State of Play: Week of 7-17-22
Game reports from around the B/X world
I’m pleased to announce a new B/X Bandits feature!
“State of Play” will follow active B/X games streaming publically online, providing highlights and analysis. If readers would like to submit short summaries of their own private game sessions, I’d like to include those as well.
There are thousands of B/X fans, all over the world, playing the game we love. I hope “State of Play” can help spotlight some of the fantastic, ongoing adventures we create as a community!
Please note: The following analysis is my opinion. The Basic rules themselves give DMs (and groups of players) permission to change any rules they want to change (p. B3). To have some basis for comparison, however, I’m using the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rulebook, edited by Tom Moldvay, and the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rulebook, edited by Zeb Cook and Stephen Marsh, as a common frame of reference. Your opinions may, of course, differ.
Week of 7-17-22
Public Games
Tale of the Manticore | Episode 3: “Unsafehouse”
System: B/X
Format: Podcast
Style: Solo, Dramatized
Platform(s): Podbean
Date: 7-21-22
Summary: While raiding the safehouse in Rull, Yellowfly and his crew find themselves facing a vicious guardian. The job goes sideways when an unexpected third party intervenes.
Hits
What I liked most about this session:
The use of music on this podcast is superb—evocative, atmospheric, and perfectly mixed, so as not to drown out the voice-actors and the narrator.
Hooray for checks on the “Monster Reactions” table! Yellowfly’s exchange with a shopkeeper (who appears to be a fence for The Church) is a great example of how rolled reactions can force the DM to take their NPCs in unexpected and creative directions.
Misses
What I thought could have been improved:
When setting the morale for the safehouse protectee, DM Jon gives him a six, saying “he’s too intelligent to have a score higher than that.” This pulled me out of the story both times I listened to it, because Jon never explains why intelligence is inherently linked to morale. For me, this part would have flowed more smoothly if Jon had said something like “…a six—not a coward, but not overly brave, either.”
Could go either way
DM calls I might have made differently:
Jon uses an “Open Doors” check in an interesting way—not to determine if a stuck door opens, but to determine if the door is, in fact, stuck or locked.
He also has an intriguing house rule for what he describes as “minning out”. If he rolls a 1, 2, or 3 for a monster’s hit points, Jon instead gives them a minimum of half their maximum hit points, “[i]n order to avoid overly easy combat encounters…”.
Assessment: 9/10; This is my favorite podcast right now; it makes the unexpected loss of the Dolmenwood actual-play stream more bearable.
Of Steam, Steel, & Murder | “BX Dungeons & Dragons - B12 Queen's Harvest session 3”
System: B/X
Format: Livestream
Style: Multiplayer
Platform(s): Twitch, YouTube
Date: 7-22-22
Summary: The player characters encounter a rival adventuring party, which is also exploring the magical basement of the dead wizard Kavorquian. When parlay fails, will the team live to enjoy their new status as landholders under the lordship of Duke Stephan?
Hits
What I liked most about this session:
The magic-user Schtolteheim’s efforts to make a rescue pet out of the abused rust monster caged in Kavorquian’s basement are adorable! Also, rust monsters are awesome!
I love the “in-between” place where characters wearing a ring of regeneration are given the opportunity to play cards with the dead, once they fall below zero hit points.
Dion is my favorite player—he seems to be having the most fun of anyone at the table!
It amused me when Radnor the Large insisted on asking the halfling Scrimbleshanks to check a scroll-case for traps, even though he’s told the party he’s not a thief!
Misses
What I thought could have been improved:
As awesome as they are, rust monsters only attack weapons and armor—the unstated assumption in the Moldvay Basic rules (p. 41) seems to be that they can only consume ferrous metals, since they are specifically describe as eating “rust.” Giving them the ability to consume treasure—including magic items that aren’t weapons or armor—makes them too much of a party threat.
DM Bert disallows the rust monster a Save vs. Spells against lightning bolt, dismissing the idea with the comment “monster can’t save”, right before he lets poor Rusty fry! In the monster description (p. B41, again), it says “Save As: Fighter: 3”! The rust monster was the best thing about this adventure! JUSTICE FOR RUSTY!! ;)
An elven cleric in B/X?! Am I missing something?
Could go either way
DM calls I might have made differently:
When the player characters attempt to talk to the rival adventuring party, the NPCs attack immediately—without, as far as I could tell—a reaction roll. This may have been part of the adventure as-written, but allowing a parlay would have opened up so many intriguing possibilities.
Rather than requiring a strength check for Schtolteheim to carry the rust monster, Bert could have simply moved him to a lower encumbrance bracket, to determine how far he could move each round while holding such a burden.
Assessment: 7/10; I like this livestream a lot, but I can’t go above a seven this time, because of what happened to Rusty… :|
Please help!
If you know of currently active B/X actual-play streams or podcasts you would like to see me follow in “State of Play”, or if you want to submit short summaries of your private game sessions, please email me at:
bxbandits at substack dot com
If submitting streams or podcasts, please use the following format:
Stream or Podcast Name
Link
If submitting a private game summary, please use the following format:
Campaign Name (if any)
Session Name (if any)
System (B/X, Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, or BX RPG; no BECMI, or non-B/X retro-clones, please)
Style Multiplayer or Solo
Date Date of the session described
Summary 75-150 words
Please note: Submissions may be edited for publication.
Added copyright notice to photo.