As we were getting ready to go out and eat and I was packing up the board-games, I heard the litany of what games they liked best - there was Escape From New York, Dungeon!, Elder Sign and Dungeons and Dragons. Wait, Dungeons and Dragons? That was the group that didn't want to play that game anymore after I finished my mega-dungeon in August 2009!
Did I hear them correctly? They want to play D&D again? I am not ready to run the Season 2 of Midlands again, but I can run them through classic AD&D Modules... they would like?... Really? Game on next time!
The other day I was playing Scrabble with a couple of members of my erstwhile New York City group. Same mega-dungeon ran out of steam with them back in the fall of 2012. This time it was because I got a new job and my G/F moved into my walk-up flat, and that brained me as a DM for a while. That and a loss of my arguably best player - mapper and caller combined - to an unhappy spouse who neded more quality time. For a year or so he was waiting for his player character to die, so that he could gracefulluy bow out, but he never got killed. That's how good that player is. Anyway,
I told them that I could run through my collection if AD&D modules, if they were interested... and they were.
So, I broke out my collection of AD&D Modules for starting characters. There are B1, B2, B3 on Horizon, Horror on the Hill. For my Pennsylvania group, I decided on the B8, Journey to the Rock as the first adventure. They are all former military, innocent of any knowledge of D&D rules or tropes. So, the wilderness adventure suits them better, to be followed by Horror on the Hill and Keep on the Borderlands, since they seem to like military patrol type of gaming. I was planning to use In Search of the Unknown as an opener to Season 2 of Midlands campaign. Of course, it wasn't going to be so easy, players will have to track the doomed expedition to that site, it will be a rescue mission, but before they can do that, they will have to investigare all over the Blacklands barony to figure out where the teen-age wouold be adventurers snuck off to. That was the big plan for the Quesqueton site.
For my New York City bunch, I will start with the clearing of the Castle Caldwell, from the B9 Module, to be followed by the Journey to the Rock. PA players already cleared that one way back in 2006.
Initially I was looking to run these adventures separately from the Midlands setting, but the more I think about it, the more stuff I come up with to incorporate these adventures into Midlands Season 2. It looks like I will be running two parallel campaigns in the same setting.
Running 2 tables at once? You are a glutton aren't you! Running just one drives me nuts, it never feels like I have enough done, and since my last game sucked, this time I know that I am over-prepping but I figure that I should be able to use it all eventually.
ReplyDeletePandemic! I bought this game for myself during the Xmas season a few years ago, and for my wife, all she wanted was a Walking Dead bag, so I ordered it and AMC never sent the thing in time for Christmas, so I ended up wrapping up the Pandemic game for her, and man was she pissed! We still haven't played it. That stupid bag never did get here until after Easter, I was pissed! Why sell products that you don't have in stock? Especially products marketed as Christmas gifts? Mental Note, don't buy anything directly from AMC ever again.
PA table is about once every six weeks, where we go for two days straight with breaks for steak, beer and movies. Wish it was every six weeks, but not always. MYC table meets about once every three weeks when we all can get together, and we run about two hours. Ironically, the NYC group moves faster than the PA one.
ReplyDeleteI like the Walking Dead series, but I don't go for the franchized merchandise. I like Pandemic. You should try it with friends, at least once or until you defeat it.