Basic Fantasy Wilderlands Campaign. Session 3

Once again, I've already posted this over at OSRGaming.org Sadly it took us far too long to get in our 3rd session. I had 3 Saturdays in a row that I had to cancel due to work, and then the next week everyone was out of it. Finally we got back and had our longest session, and we had a blast doing it! Rendering the video took a little while as Premier Pro was giving me problems. Enjoy though!

Finally had session 3 after I had to postpone for a few weeks.

The party started the session by meeting their 2 new members. A Dwarven Cleric, and a Human Paladin (we added it to BFRPG). After some great roleplay the party heard from the Corporal Oliver about some bandits to the east of the keep who recently attacked some merchants on their way there. The party was hired to take care of them, but ran into a random encounter of 3 flame beetles halfway there. The archers managed to take out one flame beetles before the others closed in. One of the flame beetles took out their Elf Fighter Braignir. After dispatching the rest of the beetles they tended to the elf who was badly hurt. He had dreams of their 2 dead friends then awoke to the care of the halfling thief who kept putting bows in his hair as he rested. He had to have a week of bed rest. The halfling thief Plimble Mae took care of him, while another elf fighter Eldor patrolled with some keep guards, and the Cleric Dongan and Paladin Markas visited the temple, questioned about the travelling priest, and met him at his home. Once they were all rested up, the party went out to see if the bandits were still out. They couldn't find them where they first met, but on their way back found a ruined tower near the woods. On the way to it they heard a Harpy song, and the 2 elves became entranced. The 2 party members tried to stop them, but once they got close enough they were attacked by 3 giant toads. The 2 non-charmed characters immediately took action on the toads until the harpy stopped singing to attack. She shot a few arrows at the party before finally flying up, pooping on some of the party and swooping down with her talons. The 2 elves snapped out and took to shooting down the harpy. Eventually the harpy nearly took down Braignir, the elven fighter who went down earlier. Dongan rushed to heal him and helped fight off the harpy before she swooped in and took out Dongan. The rest of the party finished dispatching the giant toads and the harpy before Markas was able to lay on hands. Dongan awoke, being badly scarred on his neck as Braignir dismembered the harpy. They managed to limp back to down and convince the corporal to pay them for ridding them of this evil creature before she was able to harm anyone else. Dongan and Eldor cleaned themselves off of Harpy guano, and they decided to spend the next 2 days resting up before setting out to adventure again.

Video will be up tomorrow if I only have to work in the morning. I'm not sure on my schedule yet. We had a blast though!

Here is the image of the chat where Pimble Mae was torturing Braignir while he was resting back http://i.imgur.com/5DvGMDR.jpg

Remember, this may be NSFW:

Basic Fantasy Wilderlands Campaign. Session 2

So I already posted my update over on OSRGaming.org (which if you haven't heard the news, I am the new owner of. I may post a blog about that later). This is the post from there.

Ok we just had our second session. All the players from the first returned. The party had their celebration after their heroic victory from last time and learned many rumors while celebrating at the Tavern. They heard about the Caves near the Keep, they learned about the Lizardmen in the marshes, the Hermit in the woods, and they learned about the Wights in the crypts (these are mixed from B2 and JN1, and some were learned later as well). While there the Mayor gave them the notice posted by the keep, "Treasure recovery and monster exterminators needed. All goods recovered by lawful means from monsters become the property of the carrier. Come on, come all, stalwart of heart and arm. Come to the keep." They slept that night and decided to meet at the south gate in the morning.

Once the sun rose, they had their broke their fast and decided to head south towards the keep. They managed to walk most of the way to the keep before someone from Oakheart came running out of the woods screaming with a wild boar chasing after him. The players quickly dispatched with the boar and saved the man. After talking with him, they learned some of his sheep had run away during the goblin raid the day before. Braignir gave him some water and some Gold to make up for his lost sheep. They stayed and protected him as he rested, but eventually the parted ways and continued to the keep.

Once the group arrived at the keep they were interrogated by the Corporal. Once they stated their reasons for being there he welcomed them in and showed them around. Here they learned a few of the rumors described above. The two clerics went to the local temple and met the Curate and his Acolytes. The rest of the group got some food and drink before they headed out of the crypt.

