I had worked up a big interest in Spelljammer from reading the campaign book and a few accessories. I told my Players that I wanted to run a campaign of it, and they agreed. I told them to make up some 7th-level characters (2 each for 3 Players) using just the core AD&D2 rules. Given a week’s delay, I created a crystal sphere including the PCs’ home planet, the Rock of Bral, and 8 or 10 other planets. I was very happy and excited about this coming campaign – it was going to be SO COOL!

I created several encounters to sprinkle throughout the campaign, including ships of pirates, slavers, undead, etc. The campaign would start with the PCs leaving their planet (the first to do so for their nation) and heading for the Rock of Bral. An enemy nation had a ship in orbit to stop the PCs.

Well, when we all gathered for the first game session, things started to unravel immediately. First off, one of the Players had created “illegal” PCs. His two characters were a demi-human multiclass deal that my PHB said were not allowed. He showed me his PHB, and they were allowed in there. So there had been a change during the pub run at some time. I let him keep his characters as they were – it wasn’t a big deal.

The PCs’ ship took off and headed into space. Soon they were intercepted by the enemy ship. The PCs’ ship had only one ranged ship-weapon, and the enemy ship had two ranged ship-weapons (each a little more powerful than the PCs’ ship-weapon). The PCs had only a few crewmen (low-level types, not even in the same league as the PCs), but the six PCs themselves were a formidable force. The enemy ship was loaded up with a bunch of low-level marines.

My thoughts on the encounter and campaign start was that the PCs would close on the enemy ship to fight man-to-man, and then have a fun battle with the enemy grunts. We’d get all the PCs involved in a grand battle. Then the PCs would capture the enemy vessel. When they got to Bral, they could pool their ship and the captured ship together and then buy a really cool ship that they chose for themselves. (They started with a basic flying cog.)

But that ain’t how it went down.

The enemy ship was trying to close on the PCs’ ship (to get in grappling range), but the PCs kept things at range, even though they were taking more damage than they were dealing out. As hard as I tried, I could not get the PCs to see the folly of their tactics, and could not get the ships together.

Eventually, the PCs’ ship was whittled down to destruction. All that was left was for the enemy ship to sail in and capture the PCs from the wreckage. I stopped the game session at that point.

Right after this game session, one of the Players stated his desire to change characters. He said he didn’t realize what the campaign would be like – although I had told them in solid terms what the campaign was going to be like, and he had only seen one encounter at all – and he wanted to choose characters that would work better – his characters hadn’t done anything at all yet because the group didn’t engage the enemy ship except at ship-weapon ranges. So I don’t know how he made a decision that his characters weren’t right for the campaign.

A few days later, one of the other Players had to bail out of the campaign because of work issues. So I just dropped the whole campaign. This was my one and only attempt to DM AD&D2. (Although I played a PC in a many-month-long campaign with someone else DMing.)

Bullgrit

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We were a newly formed game group, in our fourth game session (second session with me DMing). I was running a basic dungeon crawl in a moderate-sized dungeon. The Players seemed to be enjoying the play, but we were still getting to know each other’s play style.

As a DM (and as a Player) I prefer to let the dice fall as they will – I don’t like fudging for or against the PCs. I explained this to the Players before I started DMing.

The PCs (five 3rd level characters) had delved pretty far into the dungeon, battling through orcs and ogres and wolves, and a few other critters. They had left a path of death through the dungeon. Once the more organized denizens of the place discovered they had invaders, a large force went through the place looking to kill the adventurers.

The PCs had just battled a couple of ogres, and they were hurt and expended. They decided they either needed to head back out of the dungeon, or they had to find a safe place to hole up. They stepped out of the ogre room, intending to backtrack through the corridors.

They heard a lot of commotion down the hall from where they had come. It sounded like a lot of orcs. The orcs were following the trail of bloody battles through the dungeon.

The party had to get away, but they hadn’t explored further than were they were right then. In their worn condition, they didn’t think they’d survive a fight with a bunch of orcs, so their only option was to try to move through the unexplored halls to hopefully get somewhere they could evade or hide from the enemies coming.

They opened a door across from the ogre room and found a long hallway. They hustled through the door and closed it quietly behind them. They moved down the hall, coming to the end where they found what looked like a one-way secret door – secret from the other side. They heard the door behind them open and orc voices wondering if the invaders had gone this way.

The adventurers opened the door before them, and found it lead to outside the dungeon. They hurried through the door and out of the dungeon.

