Should D&D be Competitive?

(The article below discusses Tournament D&D, if you are unfamiliar with that concept, please click here for an explanation.)

              Something happened last week in my local area there was a 5e D&D tournament. I know this was a popular event in the D&D in the 70s and especially the 80s, but as far as I know seemed to start to die out with the introduction of 2nd edition. I joined the hobby right as 2nd Edition came out and was quite young so I was never able to attend any of these events in their heyday, but in reading and listing to interviews with some of D&D founding members, it was not only popular, but highly profitable. It seems weird that something that was this profitable (according to interviews) would not have continued with D&D in a bigger fashion or at least be picked up by someone else, unless the culture had changed dramatically. I know that there are still many versions of “organized play” i.e. Adventurers League, Pathfinder Society, etc, but I believe people would not classify those as competitive. I also know that tournaments still happen at major events, but from what I can gather, they are not nearly as popular. 

                I use to go to DragonCon every year before my son was born. I was there 1999 thru 2012, and there was an event that I played in a few times called “Cheese Grinder”. It appears that they are still running these up to today, but the goal was to live the longest in a series of death trap style rooms. You make the “cheesiest” character within the guidelines and try to not die. If you die you are immediately replaced by another person. I think it was $1-3 per character, and you waited in a bull pen for your turn. It was competitive D&D in a sense, because you were only out for yourself. These events were a lot of fun, I wouldn’t exactly call it a tournament, but it had some of the same elements that a tournament might have.

Responsible for tournaments in the past.

With the Old-School Revival being gaining a lot of traction, and 5e being super popular in the past few years it seems that these type of events might start gaining traction too. If it is though, I am unaware of it. It also seems that with the advent of computers and the technological revolution it would be easier to organize and get something like this running. Would people play in it though? Here is the kicker from the story above about the D&D tournament that was local here in town, it was a ghost town. There are several possible reasons, the store hosting is very new and this was an attempt to get people in the door. The city I am in has about 5 solid gaming stores with D&D Adventurers League running 5-10 tables per event, so players in the area is not an issue. I also run a D&D club at my local college with about 30 members, I offered to run a tournament at a games day we were having, and I received no interest in the idea at all. Competitive D&D was not accepted by newer generations in my group.

From Designers & Dragons, shows that AD&D was being developed for the tournament scene.

Could one of the Old School Publishers like Goodman, Necrotic Gnome, Goblinoid Press, or Frog God Games step up and organize these tournaments on a semi-regular basis? I know that they are often extremely small companies, but I believe they could get a lot of help from volunteers in the community. Or has the culture of D&D shifted over the years and the tournament scene could never get to the place it was before? The people that play D&D now are not into the idea of being competitive, and only want to play a co-operative experience. Could WotC create a new competitive scene with 5e D&D and promote it within the community? With Twitch and YouTube taking off it seems like you could find a possible wider audience for tournaments with D&D. ESports and D&D are popular on those mediums so maybe the tournament scene could flourish?

Sweep the character sheet, do you have a problem with that?

This brings us to the overall question, should D&D ever be played competitively? D&D has its roots in wargaming, and wargamers have tournaments all the time. Have role-playing games separated themselves so far from the roots that tournaments are no longer a viable option? I find it to be an interesting question. Have any thoughts on the matter? Post below with your opinions.





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My $17 Treasure Haul

I discovered at my local hobby shop that they sell used RPG books. I was able to score some sweet deals over the holidays. They only charge half price of the original cover. Apparently a local gamer was moving to Japan and had to sell his collection, so the store bought it. It is two full Ikea bookshelves full of all sorts of goodness. I was able to snag a few choice items that I am listing below.

Books I Did Get

        I have been on the hunt for this one for awhile, and in fact had bid on it in an auction and lost only the day before. They could not find a listed price for it, so they sold it to me for $8. I told them it was more than fair and I appreciated it. I actually left that day and it was the only book that I purchased. I saw the two books below, but I did not get them. Over the week I was kicking myself for not getting the Arms & Equipment book, because it is great. The Complete Ranger Handbook is fun and full of great ideas and was more of a "I just want it purchase." So I went back to the store, which is 45 minutes away, just for these two books. For those two I was charged $9 in total, which is amazing.

Books I Did Not Get

         Below are pictures of books that I did not get, but caught my eye. The question is should I get them? You tell me. Many of them are from box sets, but are missing the box and the accompanying materials. Did I miss any gems?

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Is There a Way to Make Our Hobby Healthier?

