Pre-Order your print copy of the 2009 Deluxe One Page Dungeon Codex through Kickstarter
What started as a humble contest became a hugely successful one which morphed into a humble PDF, then a much better looking one that was downloaded more than 4000 times!
As a follow up to this, my friends at Tabletop Adventure shared my wish to see this great GM resource be available in print form but financing a color print run is expensive.
You haven’t heard about the One Page Dungeon Codex yet? It was my first major RPG project:
The Deluxe 2009 One Page Dungeon Codex is an anthology of the best entries of the 2009 One Page Dungeon contest, coupled with essays by the creators of the One-Page template and myself on its creation and use in role playing games. The 21 dungeons found therein cover a wide creative range, from the classic retro-80′s look of D&D modules (and video games!) to lavishly decorated manors and awesomely hand-drawn dungeons that redefined the definition of “one-page dungeons”. It also features 4 exclusive pieces of artworks representing the contest winning entries.
In order to bring you this product in physical form, we settled on the Kickstarter program and started a 2 week campaign to raise the money to get the book in the hands of people. We tweaked the program to allow people to get their hands on their copy (copies) for as close to the actual cost of printing and shipping as kickstarter allowed us. In essence, we’re using the program to allow us to take pre-orders of the book and raise the capital for color printing up front.
We need to raise 550$ to get the project rolling and at the moment of writing this, we already have had 4 backers (in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that my mother is one of them and I’m not ashamed) backing a total of 155$. The options are:
- Supporter(3$): Don’t need the book, for whatever reason? You can still support getting this print product out to the RPG community. Your name will appear in the list of acknowledgments in the book. Also, if you come to the Tabletop Adventures booth at GenCon and make yourself known to us, we will thank you in person.
- Dungeon Fan (30$): Receive a color copy of the book, personally inscribed by me, and mailed to you in the US. Your name will also appear in the list of acknowledgments in the book
- Tech Savvy package (35$): Same as Dungeon Fan, PLUS a CD which includes “The One Page Dungeon Codex 2009″ and all 112 of the original entries to the One Page Dungeon Contest.
- Far, Far Away (40$): Same as Dungeon Fan, mailed anywhere in the world.
- Tech Savvy package 2 (45$): Same as Tech Savvy package, mailed anywhere in the world.
- Local enthusiast (110$): You may choose to receive 4 color copies of the book, or we can customize a package of books and CDs just for you. The books may be inscribed or not as you prefer, and we will mail them to you in the US. In addition, your name will be featured prominently in the list of acknowledgments in the book.
- Global Enthusiast (150$): Same as local enthusiast, mailed anywhere in the world.
- And others…
As an incentive to get you to join and support the first serious endeavor in RPG publishing I was a main part of, I decided to throw in an extra little bonuses. All participants (including the 3$ supporters) will get an electronic copy of the revised version of the one page Font of Sorrows that inspired this contest.
Please note that this is strictly a non-profit endeavor, funds will be used to print copies and ship for the kickstart supporters and any extra funds will go to print extra copies to give away to the community (charity auctions, gifts, prizes, etc).
I wish to thank, on top of the original contest team, my friends Micheal Wolf of Stargazer’s World as well as Vicki and her crew from Tabletop Adventures for having spent so much post-contest time and effort on this project.
You want to get your hands on this piece of RPG community history? Click here. Hurry up, it ends on July 19th so we can have them printed by August.
I thank you all for your generous support.
Cover artwork: Mark Allen
Post Publication Edit: Over at The Alexandrian.net, our approach to financing the project is being questioned. I hope that people know me enough to understand how straight I like things to be. When I say that we’re aiming to get you the book as close to cost as possible it involves the credit card charges and kickstarter “slice” that I don’t want Tabletop Adventure to foot since they’re all doing this as volunteer work (they could do other things with their time) .
Any money that comes from people donating more than the asked for price or those going for the 3$ option will go toward printing more books that will be given to charity auctions or as prizes in contests. I also plan to ride the first print run and purchase about a dozen books so that we can sell some at the cons I will be over the summer.
