Inq. of the Week: Tiers of Play?
I’m afraid the whispers in the darkness, first heard beyond the mountains of madness, have taken Dave and seemingly 62% of you who answered last week’s poll that you like playing Cthulhu inspired RPGs. 22% of you have a preference for worlds with dragons and fantasy roleplaying, while 16% chose the mystifying poll answer of being blissfully ignorant (lucky you)! If you are one of those fans of Cthulhu, I highly recommend you check out some of the links in Dave’s inquisition last week because there are a lot of good resources and books there.
Dave and I both started running 4th Edition D&D campaigns when the system was released, now over a year later Dave’s game is solidly into the paragon tier while mine looks to be entering paragon in the next few weeks. It’s really an exciting time for me as a DM not only because this is the longest running game I’ve ever run, but also because the characters start to get a lot more unique as the choice of a paragon path stacks on top of race, class, feats, and multi-classing. I was also very intrigued during the High Level D&D seminar at GenCon because they polled the audience on which tiers have been played and some people even raised their hands for epic and that they’d played from heroic up through epic in a single game within a year. That seems insanely quick to me, but I can also imagine it being very interesting and fun to do.
With all of this in mind, I’d like to do a poll of our own and see what levels of D&D you’ve played in over the last year or two. This doesn’t have to be in any specific edition, I’d just like to see what types of games all of you are playing in!
Loading ...We’re interested to hear more details about your game, tell us if you started at 1st level and played all the way up or if you started in the epic tier and got to kill some demon princes right away!
Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 2
See part 1 here.
Burning Dungeon & Wheel Dragons
As Wednesday night was ticking by, a dangerous new idea about the way to run a D&D adventure came up…
You see, like many gamers unused to indie RPG designs, I read Mouse Guard with voracity but finished it with the feeling that while I had likely touched game design genius, I had absolutely no idea how to run the damn thing. (I’m exaggerating… somewhat).
The one part about Mouse Guard that really blew my mind was the way adventures were designed (I assume that this also applies, by extension, to Burning Wheel, which is the engine MG is based on). A 4 hour Mouse Guard adventure fits on 1 sheet of paper. The trick to that is that each adventure has a mission and the players are required to come up with personal goals that will, at least tangentially, move the story toward achieving the mission.
Play is achieved by setting out a simple scene where some sort of skill/ability roll is called for to allow PCs to achieve their goals. On a success, the scene moves to the next one but on a failure, the GM is free to add a complication to make the scene ‘more interesting’ or give the PCs a success but impose a negative condition on one or more PCs (Tired, Sick, Injured, Angry, etc).
There’s more to Mouse Guard than that, but these ‘Goal driven scenes’ and ‘Failure = complication’ concepts lit up a fire in my usually dormant Game Designer boiler…
There’s a method to my madness, behold!
What if… I was to replace minor quests with PC-specific goals that are chosen by the players at the start of an adventure?
Thus, each player would chose a goal that is related to the major quest (the game’s mission), either to help achieving it, to explore the adventure’s story in more detail or to help develop a character’s backstory more?
Now instead of having City of the Overmind be a site-based or event-based adventure (both requiring me to create scenes), why not have a goals-driven adventure based on a mission and the city’s map I drew?
I would asks players what goals they wish to work on first, then I would assign a complexity for attaining these goals. Each goal would set the basis for a freeform skill challenge. Each success that need to be rolled becomes a mini-scene to play out with the PCs, including player and DM narratives.
In other words, in a scene, players would describe what they do to progress toward their goals and I would do my usual job of bringing the scene to life. Then a skill check would be rolled based on what feels most natural for all. On a success: we describe the success and move forward to next sub-scene (or attain the goal).
But here is where it gets real interesting. On a failure, I would introduce a complication. For example, I could say that the PCs were spotted by the Overmind’s goons and I could either create a Chase skill challenge, or chose from my Depth of Madness encounters that are already prepped and make a fight.
In that sense, I would stop using the 3 strikes mechanic of skill challenges. If players fail their rolls, they get more/harder challenges to deal with. If they overcome the complication/challenge, they get to move to the next scene, regardless of the number of failed skill rolls.
Of course, I would award treasures based on the completion of goals…
It worked wonderfully on paper. I could sense deep in my guts that I was on the verge of a breakthrough in terms of adventure design, minor quests and skill challenge mechanics.
I just needed to validate this feeling in the arena of Actual Play…
Info dump Warning! The Warden Priest’s Tower
I knew I could not send my players blind into such a new way of playing. I needed to immerse them rapidly in the setting and give them all the info they needed so they could take the reins of the adventure from my hands and go.
