Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 1
I started playing D&D with the 1st edition of AD&D way back in the first half of the 80s. I didn’t read English very well (and neither did my friends), so we ended up doing what pretty much everyone else were doing with the game: use the rules we understood and ignored/made up the rest.
I eventually grew dissatisfied with D&D as a whole and I moved on to a certain Generic RPG during the 90s, only to return enthusiastically to D&D 3e in 2001. The rest is known history. However, during my 3e period, I got my hands on a copy of the original ‘White Box’ D&D game circa 1974. Excited, and feeling nostalgic, I wanted to have a one shot game with my gaming group so I set out to read the rules…
…only to quit in disgust 10 minutes later, reminding myself that old stuff is often not as good as nostalgia paints it.
I’ve then abandoned my idea of playing Original D&D. When the Retro-Clones came out, I was happy that the Open Game License could bring this to be, but I didn’t explore, remembering my bad experience and focusing on my game of choice.
Fast forward to last spring. While getting ready for Gen Con, Chgowiz said, in half-jest, that he’ll play in one of my 4e games and if I played in his Sword & Wizardy game. S&W is a retroclone of the 1974 D&D rules. As you may know, I loved that game session! I downloaded the game since and found that having re-written everything based on the OGL clears up many of the warts that bothered me about the game.
So when my friend PM organized one of our Geekouts (an all-day, game, food, movie fest) last Saturday, I decided to bring both the Dominion board game and the Quick Start rules of S&W. I hadn’t read the rules much (a quick skim) and I noticed that there was a started adventure, so I thought we might play it if the opportunity presented itself.
Over lunch after our Dominion game, I pitched my friends PM, Vince, Franky and Anne (Franky’s gf) to give S&W a try. Interestingly enough, everyone but PM had played older editions of the game before, so they were all willing to give the game a try. They all agreed!
Roll up the Rim to Win! (Canadian readers get that reference)
Once back at PM’s, I gave each player a set of polyhedral dice and a Character Sheet and they all rolled up PCs the old way, 3d6 in order. With bonus and penalties being, at worst, +/- 1, the numbers really didn’t mean much in that version of the game… until AD&D came and changed all that.
So here’s what everyone rolled:
- PM rolled Mufki, a Human Cleric (Undisclosed deity)
- Vince rolled Ortec, an Elf and he picked Magic User as his class for the adventure, oh and he had only 1 hp.
- Franky rolled Orvat, a Human Fighter
- Anne rolled Aniamo, a Dwarf (Fighter)
Everyone picked gear, including lots of torches, lanterns, 10-foot poles and a grappling hook attached to 50′ of rope.
30 minutes, and we were ready to go!
Onwards to the Old School!
There was no way I wanted to start the adventure with a tavern scene. So after reading the 3 proposed hooks I went into DM mode.
“You are all adventurers, not by trade for there’s no such thing. Rather you are adventurers by default because you have needs, pressing needs that can’t be met rapidly enough with a craft or trade. You like money and you don’t like to work or risk getting imprisoned for it. So exploring ruins for long lost treasure (and relieving your falling comrades of their un-needed worldly possessions) is your chosen path.”
“You all made your way to the town of Akban. The town is not known for anything but rumours talk of treasures to be found in a recently uncovered entrance to the Underworld near the town. There may have been rumours of increased Goblin raids but you are uninterested in heroics, at least not unless there’s fame and fortune to become one.”
“You noticed each other in town, shopping for adventuring supplies and drinking in the same watering holes. so you decided to band up to increase your chances to survive, you’ll work out how split the loot when, and if, you come out…”
And so the adventure started…
Inq. of the Week: Cthulhu Who?
Last week, we asked about “D&D on the screen”* and 57% of you said that you played the original game regularly at least at some point, and 51% of you went on to Burning Crusade as well. 33% of you are completely clean of the Warcrack. 33% of you are also looking forward to Azeroth being torn asunder (by goblins and werewolves), and judging by the reactions, it looks like the newest expansion is going to be another hit.
I have something to confide in you, my friends. I have found myself gripped by an unnatural force. I cannot fathom or explain its depths, but I hope in inquiring in you that I may yet find my way back. It all started when I was sent a collection of strange sounds that carried with it the story of a group of investigators, the source of which came from an entity known as Yog-Sototh who dwells at least beyond the Atlantic Ocean.
Then, upon venturing out to a cosmic confluence, I found myself obsessed with finding a particular thing only identified to me as The Yellow Sign. I wandered aimlessly in what seemed to be endless halls, making a fool of myself at false leads until coming across a hidden nook where upon a Bearded Trickster gave me what I sought… for a price.
