Blackmoor Week this year has been very busy and I did not get to post as much as I would have liked, but I did get to game and that really is what it is all about. Blackmoor Week started on September 24th and concludes today October 1st with Dave Arneson Game Day. Today is Dave Arneson's Birthday and we celebrate a man who has given a tremendous amount to entire gaming community. All tabletop roleplaying games are based on his game engine.
While I did not get to play today, I did get to play on Saturday the 28th of Sept and I will be gaming again this coming Saturday the 5th of Oct.
While I have mainly reffed over the years it is always fun to move to the other side of the table as a player. I have always wondered if those who play, but do not ref understand how much work goes into getting ready for a game? The game I currently play in is a high prep game, although the ref is retired military and has the time, and I know that he puts a lot of time into getting the game ready and he is very organized. I on the other hand run a low prep game with a lot of improv, create on the fly and even when I have more time to prep the when I restart my game I will still run it the same basic way.
The game I am in runs for five hours at a time and that works well for the whole group which varies between five and eight players each time we meet. When I ref I have been running games about four or five hours long these days, although I prefer to run games that run for eight to twelve hours, but that has not happened since I graduated from college 40 years ago. I am hoping I can eventually have a game of that length once or twice a year.
The game I am in right now is a 2nd Ed AD&D game. I have never played 2E before as I am an OD&D ref and player (since Sept '75), although I have played and reffed some 1st Ed AD&D that was back in the late 90's for a while. Current characters in the game range from 3rd level to 7th level with death occuring every now and then, but we are gradually working our way to a higher level party. This game is heavy on undead and several of the undead are original and have unusual characteristics. One has a glowing area in his chest and when killed explodes and the bones fly around like scraptnle. Other monsters are also more deadly than standard.
We travel back and forth between an island that we are trying to completely take over and the mainland. We have to travel all over to multiple cities for training when one of us levels up and it is expensive. Everything goes into the party loot with magic divied up to you can best use it or needs it the most. Training and expenses are paid for out of the party funds. (yeah, no fighting over treasure)
Both time and resources are tracked and there are several pages of house rules which we all get a copy of.
Most recently we have been fighting with Merrow and Sahuagin with a few other allies. They occupy some caverns that have below water entrances that have to be accessed at low tide. We have from the outside been whittling them down and at the current time we returned after being away for a year. They have a lot of spell use that has made for some really tough battles, with shaman and witch doctors and such. Every battle has been really close to being a party wipe. This next game could wrap this up if we are lucky and we survive. It should be in that event a good haul. But the first thing we have to do this coming game is have several of the players roll saving throws for their magic items. Hopefully we will not lose to much of our stuff because we are going to need all of it.
The ref (DM) posts about these games over at Dragonsfoot. The thread title is (2e) Newbies to Kervasis and if you go to this link (2e) Newbies to Kervasis- scroll down to post 189 for a summary of session 59 the one we just played.
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