Warning:  I suck at writing entertaining logs.

So our group is finally playing some old-school D&D, fulfilling a wish I've had for 2+ years now.  Specifically the Moldvay set, with Keep on the Borderlands as a starting point for the campaign.

The organization of the rulebook could've been a tad better, but it's much easier to navigate than the AD&D books.  Character creation was fairly quick, taking only 20 minutes or so despite only having one copy of the rules to share between several people.  When another player joined us later the evening, we were able to get him rolled up in a matter of minutes.

So far we have Nads (fighter), Ned (cleric), Thefe (the thief), Lars (fighter), and Dat Ho (thief).

Not wanting to waste time with too many formalities, the party introduces themselves to the captain of the guard, stables their horses, and stocks up on provisions.  The next morning they set out East in search of the Caves of Chaos, (luckily) avoiding any dangerous encounters in the wilderness.

Once at their destination, the party decides to start investigating the caves inhabited by a kobold tribe.  They nearly lose their front rank to a pit trap, and then are accosted by several kobold warriors keeping watch.  After dispatching the first few, they manage to find the main lair where the rest of the tribe is waiting.  Unfortunately for the kobolds, my players bought quite a number of flasks of oil, and began tossing them into the lair as they were rushed by the male warriors.  The party sets up a defensive line at the entrance, slicing away at the front rank of kobolds while tossing oil at the ranks further back.  Unusually brave buggers, the kobolds continually pass their morale checks, until all the warriors are slaughtered.  Sadly, Nads the Fighter only had 2 HP at first level, and fell to the fiends.  The players decide to leave the female kobolds and their young alone, but collect whatever loot they can find.  

The fight with the kobold chief is slightly less dramatic, him being felled quickly due to a backstab from Dat Ho.  The players search his body and ransack his room, finding a key to a food storage area and other mundane loot.  They restock on provisions from the food storage unit (slightly sickened by the human remains they find), and decide to head back to the Keep for the time being, deliberating on which part of the caves to explore next, and what to do about the remaining kobolds.



For our first short session, everyone had fun, and it's definitely something we want to continue doing.  If I had any peeves with the system, it was that thief skills were ridiculously low (I've been thinking about substituting in AD&D percentile values), and sometimes I found myself wanting the side vs side roll-off type combat of Burning Wheel or Tunnels & Trolls.  Despite that, though, combat was still pretty brisk, and didn't have anywhere near as many floating variables to keep track of as 3e or 4e.

The campaign will continue, and will probably follow an "open table" format -- up to a dozen or more characters depending on how many people end up playing in the long-term, with the "party" consisting of whoever is available to play that night.  Hopefully that'll help keep the game alive where other games have failed due to scheduling conflicts.