I thought that it would give me peace, but I came across a friend of a friend, a skilled master of games, who in hushed tones showed me a rare tome indeed. “Bound in the hide of a mi-go” he told me, with only 3 copies remaining known to man. His salesmanship was unmatched and through some slight of hand, I found myself handing over my savings just to make it mine.
I managed to escape from that gathering, confidant that now I had these things in my possession that my thoughts would return to normal. But no, I would be introduced by some kind of strange Wolf-like creature (who claims to be both King of the Ghouls and King of the Monkeys) to a creature named Azathoth, and promised me that were I to only give myself to their order, that I would move through time and space itself and shape the course of history. His other stories were compelling as well, but I found myself drawn to this strange tale.**
I believe it is too late for me now. With each new tome I uncover, the more I find myself drawn away from my usual realm and into a realm of insanity. Are you with me?
Loading ...* Nobody calls it this.
** Seriously, support Red Eye of Azathoth and vote for it being Call of Cthulhu system proper. It sounds like a kickass adventure and I don’t want to have to import it from d20.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-08-29
- Here is our podcast feed but we do not yet have an iTunes link.
- The first of the GenCon Seminars from the media track has been posted
- “How the Web Series The Guild Stays Successful” by WSJ
- Short Muskrat Blog Post: The Summer of 69, and Gygax and Arneson (via @muskrat_john)
- Nice recap of the GenCon 4e Design and Development seminar (via newbiedm)
- DnD Markers - We are working with WotC to figure out the best way to get these into your guys’ games. (via @thekiko)
- 2 Girls, 1 Up (SFW)
- Turbine sues Atari over Dungeons and Dragons Online licensing (via @joystiq)
- Microsoft “destroyed development culture” at FASA- Interview with Jordan Weisman
- Save My Game Seminar: The folks at Wizards have posted a precis of the Save My Game DMing seminar (via @RobinDLaws)
- Are Kids Interested in Pencil and Paper RPGS?
- ENWorld launches new Wiki
- Comic completed and posted. Some D&D fun. (via @extralife)
- Hobby Game Market Strengthens but “The RPG category remains deeply troubled with most brands down, and the gap between D&D and the rest growing. “
- Talk like Warren Ellis
- Wizards Community Site is Live
- New D&D podcast with @wilw, @pvponline, @CWGabriel, and @Tychobrahe
- in honor of jack kirby’s 92nd birthday I am creating 719 universes today (via @mattfraction)
- Allen Varney’s article on The Escapist Magazine is about retro-clones, but not just D&D ones (via Bat in the Attic)
- If you’re intimidated by the thought of Hirst Arts , try Castle Kits (via @MonteJCook)
- Batman: Arkham Aslyum breaks ultra-specific Guinness World Record
- Lair: If 4e isn’t a role-playing game you’re doing it wrong (via @greywulf)
I Am A Liberal Gamer
If you know me personally, my political preferences are well known. But what I refer to today is my preference in game design.
I’m a big proponent of change in game design. If something isn’t working, don’t just patch it, teardown and rebuild. This puts me in opposition to what I will respectfully call the “Conservative Gamer” contingent, who prefer that games preserve much of their makeup from edition to edition. Their reasons are certainly strong ones: ensuring backward compatibility with existing products, keeping the game familiar to previous fans, and so on.
But, that’s not for me. I prefer to see innovation in game design. I’m all for taking an existing game in brand new directions, especially if the end result is new and interesting, but- here’s an important part of a successful redesign- while maintaining the core feel of a game. Not only that, but the tastes of audiences change as time goes on, and new editions should take that into account. I also feel quite strongly that in ANY kind of design, be it game design, graphic designer, programming, what have you, the fact that something is traditional is not enough justification by itself to keep an element in.
This all probably will not surprise many of you with my support of D&D 4e, Fallout 3, Twilight Imperium (despite my negative experiences with it) and more recently, the newly announced Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay edition. In every case, they took an existing game, and decided to take it in a new rules direction, often featuring new components and styles. I’m quite happy they did: in each case, they tried to bring forward the essence of the previous edition or editions while introducing new gameplay and appealing to a wider audience beyond those who already had the previous edition. To put it more bluntly: a new edition with minimal changes or only superficial changes is unlikely to bring in new players. Many gamers unfamiliar with a game aren’t really going to care that “Class X or Card Y was broken” in the previous edition, but now it’s fixed, so you should really play. They’re more likely to be brought in by “the combat system was streamlined” or “there’s a really neat new set of options.”
Of course, not all revisions are successful, and are going to always be judged on various personal criteria both by existing players deciding to switch and the new audiences they want to appeal to. Ultimately, I’d rather them try something new and fail then play it safe and have moderate success (though a game company’s accountants may disagree.)