I hope this clarifies things and I’m more than happy to answer questions if you have them.
Oh and in better news, we’re just 100$ away from our goal! That’s so cool! Please help us make this project a reality!
Thanks.
Roludothon 1 Report: The Sea patrol.
See part 1 of my convention report here.
The afternoon of this con saw me join a new group for a game of Mouse Guard. I had not been a player (instead of a game master) for some time and I was approaching the experience with a mix of excitement and worry. Excitement to finally see someone else run Mouse Guard, worry that he’d be bad at it, or that I’d hog the spotlight from other players and annoy the hell out of others like I know I can do.
Then I gently told my numerous neuroses to go outside and play in traffic while I settled in my chair to have some actual fun. This post relates the 1st of 2 missions we played that afternoon. While both were very enjoyable, the 1st one bests showcased how the game plays.
Dramatis Persona
I was soon joined by a group of awesome players: Florian, Cedric, Harold and our GM, Dominique.
Dominique is one of those Burningheads you hear about in gaming conventions. You know what I’m talking about right? I mean those who wear Luke Crane’s Burning Wheel t-shirts all the time and get the game’s logo tattooed behind their necks to show their undying support for his games!
I kid. Dominique was a very enthusiastic GM whose quest for finding the RPG that met his needs led him to Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard. He’s told me he played several successful campaigns with both. My initial worries were rapidly put to rest.
Our GM presented us with our Mouse Guard patrol, made of various pre-generated characters. I decided to go for a Tendepaw apprentice called Sloan whose beliefs and traits screamed “evil git” but who I morphed into something closer to my own playstyle which was “impulsive troublemaker”.
Harold, with whom I developed a quick friendly report, picked up Thom, our “I’m too old for this crap” Patrol Leader. Florian (who later joined my 4e game) played the role of “I need to listen to my heart and follow my head” Sadie. Finally, Cedric played Baron, our beefy halberd-yielding tough mouse.
The Mission
The mission, as is mostly the case in this game, was very straightforward. Sadie’s enemy, a merchant called Shane came to us, all battered and wounded, telling us he had been waylaid by pirate mice on the Northern “Sea”. He begged Sadie to help escort his ship and cargo from Darkwater to Port Sumac (2 coastal cities on that “sea”, scale is pretty screwed up in that game) and find any info about the pirates hideout to recover his lost wife.
I’m having a bit of a fridge logic moment here… wouldn’t Shane ask us to find his wife first? I guess there’s a reason why Sadie didn’t like the guy. After a bit of hesitation, Florian decided to have Sadie accept helping his adversary and we set out on his boat.
GM’s Turn: Disaster Strikes!
As our party of guard mice set out on the open water, I knew trouble was coming (the game thrives on obstacles and conflicts) and I also knew that trouble was even more fun when we failed a challenge! So when the DM hinted that the weather might be changing and that he wanted to know how we were going to deal about that, I let go my inner instigator. I knew full well that the first player to step on the plate had to go for it and could not weasel out.
Except that Sloan was not, by far, the best mice for the job.
So using my low mid-range weather watching skills, accepting the guidance from my mentor, but pushing away the help of Sadie (my belief was “I’m superior to all other mice in the territory”). Thus, I only managed to tie the opposed check vs weather. When given the choice for a tie-breaker by Dominique, I promptly chose to use my “Cunning” trait in favor of my opponent (i.e. the weather) arguing that I secretly wanted to fail to get a better occasion to shine later.
The weather turned, much to Sadie’s displeasure and the boat started collapsing. Sadie took the lead to prevent it from breaking up and, as can be expected, refused my help! (The tension was rising!) All other guards chipped in but the roll failed and the boat collapsed and we managed to save most of the cargo onto a makeshift raft slowly drifting toward Port Sumac… right into a nest of Geese!
The GM called for a fight and we split in 2 teams, each choosing our conflict goals. A pair of geese males would try to teach us mice a lesson by capsizing our raft, Harold and I settled on “Striking terror in the heart of those birds so they leave all mice alone” and the other team chose “Prevent the loss of all cargo”.
