Attending

Actual Play

Attending

Clockwise round the table, starting with the GM:

• T.K.B. — GM
• B.MC. — playing Azrulektos, a Kraken warrior/wizard
• C.A.H. — playing Karl Kroc, a Masaquani treasure hunter and navigator
• M.A.H. — playing Moorumah, a charming but rather dim Grael

Introduction

Actual Play

M.A.H. contributed this (lightly edited) actual play report:

After an extended character creation session (made longer due to C.A.H. being an HOUR late -- BAD C.A.H.), our 50 Fathoms campaign is off to a great start.

It all begins upon a ship, and with three particular sailors aboard. Azrulektos, a squidy-looking thing, could summon great skull-headed bolts of water and enjoys participating in Fight Club With Giant Creatures (one-on-one, of course). Then there is Karl, who looks almost human, except that both his hair and skin are some undefinable color, but let me tell you its a doozy of one. Karl is a Warrior, highly trained in the art of Shoot First And Spend Two Rounds Reloading Later. Finally, there is the lovable, but dumb-as-a-stone (and heavy as one too) Moorumah a walrus-looking being who speaks loudly (and innanely) and carries a very big club, and also occasinally trees. They are a lovable band of misfits (Azrulektos is Highly Curious, Moorumah has a Big Mouth, and Karl is equally Noticable, but in a way that I have forgotten).

Anyhoo, it all starts on a ship and with two elements. Fire and Water. A big storm made the water, and our inept now-deceased cook provided the fire. These forces combined to create a ship broken in half, and a lot of sailors drowned or beached on an island. Also, of particular worry to Moorumah, there are logs floating all over the ocean. The same logs she spent so long carrying back and forth onto the ship, with one long log under each arm.

The captain assigns the trio to look for food, and they promptly return with Moorumah carrying a 'Nana' (banana) tree. As this takes care of only one of the four food groups, the captain sends them out again. This time, they manage to kill a small dinosour, and take it back to the beach.

LITTLE DID THEY KNOW that the Red People (the savage Ugaks) had attacked the beach while they were gone. All the other sailors are gone, as are the nanas! What is a trio of (mostly) semi-aquatic beings to do? They follow the tracks of the Ugaks down the beach in hope of rescuing the other sailors. Along the way they find a small boat but broken on the other side of a reef, and materials to make a sail and other necessary components so that a makeshift boat is feasible. But, then they notice tracks going off into the jungle, and decide to follow.

The tracks end in a huge clearing, with a few scattered Red People surrounding a large pool of red goo. A huge statue of a Giant Monkape looms prominently behind the pool. There are 6 sailors lined up next to the pool, tied up next to a shaman who is directing proceedings.

Azrulektos sneaks around to flank the pool, and effectively neutralizes the shaman, while Moorumah charges into the scene like a charging bull elephant, and Karl fires off his one shot before sitting down to reload for two rounds. Unfortunately the dying shaman pushes one of the prisoners into the pool of red ooze, and a Giant Monkape rises from the ooze. There is a great deal of combat which takes place in slow motion shakey-cam. Azrulektos goes one-on-one (see previous note about hobby) with the Giant Monkape, and ultimately defeats it with a little help from some escaped sailors. The other foes are handily defeated by the trio.

In the end, we get many pieces of eight, as well as 4 experience points each. The DM bribed M.A.H. with the promise of an additional experience point if she would write up a summary of the session's events.

She does so, despite having forgotten all the characters names.

Ding - 1 xp for me!!!!!!!

Aftermath

Each PC each got +4 XP, except M.A.H. who got 1 extra XP for writing up an actual play report.

Attending

Clockwise, starting with the GM:

• T.K.B. — GM
• E.A. — Aspen Thistledown & Sigisund Thorinsson
• T.A. — Sir Deelan the Ignoble & Belinda Warmhearted
• M.A. — Alfros Bladesinger
• L.B. — Sir Leopold Drakehelm & Cassandra Lightfinger

Unfortunately, D.B. wasn't available.

L.B. had been dissatisfied with the character she had been playing, Belinda Warmhearted (a pacifist with a low Fighting skill), and switched her for Sir Leopold Drakehelm.

She and E.A. both wanted to try playing two characters.