Am I picking on fans of older editions? No, not at all. In fact, I think there’s a fair number of retro-clones that are doing exactly what I’m talking about, and are trying to bring forward the essence of an older game by emphasizing those aspects that they enjoyed and trying some new things in other areas. Nor am I completely an adopter of every new edition (Mage: The Ascension 2e forever!) but I don’t ever begrudge new editions of games coming out.
In fact, that gets to the heart of my main complaint about the other site of this argument: you can still play your older edition, or older edition with house rules and other patches… but if I don’t get a new edition, my only recourse is to make a new innovative game myself, which is a lot of work. And you know how I hate that.
Friday Chat: The Issue(s) of Combat length in D&D 4e
This post is inspired bu a Twitter discussions I had last week.
As my player level up right into paragon level, I noticed that the length of combat in D&D 4e kept increasing. We often break the 90 minutes point for ‘normal’ encounters and massive boss-level fights will easily eat up most of our 3 hours long gaming sessions.
That started to bother me, although some of my players told me that they were having fun. In fact, they clearly told me that they would rather play longer fights than get rushed to play faster.
Fine, but I’m still bothered… I’d like to do more in my short D&D sessions.
I also know that this is an issue for many group playing the last 2 versions of D&D (and some newer games like Savage Worlds, or so I hear).
But here’s the thing, the length of combat in a RPG is only an issue if someone in the gaming group stops enjoying the scene. If everyone is engrossed in it and time flies, then there’s no problem.
However, if a player (or DM) stops enjoying the fight, then having it continue for more than 50-60 minutes will start taxing that player’s willingness to delay his enjoyment for the sake of others.
(And that brings a whole other subject, in that D&D 4e’s default take on intense tactical combat can and will turn off players who aren’t at least partly motivated by kicking butts or tactical planning. Storytelling Psychodramatist will certainly be irritated by long fights…).
The length of D&D 4e combat is usually attributed to the following:
- Turn planning:
- Power choices for high level PCs
- Analytic-minded players
- Brilliant Tactician and Optimizer players
- Low Experience Players/DM
- Page Flipping (Lack of Power Cards or monster stats)
- All the above combined
- Encounter Design
- Evil Combos that abuse keywords and status effects (Insubstantial + Regen + Weakness = no fun)
- Regular use of Elites and Solos
- Poor choice of monster roles (ex: all Soldiers and Controllers)
- A Storming Group : (Player conflict, rampant rules lawyer-ing and general lack of focus)
- Tired players and /or DM
Now, I recently realized that what really kills me during combat encounters (pun unintended, but retained after edits for chuckles) is when The Grind sets in.
The Grind is defined as the stage of a combat where the outcome is clearly in the party’s favour but the players must still go through the motions of whittling monster HPs down to zero.
While people have experienced the Grind in most types of combat, my group sees it mostly in fights featuring Solo monsters and Elites. Since I’m the one bothered about it, preferring that we progress in our story rather than spend an extra hour mopping up a fight, I’ve come up with my own fix.
- Use the ‘corrected’ D&D Monsters stats from the D&D Compendium, Solo hit points were dropped 15% across the board with a few exceptions (Dragons iirc, which are underpowered, but that’s another discussion).
- When a combat enters the Grind stage and energy level of group starts dropping, I call the fight off, using narration to explain how it ended.
- If the remaining fight could still cause significant damage to PCs, I may attribute a Healing Surge Tax, provided player approval, to account for end of combat wounds.
Now this post initiated from Twitter and some of the ideas I present here sparked some more discussions:
Destrin: that’s such a simple idea I didn’t think of it…though my pcs would want to play on to try and prove they can avoid the tax
That should be in the player’s power to do so… however, some players, bored with the fight may actually come forward and pay the Healing Surge tax themselves!
chgowiz Doesn’t that preclude that the players may not win the combat?
The Grind is hard to define but evident to spot. There comes a point in a D&D fight that even if you score Crits, no players are going to die, unless there’s a freak statistical event.
chgowiz: Sometimes even in death, a little itty bitty thing can cause interesting random results. Don’t shortchange the power of dice.
In older version of the game (Chgowiz is a grade A Old School), the story was probably often shaped by the swing of the dice, as my crazy Gen Con Sword & Wizardry experience can attest to. In D&D 4e, the story is, IMHO, less defined by wild swings in chance.
Another point I discussed was that if the DM was the only one bugged by combat length, he/she should work elements in the combat to make the ‘end game’ more interesting. For instance, you could use Load-Bearing bosses (or rather, Load-Bearing minions), Damaging Terrain, Fiendish Traps that PCs can use against high HP monsters, etc.
