The Tuesday Knights Redux!

Left to right: Gregor (half-orc druid) with Billy The Badger; Feng Ying (gnome monk); Red (human ranger); and Clodius (human fighter) with Faith the Donkey.

With two sessions of my Tekralh campaign under our belts, it's time to meet The Tuesday Knights' characters 'officially' and see where we can go from here.

Gregor: played by Pete, a tatooed half-orc druid with a true neutral outlook on life. Abandoned as an infant with a human tribe and raised as one of their own. He is the group's map maker (I don't allow the player's squared paper, so Pete is mapping 'by eye' on plain paper - my original idea was just to allow them a stick of charcoal to draw with, but I think that would have been a step too far). As well as a limited portfolio of spells at first level, Gregor is a bit of a combat-monster with his two-handed scimitar.

Feng Ying: played by Nick, the gnomish monk. Handed over to the dwarven monks of the Deng Fang Mountains as an infant by his parents, to be trained. He is now on a quest to find his missing mentor who vanished from the mountains some years ago on his own adventure. Feng Ying is the master of the unexpected combat maneuver (such as flipping the giant crab on its back and making a nerve strike on a giant snake with his teeth).

Red: played by Steve, the human ranger. Handed over to the elite combat unit known as The 30 (or The Mound Rangers) as an infant by his parents, to be trained. He is now on a quest to prove his worthiness to belong to this organisation. Another combat-monster, armed with a long spear, a throwing spear and a dagger. In a recent fight with a gang of pirates, he took out three with three, quick jabs of his spear, then chased down another and fought him to a standstill in a bloody wrestling match in the confines of a beached jolly boat.

Clodius: played by Clare, the human fighter. An escaped slave from the matriarchal island of Zenn, he is not the sharpest tool in the box. Driven by a lust for mead and treasure, he tends to act first... then act again. Thinking isn't really in Clodius' repertoire. During the fight with the pirates, he was so keen to get involved he barged Feng Ying out of the way, flattening the poor gnome against the wall. He also - having been almost surprised by a giant crab arising out the sand behind him - smashed his lantern (the party's only light source) over its back.

Now we just need to get them to (a) survive this first dungeon crawl (The Portown Tunnels) and (b) get them to agree a party name.

I love the fact that after several of The Tuesday Knights were quite insistent that this be an old school, hack'n'slash, dungeon crawling campaign, three of the four have created characters that are better designed to function outdoors - a druid, a ranger and a nature spirit (gnome)!

Our monthly games are only about three hours long (Pete is a new father and needs to be home by about 10.30pm), so it's going to take longer to finish this first dungeon than I had originally planned (next month's Halloween-themed scrap will have to be held over to next October, I guess), but who cares? We're finally playing Dungeons & Dragons again, like we did when we were teenagers and it's just as much fun.

I might venture the suggestion (at our Christmas party) of fortnightly games, but as Steve (already a very busy man, as a youth worker and father) has to drive down from Surrey and the rest have many demands on their time (such as real jobs... unlike me), I think this is just a pipe dream.

At least it means I already have material for probably several years' worth of campaigning on my gamesroom shelves... if not several decades.

Long live The Tuesday Knights!