I could see in every Player’s expression that they thought I had just orchestrated – fudged – their escape. It was too perfect a set up, and too perfect an escape route – right where they needed it for the most climatic escape scene. There were even a couple of groans about how it was too perfect.

“Here, look,” I said. I used a couple of pieces of paper to cover parts of the [printed, not hand drawn] map they hadn’t explored yet, and showed them just the part they could recognize as the ogre room (a unique room with a pit trap in the center), the corridor where the orcs were coming from (with a penciled X where they had left a dead orc patrol), and the hall with the one-way secret door at the end.

The Players looked at the map and saw that I had not fudged any of it for their escape. They laughed, one hooted, and a couple high-fived. The escape scene had happened naturally, and fairly.

That was a critically important moment, for me, as a DM. For those Players, and for me, that was a very fun scene only because it wasn’t orchestrated to be cinematic. It defined our relationship as DM and Players – they knew things in the game would happen naturally and fairly.

Strangely, I’ve met Players who don’t want to “see behind the DM screen” at all, ever, even to prove things are “fair.” I’ve met Players who want the DM to roll dice behind the screen so they can’t see the results. I’ve actually had another DM tell me that showing the map to the Players in the game above was wrong.

Bullgrit

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Looking through an old Dragon magazine the other night, I re-read some letters to the mag about the craziest D&D campaigns. I’ve seen a few crazy wild game sessions, but I’ve played in only one crazy wild extended campaign:

AD&D2, early 90s — Our PCs started at 5th level, and eventually made it into the low 20s. In less than a year of playing, my cleric made level 23. I remember taking my war cleric, alone, (just me and the DM at the table), into the mountains to ambush hill giant war parties, just to build up xp outside our regular weekly group game sessions.

As a group, we literally built a metropolis using magic — repeated, daily use of wall of stone, move earth, wall of iron, etc. We quickly built up a huge population, and defended them from all kinds of crazy mighty threats.

A couple of PCs went on an adventure by themselves one time, and accidentally opened a gate to Hell. Devils started gating in and the PCs retreated. From then on, that mountain range was literally crawling with all kinds of devils. We could kill them by the dozen when we ventured into that area, (again just for the xp).

We fought ridiculously powerful foes. In one battle, three PCs (including my own) leapt through a prismatic sphere to get at the archmage inside. We all three survived and killed the enemy.

The wizard’s guild was literally on the moon above the planet. You had to have teleport without error to reach it. (We had two magic-users in our party.)

Now, this may not be that crazy to some people, but for me, it’s the only time I’ve played “epic” levels, and the stuff going down in various battles (and outside of battles) was so far beyond anything I had ever experienced before (or since) that it boggles my mind.

Bullgrit

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My gaming group finally got around to giving the latest edition of D&D a trial run. I’ve had the Player’s Handbook for many months, and I’ve read most of it. Reading it just didn’t turn me on to the system.

Reading the rules gave me one main feeling: this ain’t D&D.

The rules/mechanics — races, classes, abilities, etc. — seem well balanced, but there’s a lot of stuff that just feels like a new game system than D&D. But I withheld real judgment of the game until I could actually play it.

Well, now that I’ve played it, I have one main feeling: this ain’t D&D.

I know “this ain’t D&D” is an inflammatory statement among D&Ders, and I fully understand how and why it will completely piss off some of 4th edition’s fans. But it’s an honest feeling from me. Just too much has changed, too much is drastically different from the game’s predecessors. It feels like a whole new game system, not a new edition of D&D. I don’t see an evolution, or even a revolution. It’s just, different.

There are some things that I just don’t want in my D&D, like dragonborn and tiefling player character races. There are some things that just seem alien to D&D, like 1st-level characters having two dozen hit points (and goblins having equal combat lasting power). And there are some things that seem to go counter to making D&D “better,” like so many character abilities and even more things to keep track of.

But when I look at the game system as a new game (rather than an evolution of D&D, specifically), I still see problems. For instance, the 1st-level characters have half a dozen abilities. (My pregen tiefling warlord had 7 abilities to choose from each round.) That’s a hell of a lot of stuff for beginning players, with 1st-level characters to deal with. (It was a lot for me, an experienced gamer, to keep up with.)

I like some of the concepts the designers said they were trying to incorporate into, or eliminate from, the game. Like make the characters abilities work well with a group of allies, and give the characters the ability to keep going beyond the 15-minute adventuring day (after expending their big daily powers). But many of the systems the designers put in place really didn’t solve the problems, or worse, made things more problematic.

