and foot - along with a punchy brutalis dread, the new Lemartes, and the new Astorath. It also has the codex, the cards, and multiple upgrade sprues to kit out the troops. This is what is really stinging a lot of us - death company had unique sculpts before, from the old metal ones through the later plastic set which is still one of the greatest kits they did  as far as bits and customization options. Now they are generic intercessors with an upgrade sprue for shoulder pads and a few helmets and weapons. It's a serious come-down from what we had before. In the earliest days your death company tended to be assault marines painted black and we are kind of back to those days now which is not really something GW can brag about. Regardless, I wanted to get all of this stuff together because it takes me a while to decide how I want to build it and then it takes a while to actually paint it too. As insurance against disappointment I went ahead and picked up two more boxes of the current death company as they are being discontinued in favor of this new set of options. I have some already but I wanted the parts for future use as the helmets and shoulder pads still fit on primaris-sized models and the assorted bling and trim bits will work there too. 

We went from this ...

The new sanguinary guard are getting mixed reviews too and I am not a huge fan - mainly because of the lack of wings! It's a huge part of their look which is golden armor and big white-winged jump packs! The new ones are far less visually interesting, which is especially damning for a Blood Angels units. I'm sure there will be third-party add-ons out there to add the wings back in but I grabbed another couple of boxes of the current kit here too as insurance because it's going away as well.  The old helmets will fit just fine and I suspect the wings will pop in there too - we will see.

... to this. 

I did like the new captain and sanguinary priest models. I will probably end up with a few of the captain - one in red, one in gold, one in black, maybe. The Dante and Mephiston updates that have been out for a few years now are great too so it's not all bad. 

So now the plan is to finish up a few straggler BA projects and then start in on the Great Updating - and try and actually finish it this time.

Anyway - more to come.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 4: The Moathouse

 

Back in the village the party hands their borrowed gear back and hands the prisoner over to Rufus for questioning and detainment. Then it's off to weapons trading and evaluation and some intra-party deals for components. The village leatherworker makes a deal to patch up some armor for some of our heroes and shares a little background information on the area as well. Then it's time to head for The Moathouse!

Here the party gets cautious: they set up a base camp some ways away from the ruined fort and then have the wizard spy out the place with his brand new familiar. After this they approach and manage to stumble into some giant frogs right outside the main gate. This is a fairly quick fight but it does put some fear into the halfling mechanist as he realizes he might be a swallow-able size for some of the frogs. My veteran players know what to watch for and so slice open the the frogs and find a nice gem for their troubles. 

The upper level of the place is cleared without too much injury ...

• The fighters do the traditional front line thing and hold off a giant lizard in one room. After it is defeated they slice it open and find a magical shield and so likely establish a precedent I will be dealing with for the entire campaign.
• The halfling once again finds trouble as he steps into a room alone and gets chomped by a giant tick. this combat marked the first use of the "I can cast a touch spell through my familiar" option as the wizard manages to shocking grasp the things while remaining at a very safe distance. 
  (and yes, they cut the tick open too but it was item-free)
• They killed a giant snake as well, continuing the tradition in this campaign of giant snakes dying in one round of combat. They are probably going to try and make something out of its hide as the ranger opted to skin the thing afterwards.
• The halfling's personal trilogy of terror wraps up when he steps into a room first (again) and is set upon by a room full of giant rats that put him down quickly, forcing the fighters to wade into the room while the cleric and bard and wizard take shots from the doorway. They do win fairly quickly though no animals are sliced open afterwards. 

A more detailed narrative account of the tale from the players' point of view can be found here.

DM Commentary

It was good to finally get to the moathouse and get some good old-fashioned violence in. Any of you who have played through this know that the dungeon level is where it actually gets nasty - the upper level is fairly easy in comparison and while it's a good warm-up it's almost misleading as to the level of difficulty you are going to see underground. That said maybe the halfling will learn not to go first.

There was also a fair amount of interaction in town, mainly at the inn and with Gipson the leatherworker so my team is not solely consumed with loot and bloodlust. There are still new people to meet and new contacts to make there so it should keep things interesting for a while longer. I have some ideas about adding a few more characters in to the mix as well.

The game continues to run pretty smoothly though it is still challenging to run with 7 when combat lasts a round or two. My position on 5th from  very early on has been that it's the simplest version of the game since 2nd and I still feel that way but it's not quite at the B/X level. I ran 8 in 3E for quite a while so it can be done and it will come easier with time. 

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 3: Hommlet Ho!

 

Originally I had planned to use one of several possible intro adventures covering the journey to Hommlet but as the session approached I decided to chuck that and just jump right into it - enough with the delays and prologues, we know how to play D&D here. So we did. I made the players talk about why their character would be coming to Hommlet and dropped some leads/rumors for them that they might have heard prior to their arrival. Most of these involved rumors of banditry and a possible stirring of the old cult and this would come back to bite me right in this first session.

