BEAN! & Pretzels
The Town Hall, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire October 30th 2011
The Quest for the Palathron
BEAN! The D2 Role-Playing game.
Crissie, Darrgh Junior, Will, Aiden and Peter. The intrepid BEAN!ers.
After years of being badgered to run an Autumn event, Phil from Spirit Games, finally gave in and organised a one day mini Beer & Pretzels gaming day at Burton Town Hall. After the enjoyment had on the Sunday at the event in May, I received a request to run another BEAN! adventure. Never being one to want to disappoint my adoring public, I set about tidying up one of my early T&T tunnel complexes; The Quest for the Palathron. A fairly standard dungeoncrawl to try to find the fabulous, enchanted jewel of the title 'The Palathron'.
The gaming hall, much quieter than the event here in May.
We all arrived on the stroke of 10 o'clock to begin play literally as the doors opened. For once I had been organised and established the back story to the adventure and sent it on to the participants well in advance. It, therefore, took just a short time to set everything up and get going. It must be said that the gaming a hall, although there were quite a lot of people present, was much less busy than it was back in May when we had to use space on the stage.
Will, Darrgh Junior and Aidan - the fighters hang together during a comfort break.
The characters to take on this 2 level dungeon had all been dragged from the local gaols. I gave the three younger players the task of being the "muscle" of the party. Their warrior credentials had been well-established but one of them harboured a dark secret that could trigger disaster for him at any moment; he was a wewewolf. Crissie once again played the rouguish thief while Peter was the obligatory wizard and nominally the leader. It wasn't long before they were all getting stuck into all that the complex could offer.
Young Aidan checks on the finer points of the BEAN! rules.
After an inauspicious start, 2 characters fell off the ladder that lead down to the tunnels of Trinian, the exploration proper got under way once they had dealt with a couple of wandering trolls. The young warriors got shut in a room where the floor behaved like a storm tossed sea but managed to escape with only minor injuries and the whole party met enchanted beast the Yale whose strange, curved horns act like skeleton keys - of course they had to kill the creature first! The final action on the first level was for all the characters to touch a giant, enchanted quartz that transported them all to level 2.
Darrgh rolling up more trouble for the intrepid BEANers!.
It didn't take long for the intrepid quintet of beanfolk to find the room where the Palathron was hidden. Before that, though, they had to fight another couple of trolls and then cross a room where a blizzard was raging. The howling wolves within this room caused the party's lycanthrope to transform and go on the rampage but fortunately he found a couple of Hobbeans whose throats he could tear out away from his colleagues' view. And before you could blink the Palathron was found and back up the stairs to level 1. Escape was only briefly held up when 4 of the party were transformed into the playing pieces of a boardgame but this proved a temporary state of affairs only. As the GM, I can only hope that the players enjoyed themselves as much as I did. I certainly hope to run some more BEAN! at Beer & Pretzels next year but perhaps sooner than that if I'm lucky.
Two successful delvers start spending their loot on new equipment.
Once again, I must say a huge thank you to Mr Jeff Freels: Artist and Game Designer extraordinaire. His inspired idea to invent a D2 role-playing game has allowed me to introduce role-playing to my son and other youngsters at a much younger age than is normally possible. Long may his quill be well dipped!
Darrgh Tarrrho (Sid Orpin)
October 2011