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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Today I ran the first third of SfSS for four players using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box: My 9-year-old son , his friend (also 9), the friend's little brother (age 6), and their dad (age 40). Each played a character they made although these were essentially tweaked versions of the four pregens included in the game. The party's composition was:
 Miago - Elf cleric of Desna (my son's character)
 Bond - Dwarf rogue (other 9-year-old's PC)
 Yelnif - Human fighter (6-year-old's PC)
 Ezrin - Human mage (dad's PC)
Since we had about five hours to play today I decided to try out the adventure path's first adventure rather than running the BB's starter adventures since I find them a bit bland for my tastes plus I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some play time in with an adventure I'm planning on reviewing this year.
Session Events
Warning: This will contain some minor spoilers since there's no way to describe the session's events without revealing some of the details of the adventure.
The session started with an explanation of why the group was on a ship on their way to Sargava - I painted it as a land of jungles, ruins filled with treasure, and dinosaurs. I then described the group having dinner on one of the last night's of their voyage when suddenly things went black.
We then jumped right in to the adventure proper, with one of the characters (Bond) awakening to the sensation of being soaked to the bone and something painfully pinching his foot. He opened his eyes to discover he was on a beach with a hideous sea scorpion gnawing on his boot. The other group members slowly regained consciousness and fought off a trio of hungry crustaceans.
After the battle the group tried to make heads or tails of what had happened, finally spotting the wreckage of their ship on the rocks just off shore. Two of them gathered up other survivors while the other two swam out to the wreck, gathering what supplies they could and freeing a prisoner still shackled in the ship's brig. They also recovered the captain's log and maps, revealing that the captain had apparently suffered some sort of mental breakdown and took the ship off course, bringing it too close to the hazardous shoals and treacherous currents of The Smuggler's Shiv and apparently they had run aground.
After spending a tense night in the jungle, they decided to leave the other survivors in the makeshift camp they had made and set out across the island (using one of the captain's maps) to try and find help. Along the way they discovered that the captain and another passenger had apparently also landed on the island, heading south along a game trail. They also discovered the long abandoned burial site from some pirate treasure, thanks to a map supplied by one of the other castaways. Digging at the site turned up a pretty vicious trap which dropped Bond into a pool where two lacedon lay in wait. Luckily, Miego was able to save the dwarf by channeling his goddess's power, destroying the undead creatures. Further exploration turned up a rather sizable treasure trove, most of which the group had to rebury since they didn't want to lug around 50 pounds of loose coins with them across the island.
A few more days of exploration turned up what at first appeared to be a deserted lighthouse but they quickly discovered it was actually the camp of some bloodthirsty cannibals - the party managed to slay the cannibal's shiv dragon (a big monitor lizard) and a couple of the cannibals before fleeing in to the jungle before the rest of the camp could respond. Unfortunately this alerted the cannibals to the group's presence on the island, the result being that three of the other castaways (the NPCs back at the first camp) were captured and were destined for the stewpot. The PCs thus mounted an assault on the camp and narrowly defeated the cannibals, thanks in no small part to Ezrin's clever use of a burning hands along with a lightning bolt spell from a scroll to burn the cannibal's witch leader to a crisp.
My Commentary
Overall I was very pleased with the way the session ran. The entire group (kids and adult alike) had a really good time although it was clear that the 6-year-old wasn't terribly excited to play most of the time, despite the fact that he was a real nature with talking in the first person (even acting out his actions, including facial expressions) and really seemed to like the problem solving bits of the game.
The two 9-year-olds, OTOH, were really excited to play and had a great time from start to finish. Interestingly the two of them played as the stereotypical "chaotic greedy" types so commonly seen in D&D games. At the same time they really seemed intent on playing their characters and spent a lot of time talking in character.
The dad really enjoyed the game and did a great job backing off and letting the kids try to solve the problems and formulate plans before offering his advice. This worked even better due to our choice of characters - Ezrin is a 45-year-old late bloomer who clearly is supposed to be much more mature than the others around him.
In terms of the game's rules, everyone was brand new to the ruleset (my son received the box set under the Christmas tree), but picked up the rules very quickly - they got the hang of attacking and various actions. I did simplify some bits (e.g., we didn't do a lot of tactical movement or worry a lot about strict grid movement) since I was more interested in the story and them playing their characters than focusing on tactical combat. The streamlined rules of the BB are very nice and the character sheets really help with explaining what to roll and when.
What about the adventure? Overall I really like the adventure, even though I can't bear the idea of running it in the sandbox style in which it's written - many of the island's exploration encounters and "side missions" are very CRPG in design (e.g., one of the NPCs wants you to fetch some berries for her; another one wants you to capture an infant dinosaur for her, etc) and don't add anything to the story but rather just ruin the pacing IMO. Similarly, playing the adventure as a hex-crawl style exploration could easily lead to hours of pointless wandering which once again messes with dramatic pacing. This is made even worse when you're dealing with young kids who aren't likely to be interested in mapping the island or spending a lot of time having scenery described to them.