What a fight that turned out to be! My character had no direct fighting skills (my weapon was a shield) so our team alternated between attacks, defences and manoeuvres (and generous use of my poison-lore) while the other team focused on attacks and manoeuvres. The geese made a few passes at the boat and destabilized our position quite strongly yet with a few well played strokes of Thom’s sword, Sadie’s sling and, especially Baron’s Halberd we also dropped the geese’s disposition (the game’s hit point).
Fortunately, both of our teams managed successful Defence rounds (which “heals” our disposition) and my character went all out, climbing the rafts mast, jumping in the air and landing a very solid “Death from Above” hit on one of the 2 aggressive birds, making them flee in abject terror, all cargo safe. Sadie’s enemy was pushed overboard, but Sadie, after visibly hesitating, threw Shane a rope to bring him back on the raft.
Tired, hungry and thirsty, we made it into port, sought out Sadie’s friend who owned a Tavern and eventually convinced her to share with us that some thugs over at the docks had contacts with the pirates who careened at an island near Port Sumac.
Player’s Turn: Sloan’s revenge!
The player’s turn is that very peculiar mechanic where players obtain, through using character traits against themselves during the GM’s turn, a number of turn tokens to use to redirect the story’s narrative and recover from the tribulation of the GM’s turn (i.e. the adventure).
Now the game rewards players who use their character’s beliefs, instincts and traits, so I decided to go for gold. My instinct was “Always seek revenge” and I had a target!
I used my token to approach Sadie’s enemy who was painfully recovering from this whole ordeal. I suggested that Sadie could use a good lesson in humility and proposed that I play a prank on her, provided that Shane supplied a very specific chemical compound that I was sure he had in his cargo of dies we had just saved. He happily obliged and I, in front of a disbelieving GM, explained how I planned to concoct a bleaching solution to drop in Sadie’s washbasin during the night. I made a sneaky skill roll and succeeded!
Now what was really cool was that Sadie’s player, Florian, totally played with me on that one and described how Sadie cluelessly went about washing her furry face, failing to notice all the bizarre looks she got from everyone.
We managed to track down the pirate’s most likely hideout (with the help of Sadie and myself acting as distractions) with the help of Baron infiltrating a dock gang and got to see Thom try to armtwist a governor into helping the patrol and then fight a dock thug to secure his commitment.
A great mission. Dominique showed all the elements I look for in a great GM, enthusiasm, flexibility and a willingness to let players suggest events and consequences whenever he has to make a choice. The other 3 players were also great to play with.
I truly love this game and I can’t wait to play it with my friends tomorrow. I’ll keep you all posted!
Roludothon 1 Report, Morning: Robo-Rally, Agricola and Cheetoism
Last Saturday, I attended a Montreal-based mini- gaming convention, called Roludothon 1, based around our newest bilingual gaming forum Roludo (which, unless I’m mistaken, means roleplaying in Esperanto).
The event, held in a beautiful 8 room apartment in Montreal’s Plateau brought together about 20 gamers playing board and roleplaying games over 3 tables and 3 time slots. The apartment was this HUGE early 1900s multiplex so typical of my city and our hosts Jocelyn and Marie-Mousse showed all the grace and informal generosity typical of Québécois hospitality. They also ran a tight ship, having tables and chairs prepared before each event, including cardboard signs with the names of the events and participants on each.
The apartment was located near a local commercial street filled with cafés, bistros and restaurant, it truly was a perfect setup for such an awesome nerd party that was this mini-con.
Board Games Morning Slot
The morning slot had a supers RPG called Wild Talent and a more general board game area. That’s where I registered and was joined by my friends Eric, Martin and 3 other very friendly gamers. We started the day with a game of the latest edition of RoboRally, Richard Garfield’s game of programmable racing robots shooting, pushing and screwing with each other’s well crafted plans.
