Mostly Geek

The sad tale of Wilgo the Blingseeker and his cousin Zilgo.

So I finally got some RPG play time yesterday.

I trekked out to Kyle’s place on the other side of the city to play in his second one shot first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Gary Gygax memorial game. There was six players (including me) and all bar Phil rolled up characters on the spot.

Kyle has strong opinions about, well, pretty much everything. But his strong opinions about old school gaming are that you should do it properly. And properly in the case of character creation means roll 3d6, six times. In order. So no swapping around stats in order to make a good character, no rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest. No rerolling unless A) your character is unplayable by the rules or B) your character is dead.

My first character was stillborn. With wisdom of 4 he was too silly to be anything other than a thief. Unfortunately, with a dexterity of 5, that wasn’t an option either. Back to the dice I went.

The second go was a bit better. In fact so much better, one of the other players accused me of bribing Kyle with the zucchini I’d brought him out of our garden. And so was born Wilgo, crazy hobbit thief (if I’m going to impinge on copyright, why not go all the way?).

We ended up with

• Mo – human cleric of the God of Goats, played by Ben
• Bo – dwarven fighter, played by Elizabeth
• Kagg – a human fighter with 1 hit point, played by Colin
• Erwulf – a decrepit human cleric of the god of the High Hills, played by Jon
• Li’lip – a second level elven magic user who had survived the previous Gygax Memorial Game, played by Phil
• and the aforementioned Wilgo

The idea of this was to have fun and not take any of it to seriously. Kyle facilitated this by setting us down in a village named Bob. As a result, I decided that Wilgo was an ‘emo’ halfling, complete with dyed black hair and bangs. His tagline was “you’ve heard of the Shire? I come from the Hood” and he named himself the Blingseeker.

Unfortunately, Wilgo didn’t lie long enough to get much bling. After a solo fight with a lone kobold, and a more difficult fight with a larger group of the same, Wilgo stepped on a caltrop and died, presumably of some horrible, fast acting infection. One of Kyle’s other rules was that a number of faceless adventurers were waiting outside the dungeon, ready to step in as needed and thus Zilgo was born. Zilgo was nearly identical to Wilgo in everyway, except with less money, worst stats and more hit points.

Subsequently Bo and Erwulf also met messy ends at the hands of the kobolds, to be replaced by characters whose names I forgot to write down! We made our way into the lower caverns, killed a basilisk and retired rich.

It was a good fun afternoon with a good group of people. I’m not sure I’d be looking to play like that very week, but I would definitely make the time to remember Gary again in suitable fashion. Looking over the above, I think that the game was more abotu the process than the story, such as it was. There were still some cool bits – a lake of breathable water with a damp cavern below stood out particularly. But it’s hard to recreate the humour and fun of the afternoon. So thanks to everyone for a good time!

Tags: actual play, D&D, games, Old School, RPGs

6 Comments to The sad tale of Wilgo the Blingseeker and his cousin Zilgo.