Hyrulian Adventures: Alignment in Legend of Zelda

Alignment in the Legend of Zelda games is an interesting beast. There is clearly an old school D&D, Law vs Chaos thing going on, right?

Kinda.

Sorta.

But there’s more to it than that. When we look at the mythology of the world, it centers around the power of the Triforce, of which there are three (four?*) parts: Wisdom, Power, and Courage. Each of these parts is personified in Zelda, Ganon, and Link, respectively.

*That fourth part would be the upside-down triangle there in the middle. The Triforce of Shadow? Not going there in this post, but it’s worth mentioning.

So, we have alignment working along these three axes. We have a Triforce of Courage that needs reassembling, and then someone to wield it. Who should that be?

Obviously, the person who has been the most Courageous! This will mean a great deal more bookkeeping for myself, as I will need to keep track of the PCs actions every game and make judgment calls (quite frankly, more than I’m really comfortable doing, but I think it will be worth it in the end) on whether their actions have been Wise, Courageous, or Power-hungry. In the end, only one of them can raise the Triforce of Courage and fight Ganon. Of course, I’m not going to tell them I’m keeping track of this kind of thing.

Side-note: what happens if someone who is not pure of heart or truly courageous enough to wield it gets his or her hands on the Triforce of Courage? Something exciting I’m sure… Because I'm not going to just come out and tell them who is supposed to wield the Triforce of Courage! 

Right now, I have it set up with a kind-of points system. Basically, each character will get a point in the appropriate column whenever they do something in-game that is especially Wise, Courageous, or Power-Hungry. I wish there was a good way to make Wisdom, Power, and Courage each PC's stats, but I'm not sure how to make it work. They feel more like personality attributes than physical statistics to me, which is why I'm keeping them separate. I do have plans to use these scores in a couple of different ways down the line, which I'll explain when we get there (eventually). 

But also, what happens to the character who has been the most Wise?

Or the most Power-hungry?

Any ideas? Sound off in the comments below! 

Hyrulian Adventures: Session 1

I was a little stressed out leading up to getting started yesterday; I haven’t run a D&D game in several months, and running a game for the kids can always be a challenge. On top of that, I didn't have as much prepared as I would have liked, and knew I would be winging some of the session. We started with character generation. We had five characters fully done up within an hour and a half. Microlite characters are pretty straightforward, of course, and most of the time was taken up buying supplies.

I explained it in an earlier post, but I’ll recap here. PCs start basically as level-0 townsfolk with three stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Mind. Stats are calculated using 12d6, dropping the three lowest rolls, and assembling three scores with what remains and assigning as the player sees fit. Ability modifiers are calculated by taking the score, minus ten, and divided by 2, rounded down. They all get 12 HP plus a Strength bonus. They all rolled on my Character (Family) Background Generator, which gave us the children of a barber, a forester, a farmer, an arrowsmith, and explorers. There are no levels. Character improvement happens through acquiring items in-game, training with NPCs, and success with certain tasks in the field. I’m still ironing out some of the details, but I have plenty of time and some good ideas, I think.

Regardless, things got off to a start with some combat. I’ve learned that with the kids, they need some action to start things off. So I explained the situation, plopped down a battle map, and we got to rolling dice.

They nearly died.

It was fantastic.

So, having successfully fended off the bokoblin attack and defended their fellow villagers and the refugees, they set off to help the town by acquiring more weapons and armor. They upgraded their “weapons” (really just hunting tools) by having the town blacksmith do a little work on some of the swords that were dropped by the bokoblins from the attack in town.

They have a general map of the area (which belongs to the daughter of the explorers), and they were faced with a few options. First, Lon Lon Ranch is some five or six miles from Kakariko Village, and there was some concern if the ranch would be okay. Also, Ordon Village, some twenty miles to the south, could also be in need of assistance. Finally, there was an area on the map clearly marked “Ruins” to the Northwest (the remains of the original Hyrule Castle, perhaps…?). They eventually settled on heading to the Ranch.

A random encounter happened first. Currently, as it is always dark and Hyrule is crawling with monsters, I’m rolling for every mile travelled. I roll 2d6, and if either face pops up a 1, bam, random encounter. Snake Eyes would be the discovery of something fairly major.

They came across a ruined tower, though it still had a second floor at least. It also had a pair of bokoblins guarding the entrance. An ambush took the guards out and they set up to move in. My father-in-law directed their movements, and they made quick progress with good cover, and the encounter with another four or five bokoblins inside didn’t last very long.

They did, however, fail to investigate upstairs. Not sure why, as bokoblins were coming at them from upstairs, but I wasn’t about to remind them. The tower’s not going anywhere, and whatever was up there will still be there, right? Maybe? Who knows.

They made it the rest of the way to Lon Lon Ranch, where they met Malon and her father Talon. Malon is the twelve year old girl who really runs the Ranch, and Talon does what he can to help out. When they come up, she is armed with a shortbow and certainly not thrilled to have strangers, but is willing to let them stay the night in the barn if they help out repairing the ranch.

Oh, and there’s a cave nearby where all these monsters seem to keep coming from, and little Malon just hasn’t been able to get over there and clear it out. Could you guys investigate?

In they went. Numerous encounters with Deku Baba plants later (the little bastards kept popping back up out of the ground after they killed them, wonder why...) and they were face to face with some robed evil dudes creating bokoblins in some kind of foul ritual involving rupees. The robed guys went down fairly quickly, but not before one of them toasted our heroes pretty good with a fireball attack of some sort.

Of course, the two youngest adventurers took the bait of the evil-looking daggers dropped by the robed fellows. And as they were trying to leave the dungeon, fighting their way through the Deku Baba plants that had grown back, one of the plants grabbed the boy as he tried to stab it with said evil dagger and chewed him up good. The rest of the group took the plants out and hauled the boy out, but he would need a few days to recover, and that only with the aid of some famous Lon-Lon Milk. Needless to say, they’re not really sure what to do with those daggers now…

And that’s where we left things. The plan is for some of the adventurers to borrow horses from Lon-Lon Ranch, leaving the injured boy there for a few days while they head back to Kakariko to deliver some of the weapons they’ve acquired, and then head back to Lon-Lon and then down to Ordon Village. We’ll see how things go, of course.

