Interlude 1

(In which the GM reflects on the game so far since he's on holiday.)

So far so good. Five is an an easy system. Well, it's easy compared to SPI's Dragonquest which is what we lunatics have played for the last few decades. For those unfamiliar with it, Dragonquest is Runequest's crazier, LOTR obsessed cousin. It's an old school charts and tables, resource management game with a definite Tolkien vibe but not the rights which went to Iron Crown Enterprises. So maybe Dragonquest is Rolemaster's slightly saner cousin who only read LOTR but not the Silmarillion. In any event, D&D 5 is a much simpler game by comparison.

The players dove into the character generation and unanimously chose 'let's roll dice', Stats were quickly assigned and juggled a bit as classes / races were chosen. Backgrounds caused some confusion coming after classes. Perhaps it should run stats, race, background, class. Bonds. ideals and flaws were for the most part rolled. Old school gamers have few problems with shaking the box and playing with whatever gets taken out.

Character generation from start to finish took one hour. Three of those players were completely new to Five. New game, new character sheet and ten minutes to find enough d6s for everyone. That's fast.
D&D was faster. As was Paranoia. 'Here are your character sheets', 'Hey, why are all our names Hydrodynamic Processor Part B?', 'Hmm, questioning the system, put a '2' at the end of your character's name'. But most games take longer, typically an entire session. The band got on with encountering a zombie, a lich, several lizardmen and then several more.

That's not a typo. First level characters met Ashrak the lich. An 18-20 level wizard specialising in necromancy. He's far to busy in his research to be bothered doing, well anything and if the band could see their way to recovering bits of lore he wants to examine he'll reward them. A lich is an excellent patron, they're totally amoral and if they're left alone with their books and tomes they make fairly good neighbours. Ashrak is going to be asking for all sorts of crazy things until he crosses some imagined line and then it will be on. But for the moment he's too much a massive source of lore, exposition and rewards for the band to even think of attacking.

Session one saw the first planned encounter, 'bandits'. Well actually they met the bandits in the first session as a source of potential employment but were far more intrigued by the necromancer. They also encountered some devotees of Bethshaba and yes, I'm probably spelling that different each time. Well they hid from them, but that's an encounter all the same. But the weekly theme was bandits.

It's also very easy to set up an encounter. I've seen a few criticisms of Five that monsters are mostly just bags of hp and damage. I see that as a good thing. People talk of 'stat blocks' but all you need for Five is the 'stat line'. Name, AC, to hit, damage dice and the rest of the line is for hp. All the other blather is in the Monster Manual. I'm loving that aspect. The players also enjoy it. Armour values and damage mitigation may be 'more realistic' or 'gritty' but the hit point system has a simple brutality all of it's own. Especially when HP in Five are equivalent to half that number in AD&D. The players enjoyed the brutal battle and it's even more brutal aftermath. Then they went back to their home town to meet the local warlord and his Darth Vader expy sidekick. Galbatorix is all about safeguarding civilisation, even if it is with an iron fist.

And it's gone on in that vein. The band meets hideous monsters and often tries talking since combat is so brutal. They've learned that monsters will connect easily and hit hard. But so can they. They've learned of the underlying cosmic crisis and some steps they can take to remedy that. They've met some interesting and colourful NPCs and time will tell if they ever fight either Ashrak, Caius or Galbatorix. Those immortal watchers sound nasty. Mabye they'll need these lesser evils...