I haven't been able to get in as much gaming this holiday season as either I or the kids would have liked, largely because I haven't been able to prepare things. However, we did get to play through part of the Triple Ace Games adventure The Tale of the Fabulous Four. Luckily, there were actually six pre-generated characters supplied, since there were actually six kids playing. It's set in Boston in 1915 and is about a bunch of kids who overhear some criminals planning to steal a diamond and decide to thwart them.

The roster was:

• L.B. playing Nancy Hestletwain
• T.A. playing Lucius Munroe
• E.A. playing Samantha Hardcastle
• M.A. playing Oscar Whitfield
• T.B. playing Arthur Abrahams
• O.B. playing Brent Hardcastle

We played through Act 1 and Act 2, though I compressed much of Act 2 because we had a very limited amount of time for the session; I skipped Scene 3 entirely, and wrapped things up completely differently.

I was definitely off my game, and six screaming kids didn't help things — for some reason I had more trouble keeping them settled down and on track than usual.

There were some good moments, though, and I think the kids had fun.

As for the adventure itself, I had a few problems with it. I suspect that if I'd had more time to adapt it things would have gone better. Oh well.

We'll probably finish this off this summer, when T.B. and O.B. are back visiting.

The usual GM in my adult group wasn't available this month (for very good reasons), so I ran the “Dead Men Tell No Tales” one sheet for Pinnacle Entertainment Group's Savage Worlds based game Pirates of the Spanish Main for them. I had a lot of fun, and they seemed to enjoy it.

I really need to run more Fudge games. Fudge Bunnies & Burrows in particular.

I finally got to finish the Pirates of the Spanish Main one-sheet “Dead Men Tell No Tales” that I've been running for the kids.

E.A. and L.B. were both here for this one, so the roster was:

• T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel, Captain of the Lady Faire
• E.A. playing Alice Pettigrew
• M.A. playing Scarred Jack
• L.B. playing Phelicity Gujon

Because we've had to split the adventure up over three sessions, and they'd finished the last one the skeletons, and I wanted a big start to this session, I told the kids their PCs had been arguing about what to do with the treasure and hanged lady for about an hour. They spent a few minutes talking about it, and then I had them make Notice rolls to avoid being surprised by the skeletons, reanimated after an hour. They picked up a few wounds in the fight, but managed to finish the skeletons off. T.A.'s bad luck with initiative cards and low rolls continued, though not as badly as before.

They then tried to figure out how they could free themselves of the curse and the skeletons, and decided the lady needed buried, which they proceeded to do, right outside the mine entrance. I had them make Strength roles to avoid becoming Fatigued, which a couple of the characters failed. And that finished out another hour, and a few minutes later the skeletons attacked again. M.A. failed Scarred Jack's Notice roll, so he didn't get dealt in the round, and got hit by the one of the skeletons. T.A. forgot to have Isaiah boast the first round, and ended up owing me a bennie. Eventually they killed the skeletons again, and decided, since the curse obviously hadn't been lifted, that they needed to bury the hanged lady in a cemetery at the church in town. Meanwhile, the weather was working up to a storm.

So, they dug the lady up, but in doing so T.A. and L.B. failed enough Strength rolls to fall unconscious (remember that the curse has been aging them rapidly), and they knew if they left the unconscious characters there they would be killed when the skeletons reanimated, so M.A. and E.A. had Jack and Alice pile the hanged lady's body on Isaiah and dragged them to the town. Unfortunately, part way through digging the new grave, E.A. failed Alice's Strength roll and fell unconscious. Jack was able to get her most of the way out of the grave, and finished burying the hanged lady with the six skeletons only 20 yards away and the zombie pirate captain only 60 yards away. (Apparently, the zombie pirate captain had been chasing them for days across the bottom of the sea). Unfortunately for our heroes, the rest of the crew, who'd been left on the sloop offshore, picked this moment to come ashore. Upon seeing the sorry state of their captain and officers (and failing their Spirit rolls, they were overcome by greed, whacked Jack on the head with the shovels, stole the map from their unconscious captain, and set off for the treasure.

