you might very well think so...

Session 4: Assaulted by Orcs!

Our heroes have delivered their gift to the Wizard of Thurmaster and did him a favour on the way back to Milbourne: take this letter to my friend the Ranger!

While at the Ranger's farm house, a visitor arrives: a strange lady druid-of-the-woods with a pair of companion wolves.

She reports that a young boy has run off into the woods south of the river, and she fears for his safety: first because he's a young boy in the midst of a dark and dangerous woods, and second because she saw him turn into a bear as he ran off! She wants the Ranger and his new friends to help her find this boy and return him safely to his family.

Our heroes search southwards into the woods, travel for a whole day and are making progress; as it gets dark, they make camp. In the early hours of the pre-dawn light they are set upon by a scouting party of Orcs and their ferocious pet creature! Desperately they try to defend themselves, and in the end, manage to dispatch the creature and elicit surrender from the Orc sergeant.

"I will give you gold for the bodies of my fallen comrades!" he cries.

Legend: I have now fully switched to the coloured tile system for NPCs. While the large creature was supposed to be a Dire Boar, I had not yet made a tile for a Dire Boar, so a large red subterranean lizard did double duty. Bah. Flipped over tiles are the bodies of the Orc party (mostly minions) that had already fallen (including, as it turns out, the handler of the large creature, the only one capable of really controlling it!)

Session 3: Meeting the locals
Our heroes become very minor celebrities in Milbourne by arriving in town with a handful of captured bandits in tow. They meet the Milbourne dignitaries, and submit their captured bandits to Imperial Justice: the bandits, as a result, will spend a long time working the local barony's mines.

After chatting with a farmer from Harlaton on Milbourne's market day about a nearby Kobold tribe, and purchasing (with a down-payment) armour they cannot afford (yet), our heroes head off to Thurmaster to meet Tauster the Wizard.

The trip to Thurmaster passes uneventfully, our heroes provide him with his gift, and when he learns that they will soon be some need of funds, he offers to commission them to deliver a package to a certain Kyuper, who lives on the way between Thurmaster and Milbourne.

Upon delivering the package, Kuyper is visited by a local druidess, who engages our heroes to assist her in finding a boy who's disappeared into the local Big Scary Woods™.

Legend: No picture this week, as no encounters. Not a good recipe for a group including a bunch of young kids. Future vow: every session must have a battlemapped encounter. Since sessions last for 90-120 minutes, this will make session pacing an interesting challenge.

Session 2: Treed at the creek!
On their way to Milbourne, our brave heroes of the Bear Clan encounter a pack of needle drakes that have chased a priest up a tree! Quickly, they move to rescue the priest, and discover that packs of needle drakes are not to be trifled with...

At the moment when they dispatch the last of the nasty pests, a small party of kobolds emerge from the trees, and demand compensation for the loss of their hunting pets!

"30 gold pieces!" shrieks the Kobold Drake Handler!

Legend: The bear in the foreground is actually Uli the Shaman's Bear Spirit (very powerful, but also easily knocked down, apparently). The figure at the top of the map is Brandis the Druid, keeping an eye on the remnants of the bandit gang that our heroes captured in the previous episode (now conveying them in a cowed line to Milbourne).

Thanks to toddalcott, we notice Mamet on Drama (more specifically, the writing staff's job of writing the television drama, The Unit). I am not robin_d_laws, so if you want well reasoned theoretical examination of the application of scripted narratives (as for TV, film, theatre) for gaming, you should read his blog.

( Click through if you want some noodling on using what Mamet says at your game table )

Last night, for the first time in a long time, there was a character death at my gaming table. I did not mishandle the situation, but I didn't really handle it all that well either. The moment was a bit shocking, and abrupt. Shocking, OK, but abrupt, I have to bring on myself for not properly pacing things a bit better.

( Click through if you want to find out what happened. )

My list is much shorter than most, I think. I think the main differences between my list and the traditional ones are: the lack of anything by Moorcock (who I find rather turgid) or Anderson (oddly enough, never ran across his work until much later), the lack of any pulp/SnS except for Leiber, and the notable presence of young-adult and bandes-dessinées in the list.

Bestall, Alfred. "Rupert" annuals.

Cooper, Susan. "Dark is Rising" series of books.

Crowley, John. Little, Big.

Goscinny & Uderzo. "Asterix & Obelix" series of BD.

Hermann. "Les Tours de Bois-Maury" series of BD.

Le Guin, Ursula. "Earthsea" series of books.

Leiber, Fritz. All of his "Fafhrd and Grey Mouser" stories, but equally, the Chaykin and Mignola adaptations of same.

Lewis, C. S.. "Narnia" series of books.

Miyazaki, Hayao. "Nausicäa" series of manga, and nearly all his films (esp "Mononoke-hime", "Laputa", and "Nausicaa").

Moebius. "L'Incal" series of BD.

Pyle, Howard. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

Tolkein, J.R.R.. The Hobbit and "The Lord Of The Rings" series of books.

Vance, Jack. Lyonesse, Madouc, The Green Pearl.

van Gulik, Robert. "Judge Dee" series of books.

Wolfe, Gene. "Book of the New Sun" series of books, "Soldier" series of books, "Book of the Long Sun" series of books.

As a regular player of rolegames, my consistent problem over the last decade or so has been fitting the preparation time requirements into my life's schedule. As a result, my favourite games as a moderator over that time have pretty consistently been those that have provided easy access to high-quality materials that I can use for actual play: not additional rules or options, but adventures, campaigns, plots, scenarios, and so on. Unfortunately, the hobby in general seemed to be moving away from publishing that kind of material, and more towards a model where games were supported by rule expansion, and providing a constant stream of increased mechanical options for players and moderators. This made my involvement with any one game harder, not easier.

Recently, I've attached my time in the hobby pretty solidly to Paizo, and their Pathfinder series of products. What's interesting to me about Pathfinder is that its success (if it is indeed successful) seems apparently solidly based on a traditional hobby model: entrench a game's popularity and mindshare by providing a host of high-quality actual play materials (and by that, I mean adventures, campaigns, and practical campaign setting material, and not splat materials (by that, I mean products that focus on interminable variation of player character and rule-system expansion).

( Click through if you want to read a fuller rumination on the subject )

Like most folks running a fourth edition game, today I leapt on a copy of the PHB2. After a quick look at the classes contained in it, I have a few thoughts.

( Click through if noodling about gaming amuses you. )

As you may or may not be aware, my copy of Mouse Guard from IPR has been delayed, because IPR hasn't gotten any books from the publisher's primary distributor yet. Accordingly, I have not forgotten you interested commentors, but I really would prefer to wait until receiving a hardcopy of the rules, and reading the book at least once, before mounting my Mouse Guard event. My attitude towards PDF is that, while it makes a useful way to reference the material quickly, it's not substitute for reading and comprehending properly the first time. I'm still very much a books-as-physical-objects type of fellow.

We at the Old Huron Redoubt appreciate your patience.

IPR is now pre-ordering PDF+Print bundles of the Mouse Guard RPG. I have mine. I know some of you want yours. It's entirely possible that I would like to organize a special Mouse Guard game on a Sunday afternoon soonish: those with interest, feel free to express in the comments. This would almost certainly be, essentially, a tournament adventure or con demo type deal: four hours more or less, one shot, focussed on character interaction.