I'm back!

After a few years of quietly playing, running, and (as always) tinkering with games, I have something to add to the conversation again. Instead of focusing on tweaks to existing games, I find myself diving deep into design. Like many people involved in the RPG community I'm always messing around with some idea for a game, adventure, or scenario, but this time it feels different.

No limits! Yeah!

I have a few design projects on the go. Some of it grew out of regular play and some addresses problems I see. I still favour the rules-light systems based in the old school tradition, but love how games have grown and changed. There are so many options and tools we have now to mix and match and get exactly what we want out of the experience at our table or online game-space! I also find my professional life crossing over into RPGs as new game-based therapies develop. It's all exciting!

Most of the RPGs I'm working on are somewhere in the middle of the write, test, rewrite cycle. I tend to follow the muse as it jumps around so they all move forward at a glacial pace. I'll talk about each as they come up but the project that caught fire for me right now is my take on the Hardy Boys adventures. Originally the Mid Century Mysteries, the core of the game was in the works long before I decided to take advantage of the original Hardy Boys Books entering the public domain. My connection to this material is strange and deserves its own post, so I'll expand on that later.

Source material for the Hardy Boys Adventure RPG!

With my brain hyper-focused on the Hardy Boys Adventures RPG, everything else is still taking up space in my brain, but more in the background. There will be more about them in the future, but it may be a while.

My home game that grew out of playing the original Black Hack continues to develop. It was something all its own by the time the second edition of the Black Hack came out. I'll get it all in order at some point. It would be nice to put a book together for my own use and to have a better reference for my players. The reactions to the bits of it I posted before also make me think there's room for it as an option in the RPG market. Based on my experience, it could be a good game to use to introduce new folks to the RPG hobby in a way that is more accessible. For it to be accessible, it needs to be more than a pile of Google documents and hand-written notes. I want people to have a great experience then have something they could take away to try out on their own. There's more to it than that, but I can expand on the story of that game later. My big lesson from that one is kids can be the best playtesters! 

I'm working on a sci-fi game that came out of play-testing an original system I had planned to use for sword and sorcery. At that stage of the testing I wasn't certain what I would do with magic, so I ran the test using the system for a sci-fi scenario so I could have fantastic elements without magic. The system performed well, and turned out to be adaptable. After using it for sci-fi though, I realised the system supported one of the best science fiction RPG experiences I ever had. I tossed out the whole sword and sorcery thing and dove into creating a sci-fi game that made use of the core game mechanics. Then there was a lot more work to do! I'll go into the details, hopes, and motivations for that one in a later post too. 

Obligatory dice photo! These dice come from the Threshold Diceworks Holmes Retro Collection

The other project comes from people asking me to run "D&D" for them and while I doubt I'll ever publish it, organizing all the changes into a handbook would make my life easier when I run it. I used to run fifth edition D&D for a few years after it first came out, as scrolling back on the blog will show, and I enjoyed it. I find D&D's grown into a monster of supplemental rules, new options, and there is too much to keep track of when running. I still like to play it, but I don't run it anymore.  The same bloat eventually weighed down second edition D&D so much the game almost disappeared! The bloat brought me back to B/X D&D and Old School Essentials. As much fun as I have with it, I started smoothing things out. I mixed in some new approaches while keeping the core rules, benefits, and play style of B/X. I know there are people who think B/X D&D is some kind of sacred text that is eternal. I have no problems with that view, and enjoy playing at their tables. After speaking with folks that look to the old school for a set of rules that can be modified without breaking, I know there people who would like to take a look at the changes I made as inspiration for their own changes. I'll post pieces of that as it comes together as well. The last time I ran it was a great experience!

I'm not sure writing a post about posts I will write later is a good idea, but I'm back, and I'm doing different things these days. We'll see how it goes.

The Ecology of My Goblins or, How to Make Goblins Fun!

An article about how boring goblins are from Kotaku is making the rounds right now and it is clear that the author is missing the opportunity presented by goblins as a monster in an RPG.

They define goblins as stupid automations "produced in a factory" for the sole purpose of a fighting encounter as though they were a video game creature identical to the ones behind them and never leaving their spawn area.

Taunting Goblins by Thorston Erdt AKA Shockowaffel

Goblins have never been brave or even terribly capable fighters, but they have always been sneaky fighters. The author says they aren't "tricksy" or use traps, but even in the old modules goblins would use traps, raise alarms and run for help so they could overrun the party.

The biggest breakdown is in their suggestions on how to make goblins more interesting. One suggestion was an ambush failure because of a lover's quarrel in the goblin ranks. They suggest revealing cultural elements during encounters to make the goblins more sympathetic to the players. This direction is a missed opportunity to introduce the other and make goblins alien to the players.

