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<blockquote data-quote="Jolly Ruby" data-source="post: 8984163" data-attributes="member: 7040015">It went well! I think all four objectives were met. It felt D&amp;D enough, even if it wasn't actually D&amp;D; all players could create the characters they wanted to play; nobody besides me read the rules beforehand; and the combat was almost too deadly, but hit the sweet spot.The group was composed of me and five players: two who had played both OSR and modern D&amp;D before, one who played TTRPGs, but never played D&amp;D or adjacent games, and two players who never played TTRPGs before. The players who played D&amp;D before adapted very well, the game and the nomenclature are familiar enough to play it seamless. The player who never played D&amp;D but played other TTRPGs felt it was &quot;weird&quot; at the start, but adapted quite well too. She said it involved too many dice rolls, even if I asked for almost no ability checks. The players who never played TTRPGs before loved it, and I even spent hours after the game talking about the system and the adventure with one of them.As [USER=6816042]@Arilyn[/USER] said, the shenanigans opportunities were more prevalent than the system rules, so the choice of adventure was very adequate for a game where the players can play without knowing the rules. I ignored some rules too, like the &quot;always on initiative order&quot; and &quot;real-time tracking&quot; in favor of better control of game pacing. I didn't tweak the monsters too, since most encounters are intentionally way over the character's paygrade (the giant and the death knight) or are massive threats with glaring weaknesses (the owlbear). Speaking of the owlbear, it almost killed two characters! Luckily, ShadowDark isn't as punitive as B/X with character deaths, so they could be stabilized and the owlbear was scared away. They eventually encountered it twice again, the second time they locked it inside a room, and the third time was right before their escape, and they killed the beast with fire!The game was a bit longer than I expected. We played for more or less seven hours, with some large breaks. I was afraid they would be tired way too soon, but everyone was asking for more until we ended the adventure, so I consider it a successful experiment.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jolly Ruby, post: 8984163, member: 7040015"] It went well! I think all four objectives were met. It felt D&D enough, even if it wasn't actually D&D; all players could create the characters they wanted to play; nobody besides me read the rules beforehand; and the combat was [I]almost [/I]too deadly, but hit the sweet spot. The group was composed of me and five players: two who had played both OSR and modern D&D before, one who played TTRPGs, but never played D&D or adjacent games, and two players who never played TTRPGs before. The players who played D&D before adapted very well, the game and the nomenclature are familiar enough to play it seamless. The player who never played D&D but played other TTRPGs felt it was "weird" at the start, but adapted quite well too. She said it involved too many dice rolls, even if I asked for almost no ability checks. The players who never played TTRPGs before loved it, and I even spent hours after the game talking about the system and the adventure with one of them. As [USER=6816042]@Arilyn[/USER] said, the shenanigans opportunities were more prevalent than the system rules, so the choice of adventure was very adequate for a game where the players can play without knowing the rules. I ignored some rules too, like the "always on initiative order" and "real-time tracking" in favor of better control of game pacing. I didn't tweak the monsters too, since most encounters are intentionally way over the character's paygrade (the giant and the death knight) or are massive threats with glaring weaknesses (the owlbear). Speaking of the owlbear, it almost killed two characters! Luckily, ShadowDark isn't as punitive as B/X with character deaths, so they could be stabilized and the owlbear was scared away. They eventually encountered it twice again, the second time they locked it inside a room, and the third time was right before their escape, and they killed the beast with fire! The game was a bit longer than I expected. We played for more or less seven hours, with some large breaks. I was afraid they would be tired way too soon, but everyone was asking for more until we ended the adventure, so I consider it a successful experiment. [/QUOTE]

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