Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Pacificon 40 is over Labor Day weekend in Santa Clara CA
http://www.pacificongameexpo.com

I'm trying to drum up more support for AD&D locally. There aren't many K&KA folks in my area, but hopefully some lurkers might want play in one of my two 1e games:

Beyond the Impossible Spire - Saturday 9 am - 3 pm
Cosmic bridge leads to the Moon! Seek riches and evade weird hazards on its frozen surface. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 5-10
(This is a playtest of parts of an eventual module.)

Halls of Tizun Thane - Sunday 9 am - 3 pm
Search a magician's manor for how to eliminate the stalking Night Things from the village, and try to come out richer. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 2-3
(The classic Albie Fiore module from White Dwarf #18.)

I just submitted these today, so they aren't in the online event listing yet. On the chance that they are too late to be official events (the registration deadline might have been yesterday), I will still run these as off-grid games, and will post back here with where to meet.

Guy Fullerton wrote:Beyond the Impossible Spire - Saturday 9 am - 3 pm
Cosmic bridge leads to the Moon! Seek riches and evade weird hazards on its frozen surface. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 5-10
(This is a playtest of parts of an eventual module.)

Woohoo!

Guy Fullerton wrote:Halls of Tizun Thane - Sunday 9 am - 3 pm
Search a magician's manor for how to eliminate the stalking Night Things from the village, and try to come out richer. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 2-3
(The classic Albie Fiore module from White Dwarf #18.)

I ran this for my brothers BITD and we all liked it!---I haven't cracked it open in years, though. I assume since you're running it that it holds up well?

Guy Fullerton wrote:I'm trying to drum up more support for AD&D locally. There aren't many K&KA folks in my area, but hopefully some lurkers might want play in one of my two 1e games:

I may be out in CA again soon-ish, and will keep you posted!

Allan.

Guy Fullerton wrote:Beyond the Impossible Spire - Saturday 9 am - 3 pm
Cosmic bridge leads to the Moon! Seek riches and evade weird hazards on its frozen surface. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 5-10
(This is a playtest of parts of an eventual module.)

This one really piques my interest, Guy. Think you mght run it at Gary Con in March?

Chainsaw wrote:

Guy Fullerton wrote:Beyond the Impossible Spire - Saturday 9 am - 3 pm
Cosmic bridge leads to the Moon! Seek riches and evade weird hazards on its frozen surface. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 5-10
(This is a playtest of parts of an eventual module.)

This one really piques my interest, Guy. Think you mght run it at Gary Con in March?

That would be fun, or if not GaryCon, how about NTX (or both!)?

Allan.

grodog wrote:

Guy Fullerton wrote:Beyond the Impossible Spire - Saturday 9 am - 3 pm
Cosmic bridge leads to the Moon! Seek riches and evade weird hazards on its frozen surface. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 5-10
(This is a playtest of parts of an eventual module.)

Woohoo!

Yeah—I intend to skew things so the group sees areas the earlier playlists didn't. But I need to get my act together and finish up some notes on those parts.

I ran this for my brothers BITD and we all liked it!---I haven't cracked it open in years, though. I assume since you're running it that it holds up well?

To be honest, I haven't ever run Halls of Tizun Thane, but it's been on my to-run list for a quite a long time. I ran Albie Fiore's other WD module a couple times though, so I expect Halls to be good. I plan to run this in a mission-oriented style, so will need to be liberal about clues.

I may be out in CA again soon-ish, and will keep you posted!

Awesome!

Chainsaw wrote:

Guy Fullerton wrote:Beyond the Impossible Spire - Saturday 9 am - 3 pm
Cosmic bridge leads to the Moon! Seek riches and evade weird hazards on its frozen surface. Exploration (no plot) and danger (no fudging). Lvl 5-10
(This is a playtest of parts of an eventual module.)

This one really piques my interest, Guy. Think you mght run it at Gary Con in March?

Yeah, I'd be happy to run it off-grid. It's really open-ended though, so may not fit well with a convention slot. I guess I'll find out at Pacificon

I also have a different thing in my pocket for off-grid at Gary Con: A more combat-oriented scenario I sketched out on Sunday night at the past Gary Con.

Edit: And to answer Allan's question about NTX. Yeah, maybe there too. But I am losing confidence that I'll ever be able to make NTX. After thinking I could make it this past year, Summer kicked my ass and it fell through again

The official events did get added to the listing:

Saturday 9 am: Beyond the Impossible Spire
http://pacificon.conreg.net/reg/EventView.asp?ID=353

Sunday 9 am: Halls of Tizun Thane
http://pacificon.conreg.net/reg/EventView.asp?ID=354

Guy Fullerton wrote:Yeah, I'd be happy to run it off-grid. It's really open-ended though, so may not fit well with a convention slot. I guess I'll find out at Pacificon

I imagine it would go well, especially if you fast-forward some of the overland travel parts, perhaps?