Overall, a good first session for the campaign, I think. If there’s anything that’s going to kill the kids, though, it’s greed. They all suffer from “Gimme Gimme” syndrome; they all want the shiniest new thing to show up, and it’s always a competition amongst all of them to see who can get it. They were going after fallen rupees in the middle of combat. Seriously. It nearly killed a couple of them on a couple of occasions. Once that nonsense started, any thoughts of taking it easy on them vanished. Not that I was fudging any die rolls (everything gets rolled right out in front of God and everyone), but I certainly wasn’t going to bring my B-game as far as tactics with the monsters was concerned. After all, they had been warned before the game started that their characters were fragile and could easily be killed if they weren't careful...

The kids had a good time, though. There was certainly some frustrations from every seat at the table at some point, be it from a string of poor die rolls or lamenting bad decisions, but all their characters (barely) survived to see another session, so we’ll continue on!

Kids' Campaign: Good ole-fashioned Dungeon Crawl

Today in my kids' campaign, they explored the caverns below the goblin caves. At the direction of Larry the Dwarf Cleric, they stayed to the right as they explored, coming across numerous forking passages. 

First up, a bunch of piercers fell off the ceiling, attacking them. Most of my attack rolls missed; I was rolling d20s out on the table for each player. The wizard, my 10-year-old son, insisted on rolling a d20 for himself, without realizing I was rolling attacks for the monsters. 

He rolled a natural 20. We spent the next five minutes as we both rolled low, him trying to knock the piercer off, and the piercer failing utterly to chew through the wizard's robes. He finally knocked it off with his staff and they avoided the rest of the piercers on the ceiling, and went into the next room, where they barely managed to avoid being caught in the filament-traps of a group of three cave fishers! This combat went quickly, although it seems the only time I roll criticals for monsters is when the wizard gets too close to combat and a monster snaps at him! 

They defeated the cave fishers and continued on, keeping ever to the right. The next foe they encountered was a big nasty roper. The roper snagged three of the heroes off the start with its tentacles, and started pulling them in, but they managed to make excellent attack rolls to slice through the tentacles and break free. They had to gang up on it, and nearly lost Snagger the Dwarf, but defeated the monstrosity and found the gems and platinum pieces in the roper's belly. 

They continued on around the map, and came to a maze-like series of passages. It wasn't long before they were attacked from two sides by some big subterranean lizards! And then a few rounds into the fight, two more joined the fray, led by their minotaur master! The fight was looking kind of grim when the minotaur showed up; the wizard dropped (lizard got a crit for 12), and Farmer George wasn't far behind. The minotaur circled around and charged the halfling thief, but rolled a two; I ruled the thief tumbled between the minotaur's legs and popped up behind it, granting her a backstab attack for extra damage. The two elves hit, with the first hit being a "ghetto crit" for maximum damage and the second elf scoring a natural 20! The 6+3 HD minotaur went down quick, and its pet lizards weren't far behind. 

After taking a few minutes to heal up, they continued on their path, ever to the right passageway, circling around the map. In the next chamber they encountered an Auromvorax! Since the book states that dwarves despise them, I gave each dwarf a roll to recognize the beast. Snagger made his roll, and knew that the monster literally eats gold for dinner. They started throwing gold pieces at it, enough to distract it for long enough to get by. 

This is when they started discovering the remains of a group of adventurers who hadn't survived the dungeon. They recovered a spellbook with high-level spells and a tube of scrolls containing several sheets worth of bad poetry. 

Having gone most of the way around the dungeon, they headed back up to the goblin lair and made camp for the night to rest up. Nothing attacked them in the night (the goblins had left, most being cowardly and having no desire to be around when the group opened the passageway down into the deadly caves). 

Further exploration the next morning revealed a hidden, ancient dwarven crypt. The dwarf cleric opened the passageway and down they went, finding a 1000-year-old internment containing several generations worth of urns and an altar, with a blessed dwarven warhammer floating above it. After saying a prayer to Moradin, the dwarf cleric took the warhammer. 

Zeldaspiration: Hyrulian Adventures

The Legend of Zelda video games have always served as great inspiration for me, and my wheels have really been turning lately. I've always wanted to be able to run adventures in Hyrule as a table-top RPG, but I always run into the same problem when I start working on it: the story is always focused on a single character. While this would be okay for one-on-one gaming, it's not really what I'm after. 

Instead, I want to capture the essence of what makes the gameplay fun and interesting and apply it to Microlite-type D&D. 

Puzzles, riddles, secrets: this is a huge part of what makes Zelda games fun, but obviously this aspect will be confined to adventure/dungeon/world design. I want to make this as old-school as possible. Characters won't be making any "search checks".

No levels. All growth in character power is by way of earned items. This is something I love about the games. It doesn't matter how many monsters you kill or rupees you collect, you've still got to earn the Master Sword by solving the riddles to find it. 

Sandbox. The first two Zelda titles on the NES featured big, wide-open sandboxes to explore. There were hidden secrets everywhere, it seemed. Some places were much more dangerous than others, and it was easy to get in over your head. 

I will basically be developing a sandbox setting and a set of Microlite-based rules to go hand-in-hand, specifically for running Hyrule-esque adventures with my kids. They are all in love with the Legend of Zelda video games, and table-top adventuring in this style with all of them should be tons of fun. 

This won't mean the end of our Night Below Underdark adventures on Sunday, however! That game will continue on Sundays. 

Actual Play: Kids' Campaign: Cleaning Up Haranshire

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they had just cleared the Bloodskull Orcs out of the caves and discovered a tunnel going down, where they met the Svirfneblin, the deep gnomes. 

They have also gained a couple of NPC party members: Snagged, a fourth level dwarf fighter, and Farmer George, a zero-level human who will eventually level up to a first level fighter. 

