DM Chronicle: Session 5, Alien Feys & Whiskered Pirates, Part 1
Previously in Chatty’s Game:
Our Heroes battled a pirate Scholar and her Dragon Pet only to see her escape at the last second before defeat. Alone against a city of angry Ape Men, they almost managed to turn them to their cause only to be defeated by a crazed zealot and his retinue of elite fighters.
Returning to their home base, they were informed of their patron’ s kidnapping by the pirates of the Crimson Fleet. Knowing where the airship that had the patron was moored, our heroes started planning a rescue mission…
I was really looking forward to this week’s game, as my numerous adventure prep post in the last week could attest. I had four players show up: Mike (Takeo the Dragonborn Warlord), Franky (Masaru, Eladrin Warlock), Yan (Bjerm, Elf Fighter) and Stef (Rocco, Halfling Rogue).
This was to be the final game of this year’s 1st D&D 4e campaign and possibly the year’s last game. Its harder and harder to get players on Friday nights when the holidays loom closer, Office Xmas parties tend to interfere.
Anyhoo, the session didn’t turn out as expected. The final faceoff against the pirates turned out to be a very challenging, gripping combat and made the session a success overall. However, I was disappointed with how the Role playing in the 1st half turned out. Also, one player, due to a very bad dice streak and some in and out of game issues became very frustrated and this affected the group’s dynamics.
(Fortunately we talked about it after the game and we worked out the reasons and how to avoid a repeat, more on this below).
Let’s get into it now shall we?
Mike showed up at my place at around 4 PM. I work from home on game days, allowing me to finish work early and dodge traffic, I’m such a lucky guy! Since Mike had yet to perform his leveling up to level 3, I decided to fire up Wizards of the Coast’s Beta character builder and show it to him.
I was impressed! We made Mike’s character in mere minutes and printed it out rapidly, power cards included. There was one noticeable bug as his level 3 power came out wrong but overall I was impressed (plus it features the Artificer and the Swordmage, woot!).
All players ended showed up early enough. In fact, we demonstrated once more the gamer law that states that The last player always shows up when you start a pick up board/card game!
I’m sure that’s, like, a fundamental rule of reality!
Anyway, we started playing early.
Scene 1: A father’s past and Instant NPC Soup.
We summarized the last game, going over the expanded regional map. It now covered a series of volcanic islands and an archipelago surrounding a gigantic maelstrom south of the Coast.
On this archpelago, the Dragonborns of the campaign are based on a large island around a city called Draconis. The pirate’s airship was moored on the opposed side of the maelstrom, on a small island featuring a thin spire around which a pirate community called Wyrm’s Tooth was built.
The PCs mission was to find a way to get there and fast before the pirates executed their patron and came back to destroy the city of Hobble’s Point.
As discussed in the weeks leading to the game, we had agreed that Rocco’s father had one last favor (out of 3) from the fey that he (or his descendants) could “cash in”. We played a short scene where he gave his son some sort of coin that had to be broken (Think Tai Pan) inside a fey circle to summon help. He also gave some dire warnings about dealing with the Fey.
After the players wanted to plan their rescue mission so they asked me if there was some ex-pirate they could talk to. I was a bit embarrassed as I hadn’t planned any. Good thing I had just posted about spontaneity.
I made up this ultra decrepit tavern owned by an ex-pirate from the early days of the Crimson Fleet. The party discussed how the pirate hideout was setup and learned about caves found under the Spire that could lead up to the airship.
The PCs were ready to summon some Fey.
Scene 2: Alienated Expectations
I hit one of the game’s snag early in the next scene and, at the time, I didn’t understand the issues behind it fast enough to fix it.
I described the Fey ring situated by a Seaside cliff and how Rocco broke the coin to summon the Fey. I described a wooden ship mounted on a gigantic tree appearing out of nowhere, sitting right by the edge of the cliff, the Eladrin crew hailing the PCs.
So cool huh?
That when Franky, who plays a Fey Pact warlock, exclaimed somewhat annoyingly “Just like that we get a ship?”
