System: Lance and Tome (AD&D clone by Rick Stump)
Players
L: Elboron, Human cleric
H: Aildun, Elven fighter/mager user
A: Aragon, Human nobleman
G: G, Elven fighter
Forewarning: This AAR will be fairly rough.
On whim started a L&T game, after declaring an interest in starting in a video gaming community that I’m apart of. This was very spur of the moment, when I was talking with the Pathfinder 2e DM about… something. I don’t entirely remember what, but I showed him my map of Southshore, and soon after posted late night an intent to attempt to host a game.
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| 1 hex = 1 mile |
As no player had heard of this system before, it took a bit of explaining. I attempted to obscure it’s AD&D origins… but that was a lost cause to start with. Despite that, there were still a handful of interested individuals, and solid discussion in a few days led up to the first session.
Now, I like old editions is because there are fewer mechanical choices one has to ponder. You roll your stats, you select your race, class, arms and armor and equipment, and you’re off to the races dungeon, once you have all that and have read the related abilities and applied a bit of logic. Choose your flavor of ice cream and pay at the till.
Unfortunately, many players were expecting something closer to 5e or Pathfinder I suspect. There was a great deal of handholding through character creation, from the most engaged to the least. The idea that only some races can go so high or do some things was very alien, even with the explanation that magic could circumvent some of these issues. For a solid two days before, and eating most of the time I thought I might take to create, stock, and prepare the dungeon environment… was instead teaching them the specifics of how I administrate a custom spreadsheet for tracking EVERYTHING, and diving into some of the deeper but not yet relevant pieces of info.
Much of this could have been alleviated by some diligent reading. Unfortunately, a Discord permissions issue resulted in many not being able to locate the channel. Not all the folks in this space were proficient tech users.
Now, despite being crunched for time, I had at least a basic idea of a dungeon. An old dwarven crypt, where some heroes were interred from ages past. A simple enough layout of rooms, with simple enough sketching out, and some simple secrets they could discover and exploit. Some simple threats they could face off against and some treasures that would be small potatoes, but might at least catch their interest to start with, as well as go over the mechanics of dungeon delving, and the combat system (another change I quite like.) The treasure and the threats were both toned down, as I had no time to really prepare or consider. But in a discussion with some friends after, putting a gray ooze was a certain error….
I situated this location near a village, said it was discovered by some shepherds, and left it at that.
I had a very basic plan for this session which consisted of attempting to explain the systems, and not spook anyone away with a one-hit-KO. This is something I extend to first time players only. None of these players have played a system with high lethality, to my knowledge.
But that plan turned a bit more basic, and a bit more railroad than I would have liked. Having very little in the way of plans, or prepared materials, I was decidedly unamused by G’s chaotic nature and asking about the profitability of sheep, and wanting to leave and bother the farmer about the price of cattle. L and H were much more engaged, and willing to work with what material I had presented to them. Thanks kindly fellas.
An issue that caught my attention, is the party seemed a little disinterested at exploring the first room I presented them:
An embalming chamber/forayer, with a heathen altar on the west wall, coffers on the east, and a stone table about waist height in the center. The altar and table were investigated, but the coffers forgotten.
The cleric also after I revealed my ad hoc declaration that this was a ancient god of death… well, he became somewhat disinterested in sacking the place in particular. Far as I was concerned, this was an inert dungeon, far as magic and demonic energies were concerned. Some passive/very old undead guardians, untriggered traps… and that was it. And importing my own logic, I would have no problem tipping over the coffins in search of wealth.
So that was/is a mystery. Especially since giving up a share of the treasure is giving up experience.
The next room was a storage space of coffins, caskets, and a sarcophagus. There were pathways wide enough to talk that led to the two far corners, one of which had a door, that openned away. And that then descended deeper underground, and lead to some pristine polished hallways, and I started to have them explore deeper into the dungeon, and where they might face the first real threats and treasures.
I think they caught on to the dungeon crawling aspect fairly well. Even had one play mapping, before IRL duties caught up to him. The majority of them were attentive, and that’s about as good as I could ask for first timers. However, when they started to argue for IRL minutes about the division of 23 silver pieces… I started counting the minutes to apply in game. That’s not the time to do it. And at one point chastised them when they began to argue again. I was tired and frayed, and didn’t want to here them try and divide the next set of 23 sp, AGAIN.
I soft locked them out of part of the dungeon (insert here, dungeon under construction meme), and they explored a hallway with “statues”, which were a last minute modification, because I wasn’t sure how to stock static threats in a dungeon. They would otherwise have been undead, and that fight might have ended up as a slog.
I ran two small encounters that at least gave them a taste, but ended too early to really give them an idea of how it functioned. No surprise segments were achieved during any encounter.
First (not really) Time DMing
There are/were some details of specificity about dungeon crawling, in terms of time I’m not sure I got completely right. I sketched out a dungeon with just under 40 rooms, and began to dot it with additional features… I forgot to trigger a pit trap, failed to figure out how to communicate map directions with the one player who picked up the not so subtle hintings (and H did a good job of it, with the limited resources to hand) and wasn’t sure how to establish how they were going about passing through the dungeon. H did figure out from reading the rules that there was a definite possibility for secret panels and passages, and it’s a baked in expectation, and used it. I rolled a few times, and he did discover a secret door!
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| The pencil indicates North |
But I failed to establish an understanding or provide good descriptions of how they were moving through the dungeon, and where or when they were moving. That was a problem. Since H, who was taking any time to map, had to step away for an hour and they were left without a mapper, I ended up copying what they explored later. I explained this hand holding won’t continue. This is just as part of the first session where a lot of things weren’t going great, namely my sleep.
G was the problem player, while he’s generally enthusiastic, he was distracted and zoning out, and not participating. He also hopped in last minute. I’d like to keep an open door, but I might have to modify that policy in the interest of the players who take an active interest, and read up on the rules.
Many players also were reliant on me as the sole fount of information. I have relatively little experience in some of the systems, and don’t have encyclopedic knowledge. How cantrips and Orisons and other spell stuff work is not something I knew off the top of my head. I have played a single AD&D magic user in the last year, and not for very long. Cantrips in L&T are not like 5e’s FREE, NO COST DMG, but smaller utility spells that are STILL Vancian casts. Talking H through that took some time. Figuring out what spells he started with required pinging another Discord, who helpfully provided the page # in the DMG.
Also, way, way too much work went into getting people familiar with my own spreadsheet, which looks like THIS:
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| Not for the faint of heart |
There’s a ton of information I record for QUICK reference and to do things in a certain specific fashion. This is not necessarily the most useful thing for a first time player. And combined with many players not reading the instructions I posted in the dedicated channel, checking the pinned comments, or checking over the rulebook with at least a cursory glance… I am spent in terms of social energy.
Now, I do plan to continue next week. Hopefully with people at least equipped with a taste I can get my house in order and carry on, and now I have specific course of play questions I can hunt for and answer. I've already spent time checking through my print of Far Realms and will be going through Lance and Tome’s early copy more thoroughly. Having a reason to read and memorize it will give me a lot more motivation to give it a cover to cover browse.
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