category: After Action Reports

Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing Artefact, by Mousehole Press. I wrote some words about it already. In case I didn’t mention before, it’s pretty. Admire how pretty it is, again. Technically, one should play it in one or two sessions and think solemn thoughts as you meditate on being left behind. I didn’t do that. The game has setup (which I did wrong) and three acts, and I did those all on separate days. ...

Some useful feedback from OSR Pit later, and I want to remember what I want to put in an AAR. I might not write that much for each bullet-point, but I think it’s worth covering it all. The last point about the lesson is my reason for writing these, but if I don’t include the context, then I can’t be sure it’s the right lesson. What did I play? How long for? What tools did I use? What was the plot? What happened in each room/encounter? What were the characters? What were the tactics? What did I learn? What went well? What went badly? What would I do differently? I was going to expand this out a bit, but I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. I don’t read long AARs, so I want to keep them short so that: ...

Finally, FINALLY, ran Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It is rightly held up as a great intro dungeon, for teaching lessons (in a good way) about some OSR concepts to beginner players. We’re talking here about combat-as-war rather than combat-as-sport, and the general idea of “don’t assume your GM is keeping you alive”. The players I ran this for wanted to play in Fifth Edition, and as I’d chosen the RPG for our last game, I used a free conversion pamphlet. Spoilers below. ...

Tried the example ‘Frayed Domain’ adventure again with the same two friends. Changes: Halved the number of enemies per encounter Theatre-of-the-mind combat No roll20 Quake soundtrack playing through Groovy 🤘 ...

First attempt, could have been worse. But I got a lot wrong. ...

The next adventure introduces an NPC but not for long and I thought it would be fun to introduce them early. Mugwort, a hobbit NPC in the Pony had alleged a chicken thief was due to “them no-good Rangers”. It’s supposed to be a hook for another monster up to no good. But what if it was a Ranger? 🎵 DRAMATIC CHORD 🎵 ...

This post contains spoilers for the named adventure in the Bree-land Region Guide for Adventures in Middle Earth, by Cubicle 7 🙈. It does also have some maps I drew for the encounters in Hex Kit - maybe it’s worth you peeping? ...