Actual Play, Afternoon

As they rested, they heard noises approaching from the unblocked side of the tunnel, and prepared for battle, but it turned out to be the remains of another group the criminal syndicate had sent to find Jeck Lightfinger, Sigisund Thorinsson and Cassandra Lightfinger. They gladly joined forces against the ghouls of the tunnels.

After resting, Aspen Thistledown was able to track her way back to where they had left the tracks of the dragged body. Once there she had no difficulty tracking them to the ghoul's feasting room, where they found many bodies in the various stages of decay, including that of Jeck Lightfinger. Unfortunately, the item they sought was not on what little remained of the body. Search the room, they noticed that many of the corpses showed the signs of having died from the blood plague, which lead them to the thought that someone had broken into the burial tunnels where the plague bodies had been interred. They hurriedly left the ghoul tunnels and headed back to report.

▶ Here we broke for supper.

Actual Play, Evening

▶ After supper we picked up again.

The criminal syndicate gave them all medallions to protect them from the blood plague and sent them off to the plague burial tunnels. They found that the seal on the door to the tunnels had been broken, and someone had been coming and going. They spent some time exploring the tunnels, and eventually came to area where another had broken into the plague tunnels, coming from further in the mountain. They followed this tunnel until they heard chanting from ahead. Sneaking up, they found an ancient temple carved into the mountain, with rat men chanting and praying.

The kids knew that they needed a plan, or they'd get wiped out by the rat men, but it took them a little while to agree on one. They decided to sneak onto one of the balconies that ran along the sides of the temple, so that they could only be attacked through two places, the hallway leading to the balcony from the tunnel at the back of the temple and the stairs leading up to the balcony at the front of the temple. They positioned their ranged fighters to target the rat man shaman leading the chant, their melee fighters to hold the entrances, and started off their attack with Alfros Bladesinger casting fear on the area with the greatest number of rat men.

It was a good plan, and it worked out well for them. The fear spell drove away many of the rat men, back into their tunnels deeper into the depths. They managed to Shake the shaman, and keep him Shaken most of the time. The melee fighters kept the other rat men off the ranged fighters long enough for the ranged fighters to finish off the shaman and dispose of several of the other rat men, and they the finished off the rest as they came up the stairs and down the hallway.

They searched the shaman and found the item they were looking for, so they left to report.

Reflections

I really need to start a regular Savage Worlds campaign for the kids.

Attending

Clockwise, starting with the GM:

• T.K.B. — GM
• E.A. — Aspen Thistledown
• T.A. — Sir Deelan the Ignoble [1]
• M.A. — Alfros Bladesinger
• D.B. — Sir Leopold Drakehelm (later played by T.A. after D.B. had to leave)
• L.B. — Belinda Warmhearted

Actual Play

An unsanctioned thief, Jeck Lightfinger, had fled with his ill-gotten gains into The Widow's Hold, a local haunted house. The characters were charged with finding Jeck and

They entered the ill-omened house and soon found the entrance to the tunnels below. They were soon ambushed by ghouls (in this scenario a type of undead), but fought them off. When the last ghoul fled, Sir Leopald

Attending

• T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel, former captain of the Lady Faire
• E.A. playing Alice Pettigrew
• M.A. playing Captain (Scarred) Jack
• L.B. playing Phelicity Phillipe Gujon

Actual Play

I knew that losing the Lady Faire still rankled, so I made the villans of the damsel in distress plot suggested by M.A.H. the mutinous crew of the Lady Faire and the evil pirate who had taken over the ship after the mutiny. So, while the kids' struggling pirates were looking for their next smuggling job (all their current tiny boat would let them manage) they heard a rumor that their former crew had kidnapped the daughter of a wealthy merchant. They tracked down the fisherman who had witnessed the attack on the yacht and confirmed it had been their mutineers. After this they set sail for Tortuga, looking for information about where those mutinous dogs were now.

This was the first time I'd bothered to use the sailing rules from the rulebook, and they very quickly learned why somebody needs Knowledge (Navigation)! Eventually they reached Tortuga, and as soon as they landed they started looking for information. They very quickly learned why somebody needs Streetwise! Luckily for them, many people had gone to a yearly pie-eating contest held by a local eatery. They entered, and Phelicity should have won, but another pirate was initially declared the winner; however, the resulting pie-fight conclusively proved he was cheating (and Phelicity got the prize money!), and in the end he turned out to be Deadeye Dave, one of their former crew. He'd been dropped there to arrange ransom, while the rest of the crew had gone off to a safe haven in the Virgin Islands.

