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

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.)

Attending

Actual Play

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

Clockwise starting with the Animator:

• L.B. — the Animator
• E.A. — Rachel Rabbit
• M.A. — Pete Pig
• T.A. — Chris the Chicken
• T.K.B. & D.B. — Pat the Pilgrim

Actual Play

E.A., M.A., and T.A. came over to play Thanksgiving morning to play before heading next door to the holiday meal at Grandma's.

Not long after we started D.B. arrived, looking for his cousins, and since we were playing, I bowed out and handed Pat the Pilgrim over to Dan.

The kids all seemed to be having fun, and L.B. said she enjoyed running the game, although she did say that playing was more fun.

Attending

• T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord
• M.A., playing Niall, a cleric
• L.B., playing Caramel, a halfling
• T.A., playing Angrim, and Elf

Overview

This was another short session, and since one of the regular players was missing (E.A.) I decided to run something other than B2.

Attempt #1

Took SE branch, to room S. Eventually fled, jumping and pulling Caramel up, and back to town.

Attempt #2

Took SW branch to G, retreated to passage, then ran through to SW branch, killed 2 goblins, then killed goblins from other side who came up behind. Loot: 14 cp, 9 cp, 12 cp, 4 maces, 2 crossbows, 4 scale armor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 7^th 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.

Introduction

Fudge Bunnies & Burrows is the first RPG that I played with any of the kids, and was probably the first RPG that I played with most of them. It's ideal for introducing kids to RPGs: bunnies are familiar enough for them to grasp the idea quickly, but different enough so that it's neat.

[This is an after-the-fact post. Again, I could have sworn I'd written something about this before.]

I found my notes on this, which reminded me of some of the things that happened.

I ran the first example adventure from GURPS Bunnies & Burrows, “The Herbmaster's Plea”, p. 94. I used Steffan O'Sullivan's Fudge Bunnies characters, and let the players pick the ones they liked best. Several of the players had probably played this scenario before, but it was enough years ago that they'd forgotten it, and I changed things around a bit. I still had the map I drew of the barn from the farm from “The Herbmaster's Plea” for a B&B game on 2003/01/18 with B.B. & T.A. [1], so I could reuse that.

Attending

• M.B. & C.P.B, jointly playing Chamomile, a bunny with healing powers
• L.B., playing Raspbery, a storytelling, risk-taking bunny
• T.A., playing Stripe, a capable young King's Scout bunny
• D.B., playing Oakroot, a solid and reliable, very strong but somewhat dim member of the Owsla.

Actual Play

They went through the forest on the way to the farm, and were attacked by mongooses. In evading the mongooses they ran off separately and all of them but Stripe got lost. Oakroot and Raspberry eventually got back together and were bickering so much (in character) that I figured their bunnies must be brother and sister. Oakroot and Raspberry made so much noise that the didn't notice the bear, and almost ran into him. Oakroot was so confused that he ran into a tree! Raspberry had dashed ahead and hidden behind another tree, and when she say the bear approaching Oakroot she used her skill Throw your Voice to distract the bear long enough for her and Oakroot to escape. Stripe had tracked them down and had been watching them from a safe distance, and soon joined up with them. They found the others at the edge of the forest, and headed off for the farm. They went into the hedge, but just managed to stop before one of them got caught in one of the traps in the hedge. They sneaked along the hedge, and then stuck across the new-mown hay field to the pig pen, where they spent some time talking with the pigs, who were very bored. They decided to let the pigs loose as a distraction, but they needed a lever to open the gate to the pigpen. They went through the pigpen, through the chicken house (asking the rooster first), and into the tractor shed, where they found a screwdriver. They eventually got the gate open, with the cooperation of the pigs, and in the confusion while the dog was distracted they dashed across into the barn.

In the barn they eventually found the herbmaster in one of a set of rabbit hutches in the hayloft of the barn, and they managed to figure out how to open the hutches and set all the bunnies inside free. Oakroot and Stripe accidentally scared the hutch rabbits, and one set didn't want to escape to the warren and were making lots of noise to alert the cat that something was wrong. Raspberry used her Storytelling skill and Enthrallingly Charismatic supernormal power to calm them down by telling them a story about .. FIXME: spelling? Elharairah and convince them to come along quietly.

They eluded the rats and all made it back safe to the warren, which welcomed the new rabbits joyfully.