In Oakheart they heard of some men dying to some beast in the Crypt. The group decided they should check that out first. After a small bit of travelling, they arrived with no incidence. They came across a ruined Crypt with a rusted gate. The Elf Braignir noticed there was an inscription and decided to clean out the dirt and read it, "EVIL WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL. DESTRUCTION TO ALL THAT IS GOOD." He then proceeded to cover it back up with dirt. After listening at the door and checking it for traps, Rodin Flamebeard lit up his lantern and entered. They noticed 7 sarcophagi with one having the slab on top split in half. All of the rest seemed undisturbed, but one that had clearly been messed with as there were patches of dirt and dust that was missing. First they decided to inspect the split sarcophagus, where they just found a rotted corpse. Rodin ripped his arm off and put it in his backpack. Next they turned their attention to the disturbed sarcophagus in the back wall. Rodin took his warhammer and with two swings broke open the lid. In it rose an angry Wight who shrieked at the party and attacked. Eldor, Rodin, and Octavian wielded their Longsword, Mace, and Warhammer and attacked, dealing a small bit of damage to the Wight. The Wight, upset at its disturbance attacked the Dwarf who broke open his sarcophagus and drained the life energy out of him. Suddenly the obese Rodin looked like a malnourished pale dwarf and fell to the floor. Everyone but Octavian decided to run after that. Octavian tried to stand his ground and slay the Wight. He chanted a prayer to Thor and completely missed with his swing. The Wight then lightly touched his shoulder like Spock and drained out his energy similar to what happened to Rodin.

The rest of the party returned to the keep to drink away their sorrows. They ordered much food as they knew Rodin would have enjoyed, and they drank in remembrance of their comrades.

Even the two players who had their characters die had a blast. I have it recorded and will upload it in due time. Just need to splice off the beginning and end :) Hopefully it will be up soon!

Once again, just a reminder this is NSFW

Tonight we'll finally start our Mongoose Traveller Character Creation. Since that is a mini-game unto itself, I will be recording it and posting it once it is ready too.

Dizzy's Return & New Campaign

So I've started a new campaign. I wrote the synopsis of the first session on osrgaming.org I figured some of you guys might be interested (even if I haven't posted in two years). Just to sort of introduce what I'm doing, I am running Basic Fantasy RPG (B/X retroclone with some modern sensibilities) for brand new players. I have something like 10 players currently, but not that many in this session. I am running the campaign in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy by Judges Guild. I started them just south of Light Elf, and am using the modules B2 Keep on the Borderlands and JN1 The Chaotic Caves. This first session mostly just uses the town from JN1 (I've set the adventures near the keep in B2) and actually started the session using the opening to the Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords adventure path.

Instead of rewriting everything, I'm just going to copy & paste the original post and include the youtube link. Enjoy guys!

I ran our first session 10/17. We had some technical difficulties. A couple of guys dropped in and out, another lost internet, and me personally, I had AT&T out fixing my internet that day. The outlet I had my modem plugged into was faulty so I had to move my modem out of ethernet range. They gave me some boxes that connect ethernet from my study, to the room my modem is in via the copper wiring in the AC outlet (although it originally sounded like snake oil to me, it actually does work). I didn't have it set up at the time, and my wireless card in my desktop was not up to the task of streaming so my stream went in and out. I tried to pause the action until it was back in, but do to how it happened, the stream is in 6 different parts. I was hoping just to highlight the beginning to the end in one go, but I'm downloading the parts, and will splice them together to put on youtube for y'all, but it will take me some time as I absolutely have to go through all of them and splice them.

A warning, there is quite a bit of cursing, and it will not be safe for work (or children).

We had a couple of brand new players, so excuse the time I had to spend explaining how to roll dice in roll 20 and add modifiers. Afterwards everyone explained that they had a great time though.

