This weekend saw my regular gaming habits continue: D&D on Friday night and Saturday, and boardgaming to fill out the holes. I feel quite fortunate to be able to regularly play games with my friends, and it was really good to have Adam join us again on Friday night.
Yes, after a gap of a few months, Adam has rejoined my 4E Greyhawk game, as his situation still hasn't quite resolved itself enough – he's not in Melbourne full time and is still commuting from Ballarat. Thus, being in a Melbourne rpg group is a bit difficult. Getting his character, Max, back into the group was really good, especially as Josh couldn't join us and Adam allowed us to have a group of four. There's also a strong likelihood that Greg will join in as well, but this weekend ended up not being a good one for his family and he was unable to attend. From worrying about the state of the group I've suddenly gone to six players – if everyone can attend at once, which seems unlikely; it was a major problem with the campaign in recent months.
As a result, I can move into what really will be the endgame of the campaign. I've been running this game since 4E came out, and the group is now 24th level. It's been a very interrupted game at times, but there have been some great stories coming out from it. We finished off the 4E version of Tomb of Horrors two weeks ago, with Acererak being destroyed. My major change to the adventure was instead of having the final encounters be on the plane of the dead god Nerull (who is quite alive in my game), I placed it in a place sacred to Tharizdun. I've been building up to this point for a very long time, and so revelations in Friday's session that the Doomdreamer elementalists that have been annoying the party for many, many sessions worship Tharizdun was not such a surprise to the group.
It's funny: I'm not a fan of the conflation of Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God that occurred through 2E and 3E, but I am very much a fan of the 4E cosmology (which I've adopted wholeheartedly for my Greyhawk game, though the gods remain as they were in my 1983 boxed set). Thus, it seems that elements of the 2E/3E version are making their way into the game. I had Archibald (Adam's old PC, now a major NPC villain) turn up again, and the session ended with the group chasing him – and the Doomdreamers – off towards Verbobonc. My group doesn't have the Greyhawk lore that I do, though they're familiar with the bits they've played through, so the full implications of that place aren't immediately apparent to them; I'll make sure they are in the next session. There's a little village nearby that I think they'll be visiting soon…
Saturday afternoon was given over to playing boardgames. Jack was unexpectedly there, so Rich, Sarah, Jack and I played through two of AEG's Tempest line of games – Mercante and Courtier. Sarah found Mercante frustrating, but mostly because she was unfamiliar with the play of the game and the distribution of goods in shipments. She still won; I played a horrible game. I'm quite fond of games with auctions, and this one is a very elegant design. It isn't without flaws, but I've enjoyed the two games I've played of it.
In comparison, I really understand Courtier, and I ran away the winner of it – something like 32 points to 17 (Jack and Sarah), with Rich a long, long way behind. It's not a natural fit for Rich at all, and he's as bad at playing it as I'm as good. The Queen got arrested very early into the game, so it wasn't long at all.
The evening AD&D game saw nine players around my table; that number didn't include me as DM! Callan was away, as were Shane and Brodie, which meant that Callan's Rifts game would have taken away… one player. I would have still had eight players. Madness! I hardly expected the game to be so popular when I began it a year and a half ago, but it has proved to be so.
Due to having quite a few new players, the last few sessions have been lower-level games (with the experienced players taking the part of their henchmen), and we've gone through Castle Caldwell and the Lost Island of Castanamir. I'm really looking forward to returning to my proper campaign; I've put the PCs on fairly high XP gains so they'll be ready. 4th level characters can join an 8th level AD&D game and contribute; 1st level characters are just a bit too fragile.o o
I've also moved entirely to running the game using the reprint books, although I certainly have a lot of original books at home, the newness of the books speaks for a lot. I really like the cover designs as well (and those of the adventure reprints). I've now twice used dndclassics.com to download adventures for the group as I wasn't originally expecting to be running low-level PCs. Having my new Surface Pro has been an absolute boon, as it's so easy to use in place of a printed module; certainly in comparison to my laptop. Last session, I brought in the printed version of C3, which is still more convenient, but I didn't have it with me when I began the game.
D&D Next I'm playing primarily through D&D Encounters at present. The current season is massively more entertaining for me than the last; the mere fact that there are different factions struggling over the staff and that the players HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FIND THAT OUT means a hell of a lot. The holidays and midwinter have impacted our numbers somewhat, but we're still regularly getting two tables and might get back to three in the near future. The biggest problem we've been having relates to DM availability; one of my DMs hasn't made it for four weeks and another now has a job that conflicts. I still have two other options, but as we rarely have good notice, we're often running the sessions without good preparation. (Thankfully, they haven't been that difficult).
The D&D Next system still has problems, but they mainly relate to the maths. I'm very worried about the number of high-damage Area Effect spells the NPCs can cast; which, when coupled with the difficulty of saving throws, can cause a party to go from fully healed to dead with a poor initiative roll. I'm hoping the D&D Next team manages to fix this in the next packet.
It's really interesting how much I'm enjoying AD&D (and I look at Next through those eyes). I also really like 4e, with the exception of how slow combat can go. 3E is something of a dead system to me at the moment, though I think a very large part of my disenchantment with it is due to Paizo's philosophy of encounter design, which often boils down to "do you have spell X? If so, you can win. Otherwise, you'll lose". That's part of 3E in general, but my experiences with Paizo adventures is that they take it to extremes.
With any luck, Next will avoid that trap. (I don't mind monsters you need specific ways to take down; I hate them when taking them down is required by the adventure and it's a common occurrence).