Holgard Campaign Reports & More

 I have been running an AD&D 1e game since March 2021. I have the initial session reports on the Dragonsfoot forums but am going to be transferring them here. I stopped writing reports some time in, but will provide very brief summaries of the ones I didn't write up.

We played 21 sessions (over about 8 months) before I called a hiatus to it (IIRC the last session was in November 2021). This was due to a combination of things, not least being a flaw in my approach and life balance. My players were disappointed when I ended the sessions - and I'm disappointed I let them down.

Now, after having a break, and with the current intensity and energy the Brosr guys are giving off on Twitter, I can't NOT run a game. But also, with guys like Bdubs, Jeffro, Macho Mandalf, Rick Stumps, and more providing session reports AND guidance for how to achieve this success using the methods in the 1e DMG, I also see where I was burning myself out and going astray. More concretely it was around how much time I spent doing superfluous things versus useful things for prep, and how much/how little I actually had to do to facilitate a good gaming experience (an anecdote - once, I knew the PCs were going to go to a dungeon before the fact (what a rare gift!) but due to work/life I didn't get a good map of it in time and was rushing with the random generator in the book and stray ideas in my head. Players ended up saying it was a cool dungeon!)

The key principles for a Brosr game are:

• 1:1 Timekeeping
• RAW (I use AD&D 1e)
  
• Patrons
• Large scale battles (more precisely, factions of conflicting alignments with Chainmail armies being in proximity to each other)
• Total Player Autonomy
• Emphasis on random tables and improvisation - for a good discussion on how to get good mileage out of the MM and DMG random tables, see this post which ties in concepts from Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign and AD&D1e. 
• Fudge free dice

The blogs I linked to above discuss these concepts in sufficient detail that I needn't repeat it here, particularly Bdubs'.

Some areas I wish to improve in/change with 'reinstating' the campaign:

• Using the Psionics rules - I never banned them, but never made an effort to implement them. That is changing - every NPC I roll up gets checked for psionic ability now.
• Avoiding hyper-detail - I fanatically organise, so compartmentalizing and breaking everything down takes a lot of my prep time. This isn't around town structure or NPCs, which I just improvise, but more around map scaling, dimensions and other mechanical stuff. On this note, I've realised that breaking down to hyper detailed hexes isn't that essential - some structure is good for travel times, getting lost, etc. But for finding things IN a hex, I feel it would work best to abstract that away with dice rolls rather than precisely place things ahead of time.
  
• Using Chainmail for mass combat - the AD&D rules support mass combat quite well (being an extension of Chainmail anyway), but Chainmail is a step back in terms of detail/complexity (no weapons vs AC, no HP, etc.) So it makes it easier to adjudicate mass combat (which, IMC so far have happened off-screen - though I may use AD&D rules where factions have chosen specific equipment to have an advantage)
• Being more generous with info for players - it is easy to hoard info as a DM and be skeptical of how much the players should know. In my experience, they should actually know more than they do/the price of certain information shouldn't be so high. (This is not to say they should get a free lunch, but to realise that the way DM views the campaign his very different due to his unique position).
• Rules Minutia
• Footmans weapons are 2h and Horsemans are 1h regardless of weapon size - this just makes sense and gives weapons like the hammer a bit more utility.
• The amount of attacks different shield sizes are effective against
• The impact of having a large shield vs small one
• Defining the impact of encumbrance categories as mentioned in the PHB (Heavily Loaded, Encumbered etc.)
• Item saving throws for projectiles (check this more regularly)
  

On top of this, I wish to modify the report structure to incorporate more of my thoughts while DMing, rulings I made, advice etc. Where it is compromising knowledge that players ought not to know, I will see if I can hide it with editing tools.

The early reports start a bit slow and 'typical' but I do assure you that, particularly around the time the players second set of characters are introduced, the reports get much more entertaining and unhinged.