Articles by Phil Menard
The Chatty DM is the "nom de plume" of gamer geek Philippe-Antoine Menard. He has been GMing various versions of D&D and other RPGs for nearly 30 years. A renowned RPG blogger, game designer and published author, he squats a corner of Critical Hits he affectionately calls "Musings of the Chatty DM." (Email Phil or follow him on Twitter.)
Capsule Review Week: Intro and DDO Eberron unlimited
I’ll be spending most of the coming week preparing for Montreal’s Draconis gaming convention (where I’ll host a Dungeon Reality Show game, 2 Swords and Wizardry games and both a French and English Seminar on DMing 4e).
While I initially thought I’d take the week off from Blogging, my evil backstabbing mastermind lieutenant PM mentioned that I could, you know, write short posts instead.
…
The implication of such a suggestions were just too staggering for my fragile little mind and I must have blanked out for some time…
When I eventually recovered, my bruised mind had settled on a compromise. It decided that I would post a 3 paragraphs review per day for the whole week and would participate actively in the comments whenever I could manage, answering questions and such.
For the purpose of these reviews, the three paragraphs are going to be:
- A neutral description of what the product is
- What I liked about the Product
- What I disliked about the Product
Followed by a one sentence conclusion.
Here are the products I intend to review this week:
- Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Eberron Online Unlimited
- Cryptic’s Champions Online
- Rio Grande Games’ Dominion
- Mythmere Games’ Swords & Wizardry
- Archaia’s Mouse Guard
Also note that I have purchased (except DDO) each of those games. So let’s get started!
Dungeons and Dragons Online Ebberon Unlimited
What it is
This PC game is a reboot of Turbine’s DDO Stormreach relaunched as a freemium MMORPG. The game chronicles the exploits of groups of adventurers in and around the Eberron city of Stormreach. While the core game remains free, users are invited to purchase additional content (new classes, races, instances) and items (magic items, buffs, cosmetic upgrades). Subscription is available but it mostly gives you X credits per months to buy store elements. The game features a new tutorial zone designed for easier group play. played the original version for a while and downloaded the new version to play with my son without having to pay for 2 accounts.
What I liked about it
I liked how it brings the D&D (3.5) brand to life, Giant Spiders are BIG, Ogres look like they do in the Monster Manual and they hit HARD. Game play is fast and the interface can be mastered relatively easily. It is by far the BEST dungeon crawling experience I’ve seen in a MMORPGs and playing with buddies over voice chat can be really fun. You get a lot of game for the amount you paid (i.e. 0$) and that’s hard to beat
What I didn’t like.
The game is seriously flawed in lot of things. The one issue that made me quit in disgust was instances within instances in the early game. If you happen to die in the nested instance before you discovered the first resurrection shrine, you have to run through the city (again), then through the first instance (with full re-spawns), then the second… alone. Other annoyance: brittle equipment and equipment busting monsters, minuscule equipment icons, treasure behind locked doors (here buy a key in the store!) and too many of the same freaking monsters. I have better things to do with my evenings.
What it boils down to
It’s a great way of playing D&D online with friends and for free but as a MMORPG, it ignores many lessons that Wow has fixed a long time ago.
You can download the game here.
There you go! If you have specific questions about the early game, let me know, I’ll happily answer them as soon as I can find a few moments.
Champions Online: Being 13 Forever
Oh yeah, like some others, I succumbed to to the Champions Online bug. I’ll post a short review later this week but in the meantime I had to share a few screenshots of my latest PC, the 4th I made so far. And I confess that I really am nothing more than a 13 year old boy with a closet full of Image Comics from the early 90′s
Meet… Front Loaded! (Insert adolescent laugh) She’s a redeemed Master (or is it Mistress he he he) of the Infernal Path of the Demonic Twin Cannons.
(Sigh)
But enough about fluff… let her action speak for themselves!
I kill you dead sucka!
So yeah, she’s Lara Croft meets Equilibrium, with big red plastic buttons!
Oh and here she is, posing with Millennium City Mayor Calvin Biselle and some random Canadian guy in the back.
I love this game… and I love being 13!
Friday Chat (Early edition): Are you a Backseat GM?
I’m posting this early since I will have limited net access tomorrow.
On Friday night, I get to lay aside my Dungeon Master’s Screen, maps, stack of books and other DM paraphernalia to grab a lone piece of paper, one rule book, a set of dice, a pencil and a mini. I get to play Star Wars Saga edition and my good friend Franky is going to be the game master.
Whenever I get to play in a new game I get nervous. Not because I fear I won’t play my character properly Rather, I’m nervous that I’ll turn into a Backseat GM again!
A Backseat GM will:
- give ‘the look ™’ when the GM fumbles a rule.
- reach out for the book for a rule before the GM is finished saying “Let me check”
- try to use meta game knowledge of adventure design to move the story forward
- argue with the GM if a ruling is made that contradicts a ruling in his own game
- begrudgingly recognize the GM’s authority but may let any frustration show in passive aggressive ways.
- will have the urge to do all of the above but will fight it tooth and nail to leave the poor GM alone.
I really worry about turning like that because, quite frankly, I would hate to have players do it in my own games (fortunately I don’t… or if I do, I’m now good enough to ignore them). Additionally I know that if I turn on backseat GMing mode, my attention will be focused on the GM and not on my game, robbing of the simple pleasure of playing just one character in someone else’s world.
Willfully giving up control is another, entirely different issue.
Discussing this with people on Twitter yesterday (many suffer from this) made me realize that I tend to become a backseat GM only when I sense that the GM in front of me isn’t confident in his skill to pull off an adequate game session. I sense the fear and I don’t like that. I think that one of the requirements for me to implicitly trust other GMs is for them to project a sense of competent confidence. In such cases, the backseat GM goes in the trunk and I can enjoy the show.
I know I sure did in Chgowiz’ Gen Con Swords & Wizardry game.
So of course, my goal is to focus solely on the game. It will be a new game system (albeit familiar) and an all new gaming group. I’ll be playing a Scoundrel to the core, shooting first and asking questions later. And if all else fails… there’s always a grenade.
