I'm back to DMing at a table again after a long hiatus. I was at a seminar at work and to add randomness to a teamwork exercise the facilitators brought out some 6-sided dice. I was feeling cheeky the next day and brought my big bag of gaming dice. This led to a co-worker asking me if I ever played D&D and asking if I could run a game for him and his two tweens. He tried to run 5E himself with his kids, but they struggled with it. I decided why the heck not, since in the previous year I did a single short game session separately for my daughter and son the previous year.
My son asked to come along and I brought a few books with me. My copy of Castles and Crusades rulebooks, my 1st edition D&D rulebooks, and the latest Goodman Games version of the BECMI adventure The Lost City. Character creation took less than 20 minutes and we were off. I had to replace a few of the original Lost City monsters to make the game more desert-themed (Mystara Hutaakens instead of hobgoblins, snakes replacing non-desert animals, scorpions replacing giant bees, etc). Also, in the the Lost City's first room the characters stumbled into a wounded and dying follower of Gorm who told them that the son of their leader had been captured by the worshippers of the Tentacled One and beseeched the heroes to rescue him. Then the wounded man died and the characters, who were out of food and water, decided to press on. They met several sets of crazed inhabitants (mostly harmless) and had a grand old time looting the first two upper levels of the pyramid. They even defeated a band of Zargon worshippers, rescued the son of the Gorm chief (though he was drugged up by a mixture prepared by the Zargon worshippers), and almost got the son all the way to the base of the followers of Gorm, but they got greedy and decided to try to loot some treasure underneath a hive of scorpions... they ended up getting themselves and the young man killed. Total TPK, but I was called the next day and asked to do another session.
The second time we created new C&C characters using the Duchy of Karameikos as the backdrop. The characters started at Threshold as new adventurers known to hangout at a small shrine and poorhouse run by a cleric called Aleena. My co-worker is playing a Fighter with a connection to a minor noble family that lost their meager holdings once Duke Karameikos took over the land. His son is an elven rogue with a crossbow. His daughter is playing a half-elf wizard that rolled luckily and has a faerie dragon familiar. My son is playing a half-orc ranger who specializes in rivers and coastlines.
The NPC Aleena, her father, and some of their associates, are all concerned over the activities of an organization known as the Iron Ring. There is a rumor that Bargle, a member of the Black Eagle Barony, is also operating in the area and may have some connections to the Iron Ring. In their first adventure, Aleena asked the party to investigate a bunch of ghost pirates that came ashore to Threshold recently and kidnapped some people and stole some loot. A paladin friend of hers went to investigate a manor house northwest and up the river, since he found shimmering paint on the docks and suspected that the ghosts and their ghost barge were fakes. He had not come back. The party went to the manor house and we went through a modified, truncated version of the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, with the adventure ending with them finding the river pirate barge under the manor. The party recovered the body of the murdered paladin (but kept his armor), discovered an illusionist's stash of hidden treasure, and fought and killed the pirates, including a bugbear wearing an Iron Ring. The wizard learned a bunch of illusionist magic, to her delight. They also found correspondence to a man named Bargle that was suspicious. My son's character freed some surviving prisoners, and with their help he sailed the barge and its stolen goods back to Threshold.
Aleena, disturbed about the evidence found, had the party members meet with her father. They were surprised to find that her father was the ruler of Threshold... well three of them were surprised. The fighter had a background knowledge of Royal History and the player rolled his knowledge check well enough and was clued in. The ruler of Threshold asked the party to meet a friend of his that lived a day's travel to the east. His friend, Lord Kavorkian, had been investigating evidence about the Iron Ring and would likely need the new bits of clues the party discovered. Unfortunately, when the party got to Kavorkian's manor, they found that the man had recently died and his one-armed son in charge. Although at first suspicious of the son, after a discussion over dinner the party realized he seemed to be an honest knight that recently fell on hard times, losing both his father and his arm. He asked the party to go into the dungeon underneath the manor and find a special sword, an expensive tiara, and his father's notes on the Iron Ring. Thus the party left and successfully navigated the first half of the B12 module: Queen's Harvest.
