Power Attack the Shoggoth
As noted previously, I’m a huge fan of the d20 Call of Cthluhu book. With it, I ran my favorite campaign of all time, and the rules were exactly the level I wanted them. At all levels, PCs were fragile. (In fact, it seemed like the primary motivation from them for leveling up was to regain 1d6 Sanity.) Characters could have roughly identical skill sets and still not feel useless compared to another character. And most of all, the rules buy-in was already taken care of: these were people very familiar with D&D, and that translated very easily for each person to know what their character could do.
Except…
The feat selection sucked. Keep in mind this was the early days of d20- even the designers (the book was co-written by Monte Cook) didn’t have as much experience with the ins and outs of the d20 system as they would in years to come. Thus, the feat chapter was lifted almost directly out of the D&D Player’s Handbook, and featured primarily combat feats, with a few new psychic feats thrown in. So every 3 levels, the characters in my d20 CoC game got to pick stuff like Power Attack, despite the fact they never wanted to be in melee. [Read the rest of this article]
Adventure Prep: Online D&D game trial
As discussed here, I’ve gotten a group of geeks together to experiment with playing D&D online.
The first game (Friday night) is mostly about meeting with the players online, getting our various software working and maybe try playing a short D&D 4e Scenario.
For the first game we settled for Gametable as the Virtual tabletop software.
I chose Gametable first because its the simplest software I found. Its basically nothing more than a shareable drawing surface with movable elements called ‘pogs’ (Miniatures and furniture) and Overlays (map elements).
I invite you to check Alex’s tutorials on this application as I didn’t plan to revisit what he already wrote. I really like this application even though it’s got exceedingly limited features. It still provides the basic I want from a virtual tabletop:
- A battlemap application (which can be used creatively to store other types of gaming props like regional maps and scrolls.
- A dice roller (very basic) although I’ll likely play with the honor system
- A way of hosting the game and sharing the map.
The software does not include voice chatting and since we intended to have some, we decided to go with Skype.
The adventure I planned for the game is exceedingly simple. The adventurers will need a group of 5 fearsome Kobold Champions and their Draconic Boss in a 2 scene setup.
The background for the adventure though is a little more unorthodox:
“Hello and Welcome to this special edition of THE CRAWL!: Monster vs Monster edition! I’m your host, Naquist Balefire. Lets give a warm welcome to our newest contestants who are getting ready to challenege the yet undefeated SCALY SIX!
Oh yeah, I’m gonna play me a little Dungeon Reality Show adventure!
As I was trying to draw the map with the mouse I kept having a hard time drawing the cave elements where the adventure will take place. In a moment of frustration when I was about to throw the mouse at the other end of my gaming room, I remembered the X-mas gift my mother gave me last year.
She gave me a Wacom drawing pad…
I hooked it up to my laptop and BAM, I was drawing the map just like if I was using Wet Erase markers on a Chessex Vinyl battlemap.
Awesome!
That’s pretty much it. I’ll let you know how it went.
Review: "Martial Power"
Overview: Martial Power is the newest player-centric sourcebook for D&D 4e. It contains more options for the four martial classes (Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Warlord.) Each class gets new class feature options, paragon paths, feats, and epic destinies.
In-depth: 159 pages, hard cover, full-color, $29.95 retail.
The new class builds for Fighter and Ranger are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Fighters get Tempest (two-weapon fighter) and Battlerager (kinda like a Barbarian, gets a lot of temp HP). They both get powers to support the builds, plus powers for any fighter to take. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty's First Freelance project
Its official.
I just signed a freelance writing contract with Goodman Games.
After a few flip-flops on my part, I (helped by a few people hitting me on the head with a frying pan) decided to plunge forward come what may. I shall be spending the next few weeks writing (with the help of a friend) a short 4e compatible adventure.
This is going to be my first serious foray in publishing. Its a small enough project that I feel confident that I’ll meet expectations. After that we’ll see if its addictive/rewarding enough to do more.
As things stand, I must deliver this by mid-January. I’m not going to say it (I’m not). Suffice it to say that this project creates a temporary shift in free time priorities… and I sadly can’t blog about it much.
I’m nervous and elated at the same time!
Wish me luck!
Work less, Partner with People and Make it! (RPG Blog Edition)
Jonhathan, a fellow RPG Blogger network member sent us an impassioned message on the network’s mailing list earlier this week. He was exhorting the virtues of making partnerships to increase our success as bloggers and RPG enthusiasts.
He was sharing with us what he got from this Copyblogger article about how all the work we did as a blogger was keeping us poor.
I started responding and decided that maybe making my response in a blog post would a better idea as several bloggers are not on the network or part of the mailing list.
Partnership IS key…
I strongly agree that one of Blogging’s biggest strength is the community it can build and the networking possibilities it provides by linking like-minded individuals. I gave myself a community builder voice and am extremely proud to think that I somewhat contributed to what we currently share on the RPG blogsphere.
Several of us are already linked. As Jonathan mentioned, the RPG Bloggers network is one of them, the Blog Carnival another.
