Posted on 2024-09-19
Milyagon Adventures In Just Quest
Library Game Day
2024-09-14
I played with my grandson. He played a level 1 Elven archer named MoSahj, Mos for short, with traits, Archer and Swords. So a trained elven fighter.
I played Caper as a DM PC, Mos's sidekick, a level 2 halfling bard.
Mos befriended a fox, a meerkat, and a porcupine who turned out to be quite deadly shooting quills.
We crossed the bridge into Wilken Woods after fighting the troll under the bridge.
I put out a new map. This was the ultimate sandbox. My grandson drew the map. I filled in the details. I picked the porcupine and the meerkat token and the troll under the bridge. My grandson then picked all the other tokens, the fox and the bad guys who were all trolls or skeletons. My grandson placed tokens on the map. We walked around and met animals and fought bad guys. My grandson set up the final battle and the porcupine delivered the final blow to the big bad, the Skeleton King.
We also fought a Troll King who I named JRR. (JRR Troll King)
I have been running cozy to cozyish adventures but my grandson wasn't having that. He was an elven archer with a sword and he was there to fight.
So I got to test Just Quest combat more intensively than I have in the past and I was happy with it. I definitely leans toward the PCs, which is what I want.
Still, this is OSR and if you're playing a level 1 character with 6 hit points and you get into a fight with a goblin if the goblin rolls good and you roll bad you can end up with 0 hit points in a very few (or even one) round of combat.
When I'm playing with kids 0 hit points is unconscious.
When I'm playing with more experienced players 0 hit points is dead unless medical aid is rendered immediately after combat. So TPKs are possible.
To play with the true OSR feel 0 hit points is dead and you roll a new character. In Just Quest this takes less then five minutes so before you know it you're back in the game.
I enjoy playing with just the one PC and the DM. I used to play that way with Vivian when we were hosting If You Play You Win on Inspired Unrealty open game chat. You know how it is. Sometimes nobody else show up.
Vivian's character, Ari, had a pet mountain lion named Tude so she would roll for Ari and Tude and I would roll for my DM PC, Caper, and all the NPCs and bad guys. This was back in the really cozy days so there weren't many bad guys. (But there was still danger!)
Or you can pick up NPCs along the way like we did this game. Mos had to roll against charisma on each of the animals and he had three good rolls. Otherwise they would have run off.
I took photos of the map and my sign and I will also scan MoSahj's character sheet. This is the first time that I laid one map over another to visit unexplored territory and I liked how that worked.
Next month, in October, I will be out of town playing music at the King Biscuit Blues Festival so I will miss. But, I'll be back. I don't expect to get a game every month but so far I'm two out of two.
Thanks to the NEA Gamers Guild and the Jonesboro Public Library for maiking Library Game Day possible. If you like board games that is the primary focus of game day and they do have play to wins every month.