What about you, are you a Backseat GM? When does it trigger? How do you deal with it when it does? How do you avoid it?
Post publication edit: In a freaky unplanned coincidence, NewbieDM posted about the very same subject too! Had we known we would have made this into a Ha said/He said post. Enjoy his take on things here.
City of the Overmind: Rumble in the Vats 3D, Part 2
See part 1 here.The interesting thing about a D&D session that consisted entirely of one fight is that I can relate it through the classic phases of a D&D combat encounter. What’s that you say? Over the last 10 years, ever since I started playing 3e, I noticed that all fun combat encounters shared similar phases such as:
• Exploration: What is the DM going to send at us this time?
• Contact: I have a 23 does that hit? No? It Grabs me? What the hell?!?.
• Panic/Despair: Oh 5#1t! We’re all going to die!
• Turning point: Yay, they’re fraking bloodied!
• Mop-up: Victory! This fight is ours, we just need to kill them now!
Of course, this is not the only formula of a well designed encounter and it does not cover PC defeat. However, I’ve seen it many times so let’s relate the encounter in those terms.
Exploration
The encounter began with all PCs starting on the floor level. The Philosopher Grell (A Controller) and 3 Horrid Grells (Soldiers) started on the other side of the map, flying 2 squares (10’) over the highest platform.
As I mentioned before, all Grells were already bloodied and I assumed that they had all used their Action points. It worked out beautifully; I never felt that the fight went into grind.
Most of the party rapidly moved to the nearest structure and climbed the numerous ladders to the second level. I explained that the Reservoirs were massive and made of cast iron. Fangs had had time to study while ‘away’ last game. I explained that weak spots could be targeted (at a level adequate DC) and the reservoirs could be punctured to spill out their content. Thus, Corwin (Halfling Sorcerer) sent an Acid Orb that destroyed a weak weld point… the resulting gush of Toxic Goop (too far to hit anyone) started filling the whole floor.
Yan: These little cans can fill the whole area?
Chatty (thinking rapidly): The cans represent the bottom part of the reservoir which are much larger above that point! So each ‘can’ will flood the whole map by 1 square.
Math: That means that we can’t pop them all now, there’ll only be the 3rd floor available by then!
Chatty (Smiling evilly): that’s the idea.
As the dungeon filled up, I told the players that the goop ‘attacked’ everyone in it at the top of each round. Almost everyone climbed on the second level… except Yan’s Barbarian (Nanoc)… he chose to charge another reservoir instead.
Instant Contact to Despair/Frustration
The PCs moved to the second floor and the Grells moved toward the middle of the map splitting in four. The group divided in 3 sub team without really discussing it, a rare occurrence with my players.: Corwin and Rocco (Stef’s Halfling rogue) climbed to the 3rd level of the structure, Nanoc splashing in the goop, charged a second reservoir (and missed) while Fangs, Usul (Invoker) and Dworkin (Shaman) advanced toward the Grells from the second level. Then the proverbial piece of terminally digested food hit the no less proverbial aeration apparatus. From the first damaged Vat,came a bio-mechanical construct built like a Serpent. It shot a beam of focused radiant light right into the face of Usul, blinding him and started repairing the reservoir. The Grell Philosopher sent out a psychic call and 6 Headsquid Zombies rose from all over the map and attacked (and new ones kept coming back when they were killed). The Philosopher then sent a Psychic Storm, hitting Fangs, Dworking and blind Usul, hurting them and dazing them.
Nanoc for his part experienced the effect of the Toxic Goop, a combination of Acid and psychic energies that hurt him and dazed him. A Grell reached him and grabbed him, putting him in dire straits. The remaining 2 Grells moved in on Rocco and Corwin, pincer style.
By round 3 all players were excited and worried. The Goop’s dazing effect made the fight quite harder and with 12 monsters (4 Grells, 2 Arctide Welders and 6 Headsquid Zombies) on the board the situation looked grim. We had reached the ‘Oh Crap’ stage for sure.
However, it became clear to me that one player was NOT having fun. Mike seemed downright pissed off, having his character dazed and blinded while failing save after save. On top of it all, he had missed a few important early fight attacks, compounding his frustration.
Now having an angry player at the table is always a touchy thing. At any moment the player can have an emotional outburst that may scrap the whole evening or, at the very least, dampen a good part of the evening. While I knew enough not to take it personally (it’s just a game and sometimes your dice (or the DM’s) roll against you, I didn’t want to add to his frustration on purpose. I also decided against broaching the subject with him at that time. I’ve yet seen someone have a rational discussion when angry and he was in what I call ‘smoldering’ mode. I was however confident that the game would turn his mood around eventually. In fact, often the best solution to anger is to let it pass.
So I refrained from having the Grells attack him while he was disadvantaged and let the game do it’s thing.
Turns out I was right.
Turning Point and Mop Up.
The fight’s turning point occurred when the party managed to control each Grell. It started with dazed and grabbed Nanoc…
Chatty: As the Grell approached to grab you, you noticed that it retracted its tentacles, making sure none touched the Goop you’re wading in.
Yan: Oh! It fears the liquid? Then I freaking hit the Vat so that the stuff sprays us both!
Nanoc did hit, and a huge blast of Goop sprayed out. The Grell was washed away by it and never resurfaced (aberrant creatures got stunned by the liquid, it was my ‘alternative win condition’ to help speed up the fight).
Yan: Hell yeah!
The Warden, having a reach of 2 in his Oak form used his new feat (that I had suggested, woe is me) slowed the Philosopher when I tried to move away toward the Shaman and Invoker. It never left the grips of the Warden and Shaman’s Spirit companions.
Corwin used one of his sorcerer feat/power combos and managed to stop one Grell’s progress by slowing it on each hit and creating a storm zone that kept pushed it away. It stayed in that ‘eddy’ until slain by the Sorcerer.
Rocco on the other hand did it old school style. When he noticed that the remaining Grell was flying right next to the highest point of the 3D structure, he promptly climbed up to the top…and jumped on the Grell! After 2 rounds of sneak attacks, the Grell and rogue plummeted down into the goop. Rocco then rapidly swam onto the nearest platform.
