Being Busy

Well, I'm certainly not keeping up with the blog with the same ferocity I did during the Daily Blog Challenge. I suppose that is to be expected. I didn't set any hard deadlines for myself or anything. Honestly, I'd probably rather be gaming or working on something game related than writing about games, at least right now. Plus, I post on a couple message boards, so that gives me some lower commitment opportunities to write about gaming experiences (and often provides nearly instant feedback)...

So I said I was busy, right? Well I've played 6 RPG session in 4 days this week. Saturday was GASP Games Day, which I wrote up last Sunday. Sunday, the 3.5 Ravenloft game resumed. Unfortunately, for the third session in a row, 3 of the players weren't able to make it. The three of us that did make it soldiered on and advanced the plot, though. Monday, I played in a grinder of a 3.5 Forgotten Realms game. My poor rogue was getting destroyed. I tried to design him as more of thug/brute than a sneaky type (he's got 2 levels of fighter and 6 of Rogue), but he was getting hammered on. I think he took nearly 200 points of damage over the night and was down/dying once or twice. Ouch. Tuesday we played Call of Cthulhu. We're still working through Masks of Nyarlathotep.

This weekend, I'll be running my first OSR game. It's going to be a one-shot that may lead to more sessions, depending on how it goes. The game is going to be made up of 3 guys from my usual Tuesday night game, another gamer friend with a lot of experience with new and old editions of the game, and 3 total novices. Two of them haven't played any RPGs in over 10 years and had pretty limited experience then. The third has never played anything, ever. I wanted to keep everything loose and light on rules, so we'll be using Swords & Wizardry White Box. I'm going to run a dungeon I found online called "The Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches". Since at least a couple of the players read this, I'm not going to give away any info. I know they're good and won't spoil it for themselves.

For the game system, I thought about using Labyrinth Lord or LotFP, but White Box is so stream-lined, it just seemed like a good fit. I want to save LotFP for my regular Tuesday night crew. Depending on how this goes, I may run a future one-shot with Labyrinth Lord or S&W Core, to see if people like a slightly more advanced system.

I am limiting to the 3 base classes and races -- Fighter, Cleric, Magic User, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling. Players are going to roll their stats 3d6 straight. I've already come up with a few simple house rules to fill in the intentional gaps in the system, and I'm excited to see what I'm going to have to rule on the fly. All the combat is going to be abstract. We're not going to worry about minis or tactics or anything. I'm even going to try to get them to map the dungeon on their own, just using my descriptions. None of us are used to playing this style of gaming, so hopefully it goes okay. I want to have a little bit of culture shock for the people at the tabe, with out putting them off from old style play.

I'm really curious to compare the play style of the completely new person to the people that have been spending a lot of time playing newer editions of the game. Are the regulars going to get tripped up by the lack of skill system? You'll notice, I am running the version without the Thief class. I'm excited to see how they handle those locked doors and trapped passageways without somewhere there who can just roll a couple dice to "fix" it.

Anyway, I think I'm ready to do this. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was a bit nervous. Running this kind of game seems like a significantly different experience than what I'm used to. I think I'm going to do just fine, but the unknown element always adds some jitters (and excitement). I'll be back with a full report on how it goes and probably some notes on the S&W White Box and the adventure.