What would you take along if you went travelling abroad with your wife and needed to bring along a game?
I picked Labyrinth Lord and some Black & White Dungeon Maps from Paratime Design. I had prepared a first dungeon level with a snake cleric, two lizardmen, eight kobolds, a captured gnome, a poisonous spider, and a 4th level wizard. Claudia had rolled up a halfling and recruited four retainers (a cleric, a mage, and two fighters).
Black & White Dungeon Maps from Paratime Design
We played two or three times, and we liked it a lot. I also lost a d10 that fell from our table, rolled accross the balcony floor and dropped into a rain pipe. A small price to pay!
I also started to take some notes on the kind of world I’d be running, and I bought some more nice looking notebooks to start taking campaign notes.
The main idea for my setting is Spontaneous Generation underground “due to Earth Magic”. This explains why there are monsters underground, why the regenerate, how to tell what sort of monsters to expect (mud → goblins, rotten wood → kobolds, moss & stones → trolls, etc.), and how you can find them in the most ludicrous places. I think Claudia likes it, and so do I.
Most campaign notes currently list some background information (I’m using the Hutamah jungle of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy as the surface world), and the {NPCs non-player characters} Claudia’s halfling has interacted with. As all retainers must succeed on a morale check after the adventure to see whether they quit, the list of interesting people keeps growing after each adventure. This nicely follows from my conscious effort to let the world evolve together with Claudia’s characters instead of following a secret plan of mine. At first Claudia was disappointed to learn that half her retainers would quit. When then came up with explanations and detailed how and why they decided to settle in Ashwood I think she liked it.
#RPG #Labyrinth Lord #Old School