Starting out they all met at the inn - Hommlet only has the one - then realized they shared some common goals and so decided to work together. Smartly they divided up to check out the village and talk to some of the more notable establishments and inhabitants. Our Heroes are:

• Malice (Bard 1)
• Braeden (Ranger 1)
• Sir Kentor (Paladin 2)
• Sir Lantor (Fighter 2)
• Xyzzifax (Wizard 2)
• Samson (Halfling Mechanist 1)
• Jaric (Cleric of Trithereon 1)

Jaric went to the local temple - Hommlet only has the one - to touch base with the local Priest of St. Cuthbert. He got some basic information out of the assistant priest and then came back the next day for an appointment with the main man. It turns out that the priests of orderly, obedient society for the common man aren;t super-thrilled to find a cleric of the rebel rabble-rouser Trithereon in town asking questions but Variable Dave rolled badly on his insight check and left the place thinking he might have a new best friend. 

Xyz went to talk to his fellow wizard - Hommlet only has the one - named Burne, a semi-retired adventurer and learned a few details among which that they are willing to pay a 5gp bounty on Bandits.

Braeden met Jaroo, the Druid of Hommlet - as Hommlet has only the one Druid - and learned that in addition to bandits gnolls have been seen in the local woods. Jaroo also offered his assistance with local nature and magical questions if needed, and that his apprentice, one Conn Shaunnery, is missing. 

Malice and Samson decided to talk to the village elder, the mayor, effectively, of Hommlet. In a bit of a rambling conversation they learned about the bandit troubles, temple troubles, the village of Nulb, a nice halfling family that used to live nearby, merchant traffic, and the local militia. 

Kentor and Lantor decided to spend their time getting to know the inn - the Inn of the Welcome Wench. Buying several rounds for the house they hear tales of bandit raids, lights at the Moathouse, and strange creatures seen in the countryside - including a griffon spotted flying over the Gnarley Forest.  

Gathering back at the inn a plan comes together to attack some bandits involving a wagon, some mules, and deception. Deals are made and the next day the party heads out disguised as merchants with several members using stealth to escort the bait while staying out of sight. 

After several hours this does pay off as a group of bandits emerges both in front of and behind the wagon and demands the "merchants" dismount. As they do this a fight breaks out, crossbows twang, and magic words are uttered as our team of seven heroes takes on twelve well-armed brigands. By the time it's over the heroes are all still standing (Malice was dropped once and Braeden was in rough shape for most of it) and all but one of the bandits are deceased. This leaves them a potential prisoner and after some debate - and some interrogation - they decide to take him back to town to face justice.

DM Commentary

Lordy lordy lordy this went in a different direction than I was expecting which is both entertaining and challenging. Lots of exploring Hommlet - sure, that's natural. Then they got stuck on the bandit thing despite my attempts to connect that to the Moathouse and the Temple and spent a bunch of time and energy on that. Don't we just go to the Moathouse? Doesn't everyone? If you play Village of Hommlet and know anything about it isn't the first stop the Moathouse? For about 45 years now? Also every time I myself have run or played in it over the years that's been the next thing after establishing yourself in the village. It's nice to know I can still be surprised after all this time but the creeping realization that they were not going to the Moathouse meant that I had to throw together a decent bandit encounter on the fly. This isn't hard in itself but there is some effort to balance "well these bandits are getting pretty brazen" versus "most of my party is still 1st level" means thinking up a band that could reasonably pull off a small caravan holdup while trying not to make a TPK a foregone conclusion. It worked out so the old instincts are still working but that time I spent re-reviewing the Moathouse and its dungeon beforehand was kind of wasted. 

It was fun watching them come up with their scheme though. 

Another disappointment was knowing that I have 3 different cart/wagon miniatures and could not find a single one of them as this plan was taking shape. So many miniatures but I didn't have these ready so we ended up improvising. This was a problem back in the Isle of Dread campaign a few years ag so I went out and picked up a few just to avoid this same situation. Ah well.

The prisoner thing is another unexpected development. The wizard and the bard both have Sleep spells and both fired them off, taking out part of the front group and the back group - preventing a lot of crossbow shots at the least. This lasted long enough to keep several of the bandits out for the whole thing and after a burst of executions they realized it might be smart to keep one alive. Now we aren't playing with alignment in this campaign so there aren't some of the traditional D&D arguments here but people who have settled on some morals for their character had some differences of opinion regardless.  No one was coming to blows over it but it was a discussion. With multiple casters in the group and one of them being a bard - even a more murderous bard than I typically see - and a lot of human & humanoid opposition, I suspect prisoners will be a recurring thing so I'm going to have to examine what kind of jail accommodations Hommlet has. My suspicion is "not enough" Down the road though this could lead to interesting developments as Verbobonc might send an representative to find out who is taking all of these poisoners and either admonish or reward them. It could also lead to a dedicated interrogator being sent down. We will have to see but that was one thought that I had on long term impacts if it continues. 