The PCs awoke to a hurricane (which I'd earlier rolled using my weather die from Flying Buffalo), and found shelter in the church crypts. I actually wanted to end the adventure there, but the kids insisted we continue.

After a few days the weather finally subsided and they immediately headed back to the mine to look for the treasure. It was gone, except for a bent half-farthing piece that had been overlooked in a crack in the floor. At this point they were all suffering from Fatigue from not eating or drinking for days, and so they went back to the town to search for water. When T.A. failed a roll to avoid Fatigue, I ruled he'd gone delirious, wandered out on the dock, and falling into the water, to be washed out into the bay. L.B. had Phelicity swim out to save him, but by the time she reached him T.A. had failed his swimming roll and was drowning. Phelicity swam down and brought him to the surface and back to shore, but he had died. Luckily, M.A. tried to resuscitate, and failing the first roll spent a bennie (the last bennie among the group) to reroll, and aced well enough to overcome the –4 penalty from drowning and the –2 penalty from being untrained in Healing, and saved Isaiah.

At this point I pointed out Isaiah's consistent bad luck, loosing the treasure, loosing his ship, and Jack's comparative good luck, and like proper little pirates they voted Isaiah out as captain and Jack in. After that Jack climbed some palm trees and found some weird fruit so they could eat. I decided that the island had no living creatures at all, due to the curse, but that they could find enough edible plants so they wouldn't starve for the weeks it would take while they built a small boat (with both oars and a sail) from timber scavenged from the houses in the village to take them off the island to begin their search for their traitorous crew and their treasure.

And that's were we left them.

Since this actually ran pretty long, once all sessions were considered, I gave them all 5 XP. Not wanting T.A. to be too discouraged, I let him trade his “Captain” edge in for something else. I didn't let him buy off his “Cocky” Hindrance, though. Judging by everybody's reactions, I've got a Pirates of the Spanish Main campaign to run now. I can already see how to work the “Smuggler's Song” one-sheet in as the next adventure.

I ran another session using the the Pirates of the Spanish Main one-sheet “Dead Men Tell No Tales” with the kids.

E.A. couldn't attend, but L.B. could, so she played Phillipe Gujon and Alice Pettigrew, and out of deference to her dislike of playing “boys”, it was revealed that “Phillipe” was actually “Phelicity”!

So, the roster was:

• T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel, Captain of the Lady Faire
• M.A. playing Scarred Jack
• L.B. playing (as her main character) Phelicity Gujon and (as her secondary character) Alice Pettigrew

We picked up a couple of days from the island on the map. Not liking the look of the decayed dock, they anchored offshore and left the crew to guard the sloop. On shore they found everybody 50 years dead. They easily found the mine, ignored the skeletons wrapped in pirate flags, and were shocked to find the lady hanging above the treasure in the depths of the mines. And of course, they were then attacked by the six skeletons wrapped in pirate flags.

T.A. was plagued by poor initiative card draws and low rolls, and earned the unhappy nickname “Captain Slowpants”, and eventually ended up “Captain Slow-anything”, much to his dismay. Eventually, however, they managed to kill the skeletons, and that's where the game ended. (We only had a short time to play.)

Some of the kids and I played through about half of the Pirates of the Spanish Main Savage Worlds one-sheet “Dead Men Tell No Tales” this afternoon and evening, before and after supper. This is one of the free downloads Pinnacle Entertainment Group did for the game.

The roster was:

• T.A. playing Isaiah Kestrel
• E.A. playing Alice Pettigrew and Phillipe Gujon
• M.A. played Scarred Jack