                Last Monday while I was actually in the middle of posting my Orc race as class, I started having some chest pains. I was on break at work and was rushed by EMT to the local hospital where I had to stay for 24 hours of observation. I appears to not be related to my heart directly, in the sense that I did not have a heart attack, but I still might have some blockages, tests will tell. I also noticed lately that many of our producers of content that have passed on, on average, went before a ripe old age. The doctors spoke to me about diet and exercise and the entire realm of “lifestyle” changes. The issue that comes up though, does my hobby make me unhealthy?

Trying to protect this bad boy.

                First and foremost this is not solely pointed at roleplaying games, I also have a desk job where I sit for 8+ hours a day. I have an extremely busy life that sometimes prevents any form of exercise, and not the best eating decisions. These factors weigh in far more than anything RPGs are doing to me. That being said, sitting for prolong periods of time and eating the common fair at the usual RPG session is not doing me any favors either. This does not include the time I spend reading RPG books, watching RPG Youtube shows, and writing this blog.

                I am thus reaching out to the community, have you found a way to possible make your RPG time a healthier experience? I think the obvious is to cut the poor foods out of gaming and substitute healthier options, but that only gets you halfway there. Beyond being in a boffer LARP, can you get any form of exercise in your RPG hobby? I think this issue is important to the community as it ages and we will have more and more premature deaths happening in the community.

                This was short and to the point, but I am hoping it can spawn some decent discussion in the community.

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Tips on Starting an Old School Group Near You

      Since the fulfillment started of Old School Essentials I have seen quite a few people attempting to start an OSE game near them. Many are finding that it is a bit harder to do, especially since 5e is the dominant D&D on the market. I recently responded to a person looking to start a game in their area, and saying that the local game store was not helpful. I gave him some advice and I wanted to share it on my blog because I think it is relevant to the greater community at large. Before diving into the OSR scene head first, I was extremely into the Indie Games scene and tried to help their popularity spread as well. I was met with the waves of Pathfinder and D&D games, and people that were unwilling to try things that were different. I did manage to get a local, loyal 30 – 40 person group of Indie gamers into a group that met on a weekly basis. These are some of the tips that worked in my personal experience to get an “unknown” game out into the community.

High quality production values

One – Start Your Own Group

  This seems pretty self-explanatory, but plenty of people just try showing up at random game stores with no organization and expect to find games. The truth is that the big companies are HIGHLY organized. Pathfinder Society, D&D Adventure League, and the Savage Worlds Society are examples of companies that have organized their most rabid fan-base to provide them with hours of free labor. The companies in turn provided them content and better yet, a community that players are often looking for in a game. You need to form your own community. 

Looking for a group is hard work

Meetup is one of the best, but it costs money per month. This allows you to schedule regular game times, allows members to chat, and focuses your search for people in your local area. Another good option that is free is Facebook. Creating a Facebook group has most of the same features as Meetup, but it does not offer the specificity of Meetup. It is very likely people in your area will never find your Facebook group on their own. People go onto Meetup because they are looking to do a certain activity. What I ended up doing was starting the group on Meetup, once it was big enough with consistent members, I made the switch to Facebook. We did lose a few members though, because some people refuse to use Facebook. 

Once you have the group, you need to advertise the group. You can go old fashion and make flyers and hang them in libraries, game stores, and recreation centers. You can also advertise online in local forums, Facebook groups, and other forms of social media. Just know you are going to get a lot more lurkers, than actual people who will show up. My Meetup had about 200 members, but I only ever had about 40 active members. People love to sign up for things, but not actually do those things. The other thing to do is advertise by running games. Many communities have local games days and are looking for GMs, run games there. You must be totally prepared to run games for very small amounts of people, like two, and be prepared to run games for parents with their children. Many times the “hardcore” players are playing 5e and Pathfinder, and you will get what you get. Occasionally though you will get a player that really takes to the system/game and you might get them on a more permanent basis.

Two – Do Not Start With a Campaign

I often see people saying, “Hey, looking to start an OSR group for the first time, I am going to run a Barrowmaze campaign.” This will actually drive people away, or make them not want to start in the first place. Even with the most experience people, Barrowmaze would take a minimum of a year to play. People do not want to make that kind of a commitment right out of the gate. I will harken back to Pathfinder Society and D&D Adventurers League. They are successful in part because they run short adventures that have a resolution at the end. Many people starting out want that kind of an experience. Your best solution is to run a series of one-shot games. This serves two real purposes, one, it is less of a commitment from new players that might not know you or the game style. Two, it gives you time to learn to run these types of games. A campaign has a lot of moving parts, a simple adventure usually follows a solid, small structured event.

I love this short adventure.

