Old School Geekout: The Order of the Grappling Hook, Part 2
This is a retelling of my recent Sword & Wizardry during a day of gaming with my friends. See part 1 here.
Descent into the Depths of Level 1
As we set up for the game, we took a bunch of Hero Clix minis to act as our miniatures to represent marching order and determine relative position of PCs during combat.
I also opened a brand new Graph paper notebook I bought at the local supermarket and gave it to Vince.
Vince: What’s that for? I need to keep a diary or something?
Chatty: No, you are now the group’s cartographer. Try not to fall in a pit of flame. Now you start climbing down a 20×20 circular staircase that opens into….
Boy is describing a room’s dimension hard when you lost the touch. It’s an exercise in clear communication to get the cartographer to represent semi-faithfully the dungeon room the party is in. I also had to refrain from grabbing the map and do it myself many times.
The first room was shaped like a pillared chapel hall. Where the altar would be, stood a gigantic bestial statue holding a large Bronze bowl instead. The bowl was filled with fire burning without any noticeable fuel. The room had 3 exits.
Being visceral D&D players, they started sifting through the rooms looking for traps. Orvat (Franky’s Fighter) used his grappling hook to check the floor for traps (He would throw his hook forward and real it in repeatedly).
Classic!The game was already a success in my mind.
After rapidly rolling a bunch of dice for nothing and telling them there were no traps on the pillars, a few PCs started investigating the bowl. At a certain point, they attempted to shift the massive bowl in the statue’s hands (Rolling Str checks, d20, play under ability).
Of course, the gaming notes had nothing to say about this, but in my perception of classic D&D, PC effort must be answered with a proper reaction from the DM. (That’s actually the core lesson I got from Reading Tracy and Curtis Hickman’s XDM book)
ChattyDM: Okay, so as you shift the bowl a few degrees counter clockwise. Suddenly the flame goes out! And so does all your torches and lanterns!
Ah yes! Harmless but unnerving… had the adventure come with a random encounter table, I’d have played one right there!
After light was restored, the PCs shifted the Bowl back, re-lighting it, and walked to the eastern door.
One up? No, one down!
Always remembering what light source was used around the map maker (something I had to get used to doing again after 20 years) the players checked the door for traps. When satisfied (or convinced that spending more time on it was useless), Orvat opened the door. The room was filled with cobwebs and featured a crumpled skeleton and a dessicated corpse.
Using is trustworthy grappling hook shtick, Orvat managed to grab both bodies and drag them out without disturbing the Giant Spider resting over the door (I ruled that it would pounce on a 1-2 on a d6, the core mechanic of S&W). In fact, with that technique, Orvat scored the room’s only treasure, a measly 6 gp from a leather pouch.
Great fishing Franky!
After that Orvat stepped in the room, only to be surprised by the pouncing spider. After missing him (because of his Ring Mail), the Spider kept the initiative and made a beeline for the second player in the marching order…
Anne: Guys, I think it wasn’t wise to place the 1 hp Elf in second place.
Vince: No S#17!
The spider bit, dealt exactly 1 hp and injected it’s weak poison, which promptly killed poor Ortec.
Woot, 1st PC death within 30 minutes of playing, I’m good at this old school D&D!
The Spider was rapidly dispatched with a good swipe of an axe. Mufti, great charitable cleric soul that he was, promptly took all of Ortec’s possessions under the cover of his religious duties to the dead.
DM Note: I have it on pretty good authority that the #1 source of loot for level 1 PCs is what they can grab when a fellow PC bites the dust. This is so classically cool.
Length of combat? 5 minutes, number of deaths? 2.
Upon further exploration of the room, I described a moving cocoon stuck near the ceiling. Once the players took it down, nearly skewering it first for safety, the players opened it to reveal a groggy Elf (Fighter mode) named Ubvid.
Chatty: That’s Vince’s new character by the way.
Party: That was fast…
Yup, Vince was back in the game with a new PC before they were ready to leave the room. That counts for a lot in a fast and furious RPG like S&W seems to support.
Spiky Portcullis
So the PCs then ventured South, where they entered a room whose only other exit was blocked by a portcullis.
DM note: As I mentioned before, I was running this adventure blind, reading each room as the PCs entered them. I even made jokes that the room was loading whenever I stopped the adventure to catch up. Fortunately every description was short. In this particular case, I described the Map’s feature before reading the text. In the room, the portcullis is a trap sprung when the PCs went deeper in the dungeon. Instead of doing a retcon, I went with it, assuming that another dungeon denizen triggered the trap before.
The PCs pooled their resources together and 3 of them lifted the portcullis (40 STR points needed) while the 4th one Spiked it open.
Ahhh! Iron Spikes, what can’t they do?
The PCs continued southwards…
(Sorry to keep those short and sweet, I’m prepping my Friday game at the same time, I hope you enjoy them!)
Image Credits: Wizard of the Coast
The Inner Half-Orc versus The Retro-Clone
(PM is a good friend of mine and while our interest in gaming and movies intersect, we have not roleplayed all that often together. Here’s one of his rare, and always very entertaining posts about his experience as a closet RPG geek -ChattyDM)
Where is it? I’m sure it was around here somewhere… I hear it rant from time to time… Ahhh! There he is; stuck between ‘Fix the fireplace’ and ‘Replace the fence’. My (very dusty) inner half-orc has spent the last few months in the procrastination part of my brain. It’s not the nicest place to be stuck in, but at least there’s plenty of space to walk around; that part of my brain is HUGE! In any case, a surprise game of S&W grants him an early release from his prison. Yay!
This article is part of a short series about my introduction to RPGs and my perspective on the interaction of the players.
