Welcome to the rundown of my First Edition
AD&D game #6. If you’d like to read about previous sessions, check out the
“Dungeon Do-Over” post from three months ago.
The PCs
are now real local celebs.
• They found a fresh, unexplored dungeon, and
didn’t grab anything from it.
• They found an ancient relic of Boccob, and
one of Joramy.
• They won the Dwarven King’s Dungeon
Lottery.
• They brought back a 3-ton silver menhir for
the King.
Villagers are beginning to sing songs about
these guys – thus, when a nefarious Orc shaman kidnaps three newborn Human
babies in the night, who you gonna call?
The ranger easily picks up the shaman’s
trail. Cleric says, “First 72 hours are key!” Anachronistic, but funny. Those babies
have been taken 24 hours ago. So the party promptly follows the kidnapper’s
footprints through the woods. After a few hours of tracking they reach a
dangerous part of the forest. There are three particularly evil landmarks in
that zone: 1) the indestructible wooden tower of an extinct witch coven; 2) a
reoccurring rift leading to the first Plane of (possibly) the Nine Hells; 3) an
ancient fertility sanctuary of the Ogre goddess Beqweth, Vaprak’s wife.
Three very evil spots, close to one another
– what an ideal place to hang around if you happen to be an Orc shaman!
First magic-user sends his familiar (a crow)
flying towards the old Witch Tower. All he can see are two grizzly bears chained
underneath the tower. But as the crow flies closer to that warped wooden
structure... an Orc archer hidden inside kills it with an arrow! Ouch. Poor
magic-user loses 8 HP. Meanwhile, the second magic-user had sent his
familiar (an owl) towards the Ogre sanctuary. He saw a lone gargantuan snake
sleeping on top of a huge mossy tumulus, with some shattered phallic monument
nearby, but no Orcs.
The PCs head for the Witch Tower; there’s at
least one Orc over there, right?
“And there’s smoke pouring out of the damned thing!”
Perrier drinking ranger and his E-cigarette
provided excellent special FX for the Witch Tower. The ectoplasmic goo covering
the building from top to bottom was already scary enough – but if you add
drifting wisps of smoke, well...................
Thief and ranger approached from the west
while the cleric, Dwarf, and magic-users came in on the northern side. Those
bears were quickly released, and surged forward to get the PCs. From the
tower’s balcony, not one but three Orc archers began firing arrows at
the Dwarf and cleric. Thief sneaked up to the base of the tower and climbed.
Ranger carried on for three rounds firing six arrows at the Orc archers. Orc
number one died and fell out. Magic-users blasted one attacking bear with four magic
missiles. Dwarf hurled a couple throwing axes. Cleric cast his spiritual
hammer.
By the time the thief had climbed all the
way up to the balcony, Orc archer number two was dying and collapsed over the
wooden railing, pierced with arrows. The thief boldly stormed the tower all by
himself and engaged that remaining Orc in melee – short sword against short
sword +2.
Dwarf and cleric tried to steer the two
bears to either side of a dead tree, hoping for the chain to get stuck, but it
didn’t work. Ranger and Dwarf had to resort to animal cruelty and finish both
bears in a bloody manner. Then the MARG people showed up unannounced – the Medieval Animal
Rights Group. I’m kidding.
One of the babies was retrieved in a makeshift
crib inside the tower, under a powerful sleep spell. One down, two to go!
By that time in the game, one missing player
had showed up, so I added the bard to the party – he was following but had gotten
lost for a few hours, as Hobbits are wont to do.
Nightfall found the PCs trudging through
dense forest with no clear trails, and the ranger kept seeing traces of various
beasts and monsters: bugbears, wolves, panthers, goblins, and even a giant of
some sort... We had about ninety minutes of gaming left on the clock, so I
decided to skip the random encounters. The cleric carried the sleeping child,
and the party arrived at that second location (the Ogre fertility sanctuary) a
short time before midnight. Only source of light was a declining campfire in
the center of the clearing. The ranger (an Elf) could make out the gargantuan
snake on top of the tumulus, as well as two giant snakes lurking in thickets at
the edge of the glade. After choosing one of those giant snakes, the PCs made
their way towards it.
First round saw a staggering 39 points of
damage dealt to that giant snake; it quickly retreated towards the tumulus, and
the other reptiles started to slither in the party’s direction. Except for the
thief who wandered off again, all PCs stayed entrenched in that thicket, and
were soon assaulted by the 154 HP gargantuan snake, and two 45 HP giant snakes
(including the one that had already suffered 39 damage). The wooden door of the
tumulus opened and an additional giant snake came out to join in the fight.
The mighty Battle
of the Thicket.
Four or five rounds later the Ogre priestess
herself awoke and shambled out of the sacred tumulus clutching her meat
cleaver. She cast a spell on the thief and he missed his Save, thus being
transformed into a giant ant.
Antoine, who plays one of the magic-users,
grabbed my camera and began taking pictures of the Ogress from inside the
tumulus. This proved difficult because of the close proximity and the flash. He
had to snap ten or eleven pics, but finally got one right. I think it looks
awesome.
“Who dares disturb
my sleep?”
With all the snakes dead except for the
biggest one who was being relentlessly clobbered by the Dwarf, the cleric
decided it was safe enough to lay down the sleeping baby near that campfire,
and he then marched towards the priestess who attempted to polymorph him too,
but failed. Priest against priestess – that is one holy clash we all wished for,
didn’t we?
Boccob “the Uncaring” prevailed over Beqweth
“the Mother of Ogres”. THE DAMN PATRIARCHY WINS AGAIN...
