You've got to kill a PC or two every now and then - it raises the stakes for the game and makes it far more engaging fro the players. But a dozen!!! That's getting to be a bloodbath. Doesn't sound like there were any TPK's though, which is a good sign.

Well, the retreat wasn't cancelled for this year - but only because the owner of the campground cut them a very good deal.

So, the third weekend in August is a go.

Meanwhile I just got a late night phone call to go back to running the teens game - both from the current GM and the players. They plotted behind my back.... Seriously, the GM was having a rough time, the other players started talking to him, and he decided that GMing is just not as much fun as he had thought it would be.

I was not one of the complainers - the only way a GM gets better is by practice. He needs the practice.

On the other hand, I am much better at running than at playing these days. (See above - I need the practice at playing.)

But spilled milk under the burning bridge - back to running. At least I still have the off week Pathfinder game to be a manipulative paladin in.

The Auld Grump

And the seed of my annoyance - I had just finished painting the miniatures for the PCs.... (Cleric, ranger, rogue, cavalier. I was the cleric, for some reason one of the other PCs had the notion that I was planning to take over the world or something....) I wanted to play a witch, but we needed a cleric.

The Auld Grump

Past players meet current players, begin comparing notes... My first clue? When one of my current players asked 'So, a house isn't a home until an ogre throws up on the carpet?'... I'd almost forgotten that incident, from WHFRP.

The Auld Grump

My first TPK in a long while - it all started going wrong in the first two rounds of combat. The alchemist was in the lead (mistake #1), and got hit twice by an as-yet unignited flaming skeleton. Low on HPs on the first round. He retreated. hiding behind the cavalier.

The cavalier then did what cavaliers do, and charged, smacking one of the still unignited flaming skeletons.

The ranger fired a bow, doing no damage.

Then the alchemist threw a firebomb into the melee combat - igniting the two flaming skeletons and doing damage to the cavalier.

The cavalier retreated to the rest of the group, and the flaming skeletons started doing d6 damage every round with their fiery auras....

The alchemist went down, and the cavalier neglected to draw the skeletons away so that the fiery aura would not continue to crisp the unconscious and dying alchemist.

Then the cavalier went down, leaving the ranger all alone....

The only survivor was the rogue that was not at today's game, so a TPK of members present.

The Auld Grump

Ouch!

A tad difficult to come up with credible scenarios for the characters surviving that, too, especially with the fiery skeletons doing ongoing burning damage to the bodies. Doesn't tend to be much left after they wander away again.

Just got confirmation - Jackie will be joining me for the Pagan Retreat this year! And for the whole shebang.

Given that she is not a pagan, in any way shape or (rather amorphous) form, it is amazing how much better that makes me feel about going! She can protect me from nekkid witches with predatory instincts! (Seriously, what the heck? Where were they when I was available?!)

Nor does she game.

However she is a more experienced camper and hiker than I will ever pretend to be - aside from my two weeks of canoe camping in the late seventies. (If you have never gone canoe camping then there is a word to fear... Portage. *Shudder!*)

On the other hand, she has gone camping on a Vermont mountain in the winter.... Yeah, she is definitely the more hardened outdoorsperson.

The Auld Grump, she had to take a roll up mattress with her to protect her from the ground, and make sure that it wouldn't freeze and shatter in the -40 F. weather.... Water will freeze before it hits the ground....

I probably should add the final outcome of the nekkid pagan incident.

Megan and I have been dating for just over a year now - after Jackie actually told me to start dating her. (Yeah... my ex is the one that pushed me into the new relationship - Jackie and I had been dating long distance for the better part of twenty years out of twenty four. She finally decided that we both needed somebody living a little closer than two hundred miles away, as the dog trots.)

It's a strange thing to have a girlfriend that lives within walking distance. We... spend a lot of time doing things together - including my dread enemy The Karaoke.

In a few months I am going to Minnesota to visit her grandmum.

The Auld Grump, a year later, and it still feels weird.

Yay! Come to Minnesota! It's beautiful here--just not in winter. So, like, it's great for about 6 months of the year.

Oh, that's just sad. People around here hate that dang movie. Nobody speaks like that nowadays. When I was a kid, there were a few older folks in my home town who did talk like that a little, but that was waaay up north in the small towns. My hometown is about 150 miles north of Fargo, on the Minnesota side. It was an accent that the old Norwegian and Swedish immigrants used, but no one born locally since the 50s has picked up.