       I have run Lamentations of the Flame Princess “A Single, Small Cut” more times than I can count. I used it to introduce the concept of OSR gaming, and it can be done in about 4 hours. There are a ton of cheap or free short adventures that can be used for this kind of an adventure. The trick is to run one game, then ask people if they would like to play again. If they show up again, run another one-shot and rinse and repeat. Eventually you will have a group of regulars that does show up and is taken with the game. You will know they are really taken with the game if they buy their own books. Once this is starting to happen you can broach the subject of starting a lengthy campaign, they might even ask for it. The trick is to not pull the trigger too early, you need to have a solid base before you move into something bigger.

Three – Be Patient

This is not a fast process. It took me at least a year to get even a small, functioning group that met on a regular basis. Even with the vast success of D&D in the world today, it is still am extremely niche market. If you are trying to promote OSR gaming, you are supporting a niche within a niche. This means that it will generally take time to have people come around. The more perseverance you have the more likely this is to happen. You must be completely prepared to run a ton of games, and never play in any games. You have to be prepared to have to organize lots of events to have half of them generate no players. You have to be willing to be the sole driving force behind a group, until it become self-sustaining (which will take a long time). 

Take a moment

It is really nice if you can find a partner that is just as passionate about these games as you. When I was running my Indie RPG group, I had a second person that could help out and I trusted to do a good job. I know this might not always be possible, but it is a great resource if you can find it. This will lighten the load a bit, and you will have someone to lean on when things go wrong, and they will.

Four – Be Prepared To Get Rejected

This is the hardest part of the process. More often than not people will not even want to give your game a shot. They want to stick with what they know or they do try it, and it is not for them. It seems hard to accept because we love the games so much, how could someone possibly not like it? You will get bumped for your tables at cons or stores in order to make room for 5e or possibly Magic The Gathering. It is hard to blame the stores, oftentimes 5e does not bring in huge amounts of money, let alone a game they do not even sell. Always try and support the store and encourage your players to do the same. I always try and buy something when I am playing in a store. Dice, miniatures, or at bare minimum buy a soda or two. This goes a long way to making good with the store.

It will happen

The roughest rejection, and it will happen, is the players who you KNOW had a great time, but happily run back to 5e or Pathfinder. They were excited at the table, making great plans, laughing with the group, they even tell you at the end how much fun they had. When push comes to shove though, if Pathfinder Society is giving away a free super weapon for each character taking place in their society night, players will go to that. I will never understand why people would rather play in a bad 5e game over a good OSE game, but it will happen if you do this long enough. This is not to say that ALL 5e games are bad, and ALL OSE are good. I am talking about specific instances where players told me how bored they were with their Adventure’s League games, but still kept going over doing something different.

Moral of the Story

It is possible to get these games up and going, but it will normally take a large amount of work. Luckily now we do have other resources if this is just not happening in your area, we have the internet. I know there is nothing like playing in a face-to-face game with people around a table, but sometimes we do not have a choice. I am lucky that I still get to play D&D with my friends that I started with in 1989, but I know that not everyone has that ability. I hope what I shared here can help you in the future.

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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode 6 – Tales from the Outer Rim

               As mentioned last episode our group was taking a slight detour from the Caves of Chaos to go to a galaxy far, far away. I have been running D&D for almost two years straight on a weekly basis, and for the past few months I have been running a 5e game as well. I was D&D’d out and I needed a change of pace. I decided to bust out the West End Games Star Wars D6 system for some cinematic goodness. Why WEG Star Wars? Two main reasons, it is what I know (though the last time I played it was the 90s) and it is the best Star Wars RPG. I also wanted to do something that did not resemble a dungeon crawl at all. I printed out a bunch of templates for characters and had the group pick what they wanted. We ended up with a Wookie Warrior, Brash Pilot, Outlaw, Mercenary, and a Technician. You might be asking, “What no Smuggler or Jedi, those are so classic?” I had two additional players, but they both had to leave unexpectedly due to an emergency, and they chose those templates. They left so early as to really not affect the game at all. I went ahead and ran an Instant Adventure, so it might seem familiar. 

REUP Edition

                The conceit of the game was that they were all young people looking to join the Rebellion after the success at the Battle of Yavin. They were to all make their way to a smaller core planet, to start the perilous journey to the Outer Rim to a Rebel training facility. They had never met each other before, and were now being introduced to how the Rebellion does things. As they enter the space port they are told that they will be packed into shipping containers, and smuggled into the Mid-Rim. From there, they would meet with the local Rebellion cell and they would arrange for the rest of their journey. Already the PCs are a little nervous about this plan because it seems risky. Of course it is risky, you are in an act sedition organization live a little. They all get into the different containers, but the group had not planned for a Wookie, and he was forced to crawl into an industrial cylinder and have the ends welded shut and some air holes poked in it. He instantly became a dog in a carrier, and the jokes ran rampant across the table. Also, no one in the group spoke Wookie, so there was communication issues. The transport lifted off and they heard the pilot, Garrack, tell them it would just be a few hours now.

