Third practice session with a third group. Truth is, these three groups have been three duos. Most folks would probably mash them all together and have a single 6 person group but I dig small groups and the first group will have 3 people tomorrow.

This game is with an old friend, Pete, who I’ve gamed with a metric ton of hours. I knew he’d be the perfect person to team up with my dad, who gamed once with me some years ago (and I think he played a dungeon-y board game with his roommates). Bonus: Pete lives two minutes down the road.

The Rogue’s Gallery Book with Sam’s art remains a delight. Tonight Sarge and Grog hit the table.

Once again we picked pre-made characters from the Rogues’ Gallery but this time as we got ready to start I straight-up panicked. I was two heart-beats from cancelling. Was it the pressure of gaming with my dad? Was it the scant notes I had to go on? What did I have to go on?

Pete was there when I ran an adventure out of Trilemma Adventures; I think he owns the book now. Can’t run that again. I decided a few days ago I was going to use the Sorcerer-Kings (alien beings who strip-mined something and then left) but this time with a different city’s reaction. How about a city that decided to regulate dungeon delving and tax the shit out of the arcane science-fantasy treasures pulled out of the Sorcerer-Kings’ labs, breeding pits and fell shrines? Sarge and Grog were hired to go into a delve found on the land of a well-to-do wool merchant who wanted to sink some money into adventuring.

“We’re the hired help,” my dad said. Okay, this is resonating; this was working, I thought when he said that.

I grabbed a Dyson Logos map and jotted some notes on it. I decided under the city was a mega-dungeon and that is where the real money is. This dungeon on the hills outside of town where the wool-merchant’s sheep grazed, has a tunnel into the larger mega-dungeon with factions vying for turf.

That all felt good but the dungeon felt thin. I started describing the statues of the creepy-ass Sorcerer-Kings and Pete and my dad reacted. They were unsettled. I pushed it with the Pale Duke, the Red Goat, the Silver Alchemist and the Void.

By the end of the session we had a fine bit of highlights:

Grog had cut off his own hand when some light-eating goo came off one of the Void’s statue and began running up towards his wrist. Sarge lost his temper and cut off the hand of a statue of the Pale Duke.

They accepted the surrender of a kobold after killing its partner and call it Lockheed.

“Can we adopt the kobold as a pet?”

“No, it is a sapient creature and we don’t do slavery.”

Two combats, more than the other two games combined. It was more about the way the Monster Reaction roll shook out and Pete zoned in on a dungeon detail that he thought might be treasure in a box but instead was a guardian zombie in a box. Glad I got some experience with surprise rolls and the OSE combat steps.

My dad asked some good questions about the purpose of the game and we talked about exploring and learning about who the characters are and glory and treasure. It was neat hearing him ask Pete questions about game prep and hearing Pete’s answers.

My dad’s human fighter is navigating by emotions and his Dwarven comrade, Grog, played by Pete is leading with dungeon-savvy and veteran gamer cunning. It is a cool duo.

We ended with the group (Sarge, Grog and Lockheed) walking towards a lone sarcophagus made of white marble. I’m glad I bit back against that panicky moment and played on. It was fun and it is always amazing to show my dad this hobby.

Played my second practice session of Old School Essentials. Last time I was frustrated that the start with slow and getting to the point where the players had enough information to make interesting choices was a bit later than I would’ve liked. This was also my first face-to-face game in years and years. It was lovely.

This time we picked characters and talked about learning new games a bit as it was Coach’s first game. Yay! Janaki and Coach both narrowed down their character choices down to 2 or 3 favorites. I suggested this was good in case a character perished. We had the Bonesmith and Scamp. Coach described Scamp as “Frodo’s drunk, gay uncle” and I knew that Coach was going to do just fine at this gaming stuff.

The Rogue’s Gallery Book with Sam’s art is a delight. I took one Dwarf character whose character description was all about how much they loved slavery, even with editing out all of the character histories that character still had manacles among their gear – nah.

I decided to go with the Stellarium of the Vinteralf and I’ve got to say that running something out of Trilemma Adventures has never let me down. The set-up was that they worked for a the Library Atop the World and a Vinteralf Prince had a book on the forging of star-metal that was long overdue. Rumor had it the prince would be at the Stellarium. Not wanting to eff around with wilderness travel, a library mage set up a gate for them.

They gated in to a small town below the Stellarium’s precarious glacier, where they got some rumors and hired on two young ladies, apprentice axe-wives.

Most of the dice rolls were off the Monster Reaction Table. The Bonesmith rolled under their Wisdom to offer a polite greeting to the dragon, who was not sure of these visitors. Scamp’s sense of justice at seeing a dead hobbit among the dead polar bears and elk in the larder was set at ease. The Vinteralf Prince was kind of a d-bag, so they only partially thawed them before taking the book and bouncing.

Signe and Laerke, the apprentice Axe-wives, got their first rings on their axes for facing down a dragon and helping the Library Atop the World. The now-ringed axe-wives let Scamp and Bonesmith know that they’d hire on with them anytime. Scamp had a drug-induced trip during Millvale’s Ancestor Festival and learned of a shire in trouble – next session, some Seven Samurai-inspired action.