Finally it is challenging to manage a 7-player table at times, mainly in the sense of giving everyone some spotlight time. Sure, when it's your turn in combat you get a chance to shine but outside of that it's important to give everyone some time and I am very conscious of that. Combat also takes quite a bit longer than it did with 4 as in addition to more player actions there will usually be more enemy actions and it just eats up the available time. Not a problem yet but it's something I will have to watch. 

Rules-wise Tales of the Valiant continues to shine as far as character abilities and general running of the game. The index continues to fail us regularly (things not in the index from this session: cover, hiding, stealth, darkness) but that's really the worst I can say.

 As a final final note we have set up an Obsidian Portal site for this campaign so if you'd like to see more details and a session recap from my players' point of view here is a link to session 3.

Stay tuned for "Session 4 - Maybe Now They Will Go to the Damn Moathouse".

Kickstarter for D6 System Second Edition

 

Link is here if you're interested. I'm a fan of these mechanics and have been for a long time. It's been a while since I ran it but it's always on the list. Primarily this is because of Star Wars for me and I suspect for most other people that would care about a new edition of these rules but I can totally see it usable for a variety of campaigns. Any pulp-ish type game would be a decent enough fit. Savage Worlds fills a lot of this niche for me but a cleaned up and refreshed set of rules could mix in nicely.

As far as that Second Edition part I'll let their own words cover it:

Why "2e"?

Wow, that's a good question. When we were talking with WEG regarding this project, for a long time, we struggled with the name. D6 System books often were just defined by "eras" or the systems they supported. 

Finally, we realized that even though numerous iterations and previous publications had existed, few (or none, really) of them had consistently presented themselves as an "edition", but more as an evolution or iteration on previous releases. 

Together, the teams felt that calling this corebook "2e" would mark a new era in the game's publishing line, and would help to codify and communicate clearly where we are aiming to take the game line in the future, while also using language that existed in the tabletop rpg spaces common vernacular. 

Works for me!

There is about a week left for the KS as I post this so if you're interested give it a look! I have no vested interest or connection to these people - I just like the prior versions of the game in its best-known incarnation.

Scheduling for the New Campaign and a look back at my Agile-Style Gaming Posts

 

Schedule Magic!

A few years ago I was working through some schedule angst and came up with an idea that managed to cover just about all of the bases I needed. I brought it up again a year later and talked about how it had gone and in general it worked pretty well and looking back years later I can confirm that it really did. It's not a solution for everyone - I doubt most people are going to have the combination of things I did at the time but hey, if someone does and those posts help them figure out something that works for them then great! I'd love to hear about it. If you have people at home that play and friends that come over and everyone is on conflicting schedules it's worth considering a matrixed approach to keep the wheels turning.

I haven't said much about this style in the past few years because it kind of faded out as life changed. It's been 6-7 years since that was the problem I was trying to solve and as things have changed and kids have grown up and moved out and moved on I don't quite have the schedule chaos I was facing back then. I moved to a new place, set up a new game room, added some new players to the mix, and tweaked up the rest of life as well.

For about two years now RPG time has settled into a far more predictable routine. We meet once a week  on Saturday nights and after some experimentation with rotating through multiple games we've settled into that most basic of scenarios: we have one main game. Sometimes we have had a backup game for when part of the group missed but for this run I am looking at dropping even that. Whoever shows up can take whatever characters they want in whatever direction they want. This should especially help with the last-minute cancellations which are not a regular thing here but can really cause chaos when they occur. This means I have to enforce a little more structure than I normally do - i.e. they must get out of the dungeon if they are in one -  but it pays off in having the session-to-session flexibility. I think this will pay dividends in improved focus and immersion in the campaign so I think it's worth a try. 

I have a little more preparation to do in having things ready to go at different levels and for varying numbers of players but a) I have more time to do that with only one game in play and b) it's D&D so there is no lack of material to co-opt for my game. I don't think it will be a problem.

I do occasionally cancel for vacations or family stuff and that means no game that week but I try to keep that infrequent. Consistency and predictability go a long way towards keeping the game going and on people's schedules so I'm willing to set things up to get us there.

So yes, all of that complicated calculating has now boiled down to one game we play once a week, every week, on a set night. The Agile Approach is what I needed for a few years but time marches on and things are simpler now.  Change is inevitable and life is funny but it works for all of my friends and for me so this is a good place to be.

