Never bring an Ostrich to a Druid fight...

We managed to play for a few hours on Friday night.

Our intrepid adventurers were standing in a dark hallway, with a large door at one end... from behind the door came scratching sounds... like the scratching a cat would make... like the scratching a cat the size of a small elephant would make... but that's where they left...

If I were a mean DM it would have crashed it's way through the door before Friday nights game, but that'd be mean, and I'm categorically against mean DM'ing, so it was still scratching away when we started.

They made the wise decision to leave, and when they ran into a group of Deep Gnome guards they gave themselves up, which, in true Return of the Jedi style, brought them right to a crazy old king, who made them participate in an underground ostrich race for his own amusement.  

The rules were pretty simple, but I think if I do another race I'll change it a lot...

So, first off, the rules as I ran it:

Everyone starts with a D6

For every 5 points of Ride or Handle Animal you get +1 to your dice rolls

Heavy armor drops you 1 dice (so from a D6 to a D4, etc)

Being small let's you move up one dice.

At any time you can move up one dice, but have a chance of falling off

At any time you can move up 2 dice, but have a bigger chance of falling off

You can move down one dice for a 2 ac bonus and +10 to perception.

Combat works as normal, the Ostriches, however, are well trained racing mounts and won't attack.

There were 4 riders on the players side, and 2 riders on the gnomes.  If the players win they get to ask the king for a boon.

And this worked well, everyone had fun, although it went completely differently than I expected.  Primarily because only one PC had to finish the race, and there were only 2 gnomes competing against them.  So 2 pcs raced, and 2 pc's stayed behind and locked the gnomish competition down.  (Fighter killed one, druid did a sexy Ostrich dance to distract the other's mount.)

So the other 2 had no problem waltzing through the traps and other minor encounters of the race track.

If I were going to do it again, I'd make everything bigger.

Every starts with 3D6.  For every 5 ranks in Ride or Handle Animal you get another D6.

You lose a D6 (or 2) for heavy armor.

You get a D6 (or 2) for being small.

Etc... so instead of moving up 1 or 2 squares, you'd move up... a lot... or down, a lot... 

I'd also have changed it so if one player wins, that player gets a boon, but anyone who beats the gnomes gets a prize... and I'd have more gnomes... at least 4, maybe 6 or 8... 

Our rogue and Barbarian running the gauntlet... we ended up setting the starting line off to the side with the druid and fighter boring the gnomish competition to death... 

They also fought a slightly leveled up Bulette... and rolled 4 20s in a row, and completely destroyed him.  

The "Bulette" is actually a Megablocks Dragon... I won't tell if you won't.