As ChattyDM explained here, four of us were treated to a retro-clone type game and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. At one point, I even described it as my best RPG experience ever. (Where ‘ever’ corresponds to 5 or 6 game sessions). As I considered the potential faux-pas of saying this in front of my usual DM (Franky), I started to ponder how and why this game fitted better with my player personality.
Squirrel!
As I’m revisiting the evening, the first thing that pops into my mind is that creating my character didn’t throw me into the woes of planning paralysis. Whenever I’m presented with a quantifiable logical system, I attempt (and love) to find the best way to take advantage of it. But as a player in a role-playing game, I find it detracts from my goal.
Let me put it this way…
I’m sure you’ve all once seen a dog engaged in a deep battle of wits with a tennis ball only to be suddenly extracted from this epic war by the sight of a passing squirrel. Quantifiable logical systems are my squirrels. If the character system is simple, the distraction will be short and will not bother me. If it’s complex and meaty, and full of good stuff, I’m screwed. This also applies to combat of course, as they are also anchored deeply in the rules I’m oft… SQUIRREL!
My tennis ball…
My personal goal when I play a RPG is to find solutions to the different obstacles presented by the DM. I enjoy a good plot twist as much as the next guy, but that’s not why I’m here. To be thoroughly enjoyable, whatever solution I find must flow naturally with the game itself and I prefer if the solution comes from me, not from my character sheet. My solution can be supported by the character sheet, but it shouldn’t dictate it. (I guess that’s where I align with Chatty’s ‘Say yes’ new philosophy).
This game offered quite a few opportunities for such occasion. They were pretty simple and probably not vital to the adventure, but it was something I could sink my teeth into.
Ultimate consequences or lack thereof
This game of S&W was all about exploration, and keeping out of more trouble than we could handle. That last part was pretty important to my enjoyment as well. We had to be cautious or our chances of getting out alive would drop precipitously. I don’t know if it’s because we had no skills to use, or more equipment to ‘MacGiver’ into a solution, but I was glad to see that fights were dangerous and avoiding them was often a good thing. I guess I’m saying that the game didn’t over-promote fights at the expense of any other alternatives. Now I won’t pretend that S&W doesn’t use fights as a default ‘turn of event’, but at least there’s a very real threat, and it will take 15 minutes to resolve.
…maybe it was just this specific adventure; my sample isn’t large enough to make a distinction.
Of mice and fights…
As I’m writing this, I realize that my experience, whenever the party flubs a dice roll or chooses wrongly you end up with either an additional fight, or just an even bigger fight. To me it feels like the price for not reaching a goal is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. ‘You screwed up, here’s a 45 minutes fight to go through before you can continue.’ And as Chatty previously explained, a performing party will ultimately dispatch any aggressor without much danger. So not only does the default complication does not involve any real jeopardy, it will consume much of session’s preciously saved-up time allotment.
Recently, Chatty discussed briefly how Mouse Guard uses complications when a character is unable to perform a task or reach a goal and how he thought that was something worth trying. I was a little bit surprised at this since to me it’s clear that when such an event occurs, it’s only logical that there should be a complication. Then I realized that the statement was simply incomplete. When a character is unable to perform a task, there should be a complication that doesn’t necessarily involve combat. Something I have not encountered too often in my previous games. Skill challenges are okay but… SQUIRREL! Again.
Is this it? Retro-clones forever?
I don’t think I’m forever limited to this type of rule set. Like any other player, I just need to communicate my own likes and dislikes to my DM and work with him to make the sessions more enjoyable. I mustn’t forget that there are other members in my party and they probably enjoy different aspects of the game.
Here’s a simple wish.
Get me something to do other than talking or fighting. I discussed combat a lot more than I intended but skipped over role-playing altogether since there wasn’t really any to speak of this time around. But what’s left to do but these two you ask? Exploring! Opening doors to rooms empty of any enemies works for me. Let there be something to do in that room from time to time and I’ll be happy. It doesn’t need to be a puzzle straight out of Myst either.
Let’s take your basic plot hook ‘Find the sorcerer’s globe of badassdom’.
After we kill the sorcerer’s in a fight (if we must have one) let me explore the room and find the thingee on the top shelf of the library.
‘The sorcerer falls to the ground dead…’
“We search the body for the globe…’
‘You don’t find it on him.’
‘I check the room.’
‘After a quick inspection, you notice a faint glow from the top shelf. The shelf is too high for you to reach’
‘Is there a ladder somewhere?’
‘Nope’
‘I climb to the top using the lower shelves’
‘Ok roll your dexterity’
FAIL
‘Midway up the shelves, you hear the whole structure crack as it rips from the wall. As you fall you try to hold on to the remaining shelves under you but they break off as well. The shock loosens something on the top shelve and you see the globe slowly roll toward the edge… aaaaand.. It falls….’
‘I dive to grab it’
(Just say yes)
‘You catch it just in time, but all the noise attracted two guards who were patrolling nearby’
Ensues a 10 minutes fight where we might be in danger for real… of dying, being imprisoned, or losing the globe to a quick thinking guard.
Sounds a little bit goofy right? Not too heroic either I guess but I love that kind of stuff. And this whole exploration mini-scene couldn’t have lasted more than 10 minutes. Sure, the DM needs to be pretty good at improvising the situation, but not every room needs to be like this either.
YouTube Tuesday: Well, OK, I Was The Traitor Edition
An ad for the newest Looney Labs party game, “Are You The Traitor?” Not only has it quickly become one of my favorite games (right up there with Werewolf), I worked on it and I appear in this video. Marvel at my acting prowess of delivering two whole lines, thrill at my crazy eyes, and watch the excitement as I try very hard not to hit a friend with my very real sword.
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