The Svirfneblin met them and gave them some more, though limited, information about what is happening in the Underdark. They know the dark dwarves have been taking magic-capable humanoids below, and they know that illithids are involved. 

The gnomes are not eager to trust surface dwelling adventurers. They are fearful that foolish adventurers might lead the dark dwarves or the mind flayers back to the gnomes, and wipe them out. To earn their trust, the party must help the gnomes out. Two tribes of trolls dwell nearby, who are constantly warring with each other; wiping out the trolls would greatly improve the gnomes' local security situation. 

The party recognized that large numbers of trolls may be a bit beyond their capabilities, despite their growing arsenal of magical items. The gnomes offered to lead them back to the surface to make preparations, with the caveat that they have about ten days before the dark dwarves will return and discover the slaughter of the orcs. 

The party returned topside. Snagger the Dwarf was eager to hunt down the bandits who kidnapped him. With the help of the ranger Kuiper, they tracked the bandits to the old abandoned Garlstone Mines. They made short work of the bandits there, including the evil priest leaders; they also finally got to take out Ranchefus, the escaped leader of the kidnappers from Broken Spire Keep.

This earned them a decent cache of magical weapons, items, and potions, as well as enough experience for the cleric, the magic-user, and one of the elf fighters to level up. 

With about a week left before their scheduled rendezvous with the Svirfneblin, they decided to go investigate the mystery of the New Mire. The New Mire, up until a couple years ago, wasn't called that. It was fertile, abundant farmland and forest. Something caused the area to become waterlogged, and no one knows what. "Blue Demons" have been spotted in the Mire, and the party quickly recognizes goblin tracks. 

They track the goblins to their lair, and discover they are, indeed, blue. Instead of slaying them outright (the goblins are quite cowardly, and have never harmed any local humans, though they have swiped some chickens and sheep), the cleric led negotiations, and they soon discovered the magic ring worn by the goblin shaman: a Ring of Water Elemental Control. They convinced him to give it up in a trade that was much to their advantage (the goblin was unaware of the ring's true power). 

Further interrogation of the shaman revealed that the goblin found the ring in the now sealed off caverns below their lair. The way can be opened, and the party is eager to see what else is below... 

Have a Dungeon

Whew, it's been a minute! Been busy getting life around the house straightened out. We're expecting a baby boy in June, which requires a good deal of moving the other children around in the house, painting rooms, and all sorts of other work. Work work work. Which has left me completely unable to keep up with blogging here at the ole Pack of Gnolls.

However, it seems most of the work is complete, and I have some more time now to produce some more material for this here blog. 

In the next couple of days, I'll post an update on how the Kids' Campaign is going. We've had two sessions since my last report, and they are about ready to start delving into the Underdark. However, next session will be an exploration of this cavern complex: 

If you're at all familiar with the AD&D 2E "Night Below" box set module, this cavern complex exists below the caves in which the "Goblins of the Ring" from Book 1, The Evils of Haranshire, reside. The PCs are about to explore these caverns, as this is where the goblin shaman found his malfunctioning Ring of Water Elemental Control, and they've been blocked off ever since, due to some big nasty monsters that lair down there. 

Now all I need is to figure out what goes where... 

In the upper middle part is an arrow, which is the passageway that leads up to the goblin lair. In the bottom right is a passageway that leads to further caverns below. I'm sure this cave system eventually winds up in the Underdark. The pit in area F probably goes down to a lower level as well. I probably could have ordered the letters for keying the damn thing a little better, but it's late, I've had a few beers, and I gave blood today, so I don't care. 

Feel free to use this map in your own game, or write up your own key for it. I don't care. I just put it on the internet, which means it's free for everyone. I would appreciate a comment below if you do use it, or post it somewhere else. 

PS: the baby's name will be Avery Linn Sullivan

Kids' Campaign: Assault on the Bloodskull Orcs

My Microlite kids' campaign continued apace on Sunday. They have been exploring some underground tunnels in Haranshire, searching for the dark dwarves who are part of the kidnappings that have been occuring. The dwarves are taking people kidnapped by bandits and orcs down, presumably into the Underdark, for purposes unknown but probably nefarious. 

They started by recanvassing Broken Spire Keep, and this time managed to break into the old treasury, claiming a significant haul of gold and a new spellbook for the wizard. Then they went back down into the caves. 

It took them a day and a half of exploration, including a run-in with a pair of cave bears (they ran away) and some giant rats led by a pair of wererats (they stayed and fought) before they turned down the passage that led to the lair of the Bloodskull Orcs. They encountered a Bloodskull patrol, which they dispatched with ease and took one hostage via Charm Person, who led them to the huge, thick gates barring entrance to the clan's lair. The heroes had a key for one door, but not the other. Fortunately, they had the orc, who knew the secret knock to gain entrance. They sent him in with orders to get the boss to come out. The boss came out a while later, with his bodyguards of course: the orc shaman of Gruumsh, a seven-foot tall orog, a pair of cave lizards, the charmed orc, and an extra archer. 

This fight definitely went the orcs' way first. The shaman Cursed the heroes first, and the heroes couldn't seem to penetrate the orog's armor or land any blows on the big lizards. Then, with dwindling hit points, in one round the tide turned; first a lizard was dropped and then the fighter landed a decent blow on the orog, which was followed by a critical hit by the halfling rogue using her Vicious shortsword, which dropped the orog, and the other lizard fell right after that. 

The boss ran back into the lair, but the shaman wasn't fast enough. He was cut down quickly, and the heroes made it inside before the gates could be shut, killed the orcs trying to shut the gate, and set up around a corner from the main force of orcs. 

The next half-hour was pretty tense, as both sides waited to ambush the other should they be foolish enough to come around the corner in a bottleneck hallway. This is when the party remembered they had some unidentified potions tucked away in their bag of holding. 