With all the time D&D 4e DM save preping for adventures (compared to D&D 3.5), why not use some of it to design cool environmental conditions for the fight.
This launched another series of comments:
TheGamerDome It feels a little artificial to have every single room be a set piece with fantastic environmental elements.
It doesn’t have to be, long drawn-out combat should not happen every time, or at the very least, if the whole group agrees to play slowly, the Grind should not occur all the time. If it does, something needs to be addressed regarding the way your encounter are designed or the way the group plays the game.
For instance, a 4e group refusing to perform as a team will see combat stretch much longer than need be as they won’t be using the built-in synergies that a party can muster.
Published adventures often have design issues in their combat encounters, it’s still as much an art as it is a science. You want my trick? More Artillery and Skirmisher, less Soldiers and Controllers… and traps!
DaveTheGame@ChattyDM I’ve found the best defense against grind in any game is to give clear objectives for combat beyond “kill ‘em all”
That is possibly the best advice I could share on making fights shorter. Stop using the ‘bring monster HP to 0′ default goal and add new victory conditions. In fact, you can create endless mini-games by mixing battlemap, combat and Skill Challenge elements to a combat scene.
Just look at the ‘ Rockball’ game encounter in the back of the Dungeon Master Guide, you could easily adapt it to have a Skill Challenge where hitting 4 Switches on a nearby wall would open a door allowing the party to dodge the endless horde of Kobolds pouring out of holes in the walls.
TheGamerDome@ChattyDM Also, The Grind isn’t just about the time it takes to finish, it’s about inevitability.
I keep saying that D&D4e and Magic the Gathering are more similar than what people think. It is precisely my experience with Magic and the concept of Inevitability (The point where you can’t lose a Magic game, baring gross player mistakes) that made me react to the Grind by ‘scooping up’ my monsters and moving on to the next Match Scene.
In my opinion, what it boils down to is:
As a DM, you need to gauge the relative fun of everyone now against the potential fun of the next scenes. If present fun takes a dive, move on to the next scene. And always, don’t make edicts, talk to your players, you might be misreading non-fun as concentration or tiredness.
What about you? How do you deal with long combat scenes in D&D 4e or your favorite game, I hear that Savage Worlds can also be like that.
Sound Off!
Image Credit: WarnerBros
GenCon 2009: High Level D&D Seminar
While at GenCon this year there were many events and seminars which I wanted to attend, but one of the seminars that I really didn’t want to miss was the High Level D&D one hosted by Bruce Cordell and Stephen Schubert from Wizards of the Coast. The blurb write up for the seminar mentioned something about a sneak peak at what might lie beyond level 30, which combined with epic level monsters fueled my post about adventuring after the epic tier. It turns out that the blurb may have been misleading, or in my opinion downright incorrect, as Stephen addressed this and said they had no plans to discuss such a thing. However, as the WotC designers have a habit of doing, they asked the audience in the room who would be interested in such a thing and if I remember correctly just about half of the room raised their hands, so we may be seeing something about this in the future of 4E.
The High Level D&D seminar began with Bruce recapping the general overview of the three tiers of play in 4th Edition. Heroic focuses on local issues, small dungeons and a strong incentive in gaining loot as the party slowly makes a name for themselves. The Paragon tier sees the party move on now that they’re recognized to bigger cities and bigger goals, and the story ties them to more regional consequences for their actions. Epic tier sets the party up as “myth-makers within your game world” as they fight avatars, angels, and even gods. They emphasized that one of the goals of the Epic Destinies is to really tell a strong story with your character in this tier of play. Stephen and Bruce took some time to elaborate on epic level play, saying that as the party learns to do awesome things like fly and come back to life, they insisted that DMs should in most cases let the PC’s do these things and use their epic abilities instead of the gut reaction which is to stop them from flying over a mountain or completely avoiding a location. Instead what they encourage is letting them fly over things, but make it a dangerous path for them to take. The underlying idea is that if the characters have awesome abilities but they never get to use them, then the game stops being fun for the players!
From there the seminar jumped right into a big Question & Answer session, which I attempted to record most of the important things said during. There were many questions about the game mechanics and math at higher levels, especially with regards to PC to-hit and AC versus Monster to-hit and AC, they said that the expertise feats and several others should help minimize any discrepancies. They really want the game math to scale all the way up through the levels, and what they have found is that party cooperation that develops at later levels starts to offset any of the perceived differences in the math (for example: Epic PC armor class lagging behind). There was a follow up question about if resource management really scales all the way up, as higher level characters don’t need to use as many healing surges or aren’t in as much danger. The answer was that there will be more factors draining a character’s healing surges at higher levels. They mention that daily powers and magic items once the character has more of them become a resource that can be managed as well and lived with, but once a character runs out of surges it’s time for them to rest!
