Adventure Prep: Fitting everything in one evening
Since I’m running a D&D 4e home brewed adventure for my gaming group this week, a lot of my creative energies will be focused there for the next few days. A guy needs his priorities straight and my D&D game is pretty much at the top of my ‘use of free time’ list.
This means that I don’t plan to post some monster article about any special subjects this week (and I didn’t build a buffer of posts over the weekend like last week). I will be spending my evenings on prepping and once I hit my daily targets, I may fire up the ole blog and write a few lines about stuff I realized or thought up during my work sessions.
As things stand, my players will summon a Fey Airship and will need to negotiate (Skill Challenge) with the ship’s crew for passage to the Pirate Fleet’s Airship mooring point. Brandobaris, the party’s patron and main McGuffin of the adventure is being held on the pirate vessel.
I’ll be missing 2 players so I would prefer that the adventure not take more than one session. My plan therefore goes like this:
- Scene 1: The Fey Favor and summoning of the ship
- Goals: Storytelling, exploration of setting
- Scene 2: Negotiations with the Fey (Skill Challenge)
- Goals: Storytelling, roleplaying
- Scene 3: Aerial Attack: Something big and flying spots and attacks the PCs.
- Goals: Butt Kicking, brilliant planning, power accumulation
- Scene 4: Boarding the Pirate Ship (Stealth and/or short fight)
- Goals: Brilliant planning, supercoolness, minor butt kicking
- Scene 5: Showdown on the Pirate’s Bridge! (combat vs pirates guardians and big reveals)
- Goals: Storytelling, butt kicking, power accumulation
- Scene 6: Return Home, Closing Credits
- Goals: Storytelling, campaign conclusion
Since an extended rest is assumed in the story between Scene 3 and 4, I’ll but a big nasty there… possibly something linked to the game’s name.
As for Scene 5, I have to factor in the group’s tiredness and the time of the evening, so I’ll probably make the fight less complex than what my original plan for the story called for (Dragora, her dragon, the ship’s captain and officers and Brandobaris). I’ll probably settle for something challenging yet simple enough to be completed within one hour or so.
For both Scenes 3 and 5, I will want to establish cool battle maps and create at least one or two battlefield elements that players can use to spice up the fight. As I write these lines, I can totally imagine some sort of magical Harpoon guns mounted on the gunwales of the Fey Ship. I’m open to suggestions of things you might find on airships (Structures and cargo) that could useful in a fight.
Scene 6 will be the campaign’s conclusion. The Heroes have either failed or return victorious with their spoils (which could be surprisingly large). We’ll conclude the campaign and I’ll start asking players what they want their characters to do in the near future, before the next campaign starts (which could be with the same or different characters).
Now depending on how players react and the choices they do, I might drop scene 6 and stretch the campaign for one more session. For instance, if the PCs want to seriously dent the Pirates’ strength, we might decide to plan another adventure in the same region. I’m perfectly willing to meet my players here, we basically have 2 or 3 sessions planned before year’s end anyway.
Wish me luck! I think this will be a good game
YouTube Tuesday: Singing about Kissing Wookies Edition
An a capella version of various John Williams songs, with new lyrics around Star Wars. Oh, and it’s composited very well, as you’ll see.
Hands-On: D&DI Character Generator Beta
Today, the Beta version of the D&D Insider Character Generator became available to subscribers (and possibly some non-subscribers who signed up to beta test.) At GenCon, we were given a preview of the Character Generator alongside several of the other applications, but we didn’t get a chance to use it hands-on. Today, however, I went through and inputted the character I’m currently playing to test it out, and it all went very smoothly… with one exception.
Installation takes a while, especially on the step to update the .net framework to its current version- a period of about 15 minutes where there’s no indication that anything is happening. A reboot is required, but other than those two things, it went pretty smoothly.
Launching the app takes a little bit, which I’m presuming is when it connects to the Internet to get current data. I expected to have to sign-in to my D&D Insider account, but that did not happen at any step. [Read the rest of this article]
ZeroClix
Citing the tough economic times, Topps announced today it will be shutting down Wizkids. For those who came in late, Wizkids was the studio that made the first clicky-base game MageKnight, and then was able to spin off the concept into their most successful game, HeroClix. They had a string of other clicky-base games, the construct-a-ship game Pirates of Spanish Main, various collectible card games, a board game or two, and a few other miscellaneous products. Topps purchased Wizkids in 2003 (when founder and game genius Jordan Weisman left).
