Sunday, April 25, 2021

Running Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcery of Hyperborea




I have a great circle of people to role play with, amazing people, and even better friends. We mostly play DnD 5E which I love, but I've been playing it for a while and sometimes I yearn for running something from the OSR. At the moment we are in the middle of running Avernus so there isn't much room on the schedule to run a one or two-shot. Then it occurred to me that since I run a game store and I could run a demo, so yesterday that is what I did. I only had two players but that actually worked out really well. I used the ASnSH Rogue's Gallery II pdf for pre-generated 1st level characters and after about 30 minutes we were off and running.

I ran the Rats in the Walls adventure which is excellent. One of my players is from the regular RPG group and the other was someone I hadn't met before. We all had a blast and finished the session within three hours. ASnSH is a superb game and heaping with flavor. I truly loved it and so did the players.

I asked about making this a regular thing but it wasn't in the cards and I fully understand that. Afterwards as I contemplated the session and the system something occurred to me, we could have had just as much fun with DnD 5E, Swords and Wizardry, Against the Darkmaster, or Champions 4E. The system didn't really affect how well written and playtested Rats in the Walls was and the flourishes I added didn't rely on the system either.

I've always been a system guy, even when I only had one RPG that I owned or played I have constantly been looking at another game. It has short-circuited way too many campaigns to count and has honestly caused me quite a bit of grief.

I'm not going to say I won't fall for this trap again, apparently, I'm a slow learner sometimes. But I'm going to try to remember that the trap is sitting there waiting for me.

4 comments:

Doctor Futurity said...

I feel the same way about Rats in the Walls....I've actually never run it for AS&SH but I have converted and run it in 5E, 13th Age and LL. It's a great one-shot.

Jason the Storyteller said...

In my experience the way to make it a regular thing is to make it a regular thing. Plan, announce and show up session after session after session to run, even if it's only for a few people. Gradually, with enough consistent effort, it will grow.

Cross Planes said...

@DF for some reason it had never occurred to me to run an OSR adventure I like with 5E. Its really strange.

@JtS excellent point.

Todd Brown said...

I don't know how much it compares to the swordsmen in the king essays, but that's the comparison that came to my mind for some reason.

Monster Monday: Ork City's Chupacabra for Shadowdark

Welcome to Ork City! In the middle of Ork City's Hatt Island is the Park, a wild and dangerous forest filled with all manner of nightmar...