What the?
I floundered a bit, describing the weirdness of the crew and tried to get the PCs to get involved with them. I ended up making the NPCs too alien and creepy for the players to successfully interact with them.
It turns out, when I discussed with Franky, that he expected to have some kind of scene where the summoning would bring Feys to negotiate with the party and getting the ship being the culmination of the scene.
As the game was not progressing as planned and I couldn’t understand why at the time I decided to move things forward (always a good idea). I revealed that the ship’s captain (and whole crew really) was in fact an exiled Trent cursed with insatiable wanderlust. The “crew” was actually made up of puppets of former passengers that the ship copied from the emotions he bargained from each in return for various favors during voyages.
I then decided to move on to the next scene.
In hindsight, I ‘got’ what went wrong. For a roleplaying scene to work, especially one where players are not familiar with the NPCs they are to interact with nor the stakes of the scene, there needs to be clear reference points the players can identify with. You need to create links to the PC’s backstory story or to the situations so that players can grab them and use them to initiate roleplaying.
I didn’t do that. I focused on a cool ship and I overloaded the creepiness factor, making the scene into a ‘museum piece’ limited in interactiveness.
I should have built on Franky’s character extensive knowledge of the Fey and brought a NPC that somehow ‘knew’ Masaru (possibly the Fey force behind his pact) and could have negotiated the favor that lead to the introduction of the ship with the appropriate introduction to “get” its weirdness.
Up next: Dragons & Pirates II, the PCs revenge!
Credits: My Airship, by ShAwNKun
RPG Bloggers Digest and Creative Overdrive Output
For those who missed it, Dave and I started posting weekly highlights of the RPG posts that appeared on the RPG Blogger network.
You can see my first post here, and Dave’s picks here.
It basically highlights whatever got our attention during our alternating weeks as Editors of the network. Have a look its well worth it!
This week is my turn again, get ready to astound me! 
On an unrelated note, it seems I’ve shed my writers block for one day yesterday and I spent 5 hours writing posts for all my websites!!!
My campaign report will go up tonight and tomorrow night. I’ve also posted about my new online D&D game yesterday. I’ve put up a notice in Chatty Studios that Kobold Love is going on a short hiatus so I could write it offline and give a better adventure.
Finally I’ve taken a few minutes to post a new Suburban Overlord comic.
Yeah, I decided to harness these surges of insanely productive writing binges to make up for the dryer spell.
Have a nice week, I’ve Standard Operating Procedures to write now!
Inq. of the Week: Bad Movie Ideas
As we are oft to do, we wanted to find out what kinds of games you play. 94% of you play Tabletop Roleplaying Games (only 4 people who voted do not), 71% of you play console games, and 67% play boardgames. Amazingly, 0% are not gamers at all… they have all fled from our gamerdom.
TheMainEvent ran this gem of a story by me:
Ridley Scott, who has been attached as a producer on “Monopoly” and has been mentioned as a possible director, is now officially attached to helm the project, with an eye toward giving it a futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic “Blade Runner.”
Which naturally lead the two of us (both aspiring screen writers) to begin pitching ideas back and forth: [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty's Online D&D 4e Game: Genesis of the Project
As many of you know, I made a lot of friends and contacts around the time of Gen Con 2008.
Among those friends was Don, one of the members of the Wizards of the Coast Development team working on D&D insider. Don was one of the Seattle Wizards who read my Open Letter to WotC and didn’t call for my summary execution (i.e. no goons jumped on me when people like Mike Mearls and Chris Sims said ‘Oh you’re the Chatty DM!” at their Gen Con booth).
Hatching a fiendish Plan
While chatting with Don, I pitched the idea that it would be cool if I was to get a few bloggers together and tried the D&D Game table app (a virtual tabletop software) when it became available in Beta. I sold it as a way of getting prime feedback from fans with established authority on the net. He was all for it.
I’ve long wanted to try playing tabletop D&D over the Internet. I’m not much of a fan of play by post RPGs. While I really enjoyed creating and playing with TwittRPG I much prefer the instant action and reaction of a tabletop game.