                Smash cut to the next scene as the transport touches down and is immediately greeted by Imperial inspectors. They are requesting the cargo manifests, crew manifests, and want an inspection. Garrack attempts to comply with their demands, but is hesitant when they ask to see what is in the crates. He keeps telling them it is foodstuffs and if he breaks the seal on the containers, it could damage the cargo. The Imperials are not buying it, so Garrack knocks a warning on the side of the Brash Pilot’s container, opens the lid, and hits the Stormtrooper with the lid. I was excited, finally some action, so cinematic combat that is not in my dungeon crawls. I can hear the John Williams score kicking in, and it is about to get awesome. What does the Brash Pilot do? I hesitate to call him Brash at this moment. He stands up and puts his hands in the air to surrender. WWWHHHAAATTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!! My jaw literally hit the floor. A scratch sound across the record and the William’s score ends. I legitimately did not know what to do. The Stormtroopers turn on Garrack and start to kick the shit out of him, and still the BRASH Pilot does nothing.

This was suppose to be an intro fight.

Finally the Outlaw decides to bang on his crate to see if he can get the attention of the Troopers, and he does as a few peel off to inspect it. As they open the crate, he shoots one in the face. This triggers the Wookie to bust out of his container like the Kool Aid Man, Oh Yeah. Each of the PCs now started popping out of the crates to blaze away at the Imperials. The Technician got stuck in his crate, and tried to burn his way out with a plasma torch, but that lasted longer than the combat. The Wookie was a beast and kept walking towards enemy fire absorbing the shots until he picked up a trooper and threw them into the others. The battle ended and Garrack chided the BRASH Pilot for being a bit cowardly, and told them they had to find “The Maze”. He warned them that more Imperials would be on their way and he had to take off.

Not knowing what “The Maze” is, the Technician used his computer to slice into the local network and figured out that it was a bar on the other end of town. While he was in there he decided to poke around and found the plans to the patrol schedule of the local Imperial outpost. They made a few Streetwise rolls to avoid any danger, and made it to The Maze. It was a dark bar with an actual maze-like structure. As they made their way through, they had several encounters. One was a small alien that the Pilot knocked over his drink. They could not understand it, but it was drawing all the wrong kind of attention. The Wookie ended up picking it up, getting kicked, HARD and the little guy scampered off. Next the Mercenary was recognized by a strange mantis-like alien as having worked a job together in the past. The Alien’s human name was Pop, and was trying to seduce the Mercenary. Pop was a little offended when his friends drew him away, and might return at a later date. At this point people are watching them and people in the corners are talking into communicators while looking at them. The Technician in a hurry runs smack dab into a female in Mandalorian Body Armor. She doesn’t say a word, but follows the entire group as they walk by. The Wookie tries to intimidate her, with no success, he also did not notice the Wookie scalps hanging off her belt.

The Maze

They make it to the back of the bar and there is a huge, green alien that is almost the size of the Wookie with a partner who looks almost feline. They pick a fight with the group and for a few round they brawl it out in the bar. Finally guns start to get leveled, and the feline drops a smoke grenade on the ground and it turns out these guys are the Rebellion contacts. They head through a secret compartment into the headquarters for the local Rebellion cell. They meet the Rebel commander, and she explains that they need the group to fly a transport and X-Wing past the Imperial blockade and get supplies to a nearby system. The transport is nearly full, and they need to go to a local port and pick up the last of the delivery, and take it to the ship and get out of here. The transport and the X-Wing are hidden out in the woods, and she give them the coordinates to find them. All their hopes lay on this group and them completing this task. This was as far as we got, we still have a bit to go and I think I want to get through all of this before I return to D&D.

I had a great time playing this side excursion and my advice to any Game Master is to take a break and do something else every now and again. Players if the GM asks to do something like this, go along with them, odds are they need a break in order to recharge their batteries. You do not want to play with a GM that is burnt out, it is not a good experience. I also found out that I really missed this game and cannot believe it has been so long since I played it. I got the REUP edition, which is out on the net, and it takes 2nd edition Revised, and updates it as far as format and adds in materials from popular supplements. It is 500+ pages long, and it is wonderful. I went ahead and had a POD copy made because I like it that much.

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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode 5 – The Bitter Taste of Defeat

This week in the Old School Essentials campaign..... 

