I tried writing up notes for a custom adventure but kept coming back to Doom of the Savage Kings. In the end, I hacked that adventure up to fit as a follow-up to Scouting the Dusklands.
I start these games, often with a group of people who have never met. If someone’s character has been on a delve before, I ask them what details of the past adventure their character will offer during the journey to the new delve. Then I ask each character a question – usually something about what the other characters might notice about them. On one hand, I’m just trying to establish who the characters are and on the other, I just want folks to get comfortable talking.
The most exciting part of this adventure is I got to introduce two friends to gaming alongside two of my favorite veteran gamers. I was shocked at how good the rookies were – asking questions to get a better idea of what was around them, using strategy and interacting with their environments like tabletop gamers with decades of experience.
We had a dangling thread, as the Boar of Hirot was still running rampant, the players having had made a kind of peace with the beast but will have to return to get it back to its home.
Pip had a great no-nonsense approach to the world around her, letting her comrades know when she thought a bad idea was likely to get them killed.
Glim was full of frustration and anger at the injustices around the town of Hirot and full of pathos for the sad stories of the Dooskalfs (Dusk Elves).
Captain Creed was this bombastic leader with his chest out, asking his comrades for their input while leading the charge into whatever situation was at hand.
And Thorough was, as Pete put it, the Porthos of the group – large and full of good cheer, offering a beer to whoever seemed to need it, always up to offer his claymore towards solving whatever problem is at hand.
Pip, Glim, Captain Creed and Thorough had a great chemistry to them. I hope we get to see them together again.
Running dungeons is far from my strong suit. It was far from the best GMing I’ve done and probably should’ve run about 15-20 more minutes to deal with some threads around town. And that is alright – not every swing is a grand slam.
If you would like to get an email notification when blog posts are published, please subscribe below:
Githyanki Diaspora 