My First Crack At C&C
Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 3:26 am
Background:
Lately, I've been getting in a lot of gaming as a player at the table. I've got a weekly D&D group (three rotating campaigns) and actually just quit a Champions game that wasn't doing it for me, but what I haven't gotten to do in way too long is GM something. This is partly due to scheduling, and also partly due to the fact that my old regular group is pretty far flung and hard to get together. Issues relating to having a small child also complicate matters. But mostly, it's due to the fact that I'm a bad one for over-preparing, planning and plotting things in excess, and burning myself out before the game ever makes it to the table.
So, last Saturday, on a very spur-of-the-moment decision, I decided to try a different approach. I decided to try recruiting a new bunch of players from my collection of geeky friends with kids. I figured our house is pretty big, and if most or all of the players have kids, they can all just come over and play or watch videos or something in one place. I'm going to run C&C, since it 1) covers very familiar territory, 2) is very low-prep compared to most games I've run in the past.
I put out some feelers, got five players lined up in very short order, spent a day or three thinking about what I was going to do and about two hours typing up my notes last night (I spent more time cleaning the house prior to the game than I did actually prepping it.)
The Session: (cribbed from my LJ):
We spent the first hour and a half or so on character creation. This went a bit less smoothly than I would have liked, due to the fact that I've only got two copies of the Player's Handbook and even though C&C is pretty simple, there is a fair bit of stuff you need to look up at the beginning. Eventually, we got the PCs more or less hammered out, enough to get things going.
Our heroes consisted of the following:
Eric, a half-elf ranger
Zatanna, an elven illusionist
Caera, an elven druid
Calera, a half-orc monk
Sir Dudley, a human paladin
Rather than going through the rigamarole of trying to maneuver them together as a group, I just had them together on a road, going through an area of wooded hills towards the quaintly named Umberton (Doesn't it sound like something you'd hear on Thomas the Tank Engine? I think so.) Umberton is known for its large markets and merchant caravans, so it sounds like a likely place to seek possible employment for stout adventurer-types.
(I should note that, having only had a week to prepare for this, and having tried very hard to hold to the mantra of "Thall Shalt Not Overprepare," that Umberton pretty well exists in a vacuum at this point. As does the road and the wooded hills. I'll flesh it out as need arises.)
Anyway, our heroes were alerted to the sound of hoofbeats approaching, which turned out to be from a mule trotting towards them in a high state of agitation. Caera calmed it down and they were able to examine it and learn the following:
1. It was wearing a harness rig which had been cut.
2. While the mule was uninjured, there was an arrow stuck in its horse collar.
3. The arrow appeared to be of unremarkable human manufacture.
Scouting ahead, Eric and Zatanna see some smoke rising from beyond another bend in the road about a mile up. Eric takes to the treeline while the rest advance up the road.
Coming around the corner, they find the source of the smoke. A farmer's wagon, burning in the middle of the road. Around is is a scene of carnage. Two men are dead, and a third is badly wounded, barely hanging on. Dudley goes all paladin-y and uses his healing touch to save the man's life. He identifies himself as Ulstead, a farmer from the area, and asks after "Elspeth," his daughter, of whom there is no sign.
He informs the heroes that he and his daughter, along with his farm hands were driving their harvest to market when goblins came boiling out of the woods. They tried to put up a fight, but the foul creatures were too many and too well-armed. Zatanna and Eric note that it's strange for goblins to be carrying weapons of newish human manufacture, but that matter must wait until they can rescue the missing girl. Eric locates the goblins' trail without too much trouble, and along the way, they find Elspeth's headscarf. The trail leads to a clearing near a cave in the side of a hillock. A few moments' observation reveals a pair of goblin archers in the trees and another on top of the hill holding some sort of rope, which our heroes correctly surmise is an alarm bell.
Zatanna uses ventriloquism to trick the goblins into thinking they're being called into the cave. Once they're occupied with that task (and the alarm ringer away from his rope,) Eric and Caera begin picking them off with bows, managing to take out all three of the sentries before they could get off a sound.
After this, Eric and Calera took to the former sniper posts, while Zatanna crept on top of the hillock. Sir Dudley set himself up near the cave mouth and Caera held back to the treeline. Zatanna cast Dancing Lights off in the woods, and then rang the alarm. The goblins, being goblins, shortly began pouring out into an ambush.