Not being one to let much to chance, I had prepared the floor and built in some contingencies. First, I told Yan about my plan for the game. Not the content, but the whole Goal-to-Skill-Challenge to Failure to Complication thing. I wanted to know if he “got” what I wanted to do or if the whole thing was just my creative madness drowning common sense.
After wrapping his mind around the concept, he got it all right. I knew that I could trust him to act as a ‘change agent’ in the group later when I made the pitch. Just in case, I also had a contingency should players feel too uncomfortable with the change or were too tired to understand all my excited gibberish.
The first scene had several goals:
- Introduce the new setting through vivid descriptions
- Give the PCs a nearby ally and a home base so they could anchor themselves in an otherwise hostile environment.
- Share the city’s map with the players to help them plan
- Give them the adventure’s 2 missions
- Find a way to enter the Overmind’s Castle
- (Optional) Recover the 4 parts of the Overmind’s key and find out what it can be used for.
I described the city (imagine a ruined Erelhei-Cinlu, plus add a huge portal to the Far Realm and a dozen of floating, insubstantial Lovecraftian horrors ‘haunting’ the city’s roof) , the story of their Warden Cleric ally, his cult infiltrating the whole city and the political situation of the city. Once I was done, I explained my new approach to the game and asked them for the goals.
With gentle nudges from Yan and myself, they eventually formed a set of 6 goals that were… just plain awesome:
- Math (Corwin Sorceror of Chaos): I’m going to go and get the 4 parts of the key. It’s too crazy, it just might work!
- Yan (Nanoc, Barbarian): I’m going to investigate the city to find the probable locations of the key parts.
- Stef (Rocco, Rogue): I’m going to break the Overmind’s hold on the city’s citizen and end this fascist regime!
- Eric (Fangs, Shifter): I will destroy the city’s Vats and put a stop to the Overmind’s mutations of hapless monsters
- Franky (Dworkin, Shaman): I will bind a nature Spirit near the destroyed Vats to prevent the Overmind from reclaiming them and help protect the citizens.
- Mike (Usul, Invoker): I will bring the Gods’ influences (and Kord’s in particular) back to this city after the Overmind’s control is broken.
Chatty: So Mike, what you’re saying is that you want the citizen to be freed of the control of the Overmind… so they can become followers of the Gods?
Mike (showing a pained look): Essentially…. yes (smirking).
Chatty: Excellent!
I really didn’t expect as much. What I absolutely loved about those goals was that they came from the players, they weren’t scenes that I implanted in their minds, the train track had ended some time ago and this was all virgin territory for everyone at the table.
Those goals were beacons telling me what each player wanted to do in the game! All I did was connect a few goals (thanks to the 5X5 method) by putting a few coincidences here and there. For example, I put one key part in the Vats.
What was really funny is that Yan noticed me doing that and mimicked someone knotting some ropes together, but I think that this is a crucial part of the model as it allows goals to be tackled together and creates a more cohesive adventure.
So we set out to play this game out… I really was curious to see how it would play out.
Up next: So Chatty, are you ever going to tell us if your method works or not?
Image Credit: Archaia Studios
YouTube Tuesday: Stop Motion + Lego + 8 Bit = Win
A stop-motion animation over 1500 hours in the making that has to be seen to be believed.
Primal/Within Chronicles: City of the Overmind, Part 1
After a few months of rest our heroes are called to save citizens of the City Within from the monstrous tentacles of a clutch of aberrant creatures. Following clues left behind by the monsters and the ever elusive ‘Master’, the party prepares to use thier recently acquired teleportation lore to follow the monsters to their source deep in the Dungeon and destroy one of the it’s most critical Nexus.
This series of game report will be different. I usually tell you the story of the game, peppered with my DMing calls and challenges. This time, I ended up using such a radically different structure for the adventure that I will summarize the whole story first and then tell you how I built/ran the session.
The City of the Overmind, Session 1 Redux
The PCs teleported on top of as ruined tower overlooking an eerie ruined city of the underdark. Far from being deserted, the whole city was under the control of a totalitarian and extremely insane Mind Flayer known as The Overmind. The PCs found an ally from the City Within and learned that the Dungeon’s nearest Nexus was likely found in the Castle of the Overmind. In its craziness, the mindflayer distributed 4 pieces of a magical key that could supposedly open the way to the castle and the Nexus. The party’s ally had one such key.
After some planning, the party decided upon an elaborate plan to retrieve the keys, disrupt the influence of the Overmind over the city, establish new Divine and Spirit foci to ‘convert’ the City, and sabotage some installations to create a diversion to facilitate entry into the Castle.
