Monday, February 29, 2016

dungeons & goblins

Something interesting happened this weekend--I killed a dragon.  Helped kill one anyway, manning a ballista while others slung spells and arrows.  Had a conversation with Matt about it, told him that in over 25 years of gaming across multiple editions, I'd never once encountered--let alone killed--a dragon, one of the game's namesake opponents.  His response was fitting.  "Isn't that funny how it goes?  It should just be called Dungeons & Goblins."


It was a pretty exciting night, though laced with a lot of frustration and planning fatigue.  I really liked that every conceivable course of action, every plan, seemed bad.  Too risky, suicidal, too unlikely.  Every plan seemed a hopeless longshot, with most destined to put us in the dirt or leave the town of Brithem open to destruction.  We were the best equipped to deal with the menace, but lacked the resources to turn the fight in our favor.


The planning paralysis seemed very real--we disagreed on the best course of action, the town's trust in our ability to combat the threat waned, and all the while townsfolk and farms were being slaughtered and ruined by the vengeful dragon.  What could we hope to do, in light of such a threat?


In the end, it was only after several outlying farms were destroyed that the remaining targets were narrow enough for us to stand a reasonable chance of laying ambush, and fortunately it worked.  My character, a dwarf thief named Lincoln, proudly cut a black scale from the beast as a keepsake.  Cliché?  Sure.  But I don't care, I just helped kill a dragon.


This session came at just the right time, in a period of renewed love and interest in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, when I don't have access to a regular game.  The battle came down to planning, tactics and execution, and never devolved into the hackfest that modern games can become against such foes.  I'm not saying that modern games have to be hackfests, but with a greater reliance on mechanics and with creatures having loads of hit points compared to their older edition counterparts, the games I have both run and played often end up that way (I'm looking at you, 3.5e, Pathfinder and 4e).


You can find details of the session, as well as excellent recaps from Matt's campaign, here:


http://1eadventures.blogspot.com/