Keeping it Simple With Pits & Perils

Last Wednesday +Chris C. started his Pits & Perils one-shot game.  +Ken H and I have the privilege to be the players.  Chris recently wrote a good post about how he prepared the adventure.  He mentions freely available gaming assets that he used to save time.  I like the post because of the finite pieces he uses to get things started.  One of my biggest problems when I begin something is editing down what I want to use.  There is an overwhelming amount of good gaming content available that can get cluttered quickly.

Ken just posted about our experience from our first session.  I posted my Pits & Perils character here.  It was interesting creating the character.  Simple.  Chris said I could just use a notecard for my character sheet and that's exactly what I did.  Only one side, so I kept my session notes on the back.  And in addition, Chris provided us with two henchmen each to help bulk up our ranks.  I chose two footmen named Juliette and William.  Ken chose a footman and an archer. 

Our first session consisted entirely of role-playing.  Ken's mage, Phandor, and my fighter, Chevor, spent the session getting to know the area, the people and the situation. 

As we entered the outskirts of the small hamlet of Innwood we encountered a woman and her son skinning a wolf.  Both were serious looking and boy looked wary of strangers.  We greeted them politely and after a few exchanges the woman (Diana) said that Innwood was having trouble with wolves and there is a 5sp bounty on each wolf's head.  She added where we could located the inn and warned up not to drink the water, something was wrong with the well.

We traveled a little farther up the road and encountered an older lady, sobbing that her son had gone missing.  Chevor being a man of quality and of good-heart, he promised to look for her son, but it being near nightfall and not knowing the land, the search would need to begin in the morning.  She thanks us and promised a reward if we found her son.  She informed us we should look to the abandon abbey a few miles down stream. 

The backstory of the missing boy (his name being Fenrick) is he fell in love with a girl named Rose, a girl of some beauty from the description of the villagers.  Fenrick was scorned by Rose and he cursed Innwood.  Rose went missing a few days after that scene.  The people of Innwood already disliked Fenrick, banished him.  Thus his reason for running away.  At least that's what we believe at this time.

Once we enter the hamlet we find a group of men attempting to discover the problem with the well.  They were taking turns being lowered within.  One of the men was the owner of the inn (I believe his name was Jack), with barely enough, we managed to get a room for all of us.  Jack told us about how we could earn a little money by hunting wolves.  We told him we had heard that from Diana and her boy.  Jack was the one who filled us in on the back story of Fenrick and Rose.  He made it clear that Fenrick was not welcome back and if he saw that boy again he would flog him out of town.

We requested to see Rose's room.  Jack said she stayed there and was furious that she was gone.  Phandor found a torn up note with Fenrick's writing scrawled on it.  A simple note, but damning.  

In the morning we headed toward the monastery.  Her directions proved to be accurate and two miles in we saw a ruin monastery upon a hill.  We explored only the first few rooms and in that time we found who we believe is Fenrick.  He looked to have been killed by wolves.  And like all good, poor (or rich) adventurers we explored farther hoping to get a few more coins in our otherwise dusty pockets.  We found a few religious tomes we could salvage from the rats, but little else.

That is where we concluded for the night.  Our first session in the books.  While I can't comment on the system as of yet, because we used little to none of the mechanics, I believe it is a system that will disappear into the background and allow us to play with searching for rules. 

A great success I think.  It was a fun, easy going game.  Lots of loose threads to pull on to see if they are connected.  In that short of time we were introduced to three different adventure threads, possibly four. 

That is how you run a game.