The first Griffin Mountain game, (2003-04?). Session two (post three).
Note: if you haven't read my previous posts in this (2003-04) series I recommend you start there. Also these are twenty plus year old memories, inaccuracies are inevitable. Session two (2003-04):Players; a young, native Balazaring woman with amnesia (played by T.). NPC's: a group of native Balazaring children (I think they were four or five), and a black Dog puppy (there had been another player at session one, who left without word, they had no bearing on the game so T. and I decided they were never there). T. and I decided before the game to dice up some of the children, for fun. One roll was a natural 18 on three D6 for a child's POW score. A naturally powerful (but totally unskilled) Magician this NPC would have bearing later in this and other Sessions, I decided. T.'s character was facing down some Broo, and she decided to fight them. I was using part of Runequest 2 for the game (it practically was just a skeleton, part of the system). I made the mistake of making one of the Broo a penguin looking creature, and T. was not amused because his character might die in the fight. However T. rolled a hit on that Broo and I ruled it a kill. I rolled randomly to see who the other Broo would attack, and it was either another child or the puppy. I rolled for the Broo to hit and it succeeded, and I rolled it's damage. The damage was definitely more Hit points than the child or the puppy had. I decided that seeing one Broo killed so decisively the others ran away. Now this was before I did lines and veils, so I had no idea that child or animal endangerment were triggers for many people. I ruled this NPC dying due to damage, but for whatever reason I ruled that the child Magician (see above) could heal the dying character. My player, T. liked the rulings as I described them. Lesson one learned this session was never to joke around when my players were deadly serious. Two, a few rolls for NPC's to make them memorable could shape how the players (and I) viewed the NPC's. Three, rulings on morale for encounters were more important than rules.