Lacking Natural Simplicity

Attending

Clockwise, starting with the Director:

• T.K.B. — Director

• T.A. — Grimbold Tornhelm

• M.A. — Gordo Brondwyn

• E.A. — Aspen Darkfire; she also played Alexa Wolfrica, L.B.'s character, since L.B. couldn't attend

Actual Play

At the Griffin's door, they unlocked the door, they unbarred the door, and then Aspen (at Alexa's suggestion) listens at the door and hears very interesting things. They decided to rebar the door and go on.

They opened the Giant Lizard's door, saw the saddle, saw the lizard, and pulled the door shut and barred it.

In the Guardroom, there was a lot of throwing chairs, by both sides. Alexa was reduced to –1 STAMINA by an opponent's Mighty Blow. Aspen cast Stamina, bringing Alexa back to 5 STAMINA, and then Gordo was taken to –1 STAMINA by another opponent's Mighty Blow, and was brought back to 5 STAMINA by another Stamina from Aspen. All through the fight the Ogre had been laughing at the Heroes and throwing stuff at them that knocked them down, but Aspen had been steadily sniping at them, and despite one impressive Dodge, where the Ogre interposed a Goblin haunch from his supper and blocked an arrow she had steadily brought his STAMINA down. When the Orcs were finally disposed of and he threw the table on the Heros, Aspen was far enough back to escape the spill, and switched from arrows to Fire Bolt, rolled a 6 for damage, and the Ogre fell down dead!

After the battle Alexa cast Stamina (which for her is just a natural ability, a “second wind”, not a spell), and got an Oops!, and E.A. rolled a 13 on the “Oops! Table”, and Alexa ended up with a pair of small goat horns! Eventually everybody was back up to full STAMINA.

In the sorcerer's chambers they killed Xortan Throg and tried not to kill evil Prince Barinjhar by pulling their blows, hoping to return him to his father for rehabilitation. However, he died while they were searching Xortan Throg's study and freeing Princess Sarissa. They found him dead when the returned to the main chamber. The real Xortan Throg clued them in, via a vision in the fire in the fireplace, that they had killed a fake, and that he was still alive and looking forward to destroying them and Salamonis. Since they'd killed the Prince, they decided traveling to Salamonis with Princess Sarissa was a good idea, and headed back out through the Goblin cave to avoid Prince Barinjhar's soldiers, outside, and set off in direction of the fabled city.

Aftermath

All characters got +3 XP.

Reflections

The kids picked up on throwing things pretty quickly; I'll have to see what other sorts of tactical twists we use.

I enjoyed running this, and the kids had fun.