               If everything went well for the characters in episode 4, everything went wrong in episode 5. This whole time we have been playing the rolls for random encounters have gone favorably for the players, but not this game. They were relentlessly pounded by the random encounter die, and got little in return for it. We kept a large portion of the party from the previous weeks. We still have the Dwarf, the Cleric, and the Magic-User, but to that we added another Dwarf and another Cleric. To distinguish the Clerics I will refer to the older Cleric as Cleric-tough, and the newer as Cleric-weak. The reason is the newer Cleric-weak, rolled pretty bad and only had 2 HP and couldn’t afford platemail. Everyone at the table kept telling him to buy a grave early in the game, because it is coming. The new Dwarf was a beast and had great stats including a 1 AC and 10 HP, people at the table all pointed and said, “New Tank!”

                The characters headed off to the Caves of Chaos without a guide and without any henchmen. I keep trying to drill into their heads the importance of these things, but they want more money. Apparently the 30 silver a day for torchbearers is too heavy a cost for these adventurers. They do make it to the caves without incident, and immediately head into cave D where they met goblins before. They decide to go towards room 17 where they had the first ever encounter of the campaign and continue on. They discover a set of stairs, and quickly get scared and decide to go back. This whole time I am rolling random encounters. Backtracking and heading into room 19 they start to hear unusual noises. They hear goblins yelling, and general chaos. The Dwarf decides to “sneak” into the room, I advised that the stealth skills of a Dwarf in platemail might not be the best, but he goes ahead anyways. He sees a group of goblins, attacking the air, and shadows flicking around the room. I rolled a random encounter at the same time they were entering the room to I combined the encounters. Everyone in the room saw the Dwarf with his friends close behind and all the PCs heard was, “New friends!” and the beating of wings. They got flashes of images of small humanoids with insect wings moving towards them. I rolled randomly to see how many of the Pixies would stay and which would go to the PCs, all seven of them went to the PCs.  

Truly a worthy foe!

                The PCs almost break ranks immediately, they try yelling to the goblins that they will help with the Pixies. The reaction roll was crap, and the goblins begin to hurl javelins into the party at the same time as the Pixies are stabbing them. The new “tank” Dwarf laughs at the goblins and then gets hit for 6 points of damage and stops laughing. The pixies continue to try and stab the party, almost gutting the Magic-User. The Pixies keep yelling about how much “shiny-ies” the party has and trying to take their gold purses. Eventually they begin to fall back, but the Pixies give chase and are much faster than the party. The Magic-User gets the good idea to throw lots of money on the ground, and after 50 GPs of loss, they manage to stagger away. So much for that endeavor.

                They decide to brave the stairs and begin to backtrack yet again. When they get back to room 17 they run into one of the greatest threats to PCs in the Monsters Manual. It is a random encounter that I always fear to get or to give to PCs, Giant Bees. The 5e players have no idea why my players from previous games are so upset, they do not know about the poison mechanic. The Magic-User decides that now is the time, and casts Sleep. He managed to drop all 9 of the bees and the party walks away unharmed, but it could have been much worse. They then proceed to go up the flights of stairs and find themselves at a hallway with a locked door.

DEADLY!

                The plan started out well, they knocked on the door and pretended to be goblins. The new “tank” Dwarf and Cleric-tough up by the door, the rest of the party hiding down the stairs. The Dwarf knew goblin and was confusing enough to get the Hobgoblins on the other side curious, until he blew it. They told him they were going to open the door and to step back, he then in COMMON told his party to get ready. Hearing this, the hobgoblins knew something was amiss. I described how it took a few seconds then the door came quickly open. One hobgoblin was opening the door and hiding behind it, the others had crossbows ready and fired. Once the shots went through the hobgoblin shut the door and locked it. The bolts went out, and the “tank” Dwarf was struck again he was down to 1 HP. The Cleric-tough stood by the door, as the “Tank” Dwarf crawled away. Sure enough, the door flung open and three more shots came out, this time the “tank” Dwarf dropped. He made his death savings throw, but was out. The Cleric-tough stuck his foot in the door, and ran in as the rest of the party followed.

One of my favorite monsters.

                The Magic-User gave the ‘tank” Dwarf a potion, and he got back 1 hp, but was up. There was a good pitched battle in the room, but the part managed to take out all of the Hobgoblins gaining a whopping 16 GP in the process. They looked down the next corridor and saw only a cavernous, long hallway and decided to head back to the keep, actually poorer then when they started. As they went home I had them roll to see if they got lost, and they did, because guides are there for a reason. This spawned an encounter with Fire Beetles that was not that spectacular due to Sleep. The Magic-User has rolled a minimum of 8 HD of monsters each time he casts it. Someday his luck will run out, but it was not that day.

An old friend with a new face.

