After Action Report – Free RPG Day @ Comic Quest, June 21, 2014

I had heard about Free RPG Day a few weeks ago.  This is supposed to be a day that is effectively a combination of Free Comic Book Day and International Tabletop Day.  The idea behind it is to give the participants a feel for role playing games by providing them with starters to game systems and provide their first exposure to the games through introductory adventures.

I decided that I would go to this event for two reasons.  The first was that it was a weekend where I did not have another event that I would normally attend happening so I was looking for something to do with my Saturday morning/afternoon.  The other reason was that I wanted to give Pathfinder a try. 

I had heard a lot about the Pathfinder system after I stepped away from role playing games when D&D 4^th Edition came out.  I had been curious about what improvements they had made to the D&D 3.5 OGL that made it such a superior game to D&D 4e in the eyes of players that it eventually began to outsell D&D 4e.  Not enough to actively search out an opportunity to play the game but enough that if I was there and someone gave me a chance to play I would take it.  After many years that opportunity finally came.

I showed up to the event a little early armed with some dice a pencil and paper.  In other words all the basics I should need to be able to start playing any RPG.  I did not know what to expect so I was ready to play a pre-generated character or roll up one onsite.

The local Pathfinder Society group was there so there we pre-generated characters available to play and they had an introductory adventure that was provided by the publisher to run us through.  For my characters I chose the wizard that they had.  Even though I rarely played arcane spell casters in the past, I would generally be a ranger or a rogue, I figured I was the most experienced D&D player at the table so I was the best choice to play a first level character with the limitations that wizards have.  The other five players were a cleric, a druid, a fighter, a rogue and a sorcerer.

The only real difference I saw from D&D to Pathfinder was that the arcane spell casters were given a d6 hit point die instead of a d4 hit point die.  To me this just makes sense at lower levels to aid in the survivability of the arcane spell casters in general.  Otherwise the game played just like I remembered D&D 3.5 playing.

The plot of the introductory adventure was that the players are sitting in a tavern and because of a case of mistaken affiliation with a pickpocket with poor skills are drawn into a fight that turns quickly into a lethal combat.

When the action began I made my way to the back of the group so that they could act as the meat shields that all good wizards need to survive to become powerful wizards.  After two rounds of slow retreat and trying to unsuccessfully calm the situation before it escalated.  I was ready to go.  My plan was to fire off my magic missile at the enemy’s most powerful frontline fighter and then use my club to attack anyone that got into hand to hand range.  I would hold my burning hands spell in reserve in case we had a breakthrough anywhere.

The first part of the plan worked out well I hit the guy that was in charge of the others while he was mixing it up with our fighter causing him a bit of damage.  I was preparing to mix it up with another patron that was giving one of the barmaids a hard time when someone came running down from an upstairs room a cast wizard lock on the door preventing anyone from escaping.  I was concerned because that meant that I was up against a wizard that was at least 3^rd level which would be a big problem.  Ignoring the fact that I was sure to die going up against my new foe, I threw myself at him with my club hoping that I would prevent him from getting off spells if I kept close to him.  I was able to do a decent job if it even though he did manage to get a mirror image spell off.  In another couple of rounds the city guard showed up a broke up the fight.  I guess that we won the fight because we had the most combatants that were still functional at the end of it.

I found that Pathfinder played just like D&D 3.5 so that if I was so inclined I could jump into a Pathfinder game without very much in the way of a learning curve.

The problem I had was with the adventure the Piazo provided as an introductory adventure.  The morality behind the premise was dubious at best.  The fact that the initial opponents in the bar killed a pickpocket outright instead of handing him over to authorities seems a bit extreme to me.   Add into it that the players get stuck in a lie or death fight with other bar patrons and staff that appear at first to be more towards the good spectrum of the alignment chart leaves me with a bad taste.  I would have expected that an introductory adventure should have been more of a straight fight between good guys and bad guys than anything else.

All things considered I did have fun but I will not rush out to start playing RPGs anytime soon.  That being said I did just receive my copy of the Morrow Project…