Super Saturday - Civil War!

Since I put up a post about Annihilation a few weeks back and had some mixed feelings about it as an event and as a game book for MHRP I thought I would also post my thoughts on Civil War. The short version: It's a great event but a less great game resource.

The Comic Event

 As a comic book event it's great, spanning 100+ issues and involving all of the major characters (except Hulk - I know) and most of the minors and the teams and organizations and a lot of the villains as well. We have a core plotline involving certain groups of heroes and side stories involving a lot of smaller groups or solo heroes. It's truly an epic event.

Additionally, and just as important, it revolves around an interesting question, one that goes beyond the traditional "good vs. evil" or "save the world" adventure stories that have made up the bulk of comic book stories. It's possible to see both sides of the question as "right" on some level, at least as far as why they think the way they do.

Finally, there are serious consequences to the outcome of the story. Depending on which side comes out ahead, things may continue almost as they have, or they may be altered in a huge way - not as with the simple "earth/mutants/magic are destroyed - or not" type of scenario but they are just changed in significant ways. The final effects of the conflict are a step above most comic stories and even some other events.

These are the things that elevate Civil War to a higher level. Which makes it great as a comic book epic but how does it fare as a Superhero RPG?

The Game Supplement

The Good:

• This is a big, complex event that can involve any hero in the Marvel-verse
• There are lots of hero datafiles
• There is a lot of player choice as to side, and both room and precedent for changing sides partway through the adventure
• The outcome will upset the status quo, opening up room for new heroes to make a place for themselves and take a significant role in the post-war universe.

The Bad:

• As the first big event for a new game system this is not a traditional superhero adventure scenario. Sure, heros fight each other fairly often, but not like this. Some players may not be all that fired up about a heroes vs. heroes campaign over philosophical differences and the role of government. It's an interesting situation, but if you're looking for a silver age type of game where talking gorillas are a regular opponent and throwing bulldozers at an enemy is a common and fun activity, lectures about keeping people safe and registration ultimatums are going to get old quickly.
• The huge scope can make it difficult for a new group to find their place in the world before that world starts changing. If your group is going to be playing established Marvel heroes that's less of a problem, but if you have at least a few home made characters you may want to give them a chance to start off with something else and then move into the main plot. Also, it doesn't seem all that appropriate for new hero #23 to move into a leadership role on one side for the war when all the Marvel heavy hitters are available
• This is a storyline that rewards knowledge of the Marvel universe. The more your players know the more they will get out of it. This isn't automatically a negative, but in a campaign like Annihilation, for example, there's an obvious threat and a clear direction to take even if you're not a comics expert. Here it helps to know how a lot of the heroes well as you interact with them and not everyone will.

Well, I suppose there's not a lot of "Silver Age" in this anyway ...

Overall I like Civil War as a game book, but not as the kick-off to a new campaign. All of the upheaval and loss and sacrifice will mean a lot more if your players have a chance to get to know things as they are, and then get to pass thru that time of change and come out on the other side. Let them build up some rivals and enemies and allies first, then make that scene where a friend chooses the other side a big one. Same thing when an enemy they've jailed before shows up with a badge for the first time - history gives us context and some meaning.  I suppose my ultimate take on it would be "go run your game for a year, THEN run this, for the ideal experience.". Given this I would have liked it better if this had been the third event book, rather than the first, but the answer here is to make your own. There are a fair number of homemade events on the net for inspiration and structure - take a look and get to work! Then run the Big Book. 

That's about it for Civil War. The next big thing is supposed to be Age of Apocalypse and I will be all over that one when it arrives. 

40K Friday - Farseer

This is another 40K novel but it's one from about ten years ago that I somehow missed. I picked it up on our Austin road trip and I'm very happy I did. It's by Bill King, my favorite of the various Warhammer and 40K novel writers. He's written 6 Gotrek and Felix novels and 3 Space Wolf novels and none of them have sucked. A track record like that is hard to find in the realm of "genre fiction". Plus they're actually good - the characters are interesting, the settings and  situations are interesting, and there's some logic to the plot - that's about all I can ask for in a book like this.

This one is no exception but it is somewhat different from other 40K novels and even some of BK's other books.

First, the main character is a Rogue Trader, so right off we have a different take on things as so much of the 40K universe is seen through the eyes of conditioned and engineered space marines or terrified helpless grunts of the imperial guard - here we have a wealthy powerful otherwise normal human who is free to travel and largely do what he pleases without being part of a military organization or a secret conspiracy. As the book begins he is low on funds, in some disfavor and in some debt, and has some other developing problems as well. Much of this is due to a prior expedition that went badly. Part of the story is climbing up out of this hole.

