Blackadder23 wrote:

Very nice!  Feel free to "rip off" anything you like.

Thanks, Blackadder! You were an inspiration. And, of course, a souce of ill-gotten gain. Your group better get to the Black Fief soon because my players are already curious!
 

So in our AD&D game, we've settled on using a system of 4d6 (drop lowest) 7 times. Then you can drop one stat and collapse the rest to create your six ability scores. This allows some choice while still bowing to the tyranny of the dice. For our first AS&SH game on Saturday, I gave the players a choice:

1. Roll as above for AS&SH stats
2. Roll 4d6 (drop lowest) six times in order
3. Roll 3d6 six times in order

For choice 2, I let the player reroll one other roll (not an ability score) later in chracter creation: HP, starting gold, starting spells, whatever came up. If s/he didn't end up taking this reroll (they were all pretty lucky with HP and gold, actually), s/he could start the game with 50 XP.

For choice 3, I made it two possible rerolls or starting the game with 100 XP.

Seemed to work as a fun way to let the players have even more choice!

They ended up creating
Amazon Pyromancer
Esquimeaux Illusionist
Kimmerian Cataphract
Viking Shaman
Celtic Fighter

Note the lack of clerics and thieves. I'm sure that won't be a problem!

Hi, all,

I know I read this, but for some reason at the table on Saturday I went completely blank. When a character has more than one attack in a round, they come at the same time, no? And against the same opponent?

So, e.g., a fighter-type with two melee attacks in one round would take them both on his side's turn (i.e., winning or losing intiative)

--in Phase I in a regular toe-to-toe fight or after a half-distance move or charge
--in Phase II after a full-distance move or charge

Right? And the same applies to monsters with attack routines or to multiple arrows, for example?

And am I right that all Phase I actions happen (first for the side that won init., then the side that lost) and then all Phase II actions happen (same deal).

Yes? No? Shut up, Handy?

Before leaving, they dug through the sand of the cavern's floor and unearthed a chest, old but solid, coated in the calcified droppings of the giant spiders. Working in shifts, they ferried their unconscious companions out of the caverns and into the open air, along with the chest. Leaving the wounded Kelt to guard them, Euthymios hustled back to the road and into the tiny hamlet where he had grown up. He hailed a farmer and offered the old Kelt a gold coin (liberated from Demostrate's purse) a gold coin for the hire of his cart, horse, and self for a couple of hours. Soon the wounded were bedded down on hay in his parents' barn. The cataphract and the Keltic fighter pried open the chest and found it was full of old copper coins, bearing the mark of some forgotten Keltic kinglet. As the night wore on, they counted them: five thousands. Worth a hundred gold in the market of Hawkford. It was something, at least.

The next day, leaving the wounded under the care of Euthymios' mother, they set off to the sacred valley of the druids, where ancient menhirs loomed out of the fog, bearing Harlan's body. Here, farmers and acolytes were driving a mixed herd of sheep, goats, and calves into a pen. Other druids were constructing a cage of withes, building a huge frame. The Kimmerian did not follow the local faith, but Comhan did. He knew the signs of preparation for the coming sacrifice three nights hence at the fullness of the moon Phobos: a wicker man, a living cage of fire.

All conversation ceased as they carried their grisly burden toward the standing stones. Fionnhbar, the head of the local druid church, emerged as if from the mists and moved toward them. "You carry what does not belong to you," the man, who seemed at moments ancient, at moments sinewy and powerful as any warrior. "Tell me, why do you bear this, which in life was pledged to us"

The two warriors told their story to the druid, Euthymios calling on the stories he had heard knights tell in the stables after

Audgisl assessed the two fallen companions. Demostrate seemed in worse shape. He believed she was stable and in no danger, but the blow to her head had been severe. The bite wounds on her body were strange. Where the strange hounds' teeth had broken skin, the surrounding flesh was grey and brittle. He felt carefully around the wounds, seeking through the pyromancer's weak pulse for the deeper pulse of the world and any sign in it of the corruption, poison, magic. He was not sure. It was no venom, he thought, no natural source that soured these wounds. He wondered how they would heal. He realized, too, that all those who had been bitten shared the same mark. He turned to the fallen Esquimaux, whose tough little body seemed less savaged. The shaman began to growl deep in his throat. He pulled forward the cowl of his bearskin cloak, dropping his mind into bearthought, bearmind. He began to bind the Esquimeaux's wounds as the bear would cleanse its own. Snow. Thick, rough tongue with the tang of blood still strong upon it. The world's pulse, felt, measure, matched, and bound to the Esquimeaux's body in thick bandages and guttural, growling words.