The party survived, but were pretty battered. They brought back the sword, tiara, notes, and two would-be thieves from Specularum that messed up and fell into an early pit trap. Although the notes were recovered, they were in coded cypher and it would take some time to decipher them. The tiara was given by the new lord of Kavorkian manor to Aleena upon her arrival with her father. She blushed at the site of her new dowry and her father gave his blessing for the engagement. The new Lord Kavorkian asked if the party would accompany him to Specularum so he could sell off some small properties in the area. The road was dangerous and he only had one-arm, after all. And they could bring their two new thieves with them, and if the ladies behaved themselves and helped the heroes navigate around Specularum they could earn a pardon and let bygones be bygones. Besides, the nicer of the two prisoners seemed a kind enough sort in her own way, and appreciated the PC thieves' skills in combat and lockpicking. In addition, a festival was about to kick off in Specularum that the heroes would probably enjoy attending for a few days before everyone returned to the manor...
What they didn't know is they were about to encounter the Veiled Society. This is where we left off. The party is 3rd level and will go through the Veiled Society module. They have begun to meet NPCs that will introduce them to a wider world of intrigue and politics. Both Aleena and the new Lord of Kavorkian manor are members of the Order of the Gryphon. They oppose the Iron Ring. The deciphered notes will lead them to the 2nd half of the Queen's Harvest module. The heroes are also going to have some options to choose alliances. They may decide to side with the Duchy filled with foreign aristocrats or with the old, displaced noble families. They may also choose to support the Iron Ring instead of the Order of the Gryphon, but honestly they already had that choice and it seems natural that they will continue to help Aleena versus the Iron Ring and its mastermind. We'll see where this goes...
I'm using a modified version of C&C. I laid out some skills and natural abilities. The ranger gets bonuses to tracking and hiding along waterways and coastlines. The fighter is knowledgable in royal lineages and local history. The thief can use his Thieves Cant to get along with other rogue-like characters and can sometimes detect when the party is being tricked or a con game. The wizard can detect and read magic with a skill check. We use the C&C siege engine for these skill checks. It's worked out pretty well so far.
Some final observations... the old modules really hold up for the kind of play I wanted. No adventure module is perfect, but I find that the tweaks I have to make to the older modules is minimal. At first I was tempted to run a Paizo adventure path like the Shackled City or Age of Worms, but I found that it would have been hard to flex from the rails those longer adventure paths require. Deviating too much from what is written in those adventure paths causes more work than they are worth. It is much easier to string a few old school modules together and thread them together by some of the older campaign settings. Mostly because the old modules and campaign settings are more like frames that rely on the DM to put the details onto.
Oh, and one more thing... just saw the D&D movie but didn't have high hopes for it going in. I was honestly surprised by how good it was and how much I enjoyed myself. I definitely recommend a watch. It was much better than the trailers made it seem.
My son asked to come along and I brought a few books with me. My copy of Castles and Crusades rulebooks, my 1st edition D&D rulebooks, and the latest Goodman Games version of the BECMI adventure The Lost City. Character creation took less than 20 minutes and we were off. I had to replace a few of the original Lost City monsters to make the game more desert-themed (Mystara Hutaakens instead of hobgoblins, snakes replacing non-desert animals, scorpions replacing giant bees, etc). Also, in the the Lost City's first room the characters stumbled into a wounded and dying follower of Gorm who told them that the son of their leader had been captured by the worshippers of the Tentacled One and beseeched the heroes to rescue him. Then the wounded man died and the characters, who were out of food and water, decided to press on. They met several sets of crazed inhabitants (mostly harmless) and had a grand old time looting the first two upper levels of the pyramid. They even defeated a band of Zargon worshippers, rescued the son of the Gorm chief (though he was drugged up by a mixture prepared by the Zargon worshippers), and almost got the son all the way to the base of the followers of Gorm, but they got greedy and decided to try to loot some treasure underneath a hive of scorpions... they ended up getting themselves and the young man killed. Total TPK, but I was called the next day and asked to do another session.
The second time we created new C&C characters using the Duchy of Karameikos as the backdrop. The characters started at Threshold as new adventurers known to hangout at a small shrine and poorhouse run by a cleric called Aleena. My co-worker is playing a Fighter with a connection to a minor noble family that lost their meager holdings once Duke Karameikos took over the land. His son is an elven rogue with a crossbow. His daughter is playing a half-elf wizard that rolled luckily and has a faerie dragon familiar. My son is playing a half-orc ranger who specializes in rivers and coastlines.