There was a long discussion about broken mechanics and how to deal with them as a DM, such as an epic level wizard using Orb of Imposition being able to stun-lock Orcus. The effective answer was to throw more challenges and not just let the party cheese a demon prince, Stephen’s go-to example was throwing five Balors at the characters (be he also alluded that he is a deadly DM). A question was asked about how to handle high level rewards, which they referred to as being answered and addressed in the DMG2 coming out next month (Stephen had a copy that we got to look through briefly). Both Bruce and Stephen suggested giving out items that fit the flavor of your game world and giving them mechanical benefits on the side, the anecdote used was a character gaining a +5 to reflex because they were blessed by the Lady of the Lake. This discussion also lead into giving out temporary boons to characters (such as the +5 to reflex) that make each encounter, adventure, or tier unique for the players.
Someone asked about why Wizard area of effect attack powers seem to target allies while monster’s attacks don’t. The simplest answer was that Bruce felt players need to have interesting choices, and that the AoE targeting leads to more of these. The question was asked about encounter length in paragon and how long they should take, the rule of thumb given was that truly epic fights should take 1-1/2 hours, while the typical fight should always last 45 minutes to an hour at most. They did acknowledge that at the higher tiers the sheer number of options players get tends to spread things out and slow things down a bit.
Solo monsters were brought up, and questioned whether their damage output was too low or if there were ways around this. They seemed to understand this, and recommended increasing the damage, they also said that solo monsters in the Monster Manual 3 will most likely have better resistances to stun and other effects to increase their ability to challenge parties. This is the point where someone brought up the level 31+ issue, which caused Stephen to say that perhaps the GenCon write-up had over-promised the seminar in that respect.
Someone asked if they were going to continue the Icons line of minis, especially for Orcus as he is the final fight in the official adventure modules. Both Stephen and Bruce expressed that everyone at WotC really wants to produce those minis, but that the Dragon Icons did not sell nearly well enough and so they have no plans at the moment to continue with more. A great question was brought up about how to make players in the higher tiers feel like the consequences of the game are higher, the answer was that more involved storytelling is needed to get player investment in what is happening to the characters. The question was also asked about how to effectively jump characters from one level to another, they agreed that you should jump characters to the beginning of a tier such as level 11 or level 21, and not to the middle of a tier. This allows the players to become familiar with their character’s abilities, giving them better knowledge of and investment in the character. A reference was made to some of the more “ridiculous” rules for using skills in 3.5, such as stunts and skilled feats of epic proportion. Utility powers effectively are meant to take the place of these, but they didn’t view this as a bad thing to allow players to do and really make their skill choices feel important especially at later levels.
Perhaps one of the matters that I was most curious about, the questions was asked how the monster creation rules changed from the first MM to the MM2, and how we can update earlier monsters to the new rules. They elaborated that some of the changes came from solo fights dragging: the early solo monster’s defenses were too high and they had too many hit points so they lasted until characters were out of daily and encounter powers and had to resort to just using at-will powers over and over. To fix this they reduced the hit points gained when making a solo monster and did not adjust their defenses nearly as much, but they did try to give them a more concentrated output of attacks in the shorter number of rounds they’d be fighting (such as through bloodied trigger effects).
Another question was asked about the official modules, and how they made the final fight with Orcus (in E3: Prince of Undeath) dramatic and truly epic. They could not mention any specifics as the module is not out yet, but they said that Orcus knows the party is coming to fight him, and that the demon prince has an involved role in the story and goals that he wants to accomplish, so he will be prepared for the PCs and those are the elements that add to the encounter. They also revealed that the E3 module will have a different stat block for Orcus than the one in the Monster Manual.
Straying a bit from the subject of high level D&D, but still a good question, it was asked how many future books they planned to produce and if it would just continue as it is going for the next few years. Stephen essentially said that there is a critical mass for the core books that they will stop at, supposedly none of them intends on creating a PHB 11 or a DMG 10. Exactly how many they will make cannot be said yet, but it sounds like the 5th or 6th generation will be the most we see, then they will go on to creating other books instead of the core ones. In my opinion the quote of the seminar happened at this point:
“We want these books to have things in them that make your game better.” – Stephen Schubert
The end of the seminar included some general discussion on how to handle encounter design, which led to Stephen telling some good stories about how he feels the Wizard in the back of a party should never feel safe. He said almost always in his games the party has monsters coming at them from multiple (if not all) directions and the safest place for the Wizard to be is usually close to or next to the Fighter. Overall it was a very enjoyable seminar, and if for nothing else it’s really great to see first hand some of the designer’s reactions and instincts when it comes to solving problems in D&D.