So off they went to the Virgin Islands. After some excellent navigating by former captain Isaiah they arrived, snuck up the side of the former Lady Faire, now named the Saucy Wench (which the kids universally agreed was a terrible name), nailed their erstwhile crew under hatches, and disposed of the interloping pirate captain and his chief henchman just in time to intimidate their former crew as they burst the hatches.

Eventually they left Deadeye Dave on one deserted island, the other pirates on another, and sailed back to collect the reward for from the damsel's relived father.

They decided that since they had the Lady Faire back that Isaiah was captain of her again, while Captain Jack remained captain of the smaller boat. M.A. was charmingly nervous that the girls would abandon Captain Jack's boat for Isaiah Kestrel's, since it was bigger, but I think the fact that they now had a small fleet, rather than just a single boat made everybody happy.

Aftermath

Now I have to figure out if this has affected their Fame, and how much money the reward came to!

Attending

• L.B. playing Nancy Hestletwain
• T.A. playing Lucius Munroe
• E.A. playing Samantha Hardcastle
• M.A. playing Oscar Whitfield
• T.B. playing Arthur Abrahams
• O.B. playing Brent Hardcastle

Actual Play

We played through Act 1 and Act 2, though I compressed much of Act 2 because we had a very limited amount of time for the session; I skipped Scene 3 entirely, and wrapped things up completely differently.

I was definitely off my game, and six screaming kids didn't help things — for some reason I had more trouble keeping them settled down and on track than usual.

There were some good moments, though, and I think the kids had fun.

As for the adventure itself, I had a few problems with it. I suspect that if I'd had more time to adapt it things would have gone better. Oh well.

We'll probably finish this off this summer, when T.B. and O.B. are back visiting.

Attending

• T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel, former captain of the Lady Faire
• E.A. playing Alice Pettigrew
• M.A. playing Captain (Scarred) Jack
• L.B. playing Phelicity Gujon

Recap

Last time out the kids had lost their ship, lost the treasure, and deposed their captain. They'd had to build themselves a new boat to escape the once-cursed island.

Actual Play

This time out I decided that they'd forced by their dismal economic situation into working for another pirate delivering smuggled goods, and ran them through the Pirates of the Spanish Main one-sheet Smuggler's Song.

They did pretty well, though they did end up running from the watch several times. And they mostly got paid.

Amusingly, my sister was not happy when they told her they'd been fighting in a bar, so I've promised to steer closer to a “G” rating next time…

Introduction

Unfortunately my notes for this session aren't very good. I'm not entirely sure if everybody who played the previous session was here to finishing the adventure off in this session, but I think so, because L.B. was here and all the pre-generated characters for this one-sheet were in use.

Attending

• M.A. played Gar IronHelm;
• E.A. played Merula Lanus;
• B.B. played Marcus Two Hands (when he wasn't helping out with baby C.A.);
• D.B. played Ramel Ramelson; and
• T.A. played Fox.
• L.B. played Serena, Aevakar Priestess (from the Shaintar: Immortal Legends free download Heroic Archetypes)

L.B. joins the group with a shiny new character

L.B. was here, and wanted to play, of course. Since all the pregens were in use, I pulled out the characters from the Shaintar: Immortal Legends free download Heroic Archetypes and had her look through and see if she liked anything. She found Serena, the Aevakar Priestess, and fell in love. (L.B: “Look! An Angel!*” T.K.B.: “Well, not an angel, but she is magical and can fly…” L.B. “Cool!”) I swapped out a few *Shaintar-specific items and adjusted her XP up to match the “Tomb of Terror” pregens, and we got down to play.

Actual Play

Like I said, my notes for this game were…not good, so I don't have much to report. I do remember that they tried to burn the obviously magical journal of the insane necromancer, which put out a poison cloud that forced them to evacuate the village, and L.B.'s character Serena got to fly above the evacuees and make sure they were headed away from the poison cloud.

The kids seemed to have fun, and L.B. really wanted to play with her character again, so we might come back to these characters at some point. Certainly I have my doubts as to whether the journal could be destroyed by a simple fire…

Reflections

Add Wound Penalties to Fatigue Penalties and things really start getting grim fast.

