Land of NOD - Session 1

Session 1 (Dec 18, 2012)

Note: This session report is an edited version of the one posted at http://land-of-nod.forumatic.com.

We finally kicked off our long-awaited Land of Nod campaign. After a short introduction to the setting and the rules (OD&D with a few tweaks), four characters and their followers were set loose in Ophir, looking for trouble. I must admit, I improvised all of what happened on the fly (I wanted to prevent creating stuff in vain, plus I have started my best campaigns with a completely improvised session earlier, so it seemed reasonable it may also be accomplished with a pretty rules-light game, too).

The cast of characters:

• Elil Uh-Rair, devout follower of Kothar-wa-Khasis (Cleric 2 / Magic-User 2), who prefers not to have moral restrictions interfere with proper adventuring so chooses to have none
• John Carter, a former military officer in a space-faring empire (Fighting-Man 4), who crashed on this planet; he still has his kevlar armour (chain mail with no movement penalty), electric telescopic baton (standard one-handed weapon), and a laser pistol (increased damage, otherwise as other missiles)
• Latrotox, a nobleman from Venatia (Illusionist 3); his powers may be subject to heavy alternation; I am now reading through a couple of takes on the class
• Udes, a wizard seeking power and knowledge (Magic-User 3); his player arrived late so he didn't really accomplish anything
• Ubul, the kobold, follower of John Carter
• various henchmen; I remember one was given the name Gaston after their numbers have significantly decreased (yeah, we only give names to henchmen who survive their first battle or gaming session)

The most notable events were the following:

• they heard that an infamous pirate, Captain Porto, had escaped; the bounty on him was 1,000 gp
• after a longish investigation around the docks and the market, they found the lair of Porto and his fellows in a ruined building in the city, planning to escape the city and decrypt a treasure map of some sort
• they eliminated the pirates and captured Porto; a couple of their own henchmen got killed in the process (also one earned a name: Gaston)
• they learnt that Porto's brother, Rico, first mate of the Mute Shark, their deadly ship, has a mysterious, encrypted treasure map
• after turning in Porto and dividing the bounty, they decided to get to Corsair Cove, acquire a ship and marines, and steal the treasure map

It was a pretty fun first session. I had a player of mine roll on Jeff's carousing table for the first time - of course he failed the saving throw (thus lost even more of his money playing cards). Also, a new player joined to our group; it is always nice (and refreshing, as well) to see a new face.

One of the players also raised his concerns about the system; he found the quickness and deadliness of combat (particularly for 1 HD henchmen and pirates) not so entertaining as I do. I intend not to change that (actually it is among the reasons why I chose OD&D in the first place), so I have to make sure that particular player finds other aspects of the game interesting so he can overlook high lethality. Alternatively, he might just learn to enjoy it.

(Next session)