Stef had quite the satisfied smirk on his face. Go you!
The remaining monsters were eventually dispatched.
Epilogue
During the fight, I informed Mike that his character could detect the presence of a strong divine power source in each welder, so much so that he was able to find the still hidden ones and destroy them before they got activated. He recovered relics from each welder, each link to a different god: A pendant of Lolth’s, a chip of Kord’s Axe, A Feather of Erathis’ wings and a key of Sehaine. That last one was the missing key part.
Quest completed!
As the last reservoir was gutted and the whole area completely flooded, I described how everything started bubbling and described the huge Squamous (and Rugose) amorphous creature that rose from the Goop. As the players fled back into the city, I explained that it was giving chase and that the next game would cover that chase and its effect on the city.
Chatty: So picture this. As you leave the Vats, you hear rioting coming from the inner-city, the Vats behind you are overflowing with Toxic Goop and you’ve got a mad Godzilla chasing you, destroying everything in its path.
Yan: That’s freaking cool!
I love this game!
Lessons Learned:
- 3D terrain and gridless gaming works better than expected in 4e. With a good measuring tape and goodwill all around, it’s really easy to adjudicate.
- The Goop should not have dazed PCs. With the Grells already doing this, the Goop could have done something else like a penalty to defense or some ongoing acid/psychic damage.
- A 3 hour fight can work, provided that there is plenty for players to do.
Bonus:
Here’s a few other cool pictures of the game.
Look at this status flags!
Rocco is fighting a headsquid Zombie and a Head Squid while the Grell is stuck in a Storm
The Whole Setup, at the start of the fight.
City of the Overmind: Rumble in the Vats 3D, Part 1
Previously in Chatty’s Game.
Our heroes arrive in the Overmind’s re-education camp, finding several brainwashed monsters and losing their Warden comrade, who he went chasing after another Shifter. Once the commotion abated, the party sought out the camp’s Beholder foreman and defeated it, finding a 3rd key part and discovering how the city’s brainwash portals worked.
After resting in a discrete inn with a very special massage service (can you say Medusa?) the heroes disrupted the Overmind’s brainwash portals found in the city’s central plazas, freeing hundreds of monsters and fomenting sentiments of anger and revolt in everyone.
As they heroes approached the Vats, where the Overmind creates it’s most fearsome servants, they came upon the eviscerated remains of what appeared to be Fangs, his equipment strewn all over the floor…
Our last session was one of those gaming experiment that could have gone many different ways. Fortunately, it mostly turned out as I had planned and everyone seemed to enjoy it (with one notable exception I’ll get to later).
But for now, here’s:
Rumble in the Vats, the Cliff’s Notes
As the party started to gather up their fallen comrades’ gear, another Fangs ran to them, panting, wet and bloodied. While it started putting on its gear, he told the party that he was being chased by a group of Grells (Large Brains+Tentacles+Bird Beak). Before answering any questions, he led the party into the Vats, a series of sunken pits filled with gigantic reservoirs and multi-leveled metallic platforms and walkways.
Once there, the party spread out to fight the Grells. Following Fang’s instructions, they also proceeded to destroy the gigantic reservoirs, who promptly disgorged enough toxic acidic sludge to flood the whole area. Additionally, some strange Metal-organic snake were activated, started repairing the damaged vats and shot blinding beams of divine light at the party!
Fighting the Grells, the Snake Construct Welders and wave after wave of Headsquid Zombies, the party finally prevailed and proceeded to destroy the remaining reservoirs. As the last of the Goop filled the sunken area almost to the brim, the whole ‘lake’ started bubbling and churning with sickening organic sounds.
Out of the goop arose a grotesque creature apparently made out of all the monsters the party had just defeated as well as some draconic parts. As it screamed against the whole world, the PCs quickly climbed out of the Vats.
But the Amorphous Squamous Monster started giving chase…
Behind the Screen
Two weeks ago, I conceived a scene to combine 2 player goals: Get the last Key part to (supposedly) open a way into the Overmind’s castle and allow the PCs to destroy the Vats. Since Eric missed the last game, and since he was the one who chose the ‘destroy the Vats’ goal, I didn’t want to start the scene without him.
It’s a good thing that we didn’t play it then, because I since got new ideas and I broke up the usual format (Successful Skill check = Successful Scene/ Failure = complication) for a more classic set-piece encounter (my strong point).
In fact, I decided that since my players liked a good fight, I would give them one that would likely take the whole evening (apart from a 15 min intro and possibly a 10 min epilogue). The challenge would be to make the whole affair enjoyable and devoid of any elements that would impede the action or lead the dreaded Grind.
While mulling over how I could make a fight scene stand out, I remembered a 12 year old game that was moldering in my basement. Back in the late 90′s we played several Games Workshop Games, namely Space Hulk, Blood Bowl (2 seasons) and Necromunda.
That last one was a futuristic skirmish game set in the rusted Undercity of a huge megapolis in the Warhammer 40k world. The game featured pieces of 3D terrain made of cardboard supported by plastic walls…they were perfect for the scene I had in mind.
Here, have a look:
Cool huh?
Of course, I had to deal with the absence of grids on the 3D terrain pieces, but I had a few 9′ long plastic rods divided in inches. I was confident that we’d work something out.
Now for the reservoirs that the PCs would have to bust, I decided to use Tin-foiled soda cans. I wrote simple rules to target the reservoirs and created 4 levels of damage (Low, Mid, High, Seriously frakked), each with various ways that the Toxic Goop in them would spew out and hit nearby creatures.
The really cool idea I got while writing the effects of damaging the vats was that each emptying reservoir would contribute to flooding the area with said Toxic (Acid/Psychic) goop. I planned it so that busting all vats would flood the area to reach the exact height of the upper platforms of the map.
Now that I had a setup and rules for interactive terrain (the reservoirs), I needed monsters and a game plan for them. I wanted the scene to feature several waves of monsters (as Yan taught me when a played in his game last summer).
