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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6032330" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 1: THE CRYPT OF ST. BETHESDA</strong></p><p></p><p>For the first adventure, I chose something simple: <em>The Crypt of St. Bethesda</em> by James MacDuff, a mini-adventure published by AEG. You may recall those: they were the size and shape of a standard 8-1/2" by 11" piece of paper folded in half lengthwise, and each was 16 "half-pages" long - short, simple, and perfectly suited for a couple of hours of adventure. This particular one had a carrion crawler on the front cover; even better, it was an "old school" carrion crawler, not the poorly redesigned version foisted on unsuspecting gamers in the 3E <em>Monster Manual</em>, now suddenly (and inexplicably) complete with teeth and eyestalks. <em>The Crypt of St. Bethesda</em> called for 5-8 PCs of levels 2-4, but I was able to scale it down fairly easily to make it suitable for three 1st-level PCs.</p><p></p><p>Since this was apparently not going to be a very serious campaign, I didn't bother with a whole lot of backstory; Cal and Slayer had met up and decided to adventure together, and that was all the character history that was needed. I placed Gareth as a prisoner in a bandit's lair in the small dungeon complex that they were checking out; he had been captured by the bandits for snooping around their lair. (This kept Logan's PC out of the limelight for a while, so Slayer could pretty much run the two-man show and "get his feet wet" while Jacob learned the basics about combat and exploration.) When Cal and Slayer slew the bandits, we got a little roleplaying in as Gareth was questioned to ensure that his being tied up in their lair wasn't some sort of trick to infiltrate a bandit into their midst. After being rescued, Gareth joined the team and their adventuring party was now three in number (four, if you counted Joanna).</p><p></p><p>Back then, we were strictly a "map the dungeon out on graph paper as you explore it" operation, with the minis placed on the table merely to show orientation during combat. (As it turned out, the tablecloth in Dan's kitchen was made up of a plaid pattern with nearly inch-long squares, which made it easy to use as a stand-in combat grid.) For the monsters, I had a box of game tokens of various colors which I used when I didn't have anything more appropriate. (I did bring a handful of both plastic skeletons and plastic zombies from the HeroQuest game, for use as the skeletons and ghouls that were called for in the adventure. Likewise, I had a little plastic spider that saw use in that game as well.) Logan was the dedicated mapper of the group, a role he had pretty much taken on in all of our earlier campaigns as well.</p><p></p><p>Even from this first adventure I used initiative cards, a habit I had gotten into since my sons and I first played 3.0 and were introduced to the concept of cyclical initiative. For the monsters, this was a simple deck of cards; for each battle, I'd assign each of the monsters a black card (so the skeletons might be represented by the Ace of Clubs, and if a spider joined the fight it might use the Eight of Spades). For this first game session, I assigned each of the PCs a red face card; they got to pick between the King or Jack of Hearts or Diamonds. At the end of the session, I gave each of the players a blank card - it was an index card upon which I had traced a playing card from my deck, then cut it out so it was the correct size and shape - and told them to draw their PC on the blank side. That way, in future games, I could use their cards with their PCs' likenesses to represent them. Using the initiative cards was easy: I jotted down the initiatives of each combatant (clumping all of the same type together, so all 5 skeletons acted on the same initiative count) on a piece of scratch paper, then organized my "initiative deck" so that I could call out whose turn it was, then place that card at the bottom of the deck after he made his move. Holding an action meant turning the card sideways so I could see that he still had an action to take before his next turn if he wanted to take it. And once a monster was killed (or all of the same type of monster was killed), his/their card was removed from the initiative deck.</p><p></p><p>Overall assessment: well, we all had a good time, so that was the main thing. Jacob had a blast, and he had pretty much figured out the main rules by the end. (Dan and I had jointly decided that the best way to teach him the game was through instant immersion, rather than trying to explain everything ahead of time. It made this first adventure a bit slower-paced, as we explained how each game mechanic worked as it came up naturally in play, but he grasped each concept faster with a relevant example at hand to help him visualize what was going on.) We all agreed that this had been fun enough to continue on a regular basis, although at the time I just envisioned the campaign as a series of dungeon crawls with no real ongoing plot. But that was fine: I had a full run of <em>Dungeon</em> magazines chock-full of adventures, so I was sure I could keep the PCs in dungeon crawls for quite some time. Finally, I could see that Dan and I were going to have to get used to our respective playing styles; he had up until this point only played AD&D 1st Edition (and that some 20 years or more ago), but it was fairly easy to see that he was used to a more adversarial DMing style than I was using. His older campaigns from when he was a kid apparently involved NPCs constantly trying to stab the PCs in the back at every turn, and DM fiat must have been flung around with some regularity. (In fact, to project ahead in the campaign's future a bit, this would be a concern for some time; Dan proved to be a much more paranoid player than I had encountered in a long time. No NPC of mine was ever taken at face value, and Dan often tried to find the "hook" that I would surely use to screw with the PCs in any given adventure. Naturally, this made it rather difficult for me to run back-stabbing NPCs!)</p><p></p><p>As for the rest of Dan's family, 2-year-old Joey would peek in from time to time to see what all the dice-rolling was all about, and I let him play with some of the plastic monsters I had brought when they weren't otherwise in use. He also sat on my lap from time to time and helped me roll dice. Dan's wife, <strong>Vicki</strong>, peeked in from time to time to see that Joey wasn't causing us any grief, but he was fine. (In fact, I shortly became Joey's favorite non-related adult visitor, according to Vicki.) She seemed to view the game as an interesting oddity, but nothing all that exciting. However, that would change over time....