I'll give a full account tomorrow. I've got gaming tonight.

I had to return home almost immediately. Sorry, no actual play to report :(

Ok so first up, I think my game went extremely well. I decided to prepare absolutely nothing and draw the entire game from a combination of the Adventure Goals the players set at the table and including situations where whatever Talents they picked could shine. I was of course already to launch them into a previously unexplored section of Danger Mountain but when madwabbit's character (the Dwarf) declared that his Adventure Goal was "to drink from the skull of the Elf King" I sent things in an entirely different direction.

I was able to weave that and a few of the other goals into a pretty cool adventure. It started with them trying to cross a rushing river that was home to a party of Lizardmen and a (surprisingly ineffectual) giant crocodile. That was the "get them used to the combat system" combat that got things moving. Soon they wound up at the Riverside Tavern (fast becoming an iconic location in my old school style games) where they learned that the Wood Elves of the Forest of Thorns were becoming increasingly belligerent. The Elves had recently gone so far as to block all trade through the forest and they had hung a band of "smugglers" by the edge of the woods as a warning.

As a result, the town was offering a reward for any group willing to unseat the Elf King. This bad blood with the Elves had resulted in a more than a little anti-Elf sentiment among the townsfolk. The barkeep explained that they had no quarrel with the "High Elves" from back east and it was just the Wood Elves they were having problems with. Unfortunately Seonaid's Elf character had drunk herself unconscious moments after entering the tavern and couldn't indicate that she wasn't one of those damnable Wood Elves. As a show of solidarity with the townspeople, madwabbit's Dwarf urinated on her unconscious form and was quickly joined by another couple patrons. Seonaid took this in relatively good humor although she did admonish wabbit for fomenting inter-party strive. This resulted in the quote of the game when wabbit retorted, "It's only 'strife' if you're conscious. Otherwise it's just peeing on you."

After that they ventured into the Forest of Thorns and encountered some Giant Spiders (a staple of my OSH games) including the really huge spider who turned out to have a magic item in her thorax which was found in the aftermath of the battle: The Somewhat Spiritual Hammer. It was a Heavy Weapon that did not count as a Heavy thing for purposes of Encumbrance. JC's Magic User claimed it (he'd identified it after all!) and never hit with it once for the rest of the game. In fact during the final encounter I added a property to the weapon that it "could not be wielded by Magic Users". JC replied, "Apparently!"

The climactic encounter was an assault on the Elf Village that was pretty heavily guarded. The battle involved some Elf guards, a few of which were mounted archers riding on the backs of giant butterflies, some animated trees and a bunch of Elf Minions. The Goblin's Adventuring Goal had been "to find the perfect recipe" and this he did when the Dwarf pushed a pile of minions into the cook pit only to find that the creature being roasted over the fire was in fact another dwarf from his very own clan! Thus was born the savory dish, Elf Smoked Dwarf, a favorite of all Goblins.

It turned out that the Elf King was actually a demon in disguise, explaining why the Elves had been so nasty of late under his leadership. This also satisfied the Cleric's goal of "Smite a big demon". I did have to cut the ending just a bit shorter than I'd have liked due to time constraints so I didn't spend a lot of points negating damage to the demon long enough for the whole party to get involved fighting him. But they seemed to have a ton of fun and so did I.

I'm fairly convinced that I can run an awesome game of OSH with zero prep and actually the game might be better the less I prepare.

I'll detail my experiences with Julian's game next post...

Oh and yes, I agree about the zero prep making for a great game. Although from what I can tell your previous experience running certainly helped. :)

Rel said:

Sorry for the misattribution there, JC.

No worries. My inner attention whore couldn't stop the rest of me. :)

My role of comic relief was very fun. It's hard to pull off being as ineffective as my character was when Seonaid was actively trying to run from every fight. :fist:

Thanks for the review of both awesome games! I'm going to have to try running it without any prep whatsoever. When I did run it, I twisted the nugget of story idea I had to fit with the PCs. Maybe I'll just wing it entirely next time.

I'll be sure to pass along your suggestions and praise to Jay, too. For all intents and purposes, that was his first time ever running a game for anyone (aside from Elyssa).

The upload linked from the unfinished review copy thread is pretty solid and any changes since are of the pretty minor typo-correcting variety.

I do seem to be getting ready to sit back in the designer seat for the push to final copy though - no guarantees about releasing anything new in 10 days, but there's a remote possibility.