We play old school - Wife's solo game becomes a campaign

Ever since TSR/WotC published the "Fast Play" rules for AD&D 2nd Edition (still available as a PDF download from Wizards) back in the late 90s, I've had the "Vale Campaign" in my head. This particular "intro" module, written by Jeff Grubb, was a self-contained set of AD&D 2E rules, complete with pre-gen characters and a decent explanation of AD&D mechanics. It was the first of 3 modules, Wrath of the Minotaur and Eye of the Wyvern completed the series. At one time, I owned all 3, but divorces, moves and many years later, these seem to have been lost.

The campaign in my head started simply enough from the generic setting info available in the Fast Play rules:

[Start of Adventure] All of you are natives of the Vale, a small farming community made up of a number of small towns scattered along a broad, wooded valley. The Patriarch is the spiritual leader of the Vale, and he has asked you to come to his shrine when the noon bell sounds.

[End of Adventure]
The Patriarch is extremely pleased with your discovery of the library beneath the ruined tower! He believes that it may have belonged to an ancient and powerful wizard, whose lair has not yet been discovered and whose treasure still lies out there, waiting for brave adventurers to find it! Congratulations! The Patriarch is happy that you have defeated the [thing you were sent to defeat - spoiler removed] that was plaguing the local farms and homesteads. With this menace put to rest, he can turn his attention to other matters, such as finding the hidden tomb of the wizard who once ruled the valley.

So, naturally, I had to twist this all in my head and tinker with it. What was the Vale in relationship to the outside world? Who was this Patriarch and was he for real? What was his interest in the wizard's lair? Who was this wizard? And on and on... until I had pages and pages filled with not only maps, NPCs, timelines, what would happen if no heroes got involved and so forth.

This whole campaign has seen fits and starts (and I think I've written about this aspect before) in various ways. I started playing this with my ex back in the late 90s, but the Vale campaign never took off. When we divorced in the early 2000s, I dropped D&D for awhile and concentrated on other things.

In 2004, I tried to revive the Vale. I found the old PDF, got PrincessGirlfriend (who is now PrincessBride) and her son and my daughters to play. My son played a mage who ran at the first sign of giant rats, my wife played a fighter who kicked ass (go figure, look what she's playing now!) and my daughters tried their hand at this in their own game. Right about that time, my stock car racing hobby started really rolling and the campaign ended after a game or two.

So fast forward to February of 2008. I had been wanting to play some RPGs, having just finished Morrowind and poking around the old Ultima PC games. It was about this same time that I started writing my epic fail Ultima I rewrite in 3.5 edition, as well as finding my old Vale notes. I didn't do so much with Vale, as I was preparing for my survival school course, playing 3.5E and 4E and discovering rules-lite nirvana with microlite20.

Fast forward one more time to the end of 2008. I began gently suggesting to my wife that we play D&D again (and by gently suggesting, I mean a lot of geeking, "wouldn't it be cool"-ing and so forth...) and she agreed. I read up on some fantastic threads on gleemax about running a solo game, opened up my Holmes Basic book to the "Tower of Zenopus" adventure, printed a copy of microlite74 and thus, the city of Westport was born.

After that first game, I found (again) my old Vale maps and settings notes and suddenly, I had an entire campaign. I already had some dungeons/adventures from Vale and from my Ultima1 campaign I could drop in. Boom. Done. Cue happy music and much rejoicing.

In the past few weeks, I've worked on wilderness hex maps and basic ideas of what's around Westport and Vale. I've kept a running timeline of what is going on, based on what has happened in my wife's games. So this weekend, when my wife couldn't play, but my son and daughter wanted to, I had a pefect opportunity for them to play in Vale as well.

I didn't want to have the kids jump right in where my wife was. Just in case they didn't want to head into (a restocked) Zenopus's Tower, or go bandit hunting, or go looking for the merchant's lost daughter, I downloaded a beginner's adventure by Chris Gonnerman, called "A Haunted Tower". I found this adventure from the Dragonsfoot forum. This adventure was written for a somewhat younger mindset than a 19 year old boy and 11 year old girl, but the basic gist was a good beginning dungeon and gave me something to work with.

It was really a neat experience to walk my kids into a run-down tavern in the same town that my wife's character (Aeli) has been working in, and have the kids hear rumors and talk to NPCs that Aeli had heard or affected. The widow of a hireling that had died in Aeli's party served "Ralf" (my son's elf) and "Shimi" (my daughter's fighting woman). Ralf had "Bear" (a poodle guard dog recreation of our real dog Bear) tied up outside. I gave them some hooks, they spoke to a weeping alchemist's apprentice and away they went to the Haunted Tower.