I started them in the town listed in the BFRPG module JN1 The Chaotic Caves. I set it just south of Light Elf, just north of the forest in the same hex. There I actually stole the opening encounter from the first AP of the pathfinder module 'The Rise of the Runelords'. The town (which I named Ironheart) was having their harvest festival in celebration of the autumn equinox and the harvest moon. During the festivities the leader of the town guard clapped a thunderstone to call everyones attention. As soon as the thunder went off the players heard the screams of women as 20 goblins crept into the fairgrounds and started terrorizing the villages. The goblins quickly started setting fire to some of the small stands, attacking people and just going crazy and causing havoc. One of the PCs was about to be attacked by 3 goblins when the other PCs took notice and jumped in. The archers quickly dispatched 2 of them while the clerics managed to bash in the head of the third. The PCs then had a short moment to regather before they saw another goblin get hit by a torch another goblin had thrown, catch on fire, and die shortly after. Next, the storage for the bonfire and the super low grade black powder the gnomes had lent them for their festival (Oakheart is basically lightelf's defenses), had blown up killing the goblin who lit it while 4 others, and one of their clan leaders cackled menancingly. The players went to action and quickly dispatched with them, but not without taking any damage themselves. The group had been fighting for quite awhile and took a moment to rest realizing no more goblins were in their immediate area. After a couple of minutes they heard the faint sound of swords clashing a few hundred yards away and made haste. Once they arrived they found a goblin chieftain riding on a giant hog killing one of the town guard. The other guard ran in fear and 2 normal goblins ran after him. The chieftain and to more of his lackeys went for the PCs. One of the lackeys died shortly after to the archers. The chieftain rode past and nailed their thief (nearly killing her) with his 'horse slicer'. On his ride past, the archers managed to kill the chieftain off the hog who continued to run off. The last Goblin surrendered and the PCs questioned him about why they were there. He explained to his limited knowledge and tried to link it to the evil priest in b2. The players left their elf in charge of him as they went to help the other guard who ran away. They found him with 2 archers standing over the 2 dead goblins who had chased him. When they returned someone (the elf) had slit the throat of the goblin. The rest of the village came out to celebrate the heroes who helped protect them from the goblin threat. The tavern keeper offered them 2 weeks stay in the tavern, with food and drinks that night on the house. Some of the guard brought over the Hog that they had slaughtered after it ran to roast for the PCs as well. They heard about the keep to the south (for b2) from some people as well.

At that point we called it a night since it had been a couple of hours and my internet was still up and down. It was short, and a little cheesy, but I think it was a good introduction for a bunch of the new players. They got a bit of RP (not as much as I would have liked though), lots of combat, and got to be heroic and see everything come together. They already have ideas for what they want to do. They considered running from one of the encounters. I didn't realize one of the players had to go afk while my internet was out, so you will notice I fudged a few things in their favor (which I wasn't planning to do at all. I'm playing with 0 HP = death and made them roll for hit points at first level). The thief should have died when she was hit, but she was brand new, so I wanted to give her a bit more of a chance. I let them know that the lethality would be up from here on out.

We had a great time, though slightly annoying due to my internet issues, and a couple of players having to drop in and out. I'm looking forward to next Saturday!

Warning, this video is NOT safe for work.

Still alive and kicking!

Hello my faithful readers. Sorry it has been so horribly long since I posted. I've been busy.

My students had a group recital (which they did most excellent in!), which took up quite a bit of time to prepare for in May.

Then I've been working on getting my Monday Night OD&D Game off the ground, these are recorded on-air using google hangouts and go onto youtube. You can watch them here

The full playlist is at: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI7tya1ntEAn_S4egpjp_RHYN9pL7sECa

I've also ended up preparing for my other game's Mutant Future campaign, and reading up on it.

In the works, through Wild Games Productions I may be hosting (with a round-robin of cohosts) a non-D&D OSR podcast.

Final Fantasy XIV's Beta has been up, and as a linkshell (and now free company) leader, I've been working on getting us off the ground again.

And now I've also been setting up a Creative Minecraft server.

So, I've been keeping myself pretty busy, but I'm still here. I've made myself hard copies of Greyharp's OD&D Compiled .pdfs for my game, and just diving deeper into OD&D all the time.

I hope you have all been well and I promise to make another update soon!

New game preparation

So tomorrow is the character generation session for my new OD&D game I'll be running. This will be the first time outside of a one-shot, and a short lived play-by-post game that I'll be DMing for people that aren't my original group.

I'm expecting this game to be a little different from my normal group, since they're mostly a group of some of my best friends, whom really barely even understand the basics of D&D (or CoC when we play it), who basically just like kicking back with friends, killing some monsters, and creating havoc everywhere they go. Now, I of course expect quite a bit of that too, but I know I am running for people who understand the game, and most who have been in the hobby for quite a while longer than I!