Players, Characters, Habits, and Choices

 

With a new campaign kicking off, particularly a D&D campaign and the associated character generation I got to thinking about my players and their characters and the mix we have had over the years. Some of them are remarkably consistent. Some of them change it up and never seem completely satisfied with any character. I find that often this applies regardless of the rules or genre.

One of my players in D&D terms is almost always either a Paladin or a Fighter. This habit/preference/tradition goes back to at least 2nd Edition AD&D because that's how long we've been playing together. In superhero games he tends towards a Superman-style Brick. In Deadlands he's always been a straight-up gunfighter, even when there are supernatural options available.  Now he has surprised me a few times - mainly when we ran multiple characters per player in a given campaign - by branching out and trying out a wizard or a sorcerer but it's always in addition to a fighter type, not instead of one. I know when I propose a new game that he will likely be playing a martial character of some type so that role will be covered by at least one player. 

In the new campaign he's playing a Paladin so the tradition continues and I am just fine with that.

In contrast I have another long-time friend who is the one who never seems quite settled in to whatever character he has chosen and he is the one most likely to switch out his character partway through the game. When 3rd Edition D&D was new he started out as a Halfling Wizard, later changed that out to a Fighter who was focused on breaking weapons and knocking people down, and then ended up as something completely different by the end of the campaign. In Mutants and Masterminds he tried to play a Batman-type but was repeatedly frustrated with how it played and what he saw as  its ineffectiveness and if the campaign had continued he probably would have asked for a change. He is unpredictable from campaign to campaign, which is not that unusual I think, really, but that restlessness even within the same campaign keeps things interesting. This often springs from some encounter early on, usually a fight, where he determines that his character is just not that effective. Now I often disagree with him and make him work through it a while longer because he has done this as quickly as the first session of a campaign and I'd like a little more stability than that! 

That said I have let him swap out characters multiple times over the years and not necessarily due to a character death - though that is an obvious opportunity if he wants to. Sometimes it's just not being happy with how a character works and wanting to try something different. In Deadlands he chose a Chinese martial artist - we've never really had a dedicated Kung-Fu character in our DL games before so I was looking forward to trying out those options - and he might have made it to Session 3 before declaring that the melee focus was not working in a world full of guns but I pointed out that a) you knew it was an Old West game when we started and b) there are defensive powers and movement powers as well as the punchy stuff. He stuck with it and after acquiring some XP and applying it to the problem he quickly became a very dangerous combatant who was fairly tough and stupid fast so he was quite capable of getting into hand-to-hand range and doing terrible terrible things to his opponent when he did and I would say he was pretty happy with things for most of that campaign. 

In the new campaign he's chosen to play a Cleric (of a war god) and we will see how that flows for him.

My son has been playing for almost 15 years now - still a strange thing to hear yourself say - and when we started with old school Moldvay Basic D&D it was "Elf" and then usually "Fighter" when we had a second character in play. Later when we had more options it was Elf-something, usually Ranger.  In both 4th and 5th edition the Bladesinger class was tailor-made for him. though in the last 5E campaign I ran he went with a Cleric and "Sacred Flamed" anything that came in range.

 Outside of D&D type games though he has not been all that consistent. In superhero games he likes his battlesuit guys/PAGs. In Deadlands he chose to play an Indian Shaman and had a lot of fun with that. In Star Wars he's a Jedi (even a barely-trained-wannabee Jedi) or he's a lot less interested in playing.

In the new campaign he's going full Wizard so  this will be interesting.

My other long-time friend in the game does have a recognizable pattern in that he likes to be "the ranged guy". He's usually inclined towards a fighter type character in D&D terms and from early on in 3E I don't remember a real tendency other than big melee weapons. By 4th Edition though that had changed as he discovered the power of the 4E Ranger which could participate in combat from an  entirely different table with all of the Bow power he could put together. In Deadlands he went for a rifleman approach moving into full-on sniper as the game went on. It has definitely become a theme for him.

In the new campaign he's playing a Mechanist, one of the new ToV classes, and maybe he's stepping away from the ranged thing this time - or maybe he's just looking for a new way to do it. We shall see.

It's funny to  call him one of my "newer" friends when I've been playing games with him for six years but my other regular kind of falls into that compared to the others. He may be the only other one that's been doing this as long as I have and it's a lot of fun because he gets my obscure RPG references and vice versa. He has played and run a ton of other games and is the most active "other DM" in the group. He is the one most into the "role-playing" part and will come up with interesting backgrounds for whatever kind of character he ends up playing and that's another key - he is unpredictable in that he could play any kind of character buuuuut he doesn't change his mind once he's committed. he is also very open to "what does the party need?" kinds of discussions with the rest of the group when a game is starting up. To him I would say it's less about playing a particular type of character than it is about just playing. He's also an asset to have aboard because I know if I propose trying out a less well-known game he will likely be the first to jump on board. In Deadlands he played a Mad Scientist. In our Marvel Multiverse tryout he played Beast. In our 50 Fathoms campaign he played the sailing expert and duelist and that character might be his archetype in my experience - a "sharp-tongued swashbuckler" that is capable in both social and combat situations.

