Yesterday's Session...

... was a blast! We had real fun, and it was just great. I was expecting two players (who played in the Birthday Party, including the guy with previous D&D experience), and three showed up! You know, this is the kind of thing that just makes me happy. We used the core 2e rules to create three characters: Germano il Nano, a dwarf warrior, Astianatte, a human cleric of the Blue Oyster Cult, and J. Zard, a human ranger. The party moved towards Castle Bélial looking for a missing young girl. They found that the only access to the abandoned moat house was a creepy covered bridge, and eventually faced their first foe: a huge spider! Because of my arachnophobia, that was the very first time in my DM life I've used a spider as monster, but the encounter was just too perfect for that monster not to use it. Anyway, the party (not so easily) defeated the spider, and they all got some XPs. Everyone at the table seemed to enjoy the game pretty much, including the third player, at his very first experience. I tried to explain what was going on step by step (like "Ok now you roll a d10, and that's your initiative, blah blah blah" and "Roll To Hit, so use a 20-sided die and score at least 12 because of the spider's AC, blah blah blah" and so on.) I made clear a couple of key concepts, like the abstract nature of combat in D&D, and no one had any objections. Also, the guy with previous experience at the table (with 3.X), had no problems with THAC0, finding character creation way easier. On a side note, we decided not to go with Non-weapon Proficiencies at this point, since everyone was really impatient to rock the dice. We used Weapon Proficiencies, anyway (the dwarf warrior got specialization in battle axe and war hammer, of course.) All in all, it was a great night.

Interestingly enough, the players asked for a plot driven game, in opposition to sandbox based game. I think they still don't have a clear idea of it, but I think I will keep it going at least for a while. I will post the One-Page-Dungeon beneath Castle Bélial as soon as I finish it! I still have to find a cool name for the campaign...