Lessons Learned at DDXP2011
The D&D Experience has come and gone, I avoided the Bub-Con-Ick Plague, and now I am ready to sit back and take stock of the experience. In order to fulfill my promise to myself to think about the things I think about, and to try to recap some of the experiences presented at DDXP, I present to you the things I learned at DDXP 2011:
Gaming is fun.
I know it might seem sad that this is something I count as a take-away from a nice gaming convention, but I have left some conventions not feeling this way. Because of my affiliation with a variety of organized-play campaigns in the past, sometimes conventions turn into an endless cycle of meetings and hours spent listening to players’ complaints about things I have no control over. A lack of gaming at these gaming conventions sometimes left me feeling like I was at an unfulfilling job rather than a place to have fun.
I guess there is nothing that makes a person love gaming like gaming. At DDXP this year I truly got the chance to play in and run some outstanding adventures with great DMs and players. I didn’t have to worry about the mechanics of this campaign or the overall direction of that campaign. Instead, I got to immerse myself in some fun roleplaying from both sides of the screen. It was a good reminder of all the things I love about gaming.
It can be much more interesting to play an adventure you designed than it is to run it.
Generally when I go to conventions, something I have written, designed, edited, or reviewed is on the schedule, and I often chose those adventures to DM. This time, because there was a need for DMs in the new Ashes of Athas campaign, I made the choice to DM other people’s adventures instead of my own. I couldn’t have been happier with that decision, for various reasons. One of those reasons was because it allowed me the time to play the adventure I had designed called “Kalarel’s Revenge.”
The story behind the design was an interesting one, but it is one I am going to tell another time. I had run a playtest of the adventure several months prior to DDXP, but it was run with characters from existing sourcebooks—not the preview characters from Heroes of Shadow. The adventure details also changed a bit when going through development and editing, so I knew the play experience would be much different.
We randomly drew for characters, and I found myself playing Lorel the Binder Pact Warlock. We tried to give each character some fun roleplaying hooks, but Lorel might have the best ones. I knew it would be easy for me to go overboard, so I tried to tone it down a little. The adventure was also designed to possibly play out in a lot of different ways based on different (and sometimes contradictory) character goals and motivations. It was certainly possible for the players to all work together the entire adventure. And on the other side of the spectrum, it was also possible to go completely sideways. Our table was sideways almost from the start. And it was a lot of fun.
The fun worked because we had a table of players willing to recognize that winning did not necessarily mean the characters met all their goals; winning was the players having fun as the chaos descended upon the doomed adventuring party. John Rogers did a fine job DMing the TPM (total party meltdown).
It is also interesting to run an adventure a couple of times, and then play it.
After running the first adventure of Chapter 1 of Ashes of Athas back-to-back on Thursday morning and afternoon, I had the evening slot free. I was asked by a couple of friends to join them for a game, and I just happened to have created a halfling knight on the off-chance I got to play. It turns out they too had created halfling characters, and that sounded a lot like destiny to me. And they wanted to play the very same adventure I had just run twice, with the author running the game.
When I run adventures over and over again, like DMs sometimes do at conventions, I never run them the same way twice. Even for pure dungeon delves with very little roleplaying or alternative paths, I change the way traps work, or use different tactics for monsters, or even change the “win conditions” of certain combats. Knowing an adventure and then playing it allows you to see how other DMs manage games. If they try to keep the players “on script,” how to they do that organically? If they do deviate from the adventure, when and why do they do so, and in what ways to they flex their creative powers?
In this case, the DM was also the adventure’s designer, Chad Brown, and he had his work cut out for him with our party. When I created my halfling knight, I had decided to downplay the whole “halflings are cannibals” trope that is always overemphasized in Dark Sun. However, when the other 3 halfling players got into the shtick, it was difficult to resist. By the end of the adventure, we were playing our characters with all the grace and subtlety of an ebola outbreak.
I have had Chad as a player on countless occasions, and he is exactly the type of player every DM would want: attentive, organized, well-versed in the rules, always willing and able to roleplay. Fortunately, he was just as graceful as a DM, especially in the face of a table who could have probably spent the entire 5 hour slot roleplaying with each other.