The heroes initiated the plan and obtained the likely locations of the other 3 keys from an ally hiding out in the city’s Slave Pens. They tracked one in the Market Quarter and forcefully obtained it from a reclusive and germophobe Cambion merchant.
They then set out to get the second key from the Overmind’s Re-education camps by infiltrating them from the Sewers. However our heroes got caught by a patrol of Overmind servants in the sewers. They dispatched the patrol but met with strange parasitic critters that tried to eat their brains trough their faces!
That’s the session’s story in a nutshell. Of particular interest is the ‘Elaborate Plan’ part of the story because this whole thing up there was driven by the players themselves… I didn’t prepare any of those scenes except the first one.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me rewind to the week before the game…
When Necessity and Creativity Collide
As I started planning for the game, I knew that I wanted to have the players invade the Primal Dungeon and dispatch one of the Nexus. In fact, I told the players that our next ‘Season’ of D&D would be about busting 5 or 6 of the Dungeon’s most important points of control in order to cut off all the denizens from their master and plan the obliteration of the imprisoned Primordial when they reached Epic levels.
I wanted the next adventure to have a theme about the Far Realm (D&D’s equivalent of Lovecraft’s R’yleh) and aberrant creatures. As I brainstormed, I had the idea of a monstrous city, built on the ruins of an abandoned Drow city (the Drow were severely shafted when I destroyed my campaign world at the end of my 2007-2008 season in order to reboot it for 4e).
I also doodled the city and placed various elements in it. I had an old temple to Lolth taken over by the City’s leader, a Mind-Flayer. Then I imagined that the city would be ruled like a fascist state, banners everywhere (using a symbol the PCs would recognize), crowds listening to speeches, Foulspawns acting like Secret Police, thugs and enforcers, monsters being kidnapped to be conscripted into the Dungeon’s armies, forced into slavery, brainwashed into joining the street enforcers….. or worse… Sent to the Vats for reconstruction…
I rapidly realized that I didn’t have an adventure in front of me, but a whole other chapter of the Primal/Within campaign setting.
Of course, time was slipping by, it was Wednesday night and I had no story yet. I quickly created an entry scene for the adventure. The PCs would teleport at the top of a ruined tower overlooking the city (setting my players up for description of the city in all it’s glory and the opened portal to the Far Realm sitting on top of the Overmind’s castle). The tower would be held by a City Within knight who lost all his comrades in a disastrous raid. The knight converted to a Warden and Cleric of both the Great Kodiak Spirit (to link him to Franky’s PC) and the trapped goddess of Civilization.
I then imagined that the Knight had created a secret society of converted monsters that spread out in the city, trying to subvert the Overmind’s influence…
Then I stopped myself. I now had a novel, not a game, there was nothing for the PCs to do other than ‘Go in Castle and bust the Mind Flayer’s face’.
I was getting desperate, I needed a plot and I wanted to avoid the ‘first idea syndrome’!
First Idea Syndrome: When you need to come up with a solution to a problem and you are pressed for time, the first idea that’s proposed will be taken as the best idea, regardless of its actual worth. I’ll write about this more in a future post.
I already had a Dungeon magazine adventure called ‘Depth of Madness’ that featured a full dungeon filled with aberrant. My first idea had been to take it as is. but there was way too many fights and not enough story for me. Yet, with game day coming fast, it was getting more and more tempting to run it as is.
Then my eyes fell on my copy of the Mouse Guard RPG and a second, far more dangerous idea formed:
What if I took Mouse Guard’s task resolution structure where failures lead to Plot twists or complication and transplanted it to my D&D game to drive the plot?
What if I let my players create the scenes through thier play?
Up next: From crazy idea to actual play.
Touched with Fire, the 700th post.
This post will get intensely personal, while overall positive, it will dwell on some of my personal issues of the last year. Feel free to skip
Way back in November, I wrote a somewhat somber post celebrating my 500th post.
At the time, I didn’t realize that I was diving full speed into severe depression, my third in the last 10 years.
It got so bad that I was given sick leave from work and I had to get a psychiatric evaluation, my second in 4 years.
During the evaluation, the subject of my Gen Con 2008 experience was broached and I explained how excited I became, how energetic I was, how little sleep I needed and how I announced a ton of projects that I all more or less abandoned. I even jested that my wife was convinced I had taken drugs at Gen Con because she didn’t recognize me.
Well, it seemed that this episode was very significant…
After a few more questions about prior such episodes (none) and if I lost touch with reality by taking stupid dangerous risks/decisions (nope) and about my family’s mental health history, the diagnostic was preety clear.
I have type 2 Bipolar Disorder
Of course that news crushed me. Still, I reached out to people I trusted (including my many online friends) and discovered that creative people, especially writers, are often bipolar.
