The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Dragon Age Style

I recieved my box set for Dragon Age Set 1 in the mail on Saturday.  It was full of the promise of the original Red Box all over again.  

Surprisingly (or maybe not) my 10 year old became entranced by the players guide.  I'm not so hot on the dark fantasy aspect, but the presentation of information is really well done.  1 page each for the character types - mage, rogue, and warrior.  A 1/2 page spread of weapons next to the weapons list.  A 1/3 or so page of armor.  Plenty to absorb even if you ignore the dark fantasy setting and backstory.

By Sunday he had decided he needed to be a rogue, scoured the map and picked out a city to be from, and was suitably excited.  Not wanted the excitement to wane (and man do I overthink things sometime), I pushed ahead blindly.  I run lots of indie narativist games off the cuff with little planning, but they generally have experienced players who carry their own end of the story/want different stuff out of games that wouldn't interest a 10 year old.  And not having gamed with kids too much, I was a bit lost as to what type of adventure to begin with.  Then I remembered a box I had with my old D&D modules and the light dawned.  What better place to start than the same place I did.

I wanted to find "Keep on the Borderlands", having fond memories of that module, but alas it was not in my trove.  A ragged copy of  "In Search of the Unknown" was considered, but discarded along with a better kept copy of "The Village of Hommlet" because I would need to read them through to prep, and he wanted to get playing that evening.  Then I found "U1 - The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh", and the parties fate was sealed.  They would be travelling to that same haunted house overlooking the sea, that I had many years ago.  U1 is nicley divided into an intro portion delaing with just the haunted house, and another probably 1/2 of the book dealing with what the players ultimately find there.  It also has some decent box text I could easily paraphrase without much prep.

That evening Mom the mage, the rouge, and his older brother the fighter wandered into Saltmarsh and began to literally kick in the doors of the haunted house.  A snake, a pack of giante cetipedes, and a magic trap or too later, it was the rogues bedtime.  Spells were cast, monsters vanquished, and the first floor of the haunted house cleared.  It was glorious.  Both to see his enthusiasm, have the whole family play, and in having a simple system that generated exciting play at the table.

For session 2 I will probably prep a little more to make the monsters a bit more deadly.  Honestly 1st level characters in DA feel way more competent than 1st level AD&D characters from back in the day.  I think only 1 of them actually took any reasonable damage, and even then it wasn't enough to not be easily healed.

Dragon Age is swiftly becoming my favorite trad system.  Many thanks to the folks at Green Ronin for making such an awesome game.