The Cave of Worlds Campaign Blog, Session #2

I was a bit nervous about the game today. The last session, which was the first, had been spent creating characters. And I hadn't managed to work out a starting scenario that really satisfied me. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure that I could cut it as a gamemaster any more. It's been a long time since I've run more than an occasional one-shot...well over ten years!

The first hour of today's session was spent finalizing characters and chatting. But I pushed a little to make sure we started actually playing. At the suggestion of several people on the RQ-Rules mailing list, I ran "The Garhound Contest" from Sun County. It had to be modified, of course. All the names had to be changed, and on the fly I eliminated the first two contests. They required Riding skill, and that would have left two of the three players with nothing to do. As it happens the third contest, the wrestling one, also suited one of the PCs far more than the others: Gormuz (played by Zack) is a Great Troll, and a virtual killing machine. In his first bout he punched his enemy (which is allowed) and hit him in the chest for twenty-one points of damage - more than triple the hit points that his opponent had in the chest. It caved his chest in, of course, and even the healers couldn't save the man's life. So they called in the high priest to cast Resurrection. Zack was actually somewhat aghast, since the contest is supposed to be a friendly one. His next opponent quit, and he ended up winning the contest.

The next contest was a drinking contest (aka "The Intelligence Test"). Again, Gormuz's enormous Constitution gave him a huge advantage, so he was the only PC who entered (the other two dickered with him over lending him money for the entry fee). Unfortunately he fumbled on the first CONx5 roll with a straight 100, puked, and passed out. We all laughed.

The final contest of the session was the "Wall of Death". All three PCs entered, walking along the top of a wall while archers shot at them with specially slowed, blunt arrows. Gormuz went down first. Ophelia (played by Jenny), a sorceress-gypsy, stayed up quite a bit longer, but eventually couldn't stay up. Dominica (played by Michael), a female elven spirit-magician/rogue, did extremely well; she caught arrow after arrow. But when the final arrow came, she missed her Dodge, was hit, and went down. Her old master won the contest, but Dominica still got two points for coming in second.

Incidentally, the "falling off the wall" element was something I added to the scenario. It wasn't in the original, as far as I could tell.

The festival wasn't done, but we had to break at that point. Michael had overstayed, because he'd been having too much fun and hadn't paid attention to the time. All in all, it was a really good session. The chemistry of the group was better than I hoped, and we all had a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that rather than wait for two weeks, we're going to play again next Saturday!