Reflections

We played in my living room around a low, 2 foot diameter table, keeping dice, tokens, and cards on the table and character sheets off. We didn't bother to user miniatures. I used gaming stones to represent wound and shaken statuses, and check track of the skeletons just by removing the d6 that I rolled for their fighting attacks, so there was no book keeping. I thought that all worked well.

(My bones and joints, on the other hand, did not work well when getting up off the floor after a couple of hours of play.)

Reflections

I should have looked up all the details of the edges and hindrances and wrote them on the kids character sheets, and on my copies, before the kids came over for the game. I had to do it while they were there, and of course they wanted to get on to the gaming. However, I knew we'd be looking them up in the middle of game if I didn't.

We also need to play more often so I can keep the details in mind better. Maybe next weekend.

Attending

Around the table, starting with me as the GM at 6 o'lock, going clock-wise:

• M.A. played Gar IronHelm;
• E.A. played Merula Lanus;
• B.B. played Marcus Two Hands (when he wasn't helping out with baby C.A.);
• D.B. played Ramel Ramelson; and
• T.A. played Fox.

Actual Play

We got through the first encounter with very little difficulty, largely because I forgot the very important surprise packages the zombies had that should have gone off when they died, and then nearly had a TPK when I set them all off at once. They got to where they could hear the next encounter when we had to quit.

Maybe we can finish this at Thanksgiving.

Background

T.A. has been coming up with maps and ideas for roleplaying games for a while now, and earlier this week while we were talking about RPGs he said he had a Savage Worlds game he wanted to run. I suggested we do it today, Saturday, in the afteroon, and that's what we did.

His sister E.A. and brother M.A were the only ones of the kids around, and they both wanted to play. We decided to play outside, at a small picnic table in the shade, on top of a large blanket so dropped dice would be easy to find. (T.A.'s idea, and a very good one.) It took a while to get everything set up, and the kids were a little impatient; I can't blame them. But we finally got going. I brought up my Savage Worlds GM Screen and my Flip-Mats and dry-erase pens. E.A. and I got an extra benny each for shuffling cards, and M.A. got a benny for helping set up the table.

T.A. had made several pregenerated characters, so we had a good selection to choose from. E.A. went for a healer again, M.A. picked a wizard, and I picked out a theif and combat mage. E.A. came up with a name for her character, Eureka, but M.A. was stuck, so I asked if he wanted help, and he did. We ended up naming his wizard Ragnar, so I stuck with that for a theme and named my thief Loki and my fire-themed combat mage Surt.

T.A. had made a map of a cavern/dungeon and decided on the monster stats and locations, but beyond that hadn't written anything down. He had thought about what he wanted a lot, though, and had it all in his head.

Actual Play

T.A. told us that our characters had seen notices posted that a small, nearby village was seeking adventurers to help with deal with goblin raiders. A short time later were were talking with the headman of the village, who after some talking promised us 50 gp each in advance and another 50 gp each after the job was done. A short time later we were headed out to the trail the goblins took after their raids.

The trail eventually lead up to the base of a hill and an cavern entrance.

E.A. aced Eureka's Notice roll as we snuck into the entrance and noticed something weird about the wall. It turned out to be a secret door, leading down a short passage and through another secret door into a room with a giant spider just settling down for a nap. Luckily, Loki had eased the 2nd secret door open quietly, so Ragnar tried to cast a Bolt at the spider. Unfortunately, M.A. rolled snake eyes (ones on both his Spellcasting and his Wild Die), and woke the spell up. Next round he spent a benny to get rid of the shaken and aced his Spellcasting roll, aced the damage roll, and so much for the spider.

After that we worked our way through a guardroom and a kitchen, each with goblins and dire wolves. As it turned out, the guards had screamed loud enough for the cook to hear something, but we sent in Ragnar in rat form and he saw the layout of the room and reported back to us. We burst in the door, catching the dire wolf with it and stunning it. The cook died fast, but the dire wolf took forever to kill due to some really lucky rolls. We had it stunned at least 3 times, but could never land another until Surt got the Joker, took a multi-action penalty to cast the spell smite and attack in the same round and aced his Spellcasting roll, killing the dire wolf with one massive blow. He immediately set about skinning the wolf, to take the hide back and have it tanned. And that's were we stopped.