The NPC Aleena, her father, and some of their associates, are all concerned over the activities of an organization known as the Iron Ring. There is a rumor that Bargle, a member of the Black Eagle Barony, is also operating in the area and may have some connections to the Iron Ring. In their first adventure, Aleena asked the party to investigate a bunch of ghost pirates that came ashore to Threshold recently and kidnapped some people and stole some loot. A paladin friend of hers went to investigate a manor house northwest and up the river, since he found shimmering paint on the docks and suspected that the ghosts and their ghost barge were fakes. He had not come back. The party went to the manor house and we went through a modified, truncated version of the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, with the adventure ending with them finding the river pirate barge under the manor. The party recovered the body of the murdered paladin (but kept his armor), discovered an illusionist's stash of hidden treasure, and fought and killed the pirates, including a bugbear wearing an Iron Ring. The wizard learned a bunch of illusionist magic, to her delight. They also found correspondence to a man named Bargle that was suspicious. My son's character freed some surviving prisoners, and with their help he sailed the barge and its stolen goods back to Threshold.
Aleena, disturbed about the evidence found, had the party members meet with her father. They were surprised to find that her father was the ruler of Threshold... well three of them were surprised. The fighter had a background knowledge of Royal History and the player rolled his knowledge check well enough and was clued in. The ruler of Threshold asked the party to meet a friend of his that lived a day's travel to the east. His friend, Lord Kavorkian, had been investigating evidence about the Iron Ring and would likely need the new bits of clues the party discovered. Unfortunately, when the party got to Kavorkian's manor, they found that the man had recently died and his one-armed son in charge. Although at first suspicious of the son, after a discussion over dinner the party realized he seemed to be an honest knight that recently fell on hard times, losing both his father and his arm. He asked the party to go into the dungeon underneath the manor and find a special sword, an expensive tiara, and his father's notes on the Iron Ring. Thus the party left and successfully navigated the first half of the B12 module: Queen's Harvest.
The party survived, but were pretty battered. They brought back the sword, tiara, notes, and two would-be thieves from Specularum that messed up and fell into an early pit trap. Although the notes were recovered, they were in coded cypher and it would take some time to decipher them. The tiara was given by the new lord of Kavorkian manor to Aleena upon her arrival with her father. She blushed at the site of her new dowry and her father gave his blessing for the engagement. The new Lord Kavorkian asked if the party would accompany him to Specularum so he could sell off some small properties in the area. The road was dangerous and he only had one-arm, after all. And they could bring their two new thieves with them, and if the ladies behaved themselves and helped the heroes navigate around Specularum they could earn a pardon and let bygones be bygones. Besides, the nicer of the two prisoners seemed a kind enough sort in her own way, and appreciated the PC thieves' skills in combat and lockpicking. In addition, a festival was about to kick off in Specularum that the heroes would probably enjoy attending for a few days before everyone returned to the manor...
What they didn't know is they were about to encounter the Veiled Society. This is where we left off. The party is 3rd level and will go through the Veiled Society module. They have begun to meet NPCs that will introduce them to a wider world of intrigue and politics. Both Aleena and the new Lord of Kavorkian manor are members of the Order of the Gryphon. They oppose the Iron Ring. The deciphered notes will lead them to the 2nd half of the Queen's Harvest module. The heroes are also going to have some options to choose alliances. They may decide to side with the Duchy filled with foreign aristocrats or with the old, displaced noble families. They may also choose to support the Iron Ring instead of the Order of the Gryphon, but honestly they already had that choice and it seems natural that they will continue to help Aleena versus the Iron Ring and its mastermind. We'll see where this goes...
I'm using a modified version of C&C. I laid out some skills and natural abilities. The ranger gets bonuses to tracking and hiding along waterways and coastlines. The fighter is knowledgable in royal lineages and local history. The thief can use his Thieves Cant to get along with other rogue-like characters and can sometimes detect when the party is being tricked or a con game. The wizard can detect and read magic with a skill check. We use the C&C siege engine for these skill checks. It's worked out pretty well so far.
Some final observations... the old modules really hold up for the kind of play I wanted. No adventure module is perfect, but I find that the tweaks I have to make to the older modules is minimal. At first I was tempted to run a Paizo adventure path like the Shackled City or Age of Worms, but I found that it would have been hard to flex from the rails those longer adventure paths require. Deviating too much from what is written in those adventure paths causes more work than they are worth. It is much easier to string a few old school modules together and thread them together by some of the older campaign settings. Mostly because the old modules and campaign settings are more like frames that rely on the DM to put the details onto.
Oh, and one more thing... just saw the D&D movie but didn't have high hopes for it going in. I was honestly surprised by how good it was and how much I enjoyed myself. I definitely recommend a watch. It was much better than the trailers made it seem.
