Tuesday, December 6, 2011

First Local LL Game -- Initial Report

Here are a few preliminary details about how this Sunday's local Labyrinth Lord game went. All in all, it was a triumph.


It looks like I will have about five regular players, with one or two others who may drop in and out from time to time. Most of these regulars are veterans of 3.5 and D&D IV play; I have only one truly experienced old-schooler. (More on him in a moment.)

As I said before, I was really hoping to stick to Race-As-Class and other Labyrinth Lord Core Rules conventions, for part of my mission here is to introduce these folks to the mechanics and feel of old-school play, to keep the game as "Moldvay-ish" as possible. In this I was successful: the group conceded to playing LL as writ. Chargen only took one hour, and that time-frame included a lot of discussion about the setting and some gentle guiding of the new-schoolers through the chargen process. Ultimately I had them roll 4d6 (drop the lowest) in order for attributes, then choose their PC's class. All standard LL core classes were available -- even elves!

The session itself was great fun and The Lost City rules! By the end of the session, the PCs had already met their first faction and started negotiating with them, offering to perform a spy mission against one of the other Cynidicean factions in exchange for food and water. They're off!

Full session report to follow.

Related Note: Another Local Game!
That experienced OSR guy I mentioned -- Cid, who ended up playing the party's cleric, Thorgald Thorgaldson, follower of Ragnar -- is starting his own public game at Boldo's Armory, one of the local Rochester area game shops, this coming Sunday. He is running a custom-hacked d20-Lite type system, and setting the campaign in Jeff Rients' Wessex! (From what he says, he literally contacted JR, asked permission to run a campaign in the setting, and apparently received permission plus some background materials and resources from the man himself.) Here is a link to Cid's Obsidian Portal page for the game:

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/taoks

Cid was such a pleasure to play with that as of now I am planning to sit in on his Boldo's campaign on the opposite Sundays from my own local campaign.  Local RPG'ing opportunities abound!

4 comments:

  1. You know, it's like 87 miles from my house to Rochester and you are just the other side of Rochester from me; if it weren't for today's gas prices I'd suggest that we could game together on at least a semi-regular basis. Oh well, SUNY Oswego has a gaming convention coming up sometime in the Spring semester, maybe we could run an old school game there?

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  2. Very nice! Ragnar caught my eye, it's my middle name. When you mentioned follower of Ragnar I thought of my G+ account, on which I am Ragnar.

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  3. @Jagatai: Let's stay in touch, I would be thrilled to come to a con at SUNY Oswego. Please keep me posted on developments.

    @ancientvaults: Credit belongs to Cid, who created his PC's god's name on the spot.

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  4. I'll let you know as soon as I know when their gaming con will be, their advertising has been kind of shoddy in the past and they move it around during the Spring semester a lot; it's been as early as February and as late as May. I have a mole in their planning committee now though, so I should not miss it this year. Boldo usually makes it out too, although maybe not now since he's gotten so active with politics.

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