So I decided to tie everything that had happened so far in the game. I would have Eric’s Warden, Fangs, who by now, is suspected to be a clone of a City Within citizen, run up to the PC, all wet and bloodied, telling his mates that he was being chased by 4 Grells (1 Philosopher Grell and 3 Horrid Grells). However, these creatures are all Elites and I didn’t want to play out a fight with 4 elites as I wanted other monsters to show up later. But I really wanted to use Grells… then it dawned on me. I could make them all start out already bloodied (from chasing/fighting Fang)! Thus I have the power of the Elite, without the Hit Points!
I also still wanted to finish the scene with some sort of Toxic Horror (A Squamous Thing, think Gibbering Mouther made of melted Dragons instead of Humans) rising from the resulting lake of Goop.
I still needed something in the middle…
That’s when Chgowiz, responding to one of my prepping Tweets, told me: “You’re missing something very important.”
Knowing Chgowiz, I assumed he meant ‘randomness’ or something Old School.
Chgowiz: Yes, you need some of that too, but you need something else. Something Jeff Rients would tell you?
Chatty: I’m baffled.
Chgowiz (Sighing): You need more Laser Robots.
Chatty: …
Chatty: Oh man,you are a freaking Genius! (it’s true, he totally is)
At that point I thought: “What if I had some bio-mechanical monsters, half-abberant, half-construct that were activated to repair any damage to the Vats? And since I like Laser Clerics so much, why not make the main attack of the creature a beam of Radiant light?
Enter the Foulspawn Arctide Welder!
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| HP 97; Bloodied 48 | ||||||
| AC 24; Fortitude 26, Reflex 21, Will 24 | ||||||
| Immune Toxic Goop (Dmg and status effect) | ||||||
| Speed 6; Climb 4; Swim 4 | ||||||
| M Arc Weld (Standard; at-will) ? Radiant | ||||||
| +12 vs Reflex; 1d6+6 plus 1d6 Radiant | ||||||
| R Photo Pulse (Standard; at-will) ? Radiant | ||||||
| Ranged 10; +15 vs Reflex; 2d6+6 Radiant Damage, and Ongoing 5 Radiant (Save ends) | ||||||
| r Photon Overload (Standard; recharge 56) ? Radiant | ||||||
| Ranged 10, +15 vs Reflex, 6d6+6 and target is Blinded and takes 5 ongoing Damage (Save ends both), Foulspawn Arctide Welder takes 10 pts of Radiant damage and is blinded until the end of it’s next turn. | ||||||
| Welding (Minor; at-will) | ||||||
| Repair 5 hit Points to an adjacent metalic object | ||||||
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Incredibly cool no?
While I showed the monster to my good South African friend John, he started riffing about how cool it would be to have the monster have some kind of power source to fuel it’s ‘laser’ and ways to knock it out. I argued against it, having reached a level of complexity in my encounter that I was comfortable with, not wanting to add more.
However, while we were discussing this, I had (yet) another flash. One of the players goals that we hadn’t done yet, was Mike’s Invoker’s goal of bringing back the influence of the Gods to the City.
So I asked myself, what if the power sources of the Arctide Welders were Divine Relics of the major gods of the Realms? And what if the invoker could detect them?
Note my liberal use of ‘what if’ when I relate my creative process. That innane question is one of the most powerful creativity tool. I’ll discuss it more in my Creativity Series.
Once I had my answers, my encounter was complete! To avoid last time’s mistake, I did not leave that encounter to chance… this baby was a set-piece that was going to happen, not a conditional encounter.
Up Next: The Fight!
Friday Chat: Oh Wait!
I can’t write a long post today (rejoice) because I’m about to start work. However, I wanted to bring a hot 4e subject and wanted to launch a discussion about it over the weekend.
My players are sick and tired of me harping on and on about the length of combat in 4e. Apparently I’m the only one who’s bothered by that. I kid you not, if I mention it one more time at the table, I’m willing to bet that someone’s to slash my tires with his pocket knife.
Truly, my players want to be allowed to think things over without pressure so they can get the sense that they chose the wisest power at the right time. Fine, I don’t mind if each player takes a few minutes during their turn, we’re here to have fun and I’m already doing stuff on my side to make fights shorter.
However, a few weeks ago, in my Friday Chat about the length of combat in 4e, reader Michelle chimed in with what I believe is the fundamental thing that bugs me about 4e. Here’s what Michelle said:
From what I’ve seen, one of the biggest problems is contingencies. The DM can’t just say “you take 20 hit points of damage” and leave it at that.
You see, the Swordmage has Aegis of Shielding up, so that’s 6 hit points absorbed and the damage is down to 14. Also, you have been granted Resist 5 until the end of an ally’s next turn; after you double-check that it still applies, you reduce the damage to 9. Then, you remember that you have 3 THP, so 9 becomes 6, and now you are done.
Not! You suddenly remember that you have an Immediate Reaction power that let’s you use a healing surge under these exact circumstances. You add 15 hit points back in. And now you are done, for real.
Sorry, I don’t think so. Because it’s not just a matter of doing all of this math in your head — you have to explain it to the DM, one step at a time so he can understand why you aren’t bloodied yet. You have to mark off the damage and remove the THP. You have to mark as “used” the power that let you surge. Oh, and you also have to remind everyone that because you used the power, there is a side-effect that gives everyone adjacent to you a +2 AC bonus until the start of your next turn.
The next player has been listening carefully to all of this complexity, so when the DM says “okay, your turn”, he has lost track of what he meant to do, and in any case needs to revise it to take into account the new tactical situation. Maybe not every time, but often enough.
To borrow a term favored by Neal Stephenson in his novel Cryptonomicon, it’s all about the “ramifications”. Branching contingencies, baby.
What she describes above is more or less unavoidable in 4e and I accept that no problem. The rounds still manage to go faster than they did at the same level in 3e where everyone checked rules (Spells) or rolled multiple attacks.
However, a corrolary to what she said is what I call the “Oh Wait!” Syndrome. That happens whenever a player interrupts someone else’s turn by saying “Oh Wait, I forgot to do XYZ” and proceeds to do other actions. And it happens a lot at my table and I bet it does in others too. That for me is getting a little bit annoying. It does because it grinds the game to a halt and interrupts someone else’ turn.