Second another major character is a navigator. These are an interesting part of humanity that have not figured prominently in many of the 40K novels. The high point here is a chapter spent describing a flight through warpspace as perceived by the navigator - I liked it a lot.

Thirdly we have Eldar in a strong supporting role - not as prophets of doom or at the head of massed armies but just two of them, still somewhat mysterious but portrayed as individuals and giving a nice smaller-scale feel of what it's like for humans to deal with them on a personal level. There's also a fair amount of Eldar culture and history tied up in the story so it's not quite as imperial-centric as many of the novels.

I won;t spoil it so that's about all I have to say. It may have been intended as part of a series, but there are no prequels or sequels that I know of - it's a nice self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and end. It's also a nice example of how things work for a Rogue Trader if you're interested, especially if you're considering the RPG.

Spring Break with Miniatures

This time off for everyone else is wrecking my routine, so it's been a challenge to post this week. So instead of a lengthy post here are a couple of pictures of the latest crop of D&D character mini's:

Now I didn't do much painting on these - a friend of mine found them at some garage sales and rounded them up for me. I did minimal touch up and rebased them. I have not used a lot of painted-by-other-people mini's in the past but these were decent enough and expanded the options that much more. There was a surprising number of female figures in this batch and that's good because I don't have a ton of those painted up.

After working with some 1/72 plastics for my DBA armies those Reaper figures in particular are gigantic. They are typically used for characters so "bigger than life" and all that but still ...

A pair of Ancient Spanish slingers face off against a giant! The slingers are supposed to be 20mm scale and are about 23mm tall. That Reaper fig is 35mm tall! That's huge! D&D type mini's used to 25mm scale, but over the years - and in no small part due to Warhammer - crept up to 28mm and some have gone to 30mm. This guy is over 7' tall even by that standard! No, I'm not counting the base - that just makes it worse in some ways. I suppose the main criterion is "does it look cool" but it causes some problems when you've been at this a while - those Grenadier and Ral Partha figs from the 80's look somewhat vertically challenged these days. My old dwarf fighters look a lot more like gnomes next to these guys. Ah well, I suppose it's a good problem to have.

The Mechwarrior Decision

The Apprentices have been digging into Battletech more the last few weeks. Part of it is that Blaster is reading some of the old novels, and part of it is that Blaster and Red are both playing a lot of Mechwarrior Online. They've been poring through the original rules and the 3025 technical readout, designing mechs and rebuilding the ones that suck, just as my friends and I did years ago - it's quite a bit of fun to watch.

The thing is I know that eventually they are going to want to play the RPG - partly because I've told them about our old campaigns - and frankly the RPG rules for all 3 editions are pretty clunky and not really anything I want to mess with anymore. So I've been looking at alternatives.

Option A is to run it in Savage Worlds. I like the rules and it plays fast and there are analogues of pretty much all of the weapons and armor available in various sourcebooks. It may be a little more cinematic than MW campaigns typically are but I think it's manageable.

Option B is to run it in Traveller. This one feels more like the older MW rules and the gear is there, so it's another strong contender. Plus it would give me an excuse to pick up some more Traveller stuff. The downside is that I would need to sit down and come up with a career table for the various career types - mechwarrior, tech, aerospace pilot, tanker, trooper. That's not a huge downside as I like the idea of doing it, but it will take some time and probably some tweaking to get it right.

Option C is to run it in GURPS. One of my groups played MW in GURPS years ago and there were several guides to it on the net back in the late 90's. I know it would work, but I'm still hesitant. I have pretty much let GURPS drift off of my "current games" radar for the last few years and I would have to get familiar with it again. Also, I'm not sure I'm all that fired up about GURPS anymore when I have these other lighter rulesets available.

Those are the 3 main options in my head right now. They aren't ready to start a new campaign right now anyway between our D&D and our Supers campaigns. This is good because it will give me time to come up with a starting situation and look through my old BT/MW material for ideas. The basic idea right now is "mercenaries" where they roll up all of the members of the unit as characters then play who they want in each session. Oh, and they also need to round up some more players too. This may end up being this summer's extra campaign, but the wheels are already turning.

Motivational Monday

Super Saturday - Old Marvel in New Marvel

Over at Plot Points, an excellent site for the MWP Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game, they have come up with a conversion of the old Universal Table from TSR's Marvel Super Heroes. This thing:

Remember that? The article and MHRP version is here.