Notebook Campaing: Super Nico vs the 3 Hungry Goblins
Earlier this year, I went to the movie theater with my son and we ended up playing a little of D&D with made up rules. You can see the game here, including the now legendary Troll who can’t build a bridge encounter.
When I came back from Gen Con a few days ago, I told my children that a lot of people who made the games daddy played knew about the story games we played over the last year.
Rory: Do they know about Carthain’s powers of multiplying herself?
Nico: And that you shoot fire from your fingers!
Chatty: Yes, and they really know about your adventures Nico, especially the story where you helped a Troll who had to build a bridge.
Nico: Hey! I remember that game, it’s the one in your blue notebook! Can we play again soon so you can start telling stories about us again?
Chatty: I’d like that…
Last weekend, Nico and I set out to go and watch the latest Robert Rodriguez movie: “Shorts”. The Movie theater has quite a few arcade games and Nico likes to play a few of them before or after the movie. So I asked him: “Do you want to go early and play with the arcade games or do we go a bit later and continue our story game in my Notebook?”
Nico: Story game!
So we made it to the cinema, got our popcorn and bucket-sized drinks and sat in the mostly empty theater. I reopened my notebook and recapped the situation.
Chatty: So you’re Super Nico, adventurer extraordinaire. You live in the village drawn here, you purchased all your things in the shop here (review of Inventory) and you entered the Dungeon here.
Nico (pointing the map): That’s where the Troll is. He lets me pass now!
Yes. Here was a fork in the corridor and you used your metal detector to find where there was more treasure and you chose left, where you came to a barred corridor filled with doors on each side and ending with a wall.
Oh, that’s here that I’ve fought a Goblin and I used my crossbow to bounce the door and have it push the keys to me!
Wow, you have a great memory! That’s exactly it. And now you have 2 choices. First, you found that the last door to your right opens up into a corridor that goes deeper in the mountain (drawn by Nico after the last game). Secondly, you discover that the goblins have dug a small tunnel underneath the bed of the room where the goblin who attacked you burst out of. What do you do?
I follow the goblin tunnel.
It’s very tight, you’ll have to crawl. And it’s very dark.
Okay, then I keep my axe and my lantern in each hands and I crawl through the space.
You make it into a large mostly empty cave. The first thing you see is a large Cauldron sitting on a fire and 3 goblins arguing around it. When they see you, the one on your right takes out a shortsword, the one on your left takes out a spear and the last one, across the Cauldron from you, readies a bow. What do you do?
Hmmm. Can I take my magic axe to throw it at the Sword goblin, rebound it off the wall and hit the bow goblin?
Sure, let’s play it Rock-Paper-Scissors (Nico lost), awww, well the goblins capture you! Your stuff is piled nearby but you have your arms and legs attached to a spear and you are lying on the floor. The goblins are slicing vegetables into the cauldron and adding more wood to make the fire hotter.
Hmmm… if only I had a knife hidden on me.
Sorry, your inventory says that you had no knife. However, a spear is actually like a knife attached to a long pole and the blade is just over your head.
Ohhhh… can I slice the ropes on it?
You betcha!
I do it!
Okay, so you silently slice the ropes around your wrists and free them. Your legs are still attached to the spear though.
Okay, so I slowly crawl to my pile of equipment and recover my shield.
Okay, you got it, what now, they haven’t noticed you yet.
I want to throw the spear to hit 2 goblins and I want to throw my shield on another one to cut his head off.
Ohhh, your shield is not quite like Captain America, but close enough that you could stun the goblin. Let’s play for it…
(Breaking narrative) At that point I realized that the yes/no approach to rock/paper/scissors didn’t serve the purpose of the story at all. So taking a page out of Mouse Guard, I decided that a failure would rather make things more interesting instead of leading to downright failure.
Chatty (After Nico lost another contest): You throw your spear and it catches both goblins by their cloaks and sticks them on the wall. However you don’t get the time to throw your shield as you trip because of your bound legs. The other goblin has drawn his sword and charges you!
Nico: I protect myself with my shield and I get my axe out.
The sword gobling tackles you but your shield saves you! The other two goblins are freeing themselves, you gotta act fast!
I cut legs free and I attack sword goblin with my magic Axe! (He wins the contest)
The sword goblin falls dead, the other two are freed!
I throw my axe at one and I charge into the second one with my shield! (Wins contest, twice)
Great, one goblin falls dead with an axe protruding from his forehead and another has had his faced smashed in by a large piece of flat metal.
Yay! I take their stuff!
(He learns fast) Okay so you get 21 pieces of silver from their pockets, a sword, a bow and a spear.