The thing is, Wizards application is not ready to hit Beta testing yet. We don’t know when it will be but it won’t likely be for many months.
Since then, my blogger friends got excited about the project and asked me if we could set up an online D&D game before the WotC application becomes available in Beta test.
Thinking about it and discussing it with the small group we had formed, we agreed on the following:
We would play a series of D&D 4e game trying various virtual tabletop software, blog about the experience and give Don some good market research material from eager geeks who really want Wizard to give us a tool that meets our needs.
The list of applications initially included Gametable (not the Wizards one, its a free app already available) and Maptool (another free program).
I’ve since used my blogging fame and contacted Smiteworks, home of Fantasy Grounds II, and traded some publicity for a series of licenses to be used during the project. (Thanks to their CEO!).
If the project works as planned, we’ll explore all three over the next few months in a series of game sessions.
Drafting A posse!
So who’s part of this little project?
- Dave: The Game, Editor in chief of Critical-Hits.com, a game designer and co-founder of the RPG Bloggers network.
- Graham, author of criticalanklebites.com. He’s my Web Gadget mastermind and I owe him enough virtual money to put all his future kids through college.
- Asmor is our resident 4e tool web genius. Author of Encounter a day, Asmor churns out gem after gem of 4e goodness for our combined pleasure.
- Dennis, a friend of Dave’s who pens articles on CH as The Main Event
- Don from the dank dungeons of Wizards of the Coast, where they keep their coders! (This is strictly the view of this misinformed blogger and may not reflect the actual working conditions of the programmers at WotC… they’re probably chained too)
Needless to say that everyone was pretty excited about the whole thing. I sure am.
Oh and did I tell you we’d blog about it all?
Coolness cubed says this Suburban Overlord!
The Game Plan
The format of this game would be that we’d meet virtually on a few Friday nights (maybe once a month) and play out the game using Voice over IP chat software and one of the aforementioned virtual tabletop application.
Getting ready for the event, everyone made a level 5 PC:
- Dave: Warforged Fighter named Beatdown Machine
- Graham: Warforged Artificer named Rune Goldpiece Machine “brother” of Beatdown
- Asmor: Targ Bonechewer, Orc Barbarian
- Dennis: Ma’ahx Fahl’Dar; Gensai Swordmage
- Don: Ravas, Githzerai Ranger
Oh just so you know, this will NOT be a serious game. Expect much siliness.
As I was receiving the PCs, I started planning for an adventure we could play with a nearly all “monster” party.
Then it hit me and I sent this one liner to the guys:
Escape from the Monster Rehabilitation Asylum under the City of Treacherous Light (A Ptolus Adventure)
I love Ptolus, and as 4e was released, I had been looking at an occasion to showcase that this 700 page 100$+ sourcebook was as relevant as ever.
Here’s the adventure pitch I sent to the players:
You’re all going to start in Ptolus. Forget about Points of Lights, forget about the planes as we know them… This is good old Monte Cook’s city as he envisioned it. I’d use mine but it’s sitting somewhere in the Shadowfell, filled with sullen Shadar-Kai teenagers.
If you are unfamiliar with Ptolus here’s the gist of it. Its a fantasy metropolis that contains everything that used to be D&D 3.x in one city. Its filled with political, religious and criminal organization on the surface and it contains a series of dungeons that would make grandad Gygax proud underneath.
Evil and weirdness gravitates around Ptolus for something dark and world-eating slumbers underneath it… waiting for its time to come.
You, are all ‘monsters’. For whatever reasons you decide on, you have all been captured (or found) and brought in the tender care of the Brotherhood of Redemption. While its technically a meek monastery where gentled redeemed monsters toil with monks, it hides a more sinister ‘business’: that of an underground prison fortress used for detaining and brainwashing sentient beings to ‘purifying’ them of their evil taint.
This shall be a prison break scenario… Your magical/mundane equipment will briefly be grayed-out as the Prison break scenario trope requires starting with nothing.
