Dyson's Delve with Grandkids

It's summertime and I promised my grandson Matt that we'd get together and "have an adventure."  My job search intervened a week or two ago and the promised date slipped by.  A promise is a promise, so we rescheduled for Monday and we got together for a morning adventure.

Matt (10 yo), Maddie (his 7 yo sister) and Brian (their dad) came over for a Swords and Wizardry Whitebox day.

We've been playing Savage Worlds, so this was a bit of a departure.  I wanted to try something a little simpler with fewer dice (basically d20 and d6) so we gave it a go.

It took us about 45 minutes to roll up characters and get organized for the session.

• Anonymous, an elven wizard (Matt)
• Tiny, a dwarf fighter (Maddie)
• Brago, a halfling cleric (Brian)
• Hoss, a human fighter (Brian)

We started off with a nod toward the city we'll be adventuring from, Verbosh.  I explained that they were longtime friends and that they had decided to embark on an adventure.  They met up with a local veteran, Jad, who told them of "The Church of the Blue Stones."  The church is named that for obvious reasons.

Further discussion dug up rumors of a cave entrance below with known rat inhabitants and an entrance from inside the ruin.  Rumors of goblins in the ruin were also heard.

I'm using Dyson's Delve for the adventure under the Church of the Blue Stones.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

The adventurers began in the cave entrance to Level 1.  Inside, they found a bunch of giant rats and a few giant ferrets.  They put flaming oil to good use and discovered that scaring wild animals off with fire is just as effective as fighting them all to the death.  They discovered some narrow, crawl-able tunnels but they opted for the stairs down.

They ended up in the cave part of Level 2.  They found some dead rats and a horde of live ones.  Again, well timed flaming oil caused the rats to rout into their holes leaving the adventurers alone.

Tiny, the dwarf, stumbled unwittingly down the hall and was surprised by the ghoul.  It's claws were turned aside by his chainmail and his axe and Hoss's spear made short work of the foul creature.  They found themselves quite rich after they took all of the ghoul's "bling".

They proceeded on and narrowly avoided a pit trap in room 12 and Anon found a magic ring on the fingerbones of one of the ghoul's unfortunate snacks.  The ring seems to create a protective field when it's command words are spoken in elvish.

The intrepid group continued down the stairs to Level 3.  Here's where things went bad.

Although Anon was poking at the ceiling to try and find traps, and he did in fact trip one large block out of the arched ceiling; he wasn't persistent enough to trip the second blog.  Poor Brago was crushed to death under the massive stone.

The collapsing stones caused the zombies from room 7 to move toward the adventurers and soon they found themselves badly damaged and outnumbered 5 to 3.  To make things worse, their cleric was squeezed to paste.

RUN AWAY!!

Up the stairs and out into the sunlight and back to Verbosh.  Whew.  That was close.

(More to come!)

Lego Heroica (another actual play report)

Last night, my grandson Lance came over to hang out for awhile.  His mom had softball and he hadn't been over lately, so it was a good time.

Anyway, Lance is a Legomaniac.  Seriously.  He loves the Legos.

We played air hockey for a few games but eventually I couldn't resist busting out the new Lego Heroica set I bought.  He was instantly captivated.

Being the incorrigible DM that I am, I couldn't help but tinker with the rules.  I explained to him that we were going to explore the complete castle (3 games; different layouts).  During the first two games, whatever magic or treasure we found, we would carry that over to the next game.  If our characters died in the first two games, they could regenerate and we could regenerate all our hit points between session.  In the final session, if we died -- we were out.  We'd need to team up to defeat the goblin king.

In my back pocket I had a rule that if no one character made progress during a turn, the goblin king would get one random reinforcement from the goblin jar.  Never had to use that.  Lance didn't fool around.