Now of course, I’m not going to discuss this with my players tonight as it will likely irritate them more than the whole thing irritates me. But I do plan to play each turn like this :
Phil: Okay, Pete you are next, Jack you’re after.
Pete plays his turn.
Phil: Any last actions or reactions? Anyone? No? Okay Jack your next, Biff you’re after.
Pete (interrupting Jack’s move): Oh Wait, I could have used a Minor to…
Phil: Sorry man, we’ve moved on.
As much as some players would like to have full liberty to plan moves and be allowed to reach beyond their turn to provide the party with the best possible result for any given turn, this interruption can be avoided with better planning on the part of player and with the DM giving each player more time in their turn to do everything.
As for takebacks, I will still allow them if we discover that a player made a decision based on flawed information. But I think that I will actively seek to cull the Oh Waits! of my table. I’ll stop putting time pressure on players (which may have been generating the Oh Waits in the first place) but I’ll likely not allow Oh Waits from now on.
What about you? Have you seen this at your 4e table? In other games? Am I the only one annoyed by this (maybe I just need a little DMing break)? How do you deal with it?
Old School Geekeout: Of Hirelings, Doors and Long Corridors.
Last Sunday I invited some of my friends over for an afternoon of Geeking out.
This week’s Feature Game was going to be another Swords & Wizardry session, using Math Finch’s Tomb of the Iron God. Last month we had a real blast with the Quick Start Rules so I was curious to see if we could touch the same awesomeness we had last time.
Given that we only had 3 players, I introduced the use of Hirelings: Men at Arms and Lantern Bearers.
The lineup was:
- Franky’s returning fighter, now at level 2
- PM’s newest lvl 1 Fighter, with a dark Chaotic heart
- Mike’s lvl 1 Thief.
- Bob, a Men-at-arm that coughed all the time
- Bob’s men-at-arm friend
- Thorn, a peasant’s boy, hired as a Lantern bearer.
I’ll give you a time-compressed recap of the game before I go into what worked really well and what didn’t:
Party enters dungeon underneath ruined Monastery of the the Iron God. They explore a few corridors, fall in a pit (killing lantern boy and wounding a PC). Return to city, deal with lantern boy’s dad, rest , hire lantern boy’s cousin as new lantern-boy.
Return to dungeon, explore some more, get a geas from Iron God, get an Iron magic weapon… and fall in a pit! Lantern boy dies (again). Explore some more, get attacked and flanked by goblins, Men at Arms die, party breaks goblin assault, goblin rout, loot! Explore some more, find a bunch of skeleton, Thief dies, party retreats and goes back to city.
Party restocks, Deal with lantern-boys family lawyer, hires 2 new Men-at-Arms (one holding the lantern), sing the praise of dead comrades, hire cleric and return to tomb. Party explores some more, dodge some vermin and find entrance to catacombs.
We stopped there, that was about 4 hours worth of play.
What Worked: Hirelings
I love Old School Hirelings, they take 2 seconds to create (HD: 1 AC 14, Hp: 4, Longsword: 1d8 plus a Saving Throw). And if you inject just ONE personality trait, they make the whole party more colorful. So I had Bob who couched like a 70 year old chain smoker and I had Brier (Lantern-Boy #2) always say ‘huh?’
I also liked how they add complications to the game that PCs need to deal with. At the beginning of the game, when all the PCs were broke, the Hirelings were a resources they had to plan around to get help in the dungeons. They ended up being mostly trap springers and meatshields but what do you expect for 1 or 2 gp a day?
The best moments of the game all came down to hirelings. When the party first came back to town so a PC could heal his 6 missing HPs, I had dead Lantern Boy’s father, a shy peasant that always looked down while nervously grasping his hat, come and ask about his son. Seeing the players scramble to weave a yarn that made them look good (instead of ‘He cushioned my fall into a pit trap’) was freaking priceless.
Later in the game, while being attacked by a horde of goblins, one of the Men at Arms fell to 0 hp. When PM’s chaotic fighter took his turn, he gently took the fallen hireling by the head and tenderly twisted it really really hard. Because heaven forbid that he should get paid 2 gp!
So yeah, that part of the game, I really liked.
What didn’t work: Pretty much everything else
All right, I’ll come out and say it, we didn’t end up having nearly as much fun as the previous game. Part of it was because we had less players so there were less social interaction and potential for chaos. Mostly though, it was because of the adventure.
As PM told me after the game:
It was just long corridors and doors, doors, doors! Nothing to do. Heck, the best parts was falling in the Pit Traps and killing the hirelings!
Ouch!
Tomb of the Iron God is meant as an introductory (but generic) D&D dungeon-based adventure. However, where Chgowiz’s Quick-Start adventure was awesome because it packed so many different kinds of encounters in 20 rooms, Tomb of the Iron God features many many more rooms, most of which are either empty or filled with mundane gear or groups of monsters.
There are very precious few ‘WTF?’ rooms in there, like Chgowiz’s ‘Hall of the talking statues’ in the Quick-Start adventure.I had the feeling that things might be a bit dry, especially the second level, a catacomb that really is mostly monsters and treasure.
I realize that Finch was probably going for the ‘logical’ dungeon, where things make sense. I’m however much more of the “put silly stuff in my dungeon, I’ll cope” school of gaming.
What I want in an old school adventure
After the disappointment of the game wore off, I pieced together what it was that was missing, something I will now make sure are present in all S&W adventures I play…
An Old School adventure that I would enjoy running would need to have plenty of things that players can’t necessarily explain but can interact freely with. For example, take the seminal old School adventure: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, which I loved running. In it you’ll find:
- A large densely populated Dungeon going through an event (a party)
- An overly difficult challenge (Crashing the party)
- Hidden treasures
- Sleeping Guards
- Hundreds of Resentful slaves
- Fake treasure
- Weird tentacle temple
- An hidden story to be pieced together by the party
The adventure, while dead simple, was overflowing with exploration and role playing opportunities.