Another sleeping baby lay inside the
tumulus, along with some treasure: three potions, one phylactery, one ring, one
cloak, a pair of bracers, and a very intelligent Dagger of Petrification +3
with an ego as big as a two-handed claymore’s.
One baby still unaccounted for; but we were
already running late and so we called it a night. Decent result: 66⅓% of all missing
babies duly rescued. But I only plopped 10 monster miniatures on that table...
out of 24 available!
Forest Grump
We now get to the last part of this post,
where I can analyze the game and highlight what went wrong.
The props are kinda stealing the show
now. Players want to head straight to “the best props”. That is no good. So,
what’s the answer? Tone it down on the terrain / scenery side of things, and
maybe paint more minis instead?
Also, waaay too much talking. Guys,
we can get together once a month if we want and talk about TV shows and movies
and politics and stuff – but we only play D&D twice a year. Less talk, more
play.
Third problem: tactics. The guys are too
good, that’s all. I really need to break up that tight cluster of PCs by any
means necessary. I need to scatter the party and sprinkle small monsters all
over the place, make a mess, make things dynamic and unpredictable again.
Things are too static right now, because players are excellent strategists. Warcraft
and Call of Duty and Halo and Splinter Cell transformed
players into masters of efficiency, and that in itself should be a good thing –
but it seems to defeat the whole purpose of miniatures and scenery. Why the
sprawling terrain if the party keeps moving in a tight knot with the
spellcasters huddled in the center and always zeroing in on one monster
at a time? Why the trees and rocks and tumuli if no one ever hides under a tree
or seeks cover behind a rock or enters the tumulus? Hours of model-making work
for zip.
Elaborate terrain is inherited from the
kriegsspiels of the ’60s – wargames, historical reenactments – when things were
guaranteed to get messy and trees / rocks / hills were very
important. For a group of seven characters, it’s not as relevant. You could run
entire scenes with graph paper. The solid clump of characters edges to the
left: giant snake #2 is now in range for the magic missiles and spiritual
hammer: fire away! Delivering 39 points of damage on a 45 HP giant snake in
the first round – just with missiles! The amount of damage dealt by a party of
level 4 characters is crazy. I need to give them multiple targets and throw a
lot at them all at once if I hope to generate at least a little mayhem; it
probably won’t break up that solid clump of miniatures but at the very least
it’ll have them surrounded and they’ll have no other choice but to split their
damage on several foes. Still pretty static, but it’s a start.
In my opinion, big minis are a waste of
money. Two otyughs cost me $42 with shipping, and only dealt 23 points of
damage between the two of them, with no typhus. Air elemental cost $18 and
dealt 14 points of damage over four rounds, before being annihilated by seven
PCs surrounding it and easily generating 90 damage. That’s $18 for 14 points: more
than a buck per point of damage. Expensive, and not a sound investment.
No more big miniatures then – unless they’re
backed by lots of smaller minions. That is the trick: don’t let a party of seven
concentrate their attacks on just one monster. Get in their faces. Create
urgency. Press them hard. Overwhelm their “defensive huddling”. Split the
nucleus, in other words. Make things dynamic again. Use a lot of small
miniatures. Use monsters that can appear out of thin air, like invisible stalkers.
Use monsters that can drop from the ceiling, emerge through the floor, pass
through walls, or blink.
For my next game, that’s the first challenge.
Dynamic. Move player miniatures around on the map. Shake that tree.
The second challenge is to deal more
damage. I realized that none of the PCs in my game ever dropped below 5 Hit
Points in the last two sessions. One magic-user dropped to zero when his
familiar was shot and killed by an Orc, but that’s the only exception – and I
feel like it doesn’t really count. Nobody else was ever out of commission, not
even the engineer NPC in game #5. Last time I had a player character dropped to
zero HP was exactly one year ago in a big fight against 4 Drows and a
Handmaiden of Lolth. Two games were played since – one 9-hour session and one
5-hour session – and not a single knockout. Fourteen hours of play. Man. The
guys are tactical. This is not Splinter Cell though, it’s
goddamned First Edition AD&D – madness and chaos are supposed to be part
of the deal.
Those challenges stand.
My next game will not be static.
It’ll have forced flow and movement. And mark my words: PCs will drop to
zero HP or lower. This, I swear before the Gods of Gaming. It may sound harsh
to some players’ ears, but of course I’m not saying this in an aggressive
manner. It’s just – I’m starting to feel inadequate. Two entire
adventures without anyone dropping to zero? Really?
The guys don’t see each other often and of
course they wanna talk. I prepare too much stuff. That is my fault. For this
particular forest adventure I had 3 main combat scenes with spectacular
terrain, 1 secondary scene with bugbears and their feral panthers, and 1 mobile
/ random encounter (the Orc shaman and his apprentices). We tackled 2 main
combat scenes, period – and I had to cut the second one short because it was
past 19:00 and two players had already left. Basically we played that big scene
at the beginning of an action movie, and then went directly to the climax.
Nothing in between. Just talk talk talk.
I need to take that into account and prepare
less stuff. Of course the guys are going to talk: that’s only natural, and I
don’t want to ban chatting around the table like some Soup Nazi. So I’m going
to prepare 2 main scenes and that’s it; there will be ample time to chat before
we play the first scene, and in between those two scenes, and at the
very end, with the awarding of XP. There’s hardly ever any time left to do
that.
I’m actually quite optimistic. Can’t wait to
start working on game #7 which is scheduled for Halloween. Now I know what’s
wrong – and I’ll be able to fix it!