I'm all for creating villains the party can relate to, but instead of humanizing monsters, why not use humans? Humans can be on the fringes of civilization even more easily than goblins. It makes sense for them to have stockpiles of currency as treasure and they start as relatable so you don't need to build a bridge to them with contrived situations. You can have lawless bandits that are causing trouble for the townsfolk. You can have a resistance group fighting the lawful, yet tyrannical local lord. You can have a chaotic cannibal cult terrorizing the area. You can have camp of refugees from a disaster in another kingdom that has taken to raiding local farms to survive. In all cases the party is dealing with humans who are evil from the point of view of the local population. They can employ whatever solution they want and easily justify it. If they go with combat they still have the problem of what to do with the children. Are the cannibal kids redeemable by society or is it more merciful to kill them? Does the party need to worry about survivors developing into recurring villains? If those are the things you want to deal with in your game, don't go half-way. Use humans.

As for goblins, I use them as scavengers and upcyclers that are close to civilization so they can raid and steal what they need to make things better for their nests. They repurpose all kinds of stuff into ramshackle contraptions that are dangerous and sometimes comical. This use they have for the player characters' society explains why goblins are often the first creature encountered by adventurers as they begin to push into the frontiers.

Goblins by Llaaii

I organize goblins into nests rather than tribes. The hive-like organization explains why so few of them have any ambition for individual achievement (in that they don't take class levels despite being close enough to society to get the resources they need to do so). The rulebooks (in whatever edition) usually have the goblins ruled by a chief with higher hit dice. I give them a queen, whose hit dice come from her immense size. She rules the nest populated almost entirely by her children. The rest include her honour guard consisting of her sisters and her mates. Her bloated form towers above them all as she is at least as tall as a hobgoblin and massive enough to lay the huge eggs.

Goblins in my world are hatched fully grown. They have a certain amount of genetic knowledge passed to them that allows new goblins to start contributing to the nest without wasting resources on developing them. I describe goblin rookeries as something out of one of H. R. Giger's nightmares.

Alien Landscape by H. R. Giger

This lack of childhood and hive organization make goblins different from humans. They are alien in outlook and motivation. They caper with delight as they take pleasure in the sadistic sport of an ambush. They are selfish and cowardly while still putting little value on individual lives. 

They make great opportunists, working with other pack and swarming creatures like wolves, rats and stirges. I love the look on my players' faces when they realize the goblins ambushing them with nets and bows also released stirges to attack.

Goblins need to be sneaky gits to cause the party major grief, but players can also underestimate them because of that. My favourite goblin trap was a shabby wooden construction in the outer entrance to the nest. The party could hear the rats squeaking and scratching in the wooden walls and ceiling but thought nothing of it. Their low opinion of the goblins also caused them to ignore the unstable construction. That made it a surprise when stepping in the wrong place caused the ceiling to fall in and drop a swarm of rats on top of them. The noise brought the guards who raise the alarm and took pot shots at the party while they scrambled and fought their way out of the wreckage. They decided to retreat and come back with a plan.

If you are wondering about hobgoblins, I run them as larger, more martial versions of their smaller cousins and their queens are the size of an ogre! They are organized as warrior cooperatives that value the damage they can do as a group to expand the holdings of the nest. Combat is not a forgone conclusion though. I had a party played by kids find a back door into a hobgoblin nest, kill the queen and then bluff some other hobgoblins into believing they had bought some of the prisoners so they could get directions to where they were held. (B2 Keep on the Borderlands is the gift that keeps on giving!) 

Goblins, like everything else in D&D, are an opportunity to spin your game into something your group will love to play in. Monsters are a place to build your world into something fantastic and different. The darkness surrounding the light of civilization can define the world as much as points of light found in the towns and cities. A great example of that brand of storytelling in the 5e D&D Monster Manual is the aboleth. Although the best example of world building through monsters I know of is the system neutral monster book Fire on the Velvet Horizon. All monsters allow you to double down on the strange and wondrous elements of your fantasy world. Don't skip the goblins because of their low hit die!

What it comes down to is there are as many ways to use goblins as their are DMs. There is no wrong way. If you are happy with goblins as a twisted mockery of humanity that needs to be cut down like the vermin they are in the search for gold and XP, great! If you want them to have a complex society with speech patterns that confuse and confound your players during negotiations and interrogations, great! If you want to give my spin on the goblin a whirl, great! Goblin encounters are what you make of them as a group. Enjoy it!

"My Kid Wants D&D, What Do I Do?"

Either Wizards of the Coast have done a good job promoting the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons or Stranger Things got it into everyone's head, because a bunch of people have asked me about getting D&D for their kids this Christmas. 

"You know about this stuff, Dave. Where do I even start?"