We played a short game focused on one map with 5 robots and it was absolutely hilarious. This game remains the closest thing to a what I’d like a fast paced version of Car Wars to be. Still, I love that game and the small tweaks they did in the newest edition makes for a smoother running game (like adding a timer to prevent stragglers from thinking for too long).
I still want to use RoboRally in a D&D 4e game and I in fact have made mechanics for them.
Soon, real soon!
We then started playing a game of Agricola, one I had started hearing more and more about in my gaming circles but hadn’t had seen yet. For others like me, Agricola is another of those fast to play, more complex than expected European games. All players control a family of farmers staving off starvation while trying to build a farm and make it prosper.
Here’s a great quote from Nico Solitander over at Board Game Geeks:
…turns out its about raising wild boars and making babies in the German schwartzwalds. But then you press “play” and it’s pretty damn awesome a game.
The game is a “worker placement” game in which you have a certain number of turns to place your family tokens on various tasks to generate food, resources, make babies and build stuff like grazing fields, stables and new rooms to your house (to make room for said babies). The interesting/cool/unnerving thing about this game is that as the game progresses, you have more and more options on which to place your workers and less and less time before harvesting season comes, forcing you to feed everyone to avoid making everyone beggars.
The game is very interesting but the sheer amount of choices one needs to make can be catatonia-inducing. For high-level, reactive types like myself, I find myself unable to stick to a clear plan and it costs me dearly. Still, I caught on mid-game and finished with a pretty decent score for a beginner.
Yet, as clever and as engaging as this game can be, it screams Analysis Paralysis and I would not want to play this game with aggressive analytical types who requires to be given as much time as needed to “think & plan properly”.
Oh man, I just had a nightmare flashback to my one and only Federation and Empire game.
In fact Agricola is one of those games where you have to punch through the steeper than expected strategy learning curve to truly start appreciating the genius of that game. But be forewarned, a small early planning mistake can and will haunt you for the rest of the game.
Cheetoism at its best!
The con organizers had set a 90 minute period for lunch, which allowed each participants to go out and choose whatever takeout delight they wanted. I decided to go with a classic Montreal Submarine sandwich of grilled steak, Sauted veggies (green peppers, onions and mushroom) with melted cheese and fresh tomatoes!
Yum!
We all converged back to the apartment where the kitchen and backyard tables had been made available to all those hungry gamers. Now this may sound inane, but the fact that our hosts suggested that we get the food for take-out and directed us to these tables made us all mingle a lot more than we had so far in the day.
Through the smells of Subs, Burgers, Poutine and Persian delights, I got to talk and listen to stories about Pathfinder, French RPGs and Burning Wheel quite a lot and I got to learn more about a lot of people who had mostly been strangers. It’s been said that the activity of sharing a meal is an important step in forging stronger social ties and I witnessed it clearly during both lunch and dinner. This is a must repeat for future events, regardless of the venue we chose as this event grows.
Up next: Chatty plays Mouse Guard, and prevails!
What if, Twitter Edition: Dailies as Encounter Powers
One of the things I absolutely love about Twitter, once you reach a certain critical mass of followers, is its instant ability to create multiple parallel discussions about a subject.
Yesterday I was working at prepping my Font of Sorrows D&D 4e adventure when the following thought struck me:
What if dailies were encounter powers but could only be used while bloodied? That’s what I see in action movies like Iron Man 2
When thoughts like this strike me, I drop them on Twitter to see the reactions to the unrefined, raw idea. Amid various calls of approval and one notable exception, here were some responses:
WyattSalazar That would add an interesting dimension to healing too. Heal only if you’re near-death, so you can use your bomb powers and therefore risk getting an enemy critical or a fat recharge attack knocking you out. (Chatty: Exactly!)
Tomas_Chernits What if another type of power existed, and it could only be used while bloodied? “Last-resort powers”? (Chatty: That would work too without needing too much work … that or making dailies/encounter more powerful when bloodied, but it makes PCs more powerful)
Owen_Stephens Sure, the Form Blazing Sword effect (Chatty: Hey man, I’m all for Final Fantasy 4e).