Thus I ran the adventure as a series of scenes, similar to the way an episode of Lost or a movie might be shot: here's them on the beach with the sea scorpions. Move on to them on the wreckage. Cut to the others setting up camp and the guy with the map. Cut to the discovery of the prisoner. Cut to the gathering of the group and the examination of the captain's log. Cut to the next day and the decision to set out across the island. Cut to the discovery of the hill. And so on. I find this keeps things moving (we finished the first third of the adventure in less than 5 hours of actual play time) and finished on a bit of a cliffhanger after the defeat of the the cannibals. The result was something that was easier to GM (since I wasn't having to constantly consult the adventure for every little detail), more enjoyable for everyone, and much easier to dramatically pace.
Was it a railroad? Yes and no. I say "yes" because ultimately I knew where they were going to end up and I knew what events I needed/wanted to happen. I say "no" because I never pushed them in any direction - I had several very key forking points where the decisions they made determined what came next (e.g., they headed towards the cannibals' village by choosing to go one way - they could have just as easily ended up somewhere else had they gone the other way). Ultimately I think with younger kids adventures do need a degree of linearity to them though to deliver an identifiable story that's structured enough for them to make sense of.
What's next? Hopefully we'll get to play again later this month, during which I hope to finish up the next third of the adventure. I'm not sure if the 6-year-old will play again (he's not that into games and I'm just not sure he's going to want to play) which would be a shame since the game really is ideally set-up for the four core character classes but we'll manage - perhaps we can even recruit another one of my son's classmates to join.
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DMSamuel
United States
Ithaca
New York
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MJ Harnish wrote: and fought off a trio of hungry crustaceans.
That was real nice of teh Harnish to put Hida Mann into the story. I'll bet Crabby-boy will be real proud!
Great Report!
I'm curious to hear if the 6 yo will play next time. I know it may have seemed like he wasn't as into it as the others, or isn't much into games in general, but he may have enjoyed it more than he let on. I hope he continues to play - it is amazing what kids an come up with when they really let their imaginations come out to solve problems.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Thanks. When I say "didn't seem very interested" I'm referring to him saying things like "I'm bored. I want to watch TV!" and "Are we done yet?"
 It was an interesting dichotomy because by far he was the most actively engaged in terms of imagination at times in the game; in contrast his long-term commitment was almost zero. That's not really surprising though and the fact is we included him simply because everyone else was playing and didn't want to leave him out (although I think he would have been happier playing Wii all day). In addition the whiff factor of D20 was not something he could emotionally handle very well - even a single miss was a massive negative event. The same can't be said of the 9-year-olds.
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Old & Chaotic Evil Bob
United States
North Attleboro
Massachusetts
do you want to be my new host
I am EVIL, do not try to change my alignment
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Great Report
I am enjoying this adventure at a local game store with Dave as the GM
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Kevin Conway
United States
Boonville
Indiana
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Hey, thanks for the session report. Coincidentally, I've been planning this exact same adventure to run my family through using the Beginner's Box. I'll have my lovely wife and two sons, ages 12 and 7, as the adventurers. I'll definitely be borrowing the "scene" idea, that's good stuff there for these ages.
I'd love to hear of your continuing experiences in the campaign!
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Barad The Dwarf
Belgium
De Haan
Got some sanity left?
Come over to the RPGG Tavern, I buy you a drink.
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Great session report, it's a very nice one to run. Our group is still trying to get off the island. You guys run that quick. At the moment each time we face the cannibals we run, those guys are vicious.
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Mark Buetow
United States
Du Quoin
Illinois
Best game company ever?
GMT Games, of course!
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Barad_the_dwarf wrote: Great session report, it's a very nice one to run. Our group is still trying to get off the island. You guys run that quick. At the moment each time we face the cannibals we run, those guys are vicious.
You need to get them to find Pezock, Tengu Slayer of Cannibals!
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Rockhopper01 wrote: Hey, thanks for the session report. Coincidentally, I've been planning this exact same adventure to run my family through using the Beginner's Box. I'll have my lovely wife and two sons, ages 12 and 7, as the adventurers. I'll definitely be borrowing the "scene" idea, that's good stuff there for these ages.
I'd love to hear of your continuing experiences in the campaign!
Thanks. Scene-based adventures are where it's at IMHO. They let you pace things to create dramatic tension and avoid a lot of wandering around in the wilderness doing nothing but drawing maps and fighting pointless random encounters.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Barad_the_dwarf wrote: Great session report, it's a very nice one to run. Our group is still trying to get off the island. You guys run that quick. At the moment each time we face the cannibals we run, those guys are vicious.
Much of it has to do with my use of scenes - we did not hex crawl at all and I dumped most of the NPC side missions which I find pointless except for collecting XP. The cannibals are tough - without spoiling too much, there's a lot of them and they aren't pushovers. The group found a scroll with lighntning bolt (I swapped out a Raise Dead scroll for it), which helped since they used it to essentially blow up the witch.
We're already trying to put together a one Sunday per month plan - my initial plan is to drop the 6-year-old of he's not into it (it's too much work and a drag if every 15 minutes he wants to quit) and just go with 3 which better suits my tastes anyways.
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Posted Sun Jan 1, 2012 9:13 pm