The players at the table aside, it was fun to see the wheels spinning in Chad’s head. While the adventure is fun and challenging for players, it is a tough one for DMs to run because of the plot. When the DM is able to pull off adventures like that, it is a great experience for the players. When the DM is not up to the challenge, it can be frustrating for everyone. The two tables I had DMed earlier that day took two very different routes through the adventure, so I was interested in seeing how Chad would handle it, especially considering the almost slapstick nature of our party. It ended up with one PC looking a lot like a pincushion (Hi Derek!) and two halflings skipping hand-in-hand toward capture, but there was never a lack of smiles at the table. And therefore, it was a good table.
We could provide for 82% of the Earth’s energy needs if we could harness just .056% of one convention’s nerd-rage.
DDXP is a smaller convention than the likes of GenCon or Origins, but where there is gaming there must be nerd-rage, just as where there is a NY Jets game, there must be asshattery. Because the focus of DDXP is mainly on playing the game, most of the nerd-rage happens at the table. More than once I heard a player say, “If this is how this campaign is going to be, I’m quitting right now.” Then things calmed down and all was well until the next slightly controversial occurrence, when again the nerd-rage kicked in and the “I’m never playing this campaign again” howls began. Not surprisingly, the adventures usually ended with “Hey, that wasn’t actually so bad.”
I can rage with the best of them. My desk is often part of the head-desk tandem. Some of my rants have been You Tube-worthy. So when I say this, I am speaking to myself as much as to others: It’s a game, folks. Perspective. When the CNN coverage of the plight of Egyptians calling for true independence resembles someone’s meltdown over not getting a boon after an RPG session, it’s time to take a step back.
I was not nearly as disappointed as I thought I would be that the World’s Smallest Stripper was not performing in Fort Wayne again this year.
What else can I say?! That’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, like seeing the London Philharmonic or the Baltimore Orioles having a winning season.
We seriously need a seminar where a highly skilled DM takes an adventure that is running at the convention, and he runs the game in front of the seminar.
The RPGA has toyed with various ideas about how to help DMs run games better, especially games that are being run in a limited time slot in an organized-play environment. DDXP would be the perfect place for something like this to happen. I think it would be great to have one of the WotC staff take one of the LFR adventures, prepare it, then run it for a table of players (who have signed up to play the game normally) in a seminar room. The DM could take the time during play to explain why he is making certain decisions, where possible design changes could have been made, how to keep the game flowing, etc.
Part of the reason I think this is a good idea is because I attended the DDXP seminar on DMing, and there really is a wide rift between the tools and talents involved in DMing for a home campaign and DMing in a convention-based, organized-play environment where there is an expectation that the PCs need to touch certain key plot points in order for the campaign as a whole to make sense.
Fort Wayne is the seventh on Hitler’s List.
I’m not making things up. If you love literature and meta-fiction as much as I do, you need to know this. Plus, what respectable blog does not invoke Hitler at least once? Don’t answer that. . . .
WotC employees is PEOPLE!!!
Although Vanir already made this point, I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. If you believed certain forums and Internet sites, you would think that WotC employees—especially those R&D types—take sustenance only from the dashed hopes and dream of RPG players and the brain fluid of toddlers. Of course, that’s not true—except for Greg Bilsland, who we are still wondering about.
Although my freelance work has brought me into intermittent contact with many of the folks at WotC, I don’t know any of them well. But through my time spent chatting or playing with the likes of the aforementioned Mr. Bilsland, Chris Perkins, Mike Mearls, Trevor Kidd, Chris Tulach, and several others, I can attest that they are us. They love games. They get geeked about the same things we get geeked about. They were probably stared at a lot as teenagers (and with some of them, as adults as well). They get strip-searched at airports. They just happen to have jobs that are too freaking cool for words.
Chris Sims is a trooper.
Yeah, so that halfling Dark Sun table I played at that went way off the rails? We played the second Ashes of Athas adventure with Chris Sims as the DM. If we were off the rails originally, we were off the planet for his game. Chris did a wonderful job of letting us go nuts with the extraneous roleplaying, even joining in at times, while still getting us through the adventure. But what would you expect from a guy who ran a game at GenCon called “Welcome to Dark Sun, Bitches.”
And any man who knows the value of a Discover Card pretty much has the universe tamed at this point.
The Baldman knows how to run a convention.
The RPGA used to rotate people running their content at the major conventions. Sometimes the people were really good. Sometimes it was unmitigated disasters. And then Dave Christ had his turn. Dave now has it down to a science, and there is a reason why WotC has Dave running their convention stuff. If you aren’t looking, you don’t really see anything going wrong. And even when you do know something is going wrong, it is resolved quickly. With them now starting to produce adventures, Baldman Games is a name in the gaming world to keep an eye on (if only because they might try to lift your wallet).