One of the magic items I gave the party a while back was a pocketwatch. Once per day, one person can use it to gain an extra hour of time to do something; it's cursed though, and takes that hour off the end of your natural life. So the wizard used an hour to Identify the potions, which turned out to be a Potion of Extra Healing and, rolled randomly, a Potion of Superheroism! He also learned a bit about the fishy-smelling potions they'd been finding; they make the imbiber much more susceptible to charm and control magic. Weird, huh? 

The new potions gave them the edge they needed. They wizard and the rogue drank the Extra-Healing Potion, and the elf fighter drank the Superhero Potion, which knocked her up to seventh level and granted an extra 25 temporary hit points! Both elf fighters then drank what remained of their Invisibility Potion and snuck through the waiting orcs to take up positions behind them. The rogue and the wizard drank what remained of the Potion of Flight, and flew in and started shooting from above while the cleric stepped out and cast Darkness on the rear formation of orc archers. 

It was a slaughter. The battle lasted four short rounds. 

They let the women and children orcs leave-quickly-and freede a couple of prisoners, including Snagger, a first level dwarf fighter who desires to join the party to rescue the kidnapped people taken into the Underdark. He also gave the party an important bit of information: only magic-users and clerics have been taken below by the dark dwarves. Furthermore, he had talked to the apprentice wizard Jenna, whom the party is searching for, and knows she is still alive and was taken below by the dwarves just a few days ago. 

Kids' Campaign: Broken Spire Keep

Today, we gathered once again for my Kids' Campaign using the Microlite74 Extended ruleset, working our way into the Night Below boxed set module. 

This session found the heroes preparing to assault Broken Spire Keep. As they were scouting out the Keep, a small group of orcs was spotted returning to the Keep, carrying two kidnapped prisoners. (We're doing a trimmed-down version of the first book of the adventure, which basically places the Bloodskull orcs at Broken Spire)

They quickly took out the orcs and saved the hostages, both of whom smelled, literally, quite "fishy", and seemed pretty dazed. They were left with Oleanne the Druid while the party made its way across a trap-filled clearing to the front door of the Keep, wearing some of the armor and cloaks taken off the orcs.

The wizard charmed the orc at the gate, who let them in. They asked the orc to take them to where the prisoners go, which he did. That path went through the dining hall, where a number of orcs and human bandits were gathered, and a fight quickly ensued, and it didn't last long, in spite of some of the bad guys having levels in fighter or thief. 

They continued on down to the dungeon level. It took them a while to find the secret door that led to the Big Boss' chambers, and they did only after investigating the rest of the dungeon. 

The fight with the Big Boss and his zombie minions went well. The zombies all got raised once but were quickly dropped again. The Boss was down to 1 hit point when he flew away. I gave two pursuing PCs three chances to hit him with ranged weapons before he escaped. They didn't hit him. There were also a couple of dark dwarves that popped in from the connecting room, but a quick Web spell blocked their path into the room and they retreated. 

With an unconscious cleric, they barricaded themselves in the Big Boss' chambers for the night and rested. They uncovered some more of the "fishy" smelling potions, and a whole lot of gold (although they didn't get into the secret treasure room down the hall!) from the Big Boss' bedroom, and then discovered the secret door leading down into a cave system, presumably where the dark dwarves had gone. They decided to go down into the caves. 

The caves went on for miles! They encountered a group of fire beetles, which they distracted with some food and bypassed, and then a goblin tribe, which quickly surrendered after four of its number was slain in the first round. They tied the goblins up and left them there and discovered an exit to the surface, which led them back to the Thornwood. They made their way back to the Keep, wondering about Oleanne the Druid and the two rescued kidnapping victims, and set up camp. They did not find Oleanne or the rescued victims. The next day they went back into the Keep and found that the orcs had abandoned it. Very little of the treasure they had missed on their first trip through remained. 

Next time, they head back into the cave system below Haranshire. 

All in all, they got a lot accomplished for five hours of play. They are all getting better at working their way quickly through combat encounters and are seeming to enjoy more of the exploration aspect of the game. 

Kids' Campaign: Werebear Tracking

Kids' Campaign: Night Below Begins

This past Thursday, the wife and I took the minions out to my in-laws' for a night of D&D, their first full session exploring in Haranshire. They met a few of the local personalities: Tauster the Wizard, Garyld and Kuiper the Rangers, and Oleanne the Druid. Also, Tauster's missing apprentice, Jenna, is generally who the party is searching for.

Basically, this session, they went out to Kuiper's farm, to meet up with him and attempt to track down Jenna, the missing apprentice wizard. They met Kuiper, and soon after met Oleanne the Druid, who hadn't seen Jenna but was more worried about a certain werebear.

They tracked the werebear for a while, and made camp for the night. They were attacked by orcs, and dealt with ten of them inside of four rounds, including charming one whom they later interrogated.

I kind of decided on the fly that since our heroes are mostly level three at this point, there's no real big reason to adventure around Haranshire just to level up. If they decide to solve some of the problems around town, good on them, but I gave them the Underdark hook when they questioned the charmed orc, hook line and sinker, revealing that there is a passage that goes "below" and that "dark dwarves" come up to take the people they've been kidnapping.

So that doesn't bode well for the poor wizard's apprentice Jenna.

Oh, and they found the werebear and our clever young wizard subdued it very quickly with a well-placed "web" spell. Next they'll go back into town and more than likely make plans to assault the orcs. All-in-all, a very good night.

I continue to be impressed with how easily Microlite works with AD&D. The AC conversion is a snap, and everything else just works. It's pretty awesome.

Kids' Campaign: Decisions, Decisions...

The Kids' Campaign continues apace. We gathered on the Thursday before Christmas at my in-laws' for early Christmas presents, bread-baking, dinner, and managed to sneak a little time in for some D&D.

When last we left them, they were about to have dinner with Valthrun, the town wizard. He had promised my son's character, Mike the Wizard, that he would teach him some new spells if he proved himself. Defeating Kalarel was proof enough, and Valthrun taught the young wizard a number of new spells, including a couple of second-level spells that the newly third-level wizard could use.