Played my first practice session of Old School Essentials. All of the tools are Referee facing, designed to inspire and inform the Ref, so they can tell the players about their environment.

Earlier in the week I sent the players the characters from the Old School Essentials Rogue’s Gallery with amazing art by Better Legends/Skullboy/Sam. I edited out the character histories.

Running Old School Essentials is so different from what I am used to. I was floundering. I wanted to run my own idea and wing it. With a game I’m used to, that’d be fine but this is not that.

After a week of hemming and hawing and looking at adventures and jotting down notes I decided to start this game with…See, there’s a silver dragon and a red dragon, both asleep. When they wake up they will likely begin their war right where they left off back when they fell asleep centuries ago. Wispo the Elf and Dreg the Thief were hired to somehow thwart the war. I made it clear that killing the dragon was not likely and that there was a kind of starter dungeon – a tomb the dragon made to illustrate the cautionary tale of a knight who tried to slay it but failed.

I was up-front with my friends about this being a test-run and Aaron suggested that maybe they would go into the Would-be Slayer’s tomb to try and find the dragon-slaying sword and destroy it. Sure, let’s do that. I had a different idea about the fate of the sword but out of my comfort zone, I wasn’t going to veto the first good idea of the night. Also, I felt like I was cheating getting player input like that.

“Dreg, what was the first thing you were caught stealing and who was the first person you stabbed in the throat when they weren’t ready for it?”

“Both were when I rescued my pet monkey, Taco. Taco is totally a fantasy name.”

“Fuck yeah it is.”

Me, asking questions

We started in a tavern; it wasn’t my finest night.

“Wispo, what historic human event did you witness and how did it change how you look at humans?”

“I’m looking at this character sheet and these languages and I think Wispo was there when the peace accords were drawn up between the humans, elves, gnolls, hobgoblins and orcs.”

Me, asking questions again, getting back to my comfort zone

First roll was Wispo the Elf, rolling to join the song of the sleeping dragons’ feud. He rolled a 1, which is solid for a Charisma roll. I rolled up some adventurers for them to hire using the Retainers tables in Carcass Crawler #2. They hired Azelma, Fighter. I riffed off Wispo being nervous about leaving home and said that Azelma had never left the city of Telespe.

During our break one-hour-in I rolled Azelma up, 3d6 down the line and she’s a promising young fighter. I had described her as the best in the practice yard but with no real-world experience. Her stats back that up.

I like her.

Dreg the Thief had a monkey named, Taco. I assured my friends that while their characters might perish, nothing bad would ever happen to Taco (I don’t kill pets). If their characters should die, Taco would venture out into the valley, shedding a tear for Dreg the Thief.

I rolled to see if they were lost, offering a choice about traveling on the open road or through the valley on the sly. Rolled no encounters during their trip through the valley on the sly.

Did they want to hoof it and get to the dungeon as the sun went down or mosey and get there during daylight? They hoofed it. Again, rolled for random encounters and rolled a Berserker.

The dungeon is the tomb of a would-be dragonslayer, erected by the dragon as a cautionary tale.

Monster Reaction table: 7. Neutral. Uncertain. We role-played with the Omi the Berserker, who was not yet frothing. He was in the dungeon to show the dragon he wasn’t afraid, so that when it awoke it would find evidence of his anger. They found him hitting his axe against a near-indestructible statue of a dragon in the tomb’s entryway looking down on the grave of a kobold. It was clear that the kobold was the first of its minions killed by the adventurers who the dragon built this tomb to display.

And we ended there, chatting with Omi the Berserker in the entrance of the would-be slayer’s tomb. It looked like Omi was going to join them.

I couldn’t help but think that I was a bad Referee. I needed to be thinking something more like, “I’m in this role, not having a great night, still having a fun time with good friends. I’ll do better next time.”

I have a little more time to look over my tools and think about the dungeon. I’ve got a checklist (from Knock). The good news is I was playing with a pair of friends who are amazing gamers and kind friends. Tonight didn’t go great but I have a week to sharpen my prep and course correct.

And I’m running OSE again on Saturday and again on Tuesday.

Not sure that I’m going to stick with this vague-ass, vanilla Red Dragon vs. Silver Dragon starting situation. I’ve got other options. On Saturday, with new gamers as 2 of 3 of the players, I’m probably going to run The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford.

How bad could it have really been? I mean, on the bright side, there was a monkey in a waistcoat named Taco.

Post-Script Note: I’ve had feedback from folks online, much of it lovely and I feel like I should make clear that I’m not beating myself up over this. It isn’t about blame, or the Mercer Effect or not having thematic music chosen. I just felt like I didn’t use the tools of the game well and I wanted to give the characters/players more context to make interesting choices earlier in the session. Next week will be better. The mistake might’ve been not starting at the dungeon entrance to begin with. Thank you for reading.