</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6032330, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 1: THE CRYPT OF ST. BETHESDA[/b] For the first adventure, I chose something simple: [i]The Crypt of St. Bethesda[/i] by James MacDuff, a mini-adventure published by AEG. You may recall those: they were the size and shape of a standard 8-1/2" by 11" piece of paper folded in half lengthwise, and each was 16 "half-pages" long - short, simple, and perfectly suited for a couple of hours of adventure. This particular one had a carrion crawler on the front cover; even better, it was an "old school" carrion crawler, not the poorly redesigned version foisted on unsuspecting gamers in the 3E [i]Monster Manual[/i], now suddenly (and inexplicably) complete with teeth and eyestalks. [i]The Crypt of St. Bethesda[/i] called for 5-8 PCs of levels 2-4, but I was able to scale it down fairly easily to make it suitable for three 1st-level PCs. Since this was apparently not going to be a very serious campaign, I didn't bother with a whole lot of backstory; Cal and Slayer had met up and decided to adventure together, and that was all the character history that was needed. I placed Gareth as a prisoner in a bandit's lair in the small dungeon complex that they were checking out; he had been captured by the bandits for snooping around their lair. (This kept Logan's PC out of the limelight for a while, so Slayer could pretty much run the two-man show and "get his feet wet" while Jacob learned the basics about combat and exploration.) When Cal and Slayer slew the bandits, we got a little roleplaying in as Gareth was questioned to ensure that his being tied up in their lair wasn't some sort of trick to infiltrate a bandit into their midst. After being rescued, Gareth joined the team and their adventuring party was now three in number (four, if you counted Joanna). Back then, we were strictly a "map the dungeon out on graph paper as you explore it" operation, with the minis placed on the table merely to show orientation during combat. (As it turned out, the tablecloth in Dan's kitchen was made up of a plaid pattern with nearly inch-long squares, which made it easy to use as a stand-in combat grid.) For the monsters, I had a box of game tokens of various colors which I used when I didn't have anything more appropriate. (I did bring a handful of both plastic skeletons and plastic zombies from the HeroQuest game, for use as the skeletons and ghouls that were called for in the adventure. Likewise, I had a little plastic spider that saw use in that game as well.) Logan was the dedicated mapper of the group, a role he had pretty much taken on in all of our earlier campaigns as well. Even from this first adventure I used initiative cards, a habit I had gotten into since my sons and I first played 3.0 and were introduced to the concept of cyclical initiative. For the monsters, this was a simple deck of cards; for each battle, I'd assign each of the monsters a black card (so the skeletons might be represented by the Ace of Clubs, and if a spider joined the fight it might use the Eight of Spades). For this first game session, I assigned each of the PCs a red face card; they got to pick between the King or Jack of Hearts or Diamonds. At the end of the session, I gave each of the players a blank card - it was an index card upon which I had traced a playing card from my deck, then cut it out so it was the correct size and shape - and told them to draw their PC on the blank side. That way, in future games, I could use their cards with their PCs' likenesses to represent them. Using the initiative cards was easy: I jotted down the initiatives of each combatant (clumping all of the same type together, so all 5 skeletons acted on the same initiative count) on a piece of scratch paper, then organized my "initiative deck" so that I could call out whose turn it was, then place that card at the bottom of the deck after he made his move. Holding an action meant turning the card sideways so I could see that he still had an action to take before his next turn if he wanted to take it. And once a monster was killed (or all of the same type of monster was killed), his/their card was removed from the initiative deck. Overall assessment: well, we all had a good time, so that was the main thing. Jacob had a blast, and he had pretty much figured out the main rules by the end. (Dan and I had jointly decided that the best way to teach him the game was through instant immersion, rather than trying to explain everything ahead of time. It made this first adventure a bit slower-paced, as we explained how each game mechanic worked as it came up naturally in play, but he grasped each concept faster with a relevant example at hand to help him visualize what was going on.) We all agreed that this had been fun enough to continue on a regular basis, although at the time I just envisioned the campaign as a series of dungeon crawls with no real ongoing plot. But that was fine: I had a full run of [i]Dungeon[/i] magazines chock-full of adventures, so I was sure I could keep the PCs in dungeon crawls for quite some time. Finally, I could see that Dan and I were going to have to get used to our respective playing styles; he had up until this point only played AD&D 1st Edition (and that some 20 years or more ago), but it was fairly easy to see that he was used to a more adversarial DMing style than I was using. His older campaigns from when he was a kid apparently involved NPCs constantly trying to stab the PCs in the back at every turn, and DM fiat must have been flung around with some regularity. (In fact, to project ahead in the campaign's future a bit, this would be a concern for some time; Dan proved to be a much more paranoid player than I had encountered in a long time. No NPC of mine was ever taken at face value, and Dan often tried to find the "hook" that I would surely use to screw with the PCs in any given adventure. Naturally, this made it rather difficult for me to run back-stabbing NPCs!) As for the rest of Dan's family, 2-year-old Joey would peek in from time to time to see what all the dice-rolling was all about, and I let him play with some of the plastic monsters I had brought when they weren't otherwise in use. He also sat on my lap from time to time and helped me roll dice. Dan's wife, [b]Vicki[/b], peeked in from time to time to see that Joey wasn't causing us any grief, but he was fine. (In fact, I shortly became Joey's favorite non-related adult visitor, according to Vicki.) She seemed to view the game as an interesting oddity, but nothing all that exciting. However, that would change over time.... [/QUOTE]
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