So what do you do to prepare for a new campaign, and especially for new people?

Myself, I'm going to try and get some ideas from them when we're creating characters about what we would prefer, story driven, hex crawling, dungeon delving, and of course, all will be included either way, but what they'd like as the main focus.

I'm also working on typing up my house-rules, which I'm realizing I have never done before, so I'm excited to see myself what all my changes are from the RAW (rules as written).

I'm creating a campaign world. I've never done a lot of world building, but I always have a rough idea. I like to improvise a lot as a DM, partly because I'm a musician, and a jazz musician at that and that is just what we do, and partly because my players have never been predictable (not even in the slightest), so I've just learned to roll with the punches (our current CoC game I've only prepared one monster encounter in the entire campaign so far).

And of course, I'm starting an opening adventure. It will be a simple, short dungeon crawl, just to get things started, let the players get used to each other and my style, let them start building their character personalities, etc...

So that is my prep work. Anything you see missing? How do you prepare for a new game?

OD&D Brown Box!

So here in Texas, it is state standardized testing week. Due to this, I can't work. So using the guide laid out here: Do-It-Yourself OD&D Woodgrain Box

Mine didn't come out amazingly well, mainly because I didn't have really any good glue to use, so I used some shoddy Elmers Glue, that I haven't used in about 10 years.

I was lucky enough to receive my own 3rd printing (which came in the woodgrain box!) little brown books on Saturday. A few weeks before that I received Supplement 1: Greyhawk, and on the same Saturday I received a 6th printing Monsters & Treasure.

I didn't want these precious booklets to lay around unsafely on my bookshelf, so I set about to make my own box. I have to say that guide really does work well. The hard part is in fact acquiring a 6"x9" box. I used a Munchkin Box, which works perfectly.

I just wanted to share my new gaming prized possessions!

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day!

Here it! At long last we get to spend 24 hours sharing our love and appreciation of the wonderful Swords & Wizardry retro-clone!

So I've been rattling my mind with what to do for today for weeks. Honestly I couldn't decide, but ultimately, I decided that I would just share my love of this game, and two of the incarnations specifically with everyone.

First though, lets get the business out of the way! Remember today, and today only! 4/17/13
Go to http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/products.html and enter the discount code SWApprDay for a 25% coupon on all Swords & Wizardry product.

The same deal is being offered at http://shop.d20pfsrd.com/collections/swords-wizardry-appreciation-day with the code SWAD252013

With that out of the way, let me begin with my history of Swords & Wizardry.

I was getting into the OSR for a couple of years before I found S&W. I was honestly completely uninterested in S&W at the time. I couldn't see what people liked about OD&D. The layout didn't appeal to me, and honestly, I just didn't give it a chance. I also wasn't into basic at the time either (despite that I owned Holmes, and helped proof read Holmes 77), so that probably helps explain why. I was really into 1e and 2e, and was pretty happy where I was.

Fast forward to the release of S&W: Complete. I started talking to Chrispy about it, and Save or Die reviewed it right as I received mine. I read just like a 1e lite, ignoring all the rules I didn't use, and lowering the power level how I wanted to. Not to mention, the Monk class works!

Soon after this I went to North Texas RPG Con, ended up buying a copy of B/X and BECM (still don't own Immortals sadly) and began falling for all flavors of classic. When I returned my players ended up retiring their characters in our 1e/2e hybrid so we moved over to S&W: Complete. They really liked the transition, no longer having to worry about the crunchy bits we didn't like, and simplifying the rules, since only one of them owned a PHB.

This leads me to my S&W Complete experience:

I have the most experience running and playing Complete out of the 3 flavors. It is currently my go to system for D&D campaigns. I personally feel it has enough crunch to satisfy me (when I want crunch) and my players (who always do it seems), without bogging down the game. There are plenty of options to choose from. Complete is basically OD&D + Supplements + Strategic Review. Matt Finch does a great job giving alternate rules in the system, and explaining where rules did, or didn't come from. This system has everything I want as an AD&D player, and enough stripped out to fill the classic side of me too. I've played in quite a few Complete games, run by JD Clement (who is a great DM by the way!), and ran a couple of my own, plus a few short adventures, like my current playtesting of R.C. Pinnel's conclusion to the Giants Series. With this version, I honestly don't feel any need to go back to AD&D. Now, I would never turn down playing some AD&D, but I would definitely prefer to run S&W: Complete for that fix!

