The Return Of Red...

Long gone are the days of The Tuesday Knights venturing into the meatgrinder of White Rabbit Castle with just their three player-characters between them and almost certain death.

As well as the four henchmen they employed on their last successful adventure, Clare, Nick and Pete were joined this week by Steve (currently on a short college course in Brighton) for the evening - which meant the return of Red The Ranger (previously taken captive in the catacombs of White Rabbit Castle many months ago when changes in Steve's job meant he could no longer attend regularly).

Their task this month was to infiltrate the Hall Of The Goblin King (a slightly modified version of Brave Halfling Publishing's Fortress Of The Mountain King adventure), as part of the village of Larm's ongoing involvement in the Goblin Wars.

The idea being that this was a stealth and information gathering mission - rather than the usual hack'n'slash and so, maybe, they'd have a better chance of surviving!

The influence of Steve's ranger certainly helped in the stealth department and there was more emphasis on capturing and interrogation than has been present before.

The Tuesday Knights managed to further boost their numbers with two prisoners (a kobold and an orc) and a halfling they rescued from the fortress' prison cells (the picture above shows the full party caravan that headed back to the village of Larm).

The greedy halfling, Meriaboc, seems to have latched onto the party now as an endless source of food and is currently running up an enormous tab back at their base tavern base in Larm!

Nick's cleric suffered a few nasty cuts in a brawl with the orc they captured, and Pete's elf maiden was struck by an animated dwarf statue, but otherwise the party managed to get through the adventure pretty unscathed.

A full campaign account of last night's Labyrinth Lord adventure can be found here.

Next month's games night, for a bit of a change, will see Pete busting out the new copy of Top Secret/SI he's just picked up off eBay.

Pete, a big fan of the original Top Secret and James Bond movies, has had a hankering to run a spy game for us for ages and I was just thinking the other day that I'd like to actually play a roleplaying game once in a while.

The game is scheduled for only a few days after Doctor Who: Adventures In Time And Space roleplaying game will have been out, which now gives me the Christmas holidays to read and digest the rules and come up with some suitable adventures, settings etc for that particular campaign.

Then next year, depending how Pete's Top Secret runs, we'll either alternate games systems or, even (if I get my way), game more than once a month!

As a brief aside, Steve managed to bamboozle us all with his flashy, random-number generating phone which - when shaken - acted like either a 20-sided or six-sided die.

That's the closest I think we'll ever get to having a computer at the table (even though Clare has previously suggested using laptops and Skype for Steve to 'remote' game with us; but that all sounds like voodoo to me!)