Hi! This is my first post on the forums and after finding this throughly entertaining thread and great rules I feel compelled to thank everyone (especially Greywulf of course!) for bringing me back to DnD. And proper DnD (not the 3.5 bad haircut version) too!
I'm mainly a fanatsy and historical wargamer and painter but I have a great affection for roleplaying games as they came first for me. Basic DnD in particular as the Red box was the first rpg I purchased.
All of my roleplaying experiences up until that point were completely paperless and sans dice. All actions in the game were roleplayed and I must admit I miss that type of game as it left more to the imagination and there was less of a materialistic/consumerist/betterment element to the game. As I got older and I was playing rpgs with a wider group of people (all my roleplaying had been with one or two close friends until this point), the DnD system became the great equaliser. Everyone 'got' the DnD concept and as with any set of rules (as per their function), DnD was a functional framework for belting the
out of kobolds.
Well, the years have rolled on, the games played and abandoned and after a very lengthy hiatus, I'm back to beating the crap out of Kobolds - and it's all thanks to you guys
I printed out the rules and the kobold temple scenario and ran a game for a friend on the weekend. We had an absolute blast! It's really refreshing to go from playing a visceral, rules heavy, Napoleonic miniatures wargame to a rules-lite abstract contest of the imagination.
My friend (who incidentally has never played a rpg before but who is familiar with the concepts of fantasy) decided he wanted to be a woodsman who has a supernatural affinity with animals and a pet wolf.
I decided to use the stats for a wolf from the list of animals in the print out and made him take a mind + communication test against a variable DC every time he gave the wolf a command.
I quickly read over the adventure notes and explained the background to the player. As background, I explained that his character was passing through a nearby settlement on the southern borders of the realm's frontier when he had received a summons from the sheriff of the local lands.
The sheriff turned out to be a farmer who had been appointed administrator of the land in the absence of the local lord who had been seconded (along with his guardsmen) to the war in the west. The lord had left his lands seven years prior to the adventure and by that time, the Kobolds had become such an irritant that there had been numerous attempts at mustering a competent local militia with the help of passing swords for hire at the helm. All of these attempts had failed to dislodge the Kobolds from their ancestral lands and their guerrilla fighting had forced many to abandon the area in search of more prosperous (and guarded) environs. By the time the player's character turns up on the scene, the village has had enough. They decide to employ the character on the basis that he is an experienced woodsman whereas in the past, others had failed to navigate the dense woods and had succumbed to it's inherent traps. The towns people are in such desperation that they offer the character a princely sum of 15gp per Kobold head (as per the adventure notes)!
I'll summarise how the rest went when I get a chance some time tomorrow....