In the new campaign he is playing a bard because ... that's the kind of player he is - give him something with some flexibility, that's not locked into one role in the party, and he will shine. I just don't see him ever playing a basic-style sword and board fighter - not because of a power issue but because other types of characters let him flex the muscles he enjoys the most. 

For me, "playing" has been far less common than "running" for at least the past 25 years. I'd say I had a fairly even mix of both through the 80's and 90's because I was fortunate enough to have another committed DM in my main group and we traded off for 20+ years. Starting with 3E D&D I really shifted over into running the games far more than playing. Some of this was less time with kids and spouse and career all eating into game time but I stuck with it and that's the side I chose - if you want to make sure there is a game then you'd better be prepared to run them. 

I'd say for 2E  mostly ran Clerics, with some Druid and a little Paladin sprinkled in. For 3E I played a little Wizard, some Barbarian, and some more Cleric and Druid when I had the chance. For 4th I played very little but I went with Fighter to fit a concept I wanted to try out. For Pathfinder I ended up with one of my longest-running characters played for years and up to about 11th level which was a cavalier of all things - originally just to try something new and then because I really liked his schtick and the campaign (Kingmaker) was not dungeon-heavy at all in my opinion. I've played very little 5E so no strong opinions there. In 50 Fathoms I played a Kraken Water Mage who could also fight so maybe my tendency is "some kind of spellcaster" given the chance but with the cavalier leading for actual time in the saddle in the last ten years who knows? 

A few other general observations:

• We used to get a lot more non-humans in D&D but that has really dropped off over the course of 5E. I think they ended up making it too obvious of a "power" choice as it seems like there's a lot of effort being made to strip away the things that made each race mechanically unique and this left Human as the default best choice mechanically speaking. Not a real fan of this approach but I'm going to take it as it is for this run.
• We didn't see a lot of Rogues, Sorcerers, Monks, or Warlocks in the last few editions. I'd say we don't see Bards or Artificers either but I have a Bard and a Mechanist (close enough) in this game so I can't really say that for now. Even Druids have been pretty sparse around here for a long time and I thought they were one of the stronger classes this edition according to online opinion. Barbarian is another surprise given the regularity here of Fighters/Paladins/Rangers  - they were popular in older editions but I haven't seen one played long-term since 4E 10+ years ago.
• Another quirk is that we do not see a lot of duplicate character types in the party. Even into 2nd Edition AD&D we would have multiple fighters and even multiple clerics (of different deities - in 2E a specialty priest of Mystra and a specialty priest of Tempus play very differently) in a party at times. Now I don't really see that. We do have more classes now but we also have more subclass options as a way to differentiate two of the same class but I just never see it.

Well that's a lot of idle thoughts and observations but sometimes the inspiration strikes. More on the campaign down the road.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 2: Beneath the Tower of Zenopus

 

We begin in Saltmarsh at the Wicker Goat inn as our party prepares to return to the ruined tower. Our heroes (all at level 2 now):

• Paladin Steve: Sir Kentor -  Human Paladin
• Boom-Gun Brandon: Lantor- Human Fighter
• Shootist Will: Mechanist Cedric Theodore -Human Cleric
• Blaster:  Xyzzifax - Human-ish Wizard

They were all present for the last expedition and the dwarf warlock again remains in town getting to know the dwarf-owned mining operation.

There was some rules discussion pregame, mainly about how magic works in 5E and has been tweaked for ToV. I also reminded them about some of the interesting items on the gear list like oil, alchemist's fire, caltrops, antivenin, holy water, and the good old 10'pole.

Then it was time to gather the party and venture forth! Veering off from their prior course the group found themselves kicking in a door to a very large room notable for a group of stone sarcophagi, a collapsed wall on the north side, and a number of giant rats peering back at them!

Taking the lead Sir Kentor takes a number of serious rat bites as does Lantor but they clear out the vermin in short order. This leads to the inevitable opening of the six closed sarcophagi which leads to a number of interesting things:

• The first one has a skeleton holding a fine jeweled dagger.
• The second contains a skeleton holding a very nicely crafted sword
• The third conceals a skeleton with a bejeweled necklace.