Highlights included my daughter barging into every door she could find (just like her in real life), my son falling down a trapdoor, my daughter being poisoned by a spider and falling influence to confusion, and just a lot of fun with some combat and grabbing of loot. My son loves the Morrowind/Oblivion games and the fact that there was a great deal of alchemical equipment in this tower meant that he's loading up his backpack with many strange flasks and equipment. He's even asked what a dog can carry.

It was a really neat experience to see my campaign world really "come alive" with multiple groups, stories touching each other and everyone having a good time. My son, who's familiar with my wife's story so far, was laughing as the widow spoke about "those darned adventurers!" but he didn't meta-game, just laughing and shaking his head out of character.

So I guess it's not truly a solo game anymore, although I know my wife is anxious to continue her solo side of things - but the opportunity to bring Vale to many people was just too good to pass up. I like the idea of having a "family" campaign/story that we'll share together, with now my PrincessBride wife, my son, my step daughter and my 11 year old daughter (and the dog too, by extension, although going from a chocolate lab to a poodle is a stretch...)

OD&D Solo Game with my wife - 7th day

Continuing the adventures of Aeli (my wife) and company in the tunnels below the Westport Keep, we gathered again around the tabletop and went rat hunting. My step daughter decided to join us again. I'm constantly impressed at how easy it is to get people rolling with the old school rules. 15 minutes of chargen and "Mystaria" was created, an Elven Adventurer sent by her house to human lands for some seasoning. I had her write up three words that described her: "mysterious", "funny" and "pretty". I wanted to try this as an experiment to see if that helps people flesh out their character for first time play.

Last night was a bit more book thumbing than I like. The party encountered a wererat who ended up attacking the party and giving one of Aeli's henchmen the disease. I had to thumb through S&W to look up if lyncanthropy could be cured by Cure Disease alone. Nothing written in stone, so I ruled that it takes a Remove Curse as well as a Cure Disease. The party was forced to sacrifice an extremely valuable piece of jewelry to cure this henchmen. Aeli's loyalty and caring of her followers endears them to her in many ways.

They also ran into a rat swarm which ended up with Aeli getting accidentally hit with a molotov oil flash My stepdaughter tossed it from the center of the party, she missed the "to hit" so I gave her a 3 in 6 chance of accidentally hitting someone. She did... and hit my wife. That was umm... a semi-tense moment.

A sad moment happened in the game, the comic-relief cowardly torch bearer died a horrible lonely death. When the rat swarm poured over the front line like a carpet of vermin, he broke and ran. In the ensuing combat and then the wererat attack, Nodwig was quite forgotten. The party fled the dungeon after the wererat attack, looking for healing and recovery. Nodwig was forgotten. So I gave him a 4 in 6 chance of surviving.. and he didn't. He tried to retrace his steps and found himself in the slavering jaws of monstrous rats. Aeli was quite upset and slaughtered the rats in vengeance. Poor Nodwig will be remembered...

They survived and my wife has managed to make it to third level! She's attracted some attention now from the local power-brokers and her future should be very interesting. I'm really proud of her, as she is starting to show the seasoning of sessions of play. She still doesn't use the 10' pole though...

This game was challenging in some ways. We had some encounters where I had to spend a minute or two looking things up. I also had to make some on-the-spot rulings of how things would work, but it all worked out pretty well. Aeli continues to grow as a character and my wife continues to excel at learning the art of surviving.


Aeli wreaks her revenge on the last monstrous rat that ate Nodwig.

My setup prior to the game. I have homebrew DM charts for Swords/Wizardry, and I also have homebrew OSRIC DM charts. This screen is working out well. And I can't wait to have a S/W hardbound when printing 2 is released... that'll look nice! (Here's hoping for a hardback release...)

Rant: Old school D&D is suited towards Tyrannical DMs?

Ben at Ars Ludi always makes me think, with his posts about gaming. His West Marches posts are what gave my Dark Ages campaign life and structure.

Today he posted about "tyrannical DMs"  and about the nature of GM/player sharing an experience in a game.

What really got my goat was this comment.

"I actually think that the day of the tyrannical DM has passed. That style suited some of the old versions of D&D, or perhaps suited the age at which many of us played those versions, but I think people (both players and DMs) have moved past that. I, personally, haven’t had any recent experiences with tyrannical DMs. Conversely, I’ve had three in the past four years who are extremely open to shared control, both of the world and its evolution and of consequences/roleplaying (shared narrative).