The first game was occupied mostly by Lance getting a handle on what his characters could do.  He took the knight and the wizard.  I took the barbarian and the druid.  Basically, you roll the Lego die to move and if you end up fighting you roll the die again to fight.  The one symbol that is common to both rolls is the shield.  If you roll a shield during movement, you can use your ranged power.  If you roll a shield during combat you can use your melee skill.  Here's a picture of a page from the rules.  You can see what the character skills are at the bottom:

During game two, we started to discuss strategy.  We talked about what weapons we should buy with our gold and who should have them.  We discussed who should have the potions.  The weapons duplicate the skills of each warrior.  That way, you could have a barbarian (close combat) who also has the staff (healing). 

When the map was laid out for Game 2, we talked about what we'd do first and if we should split the party (in Lego this is a good idea).  We talked about what order we should visit the rooms and we made sure we'd have enough keys to open the locked doors.

During Game 3, I really thought Lance would be afraid that his characters would die.  He wasn't.  At one point, his knight with only 2 HPs left charged a green and grey goblin.  The green does 1 if you lose in battle; the grey does 2.  He took on the green first and won.  Then he took on the grey.  That could have been the end.  Nope.  He rolled a shield and took him out.  High-fives across the table.

At the end of the battle, we had to go 1:1 with the goblin king.  My barbarian had a potion of strength (instant kill) and I told Lance to just wait.  Nope.  He ran right in with his knight and rolled a sword.  Dead goblin king.

"Ha!  I got him!  I didn't have to wait for you!"  He was really proud of himself.

Great game, great fun.  This just might be the "gateway drug" that the OSR needs.  A few rules tweaks and you've really got something.

Proposed Rules Tweaks for Heroica to OSR conversion (not playtested yet):

• All damage is 1.  You can attack diagonally.  Monsters take multiple hits to kill based on their color.
• Spend gold for healing potions (heal 2 pts; 3 gold)
• No regeneration.
• If the heroes fool around and don't make progress toward the goal, add one random monster to the board in unexplored areas.
• Maybe have a GM and reveal the dungeon one room at a time.
• Allow the monsters to move (I think this is already in the rules).  Wandering monsters from explored areas when the GM rolls a shield during monster movement.

A Big Thank You

This post goes out to ScottZ of Old School Jump.

On another blog, I offhandedly mentioned that none of my local game stores were participating in Free RPG Day.

Scott volunteered to share some of the swag he picked up.

He graciously sent me two Mutants and Masterminds books (a friend would like to play supers this summer.)

-- AND --

He sent along a die for luck.  Awesome.  I shall roll it with pride!

Thanks again Scott!  Thank you for your generosity!

Pixar's BRAVE - a "flame princess" we can ALL enjoy!

There's a trailer on the web for the new Pixar movie, BRAVE.  I thought I'd share.

Here are a few screenshots.  Embedding the video is disabled.  Click the link to view.

BRAVE trailer

Castle of the Mad Archmage (Video)

Here's an actual play video of my group going through the Castle of the Mad Archmage.  I'm the DM.

This was recorded awhile ago and I forgot to post it.  It's not the most exciting bit of play, but heck, it's a start.  Maybe I'll post some more from this session if folks are interested.

Enjoy!

Areth, an architectural atlas

Saw this over at io9 and I thought it could be a great sourcebook for a post-apoc or spacey-sandbox game, like Terminal Space.

Areth

Dungeonland and the Magic Mirror

When I was running my Queston campaign in the late 80's for my high school friends and college buddies, I used parts of DUNGEONLAND to fill out the mythical continent of (this is a mouthful) Mythophantarealean (!)

I used the Smilodon Cat, the Mad Hatter and the Caterpillar atop the mushroom to great effect.

I have no experience with BEYOND THE MAGIC MIRROR, but it looks like it comes from a similar vein and could be of great use in any madhouse dungeon.

Gary Gygax must have used these (or similar) in Castle Greyhawk.  Here's part of the introduction from MAGIC MIRROR:

ENTERING THE LAND BEYOND THE MAGIC MIRROR

The entry point for The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror will be

shown on the proper level of the Greyhawk Castle Dungeon

series when it is finally done. As that is likely to be years from

now, it is probable that you will be inserting this module into

your existing campaign.

I don't know if he ever reference these modules in Castle Greyhawk (or elsewhere).

DOWNLOAD BOTH MODULES HERE BEFORE THEY ARE GONE!