As recently as last year, Wizkids was still a very strong company, running one of the largest booths at Origins, but I don’t recall them having a presence at all in either of this year’s summer shows (though I could be mistaken.)
The ICV2 article notes that they are trying to keep the viable brands going (specifically noting Heroclix, and I’d guess Pirates would be another relatively safe franchise) but I wouldn’t hold my breath for any of their other products.
As always, best of luck to those who recently lost their jobs finding other work, especially the game designers who may have trouble finding work elsewhere, as I fear Wizkids may be only one of the first game companies to fall in this economy. Topps deciding to close Wizkids is a bad sign in and of itself, as it shows that large corporate backers are having problems, which does not bode well for the smaller independant companies.
Captain America gets a Director
The Hollywood Reporter is saying that the First Avenger: Captain America movie now has a director, Joe Johnston. Johnston was the director of Jumanji and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but probably most importantly one of my favorite movies The Rocketeer! I say this is the most important because this Captain America movie is supposedly going to take place mostly (entirely?) in the 1940′s and focus on Cap’s early life becoming a super soldier and fighting in World War II, practically the same time period and even similar events as those in the Rocketeer.
No writers are on board, but the studio, which is hearing pitches, expects to hire shortly.
Johnston first met with Marvel two years ago. When the two parties clicked, general talks turned into Captain America-specific meetings, with much of the project’s current direction resulting from those early conversations.
“This is a guy who designed the vehicles for ‘Star Wars,’ who storyboarded the convoy action sequence for ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ ” Feige said. “From ‘Rocketeer’ to ‘October Sky’ to ‘The Wolfman,’ you can look at pieces of his movies and see how they lead to this one.”
Thanks to the Main Event for showing me the link on Ain’t It Cool News, where you can also go to see the short animated nazi video from The Rocketeer.
Inq. of the Week: Games You Play 2008
Our rather appropriate presidential poll has now closed, and it looks like we’re all doomed! I myself was almost swayed by the logical tagline, “Why settle for the lesser of two evils?” I held out, but most of you just couldn’t resist the Elder Sign ticket coming in with the small win at 31%. Not really a majority, but his greatness Cthulhu doesn’t need a sweeping majority to eat your souls. Second place goes to the incredible combination of Superman and Batman as his VP with 24%, followed by a surprise third place with Conan and Red Sonja for the Libertarians at 17% most likely due to their proposition for lower taxes on loot (something we can all get behind).
It’s finally November, right? I doubt many people ever have that sentiment, as this is the time of year (at least here in Maryland) when the sun goes down at 5pm and the sky seems to always be overcast with clouds. Depression hits a lot of people hard this time of year, but we all have to finds ways to get passed those feelings and try to enjoy life the best we can. One of the things that I find myself doing is playing more games. I enjoy being outside for most of the fall season, but once November hits I start staying inside more and now that we have a batcave-like basement the experience is just so much sweeter. There is some form of mad irony when my wife and I receed into our dark, underground basement to play Fallout 3, a game about a person who is born in an underground vault but ends up emerging into the outside to a surface world of adventure.
What this brings me to is an Inquisition I did a year ago about the types of games that you guys, our readers, play and how it provides an excellent metric on what our audience is interested in, and therefore what we should write the most about. It also helps us see what areas of our target audience that we’re missing, and perhaps what kinds of posts we can write to attract more readers in that area. Without further ado, I ask you about the Games You Play (you can select multiple answers):
Loading ...(Image Source: Singapore Marriot Staff club – by LiveStudios)
The voice of Chattyness
If you ever wondered what this French Canadian Blogger sounds like after 3 days with little sleep and way too much geek energy, go and have a listen at Pulp Gamer.
They just put up the RPGbloggers unite panel from Gen Con.
Along with Dave and Bartoneus of Critical Hits, Yax of Dungeonmastering.com, The Stupid Ranger and Bob of RPGdigest, you can listen to our stories behind getting into blogging, our tips and tricks and our weathering of slumps and finding our voices.
Enjoy!
RPG Bloggers Unite! GenCon Panel
At long last, the audio for our GenCon panel on being an RPG Blogger is up.
The panel includes:
- Myself and Bartoneus
- Yax from Dungeonmastering
- Phil the ChattyDM
- Tasha the StupidRanger
- Bob from RPG Digest
(Which, you’ll note, includes all the founders of the RPG Bloggers Network.)
