category: After Action Reports

Some useful feedback from OSR Pit later, and I want to remember what I want to put in an AAR. I might not write that much for each bullet-point, but I think it’s worth covering it all. The last point about the lesson is my reason for writing these, but if I don’t include the context, then I can’t be sure it’s the right lesson. What did I play? How long for? What tools did I use? What was the plot? What happened in each room/encounter? What were the characters? What were the tactics? What did I learn? What went well? What went badly? What would I do differently? I was going to expand this out a bit, but I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. I don’t read long AARs, so I want to keep them short so that: ...

Finally, FINALLY, ran Tomb of the Serpent Kings. It is rightly held up as a great intro dungeon, for teaching lessons (in a good way) about some OSR concepts to beginner players. We’re talking here about combat-as-war rather than combat-as-sport, and the general idea of “don’t assume your GM is keeping you alive”. The players I ran this for wanted to play in Fifth Edition, and as I’d chosen the RPG for our last game, I used a free conversion pamphlet. Spoilers below. ...

Tried the example ‘Frayed Domain’ adventure again with the same two friends. Changes: Halved the number of enemies per encounter Theatre-of-the-mind combat No roll20 Quake soundtrack playing through Groovy 🤘 ...

First attempt, could have been worse. But I got a lot wrong. ...

The next adventure introduces an NPC but not for long and I thought it would be fun to introduce them early. Mugwort, a hobbit NPC in the Pony had alleged a chicken thief was due to “them no-good Rangers”. It’s supposed to be a hook for another monster up to no good. But what if it was a Ranger? 🎵 DRAMATIC CHORD 🎵 ...

This post contains spoilers for the named adventure in the Bree-land Region Guide for Adventures in Middle Earth, by Cubicle 7 🙈. It does also have some maps I drew for the encounters in Hex Kit - maybe it’s worth you peeping? ...