Summer Revels

I just had a pretty excellent and productive gaming weekend. I was able to run three separate RPG sessions and play in a fourth, and had a chance to try out a new boardgame. We usually have about a dozen attendees for these weekends and this summer we tried something a little different by adding some structure and setting caps on the number of players at different events. Although I have years of experience refereeing games with large groups of eight, nine, or more players it’s never easy and frankly nigh impossible to keep everyone consistently engaged. Like most referees, my personal sweet spot is four to six players for most RPG systems: it’s really hard to cajole other players into running games for larger groups.

The experiment largely seemed to have worked: everyone had a chance to play in at least one session of an RPG, and I think the quality of play and depth of engagement was higher. So I think we’ll probably try this approach again.

I ran two sessions of the Great Dungeon of the North with two separate groups, each representing rival adventuring parties exploring a new area of my house megadungeon. The Dome of the Phoenix is a legendary location on the third level that had been discovered decades earlier but its location had been lost for years and years.

We used 5e rules and I had prepared ten pre-generated 3rd level characters for players to pick from, though a couple of players had brought their own. I also used Xanathar's Guide to Everything to generate two lists of magic items. The magic guidelines found there are so useful they really should have been in the DMG.

The first adventuring party picked characters and divided up magic items from the first list before descending into the third level. The party included Fergus Elfriend, a human fighter; Haf Ulfarson, a human cleric; Tamako Jun, a human samurai, and Azibus the Green, a human wizard.

The second party did the same two days later in both real time and game time. This group included Eldrin, a wood elf wizard; Brother Leonard, a human cleric; Rikken, a hill dwarf fighter; and Sigar Sigarson, a human barbarian.

I ran both sessions somewhat like a tournament module in that each party had four hours to get through as much of the dungeon as possible. I also used some rules to discourage the 15-minute adventuring day and emphasize the resource management aspect of older versions of D&D. While I allow short rests (with wandering monster checks, natch!), long rests within the Great Dungeon are unpredictable and even dangerous on the lower levels: damage is not always healed and spells and other resources are not always recovered. The best place for a long rest is back in Delvetown.

I intentionally built the Dome of the Phoenix region to emulate a classic Jaquay dungeon crawl experience, complete with secret areas and multiple paths. My plan was to build the whole area out of Dwarven Forge terrain based on “trays” of cardboard for easy deployment, but I simply ran out of time before the weekend.

It was very interesting to see two separate groups tackle the same stretch of dungeon. While the first group enjoyed “first mover” advantage, the second group benefited from being able to see where the first group had gone. I assumed some restocking in the two days between delves, so some rooms had new monsters and in other rooms the monsters switched up their tactics.

The megadungeons of early D&D contained an element of player competition, as different groups competed to loot newly discovered sections of Greyhawk or Blackmoor. I had never really captured that dynamic for the Great Dungeon of the North before this adventure.

The first group got fairly far on their expedition, but ended up looping back to the entrance room just as their time expired. The second group spent a little more time in Delvetown gathering rumors and was able to find the Dome of the Phoenix—and more importantly, unlock its secrets before time ran out.

All-in-all, I was satisfied with how the sessions played out. Adding a time limit as well as player competition added a level of urgency to the Great Dungeon that has been badly missing from my game, and I hope to tweak this formula going forward. Neither group spent any effort on mapping their expeditions, and I would like to bring back that aspect of old school play. I will try to post my dungeon key in the coming weeks.

I also ran another Into the Interface session of Traveller using the Mongoose 2e rules. The Professor’s Charter found the crew of the Starjammer still in the Wu system. A man claiming to be an Imperial researcher from the University of Daibei chartered the armed packet for a trip to the Desolation (Magyar 1506 B401200-E) system, a lawless haven for pirates and smugglers just beyond the Imperial border. As usual for the Starjammer, nothing quite transpired as advertised. I’ll try to post some more detailed game notes in the weeks ahead. Again, I think a smaller group really sped play and encouraged engagement.

Over the last few weeks I have been hard at work on my 2nd Dynasty model of the Starjammer, hoping I would be able to use it in this session. Alas, although I have made good progress I once again simply ran out of time. It has been interesting trying to cross over to model building from miniature painting. While there seems to be some overlap between the two hobbies, there are also many differences and I have been struggle to pick up new techniques.

I also got a chance to play in one of the short adventures from Candlekeep Mysteries, a brief investigation into the source of some tainted books of lore. It was a nice change of pace from the usual hack and slash, though I regret some of my character choices: an anti-intellectual cleric was not much use for this one, and a brainy wizard or bard would have been much better suited for the scenario. Lest anyone think this adventure was completely without mayhem and violence, the final encounter was so badass that we barely made it out alive: more than once I thought we had a TPK on our hands. I would definitely like to play more stuff from this book.

Finally, I had a chance to play the boardgame Concordia, a trading game set in the ancient Roman world. This was a lot of fun and the complexity level was just about perfect for my tastes. (It helps immensely to play with folks who know the rules.) With five players I think we were able to finish in a little over two hours. I would absolutely like to try this game again.

I had a great time catching up with old friends and I’m already looking forward to our next gathering this coming winter.