Reflections

T.A. did several neat things. Whenever a PC made a really good search roll and found something magical, T.A. rolled to see which PC the magic item would best suit, then made up a nifty magic item on the spot for that character. The healer got a Staff of Healing that couldn't be used for attacking, but would give the healer a bonus on any healing related roll. The combat mage ended up with a longsword that added a bonus to the damage for his Smite power. Later, when Surt wanted the hide of the dire wolf that he finally killed after it had given the party a long fight, T.A. said that when it was tanned it would give him +1 Armor to attacks from the back. Neither the rolling for who the magic item would suit nor the making up the magic items on the spot was anything he'd seen me do, but it worked well, he came up with nifty magic items that weren't overpowering, and it was neat: no boring “you find a +1 sword” here. In some ways I think it was very “Old School”, in a good way. (I'll talk about “Old School” some other time.)

Attending

• L.B., playing Amy and Josiah
• T.A., playing Billy and David
• E.A., playing Catherine
• M.A., playing Devlin

Actual Play

The PCs in this adventure are all kids, and T.A. wasn't any too happy that none of the characters had any weapons more effective than a slingshot! Still, they all had fun with the first two sections of the adventure. In the first they raced small sailboats, and they managed to split the characters up so that all the characters run by the two boys were in one boat and all the characters run by the two girls were in the other boat, and each had fun taunting and distracting the others. I ran it as a chase and let good taunts and distractions affect the Boating rolls of the two captains, and I let every success and raise on the Boating roll move the boat one range increment forward [1], which may not be strictly by the book, but did allow for dramatic changes in position. The girls won on the last Boating roll, and then it was time to eat a picnic lunch. They observed the thug hide the map and papers, dug them up, figured out the notes were in German, reburied them, followed the man who picked them up back to Rydel Mount & figured out that he was the gardener, headed back home (very, very, late), saw the Gypsies cooking fire beyond the old Roman fort & traipsed over to see what was happening.

Introduction

One of the games I ran over the holiday continued a Savage Worlds adventure that I started at Christmas 2007. The adventure is set in the Frontiers of Alusia sometime during the later stages of my original Frontiers of Alusia DragonQuest campaign, but set away from the scenes and characters of that earlier series.

Prehistory

In December 2007 I was looking for an adventure to run for the kids at the family get-together at Christmas. I'd been looking at my notes from my old Frontiers of Alusia campaign and decided it would be neat to revisit Alusia since my brother, one of the players in my original Alusia campaign [1], would be in for Christmas and would probably be playing with the kids. Of course, instead of using DragonQuest or GURPS, the systems I'd used in the original campaign, I wanted to use Savage Worlds, especially since I was giving all the kids who were old enough copies of Savage Worlds: Explorer's Edition that Christmas. I decided to reuse The Tomb of Aghyar, an adventure I'd written for another group that had adventured for a short time in my version of The Frontiers of Alusia, and have my original group's characters feature prominently in the city's gossip but not actually appear in the adventure.

I took the map I drew for the original adventure, added some more rooms, worked up Savage Worlds stats for the opposition (borrowing from Noble Deceit for some thieves guild types), and printed out copies of the pre-generated characters from Against the Orcs and Noble Deceit for the players to choose from, and off we went. It went well, my brother was pleasantly surprised when he figured out what was happening, and everybody had fun being chased by the Thieves Guild, figuring out where the tomb was located, and finally venturing into the tomb itself. As is not uncommon when playing with the kids we didn't finish the adventure that evening, and so had to wait for the next time my brother and his family were in town to continue it. My nephew from out-of-state repeated mentioned how he was looking forward to playing “those games with dice” when he came back for the summer.

Revamp

Fast forward to the summer 2008 visit. The night before we played I decided to remap the dungeon and redo the encounters to add a bit more zing. I was interested by D&D 4E's increased emphasis on encounters with more dynamic aspects, having followed some of the Internet discussions and read H1 – Keep on the Shadowfell, and wanted to see what I could do with Savage Worlds to make encounters be more dynamic.

Wizards of the Coast sells Dungeon Tiles, heavy cardboard [2] tiles with pretty dungeon and outdoor scenes marked off in 1 inch squares. They've also released similar tiles in the D&D Basic Game sets in the past.

There is a browser-based Javascript program called Dungeon Tiles Mapper that lets you design dungeons by dragging and dropping the pictures of the tiles from all those sets onto a grid. It lets you print off pictues of the dungeons you've created along with a list of the tiles needed to build it.

