New year, new game

We were supposed to start the year with a continuation of our Mongoose RuneQuest II game. But the GM had a lousy day at work,  or more precisely a lousy day sitting for hours in his car on the Motorway. So rather than playing a boardgame I stepped in to GM at short notice.

This suited me as I'd spent the Christmas vacation reading OSR blogs and rekindling my enthusiasm for old school D&D. After considering Castles & Crusades (which I already have, though something about the Siege Engine sticks in my craw) and checking out eBay for a copy of the RulesCyclopedia (the only item I truly regret disposing of during a massive purge 10 years ago -  WotC please reprint this) I had ordered hard-copies of Labyrinth Lord to supplement my PDFs.

After carefully interrogating me to ensure I wasn't intending to inflict 3rd Edition on them (I don't think any of us have ever looked at 4th) my players seemed equally enthusiastic. We had soon created a Magic User (Zarjaz the Zazzy), Thief (Shanks Mcspindlewort) and two Elves (Finbar son of Finwe and Delast Elfenprincess*). After a much longer delay they were equipped and even named.

* A mocking reference to a fellow male gamer (not part of our current group) with a seemingly unbroken history of playing high charisma, high comeliness female characters. Though it has to be said that he isn't the only player in my experience with this reputation. Anyway, when last heard of his current character's appellation was "The Last Elven Princess". Ironically of course the player playing this new CHA 15 female character is male ;-)

Initial house rules:

If this game proves to "have legs" these will no doubt expand into my own D&D Mine.

• Character generation using 4d6 choose the best 3 in order
• 2 for 1 attribute exchange for primary requisites as described in the LL rules, but at the time didn't notice the restrictions such as not dropping CHA - perhaps these weren't present in Mentzer?
• Maximum HP at 1st Level
• AC by Character Class
• Weapon damage by Character Class
• Ascending ACs - instead of explaining how THAC0 works at least once every session
• Warhammer style critical hits when 0 HP reached

I have selected Dyson Logos' Dyson's Delve as a minimal effort starting adventure and eschewed my home grown Greater Gallia setting (which I may revisit in a later post) for Robert Conley's Blackmarsh in order to provide some campaign background information.

A report of our first session will follow ...