When we last left our heroes, they had been drugged by the villainous Desperado or was it by the desperado Oscar…well, regardless, they had been drugged and had lost consciousness. Regaining consciousness, they found themselves blindfolded and chained to a wall. Each regained consciousness at different times and, when they did, they were not alone.
Spoilers for the adventure, “The Black Larder,” from Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics #29, “The Adventure Begins.”
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The next set of “one-shot” adventures involved Bridgett, Rachel, and RJ. They are all still playing the characters from this so introductions are in order. Shory is a human ranger played by Bridgett. Bryn is a halfling rogue played by Rachel. Drogar is a dwarven fighter played by RJ. All three were on their way to Conallglen. Drogar was heading to Carrickton to join up with a cousin who works in a brewery. Shory was “hired” by Drogar as a guide since he didn’t really have much of an idea of how to get to Carrickton other than just following the road. Bryn, well Bryn, apparently, is something of a treasure seeker who delights (I think) in the hunt as much as in the prize and went along for the “fun.”
Our trio had been traveling from the lowlands for a couple of weeks (why was a dwarf in the lowlands…you’ll have to ask RJ) and less than a day from Conallglen when the excitement started. Keep in mind that I’ve got no notes from this and Rachel didn’t take any either so this is going to be a bit rough. Shory spotted a body lying in the road ahead. To one side of the road was a river and to the other were mountains. Arrows, I believe, were sticking out of the body.
When we last left our heroes, they had delved into the lower (underground) levels of Elvid’s tower, the evil wizard. They had just defeated some nasties who appeared to be guarding a young, beautiful woman that the PCs hoped would turn out to be Arelyn.
Spoilers “A Wizard’s Fate” from Dungeon Magazine #37 follow the break. At the end, there are some minor spoilers for the adventure, “The Wizard’s Amulet,” from Necromancer Games.
So our scheduling woes led to the derailment of our Savage Worlds Known World campaign and for the interim, while we didn’t have a full group, I started running what I thought would be a series of one-shots/short adventures for the players who could make a session. We started using the D.I.Y. D&D rules I had begun to put together for these sessions. Once we all got together again, we decided to try and pull all of these together into a bit of a campaign start.
We ended up with two sets of prelude adventures. The first set, which will have the moniker P1, included Rachel and Todd. Each played two characters but only Clarissa, a female fighter played by Rachel, continued on into the main campaign. The other set, denoted by P2, included Rachel, RJ, and Bridgett. Rachel played Bryn, a halfling rogue. RJ played Drogar, a dwarf fighter. Bridgett played Shory, a human ranger.
The first of these sessions were with Rachel and Todd. I picked the adventure, “A Wizard’s Fate,” for a couple of reasons. I wanted something that was a bit of a short dungeon crawl and it has nice little twist that I thought the players would enjoy. Spoilers for this adventure from Dungeon Magazine #37 follow the break.
While the Rats & Ratlings booklet of our D.I.Y. D&D has pretty much all of the rules we’re using, including the rules for clerics and magi casting spells (and they are the only spellcasting classes), the spells are broken out into two separate booklets…Gods & Gophers and Mice & Magic. The goal was to keep spells and casting pretty simple. I also leaned pretty heavily on Dungeon World, especially for success, failure, and success with complications.
My old gaming group “back in the day” rarely played D&D with the standard spellcasting rules. We implemented a little system where a spellcaster had a percent score that increased as the spellcaster increased in level. To cast a spell, you rolled a d100 and if the result was less than the percent score, the spell was successfully cast AND the score went down by a certain amount (more for higher level spells). Rest brought the score back up. So it was a system where a caster could cast a lot more spells but there was no guarantee that the spell would always be successfully cast. It worked for us back then.
As I mentioned in my last post, our group has started to use a homebrew D&D that has four inspirations/motivations behind it: 1) a pretty simple system where the rules are not burdensome or even all that important (more rulings than rules and a system that I would be comfortable completing winging it with); 2) a system that incorporates my experiences with D&D 
(particularly my experiences from “back in the day”); 3) a system that fits my particular group of ratlings, er, players (most of whom didn’t start playing until the d20 version of D&D); and, 4) a system that lets us use a character sheet as simple as the one to the right (based on the Notebook character sheet for Basic Fantasy RPG). To be honest, it was this last one that was the initial impetus for all this.