Anyway, I download the program and spend some time fiddling with it. It has some quirks and some outright bugs, but overall it is very useful. I was able to make a more interesting dungeon layout pretty easily. I then spent some time rethinking the encounters, looking for ways to make them more dynamic.

Actual Play, Part 1

The first room I changed the least. I already had an WC ooze and a fire trap, but I added a vicious bug swarm in a pile of skulls in one corner near the entrance. When they looted the pile of skulls they disturbed the swarm and after a couple of rounds where the two looters failed to stop the swarm and the swarm failed to damage the looters, everybody moved away to the other side of the room while one of them used fear to send the swarm scurrying. Of course, in the process they moved into the area of the ooze, which was actually dispersed under the dirt floor of the room. It oozed up through and around their legs, and they had to make Strength rolls to break free while the ooze got to try to completely envelope one of them and all had a chance of being damgaged by the acid ooze around their legs. They managed to break free, and one got off a lucky shot with their crossbow, acing their Shooting roll and then acing the damage roll so high I ruled that the shot hit the plum-sized brain of the creature and killed it outright. After that they searched the room, avoiding the depression left by the ooze erupting from the floor and the acidic liquid left by the dying ooze, and finally found a secret door out. Unfortunately, the rogue set off the trap on the door, a fire blast, and caught fire and fell back into the remains ooze, setting it on fire in turn. Now they had to hurry to rescue him and leave the room before the burning ooze rendered it unihabitable. They left through the new tunnel, which lead a few feet to a a shaft down to another short corridor that opened up into a larger room.

That's where we broke for lunch.

Actual Play, Part 2

After lunch we switched play to a different house (mine, just next door), and one of the younger players, M.A., wanted to play. I had a character sheet he could use [3], so on the spur of the moment I added a mystical column of light in the next room as a prison where the adventurers would find his new character.

That room was much larger, but I'd set it up with with a pool in the middle that took up much of the room, and around several of the walls were a number of alcoves. When I added the mystical column of light, I put it on a short circular pedestal on a square base in the middle of the pool. The PCs could easily jump (not even requiring a roll) from the six-inch tall lip around the pool to the base, but could only balance and move around the base with difficulty. An early experiment with poking the column of light with an unlit torch destroyed the torch and revealed that the rather-more-viscous-than-water liquid in the pool was very caustic. Cautious investigation by T.B.'s combat mage revealed the proper method of manually disabling the mystic column, and after some careful manipulations by T.A.'s rogue, M.A.'s new PC, a paladin of the Holy Light, was with the group.

While improvising a description of his cuirbouilli armor during the initial get-to-know-you conversation the serendipitous juxtaposition of my description of a design on his armor and a aced Smarts roll by L.B., who was playing a priestess of the Holy Light, inspired me to add to the new paladin's backstory that he was the last living paladin of the Holy Light, imprisoned here in agony for — his captors thought — all eternity as punishment by the pirates who destroyed the last stronghold of the order of the Paladins of the Holy Light, and who it was thought had killed last Paladin of the Holy Light. L.B.'s priestess informed the rest of the group of the paladin's identity and his importance, and several of the players immediately assumed the paladin would set about reforming the Order of the Paladins of the Holy Light. M.A. thought all this was neat. (He's 6, BTW.)

During all of this the PCs had dispersed around the room, and it was at this point that they finally noticed that the liquid in the pool had become very agitated, with waves as tall as a man, and suddenly it was flinging globs of acidic gloop at them. Several were hit, some were injured, and one had his precious chainmail damaged by the gloop. Luckily, they had the example of the earlier ooze's remains catching on fire and had plenty of oil, and proceeded to set the gloop pool ablaze, which quickly killed it, to my dismay. [4]

Just before the beginning of the glooping, B.B.'s fighter made a Notice roll and figured out that the dusty cobwebs in the alcoves at both ends of the room concealed leathery corpses. He wanted to start stabbing the corpse in each alcove before moving on to the next. Knowing that this would simply bring the corpses out to fight him as he moved toward the alcove I decided it would be better to charge a “Divine Inspiration” tax and take one of his Bennies and tell him it was a bad idea, so they didn't end up fighting the eighteen zombies at the same time as the Wild Card gloop.

