I finally managed to peice together a Crusade

Luther7718 · Post by **Luther7718** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:22 pm

Seven years ago, Halloween Night, I was rummaging through a closet looking for something to do (I was nine years old and very bored), and I stumbled upon a red box with a long haired wild-man of sorts swinging a sword to strike a red dragon. Needless to say, this mesmerized me to the point of opening it. Inside were three booklets, several metallic miniatures, a set of powder-blue dice with white numbers, and a used white crayon. The rest was history.

After several flirtations with this game, I eventually went on hiatus for a few years. This ended when I was at church one day, and a few of my older friends (around 17 and 25) were talking about Dungeons & Dragons. I informed them that I had played, and they invited me to come by that afternoon. The books were much thicker, and it took me a long time to figure out what was going on. Circumstances beyond my control forced me to stop playing with them.

Which brings me to a few months ago, when I was babysitting four kids as a full time job to pay for the laptop on which I now type this. I needed to entertain these kids, so I picked up a copy of Lego Star Wars for my Gamecube. This game gave me that Star Wars itch that only the sound of a lightsaber deflecting a blaster shot ever seems to. I then looked for some way to live out my Star Wars fantasy in a game that would allow me to truly make my character my own. I found this in Knights of the Old Republic. Upon finishing KotOR, I still had an itch for that style of gaming, so I picked up the game flaunting the engine that its own was based on, Neverwinter Nights. This brought back memories of that game I had once loved, and I decided that it was time to return to these roots. So, I walked into a local bookstore and picked up the D&D Core Rulebooks (3.5 at the time), and promptly put them down when I saw the price on the sticker. I still wanted to roleplay, but I didn't have the money to. Aside from that, I had really disliked how complicated those after-church D&D sessions and my NWN stint had been. So, as I was carousing D&D's Wikipedia article, I spotted a "reimagining of 1st edition D&D's rules, supported by Gary Gygax". I also noticed that I could run this game with any existing D&D source material and that it was only $30 for a boxed set. Money is tight at the moment, so I only managed to scrape together $15. I decided that I would need around four people to play properly, and fifteen more dollars. so why not combine the tasks? I explained the concept of an RPG to anyone who I believed would enjoy it, and explained my monetary situation, that they would need to put forth $3.50 to play. Surprisingly, this meager sum helped to ward off those not truly interested. So, I eventually managed to find my party, a Halo 3 copy-wielding soccer player that I long before dubbed Ninja, his girlfriend (NinjaGirl), a rather large football player who reminds me quite vividly of a Wookie, and an unusually cultured young girl who happens to be a creative writer, none of which had ever played a Pen and Paper RPG before.

With this motley group in hand, a C&C boxed set in the mail, and a .pdf of The Temple of Elemental Evil that I downloaded from Paizo, I hope to have many a thrilling adventure. I also hope that you all will welcome me here, and if so, I'd like to keep you informed of my group's doings and ask your input.

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:37 pm

Now that is a cool "gamer group origin story". May your Crusade be long and full of great adventure!
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

Buttmonkey · Post by **Buttmonkey** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:25 pm

Welcome to the Crusade! Good luck with your adventures!

Luther7718 · Post by **Luther7718** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:23 pm

While I'm thinking about it, on a related note, I've never GMed before, only played. Would any of you have some useful tips for a first-time GM, especially pertaining to GMing new players?

And, is there anything special I need to know about converting an AD&D module for play in C&C?

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:52 pm

Well converting is pretty straight forward. Instead of AC going to -10 it goes up from 10 to 30 (the +10 to -10 range), other than that the HD of the creature is used for saves, etc...

SR% i converted to a 1 on a d20 for every 5%. So 25% is SR 5 in C&C.

As a starting game master, take it slow and easy, learn to understand the "chance" of the dice rolls, this is important for you in learning how to judge the difficulty of given encounters. Learn how much having the "monsters" with a high AC will greatly increase the chances of your players getting killed, etc...

Also remember you are there to challenge the players and allow everyone to have fun, not kill them and be a jerk control freak.

So whenever you have to make a judgement call make sure the thoughts of "what will make this the most fun, fair and cool" are foremost considerations in making your decision. "Realistic" is another good standard to keep in there as well.

Consistency is important. This is why you create a house rules document. Any time you make a ruling outside of the rules you write it down. Any time you find a rule in the rule book you and your players want to change, it goes into your house rules document. This helps you be consistent in your rulings and rules decisions over time.

If your interested in house rules examples you can find mine down in the on line game forum in the very first post of my "Monday Night Game" thread, its usually one of the first 10 threads.

Character creation. Decide right now, who has control of the characters? You, or the player? If its the player, then let them have a pretty loose stat generation method. Mine is in my house rules document.

Dealing with high stats. There are two approaches. You can account for this by giving the opponents better equipment or stats or HP's, or you can go with accepting that they are exceptional and allow them to be so, and they have a noticeably easier time dealing with things. This does not mean they won't die. I once played a character with all 18's and he died in the third encounter. It just means they will "Rock and roll!!!" a bit more often than others would.

Bottom line, don't be afraid of high stat characters, your the god of the world, you can deal with anything.

Don't allow evil characters. This crashes and burns and destroys gaming groups far too often to be worth trying. Especially for a new group with a new game master.

I suggest you start everyone with max starting gold. Even max gold doesn't go very far for anyone. Except maybe the Wizard or Illusionist.

feel free to ask any other questions on these boards, lots of us love to help.
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:59 pm

Oh, and as a lead up to the Temple you may want to consider using:
http://www.trolllord.com/downloads/index.html

Lions in the Ropes, and in particular "The Rising Knight" adventures. Plus the character sheet makes it easy to printout from a computer.

If you don't have a campaign setting/world you may also want to check out the Blacktooth Ridge and Haunted Highlands maps. They are decent sized regions that are part of a bigger setting.

Blacktooth Ridge is part of TLG's Erde/Aihrde setting, Haunted Highlands is meant to be used in any world.

I think Rising Knight will work well in getting the player characters together and used to working together as players, and be easy enough to lead them towards the Temple via Hommlet.
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

Luther7718 · Post by **Luther7718** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 11:22 pm

"You have been too good to me, Luther.

Ha, liking it so far.

dachda · Post by **dachda** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:11 am

Welcome. Have fun with it. search around these forums there is a lot of good info hereabouts to help you. And feel free to ask lots of questions there's always a few good souls who will do their best to give a complete and helpful answer.
_________________
Sir Dachda McKinty,

Margrave and Knight of Portlandia
Castles & Crusades Society

Heavy_Crossbow · Post by **Heavy_Crossbow** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:08 pm

Nice story! Everyone has a different story of how they got into table-top rpg's. One of the things that got me into Castles and Crusades was the fact that the rulebook was far less expensive than the DnD 3.5 books. And now with 4th edition DnD out, well, end of story. It is way easier now to persuade people to buy into a game with one twenty dollar rulebook of simple but deep gameplay, rather than over 100 dollars worth of complicated rules. I'm amazed that you pieced together a group so quickly. I hope that your crusade goes well!