In fact, the expression Touched by Fire (coined from a book on creativity and bipolar disorder) is a very apt description of the many Creative Surges I would get every few weeks or so, sending me in a spiral of new, semi-gibberish ideas that could consume me whole for a few days!
All this…plain old Manic-Depression… Sigh.
Sheesh. Can’t I even be insane in an original way?
So after accepting my situation (with the help of my family and friends) I had decided to start taking Mood Stabilizers, although I was deeply worried that the meds would make me a zombie without any creativity.
I was refereed to a grandfatherly psychiatrist who took the time to explain what the medication I was going to take would do. He pulled the studies about Mood Stabilizers and creativity and candidly told me that they was a slight chance my creativity would slump. There was also a slight chance that it would increase but mostly, it should stay the same.
So I took them… and the rushing noise in my head slowed and the depression abated. I rapidly recovered, with the help of exercises, regular social activities and the meds.As I got better, I found my voice again.! My creativity was whole, better organized and easier to channel.
I even started projects… and finished them!
We did the One Page Dungeon Contest and created the One Page Dungeon Codex. I wrote about the Dungeon Reality Show, I created a new DRS adventure and made a PDF out of it. I wrote an adventure for Goodman Games, a Kobold Quarterly article and I successfully pitched an adventure idea to Wizards of the Coasts.
Hell, I went to Gen Con and I returned normal!
So things are looking up. In fact, I got so busy lately that I missed several of the blog’s milestones:
- My 600th post some time last spring
- My 2nd Blogging anniversary on July 27th
- The 10 000th of the blog comment a few days ago
So thanks to my recovery, I got through all those and the 700 posts point!
Not bad for a (mostly) one-person show run by a mad overlord.
The blog is doing well, having weathered my illness with little impact. I don’t have specific plans about it. I write what I feel like. Whenever I feel constrained about a feature or a post, I put it aside untill I feel liek doing it again.
However, as I slowly make my way to freelance writing, I realize that all time I spend on projects will be time away from the blog. When I blog, I’m not sending picthes to Dragon/Dungeon magazine or Level Up and Kobold Quartely.
However, blogging remains my favorite medium to explore RPGs (except playing, of course), so I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
I want to thank everyone who’ve supported me this last year. In the depths of depression, it becomes impossible to believe that people could care about you. That’s why I’m so grateful to all those who stepped up to do guest posts, took the time to email and call me to check how I was and who made sure that I was doing all right.
And lastly, I also want to thank the readers who stuck around to read my articles. During the darker times, writing often became the anchor that pulled me out of the blackness and made me see the sun again. When I got comments on articles that were excruciatingly hard to write, it motivated me to keep at it.
See you at 800!
Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 4
This series has been a play by play report of my first Sword and Wizardry (A retroclone of the 1st, 1974 version of D&D) game. I used Chgowiz’s Quick Start rules and starting adventure that you can find here.
You can find part 3 here.
You Dum Dum! Me Stony!
Hired by the cowardly goblin tribe to investigate the nearby Hall of Statues, the PCs arrived at the entrance of a large chamber filled with statues of humans and other humanoids. All were sculpted as being armed and armored like adventurers. As the party surveyed the room, something a bit like what follows occurred:
Statue # 3: Avast adventurers, be forewarned that trespassing this holy sanctuary will spell your DOOM!
Statue # 5: Good one Pete! Your best performance yet!
Statue #3: You think so? I really felt it!
Party: Wha?
DM Aside: I’ve a silly streak a mile long and when I can’t divine the reason of an encounter, I go for entertainment over internal consistency. From my readings about the way Gary Gygax DMed, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t above doing stuff like that either.
From the way the statues interacted with each other and with the PCs, it seemed that they were ex-adventurers, cursed into talking statues.
Orvat (Fighter) predictably used his grappling hook to try to grab a statue.
Chatty: Huh, sure roll an attack roll vs AC 15.
Franky: (Clatter clatter) Yes!
Chatty: The hook grabs statue #3. It goes ‘Hey!’
Franky: I try to pull it down from it’s pedestal.
Chatty: Sure, gimme a STR check (Roll less than your STR on a d20)
Franky: Yes! I make it!
Chatty: The statue falls down flat on it’s face, protesting vehemently!
Franky: Can I drag it toward us? (Other PCs join him to help)
Chatty: Sure! Roll… (They make it)
Statue #3 : Why you… garble… garble… (sound drowned by statue’s face scrapping the floor, to general hilarity).
This was one of the high points of the day. Having all the players explode in laughter while I described the scene was pure DM motivational gold.