I also made up a small stack of cards that had different rumors and quests. Each player drew one, so they had plenty of different options to go investigate. A few of the rumors would lead directly to specific old-school adventure modules, particularly Keep on the Borderlands, Palace of the Silver Princess, and Night Below (without saying as much, of course!). The others were tied to places that were fleshed out recently by WotC in their Nentir Vale supplement and Dragon e-magazine.

You can download the quest cards here if you want. It's a PDF file, nine cards on a single sheet of 8.5x11 paper. I print them on cardstock so they're easier to handle, and if you cut them out, they fit perfectly in a regular-size plastic playing card sleeve.

They chose the Night Below route.

I would have liked to run the older modules, but I have always wanted a chance to run Night Below. It's huge and sprawling and requires a lot more than mindless hack n slash to succeed or even survive. There is a lot going on in it and I'm looking forward to all the homework I'll have to do to get it right.

On Christmas evening, they started on their way. Haranshire lay on the other side of the Cairngorn Peaks from Winterhaven, which meant they had to cross the mountains somehow. I gave them the choice of three paths. A northern route, rumored to be home to trolls and other big nasties; a southern route, guarded by an orc tribe who demanded hefty tribute of anyone passing through; and a possible third way underneath the mountains, if they wanted to search for it.

They chose the northern pass. They bought horses and other supplies and headed out. Most of the days were uneventful, until the third day as they neared the top of the pass, when they encountered two trolls fighting each other. The ever-regenerating trolls had been bashing each other's skulls in for god-knows-how-long, and the party managed (barely) to avoid notice and left the trolls to their rumbling.

They had one night-time encounter with a few giant spiders, but a well-placed sleep spell knocked them out easily.

And after six mostly uneventful days of travel, they arrived in Haranshire. They found the old wizard Tauster, who was quite distraught over his missing apprentice, Jenna. They spent the night in town and headed up the river to meet Kuiper, one of the local rangers, and that's where we left off.

We'll be heading out to my in-laws' this evening for the next session.

Happy Holidays! And Kids' Campaign: Wrapping up The Keep on the Shadowfell

I hope everyone had a great holiday, filled with plenty of gaming goodness, be it gifts or time at the table. I got a healthy serving of both. My oldest daughter saved up chore money from her grandparents to get me the Citadel Miniatures laptop Paint Station, which was one of those things I always lust after at the Fantasy Shop but would never shell out the cash for. My other daughter got me three new Reaper minis to paint. My in-laws got me a pair of Darth Vader boxers, which came in an excellent Darth Vader-shaped tin, which now houses all my gaming dice and has me itching to run some kind of Star Wars game with the kids. I know there was a Microlite20 Star Wars mod... Anyways, the in-laws also gave me a gift certificate to the Fantasy Shop as well, which, I have since learned, can be used at their up-coming bi-annual Used Gaming Auction. Hopefully, somebody will be auctioning off a lot or three of some old-school D&D materials.

A week ago, the wife and I took the minions out to their grandparents, and we wrapped up the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure. They were close to the end and had just the final two encounters to go. 

I was a little worried, going in, about how the kids would handle the grisly and frightening nature of the endgame of this dungeon. Giant pools of blood, evil dude trying to open a portal to the Shadowfell, undead beasties galore... But they were troopers. Well, except the youngest one. He's six and is normally pretty resolute in understanding it's just a game, but for some reason the possibility of his elf fighter (who he has renamed twice) getting sucked into the Shadowfell was more than he could bear. 

So he went with Mom to get McDonalds for lunch. 

Anyway, first was the cathedral above the room with the portal. There was a cleric conducting a ritual of some sort on the altar at the far end, a few cultists helping with all the evil chanting, and a couple of big bodyguard types to deal with, and the kids made short work of all of them, although not without taking a few lumps. The wizard was still flying around thanks to the potion he had imbibed the previous encounter. Once they cleared out the cultists, they investigated the pit in the middle of the cathedral, where more weird chanting could be heard. Also, thick streams of blood were running from the altar into the pit, and there were no other doors. A torch was tossed down the pit, with vials of oil attached to it, but it was snuffed out in a larger pool of blood below. So, with grappling hooks and rope, they descended the pit into the room below. 

The still-flying wizard went first. 

Kalarel was not surprised, and he blasted the wizard, who failed his saving throw and lost his flying enchantment, and fell into the pool of blood. Skeletons hacked into him quickly and he was out. 

The rest of the team followed quickly. The undead monsters in the room consisted of a half-dozen skeletons, a wraith the the power to raise 1d4 of those skeletons on its turn, a big zombified drake, and Kalarel, the villain himself. 

Oh, and there was the Thing in the Portal, which chose a hero at random every turn to pull towards it a few squares. 

With the wizard falling in the first round, this fight was an instant nail-biter. The cleric went down soon after as well. I even adopted a house-rule (on the fly) that an unconscious character who gets a crit on their fortitude save (to avoid more body-point damage) could pop up with 1 hit point. This happened twice, once with the cleric and once with the wizard, and both were quickly dropped again. 

Did I mention the wraith kept bringing the skeletons back? 

In the end, it was a good thing the youngest boy's elf fighter was weilding Aecris, Sir Keegan's sword, as its bonus vs undead really wound up carrying the day (even if the boy wasn't there to make his own rolls). 

This was one of those battles with a ridiculous amount of critical hits. A natural 20 was rolled just about every round. The intensity of the combat was great. I think I've grokked the Microlite system pretty well at this point; I scribbled the monster stats on an index cards moments before the battle ensued. 

This session further solidified Microlite as my go-to D&D game from here on out. Now, to prepare for the next session! They've gone back to Winterfell, healed their fallen comrades, and are about to have dinner with the old town hedge wizard. 

Thoughts on Running Castle Ravenloft with Microlite74

So, the kids have been itching to play Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. This has generally been an exercise in frustration, as the two youngest are six and eight years old, and they don't quite grasp the strategic elements of which powers to use. Generally, its a lot of the same difficulties I ran into running 4E with them. 

