Return To Zylarthan's Tower

The Tuesday night Madison Old School D&D game is back. After a couple weeks of playing Classic Traveller, we are back on the trail of the hobgoblins again.

It's been a while since I posted about my regular Tuesday night gaming group. We play OD&D using Labyrinth Lord rules with the referee's personal tastes intertwined. He doesn't like Druids and absolutely no half-orcs allowed.

For the last couple of game sessions we have been in the town of Corrain. Tonight we travelled to the village of Kingsbridge. Along the way we defended the caravan we travelled with from giant spiders. When we reached the village we obtained help from the residents. Now that the hobgoblin queen's location has been revealed to us, the quest is to defeat her and the hobgoblins dwelling in the ruins of Zylarthan's Tower once and for all.

Tonight's session had a good mix of role play and combat. Sessions that have no combat seem to drag on. Over at Grognardia there was some discussion about the stocking of dungeons for a game session. To me a good evening is a mix of all of it: traps, puzzles, combat, and set up (role play). The game gets dull when any one of these elements dominates the evening. A good referee should find ways to get a variety of these elements into the gaming session. Having said that I think we all know that: 1. it's hard to predict what players will do and 2. forcing events is almost as bad as the event not occuring at all. So rather then figuring a percentage of monsters to rooms, just populate it with your eye on the mix you want and it'll turn out fine.