Since this is about as fun as playing Rolemaster with 100 paper chits in a cup, I suggest that the 1st scene starts with both Machine brothers being inert on a laboratory table deep under the fortress and they are somehow “switched on” while all other PCs (and their equipment) are conveniently nearby.
Since, the players gave me some good feedback on how to integrate the group as a plausible party and how the game would start. I’m keeping this for the play reports.
Now this game/project is officially slated to start on December 5th. I’m so looking forward to this and count on us to share it with you all!
Trial Run
In the meantime I plan to do a little trial next Friday where we’ll likely waste about an hour setting our Chatting software and getting our game going. I plan to make the session about fighting a Red Dragon and maybe a few more koboldy allies in some sort of Lava filled cave.
To start things off, I’ll be using Gametable as the main software, referring to Alex’s excellent primer found here.
Now I could use some help from you.
Could someone help me with creating a series of Kobold Tokens (at least 3-4 different one), a Red Dragon one and a in-theme battle map? In return, I’ll site credits and publish my adventure notes (including Terrain effects and such) along with the jpgs and files to pull it off using Gametable.
Thanks guys. I plan to post an Adventure Prep article soon about Gametable and how I went to make the short adventure.à
Have a great week.
Paying the Buy-In
The problem is a very simple one:
When starting a new campaign (or even just planning a one-shot), it’s tough to get people into a new game. Thus, the game usually ends up being D&D. Now, there’s nothing wrong with it being D&D, but with so many RPGs out there, I enjoy a bit of variety when I can get it.
Why is it so tough? Because the “buy-in” total for the game is too high.
What do I mean by that? The buy-in is anything that has to be contributed by the players (and GM) in order to make the game function. While buying the game itself and any accessories is one form of buy-in, that’s generally not the problem. The problem is how much has to be learned in order to play a new RPG. [Read the rest of this article]
4th Edition Encounter Planner
Earlier this week I was talking to Asmor and idly mentioned to him how I was trying to make an Encounter Planner for 4th Edition that used the DMG encounter templates. I was hoping to have something where I input a level, choose a difficulty, and it outputs a list of the monsters that will fit into the templates. I brought this up with Asmor because he’s already created a ton of 4E D&D tools that have helped me out as a DM on many occasions, such as the Monster Math Cruncher for creating custom monsters (something I love doing) which works great in combination with his Monster Maker program (which I definitely recommend using.) He’s also created a 4th Edition Random Encounter generator and Random Treasure generator, both of which are excellent tools now that the random charts are no longer presented in the core books. All of these tools are really well made, and extremely helpful for any 4e DM.
Well, sure enough, only a couple of days later and he’s sent me a link to his new 4th Edition Encounter Planner, which does pretty much exactly what I wanted it to! I haven’t gotten to use it to maximum effectiveness yet in my game, but I will be for future encounters that I want to design using the DMG templates, and it will definitely be a time-saver. Thanks to Asmor for creating it, and hopefully some of you enjoy it as well!
You can see a full list of the scripts and programs he has created over at his site. Also don’t forget to check out his great site, Encounter-A-Day!
The long Journey, 500th post!
Musings of the Chatty DM started a little over 1 year ago, with a bad colour scheme and a 34 year old nerd with limited editorial and web design skills.
The first 200 posts were about finding my voice, the next 200 were those that established me as a credible blogger and building an incredible community of readers and bloggers.
The last 100 seemed to be about me losing that voice.
I won’t go into that again, I’ve touched on my issues enough. Suffice it to say that I also realized that I fell to the Gen Con Newbie Nerd trap!
This convention packs so much energy and cool things together that any creative type leaves it on a different plane of reality, convinced that no project is impossible! When the high wears off, one finds himself surrounded with numerous half-finished projects and a fraction of the energy and the enthusiam to see them through!
I tackled way too many things these last few months, combined with my Real Life issues, causing a mini crash in the last few weeks. No broken bones, just some bruised motivation and hard to catch muses.