As the shaman worked, the others looked at the body of their fallen friend. The hounds had only recently found their feast. Some flesh had been torn from Harlan's face, and one hound had unearthed the rich treasue of his entrails. But little blood flowed from those wounds. Instead, they realized, several deep stab wounds marked their friend's body. He had not been killed by dogs, no matter how strange. This was the work of men. And of the young magician Ottvar there was no sign.

Siomha began to slowly circle the bloody confusion, her eyes fixed on the hard surface of the road. It yielded few clues, but when she made her way off the track, the softer loam showed footprints, man-sized but indistinct, leading into the dense woods at the base of the hill. She told the others what she had seen. "Viking!" snapped Comhan. "We have a

Here's the intro I sent my players for tomorrow (thanks to Blackadder23 for the place names and setting [and scenarios!] I will be shamelessly ripping off):

It's toward the end of year 3 of the Celestial Cycle, year of the Fish/Renaissance. At this point, there are about eight hours of light each day.

______________________________
The Bat year, when the weak red sun of Hyperborea never lifts above the Black Gulf that rims the world, happened for you all as childhood was ending. Your youth was a time of terrors in the darkness, of the weak finding protection with the strong or disappearing into the relentless night. That's when you all entered training, so that even if the sun stayed forever beneath the edge of the world, you would have the power to confront whatever happened. Finally, your training is complete, and as light returns to the world, you are ready to set out in it, seek your fortune, carve a measure of comfort and wealth from the cold world before the light fails forever--or cut it away from those that have it. Somewhere there is wine and warmth and danger to warm the blood--and it's time to find it.
 The world is changed. What had been dark and forbidding gullies When the sun was hidden and the wolves howled somewhere under the sullen, comfortless light of ruddy Saturn and the feeble stars, you made your way in fear past stygian, forbidding ravines choked with ice and cracking with strange sounds and the echoes of a world slipping back into blind, weak slumber. Now those gullies are rushing with water from the melting ice, and the mountains are gathering their white arms closer, as if to fend off the coming summer or to hold closer their ancient secrets under their brooding brows. Life is returning, the cry of hawks, the herds of aurochs in the water meadows. Muscle and sinew and blood are crying out that the light is here, that it is time to wrest what you can from the dying world while you are young and strong! Let the old fear the coming darkness

mabon5127 wrote:

I for one would definately be interested in hearing how your first adventure goes on Saturday!  Is this witch a player or NPC?

Morgan
 

I think only three of my players are coming over, so I figured I should roll up a couple of characters to have in reserve in case they need to round out the party--and so I'd be familiar with how rolling them up works in AS&SH. (Side note: The character sheet is really, really helpful. One of my players has spent years tinkering with an AD&D character sheet to get one we like, and it still ends up with things like debts recorded under religion and scars recorded under animal companions. Part of that is how my players roll, but still. And it would be no help for someone new to the game navigating character creation. But the AS&SH sheet is a great guide. I was done when I had something in all parts of it! Really nicely designed.)

So I rolled up a the witch (she's a red-haired Pict named Verctissa, I think; that AS&SH name generator is awesome). And a ranger. And a magician. We'll see what the players come up with, and then if (heh) there are any early deaths, one of them can take a character on as a PC if s/he wants to. I know one of my players already rolled up a shaman. I just have this vision of their finishing with character creation and realizing no one has a fighter.

And, yes, we will report back with how it goes!
 

Hi, all,

Handy Haversack (Michael), from the exciting, fast-paced world of nonprofit academic publishing in NYC. They call it the widow maker.

I started with a B/X/AD&D mishmash in 1980 and have played mostly AD&D ever since. We've had a game running in NYC for eleven years now, with some CoC mixed in to keep us honest and terrified.

Running my first AS&SH game on Saturday. Can't wait! I already came up with a new way to burn a witch! I'm a lifelong leaner.