Date in Real life: Sunday, 9 May 2021
Players: Starflower, Edward, William, and Philip
This was the very first mission for the team, and the family's introduction to Dragon Raid.
Adventure Master Basic Training
To prepare for this mission, and my new role as Adventure Master, I took a week or so to read through the Player Handbook, the Adventure Master Manual, and the Adventure Guidebook for the LightRaider Test. The box included a rule book, but the rules were also in the Adventure Master Manual, so I didn't need to read it twice.
Part of the Adventure Master Manual includes the solo mission Adventure at the Castle of the Falls. I worked my way through this mission to acclimatize myself to the game mechanics.
I left the Player Handbook lying around, along with the New Player Briefing, and the Rule Book. I think at least three out of four of my kids read through them.
Session 0
I did a "Session 0" with them the night before. We dug out an old tape player and listened to the original tape that came with the vintage game. This was exciting for everyone, since their usual board games don't typically include audio elements. I helped everyone make their characters, and chose player markers to represent them. My boys chose British sounding names for their characters (Edward, William and Philip), since that is how they interpreted "medieval/ fantasy". My daughter chose Starflower as a character name, as she had recently read a book called Starflower by Anne Elisabeth Stengl (good book, by the way. I recommend the Tales of Goldstone Wood for Christian fantasy novels).
I also made the "Player Briefing" from the Adventure Guidebook available to them.
Preparation
I read through the Adventure Guidebook ahead of time, and cut out the cue cards. I also separated all the counters for orcs and goblins and the player characters, etc. The mission includes special pills (I call them "Raider Tablets"). For this, I cut out small rectangles of cardboard and colored them in accordance with the colors in the guidebook. I pulled out an old empty pill bottle, and put the cardboard pieces in it. This made a fun physical item for them to have on the table in their "inventory."
The Mission
We played through the entire mission in one session (maybe an hour or two? I forget.)
I don't want to give away any spoilers, since this is a published game, so I won't say too much about the mission itself. The players learned the rules and mechanics of the game quickly, as per the mission's design. They had to rescue a fellow LightRaider named Gareth, which they did. No one died.
I'll share one quick memorable moment. As you can tell from the cover art, there is one sequence during the adventure where the team is working their way up a mountain side, when they encounter a giant. They managed to bluff their way past him, but didn't know they would have to come back down that trail later! "Oh, no, is the giant still going to be there?" Yes, indeed. And he wasn't too happy.
At the end of the mission, the Adventure Guidebook recommended introducing the players to the advanced combat rules before the next mission.
This mission comes in the vintage boxed set of DragonRaid, available from LightRaider Academy.
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