Good question! If you've never played a tabletop Role Playing Game before, guiding your child into the hobby could feel like anything from confusing to terrifying. Luckily, I have your back!

There are actually a lot of games that give you a great RPG experience. Some of them are even specially designed for young people. Despite that, I'm going to suggest starting with the fifth and current edition of Dungeons & Dragons for a few reasons. Everyone who has contacted me has had their kids ask for "D&D" by name. They want something that says "D&D" on it. As the former kid who received a Tandy COCO II from Radio Shack instead of a Commodore 64 for Christmas like everyone else, I'm telling you it's best not to disappoint them with an almost what they asked for. (Don't worry, my parents don't read my blog. Their feelings are safe!) The other thing is D&D has always been something of a lingua franca of roleplaying. Because it is so ubiquitous in the hobby almost everyone has some experience with it and can relate what they are playing to it. It's also the most popular game so it's easy to find other people to game with. The last reason is they've went to a lot of trouble to make it easy for new players to pick up the game without someone helping them through it.

 The best place for a new player to start is The D&D Starter Set box. It has a stripped down version of the rules with a set of sample characters to play and one of the best starting adventure campaigns ever! They can open the box on Christmas, read through it, choose someone to run the game and be playing as early as that evening (although Boxing Day is probably a more reasonable expectation). Everything necessary to jump in and actually play is in the box, including the funny dice. It's carried by some book and gaming stores, but it's also available to order on Amazon and Chapter's Indigo.

Each player controls a character who is an avatar in the shared, imaginary world of the game. One person is going to need to take the role of the referee who adjudicates the rules, runs all the people in the game not played by the players, and presents the problems and situations for the players to solve with the resources of their characters and their wacky ideas. This referee is know as the Dungeon Master or DM. The series of adventures in the box helps a new DM get the hang of running all these things with a great advice and explanations.

The adventure, called The Lost Mines of Phandelver, has a series of locations that the players can interact with in any order they like as they figure out what is going on in the campaign area. This is important because it introduces the idea of player choice to everyone playing. The fact that the players can do pretty much anything they want is what makes a tabletop RPG so much better than a video game. 

Everything in the D&D Starter Set box

To continue playing after they are done with what they get in the box they will need more rules. The Basic Rules are available online for free with a guide for both the Players and the Dungeon Master. These will allow them to create new characters and adventures of their own that can keep them going for years. As much as I love how the ease this creates for entering the hobby, I think it is worth spending some more money on a hard copy of at least the Player's Handbook. Dead tree books are easier to reference at the table than tablets and you can roll dice on them without scratching a screen. 

The Player's Handbook for D&D has all the rules and offers all the possibilities needed to create characters to suite the imaginations of the players in straightforward steps. It's fairly easy to get. Most book stores carry it and you can get it on Amazon or Chapters in a couple of days.

At this point you are up to nearly $60 in stuff, but if you are sure your kid is going to love it and you want to spend money on things that fit neatly on a shelf, there are a couple more things you can look at right away.

The first is not made by the D&D people, but one of their competitors. It's compatible with D&D and has a great deal of value beyond the adventure itself. Broodmother Skyfortress is an adventure in the first half of the book with all kinds of options to tailor the adventure to their taste. It is amazing! The second half is full of advice on how to create campaigns, settings and run adventures. The advice is super useful to a DM new or experienced. The other wonderful thing is the Jack Kirby, 1960s comic book style art is a nice contrast to what you get in the D&D products and might help them think outside of the box. It's from a publisher in Finland called Lamentations of the Flame Princess but is also available in a few days on Amazon.

After that you might want to look at the Monster Manual or Volo's Guide to Monsters for them but it's not necessary. Save them for a birthday!

Some other things you'll need right away are pads of graph paper, pencils and a stack of character sheets printed out!

To make playing easier you could look at player tokens or miniatures. Painting miniatures is a whole other part of the hobby that comes with its own costs and entry hurdles. If people ask me about that I'll do another post, but for now I'll give you some resources for paper miniatures. These can be printed out on a home printer and used as needed to help the players keep track of where everything is when they are playing. They aren't necessary, but I found with my girls that when they were younger (6-8) having miniatures helped them engage with the game.

Paper minis slid into plastic slotabases. They could have as easily been glued to some cardboard. 

One of my favourite sites for these is Eddnic's Fantasy Paper Minis. They can be printed and folded to create all kinds of monsters to help run encounters! It is possible to find these with some time spent on Google or Pinterest with a simple search for "fantasy paper miniatures" if you have the time. If you don't you can buy PDFs of different printable miniatures for a few dollars (a good use of someone's allowance maybe?) and download them from DriveThru RPG. I'm a fan of the Disposable Heroes and Trash Mob Minis. 

