The Beatles were truly extraordinary – I don’t know much about their history but their influences continue to pulsate like tentacles through the decades. Everyone will know a Beatles song, or at least part of one, everyone (and I mean everyone) will be able to name at least one of The Beatles and most people will be able to name all four of them (was there a fifth one early on??). So, it is with trepidation that I disagree with them about ‘All you need is love’ – obviously this is not true – you need food and drink (preferably tea and beer) for a start. Then there are the vagaries of having your heart broken, getting physically hurt and other issues that occur to all of us at some point to varying degrees – you may think these are not all you need, but they are part of what a human needs generally if we are to grow and become better humans during our lifetimes. Risk and risk taking, being offended, arguing and seeing issues from other individuals stand points while being able to remain friends is all part of being a decent human being. This is why pubs are so important – this is the place where arguments, heated discussions and chit chat occurs between friends and acquaintances, and at the end of the night everyone is still friends and is looking forward to the next night down the pub. What can also occur in pubs is the joy of gaming with friends and people you have never met before – and this is what happened to me yesterday as I attended Groglove for the first time.
Now I have got past my worry about reffing games at a Con or
with people I don’t know I responded to the organisers call for additional
games and offered up Hotel Hell (Call of Cthulhu, written by Sandy
Peterson). I had ran this three times recently
and others had enjoyed it so it seemed a solid choice. Sure enough it was accepted and the details
added to Warhorn.
Groglove is a relatively small event (hence the secret society aspects) with a morning and afternoon session. Like many events if you are running a game you also get slightly earlier sign up for the other games you can play around your session. I signed up for a game of Tiny Dungeon for the morning slot (I was running my scenario in the afternoon). I hadn’t come across Tiny Dungeon before so was looking forward to playing another new game.
The event was held in a pub in London (I cant tell you the
exact location as I’d be ‘quietly removed’ from the society and never seen
again). The car started, the trains ran
on time and google maps worked – so I was actually on time. Things were getting underway when I walked in
and immediately bumped into a colleague who I had known through work who was
also at the event! Goes to show you never know which of your acquaintances are actually
part of a greater secret organisation or a roleplayer (shiver…).
There were four of us playing and we had chosen our characters
before the event. The party was made up
of a Druid, a Berserker Bear, an Elf and I was playing a retired dwarven
blacksmith.
Each PC had a simple character sheet that allowed you to make choices based on your race and profession to provide an element of customisability to your specific PC. The system itself is 2d6 based, with advantage (+1d6) or disadvantage (-1d6) depending on circumstances. You had two actions – and you could spend one action to focus, thereby instead of a pass for the roll you are making needing at least one 5 or 6, you could focus to lower that to 4, 5, or 6. The simplicity of the rules means you can focus on the game play and interactions.
Our mission was to find out why a nearby village called Brook
Hollow had been enveloped in a dense fog which appeared to be emanating from
Dragon Spire Mountain which was located near the village. On the way we had a fight with a tricksy wizard
who fooled us using illusions – he escaped but his band of brigands were vanquished! It was great fun providing some gruesome descriptions
to how we killed the bandits – I managed to smash the head of one of the
bandits into his shoulders using my large Warhammer so was quite pleased with
that result.
We got to the village and then moved onto the mountain. We had information about ‘Herman the Hermit’
who knew we were into something good (did you see what I done there?), lived in
a cave in the mountain and he advised us about a griffin that lived halfway up. We managed to get past this and eventually
got to the large red dragon sitting on its enormous hoard of treasure. The smoke emanating from the dragons nostrils
was the cause of the fog descending down the mountain onto the village
below. We had two options – fight and
probably die or use diplomacy to persuade the dragon to alter its behaviour to
prevent the smoke enveloping the village.
Dragons in games are wonderful. When we played DnD all those years ago – we had special reverence if a dragon ever turned up, it truly felt like a special occasion and we would stop the game in awe and joy. It always seemed odd to me that stats were provided for anything older than a juvenile dragon in the games we played. We generally treated them like living gods and went as far as possible to not antagonise them. I mean if a game is called Dungeons and Dragons – then meeting a dragon should be a pretty big deal. Although I guess the rule doesn’t hold when you think of Tunnels and Trolls…I mean who worries about meeting a troll in a game, (unless you are 1st level obs)?
Certainly in the Tiny Dungeon game it appeared from the DMs
description and hints that fighting this dragon would be a very bad idea. So diplomacy it was – we appealed to the
dragons superiority and immortality to lend us a hand to seal the tunnel on the
side of the mountain where the smoke was pouring out and then create another smoke
release hole on the other side so that the smoke was directed away from the poor
village, leaving the village dragon smoke free.
After a couple of nervously made rolls and the Berserker gifting
the dragon his family heirloom of a large two handed sword, we managed to
persuade the dragon to do exactly this.
Problem solved! Of course the Berserker had a lot of pent up frustration,
we tried to fight the Griffin on the way back but it took off and so we went done
the mountain and envisaged ourselves getting into a decent bar room brawl
instead to release the stored up fighting tensions!
We returned as the conquering heroes and claimed our rewards.
A great con game and really fun to play. The players were excellent and the ref done a
great job of keeping the story moving while ensuring we were kept busy. If you want a simple fast moving game to do a
bit of dungeon bashing then I recommend Tiny Dungeon, and apparently there are
various flavours including Tiny Cthulhu, Tiny Gunslingers, Tiny Pirates etc.
After a decent lunch I ran my game. I won’t go into details as I have written about Hotel Hell in a previous post – but suffice to say the players (Tess, Karen, James, Simon, Dan - sign them up to your games if you can!) were great and really got into the concept, lots of SAN was lost and in the final scene, those left alive held hands as the end of humanity occurred and the dead took over the earth. Feedback was really positive, and I have realised I am a sitter / stander type of ref. who likes waving his arms about a bit…
The best part of going to this event was being with some
really interesting and friendly gamers and catching up with some of the
Grogsquad that I have met previously. The
laughs during games and clapping at the end of games was indicative of the
great atmosphere. Well done to the
organisers (names removed to prevent discovery) and i look forward to the next
meeting and enjoying everyone’s company again.
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