The Horrifying International Table Top Day

This past Saturday was "International Table Top Day", which I'm not entirely sure if it entails D&D or not? Whatever the case we were invited out to play some 5e at a friends place.  This was our first time playing with them and their group.  The plan was to have people show up most of the day and whenever someone was tired or wanted to go home that person would either die, or trade their character, or just float away ahhaa.  From having a few conversations with the DM in the past, I knew that he had his own home brewed world that he had been running and playing in for years (dating back to 1e I believe, some iterations of 2, 3 and now 5, possibly pathfinder as well).  I had figured that we would probably not being playing in that game, and probably a module of some sort.  Just because the logistics of explaining to new players all about your world would have taken an extraordinary amount of time for a one off.  The other reason i figured it was a module, and a   particularly deadly module was the following post in the facebook group:

Please bring 2 or 3 - 10th level pre generated characters with you. 

And I guessed right! Enter TOMB OF HORRORS (for fifth edition from Tales From The Yawning Portal).

I used this generator: http://www.orcpub.com/
and created a sorceror (which I've never played before) and a typical cleric which I almost always play.  Note: don't use a generator for a class you've never played before.  It is much smarter to read the book and create it.

I created a meat shield elven fighter for my wife.

When we got there we were waiting for one more player to show up, and then create his character, so our start time got pushed an hour and a bit.  In that time I created a wizard, which I'm hoping to play that class again at some point as I enjoyed it.  This particular wizard was the first to bite the dust.  Falling 100 feet.  After the wizard kicked it I created a basic meatshield fighter as we already had a cleric in the group.  His name was "Peon".   He also almost died a few times, and had we not called the game when we did he surely would have met an epic ending. 

I've come to the conclusion that while all the character class options are nifty, and all the extra races are nifty, I really like the basic rules, the basic classes and the basic races.  As well how the basic rules do character creation.  While I get that some people like a pile of options during creation I'm not one of those people. 

It is interesting playing with different groups, everyone has their own style of gaming.  A bit of reflection both our regular groups we play in like to role play a lot, whereas this group likes combat which is cool.  Of course we didn't have a lot of opportunity to roleplay as we were basically in the dungeon the whole time.  It was quite a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to playing with them again.