Pits & Perils Session 4: Murder at Crossing Church

We had Session 4 of our Pits & Perils Round Robin on Wednesday night (Sep 23, 2015), with me running the game as referee (my first session as ref in our round robin). +Tim Shorts posted an excellent summary, so no sense in being redundant.

I wanted to run a short mystery adventure. Mysteries can be tricky to run, particular when the focus of the rule set is combat and spells. I ran The Melford Murder several years ago, a Dragonsfoot adventure module written by Stuart Marshall that I used in a Castles & Crusades campaign. Not we have blast playing it, I also gained some valuable experience in running a mystery adventure. Playing The Esoterrorists, a GUMSHOE-based game, was also a huge help.

It is actually easier to run a mystery adventure with a simple non-mystery rule set, like Pits & Perils, than it is with a more complex game, like D&D 5e. The characters have few abilities to provide an unwanted shortcut, so the players are forced to strategize and discover solutions.

I will post more once we have finished with this part of our round robin. I can't really say much about how I am doing it without tipping my hand about the mystery itself.

In-House Campaign: Anglo-Saxon England, Merrily Watkins, and Pits & Perils

Several years ago we had a Castles & Crusades campaign that involved my wife, my then-teen daughter (the family's most serious gamer), a friend, and the friend's two then-teen sons. It was a blast but came to end when the kids went off to college. Since then, my wife and I have occasionally talked about getting back to gaming as a couple. Nothing came of those conversations... we could not decide if it would just be the two of us or if we would invite others. We also were not sure what we want to play, although we had lots of ideas. One of those ideas was to base something on Anglo-Saxon England. We never did do anything with it. Until now.

Tonight, we were out for dinner and we talked again about gaming. We decided that Pits & Perils would be the ideal rule set for us. We both agreed that a setting based on Anglo-Saxon England would work well. The conversation drifted to other topics and my wife told me that one of her favorite authors, Phil Rickman, is going to have his Merrily Watkins novels made into a British television mini-series (actually, the series has been recorded already and will be released soon).

Phil Rickman describes Merrily Watkins in this way: Merrily Watkins has what is very much a night job. She’s Deliverance Consultant or Advisor on the Paranormal for the Diocese of Hereford. Or Exorcist, as it used to be known. It’s a real job; there’s at least one in every diocese in the UK. They work with psychiatrists, social workers… and also the police. Inevitably, in this series, this is the aspect of the job that predominates. The Merrily Watkins series is set in modern Great Britain and we wouldn't try to duplicate the setting or the characters, just the focus and style of play.

Our game would look something like this:

• Rules: Pits & Perils, plus an infusion of GUMSHOE (maybe just a simple allocation of investigation points to used)
• Inspiration From History: Anglo-Saxon England
• Inspiration From Literature: Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels
• Focal Points: Mystery, folklore, religion, and the supernatural

Awarding Experience

In the earlier editions of D&D--and the current retroclones/simularica--the management and attrition of hit points are the core element of the game (more about that in a later post). The ability to avoid, withstand, and inflict hit point damage forms the most fundamental aspect of the game.

A key facet of hit point attrition is the ability to increase one's own hit points and also increase the ability to inflict hit point damage. This, of course, is done through moving up in experience levels. This, in turn, is the resulting of gaining or earning experience points through play.

Giving the importance of awarding experience, I am baffled at the lack of attention this gets in the many rule sets. When I was playing Castles & Crusades, I was at a loss as to how to award experience. Well, not really at a loss, I just used my systems from my AD&D 1e days. When I started using Blood & Treasure, I discovered that the guidelines for awarding experience were not included . While that is a publishing gaffe, I have been using the x.p. awards for monsters overcome plus 1 x.p. per gold piece of treasure (nothing for magic items). I plan on tweaking that as my first "official" house rule for the Montporte Dungeon campaign.

Magnificent Miscellaneum from James Mishler

I recently picked up the first three volumes of James Mishler's Magnificent Miscellaneum from RPGNow. Each volume contains a few new spells and a handful of very creative creatures for Castles & Crusades (easily convertible to AD&D or its retroclones). James stuff is always creative, well-written, and usable so I find it to be worth the pocket change to add it to my gaming library.

Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Magnificent Miscellaneum are already available.

Five for Friday #6: Send in the Clones

Here are my five favorite retroclones (or simulacra, if you wish) of the world's most famous tabletop fantasy RPG game:

• BLUEHOLME Prentice Rules: I started out my RPG career with the Holmes version of D&D. This is clone is well done (plus it is free).
• Blood & Treasure: A quirky combination that draws on all the pre-4e material. The end result is very streamlined and playable. It hits a sweet spot for me. If we decide to make our recent Montporte session (AD&D 1e) an ongoing dungeon campaign, I think we will be going with Blood & Treasure.
• Castles & Crusades: When I came back to gaming, at the request of then-tweener daughter, we started with D&D 3.5e and I felt like the caveman thawed out of the glacier. Totally bewildered. After doing some checking around, we ended up playing C&C and our in-house gaming group still uses it as our rule set (I quit gaming in about 1982 and was totally clueless about "editions"...my fellow gamers will tell you I still have not found a clue).
• Crypts & Things: This is such a groovy twist on Swords & Wizardry. While the rules and accompanying setting reflect a pulpy swords & sorcery inspiration, I would be tempted to swipe the mage class and magic rules and use them in an urban fantasy setting.
• Swords & Wizardry Complete: When I was fanatically gaming in the late 1970's, our version of D&D looked like this (more about the Holmes, Oe supplements, Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets mashup here).