They found the dying pirate with the chest manacled to his foot, and after he died opened the chest and found the treasure map, and decided to head for the island. Along the way they found and boarded the decaying pirate ship, from which they deduced had come the dying pirate. They had a hard time with the zombie pirate captain wildcard, who had the luck of the initiative most of the time, ending up with the Joker three times, and the high card of the draw most of the rest of the time. The zombie wildcard incapacitated Alice with one blow that ended up doing five wounds at a whack, and things were looking dire. However, the zombie pirate captain's luck with the iniative cards finally left him However, E.A., rolling for the crew extras who showed up after hearing Alice scream as she went down, aced an attack roll, then aced all three of the damage dice, and then aced at least one of the rerolls, putting the wildcard down decisively. After that M.A. had Scarred Jack try an untrained Healing roll and aced it big time, so most of Alice's wounds got healed and M.A. wants Jack to learn Healing for real now, which is neat. After they returned to their ship the other ship collapsed and sank. They decided to continue to follow the treasure map, even though a storm came up. Alice was unconscious for four days. After couple of days it was obvious that they and their ship were suffering from the curse, and that's were we had to leave the game.

Lots of fun.

I ran the first part of the Savage Wolds fantasy one-sheet “Tomb of Terror” for the kids after we got done with farm work.

Around the table, starting with me as the GM at 6 o'lock, going clock-wise:

• M.A. played Gar IronHelm;
• E.A. played Merula Lanus;
• B.B. played Marcus Two Hands (when he wasn't helping out with baby C.A.);
• D.B. played Ramel Ramelson; and
• T.A. played Fox.

We got through the first encounter with very little difficulty, largely because I forgot the very important surprise packages the zombies had that should have gone off when they died, and then nearly had a TPK when I set them all off at once. They got to where they could hear the next encounter when we had to quit.

Maybe we can finish this at Thanksgiving.

I ran a short game of Buggin' with L.B., T.A., E.A., and M.A. Their bugs were at an opera premier (in a suitably rustic setting: the opera house was made of thick grass stalks covered with leaves, with doors of bark fragments) when some thugs tried to abduct a young lady VIP bug. They, of course, prevented it.

There's more to the story, but we didn't have time to take it any further. We'll pick it up again later.

I've been hearing a lot of people saying, in effect, that 4E D&D admits what kind of game D&D has always been and tunes everything for that: butt-kicking tactical battle-mat kick-in-the-door, kill everything, and take it's stuff gamist play. [1] Right now I'm ignoring the later bit about what 4E does and how well it does it, and looking at the earlier bit's claims about “the kind of game D&D has always been”. I'm not convinced.

This post, right now, is sort of a placeholder. I intend to fill in my history with D&D and look at the various editions of D&D that I've got and see if they support the “the kind of game D&D has always been” remark.

As I've said elsewhere the release of 4E and the choruses of “It's not real D&D” actually got me interested me in looking back at what D&D really was, so I bought PDFs of Original D&D (from RPGNow) and its supplements and Chainmail and printed them all out and bound them in 8.5”x5” pamphlets, in more or less the original form factor. I've read Chainmail and the three pamphlets that made up the original D&D release (X, Y, Z) completely, and have scanned the others. (Oddly enough, I've still not got beyond scanning 4E.)

So, for grins and giggles, last time my local gaming group met I brought copies of the first three commercially published roleplaying games for show and tell: Original Dungeons and Dragons; Empire of the Petal Throne; and Tunnels and Trolls. (The order of the last two is debatable.)

The release of 4E and the choruses of “It's not real D&D” had actually interested me in looking back at what D&D really was, so I bought PDFs of Original D&D (from RPGNow) and its supplements and printed them all out and bound them in 8.5”x5” pamphlets, in more or less the original form factor.

Listening to the Whartson Hall Gamers playing Empire of the Petal Throne from the RPGMP3 Community Podcast rekindled my interesting in Tékumel, so I bought a PDF of it from RPGNow and printed it. (This really drove home how much bigger and better presented EPT was than OD&D. Also, how even less Politically Correct it was.)

And T&T had been in my thoughts since Ron Edwards' wrote a series of reports on his T&T game. I played T&T a bit in my youth, so I already had a copy of it, the 5th edition, so I let that stand in for the 1st edition, a not unreasonable bit of flexibility, since T&T seems to have changed much less over five editions than D&D did over 4.5 or so.

(Later: I can't imagine why I didn't bring my copy of QLI's republication of the original Traveller Books 1, 2, and 3 along, and have one of the first SF RPGs too!)