That’s why I think a good exploration-based adventure needs lots of varied toys to play with. Be they tricks, traps, puzzles and monstrous factions.
The same applies to 4e too. While combat does provide lots of levers and knobs, a great adventure has lots of meaningful choices and unknowns to challenges both PCs and players.
So my next S&W adventure will likely be a work of my own, a Gygaxian dungeons where 2 factions fight over some strange resources while a third, big monster, stands on the verge of killing everyone off. Add a few weird temples and Idols that may or may not protect something even more deadly than the big monster and I’m sure I’d have a blast DMing it.
Creativity and the RPG Mind: Part 1, Introduction
With the recent completion of my series revisiting Robin Laws’ Rules of Good Game Mastering, I’ve been thinking about starting a new one.
Then it hit me. What if I tackled creativity and it’s role in regards to RPG players and GMs .
You see, I’m well aware that I have a high level of creativity. I really have a knack for coming with new ideas and crazy concepts. I mean, I built a successful blog, I’ve even become the de-facto DMing consultant of several of my DM friends and I have a blast inventing crazy RPG adventures, settings and rules.
In fact, while doing a personality test for one of my former jobs, the final assessment said that I can generate more ideas in a given day that most people could in a month. That assessment was quite insightful because up to that point, it hadn’t really occur to me that other people might not have as many ideas. I just thought that they had as many as mine but were either too shy or had trouble communicating what was in their minds.
Then, a few months ago, my good friend Eric Maziade, gave me a paperback book written by creativity consultant Roger von Oech, called “A Whack on the Side of the Head”.
Creativity Consultant? For real? Where do I freaking sign up?
Anyway, the book is a self-help book about increasing one’s creativity. It does so by tackling the most common barriers to creativity and presents ways to break through them. It’s very good… if a bit weird to the overly critical eye of this here geek.
So what I propose with this series is to explore creativity as I see it applied to RPG gamers through some of the themes of von Oech’s book.
This first post will lay down the base definition of creativity I’ll use and will present what I feel are the common challenges that RPG gamers have in regards to creativity.
What is Creativity?
Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. Creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new.
That’s a pretty straightforward definition. You create something in your mind through a new idea or by combining together stuff that already exist (Spork!). However, the part that seem really relevant to all RPG geeks is the last sentence.
The act of creating something, of seeing the new idea through to a final product, is paramount to the creative exercise. And in that, seeing ideas through the end, is something that many geeks have trouble with.
Hence this series.
Typical creative activities of RPG geeks
There’s a ton, probably more than people expect but I’ll try to list a few.
Players
Naming a PC, creating a PC (min/maxing is hyper-focused creativity), creating a backstory, roleplaying, figuring out a puzzle, getting out of a jam, planning, pulling something out of your butt before the dragon roasts everyone into negative HPs…
GMs
Creating worlds, NPCs, stories, campaign plots, adventure plots, twists, encounters, challenges, draw maps, craft descriptions, role playing NPCs, playing monsters, opponents and improvise (instant applied creativity just there), etc
I’m sure I forgot a ton! I’m in creative mode here, not analytical 
The Barriers to RPG Creativity
As I said before, it turns out that some people have a really hard time coming up with an idea. Several more have an even harder time making something tangible with an idea when it finally manifests itself. The creative process has several mental blocks that get in the way between idea and final product. I think this is effectively so in the geek mind…
- That’s never going to work because the rules don’t support it
- That can’t happen, it’s not canon
- I never know what to write in a back story, I’m not good with such things.
- I can’t be a DM, I have no imagination
- I can’t mess with the rule, it’s going to break something.
- Last game bombed, my story sucked, I don’t want to DM anymore.
- House rule? Who am I to change the way the game should be played?
- Ack, I’ve been at it for days, I need one more scene and it needs to be Right!
- That monster makes no sense.
- This project bores me… ohhh Shiny!
All these sample blocks to creativity can more or less be attributed to the following barriers (as taken from von Oech’s book):
- The Right Answer
- That’s Not Logical
- Follow the Rules
- Being Practical
- To Err is Wrong
- I’m not Creative
In the next posts on the series, I’ll tackle one or two of those barriers, summarize what von Oech said about the subject. I’ll then explore how this applies to RPGs and discuss it in some detail.
After that I’ll post about the 4 creative modes that bring makes an idea become a creation:
- The Explorer
- The Artist
- The Judge
- The Warrior
This last part is what I found the most critical of von Oech’s book and it has reshaped my approach to tackling RPG projects.
This is going to be a great series, I can feel it.
It won’t be posted back to back, this will be done over a long period of time, like my Robin Laws’ series. Unless I have so much fun writing it that I can’t stop myself.
But for now, what about your personal barriers to creativity? What prevents you from going from idea to final product? What are your mechanism for coping?
Chatty’s review: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, Part 2
This is a review of Tracy and Curtis Hickman’s X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, done through the voice of 2 alter Egos of mine, Phil and Tony, see part 1 to learn more about it.
For part 2, let’s switch who gets to say what first.
The Theory of XDM
Tony:
All right, the section starts with a chapter about player types. While an already heavily threaded territory, the book presents 3 archetypes: The Warrior (I Kill Stuff), the Socialite (I talk to stuff) and the Thinker (I wanna win to get to the new stuff). It then explain how scenes should be designed to fit those types.
Having had Phil harping on an on and on about his mancrush on Robin Laws, I’m well acquainted with the theory. I agree that one of the surest way to fun is to get to know what players want. XDM’s approach has the advantage of being dead simple and would be a great model to ease in DMs who’ve never realized that what players want in a game actually matters. I just find that it might be too simple though. I’ll let Dr Nitpick go at it.
Moving on.
The next two chapters are, I think, the meatiest part of the whole book. Both talk about Story and explain in detail why a good adventure is always based on a good story.
The first chapter starts as a dissertation of something called the Campbellian Monomyth, which seems to me to be English Litt Jargon for ‘Kid gets quest, Kid whines a bit, Kid beats obstacles and becomes a Man, Man becomes a Hero, Hero gets the Prize, Hero returns home and finds it destroyed/changed/boring/paved into a parking lot, Hero moves on to Tome 2″ or as I like to call it “The Trilogy formula”.
