I've really loved reading everyone's progress updates on their games, and I've found them to be a great source of discussion for practical, at the table questions, so I'm gonna hop on that train haha---for anyone interested in running Session -1, mysteries, premade content in a proactive game, old school games, or goofy player hijinks, this might be useful. Spoilers for the module! I've been out of the country for the last few weeks (which is why I haven't been in the lab for a bit) but right before I left, I tried out Scarlet Heroes, an OSR game intended for a single player and GM, with room for more. I've wanted to try it out for awhile, both to try a smaller game and to dip my toes a bit deeper in the OSR pool, so I gave it a shot! I might talk about the game itself more some other time---I found it interesting and kind of quirky---but that's for another time. I grabbed two players and an old module Matt Colville talks about a lot: Against the Cult of the Reptile God (GREAT name). Scarlet Heroes is designed to be compatible with all AD&D content for first and second edition, and does some little tricks to convert them and iron out the weird wrinkles of the systems, so it was very easy to drag and drop into this game. I felt a bit iffy about the Scarlet Heroes setting, and I wanted to get more practice using our system for adapting content into a proactive game that we developed for our next book, with a few tweaks for playing with only two people, so I went with the AD&D module. We had our Session -1 (collaborative worldbuilding), 0 (making characters and goals), and a little bit of play to start all in one session, which went FAST with such a small group. I made this sheet (which already has the edits the whole group made on it---everything on the first page is without any edits, and most stuff under the Session -1 heading was added to by all three of us): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-uUIrkFDMHABFM1Ba5dfjlY27RTt_8G9_EZzMkU6sOk/edit?usp=sharing

I am very much looking forward to reading the book when it comes out on Kindle next month! I have watched Ginny Di's video about your book, though, and I was wondering if the book is going to address what I have come to recognize as "Passenger Royalty Syndrome" - i.e. the players want to be passengers / reactive than being pro-active, don't want to name any goals, don't want to really *do* anything because they are too used to being fed a story or even railroaded around a story.

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I posted about running the Pine Hollow One-Shot. Figured I'd report back on how it went (Spoilers: it's so good they're insisting this turn into a full campaign) When the reminisce of the Dancing Dragon Circus rolled into Pine Hollow hoping to stumble up on the treasure, the last thing they expected was the turf war between local factions. After herassing the BMTC, the group rescued one of the Town Council members from abduction. One of the players had previous relations with this council member (a retired circus acrobat) and through that they got the job to scoop up the treasure before the other factions could. Delving into the mines, they tried (and failed) to sneak past Those Left Behind and were forced to put them down. They found the treasure and were ambushed by both leaders of the Chosen and BMTC. They were able to side with the Chosen for long enough to defeat the BMTC, but made too tempting of a target and the cultists turned on the circus troupe. After many rogue sneak attacks, fighter's archer shots, and a few Nat 20 death saving throws, the group was able to squeak out a victory. Now with a Bag of Holding loaded with gold, the circus troupe are getting ready to put on their biggest show ever. (If you want more details let me know)

So, I'm starting my first camping with my family (all of them fucking nerds) and it went great! Two players, Samathiel and Serbal, a woods elf sorcerer and a drown druid. Started out in a tavern (learned how boring it is and won't do it again) then the bartender look at how poor and pathetic the look so he send them in a simple paid mission to visit a granny, what the players don't know is that this man is secretly being threaten by a group of goblins to send more weak adventurers and steal their stuff. The trheath was to burn down the house of the granny if he didn't make it. Deep into the forest the goblins capture them and they see themselves obligated to fight in a coliseum against the goblin champion, Nestor, who is actually a dwarf orc, but the players, the goblins and even Nestor himself thinks that he is just a big goblin (I gave subtle cues to see if they realize he was an orc, but they didn't). Upon a fireball and a couple melle hits, Nestor fall dead to the floor, which was pretty disappointed to me. The goblins, mad as hell after Nestor's death, jump into the coliseum ready to tear off the players life's, but Serbal turned into a giant mole and take them both into safety underground. After a short rest, they find the burned down house of the granny, and she was pissed off, taking them both into a basement where she handed them an arcane bomb. This granny was an old magician who had enough of the goblins, but was too old to take care of them by herself so she trusted the two adventures to do it for her (I didnt really need to give them another reason to do it as they where also pissed off by the goblins). It started a stealth mission where they needed to infiltrate into an old dwarf temple and throw the bomb into the main hall without getting caught. Long story short, they made it, and escaped with Serbal turned into a house and Samathiel raiding him. Find the granny again, and she offer them one of her surviving magical items, but they needed to win a head/tails game or receive permanent -d4 hp (part of the NPC backstory). They win "The halfling belt" (made up item) that aumented their CHA +1 and give them the ability to re-roll any dice once per short rest.

https://youtu.be/Hg9BWF7KYqE?si=hSY00HhcOV_6yiAZ I'm definitely going to apply this into the next session. It's just about getting more movement in battles through a special mechanic in each battle, and I Absolutely love it.