Therein, in addition to hearing all of our voices, is a lot of great advice for all the RPG Bloggers out there. Find out about why each of us got into it, what tips we can give about writing, receiving comments, search engine optimization (or lack thereof), what blogging platform we recommend, and being you when you blog.
Consultant GM Case #1: The Wrecked Ship of Horror
Its the weekend, time to try something new!
In the last few months, I’ve taken a role of GM consulting through Gmail with readers and friends. One of the things I excel at is brainstorming and throwing ideas out. When I started getting great feedback for the ideas I gave out I started thinking maybe I should recuperate these discussions and make posts out of them. With their approval of course!
Let me know if you like that format.
Last week, I noticed on Twitter that one of the people I followed was having difficulty with prepping for his game. I offered to help and invited him on Gtalk.
Trabant is a teenager from Slovakia. He’s a GM who’s into Post Apocalyptic games.
Here’s an edited version of our discussions:
Trabant: Hello good sir. I believe you offered some of your services on the internets? Regarding setting up a game?
Chatty: So what’s the system/setting/situation then?
Trabant: Well, here’s the deal. The game is an offshoot from our latest campaign. It’s a one-shot, zombies on a boat style. Now first I was trying to recreate a map from a game. Objectives were pretty straightforward. Go there, pull lever, do x, run to y… Now this was not good with my group, so I added the aspect of survival.
Trabant: They’re stranded, after jumping off a sinking ship. They are armed with nothing more that their clothes and mediocre to bad combat skills. What more, there are very few weapons, in the map. So much to the setup. Now I have had a pretty good plan on how the game starts. So they have restrained ressources and need to survive/find a way out
Trabant: Players enter ship, look around. I guide them to the radio station on top of the bridge. At that point they already witness corpses and signs of combat.
Chatty: Making it creak and make noise while they explore the ship…
Trabant: Yes, yes. I thought of that. Even prepared muzak.
Trabant: Now, at the top, all hell breaks loose. Ol’ (Zombie) cap’n decides his harpoon ain’t bloody enough. Zombie 1st mate still has a loaded shotgun.
Trabant: Now at this point, the PCs should already have messaged the nearest shore. They’re not sure where they are, but the nearest port gives them directions to a map room, plus they’re obviously near Papua new Guinea (Where the responding port is).
Trabant: Now, after killing the cap’n and making contact, they should see that the ship is broken in two. Somehow, the back half is still up.
Trabant: What makes the situation funnier is that now something big is coming from the broken side. It’s pale. Its wet. Slithery.
Chatty: Ohhh! Monster!
Trabant: Hell yes. I have no idea how to put this into the story, but it’s aquatic, and quite hungry.
Chatty: If it’s big, dangerous and cool… who gives a (Bleep) what it’s doing there?
Trabant: Clever. The backstory of the zombies is some kind of stupid.
Chatty: And it might be a connoisseur of Rotten flesh! Or the ship’s super secret cargo that escaped.
Trabant: Sir you are brilliant.
Chatty: That’s what you (don’t) pay me for 
Trabant: Retrospectively, it doesn’t even have to be linked to the zombies!
Chatty: It does not
Trabant: Now I got 2 supernatural forces screwing with the players
Chatty: Hell yeah!
Trabbant: Now, I already have a plan about how the battle is supposed to go. The thing is awfully fast. No time for proper barricades, and the thing is pretty resistant to bludgeoning.
Chatty: Add sharks around the boat to make it spicer and prevent players from diving from bridge to water
Trabant: Ooooh. No need. The thing is the shark.
Chatty: Vampire Shark?
Trabant: He he, almost. a humanoid, rotting vampire shark from the future.
Chatty: A Great Wight Shark! (Rimshot!)
Trabant: Now, after giving him a bit of fire, his weakness, it flees. The players now get to make a willpower test, and the weakest of them, or strongest, feels a moral urge to sink the ship before fleeing. This adds a nice twist. At this point, I’m kind of lost.
Chatty: Make the moral urge feel like something unholy resides in the ship’s structure.
Trabant: Nice.
Chatty: Like letting it intact will bring much worse in the world.
Trabant: Hell yes! We’re more the kind of rational/scientific bunch, but this will add a whole new dimension to the game. Good.
Trabant: Now here’s a part of my problem. After this, there are 2 ways to sink the ship, one by overloading the sanitary systems and letting the toilets flow over, the other by letting the reserve fuel go kaboom. The problem is, the lower level of the ship is extremely boring.
