18 Players At The Table!!!



Thinking about buying this table for our weekly game : )



We had a good gaming session yesterday. Noone died, but one of the thieves lost a hand (insert appropriately evil laugh here). And get this, we had 18 players at the table! Yeah I wrote that right, 18 freakin players. I was worried we would lose some from last session because there was 12 at the table. Nope, now we're at 18! Blew my mind. Well, actually it doesn't break out record of 22 players a few years ago. And truthfully this is the whole reason we split groups.

So, as chaotically crazy as the the fun was, we decided to split into two weekly sessions. We'll now meet on Tuesday with a group of 8 and Thursday with a group of 10. Still really large groups, but finding time for one more day right now has been really tough for me. I did offer to allow someone to step up and DM a third game, using my room to game while I worked at my desk. Two of the more experienced gamers were willing, but noone wanted to leave the other groups to to go to their games. I'm limiting sessions to one per week per player. Otherwise we would have 18 in every session we ran. Crazy, huh? But crazy in a good way.

And I've been getting my horror on lately. Reading through the 3.5 book Heroes of Horror to spice up the campaign a bit. And this is really significant for me. After my last post about not being able to read any PF books I took a hard look at my gaming from a purely practical standpoint. I of course felt like running back into the arms of 1e and play with my toys by myself. But I reconsidered. Truth is I haven't really given PF a fair shake. My players love the system right now and the newbies are just starting to get into it. They do love the game, and I should really stick to my word this year and play PF like I promised.

So I was looking through my old 3.5 stuff, which I used to like reading at times (the 3.0 Deities and DemiGods was pretty good) and came across Heroes of Horror. I've been reading lots of horror and dark fantasy fiction lately. Currently the Necronomicon collection of the best of Lovecraft's fiction:

Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey:

About a young kid who is apprenticed to a scholarly monster hunter. And Revenge of the Witch in The Last Apprentice series:

About another young apprentice who is learning to protect his community from monsters, boggarts, spirits, and other more sinister forces that plague the people of the time.

All of these books are giving me great campaign ideas, that I'm really excited about. Of course I'm too busy whining about the fact that noone wants to play 1e with me. Then I picked up Heroes of Horror. And man, I am really enjoying reading it. Some of the campaign creepiness that it suggests, truly wicked adventure hooks, and scary adventure elements have got me more scared than any of the above books, believe it or not. I was reading it last night, and literally had to put it down because a section on story pacing and details in horror kind of weirded me out. All me to quote:

"It's gruesome, and perhaps even a bit disturbing, to describe the dismembered bodies of a family scattered across the floor when the PCs investigate a house. consider instead the benefits of a step by step revelation. Initially the PCs see only an empty living room, barely lit by their torches. They hear only the squeak of hinges and the creak of floorboards. The room appears empty, but successful Spot and Search checks reveal scrapes on the floor and impressions in the dust that suggest the furniture was pushed around recently, then moved roughly back into place. A faint scent, vaguely fruity, hangs in the air, noticeable only as the PCs move away from the front door. T cupboards are fully stocked. Dishes stand stacked beside the stove, in which the fire has gone cold and a bit of ef lies seared to charcoal. As the PCs approach the stairs, the most keen-eared among them (those who make Listen checks) detect the faintest of dripping water.

The stairs creak as the characters climb them, making stealth difficult. Near the top of the stairs, something black scuttles out of the shadows and races across the floor! No, it's just a rat . . . a rat with something in its mouth, something that smears a wet trail across the wooden slats of the second story floor. A strange, flickering light, like that of guttering candles, leaks out into the hall from a door only slightly ajar. The fruitlike scent is stronger here, but it's almost lost amid a much stronger miasma, something coppery and acrid and too familiar anyone who has ever been in battle.

If the PCs carefully push the door open, they find that unlike the one downstairs it doesn't make any sound at all. Examinations show that the hinges have been greased with some sort of rendered fat. Inside the room, on every horizontal surface, jack-o-lanterns glow, lit from within by long-burning candles. In every carved eye socket sits a human eyeball. Every carved mouth displays a macabre grin formed of human teeth. And there, lying on the floor . . ."

And that's just freaking cool.

And of course it couldn't come at a better time of the year, eh? I've been getting into horror more and more lately anyway, but it's all sort of come together in a perfect storm of terror for me. Much to the bane of my players. We are going through my adapted Hackmaster version of B1 and if there's anything that HM does well is it gore. The foyer after the long alcove with the magic mouths is a scene right out of a horror movie and let's just say I used it to full effect.

So, long story short. I'm having fun. Fun with Pathfinder. And fun with 18 eager players at the table. We left the last session with three trash trolls bounding up the towards them. And they were screaming foul that we ended on a such a cliff hanger. But as they gathered their stuff and left they were busily planning their strategy for next time all the way down the hall and out of the building. Good stuff. Well, if you don;t hear from before Monday have a great Halloween and fantastic gaming in truly horrific style.