Next week: As promised, I will talk about designing “Kalarel’s Revenge,” look at how you cannot spell NDA without “nad,” and figure out how sometimes clueless game design can work better than normal game design.
The Dungeon Reality Show, D&D Essentials Edition, Part 2
Veteran FDL smiles at Frank the Tank's confidence in his D&D skill
See here for part 1 of my recent D&D Essentials game with a group of local Geek media personalities. The game was really amazing, so much so I need 2 posts to relay the awesomeness of it all.
Dramatis Persona (redux)
- Maïwenn Amandil: Elven Warpriestess of Pelor (Caro), picture a Jersey Shore bimbo.
- Frank the Tank (Frank the Tank): Beered up Human Knight with a thing for Maïwenn
- Seaendithas Steelfarmer(Stef) : Halfling Thief who likes bad French puns.
- Todd Darkmagic (Adopted) (FDL): Eladrin Mage getting no recognition for his work saving everyone’s bacon.
Highlight: Say it with Dolce and Tankana
After the first encounter featuring drakes was completed, Frank asked me if he could make a lizard-skin handbag for Maïwenn. That’s when the producer, a fat unshaven halfling with a cigar… pretty much like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, stopped the show…
Producer: This is genius stuff kid, you’re a natural!
Frank the Tank (both in and out of character): Heh, I know! Right?
Producer: How about we replace toots’ Vicious Mace by the bag, we make it like a Bag of Holding and put a freaking huge Anvil in it?
Maïwenn: Yay, my very own Dolce & Tankana bag!
Frank later made her boots with dead kobolds and he skinned the Black Dragon so Maïwenn could get it to a designer dress maker in a later game.
Ahhh, love.
Caro takes pics of the minis while thinking about her next Ad Spot.
Mechanic/Highlight: Insta-Skill Challenge
Between the first 2 combat encounters, the PCs were standing around a broken statue of Maïwenn’s god. She mused that she, like, totally should do something about it. So we discussed it a bit.
We agreed that this would be a hard Religion check to re-channel the divine energy back into the statue. The others would be helping, Seaendithas would climb on the statue (Thievery), Frank would hand him broken pieces (Athletics) to put back in place and Todd would fuse them back with his Magic Missiles (Arcana).
At the time I decided to just make it a single check (Religion) with everyone helping with their respective skills as outlined above.
Chatty: All right so everyone but Maïwenn need to beat 11 so you can each give her a +2 bonus. Then she’ll get to roll her religion check. If she makes it, the statue is put back together and you all gain a +1d6 to all healing powers for the next encounter, if she fails, well she’ll have disappointed her god a little more…
Caro: Hey, it’s bad enough as it is!
Everyone made it, giving Caro a +6 to her roll.
Which she failed…
Chatty: All right, describe me what Maïwenn is doing just now.
Caro (In character): What? You guys started already? I was still putting makeup!
We all collapsed in laughter.
Taking a page from Burning Wheel’s “Let it Ride” rule, I didn’t allow a retry. The result stood, the test had been a failure and we moved on.
In hindsight what transpired in that improvised encounter is EXACTLY what I consider a Skill Challenge should be. Short and sweet (and totally stolen from Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard). A main character leads the task, other helps with relevant skills and ability, you make one roll. Success = task achieved. Failure = possible complication leading to either the end of the challenge or the next logical step as dictated by the narrative.
In that particular case, I could have extended the challenge by having the statue crumble and bury Maïwenn under blocks of granite, I could have corrupted the statue further or I could have invoked the displeasure of Pelor (with lots of cheap special effects), requiring a special in-game Geas to be achieved before the end of the “‘show”.
I think that’s how I’ll run all my skill challenges from now on. No more X/3, I’ll go with task(or sub-tasks) + help and narrative-adequate complications upon failure(s).
Stef shows us how Beads work: 1) Be Awesome 2) Rinse and Repeat
New Mechanic/Highlight: Beads of Awesomeness
During play, when I noticed just how many cool things players were attempting, I attempted to create a positive feedback loop (I mean, I’ve been going on and on about rewards lately eh?) so I started giving glass beads to players.
