I have a page at https://www.meetup.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Harrisonburg/events/ptphlryzqbkb/ where I post information about the game and recent campaign events. The word campaign refers to a sequence of battles which shape the course of a war, but most D & D games aren't like that. The game evolved from fantasy wargaming into fantasy roleplaying, out of a fringe group of military wargamers who were interested in mythology and fantasy settings, AD&D being primarily influenced by Tolkein's Middle-Earth. The AD&D first Edition Dungeon Master's Guide "Appendix N" lists other influences like Philip José Farmer's eternal champion, and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
Forty years ago people were still considered nerds for playing D & D, but it was just for reading books. This was before yuppies; watch a couple of episodes of Happy Days if you need context. I have five Players Handbooks, a couple of players who like to look things up in them, and sometimes we put miniatures on the table to figure out how the people are going to fight the monsters. There's none of this chessboard-like stuff where you count spaces, though. Nobody but the Dungeon Master has to do any math, and everything does one thing at a time with very few exceptions.
The Meetup page is general information about the game, and recent developments in the plot, most useful to a reader with some prior knowledge of roleplaying. Using it to sign up is not necessary; in the unlikely event that a bunch of new players showed up at once, one of the other experienced DMs in our group could run an introductory session for the newcomers in another game room. This post gives you an in-depth look at what went on in the last game, and a feel for what it would be like to be a player in the game. The highlight of the day's events was a battle with gnolls on the way to Bone Hill, but the most interesting event took place before the characters left the town of Restenford. While we waited for the last player to show up, there was a spirited discussion over PVP, or the permissibility of intra-party violence, between the autistic gamer we already have, and one of the kids in the game. To an eight-year old, this is an interesting open possibility, and when my brother unhelpfully mentioned that he had seen it occur as a result of faithful roleplaying, I had to intercede with a warning that if one player made the game less fun for another, the results would certainly be less fun for him as well.
Skipping ahead to what I said was interesting, the characters, or most of them, were searching for secret rooms in the little dungeon under a guardhouse in Restenford. Autistic guy's (there are no girls in the group at present) suddenly became brave after someone else got to find the first treasure, and opened a door revealing the next one. Now when you're holding a doorknob*, it's not surprising when a thief zooms in ahead of you, but it didn't sit well with him when that same kid's started to search the chest. He came over while that happened, and announced, "I grab his hand." Seemed like enough of a tussle to pull out the nonlethal combat rules, so I quizzed the kid, whose first impulse was to pull a knife. *All our players know doors in D & D really have latches.
This was turning out to be great storytelling. The first searcher had telegraphed his intention to take possession of the chest, so I bent the overbear rule enough to allow the second to attempt to fend off, with his dagger, the man trying to move him away from it. He failed, so I walked my autistic player through the percentile rolls required to grab and move his opponent. He got a 99 on the second, which with a Dexterity score above 0 (ability scores start at 3) produced the result, hilarious for the child as well, that the child's character flew through the air, landing on his back and taking almost as much damage as you possibly can from an unarmed attack (not counting that of a monk).
The excitement was not over as the lawful-good victor opened the chest and put in his money pouch a tiny bag containing gems, which I ruled no one noticed because he had created a sufficient distraction. Some of the players like prophetic dreams and some don't. I use them occasionally as a plot device. The group had returned, apparently unnecessarily, to the dungeon because the kid had requested a dream, and I gave it to him. As an aside, I saw the autistic player a few days later and he was acting very lawful. When he gets up the day they enter the fortress at Bone Hill, his character is going to have a dream helping him understand why his alignment is drifting toward lawful-neutral.…
As I said, the characters are traveling to Bone Hill. The group meets every two weeks, and a month ago, when I had just started the module, I found this guy in it who can identify magic items and has a little magic school. Couldn't find him again until a week after the game I'm talking about: misplaced my original copy of this module and have been using a printed PDF, which is hard on my eyes. The eight-year old's father and five-year old brother are also in the game, and the little kid was engrossed in his Leapfrog, so we enrolled his magic-user in the school. He's actually a fourth-level magic-user from (T1) The Village of Hommlet, but for some peculiar reason connected with the early evolution of the game, has next to no spells. I'd have to be a good bit funnier than I actually am to tell him his character's name is supposed to be pronounced "spoon-wah;" I told them it was Spugnose and his dad usually goes with Spugnoise. The brother's thief is also a fourth-level character from the inn in T1, which doesn't bother the player of the third-level thief, since he's much better at actually playing a thief. That guy's stealing from the party was the original inspiration for the lawful-good character becoming jealous and trying his hand at it as well. My own brother is an irregular member of the group, who dropped in and was playing an overpowered druid who occasionally tags along on the party's outings. I shudder to think of what will happen if the little kid wants to play and she's the only character available!