Honestly it's not something I was looking for but the cleverness in adapting it over is pretty impressive. I am perfectly comfortable running the Apprentices thru some old Marvel one week and then running some new Marvel another week so it's not a big deal to us one way or another.That said it makes me happy to see someone digging in to the mechanics of both games and seeing what they can come up with.

 It may well be an answer to a question not many were asking, but it's cool nonetheless.

Oh, also they have a pretty solid review of Annihilation (that I talked about last week) so if you're interested take a look here.

40K Friday - The Handy Guide to 40K RPG's for D&D Players

Well I have no new battle reports to ... report, and I haven't finished another 40K novel and I haven't picked up the Daemons codex yet. I could post up some pictures of my armies but I that's a little too "expected" to do the same week I post up an Appendix N post.  So I thought I would do something a little different and cross-pollinate two hobbies!

There is some crossover between 40K players and RPG players. Since 40K is likely the most popular miniatures game around and it has a line of RPG books that are doing well, and since D&D is traditionally the most popular RPG, I thought it might be handy to provide a perspective, an index on which 40K RPG game is right for you based on your preferred edition of D&D. Hint for D&Ders: anytime you see the word "Xenos" in one of these books, you can pretty much take it as "Evil". Same with "Chaos" but you already knew that. You can take "Imperial" as "Good"

The first 40K RPG release was "Dark Heresy". In this game you play the retinue of an Inquisitor (a character far more powerful than you will ever be), going around uncovering and eliminating threats to the Imperium, which are typically beings who either have different beliefs from you or are biologically different from you. This sounds something like every edition of D&D, but the emphasis on story and uncovering hidden meanings (and doing the bidding of powerful NPC's) places it squarely in the crosshairs of the AD&D Second Edition player. Alignment-wise Inquisitors are Neutral Good - sometimes they use the rules, sometimes they ignore the rules, as long as they protect the Imperium.

The second 40K RPG was "Rogue Trader" in which you play the crew of a trading ship and you get to travel around and meet aliens and other cultures without being required (or genetically programmed) to kill them. The galaxy is your sandbox! You have actual rules for traveling and rules for ship combat. Between this and the sandbox approach this is obviously the B/X/BECMI/Compendium/Retroclone sweet spot! Alignment: Neutral! You can do whatever you want and justify by saying "Hey, I'm outside the Imperium (neutral)"

The third 40K RPG is "Deathwatch" where you get to play overpowered genetically engineered brainwashed characters who live only for combat - clearly this is the game for D&D 4th Edition fans. Space Marines are fanatical Lawful Good and they're happy that way.

The fourth 40K RPG is "Black Crusade" where you mainly play holdovers from a previous golden age where things were decidedly unbalanced. You wage an unending war against the current incarnation of your old selves and between bolter shots complain about how much things suck now compared to the old days. Hello Pathfinder/3.5  fans! Alignment is "Chaotic", duh!

The fifth 40K RPG is "Only War" where you will be playing one of the lowest forms of life in the 40K universe: the unaugmented human soldier. You're going to die - a lot, and you're never going to be all that powerful except in a large party with certain character types. Certainly this is the one AD&D and DCC RPG fans should pick up. Your alignment doesn't matter as you will not be alive long enough to express your beliefs in any meaningful way anyway.

See, it's not just me saying this

What about OD&D? What should they play? Well, the truth is you don't want any of these new style 40K RPG books. Too many rules, too many assumptions about the universe, too much hand-holding in general. You don't need that! You want to go find the original Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader - it should bring back some old familiar feelings.

The Obligatory Appendix N Post

Some weeks have more posting time than others so I'm cashing in an "easy" chip today and sharing a photographic representation of my "Appendix N":

That's the annotated Hobbit on the left, more Tolkien, original series Conan, original author's cut Conan etc, Elric, then King Arthur on the right. Up on top we have Complete Enchanter, Worm Ouroboros, and the Prydain book collection. All of this stuff I read either before I started playing D&D or read it the first year or two that I was playing. I'd call it the core of my early fantasy reading.

Note: These are not all the original copies that I was reading - those paperbacks got tossed in a backpack, taken on the school bus, loaned to friends, read by the pool, etc.

