Now that we are back into a normal routine after the break, we were able to get back to Purple Mountain tonight. After our previous experience, I dropped the use of the battle mats and figures for this session. I feel that they don't match well with T&T, at least not as I prefer to play it. We were only able to clear two more rooms in this session. Neither room involved monsters so there was no combat. There was a thorough search of a storage area, full of various foodstuffs and a case full of mealworms. Then it was on to another room where there was a navigation to avoid a swinging axe trap and disable it old-school style: a super-strong dwarf (with a Talent in Brute Force) and a half-orc held a massive iron bar by its ends and stopped the axe's momentum when it crashed into the middle of the bar near the end of its arc. It still caused a bone-jarring impact and a clang that alerted many of the dungeon's denizens. Nevertheless, I thought it was a fairly clever idea for children to come up with, so - with successful STR SRs - I allowed it. After forcing open the room's chest, they found the gold, wand, note, and scrolls within it. With that we suspended play until next time. We've almost covered half of the 1st dungeon level now.
I'm finding that while the adventure was easily converted to T&T (if time consuming), the flavor of what I expect from a T&T game isn't shining through. Instead, as one might expect, the feel of Pathfinder manifests in the game, even when dropping that ruleset. This may be obvious to some people, but, as I stated in prior posts, for me this is an experiment. T&T's 'sensibilities' are masked by the feel of the original ruleset, even when everything has been reworked to use T&T rules and lingo. I'm also finding, even though we play short sessions due to the age of the children involved, that we are only progressing though about half as many areas as I'd expect to. I think that this is because of the mechanics involved, even converted to T&T. In my conversion I have tried to leave the 'integrity' of the mechanics, so they tend to be more involved than a usual T&T adventure might otherwise be.
While it might appear that I am just griping and that things don't seem to be working out in this experiment, I would say that isn't the case. By trying something new the process is helpful to show me what T&T's strengths are and what the style of play is that I enjoy. More to come.
