The Pools Saga: It Begins

1988 Kicked Ass.

I’ve been replaying SSI’s old AD&D Gold Box games for a project on my site called The Pools Saga. The plan is to take the same four characters through Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness—one long adventure, documented as it happens.

I gave myself some rules to make things more interesting: only four characters, one of each classic class, no endlessly rerolling stats, no walkthroughs, no automapper, and the same party has to survive all four games. I’m mapping the whole goddamn thing by hand on graph paper because apparently I don’t value my free time.

Character generation gave me Aldren, our lone lawful-good Fighter; Mara, a lawful-evil Cleric; Lucian, a chaotic-neutral Magic-User who will eventually acquire Fireball, which should concern everyone; and Merrick, a neutral-evil Thief whose moral compass points directly toward Merrick.

Then Episode 1 drops these four assholes into New Phlan, a once-great city currently occupied by orcs, goblins, undead, bandits and assorted other unpleasant things. Within their first couple of days they get pickpocketed, start a tavern brawl, nearly die, refuse to share money, consider burglarizing a shop, and somehow still find time to map the entire civilized section of town.

So far, the heroic campaign to reclaim Phlan is going exceptionally well.

If you want to start at the beginning:

The Pools Saga — overview, rules and the whole project:

The Pools Saga

Character Generation — meet Aldren, Mara, Lucian and Merrick:

Character Generation

Episode 1 — welcome to New Phlan:

Pool of Radiance: Episode 1