I told them they were “Beads of Awesomeness” that could be traded to perform actions that bended the rules in ways that made the narrative/story cooler but without being an obvious game-breaking exploit.
(Read: Don’t be dicks about them)
Rerolls, pushing one’s movement, having an item in hand at the appropriate moment without spending an action, etc.
I heavily encouraged people to use them to take cooler actions… and even rewarded some with additional beads. Here’s the best example.
In the last encounter, the Knight, Thief and Wizard were in serious trouble, being bloodied or dying. The Priestess was standing at the bottom of the map, the dragon was eviscerating the Thief and Wizards in the middle of the map and the Knight was dying at the top of the map.
While dragon is making mincemeat with our squishy PCs, Maiwenn (background) prepares her awesome play
Maïwenn used her first bead to run to the middle of the map, unseen from the dragon (i.e. I gave her a free stealth success) and used her daily to heal the Halfling Thief. She then used a second bead to “accidentally” drop a healing potion from her cleavage into the hands of Todd Darkmagic. Finally, she used an action point to move to Frank the Tank at the top of the map and used her Healing Word on him.
It is safe to assume that she got a standing ovation from the Show’s crew.
So in essence, Beads of Awesomness are like Bennies from Savage Worlds. Players spend them and make a request. The DM takes the request into account and tries to say yes… or counter propose something cool.
This is another permanent addition to my D&D 4e games.
End Credits
In the end, our heroes prevailed. We managed to play out 4 combat encounters and two mini-skill challenges in about 6 hours and we all had a TON of fun. We agreed that this game should become a seasonal event and we shall meet again this spring for the next show!
I think I have rediscovered D&D 4e by bending it to my needs and by playing it with curious, enthusiastic people who brought a fresh wind of possibilities and wonder to the game. I’m looking forward to my next experience with D&D Essentials which I really like so far. The emphasis on At-Will abilities rather than a ton of powers allows players to focus on being creative rather than dependent on their character sheet.
It sure did in our case.
I no longer make promises about my projects on this blog, but I’d love to review the original Dungeon Reality Show PDF and add the new mechanics I discovered. At the very least, I should play it at Cons in the near future.
As usual, if you have comments, questions or suggestions to make the DRS even cooler, I’m all eyes!
(Photos courtesy of Stéphane Vaillancourt and Caroline Cloutier)
DDXP 2011 Recap
I’ve returned home from sunny Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and I’m intensely glad I did so yesterday because the incoming SNOWCTOPUS VS. DEBBIE FROST-GIBSON would have made travel very perilous indeed if I left a day later. Let me get all my Winter-hatin’ out of the way here in these first couple sentences and I will do nothing but shoot pure awesome for the rest of this recap. Current cause of winter-hate: our fearless leader Dave the Game and E. from Geek’s Dream Girl, who were to be my allies on this adventure (also: roommates) got snowed in completely and couldn’t make it to the convention. Aside from the obvious sadness that I wouldn’t be able to see my friends, this event featured several deluxe repercussions. First, all the Gamma World “In A Fallacy Far, Far Away” games were cancelled. I was denied the chance to play a droid programmed to insult people. I am saddened. Second, and more importantly, Dave was going to cover lots of important events while at DDXP. As Dave is not currently capable of projecting his Astral self, his absence predicated the need for someone else to do it.
Upon hearing the news about his snowed-in comrades, Matt activates his powers of literal metaphor.
Suddenly, I found myself in the same position every unlikely hero in this modern age finds themselves in at some point: uttering various swear words into a cellular phone.
Fortunately, backup plans were soon concocted and communicated to me, and soon I faced my first real challenge as the interim Hand of Critical Hits: liveblogging the New Products Seminar. Holy crap. People talk very quickly.
A lot of neat things got announced, like the new boardgames (Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt, and Conquest of Nerath) and the expansion covering the Shadowfell. The Madness at Gardmore Abbey Boxed Set is the sleeper hit of the lineup as far as most of the people I’ve talked to are concerned, what with the Deck of Many Things it comes with.
Cards for their RPGs seem to be a big thing for WotC this year. Also coming out are Fortune Cards for players to spice up their combat. I got to play with them a little bit during a couple of games, and I’m not sure how I feel about them yet. They’re fun for sure, but they feel a little overpowered somehow.