Chatty: Make it flooded… and have PCs do technical feats while needing to a) Hold Breath (Count time) and b) Not being able to talk to each other but coordinate tasks. I did it once… it worked great!
Trabant: Good thoughts… Here are my plans until now. I had thought of a puzzle for the toilets, basically, you had to use two valves in different rooms at the same time. This sounds good for an FPS, but horrid for an RPG. What are your thoughts?
Chatty: Puzzles in RPGs need to bring an alternate, non-bottleneck solution to a problem. I’d say make that same puzzle by putting valves in different rooms and one of them flooded.
Trabant: Good. I like that a lot. I already had planned to make the rooms even a level lower than the rest,.
Chatty: So now it becomes a communication and organization puzzle. Make a map and put tools that allow communications (Mirrors, pipes, Wrenches, morse code, etc)
Trabant: I thought the rooms would have one common wall, through which they would knock.
Chatty: Make it harder,… if your group is smart it will stimulate them to figure it out.
Trabant: Good thoughts, I hope I’ll not overload them.
Chatty: They can handle it… At worst, simplify on the fly…
Trabant: Well, the Explosion solution is very boring. Essentially, the thing consists of setting up a timer for a molotov cocktail-esque bomb, and dropping it into the upper level of the tank. I’m thinking combine “watch” + “cocktail”: Equals one time bomb. The only really challenging parts would be getting there and locking the tank up.
Chatty: Why don’t you make the ‘shark’ attack during the manipulation of the cocktail bomb?
Trabant: Yes that was supposed to be the second entry point for the shark:) I was hoping to model him after Nemesis, from Resident Evil.
Chatty: Not so boring when 2 tons of teeth attack when some players are yielding explosives.
Trabant: Strong approval. I think this makes it good enough for my group.
Chatty: Plus it brings in the Rule of C4
Trabant: Everything is better with explosives?
Chatty:
Trabant: If this was a face to face conversation we would be totally looking at each other like members of the same secret society.
Chatty: I’m happy to have helped
Chatty’s Conclusion:
Who said the new generation of gamers were not interested in tabletop Role Playing? Here’s a guy willing to share about his game and get better and he’s half my age!
Being in his mid-late teens, Trabant’s adventure ideas seem to be inspired by Survival Horror video games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. He does realize that you can’t transfer some of the challenges from one medium to the other successfully. Door and lever puzzles, when paced alone, are not the best challenges for a group… except when you add several complications to the puzzle.
You may also noticed that at no point I challenged his core ideas about the adventure nor commented on the parts that he called ‘boring’ and such. My self-appointed mandate was to prod his creative ‘muscle’ to push through his block, not challenge his concepts. I’m happy that it seems to have helped him.
I’ve found in the last few months that discussing about your game with another GM helps a lot in game prepping. One of the curses of the offline GM is that there are precious few people you can talk to to get help, most of the people who share your passions for RPGs are your players!
Even some of the Online venues, like some forums, are not that helpful, filled with people more interested in calling you a moron (or plain ignoring you) than giving genuine help. Finding someone you can bounce your ideas with is always a good thing.
If you liked the format, I may do others like that. If you need help with your game, you can try to reach me on Gtalk (phil.a.menard) and you may find your game discussed here if you want. I’ll make sure to post our discussions after your game if you want.
Credit: Charles Schultz (Image)
The Pain of Campaigning IV: Put a Little Politics in it
This is a rerun. It originally ran May 14th, 2008.
One of the hallmarks of my DMing style is the political element. My games tend to focus on character development and overarching story, with combats serving to accentuate those aspects. One of the key fuels for this kind of game are nations, kings, countries and gods all jockeying for position. It is crucial in this style of game to involve the players in the details without overshadowing them. This can be challenging at times: how do you make 1st level characters jockey for importance with high priests? The answer is complicated, but rewarding. I’ve listed some tips below.
1. Figure out the Political Climate: You need to know what exactly the politics ARE before you put the PCs into the thick of it. This seems simple, but it warrants mentioning. Are nation-states gearing up for war? Is an evil force infiltrating the government? These are questions you must answer, both on the nitty-gritty (who are the opposing force and their leaders) and the general (is this a good-evil conflict, shades of grey, and do you care where the PCs fall in the whole affair?) If you’re stumped, pick your favorite period of history and twist it around. I’ve run games that started as the New World Age of Discovery, World War I, World War 2, and filed the serial numbers off. [Read the rest of this article]