This is a much-revised post. I just realized Spugnois needs to come riding up on a horse as soon as we start this time, to keep the party from getting obliterated! Somebody new showing up and joining could only help. The rest of the group got a late start and I only rolled one random encounter check the first day of their travels. I knew the story would work better if I just stuck one in, but I kept rolling checks, one each night and six a day (3 random & 3 for gnolls and their wolf friends), and could not get a result for anything until they reached the wood on the third day. Then I just commandeered the storyline; the adult player's thief (chosen randomly) wasn't tempted to follow a sketchy-looking dog-faced person into the woods, so I rolled up a second group, coming in with a very high number of gnolls and a couple of dire wolves who converged on the party the next morning. It didn't look as good for the bad guys as I had hoped. You may have intuited that I was relying on my ability to roll everything on the fly. My rolls brought in a third of the tribe's warriors, and their mates and cubs, who weren't a match for the group's tanky paladin and fighter/magic-user, who joined the group recently, and has the same Armor Class due to some DM gifts. Of the other characters present one turned invisible (thanks to Gary Gygax' generosity), two successfully climbed trees and made missile attacks from there, and the adult player's thief hid behind six skeletons, which are clothed in mysterious hooded cloaks he purchased after assuming possession of them with a potion of undead control. After the first wave of warriors and wolves went down, the adventurers snacked on peanut butter sandwiches and waited for my brother's druid's inexpertly cast Entangle spell to wear off and release a second run of bad guys. Then the adult players' characters took out the mommy gnolls while the eight-year old, who has no compunction about such things, killed the puppies.
He had a little help from the autistic player, who was the victim of the only critical hit in this game session, rolled by me on behalf of a gnoll pup which ended up embedded in his neck for most of the character's Hit Points. It's a good thing he didn't roll 100 in that fight I started out talking about…I had just gotten done reminding everybody that one of their characters could die that very session. I have a couple of tables to draw on for both crits and fumbles, and in this instance would have had him roll on the Dungeon Crawl Classics table for monster crits, probably ending up telling my young player that his arm had been torn off and he was bleeding to death. The paladin would have saved him but he would have had to learn to do everything with his left hand! We'll have one more full day of travel, with some possible navigational difficulties, when we resume, as the fortress isn't actually located on the road. They should be able to see it soon, though, testing my creepy descriptive skills, and I will have the creatures written down on paper next time. That's a real help when you're slamming your players with one monster fight after another–as I expect will be the case.
game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (vintage)
group meets at The Dragon's Hoard
experience not required
location 17 E. Johnson St., Staunton VA
schedule 12:30 PM Saturdays,next game Dec.7
I have a page at https://www.meetup.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Harrisonburg/events/ptphlryzqbkb/ where I post information about the game and recent campaign events. The word campaign refers to a sequence of battles which shape the course of a war, but most D & D games aren't like that. The game evolved from fantasy wargaming into fantasy roleplaying, out of a fringe group of military wargamers who were interested in mythology and fantasy settings, AD&D being primarily influenced by Tolkein's Middle-Earth. The AD&D first Edition Dungeon Master's Guide "Appendix N" lists other influences like Philip José Farmer's eternal champion, and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
Forty years ago people were still considered nerds for playing D & D, but it was just for reading books. This was before yuppies; watch a couple of episodes of Happy Days if you need context. I have five Players Handbooks, a couple of players who like to look things up in them, and sometimes we put miniatures on the table to figure out how the people are going to fight the monsters. There's none of this chessboard-like stuff where you count spaces, though. Nobody but the Dungeon Master has to do any math, and everything does one thing at a time with very few exceptions.
The Meetup page is general information about the game, and recent developments in the plot, most useful to a reader with some prior knowledge of roleplaying. Using it to sign up is not necessary; in the unlikely event that a bunch of new players showed up at once, one of the other experienced DMs in our group could run an introductory session for the newcomers in another game room. This post gives you an in-depth look at what went on in the last game, and a feel for what it would be like to be a player in the game. The highlight of the day's events was a battle with gnolls on the way to Bone Hill, but the most interesting event took place before the characters left the town of Restenford. While we waited for the last player to show up, there was a spirited discussion over PVP, or the permissibility of intra-party violence, between the autistic gamer we already have, and one of the kids in the game. To an eight-year old, this is an interesting open possibility, and when my brother unhelpfully mentioned that he had seen it occur as a result of faithful roleplaying, I had to intercede with a warning that if one player made the game less fun for another, the results would certainly be less fun for him as well.
Skipping ahead to what I said was interesting, the characters, or most of them, were searching for secret rooms in the little dungeon under a guardhouse in Restenford. Autistic guy's (there are no girls in the group at present) suddenly became brave after someone else got to find the first treasure, and opened a door revealing the next one. Now when you're holding a doorknob*, it's not surprising when a thief zooms in ahead of you, but it didn't sit well with him when that same kid's started to search the chest. He came over while that happened, and announced, "I grab his hand." Seemed like enough of a tussle to pull out the nonlethal combat rules, so I quizzed the kid, whose first impulse was to pull a knife.