These would be the "later" part of my fantasy reading, basically the rest of the 80's. I think a couple of those Swords books bleed into the 90's but you get the idea. That's the Thieves' World series on the left, plus Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame, then Saberhagen's Empire of the East and Swords series, the first 3 fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books (with a pink cover of all things), then the rest of Moorcock's books - Corum, Hawkmoon, etc, and then Laurence Watt-Evans Garth the Overman series. There were a lot of fair to crappy D&D books consumed in that time as well but those live on a different shelf, at least the few I still have.

Anyway, when I think about "Fantasy" as a genre, these are at the heart of my frame of reference.

Extremely Expert DM Advice #5 - Supers!

About the only other area where I feel like I might contribute something useful is with superhero games. As always, remember that a lot of online advice is useless for a specific group and that goes for super games in particular as there is so much variation in both subject matter and player expectations.Also most superhero RPG's have a pretty good section on this kind of thing. Read them, they're fun.

Setting it Up

Choice of system is pretty important when it comes to super gaming and I originally planned on running down a long list of games with comments on each. That turned into way too much to put into this but I think it will make for a nice topic down the road for a series of posts. So it's coming, but not in this post. When it comes to system my general recommendation is "pick one you know" - mechanical familiarity makes on-the-fly DMing a lot easier. If you don't already know one specifically you can still follow this guideline - play a lot of 3E/4E? Mutants and Masterminds should be an easier transition. Old school D&Der? Villains and Vigilantes or Heroes Unlimited should look somewhat familiar. Broke? Marvel Super Heroes is a full super hero line that's available free here.

Beyond system the next big thing to decide on is setting. Are you running a traditional "heroes of a particular city" campaign, maybe expanding to national and worldwide as things progress? Are you Herooooes iiiiin Spaaaace? Are you street level nobodies just trying to make a difference? If you decide to run a "magic underground" campaign then the guy making the Iron Man clone is probably not going to be happy, and if you plan on going cosmic then Kung-Fu Joe may need to allocate some points for a space suit.

Mighty Crimson Fist is happy as long as he gets to punch people

Related to the Where is the When - Contemporary is the standard and the easiest but maybe you've played a lot of modern games. How about running in the 1960's? Maybe the 80's? Then there is the oldie but goodie of World War 2, and it's grittier substitute of Vietnam. If this is a new thing I would always recommend that you start with "now" and get creative later.

In addition the the Where and the When you have the Why, also known as Tone. You can get wrapped up in the whole golden/silver/bronze/twinkie age discussion and minutiae but it really boils down to three or four approaches to the genre:

• Heroes don't kill because that ain't what heroes do, maam. Even if a villain slipped off of a cliff the hero would try to rescue them because that is what heroes do. PC/NPC death is just not going to come up. Think Lone Ranger or classic Superman.
• Heroes don't deliberately kill but if Dr. Devastator slips off of the Mammoth State Building then the Hero will probably watch rather than risking their own life to save them. PC/NPC death is rare and a big dramatic moment when it happens. Think Batman/Spiderman.
• Some Heroes kill, but only those who deserve it, and this is still frowned upon. PC/NPC death is a real possibility. Think classic Wolverine and early Punisher.
• Heroes and Villains kill a lot as it's the standard approach to problem solving. Heck, they kill mooks just to send messages to each other, setting up the big dramatic showdown where one or the other will die. This is a very modern approach but it can be a pain for the DM as your villains may only be good for a single arc or one part of a campaign, and then they die.  

Most of this is "whatever you feel like playing" but it's important to let your players know what you're thinking ahead of time. Also, find out what their "super" references are - are they coming at this from watching the live action movies of the last decade? Are they reading a bunch of golden age Superman PDF's? Have they been watching the Avengers cartoon? Adam West Batman? Reading DC's New 52? The Authority? Getting a read on the frame of reference makes a difference, and being able to say something like "I see it being like the Avengers cartoon" is very handy to set expectations - heck a lot of this stuff is on Netflix so give them some video homework and say "you're going to be the West Coast version of these guys" or pick up a copy of some recent comic book arc that you think is good and let your players flip through it. People know what a typical fantasy RPG is, but they may not know what a "typical" superhero game involves - so just focus and tell them what *your* game involves.

Iron Mom would prefer a Silver Age approach, thank you!