Do  you a favorite(s) retroclone?

Five for Friday 4: Holmes and Nothing But Dungeons (My Early Gaming)

Here is a list of five of my early gaming influences. Back in the 1970s, gaming for me was all about the giant homemade dungeon. Here is why:

1. The Detroit News (one of two daily newspapers in Detroit): There was a big article in the Sunday edition of The Detroit News (probably in the Accent on Living section) that described Dungeons & Dragons. This would have been 1977. 36 years later all I really remember from the article is a description of a giant homemade dungeon where the game took place. It was the dungeon idea that captivated me.
2. Holmes Basic D&D (with the dungeon geomorphs): I’ll get to the Holmes ruleset itself in the last point. The key point I want here were the dungeon geomorphs. We took their presence as a sign that we should be making giant homemade dungeons as the setting for our game.
3. No Modules: My Holmes set did not include a module and we never bought any. We didn't have access to a store that sold modules and so no one in my group even knew about them.To this day, I do not own any of the classic D&D modules. I have not played them nor have I read them. I am a freak, I know, and my eyes glaze over in incomprehension when gamers my age talk about their favorite modules of yore.
4. Rules Mash-Up: Most of my early gaming involved a ruleset mashup of Holmes, the AD&D 1e Monster Manual, the four Original Edition supplements (Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes), and Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (which gave us hours of fun with the Buffoon Class). The present retro-clone that comes closest to our early games is Swords & Wizardry Complete, which has a special place for me among the recent reiterations of the game.
5. Other Games: All four of us in my original gaming group had played Avalon Hill war games and Strat-O-Matic sports games. I am not sure we could have deciphered Holmes otherwise. We did not know any other gamers, so we probably would not have tried to play had we not been comfortable decoding Avalon Hill rules.

A couple of years ago, the original four guys in my gaming group reconvened (after a 28 year break) via GameTable and Skype. We started another dungeon-only campaign, using Castles & Crusades, but it fizzled after about 8 or 9 sessions. We were only able to meet online once a month and if we had to cancel, we couldn’t reschedule. Playing once a month and skipping some months altogether did not make for good gaming. I think we were also finding that going back to the dungeon (albeit a different dungeon) was not nearly as satisfying the second time around. There is only so much monster lunch money you can take until the fun wears off.

What (or who) influenced your early gaming? How has your gaming changed from that time?

Gaming Year 2012 Retrospective

Here are my highlights of Gaming Year 2012:

• Rating: 9 (1-10 scale, 1=Awful, 10=Awesome)
• Games Played: AD&D 1e, Castles & Crusades, GURPS
• Characters Run: Corum, Human Cleric (AD&D 1e); Chael Hawklight, Human Fighter (Castles & Crusades); Devlin, Dwarf (GURPS)
• Campaigns Run (as GM/DM/CK/Ref): None
• Favorite RPG Stuff Purchased: Scourge of the Demon Wolf; Blood & Treasure; GURPS (multiple volumes...the stuff is like crack, as my wife has noted with sad resignation); Amazing Adventures; Spirit of the Century; Don't Rest Your Head; Crypts & Things; Realms of Crawling Chaos; ASE1: Anomalous Subsurface Environment
• Kickstarters Joined: FATE
• Highlights: Gaming with the Monday Night Gaming Group; not being eaten by the tarrasque; restarting my blog; entering the wonderful world of GURPS
• Lowlights & Regrets: Too few sessions with our in-house-face-to-face-very-casual-meets-only-occasionally gaming group (which stretched the definition of "meets-only-occasionally").

The Magnificent Miscellaneum Volume 1

I am happy to see the James Mishler is back in action and cranking out some gaming goodness once again. I'll be picking up The Magnificent Miscellaneum Volume 1 right after Christmas from RPGNow. Not only does it include his usual Castles & Crusades goodies, it also includes some goodies for Amazing Adventures. That is welcome news, as my copy of Amazing Adventures arrived about two weeks ago and I am hoping to play it sometime this coming year.

The First Time Is Always Special: Our Upcoming Session with "Spirit of the Century"

So this weekend—if all goes as planned—I will have my first experience running Spirit of the Century. My face-to-face gaming group has only met once in the last year for a Castles & Crusades session, although previous to that we did have a couple of character creation sessions for the Dresden RPG (a FATE-based system, like Spirit of the Century). I think FATE will be a good match for our group.