I’m a Microbiology major who reads fantasy novels by the truckload, I don’t know the theory!
Then the book goes into the importance of surprise (i.e. lying), from a storytelling point of view, to maintain the illusion of mystery and keep players on their toes. Then it segues (not really, the change of subject is actually pretty brutal) into a random story generator.
Yeah.. what’s that about?
The next chapter describe 3 adventure structures (Linear, Open Matrix and Closed Matrix) and goes on to say how the Closed Matrix is the model of choice and gives an example of it. In fact, having played and then DMed the first 4 Dragonlance adventures, I recognize the structure (PCs are free to go where they please until they hit a boundary that pushes them back into the adventure matrix… like an advancing army).
Yeah, that’s cool, I guess.
The next chapter is about Riddles, including a good number of them for DMs to use… Yawn… I don’t like those and so do my player. Pass!
After that you get to the prepping the game. They mention the importance of a map, including drawing cross section of buildings (what am I, Picasso?) and how they must be internally consistent. Then follows some pretty cool tricks to writing your adventure notes (if you are the type to write the description of rooms and such).
All in all, I’d say that this section present a certain adventure design philosophy. That philosophy is, to my eyes, as valid as any, but I can’t help to think “Dude, we’re talking about DMing for a group of friends, not writing for the industry”
I’m just saying. You’re turn Nerd!
Phil
I see that you went to town and, as usual, took the wrong train, no wonder Ron Edwards calls your kind brain damaged.
This section of the book actually ended being my favorite, even though it didn’t actually follow up on the awesome bulleted lists at the end of the previous chapters . Not only did I get to see first hand the thinking that was behind some of the most entertaining A D&D modules I played/ran, but there’s useful stuff in there!
I’ll grant my special needs colleague that the player types aren’t up to par with those published in the later Dungeon Master Guides but the Story Cycle dissertation brings an interesting perspective to story design. Having never studied anything other than science, I didn’t know that the familiar pattern of Epic Fantasy tales were based on this.
Then the discussion about the importance of playing with facts, places and time gave me insights about the fact that the mystery of exploration and the emotional response to cognitive dissonance or genuine surprise are all important tools for the DM.
In fact, I found that the subject of playing with the truth to be sufficiently developed to satisfy my expectations. Sadly, the same can’t be said for much of the rest of the book.
The Random Story Generator is a good idea but it’s implementation is a bit too complicated… I wonder if there’s an automated version on their website.
The chapter about adventure design introduced me to the Open Matrix structure. While I had seen it in the first Dragonlance adventure, seeing it stripped to it’s bare component made me slap my forehead. It’s really an elegant way of doing a contained sandbox. Sadly, as with much of this book, the model gets barely 1 1/2 page of treatment, most of it describing the ‘Pushed by an army’ example .
The section on riddle was of limited interest to me. As a DM as well as a player, puzzles annoy me to no end. But I’m honest enough to say that people who like them (or have players who are problem solvers) will like that 12 riddles are not so common knowledge that players can solve them without sneaking off the table and google it while the DM is distracted by another player.
The Section also mentions how to turn a dungeon into a puzzle, taking the excellent “fake straight passages” example from the Pharaoh module. Finally, there’s a very short, but insightful discussions about traps.
Finally, the prepping section basically boils down to ‘Find an internally consistent way for everything in the story’ Once again, while most of what is discussed is interesting, it’s not integrated as a whole. There’s a bit about world building, a bit about maps, a bit about not taking easy shortcuts, another bit about Time and Space of an adventure and a series of short writing tips.
I expected something more focused, more organized. But by the time I had reached that point, my hopes weren’t really that high.
Being the XDM
Tony:
Man, I don’t know how come your mom didn’t drown you at birth. Well thank god for the good grace of our host, I get to say a few words about the next section.
Being the XDM is the section of the book that talks about what happens at the table. Like the previous section, this section is all business, no funny stuff (well some, but that’s not the focus).
I don’t have much to say here except to mention 2 parts that stood out for me. At the beginning of the section, it is suggested to find ways to avoid dumping too much info on players in order to prevent having the action grind to a halt. That’s capital. The book proposes to sprinkle such Info Dumps into props or by having the players play a Cutscene (to which you provide bits of info). Those are good starting points.
The other good bit is when they describe how a (X)DM is like an actor and should adopt acting skills (Clear Speech, and Reacting to events and players).
(High Screeching sound… like a record being scratched)
Chatty DM:
Sigh… sometime a joke stops being funny way before we expect it to. I now feel that I’m unfairly beating up on a Flawed book. So much so that I’m putting a stop to this before I get accused of being a prick. (I may be but I can live with that).
Writing this stopped being fun about one hour ago when I realized that there really was precious little I liked about the book apart the sections I discussed today.
For sake of completeness, the rest of the book discussed illusions you could use in your games to make people appear, disappear or create Ghostly apparitions. There was a whole section on mastering a few magician tricks like Juggling a big Glass Ball and card tricks. I really have no use for that… even in Tony mode.
Then there was a chapter where various instructions for playing with fire at the table and creating flash bombs (I kid you not) were actually censored so you can’t actually know what the trick is. Humorous (or not) footnotes about the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security doing some editing are peppered through the book.
Then you get a description of the Killer Breakfast, which seemed to be more a story about the actual event than clear instruction on running one. Again, no use for the average DM… even XDM ones.
Another chapter that is completely unrelated to everything else is the one about being an Xtreme player (and how to blow up ‘boring’ games). It relates a well known story about Tracy playing an instigator barbarian in an overly cautious party. That’s the story that had Monte Cook and Tracy fighting about in the Letters to Dragon (or Dungeon) magazine.
The core message basically is that an adventure game should be about adventure not about risk analysis. I’m glad I got to read Traci’s side of the story, and there some useful tips to help wake up a gaming group. I’m just not much of a fan of unbridled instigation.
Finally, the book ends with a XD20 roleplaying game, a minimalist 20 pages RPG. Again, something I also had no interest for.