               This is where we ended and we are actually taking a 1 week break from the game. I have been running D&D for nearly 2 years straight on a weekly basis. I wanted a “palate cleansing” and decided to run a one shot of WEG Star Wars. I love that game, and have not played it since it was in print. It was one of the defining games of my childhood along with D&D and Robotech. I wanted to do something more cinematic and much less dungeon grind. I will most likely be doing a write-up of Tales from the Outer Rim next week, and then back into the Caves of Chaos from there.

P.S. I almost forgot about this. I told my players that they could set up a will with the bank, and if they brought in new characters, they could have them be a relative. This was a fun little thing, that isn’t too realistic. One of my clever players knows how powerful Sleep is, and is working on copying his spellbook over so that he can will it to his next character. I know B/X does not technically allow this, but I like Magic-Users learning from found materials. They are learning certain lessons, and this is a creative use of the rules.

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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode 4 – The Sweet Taste of Victory

               Last week’s adventure was a massive success for the players. I believe that the two PCs that died last week, came back and made characters that fit the party’s needs better. We lost a Fighter and an Elf last week, they remade characters and have a Cleric and a Magic-User. The Cleric could have made a really good Fighter, but the player wanted to be a Cleric. He has an 18 STR, 13 CON, and 13 DEX, while his WIS is 11. Even so, they have a good tank in the Cleric who will eventually get some spells. The Magic-User rolled pretty average across the board, and that is not bad for a MU. The thing he did roll was the magic number 11 on a d12 for his random spell. Any player of Old SchoolEssentials or BX should know the mythic number 11, because it is Sleep. That spell is just so darn good at low levels and can turn the tide for a party that is in danger. We also had a new player, who was a solid 5e player, but wanted to try older D&D. He really enjoyed the change of pace and commented on how fun it was because your characters are so fragile. He said you have to make good decisions, and bad decisions make the game so tense. He rolled up a good Fighter and was pleased with his results. The only returning character we had this week was the Dwarf, the two thieves could not make it. So 1 Dwarf, 1 Fighter, 1 Cleric, and 1 Magic-User are heading to the Caves of Chaos, with a single torch bearer Alania in tow.

                The group immediately heads back to the Owlbear caves and wants to search its lair for any possible treasure. As they enter, I make sure to mention there is a whole wing of the cave system here that they have not explored. They head into the debris strewn lair of the Owlbear and search and find grasp in the hand of one of the victims of an attack, a scroll case. The new fighter of the group discovers this singularly, and decides to not share it, or make anyone aware of its presence. In fact, he does not even open the scroll case to see what is inside. Generally in a game of this nature, that is not a good idea, but each to their own. Seeing that there is nothing else, they decided to enter the other side of this particular cave system.

                I was really worried about this section because the chance of PC death is quite high, and unless the party takes extreme caution it can go downhill fast. I describe how the cave’s debris starts to lessen and the cave starts to become damper and damper. They enter a cavern that is dominated by a small lake and they begin to circle the outside of it. One of the PCs notices a shiny object in the pool and points it out to the other characters. They decide to remove everyone from the cave except the dwarf, and have him take a look at it with his Infravision. As the party members leave the dwarf’s vision starts to adjust and he notices that the thing in the water is not alive, or at least does not radiate heat. That is when the gray oozes lash out with their surprise actions. Normally gray ooze is a nasty combatant that can strip away armor, surprise opponents, and melt their flesh. These guys felt more like the smiling slimes from Dragon Warrior on NES. The party beat them down and the oozes could not hit for love or money. They then retrieved the golden chalice from the water, and left the cave feeling pretty good about themselves.

I wanted them to be more dangerous then this.

                I rolled a random encounter for them and decided to bring back their old friend the Ogre. He was waiting there with a herd of six goblins wanting some money and payback. He saw them laughing and literally drinking from the golden chalice and wanted that in exchange for their lives. I had a dramatic speech ready to give about how he was going to crush their bones, and then destroy the Keep, but before I can get to that the Magic-User interrupts and says, “I cast Sleep, screw that guy.” He rolled really good and all seven of the combatants fall asleep. They then begin to slaughter all of them, roll up into his cave, take back the money he stole from them with a hefty bonus of gold he extorted from the goblins in the past few weeks. With those successes under their belt, and light left in the day they decided to head back to the keep to safely store their gains. Did I forget to mention they decided not to hire the Woodsman this trip as a guide? Because they did not. I had not been making them possibly get lost, and lowered the random encounter rate due to him, but they thought they knew better.