Siliconwolf I’m not big on extra daily use, but what about bonus to hit (+4 or something) or daily is reliable if your bloodied (Chatty: Reliable is an excellent suggestion).
FleaBeard Then every player would rush into combat with no armor on (Chatty: Am I wrong to think that would be extra cool?).
countingku That is what @gamefiend is doing with his “LimitBreak” powers, iirc. (Chatty: You can find Gamefiend’s posts here)
EpicDestinies I like the idea. Perhaps it only works in “Final” encounters for that real climatic movie-moment feel?
lotofsnow Maybe a chance to recharge 1 daily per encounter when you become bloodied. Add feats to increase recharge chance. #dnd (Chatty: That’s also a simple and elegant design choice)
Alios7873 Maybe a daily you can use as you drop to zero HP. Go out in a blaze of glory! Mnstrs shouldn’t be the only ones to have that ability (Chatty: They already do, my lvl 16 players explode into powers when they drop to 0)
GeekyLyndsay @chattydm We have ‘surges’ built into our game, where we can take ability damage to gain an extra attack/spell. !d4 Ability damage = 1 more standard action (Chatty: D&D 3.5)
I would use the idea in a Gritty Heroic setting for D&D 4e, quite possibly using Dave’s E11 variant where no one levels up passed 10 except gaining new feats and swapping powers.
I submitted the idea to my friend Yan (who’s our closet game designer) and he countered that this would seriously hamper some class fundamentals, like the Warden’s forms and the Fighter’s stances. He counter proposed that all “dailies” (which would need to be renamed) would recharge after a short rest but PCs could use only one per fight until they were bloodied. At that point they could use all others.
Of course this would mean adjusting monsters, mostly increasing damage output…
I think I’m going to try this later this summer.
Thoughts, comments?
What D&D 4e hack are you contemplating but haven’t talked to others yet? Bloggers, feel free to link to your posts about 4e hacks.
Have a great weekend all!
Origins 2010: Get the One Page Dungeon Codex
Remember that contest way back when?
A few weeks back, with the help of my friends at Tabletop Adventures, I announced the publication of the 2009 Deluxe One Page Dungeon Codex, an anthology of essays on the One Page Dungeon and the contest’s best entries on various PDF stores (as a free product). Well after more than 4000 downloads, the product is now be available in more forms!
For those attending the Origins Game Fair over the weekend, you can mosey on down to Tabletop Adventure’s booth (#422) and purchase a copy of the Codex on CD-ROM (includes the color PDF Codex in both screen and print resolution formats and all 112 One Page Codex entries) for just 5$. The CDs look awesome and makes for a great, crash proof and portable reference!
But that’s not all, you can also get to see what the color hardcopy of the Codex will look like and pre-order it! While the Codex is gorgeous on your computer screen, can you imagine what all those lovingly crafted dungeons looks like fresh out of a professional printer’s? I can’t wait to hold them in my hands and lug them around at cons!
We’re selling it at cost for 22$ plus shipping which will stand at 5$ in the US, 12$ in Canada and 14$ overseas. Books will be available in August after Gen Con.
We’re proceeding thus because we’re doing all this at cost and can’t afford to pre-produce them. After Origins, we’ll offer the product through the KickStarter program (a patronage system for financing), with various levels of involvement and bonuses to generous patrons, like several copies of the book, signed copies of the Codex and my very own Font of Sorrows.
Details will be forthcoming but your support would be greatly appreciated and would help me gauge the interest for my forthcoming projects.
So remember, Origins booth 422. Thank Vicki for me, she and her crew made this a possibility!
Of Sorrowful Villainous Shrikes and Losing Encumbrance
Way back when, I used to write these short posts (yeah, Pffft!) where I would mix and match various cool things I’d seen on the web or to update people on things I had been doing. I thought it would be a good time to do one now.
