Refactoring My Brain

Preparations The past two sessions had low XP returns because I had not completely cleared out the goblin lair -- partly because I was playing cautiously to avoid character deaths, partly because I did some limited restocking, and partly because I was trying to keep sessions short and manageable so as to not have too large a downtime pass in-world between adventures (due to 1:1 timekeeping). At any rate, the low XP return had me frustrated and disappointed, so I was intent on taking out the goblin lair for good this time, so I could get the treasure and get back to exploration.  As a result, I kinda just let this session go on for a while. Normally my sessions last anywhere from a few days to a week and a half, depending on how often I'm able to sit down and play. But this one lasted over a month, and there was at least one period where I set the session down for a few weeks before coming back to it. In-game the adventure only lasted 3 days ( 4/25 to 4/27) but IRL, it ran from 4/2...

 Preparation A number of weeks had passed since the previous delve. This adventure begins on 4/13 and lasts 3 days in-game (more than that out of game, as usual). Incidentally, this timekeeping method has been working well-enough for me so far. I synch the game-world time and real-world time on the first day of a new adventure, then take however long the adventure takes (usually more real world days than game world days). But I try to keep the adventure to a fairly discrete unit -- short and limited in scope -- and I return to town when its completed. Then, before the next adventure (or perhaps on the first day of it if I'm lazy) I determine and adjudicate the character's downtime actions, to bring them up to the new present. I realize this isn't quite the approved brosr way to do things, since I'm still playing in the past, rather than into the future, but it's still a departure from conventional pause-time. My eventual goal is to get through an entire adventure ...

Preparations My notes tell me that, although I began playing this session on 3/18 (in-game and IRL) I didn't actually begin the delve proper until 3/23, and finished on 3/25. This is another delve in the dungeon under the mountain shrine. The party's objective is to explore beyond room #6, where Timbo had died to the crab spider last year. On Day 1 (3/18) the weather is warm and clear. The wilderness random encounter came up as a favorable terrain encounter. Normally, these are skipped if the party is following the same route as they have before. However, I decided that since this was their first time returning to their original campsite after the Attercops had been eliminated, they would probably scout around the area and ensure things looked clear. This would provide the justification for them to discover the favorable terrain, which was given as "safe haven". The party has discovered a nearby rocky ledge which is both defensible and well-hidden. While camping here...

This session was played in mid-March. Prior to session 5, I had rolled a random encounter for the Monsterous Attercop Lair I had discovered in session 4, and discovered that it had "encountered" ( been encountered by? ) a group of a few Bandits. Actually I rolled "Brigands" but when I when went to play out a quick battle, I misremembered what I had rolled, and looked up the stats for Bandits. At any rate, I made a few quick rolls to determine that the Bandits were easily overwhelmed. After  session 5, I determined that the Halfling Meet encountered on the way home was going to confront the Attercops, so I decided to play out this battle in lieu of a party adventure. The first thing I did was to roll a recon roll for the halflings, to see what kind of intel they would gather on the Attercops. From the PC party, they would have only learned of the presence of webbing, and might have expected giant spiders. The ACKS intel roll wasn't really designed for forces thi...

I began play on 3/3/24, IRL and in-game. 2 days pass in-game, but as usual it takes me longer to play that that out-of-game. Day 1 (3/3/24) A new character has joined the party: Zephira , a Priestess (STR:13, INT:5, WIL:15, DEX:12, CON:12, CHA:14, "Medician" template). She fills my roster back out to 6 characters, and provides some healing capability after the loss of the BFRPG Dwarven Cleric, Grimace. I figured since last session I learned about ACKS's damage model, it was time to begin learning about ACKS's healing model. With the ACKS market limitations, there are limited quantities of healing herbs available in this market in any given month, but adding a new PC who already has healing herbs in their starting template... well, that's one way to circumvent the market limitations. The party travels to the shrine without an encounter. They avoid the Attercops ( aka Ettercaps ) lairing in their previous campsite, and spend the night at an alternate campsite witho...

Dates below are in-game time, that probably synch-up (more-or-less) with the first day on which I began playing, but I often take more IRL time to play sessions than the amount of in-game time that passes. Nevertheless, I am still focusing on keeping my sessions relatively short, and ending them back in town.  2/23/'24 Even though Edelweiss took a week to recover from losing a finger in the last session, I was still able to fit a second delve into the month of February. During downtime, Chadonius looks to purchase some better armor, but since Sapperton is a class VI market (the poorest), it will have to be imported. A set of chain mail will arrive in 10 weeks (May 3rd). Since Radnor has the Healing proficiency, he buys some herbs. However, the Horsetail herb will also need to be imported, and will arrive in 11 days (Mar. 5th). This is an interesting result of using 1:1 time in combination with ACKS' market scarcity rules -- not everything is immediately available, or available ...

This would turn out to be a short delve, to get back into the swing of things, as I fumble my way through ACKS for the first time. The session occurred over a few days, roughly in mid-February , but I can't be more specific. The first new ACKS rule that I engaged with was the optional rule for abstracted monthly living expenses -- each character is required to spend a month's worth of wages (25 gp at level 1) for their downtime. (I'm ignoring the fact that I was away from adventuring for more than 1 month). This left me relatively poor, and meant the PC's would need to adventure again to fill their money purses. On the way to the shrine, the party overtakes a pilgrimage, consisting of 12 pilgrims, 4 crusaders, and an explorer. At first, they are a bit stand-offish, but Chadonius speaks with them and warns them that the shrine has been corrupted and overrun with chaotic monsters. They want no part of that, so he convinces them to redirect to Sapperton, where the shrine...

Timekeeping After the death of my Halfling Thief Timbo, I wasn't sure if I should continue the delve, or end it and go back to town. I kinda just stopped playing for a while (pause-time style) and the time eventually stretched on into a traditional Christmas Hiatus (though I did play a few other wargames over that time). In the meantime, the ACKS II playtest drafts had also come out and I was starting to look at them more closely. As the time ticked by, through January without me playing, I kept thinking about the concept of 1:1 downtime. I hadn't used it before (outside of the one month Orc Lords event a year earlier), and I hadn't yet committed to using it in this game... but could I?  If I were to start up again, was I really going to pick up where I had left off in the fall, having just exited the dungeon with a dead party member? What would the alternative look like? It would mean handwaving my character's return to town, and it would mean that my characters were ...

Side Note : Although I ended the last report at the point where my characters were in jail overnight, which makes it look like these are two discrete sessions, this obscures the messy reality that I haven't been playing complete self-contained sessions. Instead, I might be rolling a few times on various tables or oracles, interpreting and recording the results, maybe looking up a few rules or asking some follow-up questions to the GME, then stepping away for the day, and possibly not returning for a few days. Thus it happened that these first two "sessions" probably took place over the course of a month two, although they covered 6 days in-game. Far from being able to play "into the future" as the 1:1-time crowd does, instead, real-world time keeps running away from me faster than I can find time play (I, as a player, am in "time jail"). I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that if I want to improve. Shorter more manageable sessions should h...