Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Solo module (M1 - Blizzard Pass) conquered?


A couple weeks ago I posted that I was going to run some solo mods, mainly because my gaming had dried up with the abrupt closing of a local game store and the fallout/disconnect of the gaming group following that move.

Well a few things happened since then:
  • I solo'd thru M1- Blizzard Pass
  • I DM'd (sorta) M1 for my 5 y.o. son
  • I played in a session of JimLotFP's Labyrinth Lord game
  • I reconnected with my former gaming group...sorta
The last point is a "sorta" because the gaming group is now a mixed bag of some of the guys I gamed with before the store closing, and some of their other gaming friends from other groups (these guys game a lot!). At any rate, I've played in two sessions now, both different campaigns with mostly the same folks. These are weekly sessions, alternating between the two campaigns. One is currently level 3, and the other is level 11. So that's cool.

I also am especially hoping that JimLotFP will run some more online LL for us, as that was a complete blast.

In summary, I'm all smiles.


Anyway, back to the solo stuff...

So I looked thru the pile of solo/solitaire mods (D&D/AD&D/Tunnels&Trolls/etc) and decided it was gonna be M1 - Blizzard Pass:


I have three copies of this thing (don't ask why), but it kinda worked out nicely as a means to make the most out of some of these old and no-longer-revealable invisible ink text boxes. I also made heavy use of that very cool online project I mentioned last time, which is a collection of the revealed entries from all of the text boxes in M1.

So I printed out those text box entries, grabbed the module, and then gathered up this stuff...
  • My "lucky" dice cup and some precision edge dice (of course - well except for the d100...ha! that was just for fun with thieving skills), mostly gamescience BTW:


  • A photocopy of my favorite character sheet ever to fill in with the stats for the character I rolled up for this solo mod - they recommend the pre-gen guy, but I wanted to roll some dice early, so I created a Footpad named "Grep" (any old timer DOS... err... Unix users out there?) and played by the module character's gear rules/restrictions:


I neglected to jot down his (un)bonus to damage and opening doors from that whopping 7 strength...not sure why, I guess we'll blame it on being 2am. It never really mattered...ha!


First off, the screen is obviously useful for easier lookups on charts and lists:


But also for this guy! I mean the graphic alone of this crazy halfling running for his life is reason alone for propping this bad boy up for the session:


  • Some old Grenadier minis too, to add to the whole vibe. I mean, I am playing this darn thing alone in my kitchen, at about 2 am, so I need to make this as cool as I can, right?:

That action shot there is my thief Grep and his new buddies Roderick (the cleric) and Salamdros (an elf) duking it out with some lizardmen (reptile-men, I think they called them...meh). Here's a shot of the module, pretty close to that time-frame:


That's one tough predicament our heroes are in, eh? Did they put it to those dastardly lizardmen and prove victorious? Or in the end did module M1 get the best of Grep and his new friends?

"Tune in next time for the conclusion of Blizzard Pass: passed or failed."

A cliffhanger...ha!


Actually I will only provide some details of my run through the module in my next post. I really don't want to give too much away as far as decisions and such go. Sure, there are numerous paths which you could take and have a totally different story than I did, but you may not want to hear too much of the story in case you do decide to play through it yourself.

However, I will let you know the outcome of my solo session next time. Additionally and more importantly (at least to me) is that after I ran this myself, I DM'd it (sorta) for my 5 y.o. son Bobby. He's been all into minis and D&D related stuff as of late (too many past posts to reference - half of this blog is Bobby playing cool stuff with me), and his eyes lit up when he awoke the next morning to find all this stuff left out on the kitchen table from my late night session.

I ran him through it and took some fun pics of that event too. I also recorded some of it with the voice recorder function on my cell phone, so maybe if those turn out ok when copied here, you'll get a chance to hear some of the fun we had. I've yet to upload any audio to this blog, so that may not work out, but I hope it does so that you can experience Blizzard Pass as played by a very young future D&Der.

So until next time, what do you think...did Grep and his gang conquer Blizzard Pass or was it a TPK?

12 comments:

Restless said...

I think I shall have to name some hireling NPCs Grep, Awk, Sed, Lex and Yacc (brothers, of course), Tex, Troff... there's a whole range of great names available there.

yoyorobbo said...

Heck yeah! Names can be found in the funniest places, eh?

It's been a while since I used that command, but I just ran across a usage of it at work a couple weeks back, and thought "hhmnn...now that would be a good thief name."

So there it is: Grep the thief... err... footpad.

When I first started my job (fresh outta college - unix back then), I even made my own DOS version of grep, thus the old reference. I recall other freeware/shareware DOS versions too, but it was fun to dork around with back then.

(returning to normal level of geekliness)

Anonymous said...

Yes! I thought I was the only one who had an unhealthy love for the illo of that halfling running for his life. I reckon he probably made a tasty little snack for whatever beastie was back there chasing him down...

-Matthew

ze bulette said...

i'd forgotten these solo adventures even existed. good stuff. grep as a character name? made me think of the unix "crypt", command. and then there's "man cat". :)

Anonymous said...

That brings back many fond memories. Wow! I hope you realize this means I'm going to have to root through our attic again to search for that module, dontchya?

And for the record: one of my favourite characters from the earliest days was sudo the magic-user.

Unix loves D&D too!

yoyorobbo said...

@arcona:

Awesome pic, isn't it? Best part (IMO) is he just freakin' throws every bit of gear he has up in the air, and get's the F outta there!

Maybe a little bit of "ooo shiney" might come into play and the fiend chasing him might get hung up checking out all of his phat loot.

Great expression on the little guy's face too.

yoyorobbo said...

@le bulette:

"Ssh" is another good one for a thief.

And how about "Whoami" for possibly an illusionist?

Dorky, yet fun.

yoyorobbo said...

@greywulf:

Yes, "attic-grepping" sounds like a good idea.

I keep finding stuff everyday it seems in our basement...and we just moved into this house this past October...ha!

My wife asked me the other day, "You are *cleaning up* the den, right?"

Doh!

yoyorobbo said...

@greywulf:

Oh and almost forgot..."Sudo" the M-U sa-weet! Good one there, bud.

JB said...

Wow! Thank you so much for this! I've owned Blizzard Pass for many years (I love it and have run it as a regular adventure for others...even started converting it to D20 once upon a time).

But I have NEVER had the chance to finish the solo part myself! I either lost the pen, or my dog chewed it up, or I left the cap off at night and dried it out...I don't remember exactly. But it's been a HOLE in my SOUL for years!

Thanks for the link...finally, I can go kick some giant weasel ass! : )

yoyorobbo said...

@JB:

Yeah, sadly the "magic pen" burned a lot of us. I was very happy to have found the online Blizzard Pass project, and am even more happy to hear that I have helped spread the word. It really is a cool idea/project, and made my delve back thru M1 possible too. I hope you get a chance to roll back in there solo and finish it out.

Good luck and looking forward to your online game. Hope to join ya'll sometime in that venue.

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