The result is a set of three little 5.5″ by 8.5″ booklets…did I mention that an homage to the roots of this little hobby as a motivation? No, well, it is just a bit of an added bonus. The first booklet, Rats & Ratlings, is 23 pages and contains all the core rules including classes, races, equipment, combat, and exploration. The second, Gods & Gophers, has the divine spells used by clerics (clocking in at 19 pages). The third, Mice & Magic, has–as you might have guessed–the arcane spells used by magi (clocking in at a whopping 36 pages). And yes, we got cute with the names of the booklets, alliteration, and the rodent motif for out gaming group.
Death of a campaign, that is. Yep, death is not the end, again. (Apologies to Filthy Thieving Bastards)
Throughout the months of June and July we had various scheduling issues where we did not have everyone at the table for five or six weeks in a row. None of us really wanted to continue our Savage Worlds Known World campaign without the full crew. So we started playing an alternating series of short adventures depending on who was available what night. Rachel and Todd composed one group and Bridgett, Rachel, and RJ composed the other. By the time we got to where everyone would start to be available again at the same time, the players all decided that they wanted to move on to something new instead of trying to pickup with the Known World campaign. That decision was a little disappointing…okay, maybe a bit more than a little disappointing. The Known World campaign had been going so well and had turned into a rather cool little bit of alternative fantasy…shipwrecks, dinosaurs, pteranomen, and some nasty evil baddie lurking around the edges of it all…but it was probably going to be difficult for the players to continue that campaign with the same vigor and enthusiasm after being away so long. And so, sadly, we lay to rest our Savage Worlds Known World campaign.
We also started to move away from Savage Worlds at this time. We did a little Dungeon World since I was curious about it but quickly moved to some good old-fashioned D&D…sort of. I ended up putting together my own little Old School Renaissance (OSR) set of rules that harken back to MY experiences with D&D back in the 70s and 80s, is a little more tailored to the playing styles of our current gaming group, and–so far at least–has been pretty easy to convert material from most versions of D&D. I also have shamelessly “borrowed” things from some of our other favorite systems like Savage Worlds (e.g., cards for initiative…which we all find fast and easy) and even some ideas that have been around for awhile in lots of games but were nicely formalized in Dungeon World (e.g., “tags” and the idea of success, failure, and success with complications).
So far, it has been working pretty well for us…which is all that really matters, right?
Here is the latest session write up of our Savage World Known World campaign (supplied by Rachel). This session was a continuation of the party’s ongoing struggles against a tribe of pteranomen (basically humanoid pteranodons). In out prior session, the pteranomen had defeated the party and taken them hostage. The party ended up being split up quite a bit after most of them had escaped their captors. Moe had been dropped off a cliff and into the ocean below…again. Erica and Niccolo were trapped in a cave with the only exit blocked by at least a dozen pteranomen. Mick was safely hiding at the top of the mountain with Meravanni and Quintus had burrowed off.
That’s pretty much where we pick things up below the break.
Todd had to work late and so was a couple of hours late and RJ played Niccolo until he arrived.
Here is the write up of the eleventh session of our Known World campaign, written by Todd. When we last left our adventurers, they had recently survived something of a night-time attack and Rizzo was missing. They found her–or Niccolo had–just as she leaped to her death from the cliff trail that the party was traveling along. They all reached the location where Rizzo was seen to have leapt from and found a cave. As they approached, Quintus and Niccolo spotted some movement in the cave.
While the party is still on the Isle of Dread, I don’t think there are actually any spoilers for any published adventures but just in case, there might be spoilers for the original X1 or for the more recent version in Dungeon Magazine #139.
Here is the writeup from our tenth session of our Known World campaign. This writeup is from Bridgett who is playing Moe. The party is continuing their trek across the Isle of Dread and there continue to be potential spoilers below the break for the original Isle of Dread (X1) and the more recent version in Dungeon Magazine #139. When we last left the party, they had just exited a short-cut through the mountains.