GASPCon Second Day

The 2nd Day at GASPCon went very well. I ran a playtest of the adventure I was working on called the Beast of Kensla. Wolves are terrorizing Kensla and the villagers have refused to bring in the harvest. More than the Ruins of Ramat, Kensla represents the sort of adventure I typically run in my campaign. It is set mostly outdoors. While having monsters there is a ton of roleplaying involved. Mostly involving conflict between different groups of people. I ran this adventure two times before, once using D&D 3.0 and another with GURPS. So I was interested to see how it worked out with S&W/OD&D.

The father and son who played the berserker and thug from the Ramat session returned with their characters. They were even more enthused about playing than yesterday which lent nice energy to the table. Two new players arrived. One played a mage from the Order of Thoth another played a Priest of Nephthys the goddess of wealth, pleasure, and fate. The mage player hadn't played D&D in ages and the priest player was a member of Jason's (of Elf Lair Games) group. It slipped my mind that Jason lived in Pittsburgh.

The berserker is pretty much a D&D fighter that has the ability to rage. Raging get the berserker+2 in nearly all combat stats (hit, damage, ac, saving throw) for duration of a fight. The thug fights pretty crappy (like a mage) but gains good bonuses whenever the player tries to perform feats of strength, and intimidates opponents. The Thothian mage is a standard magic-user that has the Shield of Magic a form of magic resistance against spell directly cast on the mage (fire ball will hurt, hold person will be resisted, etc).

The priest of Nephthys is same as a D&D cleric with the addition of the ability to use a Greater Command at 3rd level. This spell of my own creation works as a command spell for one hour effecting a number of targets equal to the priest's level. The target gets a saving throw for each command even new ones. Also the priest gets a shield of faith which works similarly to the Shield of Magic of the Thothian mage.

Finally I used my ritual rule which allows the players to cast spells directly out of their spell book (or for Clerics out of their list) for 10 gp times the spell level squared. Most magic using class can only do this at 1/2 the highest level spell they can cast rounded down. Among both group this rule was popular. It gave a slightly higher magic feel to my setting and it still involved the management of limited resources. For the session the mage and cleric could cast 1st level spells as ritual which cost 10 gp.

Thanks to Jeff Rients tables the Berserker was 4th level, the Thug 3rd, The Mage 3rd, and the Priest, 3rd. The Thug was lucky and rolled up a Potion of Flying from the chart.

The adventure went well. The mage player was very sharp and was the leader in figuring out how to solve the mystery of the Beast. The father and son were just as happy playing Kensla vs Ramat despite the big difference in setting and tone.

For ability rolls I used the d20 system. Basically for something done in combat you had to roll a 15 or higher. You go a +1 for a 13 or high attribute and a -1 for a 8 or lower. The Thug character really shined as the player figured how to use some of his abilities to help the party. One of the bonuses the thug gets is area knowledge and in combat it allows the thug to position the party to get a +1 bonus for surprise. This came handy in several situations.

Likewise the Priest' Greater Command came in handy several time particularly in defusing a near riot among the villager. The most impressive use was on a demon that was part of the adventure. He commanded the demon to return to hell and the demon blew his saving thrown. Well that ended that particular fight quickly. The player had an impressive voice so it was a fun moment to referee. Of course the priest player had to endure the ire of the rustic priest of Mitra, the goddess of Honor and Justice. He showed great patience while the priest was calling his goddess a harlot.

The Berserker player had the worse luck of anybody I seen. He kept rolling 2's, 3's, and 4's on any and all d20s he touched. BUt after he raged in the final battle things turned around as extra +2 really helped.

I continue to refine my convention package. I believe I am going to stick with Ramat and Kensla for the spring Con I plan to go to (Coscon in Butler) the rotate out Ramat for something new. For this convention I made cards for all the classes plus a one page folded sheet with the price list and spells. The players for both events got to roll up their characters an experience they enjoyed. S&W/OD&D makes the experience a snap. I need to improve the character sheets I am using and update the cards with some missing information (mainly to hit). Again Jeff Rient's XP table is a great tool to have. Jeff if you read this I could use a link to the module and xp chart.

Now the fall Cons are done it is off to editing my project which I hope to have done soon.