                On the way back, they were camped on the 2nd night and the Cleric was on watch. The Cleric did not hear the sounds of the approaching doom until it was almost too late. The party was attacked by 10 skeletons, and the real issue was that the skeletons were on them almost before they could stand. They decided they did not want to abandon their gains, and wanted to fight the overwhelming odds. They battled and fell back more than once, the Cleric failed their Turn Undead check, and the Dwarf was taken below zero for the 2nd time, but survived. The funniest part to me is that the Fighter hiding the scroll was actually hiding a Scroll of Protection from Undead. I find his greed being their near downfall utterly hilarious. Scrambling to leave, they realize that the Dwarf was the only member of the party that even remotely knew the route to and from the cave, as this was everyone else’s first time. Then proceed to get lost for 2 more days before finding the Keep, avoiding random encounters along the way.

                We called it a little early because we had enough time for some book keeping, but not another trip into the caves. I think I am going to have the noble of the Keep take notice of them now, because they are actually doing some good. I was thinking about offering some alternative adventures like seeking the hermit, finding the bandits, or even traveling to Orlane to deal with the local issue of strange happenings. We will see what they want to do and how it will all unravel. I hope everyone is still enjoying the series and I hope that you follow the blog.

Soon I hope...

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Tales from the Borderlands – Episode 3 – Triumph & Tragedy

               This week’s adventure was full of ups and downs with the characters being overly happy with themselves, and also getting a bit overconfident as well. They had some great rewards, and some low points as well. To keep everyone up to speed I have an open table game that I run at my school for my students, each week the party’s members can fluctuate and this does cause a bit of hand waving on my part mostly at the end of the session stating, “and you get back to the keep safely” so that each week they can start at the keep. This week there was no new players, only people playing for at least their second go around. I had a dwarf, elf, fighter, and two thieves. Still no dedicated magic user or cleric, but they seem to know that and do not care.

                I am trying to get the party use to the idea of hirelings, without outright coming out and saying, “You guys NEED to hire some help.” Whenever they are in town, I mention that they can do the following things, 1) buy equipment 2) gather information 3) visit the church 4) talk with the local authorities 5) possibly hire someone. They seem good with 1 and 2, and even tried 3 this week, but I had to ram number 5 down their throats to at least hope they would get the idea. I had them meet Kip. Kip was a local street urchin that heard the group came back with lots of money, and no deaths. Kip wanted to go on the adventure. Kip asked to be their porter and torch bearer, for 30 silver a day and no share of the loot. What better deal can I throw at them? They legit hemmed and hawed over it, because “We can carry our own gear and torches?” I explained encumbrance, and not being able to use one arm with a torch, still they were unsure. Kip laid a sob story on them about trying to feed his family, and the thieves of the party took pity, and hired him. Off they went to the caves.

                Again they rolled no random encounters on the way there, and arrived promptly on the morning of the second day. They wasted no time and headed straight for cave G, and I was horribly nervous. As veterans of B2 know, cave G can easily turn into a TPK. They enter the cave system and instantly start heading down into the darkness. I continue to roll listen checks for the various beasts in this cave system, but they continue to luck out. They make it to outside the opening of a wider opening and they stop to listen for noises. One of the thieves hears the sound of cracking bones coming from down the tunnel. They decide to send the dwarf and the elf, due to their infrafvision, into the entrance to see what is happening. Again I roll a listen check for the creature with bonuses because of their armor, nothing. They end up seeing a massive creature eating the carcass of a humanoid. I play infravision exactly like “Predator” vision from the movie. They see heat, but making out details is not possible. The dwarf decides he wants to get a better look, and goes back to the party retrieves a bow, rags, and oil. He goes back into the cave lights the arrow and fires it over the creatures head. Needless to say the Owlbear was surprised, and screams and begins to charge. Upon hearing the scream the rest of the party runs, the dwarf is running too. The party with their head start clears the cave, but the Owlbear catches up to the dwarf at the cave entrance, stabbing him with his beak and bringing him to 1 hit point.

They loved this picture when I showed it to them.

                I inform them that the Owlbear is faster than most of the party, and they can run, but odds are it will chase down one of them. They decide to fight it in the open, and used decent tactics. They spread out initially and the Owlbear charged the Elf who was guarding Kip, the rest began using ranged combat to try and bring it down. The fighter took a round to get into flanking position, and they had a decent system going. The thieves with their bows were on fire, hitting about 80% of the time, and getting at least one critical. (Note: I read somewhere that Gary did not like critical hits and the double damage, he claims it throws the math off of the monsters a bit. I can see that especially with creatures having much lower HP. So instead of double damage, I went with a Gary suggestion and just max the damage on a 20. Keeps the rolls within the bounds of possibility.) Besides the thieves, everyone was down to 1 or 2 hit points by the end. Except poor Kip. Kip bravely stood his ground with the elf in the initial charge of the Owlbear, and took a natural 20 to the face. This made the thieves state, “We are not running from this fight, this thing MUST die,” and it did. They ended up taking the Owlbear’s claws, head, and getting several Owlbear steaks. As they continued messing with the body, I kept asking one at a time randomly to roll a d6. They’d ask, “What for?” I would reply, “Nothing, it’s fine.” Eventually they were like, “Is this for the Ogre trying to hear us?” I just sat back and smiled, they then packed their belongings and left. They never did go back and search its lair, maybe they will in the future.

