I’ll get to the post’s title in just a bit. First, an update.
Since I last posted, we’ve still been playing with different players taking turns running some one-shot or short adventures. After Todd’s turn running “A Keg for a Dragon,” RJ took a turn. He ran the nearly unpronounceable, “Well Met in Kith’takharos” from White Haired Man. It took us two sessions to finish it and I think we all enjoyed it. RJ did a job of going with the flow right at the beginning as my character basically picked a fight in a tavern before we really even got into the adventure. He really can’t complain as he gave me a character that was both overconfident, stubborn, and a gambler. I swear that I thought the little guy was cheating at dice!
I think that RJ was disappointed that he never really did any damage–in either session–to any of the characters. He even “cheated” at the end to try and kill one of us but with no success. đŸ˜€
After we finished that up, Pat was visiting and volunteered to run Pinnacle’s offering for Free RPG Day this year…The Wyld Hunt. This marked quite a milestone for our group…it was the first time that we ever finished an adventure marketed as a “one-shot” in a single adventure! We did our best to drag it out but first not doing what the adventure expected but Pat got us back on the rails. Pat also succeeded in killing one of the characters.
That’s what we’ve been up to over the last few weeks.
Since we had been expecting Pat’s game to take two session, I had to find something to fill the following session since no one was going to be ready to run something then. I hit on doing a higher Rank fantasy adventure as most of our Savage Worlds games have been at Novice and Seasoned Rank. The biggest conclusion I came away with from that session is that our group is just not a tactically oriented group. We’ve joked (and lamented) the lack of a tactician in the group for most of our history playing together but it really hit home that night. A fight with some trolls turned into a long, dragged out fight that could easily have turned into a TPK.
As a result, I’ve decided that we’re not going to use Savage Worlds for our fantasy campaign. We need something that is bit more forgiving for a non-tactical group of players. I simply can’t go back to 4e or 3.5…the combats in both just take too long for my preference and I really want something fairly rules light and simple in mechanics. I also want something that doesn’t really require “rules mastery” to play well and doesn’t require the players to focus so much on character builds. I want something that is easy for me to prep (from a mechanics perspective), easy for the players to play (again, from a mechanics perspective), and just lets us get on with playing the game.
We’re going retro!!!
Tonight marks the beginning of our experiment with either one of the older editions of D&D, a retro-clone, or one of the “near-clones” that are inspired by the older editions (e.g., Castles & Crusades).
More to come…