Differences from a Typical D&D Game

• Characters: You can run with fewer players than D&D. I usually prefer to have at least two but I have run with one and I know other people do too. The characters tend to be more capable and more resilient and the game is usually less deadly than your typical D&D game.
• Multiple PC's: Multiple characters per player in a campaign has worked fine for me but multiple characters in a session usually is a bad idea. Tell your players to focus on one character this time and they can play the other one next time. If you want to experiment, split the action and let the players run multiple characters, as long as they are in multiple locations. Comics do this at times and Star Trek does it a ton - there's a problem on the ground AND there's a problem on the ship in orbit and we switch back and forth until we resolve both! Multiple characters is also handy for another scenario: character A is doing his thing but then he gets captured - enter character B who will now be trying to track down character A.
• Scope: A D&D type game usually starts pretty small and slowly expands, perhaps eventually traveling to other planes. One published "early-career" M&M adventure starts with the destruction of reality and missions to parallel dimensions to try and fix it! The scope can be very different and no one should get bored. You may discover that one of your players dislikes some aspect of your adventure - for example I have one that hates time travel. Whether it's an RPG or an episode of Star Trek, he really doesn't like it. I've tried (when it comes up) to make it a personality trait for his characters as well. The goal is to have some fun with it in-game - think Bones and transporters or B.A. and air travel. 
• Progression: Very few supers games have levels. Progression is entirely different. This is a feature, not a bug, as we're not playing a zero-to-hero journey in most super campaigns. Mechanical advancement is typically slow. Beyond that type of progression there are other rewards - creating the team's first base, getting the key to the city, appearing on national media, meeting the president - all of these in-game events can show progression apart from mechanical advancement. If you're playing in an existing universe then having a PC invited to join the Avengers is a pretty big signpost, kind of like hitting name level in AD&D. Give the players a path to do that and it should help handle any lingering leveling issues.
• Adventures: Typical D&D adventures involve breaking into a location, defeating the guards, and looting the place, then living it up until the money runs out or the next rumor of loot rolls in. Superhero adventures are typically the opposite of this. Supers are so ingrained in most of us that I don't really see this as a problem but it is quite different when it comes to running things. That whole stocking-a-keyed-map-then-planting-some-rumors approach you've developed over the years? Yeah, that's not going to be much help most of the time. You're going to have to get comfortable with plots, where the badguys initiate the action and your PC's react to them. Timelines can be handy, possibly even flowcharts if you're envisioning something complicated and want it to make sense. Other times you just wing it and if it makes sense to you right now, well, it probably makes sense to the villain too.

Tips on Actually Running Games

1. Know your chosen system. Alright I already gave you that one but it does make things flow easier. Get a DM screen that has all of those nifty charts in one place. use sticky notes or tabs to mark certain pages. This can also be artificially accomplished by choosing a simpler game (ICONS, BASH, Savage Worlds) and you may not miss the complexity at all.
2. Pre-generated resources are a godsend to the supers DM. Any modern game should give you stats for some basic thugs, robots, ninjas, soldiers, cops, and some animals. It should also give you mechanics for common hazards - fire, lightning, drowning, radiation, etc. Add in a few vehicles(cars, buses, fighter planes) and some common household objects (mailboxes, lamp posts, brick walls) and you have some building blocks no matter what your players do, and they will go off-track at some point. When Grog decides to throw a flaming building at that alien spacefighter, a good game will cover how to handle that in the core book.
3. Be ready to improvise. They will come up with things you were not expecting. Use your knowledge of the system and your prebuilt parts to roll with it - that's why they are there, that's why you presumably paid money for them - to make things easier. A little bit of preparation can make the improvisation more coherent too - if your villain's plan to rob the bank to get the money to buy parts for the Megabot is thwarted, what is his alternate plan? You don't need a massive backup scheme, just a note that if it fails he's going to kidnap a wealthy heiress (DNPC?) and use her money to do it instead. Once you have the framework you can hang all kinds of stuff on it, for hours at a time.

This should be your last resort

I'm about out of things to say here but let me make one last point: In a superhero game your players' characters are supposed to be powerful, awesome, and fun. They should win a lot, mowing down mooks, putting villains in jail, and saving the world. That's part of the genre so go with it, don't stand in the way. If any style of game follows the "Say Yes to Your Players" approach it's Supers. Remember that and everyone should have a good time.

The Apprentices vs. Stonehell - Session 3

Our heroes remain one elf ranger, one human cleric, one human monk, and one halfling assassin. Yes, the cleric survived the last session with a roll on the "what happens next" table, just needing some extra time to heal up from his vicious beetle-bite.

Heading out from the camp-cave they explored last session, the party moved along the right-hand (north) side of the canyon. Exploring the next visible cave entrance, things seem fine until the ranger spots mountain lion tracks. Knowing that's a pretty tough customer they decided to move on.