Now during these explorations the skeletons are left undisturbed - at first. A few minutes in the wizard decides to very quietly use his Mage Hand to retrieve the dagger which flies up out of his grasp and moves towards the party. This is also when a pair of hungry giant rats emerges from the ruined wall to the north and moves in to attack as well. Another short fight ensues with the wizard staying back and throwing Fire Bolts while Cedric, Lantor, and Sir Kentor charge in. The rats are slain and the dagger is smacked across the room - apparently beating the magic right out of it - and then things settle back down. 

• The fourth burial structure contains a skeleton and a cloud of gas which knocks out the Paladin for ten minutes. The rest of the part uses this time to detect and identify the items so far and determines that the sword is in fact "Verminax", a +1 vermin-slaying blade. The dagger also has not had all of the magic beaten out of it as it is actually a +1 dagger as well.
• Number 5 has another skeleton with more jewelry
• The final un-raided tomb gives them some trouble until something inside it helps to push it open and a skeleton jumps out and starts swinging! The paladin sees his moment and proceeds to land a critical hit with a smite detonating the undead thing in a blast of holy light - one shot, one kill. 

Gathering themselves up and performing some minor healing the party moves out of the opposite side of the room and heads down to kick open another door. This one is empty though there are faint tracks in the dust on the floor and the upper part of the room is shrouded in darkness. As they move in cautiously a giant spider drops on Xyz from above but he dodges the move only to suffer a bite from the vicious arachnid. The rest of the team attacks but the spider scuttles back and runs up a wall, shooting webs as it goes. Our heroes pursue and finally dispatch the beast with no serious damage other than to the wizard's morale. They discover a twin to their dagger embedded in the spider's hide and also identify the tracks in the dust as goblin marks. These seem to run between two of the four doors in the room so the standard protocol is enacted and ...

Kicking in our fourth door of the day we see an even bigger room than the first one containing some cots and clutter and ten very startled goblins - not surprised, as they heard the fight with the spider next door - but definitely startled, particularly the two that were clearly approaching the door quietly hoping the noises would stop before they got there.

The party moves in, the goblins move in, and the wizard unleashes the first Thunderwave of the campaign and blows away 3 of the goblins in one blast. Though they land a few solid blows most of the goblins are dead in seconds and the boss turns to flee but is also slain before he can get far. The last survivor drops his weapons and tries to surrender but is blasted by a firebolt as Xyz says "you are too weak". The room is looted with no particular items of note turning up.

Moving on the next door it turns out to be ... open! Within is a large statue of a wizard with a hand outstretched towards the door. The team quickly figure out that the statue can be rotated and that doing so unlocks the door it points at while locking the other three. Notes are taken and the group moves on having worked out via their ongoing mapping efforts that the corridor beyond may lead back to the "snake room" they discovered the day before. 

As it turns out they are right! They kick in what they now find to be the north door of the round room with the stairs and the big snake - as opposed to the south door they opened earlier. Sir Kentor drinks a potion of growth they found earlier and they charge in to confront the huge serpent. The snake rears up and ... takes a critical hit from the Large Kentor, a ridiculous critical from the fighter and then Lantor Action Surges for yet another mighty blow from his greatsword and slays the thing before it can land a single attack!

Taking a quick look around and upstairs and seeing nothing the adventurers push open the secret door they noticed previously and move down a long corridor that ends in what is likely another secret door. It too is kicked open revealing a wizard's workshop, some statues, a very surprised wizard, and his cutlass-wielding companion. As the violence begins the wizard recovers enough to make Lantor his new friend (a Charm spell) but is blasted by Xyz and slashed by the paladin before he can do anything else as Large Kentor steps around the table and bashes the bodyguard just as his eyes clear up and he says "wait, what"? The paladin is momentarily regretful but he was on the wrong side charmed or not.

After this the party does finish exploring the stair-connected rooms finding a few interesting items including a wand and some scrolls and potions. One of these is a scroll of stone to flesh and there is a fair amount of discussion on whether to use it on one of the statues in the workshop. In the end though they decide to hang onto it for possible future need and head back out of the dungeon to return to Saltmarsh. 

DM Thoughts on Session 2

This was a fun run and they were finally getting into some areas where there was a chance for some interaction beyond swordplay. That's one of the things I like about this dungeon in that even though it is relatively small there are several encounters where one can talk things over with the inhabitants or maybe learn something interesting about another area of the dungeon. Then in session1 they end up hitting a bunch of undead and vermin with zero chance to communicate barring the one cultist encounter

As it turns out they were not terribly interested in conversation. Here we had the goblins and the human wizard and guard as opponents and it was still a "nope" from the crew. Hey, they can tackle this thing however they want to but there were opportunities for more DM fun if they had left even on of those open. Ah well.

