Open Table B/X: A Wondrous Chaos

Yesterday was the first session of the Open Table Dungeons & Dragons (B/X) game at the school. In short, it was wonderfully chaotic but a good time was had.

I had planned for 5-6 players and eight turned up. I took a deep breath and plunged onward! There were five boys and three girls present, and five of the players were total roleplaying newbies. Excellent stuff!

This is a brief report of the key events and my key learning points.

Rolling Up

After a brief outline of what Dungeons & Dragons is and its impact on the gaming world, I handed out the character sheets and dice. I’d brought along a pad of the OSR character sheets from SquareHex and they worked brilliantly – they are easy to navigate, smaller and less threatening than many, and they have clear spaces for everything you need.

I’d also bought five sets of dice very cheaply from Amazon and that allowed the newbies to take away a set of dice. At a cost of £1 per player for me, I figure it’s a good investment to help encourage new gamers to play. Smiles around the table make all the difference from the word go!

Oh, and we used the B/X Essentials books at the table – not the original D&D books.

They all rolled the six attributes, 3d6 in order. They chose a character class. We wrote down the “to hit” numbers… and so on. It was all going great until we hit equipment time. It took about 25 minutes to get eight characters rolled up, going around the table and with many questions. It took about 20 minutes for the players to buy gear. And I forgot to mention to limits on weapon choices – a BIG screw-up – until we were playing.

Next time, I am going to have a basic equipment card for each of the seven classes. They’ll each have a choice of allowed weapons and some basic dungeon gear. I’ll let the players roll for some spare cash too. Simple and quick, stealing an idea right out of 5th Edition.

Game Time

I started them in Thracia, the city near the “Caverns of Thracia“. Having asked if there was anything they wanted to do in town before leaving, there were some questions about buying weapons not on the basic equipment list – to which they discovered that they needed to adventure for such delights. No one asked about rumours, so I skipped straight to the adventure.

They trekked a few miles into the jungle and approached the ruins. They scouted (loudly) and noticed a group of “hyenamen” (gnolls) with a minotaur on the main ruin. They dithered, then scouted southward and discovered a smaller ruin. Approaching that smaller building they noticed an entrance on the west side but were then ambushed by tribesmen. In this adventure, the tribesmen wear heavy armour and there were six of them. The party fought one round, two of the characters were slain, and then they ran, giggling and entertained, into the jungle.

Lessons were learned. The players learned that all is not easy and fairly balanced in Dungeons & Dragons. They seemed to like this. It’s a feature of the original style of play and… surprisingly, the attitude was one of “that’s cool!” and “it’s like a real world!”

My Learning

I need to sort those equipment lists. I also need to roll up wandering monsters before I play – I can’t tell you how cool it was to roll up the Minotaur guard but I really would have liked to have had more time to think about how to present it. And I need to organise the notes instead of trying to just use the module at the table.

The B/X Essentials books are a god-send! Excellent reference texts that make look-ups a breeze!

All in all, this was a good first session. I hope all eight come back… but they all signed the sheet to say they intended to.

Game on!