z20/Omri: Death of Myrksog

After a 3 month break, S. and I got in another Omri session today. Omri and party managed to find and slay Myrksog the bugbear; details appended to the "Myrksog" section of The Amazing Escapades of Omri Buckle & Co.


We played using z20, which is what I quietly renamed mini20 to earlier this week (thus effectively reviving that old obsession). I had drawn up some crude character sheets a couple weeks ago. They worked well, though I need more room for gear and maybe less room for tracking spell effects. I still haven't found the best way to track spell effects--how much the GM should track and how much the player should be responsible for, and how to note it in either case.

We played a little more than 2 hours, which is quite a bit longer than our normal goal of 1 hour, but it seemed to move along pretty well.

As usual, I forgot a few details here and there--such as the miss chance for shadowy light, especially when characters without lowlight vision moved away from the torch-lit area. But that's pretty minor.

I used poker chips to track hit points and spell points and that worked nicely.

z20 grapple rules worked well--there was a significant amount of grappling happening, all without GM pain! S. also used the "Heroic Exertion" rule that I came up with just a day or two ago in order to turn a failure into a success on the last blow against Myrksog. This made for a much better story (rather than trying to chase Myrksog down into some tunnel, and maybe even seeing him get away). The exertion also left me with a karma point, which I already have plans for. (Bwahhahahaha! <--Evil GM laugh.)

A couple z20 alpha test notes for myself: While I really like being able to choose from the whole spell list, it does means spellcasters can do almost anything. I think more specialist spells would be a good way to encourage focus/customization. Imposing limits on spell selection would mean more rules (so I'd rather not do it), but I may still give it some thought. The number of spells cast felt about right though.

There were some other d20 features lost in the adaptation. For instance, without feats, Jimmy doesn't have Rapid Reload anymore and now takes a turn to reload his crossbow. Also, Solomon Jack isn't very "bardy" in terms of game mechanics. Again, not sure what I want to do about that.

Not having to track squares and attacks-of-opportunity was nice. Overall, z20 flows pretty well, though it still takes a pretty hefty amount of time just adding up various modifiers. (Admittedly, there were 9 combatants involved.) I don't think I'll make any changes on any of those until after a few more game sessions.

Overall, a great evening--fun story and good feelings for the z20 game system. Maybe soon I'll be able to successfully end this 2 year obsession with streamlining d20!