Just came back from Dragonflight. I ran +Tim Gray‘s Jaws of the Six Serpents on Friday night and it went well. I had planned a fairly standard sword and sorcery adventure — escort a caravan to Nilsomar, fend off an attack by rat-men that would foreshadow later events, discover the plans of an evil sorcerer to take over the city during the Festival of the Moon, battle, profit.
But I had a table full of great players, so I really had no work to do. +Peter Darley made a character who was a scion of a noble family in Nilsomar whose inheritance had been hijacked by a cousin of his, and hired the other caravan guards (PCs) to help him regain his birthright once they reached the city. From there on, we were off the original plot — something I always enjoy as GM, and the main reason I thrive on simple systems like PDQ.
We had other great characters: +Laura Mortensen‘s 16-year-old pirate from the Quegin islands in her oversized but fine boots; +Mark Walters‘ inquisitive Belimauran; +Edmund Metheny‘s dark sorcerer from Ahaan seeking redemption; and +Cindy Darley‘s chipper, resourceful adventurer from Narrowhome. One highlight came from Cindy’s character convincing Edmund’s sorcerer to adopt orphans — ten children he then dressed in billowing black robes and told bedtime stories to.
I continue to really like Tim Gray’s approach to PDQ; I think the use of “funnelling qualities” during character creation makes the process easier and provides very useful structure.
I also got into Laura’s Urchin game on Saturday night but I missed a little over half, as I was already fighting a cold, short on sleep and planning to run a game in the morning. The half I played was hilarious, as usual.
On Sunday afternoon, Edmund ran an episode of our continuing Savage Dark Heresy campaign in Open Gaming; it was the first time that the whole group had played face-to-face. It gave him a chance to trot out his miniatures.
It was not part of Dragonflight as such, but on Tuesday after the convention, we celebrated Laura’s birthday and had a brief prologue to kick off her Ars Magica campaign. Lots of gaming!
The Reef 