Click image to see more detail. 
These are the characters from the web series JourneyQuest and film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. :)

After that they'll want more dice. To keep them for stealing all the normal dice out of your boardgames you should probably buy them a set or two at some point. This is another thing that there is no rush for. You can buy them in comic shops and order them online. I know a guy with an online dice store that can get you a great deal with free shipping (not in time for Christmas)!

If you are wondering about the benefits of RPGs as a hobby for children, it is a social game that helps develop problem-solving skills, creative thinking, imagination, vocabulary, math skills and teamwork. There are all kinds of benefits so if they want to do it there's no downside. After 35 years of gaming I have no regrets for the time spent. My involvement in RPGs has allowed me to meet some incredible people and is a part of some of my longest lasting friendships. 

Party Up Like It's 1976!

I played the original version of D&D, the one published in the little brown booklets back in the 1970s, for the first time last night. Even though I've played clones like White Box Swords & Wizardry the old game presents a unique experience.

We were using the reissue PDFs Wizards of the Coast released a few years ago. Those versions were cleaned up with a better typeface but they still use the same layout and art that the original booklets had. I thought we were going to stick to the first three books with the core classes of the cleric, fighter and magic user. One player wanted to play a thief, another wanted to play a druid and I don't see the point of standing in the way of a player's fun while DMing so we added the class info from books 4, 5 and 6. For quicker reference I was using one of the fan made single volume versions with a better layout and art. It included some rules from Strategic Review like grappling to fill in the odd blanks as well.

We needed to dip into Greyhawk for the thief class and the rules for the druid class is spread out across Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardy!

Character generation went well. Everyone rolled a good spread of abilities with some 15s and 16s balancing out the odd 4 and 7. When it came time to roll hit points everyone rolled a 1. All of them! The fighter starts with +1 to their hit die, so she ended up with 2 and the druid had a 15 Constitution so he also added +1 for a total of 2. The thief was out of luck with only one and refused to name his character until second level. When asked he called himself Thief. This led to some odd roleplaying, but he insisted that he was named that way because everyone from his culture was named after a calamity of some kind to keep them safe from it.

In play the old rules held up. As well as the rules work in play though, the organization is a total mess. It was clearly a "make it up as we go along" project over the two years the books were published. I'll be adding tabs to the pages I need the most before the next game!

Combat was easy to run, and with everyone doing 1D6 damage it made for some creative maneuvers rather than strategic weapon choices. One of my favourite moments came when our the player with the fighter said: "Damage is always 1d6 right? So it doesn't matter if I hit the goblin with my sword or smash him into the tree with my shield?" New DMs, the answer to 'can I smash the goblin into the tree with my shield' should always be yes!

Strategy featured high as the players used hit and run tactics to keep the advantage over their foes. Surprise is a great advantage and easy to achieve if you plan for it. Without the hit points to take a hit and keep fighting they planned for it!

For all their clever tactics, the group didn't manage to do much in the way of adventuring. Being afraid to take anything on in a straight up fight left them unable to commit to entering the only dungeon they found.

Most of the first session was spent getting the lay of the land and roleplaying in the town serving as the centre of the campaign. They started by entering the frontier town called Swan's Landing by river barge. They spent some time gathering and verifying the rumours they dug up and made a quick foray into the woods on the eastern shore of the large lake called the Deepwater to raid the goblins they heard were there. After surviving that they felt they needed to find some magic. That led them to track another adventuring party across the Serpent River to the west that disappeared about a week ago. Player skill made the difference here as they asked around and found someone who saw where the other party entered the woods so they could pick up the trail easily. Their other option was to accept a Geas from the local wizard and they weren't too keen on that.

The setting itself is a small sandbox with a few secrets of its own. Everything should shake out over time. We have plenty of things for them to mess with and otherwise destroy to get us well into the New Year. I'm looking forward to seeing how things change when we add the people who were missing and get into the wilderness adventuring the party is headed for now.

So much better than the original cover!

As a system I liked it. I have pretty much everything I need to run in those first three books and the rest I can easily make up or borrow from somewhere else. It's a bit quirky, with the miniature wargaming roots really showing, but it's not like that gets in the way. There's so little there, it's not like we'll break it by ignoring a rule or two.

The single best thing in the old rules is the 2D6 based table for initial reactions and the hiring. It made for some interesting role playing moments and gave Charisma a relevance it rarely receives in later editions. People say that system doesn't matter but the existence of that table caused one player to say: "Hey, in this edition we can talk to anyone and anything and it might work out, right? I think we need to do that all the time!"

The other thing I enjoyed was the titles of the supplements. Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry all evoke a feeling of the fantastic in a way that something newer, such as The Black Hack or Dungeon World, does not.