Interacting with the statue some more revealed that they were enchanted to emulate ancient adventurers and that there was no actual curse in the room (I made all this up, like many other things in the adventure so far).
At this point, the room’s description mentioned that one statue had a hidden panel, without saying which one. In classic D&D fashion, I rolled for it… and came up with the Statue that was dragged out.
Chatty: Checking the statue, you find a panel on its lower back.
Statue #3: Hey! Lay off my posterior you Caitiff!!
Franky: For real? Awesome!
Treasure! (A few gems)
Plus,behind the statue’s original position was a door leading southwards.
Ewwww, pass!
The room behind the displaced statue lead to a ruined room filled with trash and whose walls were cribbed with holes. As soon as the PCs opened the door, a large number of Giant Rats lifted their heads from the refuse and ran away into the holes of the wall, evil red eyes peering out from the darkness.
The room’s only other exit was chewed and clawed extensively.
Vince: I say we back off!
The PCs wisely closed the door and moved on.
My! What big antennas you got there!
What followed was the explorations of a series of rooms in the area near the goblins (who, behind the scenes, were working up their courage to ambush the now significantly richer PCs).
In one room, some roots had pushed out of the ceiling, collapsing some of the masonry. When a Orvat announced that his PC chopped one, I described how bright red blood gushed onto the rooms’ floor (again, all made up).
The look of revulsion on the players as their PCs quickly exited the room was priceless.
Another room opened up on a car-sized Warrior Ant looking for food.
Initiative was rolled, the party won…
…and the door was closed and barred real quick!
I love that about classic D&D. Players gauging threats based on looks and potential gains. This is so cool… and since making dungeon rooms is so fast, the DM can enjoy seeing PCs dodge an encounter… it’s not like 3 hours were invested in it’s preparation.
End Game
Chatty: What the hell? Have we been playing this for four hours already? Whoa!
At this point in the evening, the PCs had scored a few hundred gold pieces worth of treasure. Some had taken a few points of damage but nothing serious. While the energy level was still really high (an excellent sign) , I wanted to point out something to the player.
Chatty: You know, you can return to the village with the loot you already have and return later.
Franky (or PM, I forget): We’re good, let’s do one last area, the one near the portcullis to the south of the entrance.
Dun Dun Duuuun.
Foreshadowing anyone?
So the PCs discovered the mechanism activating the portcullis. As they played with it, they started noticing goblins, armed with bows now, skulking near them. The players could feel that something was building up all around them.
Still they forged on…
They found their first locked door.
Vince: It’s locked, so I guess there’s a keyhole (I hesitated, but I said ‘yes’). Okay, then Ubvid looks through it.
Chatty (An evil idea light turning on): You see… a goblin’s face leering back! It jabs a 15 inch needle through the lock trying to pop your eyeball! (Say yes and stick it to them once in a while!)
Vince: What?! I dodge!
Chatty:We’ll see (rolls dice, hits by a few points only). It hits you, but you dodged away some to save your eye, you take 2 poins of damage and you’ll get a cool looking scar!
Vince: Arghhhh, I get out of there!
So the PCs tackled the door down and entered some sort of shrine to the Frog God and occupied by some skeleton, a pair of goblins and a female cleric. Before they could do anything in the room, a pit trap opened underneath the last 2 PCs: Ubvid (Elf fighter) and Aniamo (Dwarf Fighter), stranding Mufti (cleric) and Orvat. On top of the damage from falling, a sleep gas knocked them out, making them look like dead.
Faced with so many foes, some very existential questioning was being done by the remaining Cleric and Figther.
Initiative was rolled and the players won it. Mufti the cleric turned the skeletons…
Chatty: Hey PM, what gods do you revere?
PM: Hmmmm. Given my actions so far, I’d say the Frog God.
Chatty: Splendid! The other cleric offers to ally with you, provided that your companion forfeits all his belongings and that you burn the hearts of your other two comrades to old Frogface.
PM: Hmmmm (thinks long and hard).
Anne: Now I get why you offered us to leave the dungeon before!
Franky: Screw that! I’m running! How large is the pit?
Chatty: It’s 10′ by 10′, not easy to jump. I’d say 1 in 6 chances.
Franky (used to 4e’s feats of athletics and, more importantly, fearing for the life of his PC) : Come on man!
Chatty (channeling his past classic D&D skills): Look man, 10′ is basically from here in the dining room to the Fridge in the kitchen over there. It’s your call.
Franky: Let’s do this. (Rolls a one!) YES!
Chatty: Ortec sprints, jumps toward the middle point of the right wall and Jackie Chans it by using it to rebound to the other side of the pit! You make it!
Franky: I get the hell out of here!!!