However, as my recent blog posts attest, they have been very much enjoying playing with the Microlite rules, so my brain naturally started cooking up ideas for how to play the CR/WoA games with Microlite rules. 

There are some parts of the board games that will be easy to convert. Building the dungeon as they go, for instance, is a no-brainer. The monster AI as written on the cards won't be necessary, as I'll be the DM. 

I really like the Monster Deck mechanic, but I don't particularly want to make up a ton of new cards with M74 monster stats (though I started just such a project in Magic Set Editor). I'm thinking instead of a random wandering monster chart to possibly roll on whenever they explore a new tile. I'm thinking a 2dWhatever chart, with the weaker monsters in the middle (at the height of the bell curve) and the stronger monsters on the ends. Monsters would get crossed off as they are encountered, with the rest of the chart moving up or down closer to the middle, so the dungeon randomly gets more dangerous the deeper they get. 

I think that's a good start. Next up, we've got the Encounter Deck, which comprises traps and other events that alter play (moody music playing somewhere, drawing a wandering monster, chamber fills with blood mist, a ghost comes through, an earthquake rattles everything, etc). I'm going to need to take a bit to actually look through the cards again, but my gut feeling is that I may be able to use the cards as written, perhaps changing instances of "1 damage" to "1d6 damage". 

There are four "Conditions" that appear in the board games that were ported over from 4E. These appear often on the "Encounter" cards, so I will need a standard way to adjudicate these. They are: Slowed, Immobilized, Dazed and Poisoned. M74 has four saving throws: Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and Presence. I don't think, however, that it would be a good idea to match each saving throw to a particular condition. Rather, it would be on a case-by-case basis, and then I would have to record each instance so that precedents can be maintained. 

Anyways, I'll be taking a closer look at everything in the box this evening and should have some better ideas on how to make it work. Since we seem to have an extra night a week to play in addition to our now regularly scheduled game with their grandfather, I may just have them roll up new characters for a Castle Ravenloft mini-campaign. 

Kids' Campaign: Keep on the Shadowfell, Microlite Style

So last night we continued the kids' game, along with my father-in-law. They are getting close to the end of the dungeon. It was decided at the beginning of this session they would rest for the night, which they did in the secret treasure room they had found in the previous session. Hit points restored, they went back to the last place they had explored to, which was a hallway with two closed doors, one going right and one left. They opened the left door first, and found a remarkably clean dungeon hallway. Past the door on the right was a large room with a huge statue of a knight. They chose to go down the clean hallway first, where they eventually encountered a gelatinous cube, which they fought and killed. In that area was also the sarcophagi of the family of Sir Keegan, the last lord of Shadowfell Keep. They found the burial items of the Keegan family hidden in the crypt, which the cleric convinced the rest of the party to leave (a toy wooden sword, a doll, a broom, and an amulet). 

Next they went into the room with the huge statue. I opted to make that the only trap in the room, instead of the three different traps listed in the module. The thief spotted the access panel on the back of the statue after it attacked the first time. They gave the thief a drink of the invisibility potion, which enabled her to cross the room and not trigger the statue's attack, and she climbed up the back of it and spent some time disabling it. 

Then, still invisible, she went and opened the door on the other side of the room! She discovered all the undead inside, and ran back around to the end of the room. Attracted to the light of the torches and lanterns the team was carrying, a whole mess of undead lurched forward attack. 

This fight got pretty interesting. A mix of skeletons, zombies, and ghouls were in the room. The ghouls' paralyzing bite almost had the whole party down at one point, with three out of five failing their saving throws (I allow the players a saving throw each turn to overcome the paralysis). 

And then the flesh golem lumbered up the stairs. Its first attack critted for 12, knocking the elf fighter down to 2 HP in a single blow! She ran away quickly but the other elf, weilding Aecris, Sir Keegan's old sword, stepped in and fought bravely. The wizard was flying around thanks to a potion of flight he'd drunk, and was shooting flaming magic missiles at the monster (I let him pay an extra HP to cast the spell to add a +1 to damage and add an basic elemental type to it). A couple oil flasks kept the fire damage rolling, which kept the flesh golem slowed (and only making one slam attack at +12 to hit per round instead of two!). The fire was probably the difference between victory and TPK. 

It's a pretty interesting experience DMing for your kids. On one hand, you want to challenge them and facilitate a thrilling adventure. On the other hand, you don't want to arbitrarily kill off a kid's character. But the dice are fickle! I have been rolling them all right out in the open, including monsters' hit dice (which I don't roll until the monster is actually attacked). There's no fudging anything. The kids would be able to tell if I was, anyway. 

All in all, a good session. They healed up and are about to enter the room with the Rift. 

Microlite74 Kids' Campaign Gets a New Player!

This past Sunday was another day spent playing Microlite74 with the kids! This time we were joined by my father-in-law, a long-time gamer himself. We rolled him up a dwarf cleric to round out the team, and having him at the table was a big help, both in terms of keeping the kids focused on the action at hand, and in teaching them what kinds of details to ask about and tactics to use. 

As I've said before, I am running the kids through WotC's Keep on the Shadowfell, the infamous first published module for Type IV D&D, and adapting it on the fly for the Microlite system. It has continued to work out surprisingly well. Before we started playing today, they had rescued Douven Stahl from the old dragon burial ground, explored much of the first level of the Keep, and made their way down to the second level, but retreated after the fight with the hobgoblins' pet giant spider went sour. 

Today, they went back to town, got healed up, got a new party member, took out Ninaren and the undead in the graveyard, finished exploring the first level of the dungeon (which included the battle with skeleton warriors in the crypt and the confrontation with the skeletal remains of Sir Keegan, the last Lord of the Keep, AND finding the secret armory and solving the riddle to get the magic armor) and finished off the rest of the hobgoblins in the second level, aided by clever use of a couple charm person spells by the group's wizard. 

All told, in the time we had, had we been playing Type IV, they would have made it to Sir Keegan, and that's about it (if we made it that far!). 

