The G1G Ride Again!

Well, the holidays prettymuch whooped us, as far as having the time and inclination to gather for game.  Not only that, but the last session before Christmas (which doubled as a gift exchange for both the G1G and our Alpha testing group) and the first session back after the holidays (on January 15th) were basically big gab-a-thons where we got absolutely ZERO gaming done.  To their credit, though, the G1G decided, of their own accord, that they wanted to return to a weekly play schedule (rather than every-other-week.)  Every game suffers its setbacks (like unexpected cancellations due to someone’s roomate having a “superior liver” resulting in painful hangovers LOL) but as of Saturday the 29th, all my Grrls were at the table and rarin’ to go.

If you recall, previously, the G1G began a campaign I refer to as “The Count’s Carnival.”  The original intent was that they embrace the idea of collecting monsters and try to win the prize that the Count has offered, but they “went east,” so to say, and decided instead that the collection of monsters was immoral, and the Count must be evil for endorsing it.  They then proceeded to attack and destroy the nearest caravan, which happened to belong to Mommy Fortuna. (Thank-you, Peter S. Beagle, for such a memorable character! Side note: my inclusion of a character named “Mommy Fortuna” resulted in all five of us re-watching — or watching for the very first time! — The Last Unicorn, since two of us owned copies.)

Mommy Fortuna wasn’t with the travelling caravan (no, no!)  There were, however, many Roustabouts.  In the first encounter, the party slew 3 of them rescuing their 4th member from being sold to the Carnies, and in the second they pummelled the a skeleton crew who stood guard over the supper hour.  One of them got away, but the party ignored him and turned their attention to freeing the monsters caged in the carnival carts.  Unbeknownst to them, the majority of the carts contained smuggled people (elves, dwarves, humans, and the like,) magically disguised as monsters, but some of the carts contained the real thing!  In the end, the party freed all the slaves, and slew all the monsters, including my wonderful Solo Mummy, who they destroyed with a single casting of “turn undead” so they could slam the cage closed again, and then they torched the cart!  (This proves I’m a bit of a n00b DM — why didn’t I think of that? — but it makes me proud of my Grrls :-)! )  After all this skirmishing, they were drenched in blood and sweat and smeared with dust, so they opted to return to the inn, take some hot baths, catch some zzz’s, and replace their broken weapons and missing armor.  Instead of a good night’s sleep, though, they were interrupted by a demon-summoning ritual.

That all happened before Christmas.

In our most recent encounter, letting that one Roustabout go at the cage site came back to bite them in the butts, since he gathered up a bunch of his buddies for some payback.

We had a really great time, though we were all a little rusty after such a long hiatus, though KelsE continues to take diligent notes on game events, and draw gorgeous character portraits.

In the end all the Roustabouts fell, cinematic slaughtering was described, much blood was spilt, many ones were rolled, and vast amounts of XP were awarded.

KelsA and KelsE promised to get together and type out the story of the adventure so far.  I’m eager to read it, and will be posting it here when I get it!

Next week we get to level up, which will be interesting as neither I, nor any of the G1G have ever leveled a character using the 4.0 rules.  Wish us luck!

Aruneus Test #1: Zombie Hoard Challenge

Ben over at Troll in the Corner was kind enough to allow me and my group of girls participate in his Aruneus play testing.  A few weeks ago, he posted his first testing challenge on his forum.  I had originally applied to participate with my Game 2 Grrls (as opposed to my Game 1 Grrls, who meet on every other Saturday), but the G2G weren’t able to pull it together in time to participate in the first challenge.  So, last minute, I mentioned the opportunity to slay hoardes of zombies to my G1G group, who leapt at the opportunity to participate!

I was worried that coming up with our team name would be difficult, since we came up with several names that no one liked during our initial discussion (“Velvet Bludgeon” and “Valkyries of Zombie Doom” were among my favourites), but once we moved the conversation to e-mail we settled on a name very quickly.  Among the rejected suggestions were “Corpse Crushing Cuties” and “Lipstick and Machetes.”  Ultimately the team chose “Post Mortem Slayers” or “PMS” for short.

Since character creation is so time consuming and we were up against a significant time constraint, I volunteered to randomly generate their character sheets once they’d selected a race and class.  Did you know there aren’t any random character generators for Pathfinder?  Or, if there are, they are not easily located via Google searches or Twitter enquiries.  If you, dear reader, happen to know of one, please leave the link in the comments!  In the end, we had to do all the character creation by hand, which ate up just over two hours of our 3-1/2 hour game window.  I found the trove tokens 3.75 generator useful, though it still required me to enter all the information, and then generated a pretty sheet for me (that I couldn’t save to PDF and print *pout*)

Once everyone’s characters were created (An Elf Cleric, Human Paladin, Dwarf Fighter, & Human Sorceress), we ran headlong into battle with the hoard as laid out by Ben for the challenge.  The Sorceress, known as “Necessary” wielded a sickle that had the helpful additional power of knocking a foe prone, which came in handy for Coup De Grace attacks.  She was desperate to try out her burning hands, but knew better than to waste one of her only 2 level one spells on the first of 12 waves.  The Dwarf, Cheggers, started out dual wielding axes, but eventually found his maulaxe was wonderfully adept at zombie-skull-crushing if he took the time to intentionally swing at the head.  Of course, it was pretty much neck-in-neck between the Fighter and the Paladin, going by the name “Justified,” when it came to kill count.  The Cleric, Liriel, was marvelously pleased with the effect her channel positive energy ability had during the second wave, and couldn’t wait to fire it off again (though she promised her team mates she wouldn’t use it all up right away.)  The G1G had a fantastic time slaughtering the first two waves, but that’s as far as we got when our Dwarven Fighter’s husband arrived to take her home.

No one wanted to stop, though!  We had just been in the process of discussing how to work it out so we could just go on playing tonight ’til we were done, when he drove up.  So, rather than stop at the beginning of round 3, the whole group unanimously agreed that we have to meet up again on Monday to finish the fight!  Isn’t that wonderful?  My Post Mortem Slayers are so committed to ridding the world of the undead scourge… awwwww.

So, I’ll be back to post more about our Zombie Hoard Challenge after we finish on Monday night!

 

UPDATE: Sorry to disappoint folks (and especially Ben @Trollitc!) There was a sudden death that effected three of my players, and we were unable to get together Monday to complete our challenge. 😦

Old-School TSR Ad Makes My Day

At some point during my largely unproductive Monday, someone in my twitter feed retweeted a message from Gold, the series which contained a link to this YouTube video:

An original TSR television commercial!  I love the tag line: “Products of Your Imagination.”  I guess I’ll out myself as not truly oldschool if I admit I have never seen this or any other TSR ad before.

The part of this ad that most interests me, though, is the fact that there are two girls playing at this table.  I love it!  And I’m not talking “token female gamer.”  There are two of them.  Not counting the DM, they’re 50% of the party.  They appear to be playing a cleric and a ranger (if the female cartoon characters are their counterparts.)  Now, I admit, girl-in-braids seems pretty overwhelmed, but girl-in-glasses seems cool as a cucumber.  These two are doing a great job of looking like they’re really into the game.  I take this image to heart: it’s proof that D&D was meant to be enjoyed by both guys and gals.  Always has been.  How it came to fall out of girlie graces, or perhaps how its star rose faster among the male set, will probably require more research.  Still, as a girl gamer struggling against stereotypes, this blast from the past gives me hope.  What this 30 seconds of hilarity (come on, admit it!) says to me is,”Girls are supposed to like and play this game and it’s OK if we do!”  It’s part of the original design.

Girls at your table means D&D is “working as intended.” 🙂