Rules-wise we used a lot of "helping another" type mechanics here. In the latest version (ToV PG Page 206 "Working Together")you don't even have to roll - you just give the acting character advantage on the roll. That's a little less dramatic but OK. Luck is working very well, being acquired and being used throughout the session. Combat flows very quickly at these levels and having my condition markers and area effect templates close at hand keeps that speed going. 

That said combat also flows faster when the second level paladin crits on a smite for 43 points of damage - 8d8! Honorable mention goes to the poor snake who got hit by a critical from the paladin, then another from the fighter, then a second attack from the fighter, all of which was enough to kill it before it could act once. Sometimes the dice gods just have it in for you.

As far as the dungeon we didn't make it to some of the other interesting parts but they hit most of it and had a good time. The original has the sword as just a generic +1 longsword so I jazzed that up with a name and a bit of a history and some extra utility in very specific situations. I'll probably add some wererats in at some point to give it a chance to shine. With it and a pair of +1 daggers the group has at least a few magic weapons available if needed. 

I have not been using much in the way of random encounters but that will change as we get more into the main adventure. The temple is an active organized base for an evil organization so it will be a little trickier than the tower. 

We should have a bigger group next time, likely the full 7 players I expect to be at this full-time, so there will likely be a bit more going on as the party makes it way to the Village of Hommlet.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 1: The Terrible Tower of Saltmarsh

 

With characters made but a few weeks left before the full team could gather I talked to the available players and we decided to get together and play some prequel sessions. This came together fairly quickly so was searching a bit to find some decent and short intro adventures. I didn't have anything home-brewed for 5th so I went back to my Saltmarsh idea. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, as presented in 5E's Ghosts of Saltmarsh, is nicely divided into two parts. This was a perfect fit since I had time for two sessions so I read through the thing, focusing on the Haunted House part  in particular. This was a good fit for an opening adventure of a new campaign and a new set of rules. It also pushed the nostalgia button pretty hard as Saltmarsh was the first published adventure I ever played in back when it was new - and all of us playing it were still fairly new too. 

So I started things off telling the players they needed to think of why their characters would have made the journey to Saltmarsh and what  they might be looking for as they poked around town for news & rumors. our cast of characters:

• Paladin Steve: Human Paladin
• Boom-Gun Brandon: Human Fighter
• Shootist Will: Mechanist Human Cleric
• Blaster:  Human-ish Wizard
• Official Spouse: Dwarf Warlock

So ... a couple of new bits of information there. Steve settled on trying out the new Paladin which most of us thought he would. Will is embracing the troupe-style play by making a cleric as his "backup" character while still intending to play a mechanist in the main campaign. Blaster went with wizard and not an elf which is uncommon for him but he has a concept he is pretty fired up about. Finally, the Official Spouse joined the game for her first RPG session ever! She figured she ought to play at least a few games so she would understand what we're all talking about and maybe get more of the jokes/references - even more nostalgia triggers are firing off here now.  

I want to mention that Brandon is Steve's son and Steve is a friend I have known since the 80's.  Blaster is my own son, and with the Official Spouse joining this run is a family-heavy affair and it is a blast. If you get a chance to play with your kids as they grow up it is incredibly rewarding. 

So with a 5-person party of first level characters roaming around the village of Saltmarsh, nostalgia feelings active, they head off to that same Haunted House I did with my friends back in 1981, right? 

No.

I made the mistake of mentioning that outside of town there were actually two main areas of interest. The haunted house is one but there is also ... the Tower of Zenopus! Yes, they put that reference in the 5E version! Did they put the dungeon in it? No! Of course not! Did the greedy wizard immediately focus on "definite wizard's tower" over "possibly haunted house" and push the party to go that way? Yes, yes he did.

Insert DM scramble here. The blog's namesake tower is the intro dungeon from the Holmes Basic Set circa 1977. It was the first dungeon I ever saw, ever read, and ever ran for some very uncertain friends around 1980. I pulled up a 5th edition version of it that I found a while back - because I couldn't find the one I did myself years ago - and started describing stone steps down into darkness ...

Side track - if you think it's tricky to tell people what D&D is about now you should envision what it was like then when there were no video or computer games to use as references, fantasy movies were mostly terrible, and the concept of an RPG was so unknown we hadn't even had the satanic panic yet. it was tricky to say the least.

So, drowning in more nostalgia feelings than I had expected I started describing the sights and sounds as our brave heroes formed up a marching order, cast some light spells, and descended into the dungeon. 

The short version is "they went right" and ended up in the ghoul room where "Two fanged and clawed humanoids are lurking...". This is where the group discovers that Sir Kentor (the paladin) has a -1 Dex modifier as he pulls off a mighty "zero" for his initiative. Despite this the group manages to take down the ghouls in just a couple of rounds with no one being paralyzed. The warlock is figuring out that a) eldritch blast is a pretty handy thing in a fight and b) a pseudodragon familiar (she's pact of the chain) with unlimited range for seeing and hearing through it is a damn handy thing everywhere else.