On a more depressing note (for your PC anyway), I got to take a look at a Despair deck from the upcoming Shadowfell set. The setting messes with your characters emotions and wears them down, which is represented in-game with these cards, which will say a condition like “apathy” or “madness” and the in-game effect it has on your PC. It also encourages roleplaying these conditions by having a boon the player gets if their PC can overcome the effects. It makes my roleplaying antennae all tingly. [Read the rest of this article]
Take Refuge . . . IN AUDACITY!!!!!!!!!
A Night Panther Knight stabs an Ooze Orkkh with a plasma glaive!!!
The moment that everybody has been waiting for is here, and it is now time to see the preview of the most exciting RPG that is coming up! This is Refuge in Audacity! It is time for EXTREME ROLEPLAYING!!! Go explore the galaxy-sized city of Audacity as a Mechadragoon Corruptor or an Amazonite Ultra-Anarchist! Your fate is in the hands of the Karma Fates, and of the Karma Fate Destiny Master! You can go fight in the Blood Nebula and learn more kung fus and spells of magic!
The people on the world wide web told me that the best way to make your game popular was to give it away for free in the digital universe. So I am trying that with a preview version of the game. YOU CAN GET THE GAME ON THE GAME PAGE RIGHT HERE BY CLICKING ON THIS TEXT THAT IS HIGHLIGHTED.
I have been working on this game for a long time, since the mid-1990s. I will be soon putting out the leatherbound, 1,200-page rulebook really soon, you guys. So make sure you buy the book because this isn’t a way to make money with the free internet things. Also there is a Donate button on the page for the game, so give me money cuz that would be awesome. It would really suck if you all bought the game for free on the web and didn’t ever buy the game book when I put out the book. But still, for now you can get the preview version that has a lot of important rules cut out because you can’t have them all for free.
Anyway, I think you will like the game. It is inspired by all my influences from games and comics: Raven cs McCracken, Rob Liefeld, Kevin Simembebebeda, and Fletcher Hanks. All of them made things really awesome and epic and this game is like that. So go get it!
[[Out of Character]]
I created this game on a lark after I found a file on my computer from several years back with a list of stupid race and class names. That formed the foundation of the game, as I very quickly hammered out the rest of a semi-playable game. To be clear, this is the whole game. The 1,200-page leatherbound full edition isn’t something the author character will ever complete.
The World of Synnibarr was a big inspiration for this game, as were bad nineties comics. (I actually have the first and second editions of Synnibarr, as well as the Ultimate Adventurer’s Guide!) My intent was to boil those down—to provide the fun of rolling on tables full of ridiculous crap and over-the-top powergaming of a second-tier multi-genre RPGs without the typical unwieldy game systems that came with them.
So the top priority was getting the feel of flipping through a bad rulebook. After completing the class and race tables, I skipped the rules and went straight to the character sheet. I went with a ton of checkboxes (again inspired by Synnibarr, which had boxes for “deaths left” and “wishes”) and cryptic nonsense. All the hallmarks of too-complicated RPGs went in: defense rolls, damage multipliers, called shots, saving throws against all sorts of weird things, and so on. Soon after, monsters and adventure creation got the same percentile-table-based treatment as the character creation system.
The name, by the way, is taken from a page on TV Tropes. The usual warning about that site: Don’t click the link if you want to get anything done today.
Jared von Hindman (file photo)
I had a strange little mutant of a system, and I needed strange little mutant artwork to go with it. Of course, the only choice was Jared von Hindman of Head Injury Theater! We shared a strange rapport working on this project, continuously coming up with the same ideas for illustrations and building on each other’s odd ideas. Our conversations kind of went like this one about the image for the cover (edited for length and language):
Jared: Give me a second & I can share one of the doodles. It’s so very Mouseketeer Cable
Me: I’d suggest a few more pouches, and make the cigar glow like it’s radioactive. And spikes on the front of the surfboard.
And maybe the mouse ears are little radar dishes.
Jared: I was thinking of Frankenstein suturing the thing to his head, but yeah, definitely will throw in a few more manly details no matter what
Me: Did he just fly through the sun? It should be splitting perfectly in half and falling apart.
Jared: The exploding/shattered sun is there, just not fleshed out. Split in half? Classy.
Me: Yeah. Like a samurai cut it and ten seconds later it falls apart.
Jared: So, while I’m still tweaking the angle/details, is the general vibe right here?
IE does is need the hot babe glued to his thigh? Should it be more nonsensical like teh Synnibunn cover?
