Session XVI - Session Notes

Well, this was it - the final session of the campaign. And likely the final session I play with this particular group.

Unlike what I've done previously, I didn't actually tell the players ahead of time this time that this was going to be the final session. I just told them at the end.

It was a fine-enough session, but still had many of the same issues as previous ones. In the end, I know I'm making the best decision for me - I'm burnt out on D&D and this group and need a break.

The last chapter of the session is quite abbreviated in the write-up because I didn't think it would be all that interesting to write about every little room they visited since it takes the place of a denoument in the story. Rest assured, though, it was an old-style dungeon exploration (though they avoided the couple of traps that were there and there were no monsters left).

I rather liked using the old Basic D&D rules again and any future D&D gaming I would want to do would be along those lines though I'd probably return to the normal D&D setting/rules instead of my Bronze Age theme. I think the Bronze Age aspect went OK, but honestly I'd need a fresher set of players who understood the mood of what I was going for to make a real evaluation.

My players did not like the rules as much as I did. Complaints about having race as class and the low hit points were aplenty.

Where does the group go from here? Well, the Gayloria player is still, in theory, moving. I have no idea what is up with the Sharag player (I'm assuming she just didn't want to come back but didn't feel like she could say that for some reason). The Fredo player will be heading off to college in a couple of weeks. Like myself, the Chrysostomos player wants a slightly different group to play with (he enjoys the more morally gray games) and will be taking a break for awhile. That leaves the Skullas, Artemisia, and Pankratios players and whoever they scrounge up for a new AD&D 2e game that the Skullas player wants to run.

As for me, I'm taking a break and may run another game at some point but I want a different group and want to run shorter campaigns with more morally-gray settings.

My current planning work is setting up a "Cthulhubusters" game - Call of Cthulhu set in a more Gangbusters style setting (my usual way of playing CoC). I describe is as a game about Lakefront City (Gangbuster's pseudo-Chicago) in the 20's with a mayoral race, union strikes, a gang war, Trotskyite activists, federal investigations, bootlegging, and klan activities mixed with secret conspiracies, evil cults, vile experiments, dark magic, and the horrors of things man was not meant to know.

My other idea (that I haven't development much with yet) is for a WFRP 1st edition game based on the French Wars of Religion (using the worshippers of Sigmar and Ulric as proxies for Catholics and Protestants, respectively).

So, I've been spending the last few weeks with my new group (it includes the Chrysotomos player plus one of the guys from my previous 4e campaign along with someone they know). So far we've just been playing boardgames but I've actively been developing my Cthulhubusters game. I'm hoping to get characters created next time (they are still trying to recruit a 4th player) along with more boardgame fun, then move on to actually running the game.

It truly is a breath of fresh air and has my creative juices flowing again (I pretty much have a whole city plotted out by now). We wish we could invite a couple of the other past players to join us, but since they are closer friends with some of the people we don't want to play with we're avoiding discussing it with them; we've been flying under the radar so far to avoid hurting anyone's feelings.

For those who are interested, I will be putting up a new AP thread for that when the time comes (I may putting up some info about the campaign soon).

BTW, I did enjoy this.  I do one bronze age game that I drag out once in a while and so this was nice to read.