Ghouls are a tough first encounter for a new party but there were only two of them and the party is strong with ranged attacks. Paladin-Fighter-Fighty Cleric is a strong front line and a Wizard-Warlock backfield means they can do some damage at range. I was just glad we didn't immediately get into a multiple party member paralysis situation.

The party finds a long dirt tunnel leading out of the room and the familiar gets sent off down the thing first until it finds a group of people in a room chanting around an idol. That draws the rest of the PC's in and despite being offered a chance to join in the ritual our heroes choose violence when the Paladin throws a hammer at the lead cultist as he finishes his invitation. This goes poorly for the cultists and they are soon relieved of their lives and their nice shiny silver masks. The quick assessment is that this was a group of Orcus cultists (given the statue) trying to animate another ghoul (given the dead body laying at it's feet) and they probably did a good thing here. The cleric and paladin rebury the body and then we all move along.

This is a new section added as an optional piece by this version. It's a good addition as it adds a little more to the goings-on both in the dungeon and potentially to the town. Orcus cultists in the big graveyard outside of town? Sounds like trouble!

 

Heading south the group moves into a  smaller room and finds 3 skeletons leaning against the walls. apparently they are angry skeletons because they animate and attack! This is another short, though bloodier, fight as the party takes down the undead but the cleric takes a rusty sword to the gut (a critical) and goes down as well. Now the party gets a quick refresh on how death saves work and the cleric lives though it's a little tricky for him as he is the only one with healing magic - the paladin used his lay on hands earlier after taking some damage in the ghoul fight. 

This is normally an empty room but I wanted to keep things lively so I'm dropping wandering monster entries into these for now. The cleric only had 10 hit points so he couldn't do much about that hit. That's just how it goes at low levels sometimes - one hit can drop you.

This is an important lesson re-learned. Our heroes decide to pull back to the village to regroup and get the cleric back into shape. They end up with roughly 150 gold each after some wheeling and dealing with the local silversmith and retire to the inn to review the day's events. 

The next morning the party stops by the local temple to pick up some healing potions and the warlock decides to stay in town to do some "research". The rest gear back up and head back down, retracing their old steps. 

The next room they enter is full of piles of trash and they quickly spot multiple giant rats who look to charge as they enter the room but ranged attacks cut down many of them and Sir Kentor manages to kill one with an opportunity attack thanks to one of his talents when it tries to bite the fighter instead of him.

The party is getting more organized here as they wiped out most of the rats at range and then finished them off in melee on round 2. Strategies are starting to form.

Kicking down another door we find a seemingly empty room until someone looks up - and sees a couple of giant spiders hanging on the ceiling. The party does manage to get the drop on them and kill one quickly which is fortunate as the other starts shooing web across the room trying to entangle the fighters. It's not enough and soon the fight is over. 

This could have been a dangerous fight but the spiders did not have great luck and there were not enough of them to offset some bad rolls. 

Our heroes press on and find a long hallway with a couple of door options. Opening one reveals a round room with stairs going up... and the biggest snake they've ever seen lounging on those stairs. It notices them and raises its head but otherwise does not move. They decide it's time to head on back and recruit some help before they try to fight or sneak past this thing and so the second expedition ends with a rapid withdrawal to the surface and then to the village.

There was some dissension here between "oh we can take 'im" and "we're doing well so let's not screw it up at the end of the night." They chose caution and made it out OK. Once we worked through things these 4 had gained enough XP to make 2nd level.

Some initial thoughts on the game:

• I see people talking like ToV has power creep over 5E and it might but it's not because of stat inflation. Sure, you get more points but you lose the racial stat bonuses so you can end up slightly lower as the points do not make up for sticking another +1 or +2 on top of a 16. Having to buy those at full cost keeps the ability scores down more than you might think.
• The index for ToV is not great. Look under H for healing - nothing. Look under P for potions  - nothing. Look under C for cure - nothing. Look under S for skills - nothing. That's just a few seemingly obvious things from the first session. It's not crippling but it is inconvenient.
• My guys are a well-oiled machine when it comes to playing D&D. They know what they are doing at this point even with some new rules. It snaps back into place for me too hanging the initiative trackers on the new screen, knocking off hit points, watching for conditions ... it's a lot of fun and flows really easily. 
• Luck is looking like a pretty decent mechanic as it was earned and used for various things all during this session. My players love it.
• The updated version of the tower is good - you can find it here.

So there's our first run done - the next one is this weekend so more to come!