Me: It doesn’t HAVE to have boobs. It’s not Heavy Metal.
Jared did some great work. (I especially like the girl with the beehive hairdo and the waist twisting with Liefeld-style anatomy.) His cohort Noodle Soup also contributed a rad piece that is definitively not Colossus.
Stuck in the Past but Looking at the Present
For all the retro inspiration, I wanted to distribute this in a modern way. Just printing off some black-and-white ashcans and selling them at cons would have been more in-character for my “author” persona, but would be pretty damn silly. I’d like to have other people bolt on subsystems and house rules. Have an idea for an Erotic Arts subsystem? Want to write up what Rings of Power are for? Come up with a use for Psi Tokens? I want to see you put all that stuff out there. Send me a link on any of the addresses mentioned on the product page. I’ve released the whole shebang under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so hack to your heart’s content!
One thing I really want to put together: A gallery of people’s character drawings. Roll up a character, whether you intend to play or not, and doodle a picture of it in your notebook (the more pouches and radiation glows the better!) and send it along.
I hope you enjoy the book, whether you play it, read it, or just get inspired to look at your old X-Force comics and play some Mortal Kombat. Accept it in the spirit it was given: a very dumb one.
The Dungeon Reality Show, D&D Essentials Edition, Part 1
In mid January, I followed up on a wild idea and got 4 local media geeks to join me for a session of D&D Essentials. It turned out to be one of the best D&D games I’ve played, one of those sessions where the stars are aligned and everything just works.
The reasons for that are manifold. The players, mostly newbies to D&D 4e or tabletop RPGs, were all very enthusiastic about the game. The energy level was just right. My design decisions were near-perfect for the event and I likely managed to put all the lessons I learned from my gaming pilgrimage of the last months in practice.
Time for another Play Report, Chatty DM style!
The Setup:
Since most players had gigs with specialized Geek TV shows/channels (and associated websites) , I thought this would be a great occasion to revive my old Dungeon Reality Show shtick and adapt it to the scenario at hand, a level 2 D&D Essentials Adventure called “Sunderpeak Temple” featured at last summer’s D&D Gameday.
The scenario was a dead simple “invade and vanquish” 5 encounters adventure about reclaiming a recently destroyed Temple from the clutches of a Black Dragon and his band of humanoid minions.
If you never read about the Dungeon Reality Show and can’t spare visiting the link above, just know that it’s a silly D&D 4e variant where adventurers are desperate participants in a lethal show featuring NPCs as 3rd rate actors, callous cigar-smoking producers and crafty, tightly-wound Chronomancers.
All participating adventurers are given a “sponsored” magical item created from existing Items and adapted to the pre-generated characters I created for the adventure.
I posted about the item on our Tumblog here.
Success Factor Aside: Giving everyone an item that was 2-4 levels higher than their levels makes players happy to have a “cool toy” right off the bat.
I had another TV Show trick up my sleeve I held in reserve for the first fight… yet, I ended up being so inspired by the game that I came up with several more!
Read on!
Dramatis Persona
- Maïwenn Amandil: Elven Warpriestess of Pelor, sporting the luxuriant Divine Boon known as Pelor’s Spray Tan and Facial
- Played by Caro, who hadn’t played RPGs for at least 8 years
- Frank the Tank: Beeraholic Human Knight equipped with Morshon’s Stout shield
- Played by… Frank the Tank, who had never played a tabletop RPG
- Seaendithas Steelfarmer: Halfling Thief of great skill, wearing Dr Stealth’s Orthopaedic Adventuring Slippers.
- Played by Stef, long time friend who plays RPGs only occasionally
- Todd Darkmagic (Adopted): Eladrin Mage yielding the legendary “Jim Darkmagic Showman’s Staff”
- Played by FDL, a freelance writer and regular radio-TV host and guest.
I’m not going to go for a blow by blow retelling of the game… I’ll focus on it’s main highlights and lessons.
Lesson: Don’t Fake freedom when unnecessary
Another lesson I’ve learned from small press games and one shot scenarios:
Don’t ever try to give the illusion of freedom to players if the adventure you play doesn’t call for it.
The chosen adventure required PCs to investigate a ruined temple and clear it. Thus, I told players that
A) They all knew each other from a previous, disastrous adventure, explaining the whole “being desperate enough to participate in the show”
B) They had already accepted the thin plot the Quest Giver (a Dwarf merchant they were travelling with) gave them .