I have made a couple changes to the way we use the magic system, which is only for the kids' game and not something I would do if gaming with adults, and that is to change the cost of casting magic spells. In the rules-as-written, first level spells drain a magic-user or cleric of 3 hit points when cast. While I understand the intent of the rule, to more closely emulate the original edition's restrictions on spells per day for magic users, the result, at least for my eight-year-old son, has been to refrain from using any spells out of fear of losing too many hit points. So I've knocked them down to make each spell's cost in HP equal to its level, which definitely resulted in the boy being more willing to experiment with the spells he had in the game. He learned the hard way that "Charm Person" doesn't work on the undead, but didn't feel cheated by it because he hadn't spent too much in casting it anyways. 

I also allowed the cleric to heal 1d8 hit points using Cure Light Wounds, as opposed to the 1d2 body points called for in the rules-as-written. I've been going to my AD&D Player's Handbook for spells as much as possible, and the two systems are working together quite well. 

All in all, I'm very happy with it and see Microlite74 as my go-to D&D game for the foreseeable future. 

M74 Kid's Campaign update

Happy Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and all that other bullshit to everyone who might celebrate those days. I celebrated Thanksgiving by driving some seven hundred miles (round trip) to see some family I haven't seen in a few years, and it was all good. The minions had a great time with their cousins, the food was AMAZING (thank you, great-grandma!), and a good time was had by all. Except for the two-year-old, who never wants to be in a carseat that long ever again. 

We celebrated Black Friday by playing D&D (Microlite74 style) pretty much all day. Shopping is overrated anyway. The minions are very much enjoying the new system, even though they miss things like Healing Surges and Action Points. I am (on the fly) adapting WotC's Keep on the Shadowfell to the Microlite system, and it's working out amazingly well. This only confirms my suspicion that it is, in fact, an old-school style dungeon crawl that they tried to fit into the 4E system framework. In my experience, it doesn't work with 4E, unless you want to spend months crawling through it. I don't. At the rate my kids are going, we have another three or four sessions, at the most, depending on how it goes, of course. 

I haven't been terribly strict on enforcing exactly how they are doing things like "searching for traps" or "looking for treasure"; just the simple fact that they are thinking to do such things is enough to say "okay, here's what you've found." I figure I'll start teaching them the nuances of all that as they continue to play. Really all that matters is they are having fun, and so am I, and they all continue to learn the game. 

Teach Your Kids to Game Week!

I got an email the other day from DriveThruRPG.com about Teach Your Kids to Game Week. I'm not sure if it's this week or next or whatever, but I figured I'd share my most recent experience. I've written about this before, as I was teaching my three oldest the ins and outs of Type IV D&D. We made it through a few sessions, enough to level them up to 2, before the chaos of having a large family intervened. I have since become enamored of the newest edition of Microlite, and decided to convert the kids game to that system. 

They didn't want to lose all their stuff, or make new characters, so I had them roll stats (4d6 drop the lowest) and did the rest of the chargen myself for them. All in all, using Microsoft Word, I was able to put all their characters together in as much time as it took me to do their Type IV characters in WotC's online Character Builder. I was also able to create a new character for the youngest boy (age 6) so he wouldn't be left out of the fun. It was a piece of cake to modify the magic items they already had from 4E to work in the Microlite74 system. 

All in all, we managed to play for about two hours. A lot of that was spent with the kids joking around about everything. I am running them through the old 4E adventure "Keep on the Shadowfell", which is a straightforward enough adventure and features a large, rather old-school type of dungeon to explore (old-school enough that it is pretty much a total failure as a Type IV D&D module!). They haven't gotten to the Keep yet, but they will soon enough. 

I'm not sure if I really have any good advice for gaming with kids, though. Try to do as much of the chargen yourself as is possible. Use a simple system; the 4E power cards can induce a rather debilitating type of analysis paralysis in certain kids, and combat can really drag in that system. Kids are naturally old-school gamers, believe it or not. They want to try anything, and they need that kind of freedom. The "yes, but..." DMing style is absolutely crucial in this type of game. Encourage them to be descriptive, and they will go all-out. At least, mine did, but they are always trying to one-up each other. 

Gaming with kids can be very rewarding. I know I had a blast playing with them, and I know they all enjoyed themselves (even when it seemed they weren't; nobody likes to miss their attack roll!). So, if you have kids, game excellently with them! 

Microlite74

Microlite74

So, I haven't done much in the way of gaming in the past month, except for my weekly D&D Encounters fix. Schedules around this chaotic household have been pretty hectic, between my working loads of overtime, home-schooling the kids, the wife's knee injury, and running kids around to Scouts and sports events, there hasn't been a lot of time at all to continue the 4E D&D game I started with the kids. 

And truth be told, I think I need a simpler system to play with the kids. One thing I discovered while running the game for them is that kids naturally gravitate to the old-school ways, where they are willing to try anything they can imagine, and come up with crazy solutions to the problems placed before them. They don't need to be limited by the power cards in front of them. Nor do I want to constantly have to explain how the rules work for each of their powers. 

I've always lurked around the OSR blogs, and started doing some research into the different systems that emulate the first few editions of D&D. We all know there are several out there (just take a look over at the sidebar at Tenkar's Tavern for a pretty comprehensive list of links). I didn't want an exact copy of an earlier edition- I've got my 2E books if I wanted to play that. I also really like the core mechanic of the D20 system in 3E and 4E. To me, the best improvement they made with 3E was the Ascending Armor Class (eliminating THAC0) and the addition of Non-Armor Defenses to replace those clunky saving throw charts. 

So, after downloading a few free PDFs and perusing rules and blog posts about different systems, I stumbled upon Microlite. There is a new revision of the Microlite ruleset currently under proofreading, and I loved it from the start. Ascending AC, Non-Armor Defenses (with an option to use old-school saving throws instead!), a hit-point draining magic system (something I thought was great from my Dragonquest days), and easy compatibility with all my 2E books (particularly the magic items from the DMG, and the Monstrous Manual). I'll be using the Microlite74 Extended rules, but probably not all of them (things like combat stances won't be used). I really like the 4E nod to hit points fully recovering after a six-hour (Extended) rest, and the Body Points rules for dying are great. The system is still potentially quite lethal, but a single hit won't kill my son's wizard. I may take a deeper look at it and see if I can houserule a few things to include the standard D&D attribute array, as the Extended version of Microlite74 uses only 4 stats. 