The first three went down very easily. The second two, the same, but one remained up (mainly because Calera couldn't hit the broad side of a barn -- of all the PCs, she's the one most in need of some retroactive optimization.) One goblin engaged Sir Dudley and kept him busy long enough for their "Boss" to make the scene. Unlike the cannon fodder, he was actually pretty scary, especially for first level PCs. The two of them put Dudley down to 2 HP in one round and seriously threatened to turn the battle, as the Boss began attracting all of the group's arrow fire, taking some of the heat of the rest of his mooks.
Of course, this only lasted as long as he was up. A couple of solid shots set him up, and Sir Dudley finished him off, leaving two goblins out of the original fifteen still standing. Eric demanded their surrender, and under the circumstances, the pathetic critters complied.
Given the lack of resistance, I didn't make them go into extensive detail regarding their exploration of the caves. They found a cell at the back (with remarkably well-forged bars) containing three terrified young women, one of whom was Elspeth. A tearful reunion with her father ensued. Another girl spoke a little goblin and said that the "Big One" had said something about selling them to a buyer. Convinced they were onto a group of slavers, they decided to spend the night in the cave, then send the still-wounded Sir Dudley with the girls and Ulstead on to Umberton the next day while they set up an ambush for the mysterious buyer.
And so we leave our heroes until next time.
Analysis:
All in all, the game went well once we started playing. Everyone seemed to have a good time and nobody took things too seriously or not seriously enough. I'd never played any RPG with two of them, but our styles of play seemed compatible enough (if anything, I'm going to have to watch him because he's as devious and tricky as I am.) The C&C system is a joy to run. It's fast, clean, and with sufficient wiggle-room in the rules for the GM to handwave stuff without breaking the game.
(Even better: the kids got along. All of them. We had five kids here all afternoon, ranging from age eight to two and there were no meltdowns, no fights, and no crises. Those of you with small kids will know what a wonder this is.)
So, our first crack at this experiment was a success. The next session is in two weeks. Before then, I need to go over the character sheets to make sure all of the info is correct, and provide the players with the pertinent data on their character classes. Oh, and figure out what's going to happen if and when the buyer shows up. Right now, it's a mystery even to me.
Eventually, I may even get around to figuring out what world they're on.
Lately, I've been getting in a lot of gaming as a player at the table. I've got a weekly D&D group (three rotating campaigns) and actually just quit a Champions game that wasn't doing it for me, but what I haven't gotten to do in way too long is GM something. This is partly due to scheduling, and also partly due to the fact that my old regular group is pretty far flung and hard to get together. Issues relating to having a small child also complicate matters. But mostly, it's due to the fact that I'm a bad one for over-preparing, planning and plotting things in excess, and burning myself out before the game ever makes it to the table.
So, last Saturday, on a very spur-of-the-moment decision, I decided to try a different approach. I decided to try recruiting a new bunch of players from my collection of geeky friends with kids. I figured our house is pretty big, and if most or all of the players have kids, they can all just come over and play or watch videos or something in one place. I'm going to run C&C, since it 1) covers very familiar territory, 2) is very low-prep compared to most games I've run in the past.
I put out some feelers, got five players lined up in very short order, spent a day or three thinking about what I was going to do and about two hours typing up my notes last night (I spent more time cleaning the house prior to the game than I did actually prepping it.)
The Session: (cribbed from my LJ):
We spent the first hour and a half or so on character creation. This went a bit less smoothly than I would have liked, due to the fact that I've only got two copies of the Player's Handbook and even though C&C is pretty simple, there is a fair bit of stuff you need to look up at the beginning. Eventually, we got the PCs more or less hammered out, enough to get things going.
Our heroes consisted of the following:
Eric, a half-elf ranger
Zatanna, an elven illusionist
Caera, an elven druid
Calera, a half-orc monk
Sir Dudley, a human paladin
Rather than going through the rigamarole of trying to maneuver them together as a group, I just had them together on a road, going through an area of wooded hills towards the quaintly named Umberton (Doesn't it sound like something you'd hear on Thomas the Tank Engine? I think so.) Umberton is known for its large markets and merchant caravans, so it sounds like a likely place to seek possible employment for stout adventurer-types.
(I should note that, having only had a week to prepare for this, and having tried very hard to hold to the mantra of "Thall Shalt Not Overprepare," that Umberton pretty well exists in a vacuum at this point. As does the road and the wooded hills. I'll flesh it out as need arises.)
