Finding New Fantasies

In many ways, I’ve reached something of an impasse with my hobby. I’m not quite sure what to do or exactly where to direct my efforts. I am feeling somewhat under-involved. It’s a curious sensation.

A month ago I instigated the Open Table on Friday Nights. Simultaneously, I decided to prepare to run an Open Table at the school club. Since then, given that the school club doesn’t come online until next week, I’ve run just one gaming session. My prep requirements have fallen through the floor (a good thing) while my desire to create and write has grown.

Right now, I am not entirely sure what to do next.

B/X Dungeons & Dragons

The most activity in my hobby in the past month has come from re-discovering and actually playing with the 1981 edition of Basic/Expert (B/X) Dungeons and Dragons. To be honest, while I did re-read some of the Basic rulebook, I’ve mostly been referencing the eminently more useful B/X Essentials rules from Necrotic Gnome Productions. Honestly, these are worth their weight in gold (although admittedly, they are not that heavy).

We played some excellent games just prior to the end of the last school year, and I introduced some keen teenage students to the delights of what I consider to be the “original” style of play: the dungeon-crawl. Over the summer holidays, I reviewed every edition of Dungeons & Dragons that I own (which means all except 4th Edition) and came to the conclusion that the most practical application of the Open Table for fantasy is probably going be B/X: it’s light and quick, easy to prep, easy to add to, and you can roll up a character in well under 15 minutes.

Adding to this, a friend of mine asked me to run a one-on-one adventure in a “Play-By-Forum” format (actually, we are using Rolegate) and I’ve been finding running a game with B/X to be VERY playable. I am not entirely able to read my friend’s reactions but I’m taking no complaints and a pretty responsive turnaround speed to mean he’s having a good time. In fact, running this game is proving trivial and no more bother than answering an email once or twice a day would be.

Itching To Write The Fire Citadel

It has been some time since I thought much about the “Fire Citadel of the Dragon Kings“. Originally, the idea was to create a mega-dungeon for my Mystamyr campaign using the Classic Fantasy rules. Next, when Mystamyr became part of the Greymoor setting, the Fire Citadel was re-located and a more detailed hex-map was drawn. When the Friday Night group all but broke up, however, the project went into limbo. Until this week.

The choice of a mega-dungeon for the school has been resolved: I aim to run the acclaimed “Caverns of Thracia” module, which has been the subject of so many excellent reviews and actual play reports as to catch my attention. Combining this with B/X Essentials will be a pretty cool combo, methinks. In truth, however, reading it and pondering upon the contents has convinced me to Jaquays my dungeons.

The newly reviving Friday Night group is playing Stars Without Number in my New Calderon Sector campaign. We’ve had one session (which I largely screwed up on the night, but that’s another story) and we’ve already hit a scheduling gap… but I am keeping my head up and smiling through it. Time will tell if this game can work.

Those games aside, however, I am itching to write. Without the horrendous pressures of prep for an ongoing and detailed campaign, I am left twiddling my thumbs. To be fair, that’s given me lots of time to read other (non-gaming) stuff. This has been nice. And yet…

I am minded to return to that project, the Fire Citadel, with my B/X head on. It would be fairly trivial to re-design and plan the mega-dungeon for play with the 1981 rules. It also wouldn’t take much to convert it to Classic Fantasy if anyone was interested. Mostly, it’d be a nice project for me to work on in-between those few hours when the players I know can make it along for a game and my real-life job as a teacher.

Like I said, I’ve reached something of an impasse with my hobby. I’m not quite sure what to do or exactly where to direct my efforts. Yet, it does seem an opportune moment to write the dungeon adventure I am interested in while I watch and see where this new era of more relaxed Gamemastery takes me.

Game on!