The challenge of the Nerd Partner
However, Copyblogger’s point is about working less and making money. Partnership is presented as a way to share the work that leads to financial success.
Making money in RPG blogging is a recurring subject (it probably is in all things blog). However, Its a modest success for some (me included, for the moment) and one big pipe dream for most.
In order to achieve any sort of significant financial success you need to establish value. That value can be attributed to your work or to you as an individual. Once that value is established, people may pay you money to associate with you or your content or to acquire it in one form or another.
The underlying message I decoded from Jon Morrow (author of the Copyblogger post) was that partnership IS indeed a way to success, however you choose to define it. However, I think you need to build a name, a reputation and possibly a ‘product’ before you can partner with people who will trust you.
A big challenge of RPG blogging is that we’re all geeky nerds. We develop intense, highly enthusiastic passion for various subjects around our common theme. We have a near infinite amount of honest goodwill to tackle 1000 projects a week!
However, the nerds I know (myself included) are usually flaky and shaky business partners. Trusting an unproven nerd to deliver on a promise is a definitive business risk, especially if you’ve never met them in person.
Hell, just look at how many projects and series I tackle and don’t always see to the end. I for one would be cautious about associating with myself! 
So I would say that as a potential partner in a future RPG/Blog endeavor you need to establish your credibility and then find people who have established their own.
You then tackle a small project with them and you gauge how working with them turned out.
(That’s what I’m currently doing in a few team projects I’m trying out)
Oh and if you do partner with people in a project that may involve money, try to address this as early as possible in the project’s lifecycle. It will save you a ton of trouble later.
The Big Idea!
Finally, once you have established your partnership, I think you need more than goodwill and a good range of skills. You need to build your partnership around a simple idea that everyone shares and that will excite people.
All the ‘oh yeah I’d be willing to do something” of the world are worthless until the “do something” becomes an actual tangible project/goal.
So I agree with the idea… be it more traffic, more blog revenues or starting an new RPG imprint, you need people to share the work. However, as any business ventures, you need to convince people you are a worthy partner and you need to find others you can trust!
That’s what I’m trying to do with my projects!
Well at least the ones I won’t flake on!
Hell, maybe I should write of them Internet Marketing blogs…
D&D 4e: New Encounters
In setting out to design new types of Encounter groups for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, I started in the obvious place by looking at what was provided in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Right away I noticed the two groups that stood out were the Wolf Pack (4-7 skirmishers) and the Dragon’s Den (one solo monster). Both of these solely feature one type of monster, which highlights the abilities and features of the monster in a unique way. Wolf Pack is a great encounter of all skirmishers: a group of speedy and maneuverable but lightly armored and weak troops. The Dragon’s Den features solo monsters but adds in the spice of an additional elite monster in particularly hard fights and is presented to us the suggested way of complementing solo monsters with other monsters in correct balance.
With that in mind, and with a request from Asmor, I began putting together some new Encounter group templates that can be used to expedite your game planning and hopefully present your players with some new experiences and challenges. I’ve also listed some suggestions and brainstorming for how these groups could be implemented, and I would love to hear any you’ve come up with as well!
I looked first to my personal favorite monster role to feature in its own Encounter Group: the Lurker! I feel like they get very little love in the DMG Encounter groups as they only show up in the harder Double Line groups, so I very badly wanted to do them the justice they deserve. [Read the rest of this article]
DM Chronicle: Session 5, Alien Feys & Whiskered Pirates, Part 2
See part 1 here.
Scene 3: White Rage!
After a night where the PCs slept warily on the bridge of the ship the PCs spotted a winged creature flying toward them. It was a large White Dragon with a human pirate riding it.
Screaming in draconic about ‘finally getting a prize worth taking’ the dragon charged!
I setup the Paizo Ship battle map (See image) and placed the Dragon about one round away. My strategy was to have the Dragon fly over the ship, drop the pirate (a Hobgoblin archer refluffed as a Human) in the crow’s nest and engage the party.
The ensuing fight lasted about one hour and was a good challenge for the characters. They took out the archer first and then concentrated on the dragon. When the Dragon finally died, it was slowly absorbed by the ship and it gained quite an impressive figurehead. The ship gave out a pair of magical gloves as a thank you.
During that fight, Franky’s warlock missed each and everyone of its attacks. His rising frustration was palpable. After the fight, Franky made an effort to turn his misfortune in a roleplaying scene, asking the Trent why his Fey Pact was not functioning so close to the primal forces that powered both the pact and the ship’s flight.
While I had the ship argue that being an exiled, it was not ‘in tune’ with the Fey Energies of the Feywild, Franky, being frustrated, was rather resistant to accept that.
Then one of the players made a crack about Franky that I missed (possibly about his relative uselessness in the fight) and Franky became livid with anger and basically clamped up for the rest of the evening (It was barely 8h PM by that time).
As I said before, we since spoke about that after the game. We both agreed that we would sit down in the near future and hammer out how the Fey work in the gameworld. Thus, next time we’ll be roleplaying on more common grounds.
