My recent Cold Iron play has me really thinking about the system, and really thinking about Troll Slayer (working name for my own game).

Out last session was interesting in how the players reacted. Based on their previous sessions, I gave them a daytime encounter with 10 swamp trolls. I expected it to be a tough encounter, but very winnable. We played it twice. And they lost twice. But after that, one player commented he's never had so much fun dying, which was very interesting. It did not seem to be a sarcastic comment. Our use of "gee that must have been a bad dream" means the players don't have to start over with new characters if most of the party dies (in Cold Iron, we have yet to have a situation where just one PC died - though a few sessions ago they did have an NPC die).

The first time we ran the encounter, the characters rolled terrible for their perception checks so the trolls got to close and attack in the first round, with the PC's still drawing weapons. The spell casters were quickly killed (the cleric's head popped off in the first round, the mage was knocked quite dead in the second round). Everything collapsed when the lizard woman tried to run away (she is played by the young husband), though the player who made the comment about dying was able to hold out for several rounds of being completely surrounded.

The second time, the perception rolls were much better, and they had time to get ready and toss some spells at the trolls before melee was engaged. The spell casters levitated to avoid becoming troll snacks. Unfortunately, all the spells fizzled or the trolls saved (my dice were running hot). Once melee was engaged, it didn't last long (an NPC went down in the first round - more hot dice). Partly this encounter was lost because of hot dice on my part.

This all has gotten me comparing to my college Cold Iron gaming and wondering what all is different. Back in college, one campaign did start out with a lot of death (in one famous encounter, the only survivor of a night attack by swamp trolls was the mage, but they were beginning characters, and that was a surprise night encounter). One big difference was that in college, we rolled for starts, and rolled and rolled and rolled. The spell casters from the college game probably couldn't be built with my point buy system. I think another difference was a larger party. We're currently at three players, with 3 NPCs, there were often as many as 8 characters in college. A larger party is more able to protect the spell casters and keep them out of melee. I've also realized that in accelerating the XP curve, they're not getting as much treasure as they would have had in college. And the players haven't figured out the treasure economy yet (which can largely be blamed on the reduced treasure).

Frank