I go back in town, sell everything except the sword (that he kept)!
Okay, well you make 6 pieces of gold all in all, a good first day in the dungeon if you ask me…
And then the movie started.
Nico really likes this type of game, but I see in him a tendency to want more complexities in his games, so I’m thinking of upgrading the game to something like Sword&Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. While he’s old enough to tackle D&D 4e, I want to focus the game on exploration more than fighting, and I don’t want Nico to focus his attention on 4e’s combat crunch quite yet.
Yes, I could play 4e with little or no combat, but I want to explore how he perceives the games I played when I was near his age.
Knowing my son, he’ll ask you if you enjoyed his stories and will want to play another one soon. As usual, I’ll share your comments with him.
Congratulations to Obsidian Portal and Kobold Quarterly
The winners of the 2009 Ennies for Best Website, Kobold Quarterly took the silver and Obsidian Portal took the gold. Congratulations to them both: while I would have loved to have won, they both definitely deserve it. I read Kobold Quarterly whenever I get a chance, and I used Obsidian Portal extensively for my last D&D 3.5 campaign (and planning on using it more) and it really is awesome. Plus, Micah from Obsidian Portal bought us lunch, taking the sting off. So congratulations to them both. And congratulations to all the winners of every category!
It seemed that everyone in the category was in agreement that “Best Website” was too catch-all, since clearly what we do and what Obsidian Portal does and what Dungeon-A-Day does are all very, very different things. A “best RPG blog” category vs. a “best website” is a bit closer which still would have put us up against Mad Brew Labs, and probably some of our esteemed colleagues like Gnome Stew, and RPG Bloggers members like Chatty DM. There has also been the suggestion about splitting between free websites and pay websites, though the two winners both have very useful free sections, so it would have to be given some more distinctions. Anyway, I know that we have some awesome judges (mostly new) for the next Ennies year, so hopefully they recognize the value and growth of websites and blogs and do something cool next year.
So we did want to extend our heartfelt thanks to those who did vote for us and support us, and maybe we’ll have better luck next year. And I did promise one thing: [Read the rest of this article]
Primal/Within Chronicles: Say it with Tentacles, Part 2
See part 1 here.
Setting up the Fight
This is going to be a weird game report because the fight that I will get into shortly, is pretty much all that happened in the game, with some dream sequence before and a bit of story and scary stuff after. So I’ll spend a few minutes on the fight setup itself, the cool new gadget we used and how it was designed it.
Plus, it will likely make Yan’s head explode of impatience as his PCs was so damn awesome throughout the damn fight.
I wanted the combat scene of the season to be hard but not so hard that I would hand the PCs’ butts back to the players, like many of my previous campaigns started. I wanted an encounter made of Abberant creatures to set the tone of sessions to come. To that effect, I took a lvl 13 Solo monster from Dungeon Magazine (the Wellspring Horror, from issue 162), I added 2 level 10 Destrachans (Artillery) and 2 level 10 Warped Ghouls (Brutes, from Dungeon Mag #161).
I set the fight on one of the D&D 3.5 era battlemaps, called Thieves Guild from the City of Peril map-packs, a series of multi-storied houses with plenty of plank bridges and ladders. (These maps are absolutely great for 4e encounters, get them if you can still find them).
I also deployed two of my many Gen Con finds: Dark Platypus’ Magna Map and magnet action stands with Status flags! By putting the rubbersteel map underneath the WotC paper battlemap, I was able to place stands beside all the minis. Whenever a condition hit them (Dazed, Continuous Dmg, Blooddied, etc), I’d bring a little flag close to the mini’s stand and it would literally leap from my fingers to the stand… stacking with other flags without fumbling!
Best luxury D&D accessory ever!
Tentacles cleanup in aisle 4, stat!
The fight started right after the PC heard the disgusting tearing sound, coming from somewhere hidden in the middle of the map, with the PCs focusing on the Destrachan. One was nearby and the other was sitting a few building further away. The Shaman stepped back to get line of sight and summoned his spirit companions. The Sorcerer did the same and fired a chaos bolt on the creature, taking a big chunk of it’s HP away.
The Rogue climbed the 20′ tall building to melee the creature. The Barbarian, after studying the environment, ran to the next building, jumped ON the 10′ tall building and charged the Destrachan over a narrow plank bridge, killing it outright.
Of course, caught in the Rule of Cool, I forgot that rules for high jumps were totally different from the long-jump rules. Hence the barbarian managing to jump ON a 10′ tall building without breaking a sweat (or a disk)…
Oh well, sometimes freakish things happen, like a barbarian leaping like the Hulk.