This foundation RPG project is going well so far. Everyone enjoyed it and delving into the OD&D game should give our whole group a new perspective. If you are interested in how one of my players found it, you can check out their post here.

Rules for Pets in the Black Hack

The longer I run David Black's stripped down old/new school D&Dish retro clone called The Black Hack, the more I find myself writing rules to suit the situations my players create and modify the game to our taste. The more I add and change the more I find myself with what looks like the beginnings of a great RPG that straddles the old school and new school well enough to function as a great little introductory fantasy RPG. That might fuel some posts for later, but for now here are the rules I created for running pets and animal companions in the Black Hack.

My players for my Keep on the Borderlands campaign went into the woods to see if they could find the dragon they heard about and only found the crazy hermit and his lion. They killed the hermit and then they tracked down the lion so they could use a Charm Monster potion on it. The warrior character treated it well and fed it more than the hermit did while they had it under control. I gave the player in control of the warrior a Charisma roll when the potion expired to befriend the lion. I figured with a 6 Charisma I was safe and the lion would just run away.

That's when they rolled a critical and the lion became their pet. Now I have rules for how pets work in the Black Hack. These are the expanded and polished version of what I sketched out during that session so they could use their lion right away. They've worked well so far. If your players force you to make up rules for pets you can use these ones!

There is a Moebius image for every blogpost!

Creature companions/pets have three attributes besides their regular DMG, HD and HP: Action, Sense and Loyalty. The ACT and SEN attributes are based on the creature’s HD. ACT is 10 + HD  to a maximum of 16 and SEN is 10 + HD + (roll 2d6 and choose the lowest one) to a maximum of 18. LOY is a usage die and depends on how well trained and well treated the pet is before bad things start happening. A faithful dog that has been with the character for a few years will have LOY of d8 or even d10. A pack animal that was recently purchased will have a LOY of d4.

ACT is used for physical tests like dodging falling rocks or combat. SEN is used to notice something, track or any test that depends on the animal’s senses. LOY is tested any time something bad happens, such as the beast is wounded, mistreated or neglected when hungry. If the LOY result is a 1 or 2 on a d4 the animal will attempt to run away.

Pets and creature companions can play different roles during combat. One option is to attack independently using their ACT attribute. If used this way they risk damage from opponents if ACT rolls are failed. Another option is for them to fight with the character that owns them and add a +1 to their effective HD for the purposes of fighting powerful or multiple opponents. Pets could also harass and distract a single opponent to create an opening and allow the character that owns the pet to get Advantage on an attack. It depends on circumstances, but creativity should be rewarded.

Pets get one action or attack, the same as the characters. Their damage based on HD already reflects the results of using all their natural weapons.

Here’s an example notation of a lion that was charmed using potions and then became a pet:

ACT 15 SEN 15 LOY d8

DMG 1d10 HD 4+1 HP 18

This way all the rolls stay player facing while they roll against the stats their pets have when they take some kind of action. The loyalty die allows whoever is running the game to keep things from getting too out of hand. If the pet is being overused they can call for more loyalty rolls.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Especially if your try them out too! 

#RPGaDAY 2017 - Day Nine

A good RPG for about 10 sessions is the Black Hack by David Black. It's a 20 page fantasy RPG with streamlined rules and a surprisingly robust system. I reviewed it in detail way back when, but here I'm going to focus on why it's good for 10 sessions.

While the system can handle any situation with a quick judgement the rules as written appear to break down in long term play. This isn't hard to change, and the Black Hack begs to bent to the whim of the table, but I figure for this question I should stick to the rules as written.

Part of the reason it's so good for a short campaign is character generation. Characters can easily be created in five to fifteen minutes so there is no reason you can't get right into the action in the first session. With time limited in the campaign you don't want to waste too much rolling characters.

Another point in its favour is the speed of the system. At 20 pages it's about as rules-light as you can go with D20 game. There is no time lost looking up rules, and there are no fiddly bits to slow down the players. They declare and action and test against a stat for success. That's it. This allows the group to cover a lot of ground in whatever adventure they are playing.

The advancement system is loose and can be as fast as one level per session. That means the characters end the campaign at level 10, the old name level from the original fantasy RPG. This means in only 10 sessions the PCs can develop all the way from zero to hero. That short development is something you aren't going to get with another traditional RPG rules as written.

The system is adaptable. You can use it with the list of monsters in the back to put together your own adventure or adapt on the fly anything made for the D&D family of systems. What it comes down to is the Black Hack is an easy choice for a short campaign, whatever your goal.

#RPGaDAY 2017 - Day Four

Today's microblog topic, courtesy of #RPGaDAY2017, is the RPG I've played most since August 2016. I've easily played more 5e D&D than any other game in the past year.

