Al-Qadim

For around the past 12 months I've been playing in a regular Tuesday group in the Al-Qadim setting. We have 5 regular players, Dan, Gareth, Jazz, Michael & myself, have lost one player Richard along the way (due to moving house out of the area) and Nathaniel is an irregular player. Ham is our DM. The group make up is quite different to most the other groups I play in as usually I am the oldest player but we have players from their 20s right through into their 50s. We play at Ham's house, around a table in his front "gaming" room and Ham kindly supplies the drinks (or at least Sophie his daughter does!) and the players supply nibbles. Sessions are 19:00 to 22:00 although we sometimes spill a little over.

I found this group via a post for another group in the East Midlands Roleplayers Gaming Group. The other group was also DMed by Ham and was looking for an extra player so I joined but after just a couple of months the group stalled due to a combination of illness and other weekend commitments. At around this time Ham started the Tuesday group so I asked if I could join this as I really wanted a regular old school group (as I was playing Pathfinder on a Wednesday at the time) and have been part of the Tuesday group ever since.

We use a Facebook group to communicate, usually just to confirm sessions and who is attending.

Although Al-Qadim is an AD&D 2e setting the Tuesday group uses an extensively home-brewed AD&D 1e rule set to play. As I cut my RPG teeth on AD&D 1e back in the early 80s this suits me as I've become increasingly disillusioned with D&D 5e as a ruleset.

In Al-Qadim I play a Sha'ir/Thief with a Djinnling Vamoosh (after Souki my first Djinnling met an untimely end). The other player's characters are:
Dan: Alard, MU & Jandolier, Cleric/Ranger
Jazz: Levandes, Paladin
Gareth: Ravi, Cleric & Azhbool, fighter
Michael: Ahmaan, Fighter
Nathaniel: Haroun, Magic User/Thief
Richard: Tze, Monk

As you can see some players have more than one character and it is expected that if any player is missing from a session another player will play their character(s). I seem to usually end up playing Haroun if Nathaniel is missing but have played Ravi, Tze & Jandolier. The characters are all around 6th level.

Ham maintains a campaign journal on Dragonsfoot, The Parsantine Expedition to The Land of Fate

We use miniature figures and each character has it's own painted figure. I believe Ham supplies & paints the figures, although it maybe that other players have brought/painted their own figures. I've no particular interest in miniatures so Ham has certainly supplied and painted mine.

The format of the games in Al-Qadim is usually Ham offers us a particular scenario via a patron or disguised genie (which my character Farouk is notoriously poor at detecting with his 25% chance to "Detect the work of genies") and we usually accept and play the scenario but occasionally we decline if we fancy exploring a different area of Al-Qadim.

We've also all met up socially as well for a few beers last Christmas and I've turned up at Ham's for a coffee and a natter on the odd occasion the game has had to be cancelled due to lack of numbers. All in all it's a great group, real old school, relaxed feel to the play with everyone committed to working as a team.