Font of Sorrows 3.0
A recent, Montreal-based, bilingual gaming forum called Roludo opened-up a few weeks ago. Managed by a group of passionate gamers, including my friend WalkerP, they decided to organize their first convention (held in one of the organizers’ apartment) this next weekend.
They invited me to join and I offered to run my Font of Sorrows adventure, a 4e Dungeon Crawl featuring new monsters, fiendish traps and heavy exploration elements.
I’ve spent some time fiddling with it this week. I ran it at Pax East and it ended up being too complex to run properly. I’m simplifying it while highlighting the elements that made it different from other adventures I ran. I’m very happy with the results so far, thanks to Dave: The Game who helped me with the Skill Challenge involving a very special 4 ton monster called Spurt.
I also plan to run this adventure at the Toronto Fan Expo over the summer where I was invited as one of the featured guest along geek luminaries such as Robin Laws, Ed Greenwood and Felicia Day!
I know I keep busting other RPG bloggers ‘ ass when they’re being negative about themselves online, but try as I might, I have trouble wrapping my mind about being associated with the above in such a large event (60 000+ participants).
I guess you really made it as a geek when you get invited to your country’s largest Fan convention. Still, part of me says “but I haven’t even started yet”.
Anyhoo, with so many playtest sessions of Font of Sorrows, I hope to be able to have a final manuscript ready for publication by the end of the summer. The adventure could even be the starting point for a Primal/Within campaign setting should I ever decide to go for it.
When Twitter leads to awesomeness
Two weeks ago, while fiddling on my home D&D session, I imagined a mechanical construct that would be the embodiment of the Blade Barrier spell in humanoid form. I envisioned some sort of encounter element that could act as both a trap and monster. Thus I created the Doomforge Bladeshrike as a tribute to both the cleric spell and Hyperion.
At the same time I was designing the monster and musing about it on Twitter, my friend Jared Von Hindman of Brain Injury Theater (where I just learned that I made the top of his “What people say about me” list, yay!) gave me advice on the creatures’ look and spontaneously decided to draw it.
Have a look (click to enlarge), it’s Made of Win.
I love the internet.
Now go buy his art! I need his butt at Gen Con for our annual Drunken D&D.
My first piece of Blogger Fan Art!
Last month, blogger Corwin of Ready an Action (A nice looking blog that posts regular D&D 4e adventures) wrote me a tribute adventure. It’s called Musings of the Chattering Skull and features a undead skull named Menardo that’s driving a whole town crazy with it’s echo-amplified incessant chatter.
The adventure features a full encounter against the garrulous skull and pokes fun at many of my past articles and idiosyncrasies. Its clear that Corwin knows my stuff and had fun working it in the adventure. He especially went all out to spell out a lot of catch phrases and dialogue for the Chattering skull, it’s hilarious. I’m now the villain of a D&D adventure, so cool!
I’m really touched and feel all weird. I guess that I have fan art now.
Have a look and let the author know what you think of it.
Power Word: Melt!
On a more personal note, last week I saw my physician for the first time since my Type 2 Bipolar diagnosis last year. I knew I that the combination of mood stabilizing drugs and 4 months of near complete physical inactivity during my last seminar season had made me gain significant amount of weight. What I didn’t expect was that I gained so much (35 lbs) and that my bad cholesterol levels skyrocketed to such height that my doctor wondered aloud how come I was still alive.
I needed to do something about it.
When I shared this as a semi-joke yesterday on Twitter, Dave offered a friendly, but very serious wager. We would both commit to losing 40 lbs before the start of Gen Con 2011 (that’s 13 months from now). We would wager that the loser would spend 100$ in Gen Con swag on the winner’s behalf. If we both won, we’d spend the money on us.
However, if we both lost, we’d donate the money to our respective Heart Foundation.
The idea caught fire and both Vanir and Chris from the website joined and paired together in a similar wager.
E from Geeks’ Dream Girl has suggested that we join her “Fit for Gen Con” project and I think that our approach would bring a cool male geek (i.e competitive yet for Geeky stuff) vibe to it. You can rest assured that I’ll keep everyone posted on the project and the steps I’m going to take to beat Dave’s plan to a pulp.