Chatty: I’ll be right back with you. PM what does Mufti do?
PM: I accept.
So the cleric readied her sacrificial gear. PM told me that Mufti was watching her intently. Spotting that PM was planning a double cross, I rolled a 2 in 6 chance of her spotting it. She did! So she immediately instructed him to climb down the pit to retrieve the sleeping PCs for the sacrifices.
Chatty: So?
PM: I climb down the pit and start rummaging through their gear.
Chatty: You hear a click, a hiss and you feel sleepy. The last sound you hear is the laughter of the other Cleric.
PM: Ah crap!
Escape!
What followed was a 10 minute scene where Franky ran, backtracked and dodged the whole goblin tribe who were tracking him to kill him (Franky’s PC had most, if not all of the group’s treasure).
Franky is a brilliant player, especially when he’s under pressure. At one point, he was chased by 2 goblins and he used the teleporter to lose them. He jumped over the teleporter tile and ducked in a side corridor. The gobbos hit the tile and appeared 30 feet away… still giving chase to a non-existant Orvat.
In each room entered, I rolled to how many goblins there were (1d6-2 iirc) and Franky was able to make it out alive, with a few nicks and scratches.
As he ran away, I described how each of his former mates were being sacrificed to the Frog God… Such is the fate of foolhardy adventurers.
That’s how you do it. Old School!
The players loved their session, and so did I. We agreed to try it again sometime. I’ll order the S&W book from Lulu and I’m considering starting a monthly campaign to see if the game will remain fun over a longer period of time, once the (re)discovery phase passes.
Lessons Learned
- While the ‘Say Yes’ philosophy applies to all RPGs, it is an absolute necessity to make S&W a fun game. In the absence of rules, skills and formal task resolution mechanics, saying Yes and giving a fair chance of success to players is a must for them to enjoy the true potential of S&W.
- S&W caters to a different sets of player/DM motivation than D&D 4e. To an instigator/Explorer/Butt Kicking/Storytelling (placed in order of preference) DM like I am, I find that I can enjoy both S&W and 4e and I will continue to do so. (Take that Edition War!)
- You can generate a LOT of fun with very little written description and ‘props’. Letting the players do the heavy lifting is really easy with classic D&D. Grappling hook FTW!
- It’s refreshing to play lightning fast combat. Especially to resolve the old Guardian vs Invader combat scenario.
So yes, Chatty DM, the mono-gamist New School blogger has gone full circle and reconnected with what brought him into the hobby the first place. 4e and S&W are the 2 best Role Playing Games I’ve played to date (with 3e a close 3rd and BESM 4th).
I hope you enjoyed these posts, I sure had a blast writing them.
Enjoy your long weekend. Up next is my 4e game report, which just might bring a revolution to the way I used to play D&D.
Image Copyrights: Wizards of the Coast 2009.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-09-05
- Gamer Lifestyle closing its doors + The Awesomeness of Critical Hits
- Privateer’s new Grind game looks like BloodBowl with Warmachines. (via @brettspiel)
- Disney Acquires Marvel Entertainment (via CBR)
- Some of your questions answered (via @mforbeck and @JoeQuesada)
- Watch #disneybuysmarvel for much amusing speculation on the merger
- several of you within and without the story games crowd will find this year’s Game Chef contest intriguing (via @misuba)
- You got your Marvel in my Disney! We’re excited about a 7 Dwarves vs Fantastic 4 battle royale (via @woot)
- Reading Ken Hite’s “Out of the Box” column about GenCon (via @mountzionryan)
- Probably the best review of Pathfinder I’ve read so far (at least, until @paizo sends us a review copy)
- “Skill powers are utility powers that you qualify for not based on your class, but by training in a particular skill”
- New Stupid Ranger post: a brief exploration of new options for the 5×5 rule
- Rumored New DDM Set Spoilers (pgs 1 and 2) Includes Graz’zt mini and dead villager mini
- The Main Event has started working through a review copy of #FantasyCraft. First impressions are positive, esp. some of the fun feats. #
- ATTENTION CITIZENS: Not Supporting The CompConomy Is TREASON! Contribution, MANDATORY!
- Are bell-curved dice mechanics better for narrative?
- Best horror modules any system any game
- 4e “Caves of Chaos”-esque module series coming to Dungeon mag, discussion here
- On Sale Now: Damn Fine Pi
- Magic the Gathering designer Richard Garfield has a blog and does podcasts (via BoardgameNews)
Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 3
This is part 3 of my retelling of last weekend’s Sword and Wizardry Quick-Start game we played at our monthly Geekout. Part 2 can be found here.
Skellies!
