Sun, 07 Mar 2010
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
- L.B., playing - Taffy the Halfling and - Alice the Cleric
Finishing the Orcs
C. 6 orcs from 14: 5sp 12sp 3sp 7sp 6 scale armor, 2 light crossbows, 6 morning stars.
Curufin found the secret door to 13, then kissed Taffy's hand.
Bow, quiver w/20 arrors, 2 swords, 2 daggers, 2 shields, 2 gems, 20 gp, 40sp.
Guard from 16: 8 sp 1 gp, Chaimail, short sword. Girl: ivoery bracelet (100 gp). Orc leader: longsword, plate mail (to Alice), shield, magic +1 hand axe (to Taffy), silver belt w/gold buckle, sword ???
Dru & Curufin took shields, Dooley took 2 swords, Glen took the daggers, Taffy took bow & quiver.
On to the Hobgoblins
Sun, 17 Jan 2010
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
I got to run another short Labyrinth Lord session for the kids.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- L.B., playing
- Taffy the Halfling and
- Alice the Cleric
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
More Orcs
C. Net: 2 rounds. Killed male orcs from rooms 14 (9 orcs) & 15 (6 orcs) at the entrance. Dooley, Jeffry, & Alice went to below zero HP — Alice healed Jeffry, James healed Alice, and James bandaged Alice's wounds. Looted bodies and fled.
(This appears to have been the first session recorded in my moleskine.)
Fri, 07 Aug 2009
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
I got to run another Labyrinth Lord session for the kids.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
- L.B., playing
- Taffy the Halfling and
- Alice the Cleric
Kobolds are Dead
Still out for revenge, they went after the kobolds again, but set off the alarm bell, and ran back to town. They came back on the second day and were attacked by female kobolds in the tree, who were joined by six more from inside the kobold warren, but the day went to the adventurers, who wiped the kobolds out, and proceeded to clean out the kobold warren as well.
Sat, 27 Jun 2009
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
I got to run another Labyrinth Lord session for the kids.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
- L.B., playing
- Taffy the Halfling and
- Alice the Cleric
Kobolds are Stubborn
The group spent most of their loot on a high level cleric who fixed Dooley up, even regenerating his fingers. Dooley now is a bit more rough-hewn, but not really any uglier than he was originally.
Out for revenge, they went back and went after the kobolds. This time they got past the pit trapped and killed lots of kobolds, but were run off again. Dru and Dooley were both dying when their friends dragged them out and healed them, but the kobolds were in no shape to pursue them.
Sat, 13 Jun 2009
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
I got to run another Labyrinth Lord session for the kids.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
- L.B., playing
- Taffy the Halfling and
- Alice the Cleric
Kobolds are Sneaky
They decided to try the kobolds that surprised them on one of their earlier trips. Luckily the kobolds weren't in the tree branches this time, so they went down the tunnel. Unfortunately, Dooley fell in the pit trap. James pulled him out with his belt (since they didn't have any rope or pole). The guards attached them with ranged weapons, and the party fled the kobold warren. Once outside the stopped for a moment, but giant rats boiled out of the tunnel, soon followed by kobolds. Eventually the group managed to defeat the rats and the kobolds, but in the process Dooley was overcome by the rats, and lay unconscious while they chewed on his face. His comrades healed him as well as they could, but he was horribly scarred and lost two fingers from his left hand.
Sat, 09 May 2009
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
I got to run another Labyrinth Lord session for the kids.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
- L.B., playing
- Taffy the Halfling and
- Alice the Cleric
Healing and Hunting
After their narrow escape from the valley last time, they decided to find a safe place away from the valley and rest and heal. James and Alice spent their days healing the wounded, while Drusilla spent her days finding food for everybody. After five days they were ready to try again.
This time they made a plan: they'd lure out the orc guards into an ambush, some staying outside out of immediate sight of the tunnel entrance, while a couple went in and apparently got scared and ran out. Luckily the orc guards fell for the deception and headed outside. The P.C.s slaughtered the guards, then moved in and systematically cleaned the orcs' tunnel complex out, ending with the orc chieftain. They even found the secret door. Then it was back to town with their loot.
Reflections
It was nice to see them have a solidly successful session, after having two sessions in a row of spectacular failure. They were so excited that they were finally taking the monsters down.
We had more time to play this time, which helped a lot. And having the fourth player (and thus two more characters) made things move along more smoothly, too. These old-school modules really do need a larger party of adventurers.
Mon, 04 May 2009
Jesse's Run flooded over the road in three places, so I wasn't able to get to work, and the kids weren't able to go to school, so in the afternoon the kids came over and we played Labyrinth Lord.