*All our players know doors in D & D really have latches.
This was turning out to be great storytelling. The first searcher had telegraphed his intention to take possession of the chest, so I bent the overbear rule enough to allow the second to attempt to fend off, with his dagger, the man trying to move him away from it. He failed, so I walked my autistic player through the percentile rolls required to grab and move his opponent. He got a 99 on the second, which with a Dexterity score above 0 (ability scores start at 3) produced the result, hilarious for the child as well, that the child's character flew through the air, landing on his back and taking almost as much damage as you possibly can from an unarmed attack (not counting that of a monk).
The excitement was not over as the lawful-good victor opened the chest and put in his money pouch a tiny bag containing gems, which I ruled no one noticed because he had created a sufficient distraction. Some of the players like prophetic dreams and some don't. I use them occasionally as a plot device. The group had returned, apparently unnecessarily, to the dungeon because the kid had requested a dream, and I gave it to him. As an aside, I saw the autistic player a few days later and he was acting very lawful. When he gets up the day they enter the fortress at Bone Hill, his character is going to have a dream helping him understand why his alignment is drifting toward lawful-neutral.…
As I said, the characters are traveling to Bone Hill. The group meets every two weeks, and a month ago, when I had just started the module, I found this guy in it who can identify magic items and has a little magic school. Couldn't find him again until a week after the game I'm talking about: misplaced my original copy of this module and have been using a printed PDF, which is hard on my eyes. The eight-year old's father and five-year old brother are also in the game, and the little kid was engrossed in his Leapfrog, so we enrolled his magic-user in the school. He's actually a fourth-level magic-user from (T1) The Village of Hommlet, but for some peculiar reason connected with the early evolution of the game, has next to no spells. I'd have to be a good bit funnier than I actually am to tell him his character's name is supposed to be pronounced "spoon-wah;" I told them it was Spugnose and his dad usually goes with Spugnoise. The brother's thief is also a fourth-level character from the inn in T1, which doesn't bother the player of the third-level thief, since he's much better at actually playing a thief. That guy's stealing from the party was the original inspiration for the lawful-good character becoming jealous and trying his hand at it as well. My own brother is an irregular member of the group, who dropped in and was playing an overpowered druid who occasionally tags along on the party's outings. I shudder to think of what will happen if the little kid wants to play and she's the only character available!
This is a much-revised post. I just realized Spugnois needs to come riding up on a horse as soon as we start this time, to keep the party from getting obliterated! Somebody new showing up and joining could only help. The rest of the group got a late start and I only rolled one random encounter check the first day of their travels. I knew the story would work better if I just stuck one in, but I kept rolling checks, one each night and six a day (3 random & 3 for gnolls and their wolf friends), and could not get a result for anything until they reached the wood on the third day. Then I just commandeered the storyline; the adult player's thief (chosen randomly) wasn't tempted to follow a sketchy-looking dog-faced person into the woods, so I rolled up a second group, coming in with a very high number of gnolls and a couple of dire wolves who converged on the party the next morning. It didn't look as good for the bad guys as I had hoped. You may have intuited that I was relying on my ability to roll everything on the fly. My rolls brought in a third of the tribe's warriors, and their mates and cubs, who weren't a match for the group's tanky paladin and fighter/magic-user, who joined the group recently, and has the same Armor Class due to some DM gifts. Of the other characters present one turned invisible (thanks to Gary Gygax' generosity), two successfully climbed trees and made missile attacks from there, and the adult player's thief hid behind six skeletons, which are clothed in mysterious hooded cloaks he purchased after assuming possession of them with a potion of undead control. After the first wave of warriors and wolves went down, the adventurers snacked on peanut butter sandwiches and waited for my brother's druid's inexpertly cast Entangle spell to wear off and release a second run of bad guys. Then the adult players' characters took out the mommy gnolls while the eight-year old, who has no compunction about such things, killed the puppies.
He had a little help from the autistic player, who was the victim of the only critical hit in this game session, rolled by me on behalf of a gnoll pup which ended up embedded in his neck for most of the character's Hit Points. It's a good thing he didn't roll 100 in that fight I started out talking about…I had just gotten done reminding everybody that one of their characters could die that very session. I have a couple of tables to draw on for both crits and fumbles, and in this instance would have had him roll on the Dungeon Crawl Classics table for monster crits, probably ending up telling my young player that his arm had been torn off and he was bleeding to death. The paladin would have saved him but he would have had to learn to do everything with his left hand! We'll have one more full day of travel, with some possible navigational difficulties, when we resume, as the fortress isn't actually located on the road. They should be able to see it soon, though, testing my creepy descriptive skills, and I will have the creatures written down on paper next time. That's a real help when you're slamming your players with one monster fight after another–as I expect will be the case.