The Star Cairns 18-27

The exploration of the 3rd Star Cairn was a highly memorable run of sessions featuring everything from PC death to romance and intrigue to total war. I often hear the exhortation from recent games designers to be a fan of the characters as if it is a new or original idea but back in 2000 I was certainly a fan of this entertaining group as they bravely, stupidly, amusingly, tragically and outrageously tackled the challenges of the formidable 3rd Star Cairn.

I think these sessions hold the record for the sheer number of emails flying back and forth between players during the week as the players were engaged out of session quite significantly. The whole thing was a challenge for the group and I had my hands full trying to keep up with them during the crazily swinging turns of events. It was a lot of fun to play and hopefully remains exciting to read and is also a reminder of designer, Sean Reynold’s fantastic work creating these locations. It has taken quite a while to ensure the edited copies are plot consistent across the 10 sessions and now I am delighted to share them as we relive the events played out in the spring and summer of 2000.


Featuring…

Simon as Andrea - Ranger
Andy as Astra - MU/Thief
Malcolm as Hemegretham - Fighter
Dave as Alvin - MU/Cleric
Karim as Raven - MU/Fighter
Alex as Zeppo - Cleric
Jan as Columbus - Cleric
Jan as Joe - Fighter

Winter's Daughter

The first of our new series of games using the Old School Essentials (OSE) ruleset published by Necrotic Gnome and also the first that we have played using an online Virtual Tabletop (VTT). I'd been playing in a few online convention games during 2020 and with the pandemic in 2021 the pace really picked up so I managed to gain a lot of experience playing in this medium, enough to convince me that it would be a possibility if I could settle on a particular VTT and get myself organised enough to run some games. Foundry turned out to be that VTT for a number of reasons but a big one is that I can run it as a node.js service for no additional cost beyond the initial purchase on my existing internet server.

We played
Winter's Daughter, an introductory adventure suitable for a beginning party with two Rangers, a Fighter and Druid testing themselves in the Tomb of Sir Chyde. Proving themselves up to the test and now a level higher they will continue onto The Incandescent Grottoes as their next adventure.

We are a new group to playing RPG's online but slowly picking up speed aided by OSE's clean and clear rulebooks and supporting VTT materials. The focus now is on playing as much as possible to get the flow of online play working well. I'm having fun and I think the players are too, they're coming back at least. :)

Featuring…

Simon as Angus - Human Ranger
Rachel as Fenella - Human Druid
Alex as Vlad - Human Fighter
Malcolm as Reme - Human Ranger