Thursday, July 31, 2014

Casting off for the Isle of Dread - All Aboard!

Getting ready to run my Isle of Dread game using the new D&D (5E, Next, whadeva).

I'm going to try to run the game straight: 1d10 damage cantrips, long and short rests, overly precise terminology and all.  Obviously there are a few things I would change about the game already without having played it.  How do I know I'd like to change them and that changing them would make things better?

Well, let's start with 30 years of gaming experience.  I know what kind of game I like, and I can see that certain mechanics would tend to lead the game away from that.  Still, 5E is workable and flexible, and best of all WotC finally is putting out an edition that allows itself to be modified and fiddled with.

So I'm gonna try to run it straight just to see how it plays.  Maybe it will surprise me, how nice it is to have PCs at full (or nearly full) power every encounter.  Maybe "movement cost" terminology won't bug the crap out of me once we start to play and just remember to divide speed through difficult terrain.  Maybe at-will Venger fireballs will be a nice touch (actually, I don't mind Venger fireballs, I just think d10 is a bit too high for an at-will cantrip's damage).

Anyway, the important thing is that I'll be running Isle of Dread, and I've got all kinds of interesting ideas to spice up the island a bit.  Plus, having both the original and the new version to draw on (and other modules I could slip in) means I can hopefully get more mileage out of this little sandbox module.

First game will be either this Friday or Saturday, depending on everyone's schedules.

2 comments:

  1. http://pandius.com/x1-isle-of-dread-6-1983.png
    Thorfinns map is a 1:1 replica.
    Oh, and then there is this, but I just skimmed it:
    http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=47591

    Damn, now I have to run this as soon as possible.

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  2. Thanks for the links! Very handy stuff.

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