After jamming open the portcullis in the room to the north, the PCs advanced to another room filled with 6 animated (and armed) skeletons! As soon as the PCs approached the room, the skellies charged!
Now without a battlemap, we started using sheets of paper to represent both rooms and the passage between. PCs moved in a 3X1 formation, blocking the entry of skellies in their room. Once again, a classic Old School moment occurred when Orvat (Fighter) realized that you could hit monsters from the behind the cover of a dwarf!
The Skeletons were dispatched in less than 5 minutes (both real time and game time). The room had a strange shape so the PCs started exploring the nooks and crannies. Thanks to the sharp eyes of the Elf and the Dwarf, a secret door was found!
DM aside: For those saying there is no skill system in Classic D&D, there is an embryonic one: almost everything can be accomplished if you roll at least a 1 on a d6, some races have bonuses for specific conditions. So everyone has at least a base chance of 1/6 of performing anything, I call this a skill system 
Bamf! Hey what happened?
So the secret door opened on a looooong corridor leading eastwards. It turned northwards into a teleporter trap. Nothing big, the teleporter shifted the party about 40-50 feet further down the corridor, messing with mapping a bit. I had fun describing the layout of the area toVince, only to tell him he must have gotten my instructions wrong and telling him to redraw.
That was enough for the party to investigate and they discovered the teleporter trick and managed to step in between both teleporter spaces… only to find nothing of interest.
That knwoledge became real important in the end game later…
DM Aside: Had I read the adventure before, I would have shifted the PCs further away, missing the next room in the corridor immediately, giving the PCs a little exploration reward for finding the teleporter’s trick.
Hey who broke wind?
The next room they visited was a tricked room. It appeared to contain a vast treasure but entering in it triggered a magical wind that shut the door and sent PCs with low strength scores flying on the room’s walls. Fortunately, Orvat was the one to open the door and he resisted the wind’s effect. While all light sources of the party were once again snuffed out, Orvat managed to fight the wind and make it to the middle of the room. The hoard had disappeared but a chest filled with Lycantrophe fighting treasures (Silver jewelry, Silver Weapons, Wolfsbane, etc) was found.
I guess that being at the right place at the right time is all part of the S&W experience.
Gobbos!
The party made it’s way westward and discovered an empty room with a descending staircase.
Chatty: In the classic game, each level had an average difficulty. The deeper one went, the harder the challenges in them were.
Anne: Then I say we stay on this level!
Chatty (Seeing that there was no level 2 in the adventure): Good call!
The PCs took a south exit, working their way back toward the exit. They opened a door to a roomful of goblins (8) who all drew their sword. The party won initiative and the PCs rapidly spread lantern oil (D&D’s Napalm since 1974) on the spaces in front of them.
Rolling ‘intelligence roll from each goblins, 2 managed to run on the oil. One fell and skidded into a wall. The other stayed steady on the oil and attacked. On the next round, the PCs lit the puddles of oil and the goblin was gently roasted. Then Orvat used the Grappling hook trick (again!) and dragged a goblin into the fire, cooking it too.
That was enough, all remaining goblins grabbed their bags of gold and fled westward, leaving an easy to follow trail of spilled gold pieces.
That was a cool fight. Like PM said in his post, the lack of skills in classic D&D is made up by the MacGuyver-esque hardware that dungeon Crawling PCs have. This is giving me ideas for other games!
So the PCs gave pursuit.
Dr Shaman!
The PCs chased the goblins up to another room filled with more goblins and a shaman, the tribes’ leader. Faced with 12 angry and scared goblins, the party opted for a time honored, and somewhat lost art of D&D.
Parley!
Aniamo (Dwarven Fighter), the party’s only goblish speaker discussed with the shaman. The Goblin tribe was in the dungeon to raid it for gold and were all scared of the nearby western room filled with evil talking magical statues. The Shaman was ready to not attack if PCs could investigate room for them. The party seemed willing but I (and therefore the Goblin) could see that they were scheming for some sort of large payment.
That’s when the Shaman cast Charm Person on the dwarf, and she missed her saving through.
Goblin: I give you 40 gp, good price!
Aniamo: Of course my good friend, consider it done. (To party:) Okay guys we’re going to help these goblins, let’s go!
Rest of party: We’re what now?
Aniamo: No time to talk! Go!
Ahhhhh, good old Charm Person.