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
Manual Labor & Shopping
Last session they'd been captured by goblins who stripped them of all their equipment and most of their clothing, but did accept a ransom offer.
Following up T.A.'s suggestion last session that they look for work, I decided they would stay around the keep for a while and try and find work, so they could get enough money to buy some new equipment. They found some work as guards, some work digging sewers for the keep, and some random odd jobs around the keep.
T.A. suggested that they'd have probably cached the hides from the three deer Drusilla killed the week they were camping, so that they could pick them up on the way back. I allowed that it was a likely thing for them to have done. Then T.A suggested they'd probably have cached the 6 shortswords from orcs they killed, and I allowed that it was a reasonable thing for them to have done. Then T.A. suggested that they'd cached the money they were carrying, and I said no way, no how.
Anyway, after a month of work, they pooled their money and figured out that each person had about 25 gp to buy equipment. James sold the shortsword and 2 javelins he got as loot. Jeffrey sold the javelins, but kept the shortsword. Glen sold the shortsword and javelins as well. The others kept them, so they didn't have to buy a weapon. After this the players worked at reequipping themselves. At first they didn't think they'd be able to afford any armor better than padded, but by cutting down their lists and the non-armor-wearing characters loaning the other characters a little bit of money, they ended up being able to afford leather armor, and slings and sling bullets for ranged weapons. [1] Eventually [2] they were all outfitted, and ready to go.
Oops, Take 2!
So, they set out east and then north along the road leading into the borderlands. When they got to the area of the road nearest the valley where they'd found the goblins, they again left the road and pushed their way through the thick undergrowth of the forest until they reached the semi-clear valley. This time they decided to explore the other side of the valley, climbing up the hill above the first thicket in the valley. There they found another cave entrance. Having learned from their mistake last time, they decided to try stealth. The three that had Move Silently, Jeffry the Monk, Dooley the Sly, and Drusilla the Ranger, would try to sneak in, while the other three would wait at the cave mouth for a yell.
Unfortunately, Dooley and Drusilla made a lot of noise as they went in, so they motioned for the others to follow them in. The first thing they saw, in the light of their torches, was a section of wall covered with niches, which all contained severed heads in various stages of decomposition. Fearing for their lives, they immediately ran out of the cave and Dooley, looking for somewhere to hide, lead them further into the valley, downhill slightly, to another large thicket.
As they rushed into the thicket, through the heavy bushes at the outside into the lighter undergrowth of the inside, they noticed it concealed, at its lowest point, just above where it edged onto the flat valley floor, another cave entrance. Then they noticed the kobolds in the tree throwing javelins down at them. Before they got out of the thicket they had two men down, Dooley and Jeffry. Once out of the thicket they ran full speed for the road, only to see that orcs had come out of the first cave mouth, and were throwing javelins, as well as the kobolds on the edge of the thicket throwing another round of javelins. Luckily, nobody else was downed, and they saw the orcs and kobolds laughing at them as they vanished into the brush.
They made it to the road, and not hearing any immediate pursuit, stopped to let James cast Cure Light Wounds on Jeffry, the worst hurt, and luckily M.A. rolled pretty well, healing enough of Jeffry's wounds so that he was conscious and able to get up. At the same time Drusilla attempted to bind Dooley's wounds to keep him from bleeding to death. Drusilla succeeded, so Dooley stabilized. And that's were we left them.
| [1] | I've always thought that D&D nerfed slings, so I ruled that if they used stones they gathered the slings did the stated d4 damage, but that if they bought lead sling bullets the slings would do d6 damage. |
| [2] | They're good kids, but even good kids, at their ages, tend to get distracted and bicker, and so things took longer than I'd hoped. |
Sun, 03 May 2009
L.B. was in town visiting the other side of her family, so I got to take her to dinner Sunday. Since she would be playing in the Labyrinth Lord game with the rest of the kids when she was here this summer, I thought we could create her characters during lunch. She thought that was a great idea. She did wonder if people would mind us playing D&D in the restaurant, but I told her nobody would mind — everybody in the restaurant would be talking anyway, and all we'd be doing is talking and rolling dice.
