Diary of a Gamer: The Best Laid Plans

My group had aspirations on finishing this Hackmaster Basic Game, but as I said in my last post, those went awry. One of my very good friends once said this of an unfortunate situation, "It was like a train wreck... you could see it coming, but you just couldn't stop it." And so it was with this game.

For weeks the game has been... off? I think that is the only way I could put it. The reason I haven't been updating my 'Diary of a Gamer' section is because for a few weeks there we just weren't playing. We all got together, we had our books and dice out, but the game just never started. Instead we would just sit around all night and talk about a variety of things.

That was the first sign that the game was in trouble. If the game takes a while to start it is usually because the group and/or the GM isn't that interested. In our case maybe it was both but for whatever reason the game just never started. That happened 2 or 3 times, but it wasn't as noticeable as it might have been because of the group camping trip, and problems with attendance for some players. Yet going into this week's game there was this sense that the game could end at any minute.

We were exploring a slavers dungeon and we were short handed. Bryan was at a work training event so that left only Christian, James, and myself as players. We were holding our own until we came into a chamber with a river running through it. There we were attacked by a giant crab. The crab killed MacDougal (James' character), annihilated Billy Mays (Christian's character), and nearly killed Gorman as well. Only my trusty battle axe and a well timed critical saved me from the same gruesome fate as my comrades.

In the aftermath of the fight I was unsure what the group's intentions were. I thought that was the end of the campaign right there, I was the only one left alive and not by much. But Christian and James gutted it out and rolled up new characters.




Alas, those characters too were not long for this world. The very next encounter was against the head slaver and three of his cronies. We battled hard but with two level 1 characters and a severely wounded level 3 character we really had no chance. They cut as down with minimal losses and this time, the campaign really was over.

And that friends, is the tale of the doom of our Hackmaster Basic campaign. It started strong, with a great deal of promise, but petered out over the course of the last few months. Perhaps this campaign stands as a cautionary tale of the demands of GMing, as the person who ran it does not typically run games. Perhaps it is a sign that my group simply doesn't embrace HM as a rules system. I truly hope that is not the case. I plan on running my full Caliburn campaign with the Advanced Hackmaster rules which will be released next year. That game will probably follow the Pathfinder game we are about to embark on.

As to Pathfinder I do have some apprehension regarding the rules, but only time will tell. I'll be continuing my Diary into the Pathfinder game so instead of hearing about Gorman the Dwarven Fighter you'll be hearing about Owen the Half-Elf Druid. Christian, who is running the Pathfinder game, has proven in the past to be a very gifted GM so I am looking forward to the game despite some skepticism regarding the rules.

I'll miss HMB though...