Scene 4 & 5: Assault of the Pirate Airship!
After the fight, the ship asked how the party wished to approach the pirate’s base. The party settled for a night run. They were able to approach the moored airship without being spotted. The Pirate ship was a huge dragon shaped vessel with 4 decks arranged around the gasbags (I took the one featured in Kobold Quartely #7) . They asked the Trent ship if it could grab the pirate’s ship and rip it out of its mooring while they stealthily boarded the top deck. It agreed.
As soon as the pirate airship was ripped out of its mooring point and the PCs boarded the enemy ship, the Trent ship faded out, leaving the PCs to their fate.
The PCs sneaked in the ship’s top (control) deck and moved in it until they found the main control room and heard voices arguing, Brandobaris among them. It seemed that the old dog was actually negotiating with the pirates! When the PCs looked into the room through a port hole they saw Dragora (The Scholar Pirate of previous adventures) another pirate who seemed to be the captain of the ship and 4 other crewmen.
Brandobaris was lounging in a chair by a table filled with charts and papers. He was attached to the table by a thin silvery chain on his ankle.
When the party burst in, surprising everyone, Brandobaris managed to recover, smiled and said ‘What took you boys so long?”
When all crewmen turned into wererats, things became…hairier. (Rimshot!) The fight was hard, really hard. Franky continued being unlucky, depriving the party of a striker’s damage output. The flanking wererats skirmisher hurt a lot!
So much so that half the party went down fast (including the warlord, the party’s only healer). While Dragora was dispatched rapidly, at that point things looked grim and I started planning for the party’s defeat. I was thinking they could be jailed in the dungeons under the city and possibly make the next campaign about breaking out.
What a downer ending though, given the mood of some players, I didn’t want to risk it!
Because of that, and since I’m such a softie DM, I decided to do something I rarely ever do, and I started fudging numbers. Not dice rolls, those I always play in the open. I did however cut all wererats HP in half from 48 to 25. Thus the party was able to vanquish them.
At a certain point in the fight, another crewman from the next room came, noticed the fight and went away to sound the alert (and bring the drifting airship back to its mooring point).
As the players managed to beat the last wererats, I decided that they could take a bit more punishing (plus I was hoping Franky’s bad dice streak would start to turn). I had 2 other wererats (un-nerfed) come in. Up to that point I had forgotten to play out the lycantrophes’ regeneration powers so I did with these two, much to the distress of the already emotionally spent players.
As planned, Franky’s luck turned and started to do significant damage. Takeo (Warlord), having spent a long part of the fight dying, was finally healed and joined the fight with most of his powers intact. The party prevailed! At the end of the combat, all players were down to a few hit points, most of their healing surges gone and all powers expended.
Brandobaris cheered them! As the PCs took command of the airship and started steering it toward the coast, Brandobaris revealed most of the “Humans” of the South Seas were in fact Lycantrophes (a fact that goes back to a campaign I played in that region 15 years ago ion real time and 2000 years ago in game world time). When the players asked about the silver chain, they learned that Bradobaris was one too and in fact an old founding member of the Crimson Fleet. The chain was enchanted to cause immense amount of pain to a captured were-creature whenever it tried to do something other than move slowly.
He explained that engineered his kidnapping, making the pirates believe that he was ready to return to the fold and share his ample wealth as an atonement offering. He trusted that the PCs would come to screw the pirates’ plans and for that he vowed eternal friendship and support for his “favorite heroes”.
The PCs returned home, at the helm of the realm’s most fantastic vehicle, leaving the Crimson Fleet disorganized and deprived of its two main leaders and its flagship.
Roll campaign’s credits. Good job guys!
The next campaign, to be played in January, will occur 4 years in the future and will likely be based on Thunderspire Labyrinth and Brandobaris sending in the PCs to establish trading relationships with the Underdark.
Lessons Learned
- When creating a roleplaying encounter, be it Skill challenge-based or otherwise, work in more links between the PCs and the situation so that players have a better chance of knowing what to do and how to react.
- D&D 4e PCs in the hands of experienced players can take a lot more punishment than I expected. I I can afford to put waves of monsters like Mearls did here.
What players liked
- Sneaking in the airship and the Epic fight!
- Scoring an Airship! (No worries, that ship will not feature as a PC possession in the next campaign)
What Player disliked
- The Fey ship scenes, too alien and lacking proper hooks to be enjoyable.
- I need to look into frustration management in regards to low dice rolls. I’ll be discussing a frustration token mechanics with my players and online friends. Heck, I’ll make a Chatty’s question about it!
Thanks for reading! My 1st D&D 4e campaign is complete!
YouTube Tuesday: Beam Me Up Edition
How could it be anything else this week but the trailer to the new Star Trek movie, a reboot of the franchise. I’ve embedded the theater bootleg since it’s the only one up on YouTube, but I highly recommend watching the full quality trailer instead.
Everything I’ve heard has made me excited for this movie, and the trailer only moreso. What do you guys think?
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!
