Just finished the first game of the con with +Reese Laundry and others. We were supposed to run “Rock of Saint Giles” for +Matt Finch‘s “Swords & Wizardry” but instead ran through my BasicModern/Eldritch Shadows adventure “The Coming of the Night Train”. What an amazing time!
The adventure started out with the characters not together, and the Priest character “Father Bill” getting a letter from a former patient at a local asylum telling him that a bunch of murders in the town he lived in where demonic in nature. Soon Father Bill was forced to call in some associates, the Thug “Bobo” and the Council Mage “Bill” after both his and other Bill’s phones called one another.
The players were awesome and took the adventure in some very unexpected directions, completely bypassing some sections of the adventure and getting into some neat exploration of the haunted train station. Near the end of the adventure after the “mid-boss” battle the players found themselves confronted by the FBI agent investigating the murders. In the adventure as written I give all these examples on how this could play out … instead of anything I thought of, however, the Council Mage just used his sleep spell to knock out the FBI agent and his light spell to scare the HELL out of the local cops!
All-in-all a phone as hell game and an impressive showing by my group. I can’t wait for the next game at 1400 which will be “Rock of Saint Giles”.
I think the best part though was introducing Swords & Wizardry/OSR gaming to a kid used to the more modern schools. He seemed confused by the off-the-cuff rulings at some points but did say he was going to get the S&W pdf.
Thoughts on BasicModern itself are pretty nice. I’ve only ever played my supplement under very controlled settings, so getting it out in the “wild” was a great experience and I learned somethings I need to do for future use of the supplement before its eventual release.
Some thoughts –
Players get to subtract their HD from their Ability Checks so that things don’t stay static.
Council Mages and Street Wizards need a little more work … The Priest might be a little TOO heal-bot for my taste.
Sanity is perfect after the revision I released earlier this year. Its not too complex and the loss amounts are just right.