So if you feel like pairing off with a friend (be it online or not) and joining us, feel free to comment or email me with the details of your wager and stakes.
Also, we need a cool name for the endeavour, here are the ones we have so far:
- The Geekest Losers
- Operation: Mass Reduce Person
- Mordenkainen’s Faithful Diet Buddy
- Power Word: Diet
- Power Word: Melt
Any suggestions?
3:16 Carnage Among Friends: Part 2, Lead 4 Dead
About 3 weeks ago, when I realized that we would not have the necessary number of players for our usual D&D session, I looked into Critical Hits’ review bin and found one of the games I long wanted to try, 3:16 Carnage among the Stars written by Gregor Hutton.
I wrote a review of it here, Chatty Sarge style!
I sent out feelers for the game and got 4 willing participants: Math and Yan, my longest standing players, stepped forward as volunteers.
Math: As long as there’s wine and a chair, I’ll play anything.
My long-suffering lieutenant PM also joined us, as did the newest members of our gaming tribe: Maze and Vyper.
Quick, prep the game, they’ll be there in 10 minutes!
To say that 3:16 little prep is like saying that rain is wet. With the help of a few charts to pick planet names, planetary environments, alien appearances, alien powers and various NPC names, the GM just needs to add a few creative sparks to create a 2-3 hour long adventure.
Here’s how I did it:
I looked at the alien types and saw “Corrupted Trooper”, defined in the rules as “renegade troopers that must be all killed”, then over the power list, I saw “Wounds resistant” which allows the ‘aliens’ to ignore wounds in a combat round (provided the GM pays with some of his pool of alien “threat tokens” each time)… finally one of the planetary environments was “Toxic Atmosphere”.
Of course these choices (our of many many more) popped up because earlier in the day people had been pointing me toward the Left 4:16 Dead hack of 3:16.
All this started something brewing in me brain!
Hmmmm, brains….
The 3rd army recently attacked a planet where lifeforms with very advanced nano-tech triggered a Scorched Earth defense before dying out. A planet-wide strike release of Nano-bots, over-saturating the Terra-like atmosphere attacked all DNA-based lifeforms, took over their neural functions and turned the invaders into near-mindless, tough to kill monsters hungering for the flesh of their uninfected kind.
Of course, the army command could not afford to let the secret of their botched mission out to Terra, nor could they inform the grunts… so before they nuked the whole planet, they sent one last mission to try to isolate the “Zomvirus”, study it and leave all grunts involved in the mission planet-side to roast in radioactive fire.
The first mission would be to capture the North Pole base, where the concentration of corrupted troopers was supposedly lowest.
Length of prep? 10 minutes.
Basic Training
I spent a few minutes explaining the core rules and all players made PCs.
Here’s what they created (Rank & Name, Reputation, Player):
- Sarge Beloved, Smartass, played by The Maze.
- Corporal Vyper, Ice Cold, played by Vyper (Real name Steph, but not our usual Steph)
- Trooper Will “I like all Positions”, Ruthless, played by Yan
- Trooper Frederico Mayweather, Bravado, played by Math
Character creation, 15 minutes, including pouring some wine and re-explaining a few concepts.
Dropships leave in 5, get your ass in gear!
Structure of play usually goes as such:
- Briefing (GM controlled)
- Lead to 1st Encounter (GM controlled)
- 1st Encounter (Group Narrative)
- 3-6 more encounters (Group Narrative)
- De-briefing/Leveling up (GM controlled, Player choices)
One of the reasons why prepping is so short is that the game discourages GMs from planning too far ahead to prevent railroading. The game’s fun does not come from following a well crafted plot (this is a game about mindlessly killing aliens) or the combat mechanics (at least not the tactical aspects of them) but rather the way players spontaneous use military and Space Marine tropes and clichés to build a story that ends up grabbing everyone’s attention.
Yes, this is Indie RPG talk, but it worked. For a good chunk of the evening, even the rules crunch addicts of our group were enchanted with the concept and we enjoyed it a lot.