But still, I made it to 500 posts! Not too shabby I should say. Well worth the work and the effort. I’ve made many friends and discovered countless cool things about my hobby and about myself!
Blogging is about cycles. It follows your energy levels and bares your soul for all to see. One thing that keeps coming back though is that if you want to blog about tabletop RPGs and remain enthusiastic about it, you need to play more!
That’s what I intent to do. And I have a game tonight!
Thanks for hanging around! Here’s to the next 100 posts!
A few stats:
- 500 Posts
- 6941 Comments
- 735 RSS subscribers
- 400 visitors a day on average
My ad revenues are now in the range of 150-200$ monthly, if I keep this up, I’ll be able to pay for Gen Con next year. Thanks for those who click them once in a while… always appreciated.
Robin Laws’ Revisited: Part 6, Being Spontaneous!
This post is part of a series where I discuss Robin D Laws’ seminal work on GMing: Robin Laws’ of Good Game Mastering, written at the end of the 90’s . I compare it to my personal experience and opinions and I check how well the guide has ‘aged’.
The other posts of this series can be found here. If you liked them, I encourage you to purchase Robin’s book. Oh incidentally, he knows that I write these and he told me he didn’t mind… I can sleep soundly without fearing his army of lawyers from Toronto!
Many GMs wish they were more spontaneous in regards to their games, especially when faced with unplanned player requests.
In chapter 6 of his book, Robin Laws tackles spontaneity by covering 3 areas:
Giving instant NPCs Names
GMs should have a list of names readied in advance in their notes to be picked up whenever the PCs ask about a NPC you had not planned to flesh out. That’s a great tip because when hard pressed to produce a name for a NPC I often find myself groping gracelessly and opting for some monosyllabic name.
Player: Hey Phil, is there a Magician that sells Scrolls here?
Chatty: Huh… Sure, he lives in a shabby tower by the town’s edge.
Player: Cool, what’s his name?
Chatty: …Jim… Darkmagick? (With apologies to Gabe)
NPC personalities
Then, Robin says that you should have a list of personality traits, one word each, that you can just cross out whenever your players actually interact with that NPC they forced you to create.
Player: Greeting Master Darkmagick, I am Galdar the Arcanist and I seek to purchase some of your Arcane rituals
Chatty (Crossing off “Dark” from his list): Jim glares at you… Darkly!
Player: (Sigh)
Yeah, make sure you make a list that’s actually inspires you to act out NPCs more vividly. You don’t need to add many traits. Its usually easier to play one trait fully, even exaggerating it, than try to go for a complex deep character. This is a RPG , not Shakespearean camp!
I’ll add that it does not have to be just personality traits, it can be any other defining characteristic that you feel confident you can play at the drop of a hat. Maybe the NPC has black flies all around him, or maybe she’s a cross-dresser that yells all the time.
Dialogue and other items:
As for achieving convincing, yet spontaneous spoken dialogue for storyline NPC (i.e. ones that you have created for your adventure), Laws suggests that you prime each of them with one or two sentences that represents the NPC’s standard speech pattern.
I’m doing that with my Kobold Love adventure and it works great!
Deformed Majordomo of Local Vampire Lord: My Mashter will shee you now! Pleashe come with meeeeee!
Halfling Rogue: I didn’t steal it, it fell in my pocket honest!
Space Marine: Let’s Frag those bug eyed Mofos and be done with it, I will NOT miss the Game tonight!
Laws then concludes this very short chapter by saying that you can apply such tricks to other things like regions, objects and rooms.
Want more? Here’s a few things I thought up while writing this:
Secrets & Rumors
Make a list of secrets and rumors that are not directly linked to your game. When players start interacting with NPCs, try to weave in one secret or one rumor in the conversation. Maybe the Blacksmith’s daughter is a cultist and performs dark rites at night, or maybe that soft-spoken herbalist is keeping a Red Dragon egg in her wood stove.
This is particularly useful for groups who prefer Sandbox type games and/or are more prone to appreciate Storytelling. Discovering such secrets can lead to whole new quests and stories.