I've played in a steady Sunday night game for a a couple of years or more. It's been pretty amazing. I managed to get my Warlock up to 16th level, the highest I've ever managed in 35 years of D&D. The system has adapted well to our dirty tricks under one of the best DMs I've played with. I've played a total of three characters in the campaign, but my Warlock is definitely my favourite. Had I know it would last so long, I might have chosen my class more carefully, but I have no regrets.

I ran 5e D&D campaigns for a couple of new groups of players. Both groups wanted me to specifically run "the new D&D" for them. Mostly because they had bought the books but didn't really understand how to use them. Partially because they wanted to play the new shiny D&D.

Philippe Caza

Outside of that, I've played all kinds of other games, from Marvel FASERIP to the Cypher System. Never as consistently or as long as D&D though.

The latest D&D is a pretty good game. I like the addition of backgrounds. The different types of each class that are chosen between 2nd and 3rd level remind me of the kits from 2nd edition. The feats are no longer overwhelming and merely add some colour to a character. There are enough player facing choices that t's easy for two characters of the same class to be completely different in play. All in all, it's pretty good.

I do find it fiddly at times. I don't like how much I need to consult the books during play, but it's not too bad. It's far more streamlined than the 3rd and 3.X editions. Left to my own devices I would play something more old school, but the best edition of D&D is the edition someone else is willing to run for you.

Moulding Young Minds and Other Madness

This post was supposed to be the third session report of my D&D campaign with my daughters but I'll be combining several weeks of play into this post to bring you all up to speed and talk about a few of the developments.

We're still using The Black Hack by David Black along with the legendary D&D Module, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. I've made changes to both since we started but the biggest change is the expansion of the group.

I volunteered to watch my friend's son while she took her daughter to the clinic one evening and since it was D&D night, after supper I asked him if he wanted to play. Carter had never even heard of Dungeons and Dragons so I described it as "like a video game, but everything happens in your head." He thought that sounded cool so we rolled up a character. He decided on a Warrior named Dabber. When he rolled four for his Charisma he asked if his character could be missing an eye with a big scar and loose flap of skin. I was a little worried I'd need to draw that so I suggested a scar with a metal plate nailed into his skull to hide his empty socket. Carter thought that was a great idea and we were off!

The Black Hack Character Sheet for Dabber, the Warrior played by Carter, 9

Getting him to the rest of the party was easy enough, he simply followed the trail of corpses in the goblin cave to the supply room where the girl's characters were finishing up a short rest. Their rest had been interrupted early on by some hobgoblins coming through a secret door, but they were ready to go. They accepted their new party member since he was a bad-ass looking warrior and the Conjurer was tired of getting wailed on in combat.

It didn't take them long to find the seat of power for the goblin caves. I swapped out the original chieftain, honour guard and mates for a goblin queen and her retinue in her nest. I described it like something out of a HR Giger painting and they ate it up. The kids loved the large, bloated queen with her chain-mail stretched across her heavy body, swinging her great-axe at them while shouting in goblin. The large black eggs stuck to the walls and floor where goblins hatched as full-sized and functioning adults was alien and great scenery for them to work with as they moved around the room fighting the queen's honour guard.

They managed to kill the queen and ran through the last of the honour guard after she surrendered. Not much for mercy, these kids. My daughters also argued over who got to stab the goblins that fell to the Sleep spells because they both wanted to do it.

That was also the session where they started chanting, "One, one, one!" while rolling important hits in hopes of encouraging a crit.

With their huge treasure hall they were able to buy better armour and spend a month at the Keep trying to learn the Goblin and Giant languages from some people they found who were willing to teach them for a fee. They made their Intelligence tests at the end of the month and each added the language they had studied to their respective character sheets. Then they made another delve into the goblin caves only to find a giant spider had taken up residence in the common hall.

Apparently Carter talked about D&D and how much fun he had non-stop for a week. Since it worked out for everyone's schedule I offered to take him and his older sister on Wednesday so they all could play. Hailey was a little wary since Carter's excited descriptions made zero sense to her, but since my youngest, Pascale, was playing she said she'd try it out.

Hailey rolled up a character with both a high Strength and Dexterity. She decided to play a Thief like Pascale's character but wanted to use a giant, two-handed hammer. Since weapon damage is by class in The Black Hack and I had thrown out the weapon restrictions on day one anyway, I saw no reason to say no to her idea. Erie started tiptoeing around the caves with a giant hammer on her shoulder.

Erie, the maul-wielding Thief played by Hailey, 10

The group spent time bribing the ogre (now that they could talk to him) for safe passage and using their sneak attack on the hobgoblins that they found behind the secret door in the store room. My oldest, Chloe, thought it was hilarious that the hobgoblins had looted all the stuff from the goblins that the party wasn't able to carry in the previous session.

