The Meet-Up Game - Thoughts on Session 2 - Open Table Goodness

(Minor Dungeon of Akban Spoiler, below.)

Maybe I should pattern my goblins after this guy.

I had my second Open Table session with the Birmingham Area Table-Top Gamers Meet-up Group, Friday night. We play every other week at a gentleman named John's house and there's two campaigns being played at each session. The living room is where the Call of Cthulhu game is being GM'ed by Brad. I've got the dining room/kitchen, at a nice, big wooden table, where I'm running my OSR flavored Old School D&D thingie.

When I arrived Friday night, I felt like crap. I was fighting a headache, my sugar was out of wack, I felt all out of sorts and didn't know how I was going to pull a decent performance out of my ass. But, once I walked in the door, the mood and overall groovy energy of John's house and all the gamers filtering in, proved to be downright infectious. It helped energize me and I think I ended up doing fairly well, though I was still a little out of it.

After the first session, one of the players had told me that he wouldn't be able to attend the next meet-up, but when I arrived for session 2, John informed me that two of the other players were the running buddies of that particular player and he didn't expect them to attend if their friend and ride wasn't going to be there.

But, no worries. Sean returned with his Cleric, ready to lay down the holy smackdown. John's father, Jack, was attending and in the mood for some D&D! Jack played way, way back when, but hadn't done so, in a while. Very Cool!

A guy who's never played before, Chris, sat in and was a welcome addition to our group. He played an MU and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty with a little melee, a trait I like in an MU. One of us should have told him about flaming oil, though. :) Last but not least, we were joined by Robert, who brought a lot of experience to the table and is a damn fine player. Everyone was a blast to game with and I sincerely hope to see more of them all!

I'm finding that DMing for total strangers can be a lot of fun! And I'm beginning to groove on the whole Open Table thing. I do like the fact that it's being hosted at someone's house, as opposed to an FLGS. And that multiple games are going on at once! Afterwards, we filter out onto the porch, smoke cigarettes and compare notes on what went on with each other's games. Like I said, the energy is very, very groovy!

There were a couple of close calls, but everyone survived the night and got some treasure and xp! About 35 goblins killed, another 9 routed, 6 Skeletons and 3 Zombies who used to be elves. The skeletons were the toughest encounter and two players went into neg before it was over. My dice got hot during that encounter! Fortunately, the Paladin and the MU were able to pull it out! I decided to use Chicagowiz's Dungeon of Akban, with a few tweaks, as the first level of my Mega-Dungeon, Lemure Abbey. The entrance room features a statue of Glasya (see MMII) and when the party arrived, goblins, each proudly wearing a new pendant/unholy symbol of the Toad God, Tvugg-Boor, were industriously scrubbing away frescoes left behind by the dungeon's former inhabitants. Robert, who spotted the Portcullis Trap and saved someone's life by doing so, has my blog address, so no spoilers in the comments, please. :)

The group found a little bit of treasure, including a mysterious, small boulder which had a Fireball spell chiseled into it. This was outside the dungeon, near a small lake. When the MU inscribed it into his book, the spell was wiped from the boulder and a message, in green flames, burned itself into the rock:

Greetings from the Octagonal Mage.

The next game is in two weeks and I have a lot of work to do. Posting will remain intermittent for the foreseeable future. Among other reasons, this game came up on short notice, so I have some prep work to catch up on.

And my home campaign is still on the back-burner. AD&D/Greyhawk is coming, but will no doubt get pushed back.