Thus no time was lost on building a premise that wasn’t necessary to our current goals as a gaming group.
Lesson/Highlight: Say Yes and Exploit Details
As the players approached the temple, I offhandedly described bodies of priests and monks strewn about. When Caro asked me if her priest found someone alive she could heal I decided to say yes and find a way to make this cool…
Chatty: Hmmm, sure, there’s a guy standing just over there. He’s really badly injured. If you make a successful difficult heal check you’ll get info on what he saw, if you fail he will die at your hands.
Caro: Gulp…
FDL: Todd will help you.
(Clatter clatter, success)
Chatty: The priest’s eyes open suddenly and he cries “DRAGON!” before falling unconscious.
Good start! Taking a page out of the Apocalypse World playbook, from then on, whenever someone asked me to do something that wasn’t directly covered by the rules, I’d pick a skill and a difficulty, explain what would be gain on a success and what kind of dramatic twist would happen on a failure and asked who was ready to help.
The players liked this a lot.
Highlight: The Knight Does Not Fight to the Music, the Music Fights for the Knight.
During the first combat encounter, Frank the Tank enthusiastically embraced the concept of tabletop RPGs. He kept describing cool moves for his Knight and didn’t bother with realism much. When he activated one of his PC’s Combat Stances, he described that he got a Ghetto Blaster out of his backback, put it on the floor and started going all Technoviking on the baddies.
This was very funny… especially when that was later exploited by Todd Darkmagic (adopted) who created an illusion of another Knight holding a Ghetto Blaster over his head. It was topped off when Frank did a power move to deal lots of damage, describing it as breaking the Blaster over another monster’s head.
I absolutely love it when players create scene elements and then others interact with them. It makes scene so much more lively.
New Mechanic: Advertising for Rewards
Once combat started, I implemented another of my new Dungeon Reality ideas. I had the one at the top of the initiative order (PC or myself for NPC) improvise a short advertisement bit about fictitious products in exchange for a one time bonus during the encounter.
For example, Stef told us about Tylenorc, the pain relief medication of true bad asses. After the laughter died down, I surmised that this message would grant stef’s thief with 5-10 temporary Hit Points for the encounter.
The endeavour was a smashing success, beyond what I expected even! Players jumped on that and even started writing copy during downtime between their turns. Hell, they even started gaming the system and created spots targeted to gain specific bonuses (like doing an anti-aid ad during a fight vs a Black Dragon). Of course, I tried to embrace that…Although, by the end of the evening everyone was running out of juice.
I stopped giving my monsters bonuses early in the game… while I participated in making ad spots, I felt like I was taking away from the players fun and abusing the system by giving my side bonuses when I could just as well play with the numbers like all DMs are allowed to in the spirit of keeping the game fun for all.
Highlight: A Knight and his Beer
Chatty: After combat, you smell something strong, yeast-like coming from the well…
Frank the Tank: BEER! I JUMP in it!
Chatty: All right, the challenge for you will not be how you get in there or how you leave it, that’s boring. Rather I wanna know in what shape you’ll be when you leave it. So you’ll have to roll a hard Athletics check to simulate you drunkenly climbing out at the end of this short rest period.
Frank: okay! Burp!
Chatty: If you succeed, great! You’re out and more or less sober. If you fail, you’ll still get out but I will reserve the right to give you the mother of all “Oh man I HAVE to pee NOW” moment whenever I chose. It will daze until you spend an embarrassing Standard action sighing very noisily… we cool?
Caro: Can my priestess help him climbing out?
Chatty: Sure, what skills does she have?
Caro: Hmmm, Religion?
Chatty: Well…. How about you berate him while he climbs? “Motivating” him to abandon his sinning ways?
Caro and Frank: Yeah!
Caro failed her roll (her first time of many that game, poor her) but in spite of the penalty that gave Frank’s PC, he succeeded.
Frank: As I exit the well, I tell the priestess “Fat loads of help your preaching did dude!”
And so the love story began…
In part 2, I’ll explain the mother of all fun skill challenges (new version) and how the Beads of Awesomeness saved the day.
(Photos courtesy of Stéphane Vaillancourt and Caroline Cloutier)
P.S. Yes, I’m starting to have fun again with 4e… many thanks to all those extra tools I’ve been picking up. Can’t wait to tell you about the rest!
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