The next cave on the north face has a waterfall pouring out of it and down into a steaming pool. Quite a bit of time is spent discussing who and how to climb up to the opening - how good are our skills? How much rope do we have? How steep is the slope? Eventually this debate is settled and the party ascends the hillside. Now the debate is over entering the cave - some want to sneak but realize that the entire cave mouth is underwater as it pours forth down the hill, making stealth a much trickier proposition. It's also hot. There's some talk about wrapping chainmail in a blanket but the water complicates this solution. Eventually they decide to quit worrying about stealth and just sloshed into the dark, steamy cave.

Inside there was room around the edges to get out of the water. As they were entering there was also some discussion over light sources. As the rest of the group checked the cave the ranger started poking around the edges of the pool with a 10' pole and eventually detected something odd on the bottom of the pool, but could not see anything due to the heat of the water - it was just one big glowing hot spot to his infravision and torches were not showing much.

The monk was quickly nominated to go for an investigatory swim and took some burn damage jumping in but mastered the pain and continued on. He discovered a brass hemisphere at the bottom of the pool with no visible edges and no place to get a good hold. As he was feeling around he also realized that it felt like the water was coming out of this metal object, even though there was no spigot or opening of any kind. Intrigued but unable to move the thing he returned to the party and described what he found. Uncertain of the  significance of this find the party decided to head out and continue their survey of the valley.

The next opening was a carved stone doorway that led to an empty room, but exploring this triggered a low growl from the next room. Approaching, the party discovered a raccoon huddled in the corner. It turned to face them and was foaming at the mouth! Then it attacked, completely failing to harm the cleric's armored leg, and the party failed to hit it as it scrambled among them. Then the assassin lined up his blade and skewered the mad beast, killing it in a single stroke and ending it's misery.

Continuing to explore the party found a fairly extensive complex of rooms. Most were empty but there was a stone throne in one with an open pit in front of it. There was a stone table in another, behind a secret door, and they found some hidden treasure in it. One other room had a sandbag trap and no apparent treasure so they emptied out the sand onto the floor and left a message scrawled in it expressing their displeasure at anyone who would trap an empty room.

At this point there was a pause in the action - more next time!

DM Notes: This was a longer session than last time and a lot of fun even though there was not a lot of combat - it was a good reminder of the fun to be had with the "exploration" part of the game.

The mountain lion lair was empty, but they showed good instincts here in avoiding it.

The waterfall cave was an exercise in reminding them that there are not a lot of skills in this game - just tell me what you want to do and we will see if it makes sense. After the climbing was worked out the next debate was over sneaking with no sneak skill - which I pointed out that they had a monk and an assassin and  the ranger and cleric were not going to have a better chance than they would. For whatever reason they were very concerned with this and then totally dropped it. Then we had a discussion about light and whether someone could hold a torch in a shield hand - the answer here is yes, until combat starts - and who should carry it etc. We also had our first usage of a 10' pole! A very sensible one! 

There is a story about the brass hemisphere that emits hot water but there was no way they were going to figure it out this early. We will see if they remember it later on. The monk diving into hot water and trying to move the metal object spurred a quick review of the opening credits to "Kung Fu" and some speculation if he had tattoos before or after or if he now just had burn scars on the inside of his arms and whether they could find some aloe in the valley.

The battle with the raccoon lasted all of two rounds and was the only combat in the whole session. Best line after the fight: 

"I'm going to go check his bed" 
"What bed? This isn't Narnia, he doesn't have a bunch of little raccoon-sized furniture in here."

This earned me an annoyed look from the birthday boy that turned into a snicker as the brother took up the theme and started throwing in his own narnia contributions. It was pretty funny after this rather rapid fight.

Exploring the the rest of the place brought back the opening doors and searching for secret doors parts of the rules. The stone table ("no there's not a lion strapped to it" - pause, cackles) provided the only treasure of the night. 

The sandbag trap really annoyed them as it was at the end of a series of empty rooms on a night with one combat and one small treasure:

 "So it's a bag full of sand? On the end of a hanging rope tied to the door?" 

-Quick checks for secret doors, searches for treasure, nothing is found -

"Who would do that?!"

So they emptied it out and wrote a message in common as described, and decided they would check back every once in a while to see if anyone answered.

It was a lot of fun but I'm hoping they actually get to the main dungeon next time and start really digging in to the meat of the adventure.