Guy Fullerton wrote:I also have a different thing in my pocket for off-grid at Gary Con: A more combat-oriented scenario I sketched out on Sunday night at the past Gary Con.

Is this the one that we were doodling on together?

Guy Fullerton wrote:Edit: And to answer Allan's question about NTX. Yeah, maybe there too. But I am losing confidence that I'll ever be able to make NTX. After thinking I could make it this past year, Summer kicked my ass and it fell through again

Gotcha. Would be cool to see you again there---the pace is definitely less crazy than GaryCon.

Allan.

grodog wrote:I imagine it would go well, especially if you fast-forward some of the overland travel parts, perhaps?

Yeah, that's a good point. I reworked some of the overland parts to be (hopefully) more interesting, but that's more for campaign play I suppose. I can absolutely see how fast-forwarding might help, at least to get to more focused places sooner. (Like how you guys had a flying carpet IIRC in that earlier playtest.)

Also, I rethought some parts, so more of the overland areas have "links" (I'll leave that vague) that allow moving between them without an overland slog.

Guy Fullerton wrote:I also have a different thing in my pocket for off-grid at Gary Con: A more combat-oriented scenario I sketched out on Sunday night at the past Gary Con.

Is this the one that we were doodling on together?[/quote]
Yup. Still needs work, but it's pretty close to usable

Brief report:

Beyond the Impossible Spire playtest went pretty well, but not without some sore spots.

The five players were great; two play/played in my home campaign, and the rest were friends of one of the former, and I had hung out with most of them before.

I gave them slightly stronger characters (as a whole) than the 2014 group, and they still flirted with total defeat thanks to some paralysis. None of the many random encounter checks triggered (!), and they avoided a couple other likely hostiles, and other than a couple miscellaneous hazard-type effects, they only had one big battle.

This group didn't have a flying carpet, so got the experience of hoofing it overland, to two adventure sites the 2014 group didn't see; partially exploring one, completely exploring another, and finding the entrance to a third.

I failed to prep well enough. Most prep was revising locations they didn't end up going to (although they saw they entrance to one), hoping to rely on my pre-existing notes for the rest. Unfortunately my prior notes were poorly organized, and actually contradicted my memory in a couple places, so I was a little flustered here or there. On the bright side, we identified several things to tweak, and I want to revisit how I plan to make the really wide intended level range (5-10) work.

The Halls of Tizun Thane went well. Only two players (one from my home campaign) each playing two pregens, let them be very efficient and decisive. The pregens were 3rd and 4th level, which is intentionally higher than the module's recommended level range, so as to allow them to make a deep stab into the complex.

One irritating part of the module is the use of 5 foot squares, in conjunction with some room sizes & alignments that weren't multiples of 10. I couldn't easily glance at the map and intuit room sizes, like I usually do; instead, I typically had to count squares. And because of the 5 ft based sizing, I ended up doing most of the mapping for them. I made a couple mistakes too; the map is pretty detailed, and I failed to note some small doors in one room.

When I run this in the future, I will redraw the map to align all walls to the 10 ft grid, for simplicity of play. And I will pre-map one series of rooms that the players are likely to move through quickly, thanks to a "guide."

Otherwise the module is great. Lots of potential hazards, several factions, time pressure, some weird/wacky stuff (the carbuncle was surprisingly cool, though I will run in a little differently next time), and a decent amount of loot. Albie Fiore obviously thought about how to design this physical space so that bold parties might experience it differently from cautious ones.

General: My games didn't attract many players. Some of the folks who played in my games last year didn't come back, although I did meet a new like-minded player who expressed interest in playing more AD&D and OD&D. The con is mostly focused on other kinds of games, so my attempt to build the AD&D base here is admittedly a tough proposition, but this is the only local Con that I can reliably make. I also need to advertise on the forums better, and submit my events sooner, so the blame goes to me.

Upon copying that over to DF, I remembered another gripe about The Halls of Tizun Thane: The module has a lot of text, and some of the key info is buried. I noticed this when preparing (reading) it before play, and would have taken a highlighter to several parts, but I didn't want to deface the magazine. (Maybe that's stupid; my copy of Best of WD Scenarios #1 has an almost-split cover, so it's not like it's pristine.) Instead, I memorized a couple details before play and/or made a mental note of where to find a couple things. Stuff that jumps to mind: The creatures visible as you approach the manor; the general room height information; the window details. As I skim that part again now, I noticed a couple minor things I forgot to account for in play, like the bars on some of the doors.

Sounds like a good time none-the-less, Guy! =)

I had BoWD Scenarios 1 and 2 BITD and definitely used some of the adventures. I'll have to look at HoTT again.

Allan.