Relationships
If your campaign uses organizations and factions, its useful to decide if a new NPC you are prompted to create is related to one of them. Is Jim Darkmagick a fellow of the Darkmagick school of New England? Is the Blacksmith’s daughter part of the Order of the Toiling Bell?
While I don’t suggest that you write this up (I mean this is about spontaneity, not anal retentive overplanning) you should feel free to make the snap decision of linking a NPC that your players take an interest in to one of the existing elements of your campaign world.
Ask your players!
You don’t have to share the burden of spontaneity alone. When you have to create a NPC on the spot, you can prompt your players to fill in some of the ‘fields’ that make a new NPC. This is especially true if the NPC was created at their request.
Feel free to ask how that NPC could tie into the story and listen carefully, maybe the players will be crafting future plot hooks for you!
Dare to be silly
Lastly, in order for you to be more spontaneous, you have to slowly shed away any insecurity you have toward your skills as a GM (as discussed here). You have to dare doing things impulsively. Make voices, give your NPCs silly names and act out exagerated personality traits.
Spontaneity is an acquired skill, push your boundaries and it will become easier.
Up next (and not in 6 months, I promise): Setting mood and keeping focus.
Winter is Coming (to HBO)
George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic has been greenlighted.
The plan is to adapt one novel each season, starting with 1996’s “A Game of Thrones.” - AintitCool
Martin himself will be doing some of the writing chores (further pushing back Dance of Dragons, eh?) along with others. Frankly, I’m really excited. After seeing Rome/Deadwood I have faith in HBO doing a multitude of eras… so the medieval War of the Rose inspired Game of Thrones should be no problem. Moreover, the lengthy treatment of each book really ought to do the series justice. Finally, the complexity of the books translates well to HBO as series such as The Wire and The Sopranos have found success whilst juggling a cast of characters comparable to the immensity of Martin’s works.
Adventure Prep: Keeping it Simple and Stupid
All right so last night I sat down to prep for my game as I planned it here and here. My goal of the night was to be done with the first half of the adventure: Getting on the Fey Airship and reaching the player’s destination.
I got out all the battle maps (I have two featuring ships, so I’m good for Airships) and I started planning a rather complex Skill Challenge that encompassed all the dealings the PCs would do with the Fey, from negotiating the favor, convincing the fey to be helpful and trying to avoid being ‘tricked’ as the kind of Fey I like to play are wont to do.
All in one massive skill challenge (or several sub challenges linked thematically) stretched over the whole evening if necessary…
As I was crafting primary skills and consequences for successes and failures and as I was discussing it with Dave the Game over on Gtalk, it dawned on me that I was possibly making a D&D 4e rookie mistake. I was likely letting the games’ rules, in this instance the not so well defined rules for skill challenges, dictate the way I wanted to play the scene.
Skill challenges are an excellent way of putting a party to work together on a large non-combat problem. However, they should not be designed as a replacement for some old fashioned Role Playing.
I blame my affinity to all things crunchy. When rules are made for a situation, I feel compelled to use them… Yet I complicate things because I still want to achieve exactly what I have in mind in terms of story… yeah, I’m insane like that.
Keeping it simple, I need to do this more often… its surprising how seldom I manage to pull it off.
I have a specific feeling I want to convey in the scenes with the Fey Airship and I can likely achieve this without any die rolls.
So I greatly simplified the skill challenge I had originally planned. I’ll focus it on the PCs getting exactly what they want from the Fey and I’ll leave the rest to roleplaying based on how involved the players are in interacting with the ship’s crew.
To that effect, I fleshed out the crew by giving names, descriptions and personality traits to the ship’s officers and I made the crew ‘special’. There should be enough hooks to entice the storytellers of the group to latch on and go wild.
So now I’m done with the 1st half of the adventure, I just need to add Treasure Parcels and that part is done. Tonight I’ll focus on the Pirate Airship and the last scene’s ‘denoument’. Thursday night will be about preparing my gaming room and setting up the battlemaps, minis and get the whole place ready for the game.
Can’t wait!
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