100th Post Actual Play: Expedition to Warlock Tower!

As most of my readership will know, Prince of Nothing recently wrapped up the No Artpunk dungeon contest - open to submissions over the summer, a select few will be published in a PWYW format, any profit from which, per the original announcement, is destined for the Autism Research Institute. I like making dungeons - so I wrote one up using the Rules Cyclopedia - and, as a celebration of this blog reaching 100 posts - this post being the hundredth - here presented is an actual play recording of me running a handful of foolish gracious buddies through it!

The video can be found on the Clerics Wear Ringmail YouTube channel under a new playlist, Basic Line Actual Play, created against my own better judgement to showcase exactly how unqualified I am to be rating other people's actual play recordings, or if you prefer - you can watch it in an embed below:

How did it go, CWR? All things considered, I think I did OK. Re-watching the video to edit (I cut out the chaff and breaks to focus on the adventure - and I cut out a few parts where my elder toddler decided to take the stage) I did a few things well and a few things wrong.

On the one hand, The VTT in use, Astral Tabletop, I didn't (and still don't) have a professional grasp of - which led to a bit of a hiccup starting up. I was mediocre about STRICT TIME RECORDS, guesstimating what the group  was doing rather than tabulating movement and actions. I did not make any special point to enforce encumbrance - though the players might have been tracking it in my defense.

...but on the other, I was decent about remembering the sequence of the combat round (even morale and flight!) I was rolling for random encounters and was tracking light sources independently. A couple of the players afterwards told me they'd come back if I ran again - and that's worth something, isn't it?

So I think it's fair to say that I do have a bit of a way to go before I try to review myself: but in any case, this being the first time I've gotten to run a game in right around three years, I was able to knock the rust off and I learned a lot about procedure - especially with a virtual tabletop - to keep the game moving the same way I was accustomed to moving it on a physical tabletop. So I've got a couple tricks in my sleeve to try next time - a couple better practices to implement based on learning the tools and the environment - and until the next one loads, delve on, readers!