So out of 158 pages, I found no more than 40 that met with my expectations.
Bottom line, the first half of the book has many gems of wisdom that scream to be expanded upon but usually aren’t. There’s some very important stuff in there. Given the second half’s content, I strongly believe that this book has limited appeal to anyone other than fans of the XDM phenomenon and new DMs looking to get better at their craft.
Maybe, just maybe, I just don’t get. But I somehow doubt it.
Tracy, I know you’ll eventually read this. Know that I could not in clear conscience review it otherwise and I apologize if the initial humorous approach turned sour.
Chatty's review: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, Part 1
There’s a Method to my Madness
Shortly before Gen Con and after completing the very long series of blog posts about Robin Laws’ Rules of Good Game Mastering, I contacted Tracy Hickman and asked if he could send me a review copy of his newest book, X-treme Dungeon Mastery. He was gracious enough to do so and so I set out to read it, planning to do a similar series of reviews.
However, I ended up being bothered by many aspects of the book. The thing is, while I found that the book failed to meet many of my expectations as a GM, I had an uneasy feeling that maybe I just didn’t get what the book was supposed to be about.
In fact, when I left my expectation by the curb, I found that I could enjoy the book, there are some very insightful and funny parts.
Thus, after much hesitation, I came to the conclusion that given the book’s apparent schizophrenic nature, I needed to dig deep in my own insanity, fracture my writing persona into 2 different entities and tackle the review with both!
(Trust me on this, given the book in question, it makes perfect sense!)
So meet Musings of the Chatty DM’s newest reviewers: Phil and Tony! Tell us about yourselves guys.
Phil: Greetings. I’ve been a GM for 26 years now and my lifelong goal has always been to achieve GMing Nirvana by acquiring the best practice and methods of the hobby. My free time is very precious and GMing is very serious business. Thus, my expectations when reading a Gming guide are high and my patience is very low. I need instant relevance that I can use at my table tonight, anything else is a waste of my time!
Tony: Yo! While I’ve been GMing for about as long as Mr Asshat above, I know that RPGs are really about fun and laughter in a pleasant social environment. GMs need to learn what fun means in the context of their groups and they needs to make sure that there’s plenty of it going around in their game. Everything else is pedantic nitpicking and pretentious noise.
This is going to be good! And so we start…
XDM: The Book
Before I unleash my 2 alter egos, here’s the breakdown of what the book is.
XDM or X-treme Dungeon Mastery is a 158 page Hardcover by Dragonlance/Ravenloft author Tracy Hickman and his son, world renowned magician Curtis Hickman. The black & white book, printed on rough paper very reminiscent of the 1st edition A D&D books, is illustrated by webcomic artist and publisher Howard Tayler.
The layout of the book is a classical 2 columns of sans serif font with illustrations (mostly cartoon) on almost every page. It reminds me strongly of Gygax’s Dungeon Master Guide… except with much less flowery prose. Hickman father and son are good writers and they chose to go with a simple, straight to the point style that makes reading the book breezy.
The Book has 18 chapters divided in the following grand themes:
- The History of XDM and getting started
- The Theory of XDM
- Being the XDM
- Ultimate XDM
- Killer Breakfast
- XDM: Player Section
- XD20 Role Playing System
The review will cover these sections, although not necessarily at the same level of detail.
The History of the XDM
Phil’s Take
All right, I had the book of a legendary Game designer in my hands. A guy that wrote the modules I learned to play D&D with when I was 10! I couldn’t wait to start reading it. Except, what did I get? Disclaimers about dangerous play and a completely bogus history about X-treme DMing coming down from “La société de l’Utlime Maitres” (which is incorrect French) and that explains how it originated in 24 BC, being handed down through the ages like some sort of secret knowledge.
And this goes on for 7 pages… that’s already 5% of the book gone without giving me anything tangible.
But it gets worse! After a short GMing quiz (that I mostly aced, soit-dit-en passant), we get a another 4 pages of secret signs, initiation rituals and level of XDMs, complete with ridiculous titles.
What’s this? A boy’s club? Are girls even allowed?
My plummeting hopes were however saved with the section’s last page, a pair of text boxes containing 2 lists of things that a XDM should and should not do. THAT is stuff I could use! I hoped that the rest of the book would visit each statement (Like ‘Never Cheat the players”) and expand on each with examples!
Tony’s Take
All right windbag! We’re on a word count budget here!
A thing that becomes apparent after reading the book is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. Even reading the boasts on the back cover hint that there’s something fishy about the whole thing. It seems likely that it should be played for laughs. Role playing games have often taken themselves too seriously and this section is a refreshing ‘clin d’oeil‘ to the whole thing.
While I’ve not been a fan of the Hickmans’ Convention antics, I suspect that the whole XDM phenomenon is a social one, built around Hickman Senior’s personality cult and his preferred style of playing RPGs. I know that they have a loyal (and growing) following and I think that the book is actually as much a ‘Membership’ Manual as it is a book about GMing.
So in that light, it gives the whole fake story of the ‘Ultimes Maitres’ a concrete meaning. It builds a common background “world” for all those XDMs that meet at Cons and interact with Tracy in his events. It is a secret club, and accepting that the whole thing is silly is part of being an XDM.
In fact, the “secret XDM Ceremonial Dance” is so ludicrous (A cheerleading routine where one cries XDM and mimes the letters over one’s chest) that a DM with the guts to perform it in front of players will have shattered one of the highest barriers to great GMing: Self-consciousness.
This is not Robin Laws or the Dungeon Master Guide. Loosen up, unbutton that top button and take that stick out your butt, XDM is both a work of comedy and a Self-improvement guide
Phil: Philistine!
Tony: Dweeb!
Up Next?
That was cooler to write than expected. Part 2 will focus on the Theory and the Skills of being a XDM. Finally Part 3 will cover the Ultimate XDM, Killer Breakfast and Player Section of the Book.
I hope you liked the crazy approach. Know that while it is all tongue in cheek, both point of views represent what I feel about the content depending on what I’m looking for in it. Let me know how it works for you.