I thought the new edition was supposed to make the game easier and smoother, especially when running combat. But what it really did was make combat more complicated and longer. Absolutely not an improvement.

Playing the game felt like trying (but failing) to mimic D&D with an entirely different system not actually meant to be played as D&D. It felt as weird as playing in the Star Wars universe with the Marvel Super Heroes rules set — a bad fit.

Now, I don’t hate this game, though I do see some flaws in the design (especially when I consider what the designers said they intended to make better). But it really does not feel like D&D. A new edition of D&D should be like coming home to find your spouse has dyed their hair, lost weight, and put on sexy new clothes. 4th edition as D&D is like coming home to find a new person there, posing as your spouse. No matter how good they may look, it ain’t what you know and love, and want.

Bullgrit

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I was recently introduced to the Munchkin card game, by Steve Jackson Games – specifically, the Cthulhu edition. I love it.

I played with one player whom I think is very familiar with the Cthulhu mythos, and one whom I think knows little about it. I’m familiar with it from geek-culture osmosis, (starting with the original Advanced D&D Deities and Demigods book), but I don’t think I’ve ever read an Lovecraft story all the way through.

The mechanics of the game are easy: just compared numbers — no random rolling of dice. The cards themselves (text and illustrations) are clear, concise, and damn hilarious.

The early game (start at level 1) is pretty fast and straight-forward, but as a/any player nears the end game (level 10), back-stabbing and paranoia become strong.

If the other versions of Munchkin are as funny and easy — and from what I’ve read up on them, they are — I think I’ll seek out and buy the main/original edition to play with my family at home.

Bullgrit

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The next PC lineup:

Player 1 = fighter, fighter (new)

Player 2 = thief (new), magic-user (detect magic)

Player 3 = magic-user (magic missile), magic-user (sleep)

Note: the below is an overview of how the adventure went. I’m leaving out a lot of little details.

The PCs re-entered the dungeon, walked up the entry corridor, and again opened the west secret door (the spike holding it open was gone, now). They followed their previous path part way, and then went through a door they had only opened and looked beyond before.

They ended up in room 21 — the meeting room with lots of benches — but it was empty of monsters and treasure. They spent a lot of time searching around in there, but there was nothing to find.

They left that room and walked back the other direction, going round and round the spiral, until they came to the center, where a single ghoul was waiting to pounce on them.

I was looking forward to this ghoul encounter. Three attacks and paralysis — I knew it was going to make things interesting. But:

Round one: party wins initiative. Fighter kills ghoul with one shot. Combat over.

<sigh> Using the stats in the book, the ghoul only had 6 hit points even though it had 2 hit dice. But at least I placed some treasure in the ghoul’s “nest.” Among the module’s treasure list is a silver mirror and a crystal goblet.

By the book, the mirror is “of exceptional quality” and valued at 90gp, and the goblet is 15gp. Because I wanted more treasure in this adventure, I upped the values to 400gp and 250gp respectively.

The module text doesn’t give the mirror a size, so I, just off the cuff, described it as two feet by three feet (thinking of a mirror hanging in our home). The Players discussed the treasure and figured it was unlikely these fragile treasures would survive dungeon exploration and combat, so they decided to take them out of the dungeon. I don’t blame them — this was their first real valuable treasure. They didn’t want to take the chance of loosing the gold and xp.

So the party backtracked their way out of the dungeon. It was almost 11:00 at night, so I called the game session at that point. We all gathered our gaming stuff and got up from the table to move to the living room for our regular after-game gab session.

The subject came up that we might try D&D 4th edition next week. There was a couple of mentions that this Basic D&D game session had been fun, but I could tell no one was really excited by the game. It seemed to be an interesting game to try, but not interesting enough to continue.

I don’t really blame the Players for feeling that way. I mean, it was bad luck that they ended up spending all their time basically just wandering the bare halls of the dungeon. In an email a few days later, one of the Players asked if the dungeon had any set monsters and treasure, or if it was just a big dungeon with wandering monsters.

I replied:

It’s a big dungeon with pre-set monsters and treasures in specific rooms/corridors. There are almost 40 rooms on that first level of the dungeon — you found 3 of them. Through no fault or bad decision on your part, the direction you went through that secret door (which is a one-way door, so it was good for you that you spiked it open) took you to the “maze area” of the dungeon where it’s mostly just long corridors and random wandering monsters. Bad luck.

Had you discovered and gone through the secret door on the other side of that entry corridor (or gone straight ahead), you would have found lots of rooms with set monsters and treasures. Bad luck.