The best part is I can still mine all my 4E books for all the fluff (which is a big part of what I really love about 4E) because it will be damn easy to convert to Microlite. I'm looking forward to the final release of Microlite74 and am definitely going to start running it for the minions. They could give a damn what "edition" we're using, they just want to play D&D. And their character sheets will actually fit on one sheet! 

D&D with my Kids, Session 2

So, following the success of my Saturday night intro game with my kids, we played again Sunday evening, and added the next youngest child, "C", to the mix, playing a halfling rogue, which she quite promptly named "Diamond". For a seven-year-old, she's pretty darn quick adding her damage dice together. Anyways, this means we have a halfling rogue named Diamond, an elf fighter called Ice, a human mage that goes by Mike, and a human warpriest called Padre.

Not the most original fantasy names, but that's okay. We're not trying to write the next Dragonlance Saga here. Anyways, Saturday's session ended with the defeat of the Necromancer and the recovery of Traeven's missing box, which just happened to contain some evil-looking human skull that was encrusted with dark jewels for (ostensibly) dark purposes.

They left the Twisting Halls and headed back to Fallcrest, and found Traeven at the Inn. To their credit, they did interrogate him about the nature of the skull and why he had such a thing, and Traeven, a tiefling, claimed he was delivering it to a monastery in the Cairngorn Peaks so it can be kept safe from evil hands. Traeven paid them for retrieving it for them, and offered them a new job, escorting him and his wagon to that monastery in the Cairngorn Peaks, a four-day journey.

It wasn't long, of course, before they were attacked by a mess of goblins. They quickly dispatched most of them and proceeded to track the ones who ran away to a crumbling tower in the forest along the King's Road, at which point we jumped into the 2nd level delve from the Dungeon Delve book. It took them a while to hack their way through it, but managed to survive all the way to the top. Definitely had an interesting few minutes when the goblin underboss was the last remaining enemy and begged them to not kill him, and the children were presented with the classic quandary of what to do with a monster that was begging for its life and clearly no longer a danger. We solved that quandary pretty quick by having him get enraged at something one of them said, grab for his weapon, and a quick magic missile solved the whole mess.

The highlight of the night was probably when Diamond rolled a 20 on an attack roll against a bugbear, the big nasty brute at the top of the crumbling tower, and felled him with a single shot from her sling. She declared that the stone went in through his mouth, and I declared that it went out the back of his head. Too gruesome an image for a seven year old? Bah, they watch all kinds of goofy horror movies with their grandfather on a fairly regular basis, so I'm not too worried about it. They all thought it was great.

The kids all think its the best game ever. Obviously, they've never played any other type of RPG, but I think it's a good first step. Working on problem-solving skills and trying to encourage them to think outside their power-blocks is definitely an interesting experience. I think they'll get the hang of it pretty quick. Kids are clever like that, they just need the proper encouragement.

Playing the Starter Set Adventure with my Kids

So I gifted my two oldest step-children the D&D Starter Set on Saturday. My wife was going to be out all day, and the two younger children were with their grandparents til Sunday, so it wound up being a perfect day for D&D with the kids.

"A" is 11 and "K" is 9. K just recently beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which is pretty impressive, I think, which was one of the reasons I went ahead and got them the set. They made up their characters, and we all stuck to Essentials builds. K is a human mage named "Mike" and A is an elf slayer named "Ice". I made a human warpriest named "Padre" who is along for muscle and healing. Good thing, too.

The Red Box is an interesting product. I'm not really impressed with the choose-your-own-adventure method of chargen in the player booklet, but the DM booklet is actually pretty solid. I opted to just use the online character builder, to save time, and it worked just fine. Because of this, all the cards that come in the red box were kind of useless, except for the treasure cards. Oh well. The cardboard creature tokens are pretty useless when you already have a box of minis, but at least we got a new set of dice, an adventure, and a poster battlemap out of it.

I went ahead and ran them through the adventure straight out of the DM booklet. I always cut published monster hitpoints in half, and did that here, and things have moved along decently. We got through the crossroads encounter, although that got a little hairy for a minute, as our slayer missed her first few attacks and the wolves proved to be kind of durable.

We made it into the dungeon, fought the goblins in the first room. The hex thrower ran away into the next room. At the time of this writing (they are taking an extended rest at the moment), they had followed the hexer, fought more goblins and dire rats, ran into the fledgling white dragon, managed to insult it, ran away, fell in the pit trap, and then got stuck on the chess puzzle. After the rook thwomped the mage pretty good, we high-tailed it out of there for an extended rest.

After the rest, we went back in, and the elf sweet-talked our way past the dragon. We fought more goblins and the bugbear, and then the undead and the necromancer. That last fight would have been ugly except for a couple of very well timed critical hits on daily powers, which completely turned the tide of battle our way. All in all, the kids really enjoyed it, and can't wait to play again. The dungeon module itself was actually pretty good. If we had a full complement of 5 players, it would have been good with the monsters at full hit points, too. It offers options for actual role-playing (possible conversation with the dragon) and a clever puzzle situation with the chess room (which, I'm sure, experienced players would solve with ease, but my 10-year-olds found quite vexing). Using actual chess pieces helped in that spot, but they didn't go back to try to solve it. I thought I did a pretty good job of giving them just enough information to solve it from the start, and then later gave them more information than they deserved, but they weren't quite there. Oh well, maybe next time!

My oldest daughter had a blast, but was not a fan of the Essentials slayer build. She wanted to know where her Daily powers were, like the cleric and mage had. So, since we got just enough XP to level up, we'll change Ice to a traditional Players Handbook fighter when we level everyone up.