July 29 was a big role-playing day for my friends and I. An entire
afternoon / evening of old school tabletop gaming. It had been
literally years since we last played anything longer than a
six-hour game. We had twelve hours to game on July 29. So I
thought, by Crom – an entire adventure must be prepared, right?
Wrong.
Twelve hours is nothing. Well, almost nothing. The guys selected pregen characters. We did a little intro. They met a few
important NPCs. Then the dungeon exploration began: one hunting
drake, one zombie, two ghouls, a group of evil adventurers, seven
goblins and nine skeletons. That’s it. And then the big finish –
a clash with the High Priest and his acolytes. But it was forced, and
not the best part of the game. In my opinion, the best part was a weird and complex clash with a group of rival (and evil) adventurers. This picture shows the very beginning of it. A Jason action figure was added just for fun. But no. Undead Masked Storm Giant will be encountered some other time, maybe.
I ran the classic module The Keep on the Borderlands. I had
prepped everything – the characters inside the Keep, a little
smuggling intrigue underneath the tavern, nasty things in the forest,
plus an entire side quest for each and every entrance to the Caves of
Chaos (except the owlbear’s and the ogre’s.) And of course the
Chapel of Chaos itself, complete with beautiful high priest and
acolytes figures from Otherworld Miniatures in the UK.
The party didn’t even peek inside the owlbear’s lair or the
ogre’s cave. They entered through “E” and never looked back.
They explored a lot, fought some monsters, but didn’t go near the
kobolds nor the orcs. I didn’t even take the trogs, hobgoblins,
orcs and kobolds out of my miniatures container. When one of my
friends, hungrier than the others maybe, said, “It’s seven, guys.
Pizza time?” it hit me: we wouldn’t have enough time to go
through even half of what I had prepared.
Actually, I had to shortcut the whole thing in order to bust out
my 4′ x 2′
Chapel of Chaos and play that big climactic finish. After squaring
off against a group of slightly evil adventurers and acquiring some
cool magical items, the party found a “secret” secret door that
was not on any map, and reached the Chapel right away. It was already
9:45 PM when we started that big set-piece encounter.
Anybody can run a good old First Edition Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons game. But
nobody can erase thirty-five years of wargames and board games and
video games. Ergo, your good old First Edition AD&D
session will be much closer to World of Warcraft than the
First Edition AD&D you remember. The only way you could
really do this is with three players who just woke up from 35 years
of suspended animation. If you happen to know such guys, let me know
– I’m curious to give this experiment a worthy try.
The Chapel of Chaos proved to be an anticlimax. The party put
everything – and I mean, everything – on the Dwarf. He
wore the Elven Brooch of Hiding From Undead, drank the Potion
of Haste, and was the recipient of an obscurement spell
cast by the druid. The Dwarf patiently advanced in those crooked
tunnels, hacking enemies that couldn’t see him and needed to roll
20 in order to hit. The other PCs followed in the Dwarf’s
footsteps, shooting a few arrows or darts, but mostly they admired
the Chapel of Chaos and drew excellent charcoal renditions of the
obelisk, gargoyles and Altar.
The monk went a little crazy when he used his newfound Sandals
of Jumping to leap past the giant tentacles pit and come
face-to-face with two of the acolytes. That part was
memorable, and honestly quite reminiscent of pre-Splinter Cell,
pre-World of Warcraft, old-school Dungeons & Dragons.
You know that feeling? When one character (usually the thief) breaks away from the rest of the party and just goes
completely bananas? Good times.
I did not remember how long these classic modules took.
What we played on July 29 was nothing but a very rough outline
of The Keep on the Borderlands. Playing through the entire
adventure would take us something like 50 hours of gaming. Hours that
we simply don’t have.
Still, this special event was pretty darn cool. Next up: it’s my
big annual birthday game at the FLGS, with 7 players and lots of guaranteed mayhem! Remember last year, when the party went to Hell – literally?