                They returned to town, conquering heroes with their Owlbear head. It was taken and put up on the ramparts to signify civilization’s triumph over chaos. They brought Kip’s body back and took it to the chapel, they also asked the Priest to make them a Healing Potion, which he started upon. They searched out for Kip’s sister, Alania, only to discover they were twins and she wanted to get revenge. She was going to go with the party on their next trip and raise hell at the caves. The elf decided to go full Legend of Zelda and buy flute. He asked, “Do I know how to play it?” I responded, “Yes, you’re an elf. I am sure you spent 1 full year of your life devoted to music theory.” The fighter then asked, “Can I play it?” I looked coldly, “No, you are not a beautiful creature, like the elves.” They rested, made merry, and decided to head back to the caves.

You beautiful elven bastard.

                They finally got not one, but two random encounters. I was excited, I wanted them to have to deal with something that was completely not on their terms. Then I rolled the random generation, day 1 herd animals (deer), day 2 Halflings. Neither was a threat, they did get to talk with a “rival” adventuring group as the Halflings were headed to the caves too. They believe they had just gotten eight new NPCs to boss around, but since they didn’t try and negotiate with the Halflings they ventured into the goblin caves. The party decided to go into the caves they had not tried yet, cave A. I rolled and the usual surprise at the entrance of cave A was not there, and they entered in full formation.

                They wanted several yards into the cave and sprung the pit trap almost immediately, the elf managed to fall in and was reduced to 2 hit points, and more importantly they had to get him out. They were in no rush, and the guards from section 2 come pouring into the section and begin stabbing into the pit at the elf. They respond by firing some arrows back and the elf makes it back to the surface. I was hoping they would try and negotiate, because the Dwarf knows Kobold, and has a decent CHA. He tells them, “Get your gold and bring it to us, then leave the cave with your lives,” and proceeds to flub the CHA roll too. This just angers them, and they send a runner off into the deeper part of the caves, and continue to verbally spar with the party, with the occasional “F--- You Smoothskins”. With one round of completely good aim, the party kills all the Kobold with missile fire. They traverse the pit, and begin to raid the bodies. All the while I am telling them about the time passing. They find a lever on the other side of the pit to reset the trap, and head into room 2. Room 2 without guards is just generally empty, but the ransack it. When they come back to the T-section they notice 3 Kobold commanders,1 Kobold “King”, and 3 more Kobolds across from them, and 8 Kobolds blocking the way out of the cave.

Silly little monster, but they can be deadly.

                One of the brand new player of a thief immediately states, “Pull the lever, it will block the group of 8 from getting to us.” This decision most likely saved the party from a TPK. This battle went on for some time but here are the highlights. The king was slain by the dwarf hitting him with an oil flask and he burned to death over two rounds. The 8 Kobolds decided to enter the pit and try and climb up each other to scale the walls. The fighter decided to throw some of his Owlbear steaks into the pit to see what happened. I try to give everything a chance, so I decided to give the Kobolds a save versus magic with a +5 bonus to not care about the meat. They rolled a 1. Their make-shift ladders collapsed and they began fighting among themselves over who got the meat. The thief then pulled the lever again, sealing the squabbling runts to kill each other. The kobold commander were not slouches though, and managed to kill two party members, the Elf and the Fighter. This brings the death count to 4 this campaign, 2 elves, and 1 fighter, and 1 NPC. I now keep a dead pile on the whiteboard at school of the character sheets of the deceased, see the picture below.

The gone, but not forgotten. Students added the writing for flair.

                The 3 remaining party members looted the Kolbolds and found the King’s golden necklace worth 1,200 GP. You would have thought they won the Mega Millions Jackpot. They were dancing around the table, handing out high fives, and general cavorting. Now I need to consider the fate of the dead in the party. The first elf that died, never came back so I did not have to deal with it. These players do want to continue. I don’t want people to completely fall behind. I think my policy will be you can keep half of the XP of a previous character. Thus, there is a penalty for dying, but it is not a complete loss. I think this is reasonable, but tell me what you think in the comments. Do you have a better strategy for dealing with stuff like this?

                That was all for this week, the player continue to surprise me in multiple ways. They are absolutely brilliant in some situations, and completely clueless in others. Seems like just another day playing D&D.

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