I can't speak highly enough of my experience as both a DM and a Player with this set of the rules.

With the recent kickstarter, I managed to grab some goodies for it too. The screen is great, but less useful if using Ascending AC, as the left two panels are to-hit charts.

Swords & Wizardry White Box:

My new love affair is OD&D. And by this I mean the little brown books. I recently ran my first Swords & Wizardry: White Box session, as you may have seen earlier on this blog. I had such a blast running it and had never felt so free as a DM. The White Box rules are so lightweight (just barebones D&D), and is really made for you to home brew all your own stuff with it (as OD&D really was too). This mentality has really grown on me, and I have been spending the time to acquire my own set of OD&D books (I've only managed to snag M&T & Greyhawk so far though).

My first time running it, I think my players really liked it. They're the same group where only one player owned a PHB that I discussed earlier. I think the fact that all you really use is a d20 and a d6 helps resolve everything so much faster in the group. I rarely had to explain anything, and any on-the-fly ruling was easy as pie. I have run another session since then, that also went quite well. The players didn't enjoy it quite as much, as I was prepared for everyone to show up, I was going to run the same adventure for the half of the group that missed it the first time, so I pulled out a 'The Old Island Fortress' out of Basic Fantasy's BF1: Morgansfort and converted all the monsters on the fly. I wasn't really prepared at all, so we ran it as a standard dungeon crawl. There was no back story or reason (besides a pitiful one I supplied at the beginning). I learned then that my players do not like randomly generating everything, as there was no real attachment. Most of the blame could be put on me for that session, but the important thing is, is that we all had fun that night.

I haven't been able to sell the OD&D, barebones concept to my group yet. I am trying my hardest to do so though. If all else fails, I'll probably start up another Skype group, as I've received a little bit of interest in playing a game like that from a couple of people.

My whitebox experience is a lot smaller than my Complete, as I haven't been a player yet. Though today I do start my first campaign as a player, using White Box and the Wilderlands, and hopefully we'll get an update on that.

I can say, if I ever sell my current group on it, my plan is to buy a soft cover copy of White Box for everyone in my group to have. I may do that either way, to maybe try and sweeten them over to my side ;) They love their options though!

Swords & Wizardry Core:

Now I know you may be wondering, 'What about the Core Rules Dizzy?', but I have to sadly announce, I have never ran nor played using Core. I've read through it, and it seems great. I think I would use it at a convention where I didn't want whitebox, but didn't want to go all out with Complete. For me though, it is a middle of the road mix of bare bones lbbs and AD&D lite. I think it will be most useful for me to mine ideas out of for White Box, but I don't think I'll be playing it anytime soon. Nothing against it, but the other two versions already encompass the two things I am looking for. I would love to play in a game using it, but just haven't had a chance to do so yet!

Ending thoughts:

With all this said and done, Swords & Wizardry, thank you for everything you have brought to me, and to gaming. You showed me the light to get into Classic D&D and led the torch to lead me to my now love of OD&D. I can't thank you enough. I definitely feel like I will always promote your game, and always try and push it. Thanks to you, 3 of the 5 events I signed up for at North Texas RPG Con are S&W/OD&D with the other two being another two games that I love as well. While I'm there, I'm going to try and run a pick up game using White Box if I can get a group together.

To the entire Swords & Wizardry community, thank you for everything you have done to support this game, and to bring new ideas to the table everyday. You guys brought this game to where it is, and helped make it the success it is. I cannot explain how happy I am to see S&W so highly looked at in the public OSR eye, and to see so many blogs agreeing to post about it today. My blog is just a mish-mash of my thoughts and experiences so far. I really haven't delved into much of what part of my 3.5/PF upbringing has done with my OSR experience, but it does show you, that some of us have been fully immersed into it!

I hope we can do this again next year! and that I'll have more experiences to share, and maybe give some of my own houserules, monsters, etc... for it!

Thanks everyone!

DizzySaxophone