They tangled with the Hobgoblin Queen and ended up in a huge fight since coming in the back door allowed the bad guys to raise the alarm. The crazy fight stretched over several rooms and took the better part of the session. Two characters where knocked Out of Action, but the cleric's spells held out long enough to get them on their feet again and good rolls left them no worse for wear. Dabber ended up going toe-to-toe in an epic battle with the Hobgoblin Queen. She was immense and had as many hit points as the ogre from earlier that they were afraid to fight as a group. He held her off in her throne room until the rest of the party was able to mop up everyone else and pitch in.

Old Wojeb, the NPC Cleric they like having around even though his
abysmal strength and occasional cowardice make him kind of useless.

The kids poked around the room until they found all the treasure, but didn't even bother opening the doors to the rookery, or searching for the secret door into the complex. They were all satisfied with the crazy combat and wanted to get their characters back to the keep to sell their loot and heal up.

The next session they went back in through the goblin caves to get back into the hobgoblin lair to chase down the rumour about a captured merchant. They decided they weren't going to chance sneaking past the ogre's cave now that tow of them had chain-mail and they weren't paying the ogre any more money. Instead they drew him out into the open where they delayed him with a wand of web they had and filled him full of arrows before closing for melee. Some good rolling kept the party safe from thrown boulders and they took him down. They stripped of his outfit in the hopes of getting some gold for the bear pelts he was wearing.

This time they found the rookery. My 13-year-old felt pretty silly about not finding it or the secret door the first time. They destroyed the eggs and made their way into the armoury. They found out that telling the guards they had killed the queen was a bad idea but won that fight too.

Olys, the Conjurer played by Chloe, 13

They wanted to tap and scratch at every wall in the hopes of finding secret door but also wanted to be stealthy and sneak around. When I pointed out it was impossible to do both they decided on stealth.

The funniest part of the session is when my oldest decided to bluff the goblins preparing the hall for a feast into believing that they had paid the queen for the return of one of the prisoners and had gotten turned around in the caves. My youngest was trying to goad her sister into casting Sleep instead, "I don't think it's very heroic to lie to them."

Snekava, the Thief played by Pascale, 9

They pulled it off and got directions to the prisoners. A short battle and a running fight later and they were high-tailing it out of the ravine and heading for the Keep.

So far they've cleared out the goblins, the ogre and crippled the hobgoblins. It should be interesting to see where they go next. At this point they still trust the chaos priest spy at the Keep and have promised to come and get him to help them if they ever find any chaos altars, worshipers or relics.

As far as the rules go, I found the 4D6 HD for the Sleep spell was hugely overpowered when spell slots are only lost on a bad roll. I decided to use the LotFP version with only 2D8 HD affected by the Sleep. It's working out much better.

When we started I used the ablative armour with the recovery on short rests. I found it worked OK, but I slowly phased it out in favour of the damage reduction optional rule, starting with shields first and eventually moving to all the armour as damage reduction. The damage reduction solves the shield problem and speeds things up a bit. The monsters still get extra hit points from armour because hitting for zero damage is not fun!

The party is shaping up! They only have a handful of low-powered magic items, but they are well equipped now that two of them have plate mail and everyone else has exactly what they need. The Conjurer has added a spell to her spell book and the party has a townhouse rented inside the walls of the Keep for the next month. They are building relationships with the NPCs in the Keep and getting a feel for the Caves of Chaos. The characters are second and third level and they've all had a couple of stats increase while leveling.

All four are having the time of their lives and can't wait to play again!



#DandDwithKids

Bloodthirsty Children!

It turns out my daughters have something of a bloodthirsty streak. My ruthless little gamers are quickly becoming the scourge of the minions of chaos!

In my last post I talked about running the first ever campaign for my daughters. We're using The Black Hack with the old D&D module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. This post is the first in a series of campaign play diaries of my daughter's first RPG campaign.

The first session went well, with the girls getting the lay of the land in the keep and interacting with the odd characters there. They spent some time asking around about the area and collecting rumours about The Caves of Chaos to the northeast. Unfortunately for them they picked up plenty of false rumours, including the one about "bree-yark" meaning "we surrender" in goblin. Random tables are a wonderful thing. Thanks to a critical success with their roll to find information, they managed to get some decent directions to The Caves of Chaos on top of their bundle of rumours, so they were able to find the valley without much trouble.

They had some luck on their first foray into the valley with all the caves and I rolled no encounter on their way in. The girls had heard there was magic armour in the southern caves so they started by sneaking into the entrance to the goblin caves.

They crept through the rough tunnels with care, avoiding one group of goblins walking through the halls by ducking down a dead-end passage. For all that sneaking around, when they found the goblin guardroom they decided to walk in with their weapons drawn and say: "Hi goblins! What's going on?"