So my take is that the situation may still exist for some folks, but it’s beyond what I’ve experienced in the last 5 years (with one exception and he had no returning players after session 1)."

Allow me to rant for a moment.

Why is it that someone who admits that they've not had any experiences with bad DMs, and (from the context of statements) hasn't played in the hobby long, can make such a damn stupid generalized statement about how old school somehow makes a bad DM?

Funny, I want someone to tell Dave Arneson that he's tyrannical. Based on what I've read from interviews and his Q/A posts, I think after he gets done laughing his ass off, he'll gleefully "admit" to it and then go on running his 30-odd year campaign. Old school style. 'Cause, yannow, he's from an age that spawned tyrannical bad DMs.

"Bad DMs" can happen, no matter what the version or style or type of game. They happen because people are either exercising their issues/problems at the gametable, or they just are not good DMs, or they are inexperienced and making all the common mistakes that everyone makes at the table. This stereotype that old school somehow makes it easy to be a bad DM is about as stupid as saying that 3E/4E makes it easy to be a bad powermongering player.

I may not like the feel or play of 3E/4E, but I have no doubt that many of the fine people that I share the blog space with are excellent players in that version who have an honest love of the game. Just as I've personally experienced many, many people who run/play old school and have the same honest love and enjoyment. I also have no doubt that there are plenty of jerks and simply bad DMs who can screw up any game. That "age" has hardly passed - I watch it happen in all walks of life.

If someone is going to blandly and blindly post crap about aspects of the game, why not experience it first and get empirical data?

I don't go around slinging shit on games that I don't know about - hell, I want to play them so I can learn and form opinions. I've never played Amber, Fudge and other diceless games, but I also don't support or refute stereotypes about them. I've experienced 3E/4E and I have my opinions based on my experiences. Does that mean I'll turn down a 3E/4E game with people who I know I'll have fun with, because of a stupid stereotype? No. It might not be my "go-to" game, but at the same time, I'm not going to persist a stereotype about it. And I don't believe anyone else should.

Man, I should not read posts before having a few cups of coffee.

OD&D Solo Game with my wife - Day 6 concluded

We managed to get in some solo game time last night, thanks to our babysitter situation going downhill, keeping us at home. Neither one of us was particularly interested in the Super Bowl, so we dungeon delved instead.

I have been moving away from microlite74 to Swords & Wizardry Core rules gradually and last night, we converted my wife's character over fully. If I wanted to houserule microlite20/74, it would end up looking a lot like S&W, so I just went there. I will continue to run microlite20/74 as well.

Last night was the encounter with "the big monster" - a gelatinous cube. (or as my wife referred to it, "the big moving jello") Upon hearing strange liquid sliding noises, then catching a glimpse of the cube, my wife maneuvered her team into a room and choked the cube into the doorway. I was thrilled that she was using awesome tactics!

Thinking this was going to be an epic battle, I won initiative and the cube attacked, but missed. What occurred next is so typical in true RPG fashion, my wife rolled a natural 20 on her first attack against the BBM and I ruled that she hit twice instead of once. Naturally, she rolled high damage, so if you imagine a fairly good looking woman going "beserk" over a 10x10 cube of jello, you have the correct picture. Two hits by the hirelings and the cube is toast.

So in one round, a 4 HD cube is now a pile of melting goo and the party is high fiving each other. I could only shake my head and laugh. Searching around the goo for the loot took a couple of turns and my wandering monster dice showed a skull, which meant 6 Giant Rats decided to see what the hubub was about about. Thus began the LONG eight round standoff between rats and party members. As hirelings took damage, my wife again surprised me ... by retreating in good order. She was tired of wasting time and resources (hp) on the worthless rats. I was thrilled with that decision.

I also introduced her to the concept of hirelings vs. henchmen as two former hirelings pledged their loyalty to her in a drunken stupor... although they meant it. Now she has mouths to feed and take care of, but she seems very pleased by that. She also got to see hireling panic as the little torch bearer (the guy behind everyone else in the miniature assembly in the picture) ran off in a panic when the cube attacked. At least he dropped the torch when he fled... fighting cubes in pitch black would be bad...

I play-tested a 1-2hp "bind wounds" houserule last night. I'm not convinced by it, it almost felt 4e-ish with healing surges, but I think if I make it soak up a turn per hp recovered (up to two), that might make it a bit more dicey and time-consuming. We'll see.

The picture is of my lovely Princess Bride, with her retinue in marching order in front of her. That smile persisted the entire night as she rocked and rolled through the session.