Mid-April 2022 gaming update

Sunday’s Greyhawk game (AD&D module A2) went well, and despite a one-month hiatus (I had to cancel our previous session at the last minute), we were straight back into the action with the party having to fight a cloaker. Despite taking great precautions due to the strange droning sound and stunned slaves in the great chamber they’d arrived at, they didn’t plug up their ears and decided to don the conspicuous black cloaks at the end of the chamber – one of which was the cloaker! This adventure was the first appearance of that weird monster in D&D, and it’s sonic attacks (causing Fear, Hold Person) – as well as consistently unlucky roles – really made for a tough and memorable encounter. This was our sixth session of the current module, and we’re about halfway through (no spoilers, please, as players may be looking).

 


When we finally finish A2 after another 2 or 3 months, I intend to put AD&D to one side for a while and run the Six Seasons in Sartar campaign for Rune Quest Glorantha, which is likely to take at least 8 sessions (four months). It will take some time to get used to RQG, but I’m 100% confident that the campaign will not only be fun, it will also allow us to explore a style of role playing that would otherwise be difficult to showcase amidst our usual action adventure antics.

 

In addition to reading Six Seasons in Sartar and its sequel, The Company of the Dragon, I’ve also been making progress with Into the Wild. If you don’t know this title, it’s a chunky supplement for old-school D&D-like games (OSE in particular) that includes very practical rules on hex-crawls, dominion play, weather, buying/selling goods, and creating your own classes. While I don’t really need the latter material, the rules on wilderness exploration and dominion play are gold; they include fantastic guidelines on retainers and mercenaries and mounting major expeditions into the wilderness.

 

Tomorrow, I run our Old-School Essentials game. We’re just coming to the end of The Incandescent Grottoes by Necrotic Gnome (we ran the loosely-connected The Hole in the Oak before that). Both adventures are modern “old-school” classics, and Necrotic Gnome’s layout of maps and text remains unsurpassed/revolutionary.

 

Anyway, it’s great to be able to enjoy something old and something new, and while our progress through adventures is always slow (two sessions a month), attendance and scheduling have been highly consistent – the Greyhawk campaign has been running for three years this month – for which I’m incredibly grateful!

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