I had spent a couple of hours reading over that module, deciding on and placing monsters and treasures, and through just pure bad luck, they encountered one placed monster and treasure.

Well, at least I didn’t have to describe a lot of rooms to them — finding and reading room descriptions from the wall of text can be difficult. This is a problem I have with many old classic modules — back before boxed text came into use. Check out this typical page from B1:

So I’m disappointed. Not in the game or in the module, but just that my first (and now probably only) chance to run a Basic D&D game for my group turned out so relatively boring, just because of the direction through the dungeon the PCs ended up taking (through no fault or mistake on the Players’ part). I would have loved to play through the whole dungeon — I see, now, that’s really the only way to get a true feel for classic D&D. A one-game session shot just isn’t enough.

Although, had the PCs gone a different way, and discovered some of the rooms and monsters and treasures, I’m sure the Players would have been excited enough to continue another game session.

Bullgrit

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The Basic D&D party:

Player 1 = fighter (Str 15, AC 1, HP 7), cleric (AC 6, HP 5)

Player 2 = thief (AC 6, HP 3, bow), magic-user (detect magic)

Player 3 = magic-user (sleep), magic-user (magic missile)

Note: the below is an overview of how the adventure went. I’m leaving out a lot of little details.

With freshly equipped PCs on paper in front of the Players, and the dungeon module in front of me, we started the adventure off standing before the front door of the dungeon. They tapped the door with their 10’ pole, the thief checked it for traps, and they listened at it before opening it.

• A 1st-level BD&D thief has a 10% chance to find and remove a trap. No adjustments for ability scores. Just ten percent.

They entered the dungeon, and began walking down the corridor, tapping ahead of them with the 10’ pole as they went. In our years together before this game session, we have all gabbed about classic D&D dungeons. Like me, one of the Players is a veteran of such dungeons, way back. So they brought their paranoia, caution, and patience with them into this delve.

• Interestingly, by the core rules, pit traps only have a 2 in 6 chance of opening up when walked across. So probing with a 10’ pole has only a 2 in 6 chance of revealing a pit trap before the front rank of adventurers walk on it.

The party reached the first pair of alcoves along the entry corridor. They 10’ poled all around the area, then moved on. When they came to the second pair of alcoves in the entry corridor, they decided to search for secret doors – but only one character searched each alcove. I guess they weren’t real serious about it. But my rolls came up with them finding the secret door to the west.

• Finding secret doors is a 1 in 6 chance (2 in 6 for elves) per character searching.

Before they could do anything with their discovery, two wandering berserkers found them and attacked. I forgot that I’m supposed to roll for the monster’s reaction instead of just attacking, but what the hell? We play D&D for the excitement of battling monsters, not talking to them. (This is my after-the-fact excuse for forgetting to roll reactions throughout the adventure.)

I would say this was my first BD&D combat since circa 1982, but I pretty much ran my AD&D1 combat by the BD&D rules. This is probably the main reason I think back on my AD&D1 campaigns as easy and smooth to run, compared to if I had used the complicated AD&D1 combat rules as written. I ran my BD&D/AD&D1 hybrid up through the mid-90s.

Although, I don’t think we ever really ran our old-days BD&D combats in the Movement-Missile-Magic-Melee order. We just let the PCs do all their stuff without ordering in the MMMM pattern. But for this game session, I was trying to run everything honestly by the rules as written. So we did movement, then missile fire, then casting spells, then hand-to-hand rolls, in order, on the winning side of initiative, then the same for the losing side.

In this battle, the fighter engaged the berserkers in melee, the thief shot his bow from 20′ away, and the cleric and magic-users hung back out of harm’s way. The fighter killed one enemy, and the thief killed the other. No PC was injured. But:

A flaw in old school modules, in my opinion, is the incomplete way they write up monster stats. For instance:

Berserkers (1-2) – AC 7, HD 1+1*, hp 5, 4, #AT 1, D 1-8 or by weapon, MV 90’ (30’), Save F1, ML 12

For some monsters, that’s information enough – orcs, goblins, and other basic monsters. But, for example, berserkers get a +2 on their attack rolls against humans and “human-like” creatures. I didn’t notice that little nugget until I looked berserkers up in the rule book, after that fight was completed. One berserker missed hitting the PC fighter by one point –- that +2 would have made the attack a hit.

The module stats for troglodytes and giant centipedes also leave out important combat information: stench and poison, respectively. After the berserker mistake, I opened the rule book before each combat to check for such missing info.