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

• T.A. played Nektar
• E.A. played Betheny
• L.B. played Erica
• M.A. played Gorge (pronounced “George”)

Actual Play

The characters followed the Teleks to the Tooth Decay, where Nektar kept trying to keep them away from the ship. Luckily by the time the others caught on they were too close and got snagged by the arm. Inside they wasted no time aggravating Bob, so when Torgo told them he'd be sending troops to imprison them Bob dumped them out of the Tomato and told them they were contractually obligated to foil Torgo's fiendish plans. They went out into the corridor and were immediately run over by the robot car carrying fruits, and were riding it back to the source when a ragged dentist spotted them and jumped and grabbed Bethany off Erica's back, tucking and rolling into a nearby bubble. The others followed quickly, and soon everyone found themshelves the targets of primitive dentists. At one point everybody was being dragged by one or more dentist toward dilapidated dentist chairs of one unpleasant sort or another, but in the end only Betheny ended up in a chair and had her teeth drilled — after being anesthetized, of course! It was at this point that a terrible noise was heard in the distance and the dentists and their chairs and even some of the trees ran off.

And that's where we left them for the time being.

Aftermath

As usual I found Toon to be very tiring to run, but worth it.

Attending

• T.A.
• E.A.
• M.A.
• L.B.

Character Creation

For some reason Toon and Buggin' are the games we've done character creation in the most. (For the Savage Worlds games I've been letting them choose from pregenerated characters, probably because most of them have been one-shots.)

We spent most of the evening doing character creation, and everybody ended up with neat characters.

• T.A. created Nektar, a three foot tall blue alien with golden eyes and antennae like Shrek's who was kidnapped and forced to join the Car Blazers and who just wants to escape.
• E.A. created Betheny, a 2 inch tall mini-me with wings who always has to be in the middle of things and joined the Car Blazers because she didn't like the orphanage, and who with a Muscle of 3 ended up the strongest character!
• L.B. created Erica, a bunny with a jetpack who was in it for the carrots, belives everybody should have a special blankie, and who has the urge to defeat villans and protect friends and their possessions.
• M.A. created Gorge (pronounced “George”), an alien from the sun, a humanoid solar flare with a belt with two holsters and flame guns who joined the Car Blazers to get to burn things.

E.A. started the orphanage idea, and when every single last one of them rolled a 3+6=9 for Hit Points, I decided that they must have all been orphans from different orphanages that the routine medical workup on joining the Car Blazers proved conclusively that they were quadruplets separated at birth!

I got the kids to laugh uproariously even before character generation was over. E.A. kept going on about how horrible the orphanage had been, and everytime she did an orphanage matron would pop out of nowhere, show evidence that the orphanage had actually been a great place, and then disappear. E.A. kept making up things that were more and more difficult to disprove, and the orphanage matron would go to more and more absurd lengths to disprove them, pulling the younger Betheny out of pictures of luxury and comparing DNA from her blood to that of the older Betheny, etc. This was really fun, and helped keep character generation from dragging too much.

T.A., an alien, wanted to make sure that the Car Blazers' unbreakable 5-year contract used normal-length years — which made me laugh sinisterly.

Actual Play

After character creation we only had 45 minutes to play, but we went ahead and started on the “Car Blazers” Series Pilot. They got introduced to the Teleks and eventually blew two of their battleships to pieces, and then spotted two other Telek ships leaving the system, and that's where we left them for that evening.

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…

Reflections

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

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

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.

Remarks

I find that Buggin' is less work for me to run than Toon. The system is simpler, a character sheet and the character creation rules all fit on one page of paper [1], and I don't have to worry about making things funny, since the genre doesn't require humor (although the players usually add plenty of it themselves). It's usually pretty easy to come up with adventure ideas on the fly, since the genre is ubiquitous in TV and movies; I'd still find an adventure generator useful for inspiration, though.

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.

Attending

• T.K.B — GM
• D.B. — playing two characters
• T.A. — playing two characters

Actual Play

Two of the kids, T.A. and D.B., wanted to play an RPG, so I pulled out Tunnels & Trolls (5th edition). They picked from the pre-generated characters in the T&T box (I had photocopied them some time before), choosing a Dwarf Warrior named Bjorn, two Human Warriors named Hrolf (renamed Ralph) and Ragnar, and a Dwarf Rogue named Sturri. They ventured into “Trollstone Caverns”, the example dungeon from the T&T rulebook, traveling through areas 1, 2, 12, and 11, then back out the same way, as they had ended up pretty wounded.

Attending

I'm guessing at who attended (although I know B.B. was definitely there) based on player names printed on the character sheets, but they may or may not have played in this session. I think they did, because I wrote something “They did manage to gather some vegetables as they fled.” in my original notes.

• T.K.B. — GM
• B.B. — Chamomile, a bunny
• C.B. — Nimble, a bunny
• P.B. —

Actual Play

I ran the first example adventure from GURPS Bunnies & Burrows, “The Herbmaster's Plea”, p. 94, for my nephew B.B. using Fudge. [1] He successfully rescued Rosin. Ended up in the Orchard on the way to the bean field, after a run-in with the thugs. They did manage to gather some vegetables as they fled. It looks like I named the captain of the Owsla Bayberry.

I think this was the first time I ran a roleplaying game for one of the kids. I ran at least four Fudge Bunnies & Burrows for B.B. and various of the kids and their parents.