Shortly after, the ghouls climbed out of the map’s sewers and onto the roofs to join the fight. They were rapidly dispatched without hitting anything much.
The Horror, however, made quite an impression on the players, especially when it played ball with the Warden, grabbing him with tentacles, throwing him to the ground and grabbing it again for massive damage.
The combat was once again a demonstration of good player cooperation. The Warden kept the Horror “busy” while the Rogue and Sorcerer dispatched the ghouls. The Shaman provided healing support, buffing with strategic placement of both of his spirit companions and damage bonuses with a huge Burst 5 zone that added +1d6 thunder damage to all attacks. The Barbarian happily jumped from roof to roof, chasing the last Destrachan.
The evening’s play occurred when the Barbarian, dazed by the Destrachan’s blast attack, killed it, got a free charge attack…. jumped from roof to roof, twice, jumped down to the ground (rolling acrobatics, taking no damage, therefore remaining standing) and scored a solid hit on the Horror!
Yan: Oh, I’m dazed? Fancy that!
ChattyDM: Please excuse me, I’ll need to have a little moment alone.
When all other monsters were dealt with, the PCs converged on the Horror. While it still had almost 400 of it’s 650 HPs and could manage to grab a PC and use it as a shield every round or so, I decided to cut the combat scene short. The fight had been running for about 2 hours and, quite frankly, I didn’t feel like stretching the encounter for another hour when the only resource I could rob the PCs were a few healing surges.
So I called the fight as being over, the PCs eventually beating the Solo monster. Discussions with the players after the game led to 2 main opinions on the subject: Some were cool with such calls and approved of them if it made things move faster. The other side argued that while it was a good idea, game wise, they would prefer more verisimilitude, like having bloodied monsters running away or come up with ‘plausible’ reasons to end a fight.
(I have a whole post just about the length of 4e fights planned for later this week).
Sewer Sortie
Once completed, the PCs explored the area, including the gore-filled sewer. Behind the grate, they found a shimmering portal opening into an apparently featureless dungeon room. After some preliminary precautions, the Rogue entered the portal and retrieved a scroll and a rounded stone from the otherwise empty room.
The scroll contained a letter in a flowery script asking the PCs if they liked the little gifts he sent the City. It then went into typical overlord megalomania drivel, saying that he could still use the Teleporting portals they learned about and that he will enjoy seeing them get in trouble with the whole thing. Finally, it mentioned a little gift, the stone, that would help the PCs identify what they are up against. It was signed: The Master.
Cue dramatic music!
The stone was a magic items, a Foe Stone, allowing to identify the immunities and vulnerabilities of foes. The city also paid the party 5000 gp for getting rid of the threat.
A short custom magic item buying session followed, upgrading a few weapons to +3.
Coming up in the next episode
Since it was already passed 10 PM, I started shifting into game end mode. I informed the PCs that using the carcass of the vanquished Horror, the mages of the Foundation were able to identify where it was ‘linked’ and managed to create an item that would open a portal for a short period near the Horror’s Dungeon focus, one of the 5 core dungeon focuses needed to cutoff the Primal from its dungeon.
So the PCs had their mission for next time: Teleport deep into the dungeon, face the local aberrant fauna, bust the local focus and teleport back.
Before ending the game, I played one last gross card on the PCs.
ChattyDM: Dworkin, shortly after your fight against the Horror, you noticed something weird while dressing up. Inside your chainmail, right at the height of your neck, you see a weird fleshy patch stuck to it. It seems alive as it reacts to your presence and seems to pulsate with life.
Franky: Dude, leave me alone! I scrape it off with a knife and put it in a glass bottle.
ChattyDM: You also find 4 other such growths in various places putting them in contact with your skin. Somehow, the patches of skin those things touched were made insensible, meaning you never noticed that you were being leeched of your blood….or worse!
Franky: Hey… I tell they others and I put all of mine in the bottle.
Chatty: They all have similar growth, except Fangs. Oh and when all your blobs of flesh are brought together, they fuse and an eye, the same color as yours, forms and frowns at you!
Yan: Oh crap guys, we’re sprouting clones!
ChattyDM: See you in 2 weeks guys!
Lessons Learned
- A complex fighting environment with 3D elements rules, even at Paragon level.
- The use of Magnet flags and Spell templates is just plain awesome.
- Plan an exit strategy for all your Solo fights. You might want to cut it short to avoid a grind. A good story-compatible reason to stop the fight is less jarring.
- Sometimes creating a problem without knowing where it comes from or how it will play it is just too cool. I should do it more often.
- Barbarians are damn scary…
YouTube Tuesday: This Is Pure Nerd-nip Edition
“Do You Want To Date My Avatar”, the incredibly catchy music video by the folks at The Guild.