And so our heroes approached the hall of talking statues…
Review: Lord of the Rings Risk – Trilogy Edition
Overview
Lord of the Rings Risk: Trilogy Edition, a board game by Hasbro and Parker Brothers released in 2003, takes the classic game of Risk and transports it into Tolkien’s Middle Earth. In addition to the change of theme, the game builds on the classic Risk mold by adding several new elements – presenting new strategic and tactical choices – yet still feeling like a light war game. But a lack of polish and an overwhelming ‘mass-market’ feel dampen what otherwise could have been a good game. [Read the rest of this article]
Preview: Magic the Gathering – Planechase
While at GenCon this year I got to sit down and play a preview game of the new Magic the Gathering variation called Planechase that Wizards of the Coast is releasing tomorrow (September 4th). My personal history with Magic starts around 1995 at the beginning of 4th Edition when I played very frequently up until they started churning out more regular expansions. The last one I remember really getting cards from and playing with was Tempest but really Mirage, Visions, and Weatherlight were the last sets I played. Since then many of us here have taken to playing regular booster draft tournaments every year or so just for fun, but what this also lets us do is see where the game has gone and what’s new with Magic without much of an investment. What has happened in the last few months though comes as a huge surprise to me, I’ve actually started playing Magic again every now and then due to a few friends who have been into it for a while. I’m still not thrilled about the frequency that new cards are being produced, there’s just too much to keep up with for me, but the core of the game is still really entertaining and a game that I really enjoy. All of this is a long way of telling you why I really wanted to check out Planechase and see what WotC is doing with the game aside from the regular expansions.
I sat down to a table of four players each with a pre-constructed standard magic deck used for the demo as well as a stack of larger cards known as planes for each player. Overall the game played out in a very fun and interesting way, but instantly I felt like luck is a much larger factor in the game which as a consequences downplays deck construction somewhat. The way the plane cards interact with each particular deck is very intriguing but many of the turning points of the game came down to a roll of a die or a single lucky draw at a particular time. I think Planechase is a very fun and interesting way to change up the game and make multiplayer games a lot more interesting, but I have some concerns about balance between the cards and a seemingly reckless nature of how the game plays out. That said, I think if you’re a veteran Magic player this variation brings a new level of play for you to enjoy and if you haven’t played Magic in a long time Planechase feels like a new take on the classic game with the twist of some plane cards that let you do completely ridiculous combinations!
The basics of the game are exactly the same as any other MtG game, except that there is always one plane in play that drastically changes one or more aspects of the game. The current plane moves from player to player always effecting the active player, and each plane card has a constant effect that changes how the players turn will play out and a chaos effect that can be activated by rolling a six-sided planar die (one chaos side, one planeswalker side, and four blank sides). Each player gets a free roll of the planar die on their turn, but you can pay 1 mana to roll a second time, 2 mana to roll a third, three mana for a fourth, and so on which adds an weird gambling edge to the game where you debate how much mana to spend on rolls that may or may not get you some benefit. A further risk or reward is that if the planeswalker symbol is rolled then the current plane is returned to its owner and the active player draws their top plane card which then becomes the active plane that each player uses. The pre-constructed decks that come with Planechase are designed for unique and creative interactions between the decks and the plane cards, but in the demo game I did not notice any player having a distinct advantage when their plane was active versus another player’s. In general it seems that all of the planes are useful in some way to each player.
Several of the plane cards seemed like they were either extremely crippling with a chance of a great reward, or completely over the top powers with a chance of backlash. One of the planes skipped the active player’s untap phase, but if you managed to roll and activate its chaos effect (a 1 in 6 chance) all of your cards would untap. If played well and with a lucky roll, you could end up playing several turns in a row simply by untapping all of your cards but at the same time some players are getting skipped entirely as their cards don’t untap and they fail to roll well. The plane that ended the game I was playing was a mirrored landscape which caused a spell that targets something to target ALL somethings in the game that it could target, this ended the game because that meant a lightning bolt would target every creature and player in the game which simply resulted in too much damage and healing happening for each player to recover from once it started. What ended the game was a spell that ressurects a creature from one graveyard, instead ressurecting EVERY creature in every graveyard which meant one massive army of our cards for that player. This was a bit of a disappointing end for a 4-player demo game, but I can see in a group with friends where we can simply pick up and play again this would be a really fun regular occurence.
Wizards of the Coast describes Planechase as “multiplayer mayhem”, which is an extremely appropriate definition for the game. If your idea of a fun game of Magic doesn’t include more random factors and unpredictable results, then Planechase probably isn’t for you. If you find yourself becoming bored with some aspects of Magic the Gathering, especially games with more than two players or if you simply want more excitement in your games every now and then, I think Planechase is definitely something you should try out. The first release for the game includes four pre-constructed decks called Elemental Thunder, Metallic Dreams, Strike Force, and Zombie Empire that come with a selection of 10 new plane cards and a 60 card deck consisting of Magic cards from a selection of sets.