However, as soon as they opened the door out of the room, the eighteen zombies came out to attack. Since B.B.'s fighter had noticed the corpses earlier and warned the others of the alcoves' contents I gave them a Notice role with a bonus, so they had a round to decide where they would be when the zombies actually attacked. Most lined up at the end of the room with the door out, but D.B.'s dwarven fighter moved back halfway through the room, planing to get a first shot at the ones coming from the other side with his crossbow, then switch to his axe.

It was M.A.'s paladin's turn to shine: he got the Joker for initiative early in the fight and proceeded to ace his Fighting roll and really ace his damage roll. I decided that the return of the Last Paladin of the Holy Light to the world and his almost immediate return to the fight against Darkness was such a momentous occasion that he had been inspired by the Holy Light and began to glow and his sword, swung for the first time in over 200 years, cut through the heads of the three nearest zombies even before they had completely left the alcoves. The paladin retained the glow and a small bonus through-out the rest of the fight. B.B. remarked that his fighter was inspired by this, and slightly later in the fight when he aced one of his rolls I ruled that he picked up a slight glow for the moment. At the end of the fight B.B. decided he wanted to become a Paladin of the Holy Light as well.

In the mean time, everybody else had been whacking at the zombies. D.B.'s dwarf was doing wonders with Sweep, keeping a significant number of the zombies from attacking the others from behind. T.A.'s rogue was stabbing away Two-fisted with his knives and both of the girls (who had independently and without me knowing at the beginning had picked two female clerics with Pacifist; I might have suggested one or the other take one of the other female pregens without Pacifist had I known) were quite happy to be taking out these unnatural creatures.

T.B.'s combat mage had been plagued with really bad rolls all night, and he was getting perturbed. I had actually missed pointing out a couple of bonuses he should have got that would have made one or two of his earlier attacks hit, so I gave him a small bonus on his last attack roll, which got him a hit with raise and with the extra d6 of damage he aced a couple of his damage dice and got to totally disintegrate the last zombie, which made up for the bad time he had earlier.

With the zombies truly dead and the gloop still blazing, it was time again for some quick looting and then out the door to the next encounter. Unfortunately, we had to end things there, to be resumed at Christmas 2008.

Remarks

In hindsight, switching houses in the middle of the game was a bad thing for the game [5]: we lost a lot of time moving things and setting up again. On the other had, it did help get rid of distractions. I think in the future at this big family gatherings at the farm I'll just plan to have gaming set up at my house, and we can just migrate people there when it's time to play.

The Dungeon Tiles make nice looking dungeons, but are tedious to organize; finding the right tiles takes too much time unless you can do it before the game, and they are surprisingly bulky. I still haven't figured out if I've lost any of the tiles. I need to try some PDF tile sets to see if it's more convenient when I can just print out as many tiles as I want on cardstock, instead of having a limited number of much thicker tiles.

When playing with the kids, I tend to let really high aces do things that are just plain cool, like letting a damage roll that aced with enough raises to do a half-a-dozen wounds if the PC had been attacking a Wild Card to instead take out several side-by-side Extras, and/or add some cool special effects, like the glow and bonus for M.A.'s paladin, the much shorter glow for B.B's fighter, and T.B.'s combat mage's disintegration of the last zombie.

I also tend to be fairly lenient with bonuses if I realize I'd made a mistake in an earlier round that could have made an earlier attack a success, retconning those earlier misses into “you spent a couple rounds getting this attack set up right, and boy did you hit it this time!” It's not going to do me any good to not recognize my mistakes and hide behind the letter of rules and send a kid away from the table unhappy. All but one of the kids I play with regularly is 11 or younger, and we often don't get to play more than once month, if that. If I was playing with adults or older kids, or we played often enough that even the younger kids had the rules down perfectly I'd be stricter.

Savage Worlds doesn't have all of D&D 4e's mechanics for dynamics, such as special rules for shifting and pushing and pulling, and I didn't really do anything particular in these sessions to do that with Savage Worlds other than trying to have more terrain obstacles and have more than one opponent per room. Things seemed to be pretty dynamic in play. I think the things that Savage Worlds does have still let you do dynamic things easily, though with more recourse to GM judgement.

Attending

• T.K.B. — GM
• B.B. — Playing the Pirates of the Spanish Main pregens, Alice Pettigrew, Isaiah Kestrel, Phillipe Gujon, Scarred Jack

Actual Play

I let B.B. make 18 bombs out of powder and kegs and nails, etc., from the Solarah and blow up most of the village. The PCs got away with Isabella and two small chests of treasure.