Now, I think monster stats in contemporary published adventures is information overload – far more info than is necessary for a combat. Although some people like/praise the bare-bones stats given in classic modules, for me, stats that omit important combat info aren’t a good thing anymore than stats that fill half a page with a wall of text.

In this battle, that little piece of omitted text made a difference in the result.

Then the party set about opening the secret door. After opening it, they spiked it to keep it open. They didn’t know it, but that was a good idea, as the door is a one-way valve, and they wouldn’t have been able to come back through it later if it closed.

Shortly after moving down the new hallway, I told them their torch was running out. It was also time for me to roll for another wandering monster check.

The Player whose PC was holding the torch joked and fiddled around, pantomiming holding the torch as it burned low. After several seconds with no one saying they were lighting a new torch, I said it went out. Darkness. “You might be eaten by a grue,” I said. That got chuckles all around.

My wandering monster roll came up with four giant rats. I described the party’s new torch lighting up, revealing the rats right on them. “Check for surprise,” I instructed. They were surprised. Uh oh.

The rats bit at the fighter and thief, and hit the thief for 3 points of damage. The thief only had 3 hit points, so he dropped dead. After the fighter killed two of the rats, the other two failed morale and fled. The cleric and magic-users again just stayed out of the fight.

First PC death in the second battle, just 8 turns into the adventure. The thief’s partner PC, one of the magic-users, picked up her brother’s body and carried it while the party moved on through the dungeon. (That M-U had 15 strength –- should have been made an elf.)

A couple turns later, the party came upon a giant centipede on the other side of a door. The party won initiative, and the fighter killed it in one blow. This encounter isn’t really worth mentioning.

The party continued their walking through the corridors, still probing the floor with their 10’ pole all along the way. They were wandering around in the maze area of the dungeon (the south west corner). They eventually made their way all the way around and up to the back door of the kitchen (area #2) (no other wandering encounters). They were keeping a map of their trek so they wouldn’t get lost.

They entered the kitchen and looked around (I had not placed a monster or treasure in this room). They gave the dead thief a burial by fire in one of the cooking pits. After that, they opened the front door of the kitchen and found the remains of a battle in the dungeon intersection (not really area #1 marked on the map, but described there).

They carefully examined and searched the bodies, finding and taking the small change on a couple of the dead adventurers. After this, they decided to back track some to check an area of their map that didn’t fit right (simple mapping error in the triangular hallway around area #10).

During this double-checking of the hallways, a pair of orcs wandering up and attacked. Again, the PC fighter tanked while everyone else hung back from the danger. But then the fighter took a 5 point hit, taking him down to 2 hit points. Uh oh.

One of the magic-users cast magic missile at one of the orcs, for 2 points of damage (orc had 4 hit points). The cleric stepped up to fight, but got immediately cut down by an orc. Second PC dead. With the cleric down, and the fighter hurt bad, and both orcs still fighting, another magic-user pulled out his big gun: sleep.

Checking the sleep spell description, I got a big surprise. There is no area of effect listed for the spell. No instruction at all about this. Really? So I ruled that it just affected everything around the caster (but not including the caster). The Player rolled and got 10 hit dice of effect. Everything, including the PCs fell to sleep (no saves for this). The victorious magic-user then killed both orcs with his dagger, and woke his comrades.

The Str 15 magic-user (who hadn’t cast anything yet – detect magic not being a combat spell) carried the fallen cleric as the party made their backtracking way through the maze area to get back out of the dungeon.

Along the way, a wandering troglodyte attacked them. It scored 3 points of damage on one of the magic-users (who had 4 hit points), and then the fighter killed it in one swing. I was lenient here and used a D&D3 concept — the troglodyte only took one attack when it moved up (trogs usually get claw/claw/bite).

They continued their hurried escape and got out of the dungeon.

41 total turns in the dungeon

5 wandering monster encounters

only 1 room discovered (but no monsters therein)

only 7 gp looted

and 2 PCs dead (from one hit each)

The 4 surviving PCs got something around 30-40 xp each. Not a very exciting reward for someone’s first time experiencing Basic D&D.

If you are familiar with the layout of this dungeon, you will recognize that the PCs (through no fault or mistake of the Players) managed to take the most boring route through this dungeon. I don’t think I could have intentionally plotted a better path to completely miss rooms, set monsters, and placed treasures.

Upon returning to town (I handwaved everything after exiting the dungeon), they healed up, rolled up two new PCs, restocked torches, and headed back into the dungeon for another go.

To be continued.

Bullgrit

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