While I loved that they strutted in there liked they owned the place, the response from the six goblins was negative. One pointed and shouted, "Bree-yark!"

At first the girls were excited, "They surrender? Wow!"

"No, not so much. They leap to their feet and charge at you with their spears raised," I said. "Looks like 'bree-yark' means attack or something like that."

Snekava let fly with an arrow and one-shotted the leading goblin in the face.
As the goblins closed, Wojeb whipped his rapier around like toddler going after a pinata. Most of the goblins went for Snekava and with three twenties, she was tasting the stone floor by the end of the round.

Snekava is even sneakier at level two!

It was looking bad for the group as the not so hand-to-hand characters tried to turn the tide back in their favour when Olys decided to use that Sleep spell she had prepared that morning. With that action the fight was over, but a failed intelligence check meant that Olys expended her spell slot for the day.

They placed Snekava on the table in the guardroom and Wojeb set about patching her up while Olys stabbed the crap out of the sleeping goblins with her dagger. Despite their desire to continue they realised they were not in any position to handle another fight. They looted the goblins and left the caves. They were lucky again and I rolled no encounter on their way out of the caves.

Once back at the keep they were pretty bummed about their poor performance in the caves. I've set the adventure in the old Grand Duchy of Karameikos. The Keep is on the Duke's Road just before it passes into the Black Peak Mountains. This information is relevant because it means the chapel in the keep is part of the Church of Karameikos. The party cleric is from the old Church of Traladara and was sent north to tend the old Traladaran shrine in the fountain square of the keep. The reason he is adventuring is he was given no funds for his mission and living in the keep is expensive.

The party managed to find a Traladaran priest who is staying at the keep. He was friendly and willing to heal Snekava for free as a favour to his fellow cleric. He also convinced the party of the dangers of touching any artefacts or altars of chaos. They promised to return to the keep and get him if they found anything like that in the caves. He was interested in their adventures and talkative. He was also surprised and grateful to learn about the old Traladaran shrine.

The next day they headed back to the caves with vengeance on their minds. They approached the goblin cave through the tree cover and spotted an ambush near the cave entrance. They used their longbows and made short work of the four waiting goblins.

They did better with the first guardroom this time and found the reinforced door to the hobgoblin lair. They heard what sounded like monsters too big and numerous to handle on the other side and decided to return, "When we're more experienced."

They found the second guardroom and entered with an actual plan this time. With no armour besides her shield, Snekava was finished with her bow and ready to mix it up with her sword from now on. They started the battle strong. Since the goblins were on alert, the goblin squad leader kicked over the water barrel and made for the hidden door with a large jingling sack.

Once it was clear the goblin was summoning help through the door, Olys decided it was time to use her sleep spell again. She rolled close to maximum on the 4D6 (twenty-one!) for the hit dice (HD) put to sleep. There are no restrictions on what creatures are affected by the spell in The Black Hack. That meant the Ogre coming through the door folded up like a cheap lawn chair and went to sleep along with the goblins.

They thought that even sleeping, the ogre was too big to kill outright, so after dispatching the goblins with their daggers, they left him alone and walked past into the lair. With no limit to their time, they searched all the nooks and crannies of the ogre's caves. Between his treasure and the gold the goblins had to pay him to fight, the girls hit the motherload!

They raced back to the keep, again with no encounter on the way out.

Once back at the keep they spent some money on better equipment, purchasing leather armour for Snekava and chain mail for the cleric. They basked in the glory of their success and partied in the keep's tavern, The Duke of Cups. I decided this was an effective milestone, having experienced both failure and success. They also had bested the ogre. They were thrilled when I told them they had levelled up!

Olys specialises in conjuring cans of whoop-ass!

The levelling process for the Black Hack was a blast with the kids. They rolled up the improvements to their characters with gusto! Cheering for each incremental bonus gained to their stats and hit points. My oldest, Chloe, actually managed to roll over her 17 intelligence so now Olys, her Conjurer, is a magical force to be reckoned with.

As far as first games go, it was a good one. The girls are hooked and it looks like my Wednesday nights are booked solid until the end of the winter.

Mechanically, I made a change to shields. They absorb damage every round, with small shields soaking 1 hit point of damage and large shields taking 2 points. The rest of the armour I left the same. It doesn't make a huge difference but it is nice for the shields to continue to be useful throughout all the fights. Otherwise, players could have their characters drop them after the first round. It also means characters will continue to use shields at higher levels when armour seems like not much of a big deal.

The other thing I'm considering is cutting the power of the Sleep Spell. At 4D6 hit dice it is always going to wipe a small group of opponents. There should be less certainty when it comes to using magic so I might use the 2D8 hit dice from the Lamentations of the Flame Princess version of the spell in the future.

#TheirFirstCampaign