I was pretty scatterbrained that morning, and had managed to forget my dice, but we stopped at Dollar Tree on the way to the restaurant and picked up some cheap d6s. While we were waiting to be seated she started rolling up her characters, and finished rolling them up after we'd been seated and while we were waiting to be served. I'd also managed to forget a pencil, but did have a pen, so instead of writing directly on the character sheets we wrote on some 3×5 cards I had. She'd already decided she wanted one to be a sorceress and one to be a halfling, so we figured out which scores should go to which character [1] and then rolled 4d6 for the characters' starting money, since we didn't have d8s. After that we worked through buying equipment for her halfling, mostly while waiting for our food. Once the food arrived, though, not much else happened but eating. :-) She did have a name for her magic-user/sorceress, Alice the Sorceress, and we decided she'd pick a name for her halfling later, perhaps the next time she's at my house. (I‘ve got some books that would be useful for inspiration for halfling names.)
Anyway, after lunch when I dropped her off I gave her some character sheets and told her I'd e-mail her the information about the characters — that way we'd both have the information — and that we'd buy equipment for Alice the Sorceress later. After I dropped her off I stopped by the office and sent the e-mail.
| [1] | Rather than the strict “Roll 3d6 in order for STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA” that Labyrinth Lord gives as the main way to generate abilities, I let the kids roll 3d6 and arrange the scores the way they liked them, and let them roll a couple of extra characters and take the highest set of scores. |
Sat, 02 May 2009
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
Attending
Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
Camping
Since everyone (pretty much) had been wounded, the characters spent 7 days camping and getting Cure Light Wounds cast on them by James. Drusilla spent the days hunting in the nearby forest, and kept them feed reasonably well, although there were a couple of hungry days.
By the 7th day the orcs started to stink, so they buried them, still in their leather armor. After they buried them they realized they could have sold the armor, but after several days of decomposition the armor was probably not salable any more.
They divided the coin up, with 10 sp each, with 4 left over for the party treasury. Glen paid his 10 sp immediately to Dooley, which after the interest left him still 12.5 sp in debt.
Oops!
On the eight day they continued north along the road that lead into the borderlands. Before the valley closed in, they could see the outline of the hills under the trees curving in sharply on the west, while the east side continued straight and steep. As they walked along the narrow valley, Drusilla noticed some light tracks leading into the thick forest to the west, although she couldn't tell what had made the tracks. They decided to follow the tracks through the forest. After a lot of bending and crawling and scraping through the thick undergrowth they emerged in a small, partially forested valley. One of the first things that they saw was a cave opening on the south side of the valley. Whooping and hollering they headed straight for the cave. They'd only gotten 30 feet in and had noticed that the original cave had been turned into tunnels carved from the rock, when they ran into a group of goblins, who yelled “Bree-Yark!” and attacked. The characters, though several had been injured, were doing pretty well, having killed 5 of the 6 goblins, when two more groups of 6 goblins appeared, one in front and another behind, an they heard something big stopping its way down the corridor toward them. The new goblins all threw javelins, and by the end of the round Glen and Dooley were on the ground dying, and the rest of adventurers were severely wounded, though still standing. And that's when the ogre arrived, stomping down the corridor. With the goblins behind them blocking their way out, things were looking grim.
At this point I suggested to the kids that perhaps surrender would be a good idea, if the goblins thought the adventurers could be ransomed. Luckily, Curufin knew how to speak goblin, an quickly offered surrender and ransom, which the goblins accepted. They quickly stripped and tied the adventurers and negotiated a 10 gp ransom each, to be paid no later than 2 days from now.
The PCs picked Jeffry to go back to town and get the ransom, as he actually had enough to ransom everybody [1], and although he had a close call on the way back, having to hide from a group of orcs out looking for something, he managed to get back in time, and the goblins kept their word and released the adventurers, wearing nothing but breech-clouts.
The adventurers hurried back to the Keep to regroup. They expected the townsfolk to be mad that they'd stirred up the monsters, but the townsfolk said that the monsters had been killing people already, and at least the adventurers had killed some of the monsters. The townsfolk did suggest the adventurers should be a little more careful next time.
So, the adventurers are safe, but they've lost most of their money, all of their equipment, and somehow have to reequip. T.A. suggested they look for work around the Keep to help get money for new equipment. And that's where we left them.
| [1] | I kindly told the players that they'd left any gold they had back in the Keep in a bank. |
Sun, 26 Apr 2009
This very short session followed on directly from Character Generation 3.
Spoilers!
We're playing B2 — Keep on the Borderland, so if you haven't played that you might want to skip this entry.
Attending
Clockwise round the table starting with the Labyrinth Lord.
- T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.
- M.A., playing
- James the Cleric and
- Jeffrey the Monk.
- T.A., playing
- Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
- Dooley the sly (a thief).
- E.A., playing
- Curufin the Elf and
- Drusilla the Ranger.