Anyway, our heroes were alerted to the sound of hoofbeats approaching, which turned out to be from a mule trotting towards them in a high state of agitation. Caera calmed it down and they were able to examine it and learn the following:
1. It was wearing a harness rig which had been cut.
2. While the mule was uninjured, there was an arrow stuck in its horse collar.
3. The arrow appeared to be of unremarkable human manufacture.
Scouting ahead, Eric and Zatanna see some smoke rising from beyond another bend in the road about a mile up. Eric takes to the treeline while the rest advance up the road.
Coming around the corner, they find the source of the smoke. A farmer's wagon, burning in the middle of the road. Around is is a scene of carnage. Two men are dead, and a third is badly wounded, barely hanging on. Dudley goes all paladin-y and uses his healing touch to save the man's life. He identifies himself as Ulstead, a farmer from the area, and asks after "Elspeth," his daughter, of whom there is no sign.
He informs the heroes that he and his daughter, along with his farm hands were driving their harvest to market when goblins came boiling out of the woods. They tried to put up a fight, but the foul creatures were too many and too well-armed. Zatanna and Eric note that it's strange for goblins to be carrying weapons of newish human manufacture, but that matter must wait until they can rescue the missing girl. Eric locates the goblins' trail without too much trouble, and along the way, they find Elspeth's headscarf. The trail leads to a clearing near a cave in the side of a hillock. A few moments' observation reveals a pair of goblin archers in the trees and another on top of the hill holding some sort of rope, which our heroes correctly surmise is an alarm bell.
Zatanna uses ventriloquism to trick the goblins into thinking they're being called into the cave. Once they're occupied with that task (and the alarm ringer away from his rope,) Eric and Caera begin picking them off with bows, managing to take out all three of the sentries before they could get off a sound.
After this, Eric and Calera took to the former sniper posts, while Zatanna crept on top of the hillock. Sir Dudley set himself up near the cave mouth and Caera held back to the treeline. Zatanna cast Dancing Lights off in the woods, and then rang the alarm. The goblins, being goblins, shortly began pouring out into an ambush.
The first three went down very easily. The second two, the same, but one remained up (mainly because Calera couldn't hit the broad side of a barn -- of all the PCs, she's the one most in need of some retroactive optimization.) One goblin engaged Sir Dudley and kept him busy long enough for their "Boss" to make the scene. Unlike the cannon fodder, he was actually pretty scary, especially for first level PCs. The two of them put Dudley down to 2 HP in one round and seriously threatened to turn the battle, as the Boss began attracting all of the group's arrow fire, taking some of the heat of the rest of his mooks.
Of course, this only lasted as long as he was up. A couple of solid shots set him up, and Sir Dudley finished him off, leaving two goblins out of the original fifteen still standing. Eric demanded their surrender, and under the circumstances, the pathetic critters complied.
Given the lack of resistance, I didn't make them go into extensive detail regarding their exploration of the caves. They found a cell at the back (with remarkably well-forged bars) containing three terrified young women, one of whom was Elspeth. A tearful reunion with her father ensued. Another girl spoke a little goblin and said that the "Big One" had said something about selling them to a buyer. Convinced they were onto a group of slavers, they decided to spend the night in the cave, then send the still-wounded Sir Dudley with the girls and Ulstead on to Umberton the next day while they set up an ambush for the mysterious buyer.
And so we leave our heroes until next time.
Analysis:
All in all, the game went well once we started playing. Everyone seemed to have a good time and nobody took things too seriously or not seriously enough. I'd never played any RPG with two of them, but our styles of play seemed compatible enough (if anything, I'm going to have to watch him because he's as devious and tricky as I am.) The C&C system is a joy to run. It's fast, clean, and with sufficient wiggle-room in the rules for the GM to handwave stuff without breaking the game.
(Even better: the kids got along. All of them. We had five kids here all afternoon, ranging from age eight to two and there were no meltdowns, no fights, and no crises. Those of you with small kids will know what a wonder this is.)
So, our first crack at this experiment was a success. The next session is in two weeks. Before then, I need to go over the character sheets to make sure all of the info is correct, and provide the players with the pertinent data on their character classes. Oh, and figure out what's going to happen if and when the buyer shows up. Right now, it's a mystery even to me.
Eventually, I may even get around to figuring out what world they're on.