Attack in the Dark
Once the kids had gotten their characters completed we only had about 30 minutes to play before I had to be elsewhere. [1] While they were finishing their characters, I finally decided to start with B2 — Keep on the Borderlands, so I started with them approaching the keep entryway. We spent a little time in the keep, talking to people and then left to find the monsters we'd heard were plaguing the area. The characters followed the road north where they'd heard merchants had been attacked, looking for trouble. They hadn't found any by the end of the day, so they camped in the bend of the road and set watches through the night, with no campfire or lights burning. During Jeffrey's watch he was surprised by a volley of javelins from the dark He couldn't really see what was going on, but he woke the others, and Curufin could see that they were being attacked by orcs. Jeffrey started lighting a torch for the humans to see by, Curufin started shooting his bow at the orcs, Dooley charged up to the orcs to fight them hand-to-hand, and Drusilla also headed up to the orcs to right. Despite the penalties for fighting in the dark they were able to score some hits, and once the torch was light things got easier. They finally killed all the orcs. Pretty much everybody had been injured, but nobody had been killed. They decided to start a campfire to finish out the night with some light.
Aftermath
There were 6 orcs, with 8 sp, 11 sp, 12 sp, 12 sp, 9 sp, and 12 sp, respectively. Each orc had 2 javelins, a short sword, and tatty leather armor.
[This is an after-the-fact entry; I could have sworn I'd written something about this already, but if so I've lost it. I'm not sure what date and time this actually happened. Sigh. I think it was nap time for the youngest kids.]
| [1] | Setting posts on the strip job, I think. |
In this short session T.A. finished his two characters, M.A. created his second character, Jeffrey, a monk, and E.A. created her characters, Drusilla (Dru), a ranger, and Curufin, an elf. I helped E.A. by quickly equipping her characters when time was running short, while T.A. helped M.A.
T.A. and M.A. were bickering, so I said that they had to roleplay being best friends. Glen needed to borrow some money, and I said he could borrow it from Dooley, but that Dooley would charge 25% interest, compounded weekly.
Attending
T.A., playing
Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and
Dooley the sly (a thief)
We'd established that Dooley was on the run from the folks in his home town who'd burnt his hovel after they'd figured out that he was a thief.
E.A., playing + Curufin the Elf and + Drusilla the Ranger.
M.A., playing + James the Cleric and + Jeffrey the Monk.
[This is an after-the-fact entry; I could have sworn I'd written something about this already, but if so I've lost it. I'm not sure what date and time this actually happened. Sigh. I think it was nap time for the youngest kids.]
Sat, 25 Apr 2009
In this short session M.A. completely generated one of his two characters, James, a cleric, and T.A. tried to finish his two characters, but didn't get completely there.
[This is a after-the-fact entry; I could have sworn I'd written something about this already, but if so I've lost it. Sigh. I'm not sure what date this actually happened, whether it was the same day as the zeroth session, or not.]
In this short session T.A. started generating his two characters, Glen, a wizard, and Dooley, a thief.
[This is a after-the-fact entry; I could have sworn I'd written something about this already, but if so I've lost it. I'm not sure what date and time this actually happened. Sigh. I think it was nap time for the youngest kids.]
Fri, 24 Apr 2009
I have decided I'm going to run some classic D&D modules this summer for the kids. I'd actually planned on using Rules Cyclopedia Dungeons & Dragons, but unfortunately I'd not yet bought the PDF for it when Wizards of the Coast took all their PDFs off the market, saying they were “saving the RPG industry from pirates.” Jerks. These days I pretty much have to have a PDF of a game I'm going to run, so, instead of RC D&D, we're playing Labyrinth Lord, a retro-clone of Basic/Expert D&D. This has some advantages over RC anyway: there is a free PDF, it's actually in print through Lulu, and several adventures have been published for it recently. I'd considered using Swords & Wizardry
I want to run B10 — Night's Dark Terror, which I think is one of the classic D&D modules, but I didn't want to start with it — it's a module for 2nd level characters, and I wanted to get a feel for how LL ran, since it has been over 20 years since I last ran a pre-3.5E D&D game. So, I'm going to start with a different module, and then either move the characters on to B10, or have them create new characters. I'm not sure if I'm going to run B2 — Keep on the Borderlands or one of the LL adventures yet.
I'm going to have the kids roll up two characters each, inspired by a OD&D (or is it BD&D — sometimes it's hard to tell) character sheet (landscape, double-sided) with two character sheets on it side-by-side.
I've printed up the character creation sections of LL and some LL reference sheets I found online, so each kid will their own booklet to use during character creation.
[This is a after-the-fact entry; I could have sworn I'd written something about this already, but if so I've lost it. Sigh.]