Playing the role of an uncaring lieutenant, I briefed the group on a mission about rebel troopers from the 4th having taken over a previously cleaned world. Their mission was dead simple: Drop near the North Pole, recapture the base there and progress to kill each and every rebel.
Math (lisping heavily): Oh man, I can’t wait kill all thoshe fucking traitorsh!
Man, we had barely started hitting the first bottle of wine that Math was already deep in character.
Will: Hey Frederico!
Math: It’s not “Frederico” It”s “Fheyderico”
Will: Hum, Fheyderico”
Math: FHEYDERICO!
Will: That’s what I just said!
Priceless.
If it don’t talk, Shoot it!
The players instantly got the whole ” troopers are Zombies” shtick and played along. The first 2 fights were mostly us getting used to the whole combat system and were dispatched quite rapidly. The first one was about the ‘Corrupted Troopers” charging the squad and dismembering a few NPCs before the PCs figured out the difference between guns and grenades. During the second scene, where the PCs were taking over a base filled with ranged-weapons armed Zombies, Vyper used one of his Flashbacks to “Ambush the Ambushers” and win the whole fight.
The high point of the evening (which also inadvertently triggered that game’s downfall after) was shortly after Vyper left for the night.
Maze: Hey, I know, what if Vyper got infected and we had to kill him? Then we’d load him in a sealed suit and send him back to the ship!
Others chimed in and they more or less created the adventure’s “end” scene:
Some time after the debriefing, Vyper’s motionless body is seen lying naked on a morgue table, waiting to be incinerated and chucked in space… As the Camera slowly pans to his ashen restful face, he opens his eyes!
Fade to black.
Everyone cheered!
Now with my usual post-game hindsight, I realize that I should have gone with making “fight zombies on the ship” the game’s next scene and go from there. That’s how the game was designed to go, players are expected to direct where the action goes from the 1st mission onwards and what they came up with was truly awesome.
Instead, by classic gamemaster reflex, I had already decided to push forward with the plot I had in mind about tracking the nano/bio lab in planet’s capital and fighting 2 more waves of zombies to get to it.
Understandably, as we played the next 2 scene, a certain ennui set in in regards to combat and we ended up fast forwarding the final fight downtown around the ruins of the Nano-lab with another player taking a Flashback and putting an end to it all.
Aside: If you intend to play 3:16 as a one-shot, I suggest not giving PCs any ‘Strength” flashback or planning more scenes that there are players to avoid each fight being dodged using them.
Debriefing
After playing the game, Yan and I felt somewhat unsatisfied about the experience. He wanted more tactical options and I felt that the later combat encounters and story felt flat. In hindsight, going over the whole experience and focusing on the period where we were in the game’s ‘zone’, we all agreed it was tons of fun and that we would give the game another try to see how it stacks up in campaign mode.
So stay tuned for more adventures of the 3:16 troopers who were mysteriously found to be immune to the “Nano-virus” but, by a freakish accident of fate and paperwork (both under the portfolio of the same Goddess BTW), were reassigned to duty instead of being quietly executed in the massive cover up that followed the mission and its consequences.
3:16 Carnage Among Friends: Part 1, Sarge’s Review
Sarge?
Sir yes sir!
At ease. I want you to explain to these Twits what we’re about in the 3:16. You think you can manage that?
I’m sure I’ll manage not to botch it up beyond your abilities to salvage it sir!
You’re too clever for your own good Sarge, now get that tongue out of my ass and just do your job!
Sir yes sir!
In space, only 2 skills are needed, and textin’ ain’t one of them.
All right you lillies, 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars is a rules-light, hyper-focused, indie-as-hell roleplaying game. All players are space marines fighting in the 16th battalion of the 3rd army. Their sole mission in life? Drop on planets with scores of other troopers and officers to kill absolutely all life in the name of protecting the Terran home world.
What, you need a deeper reason? Do you want to have a quiet talk with Treason my trusted .45? I didn’t think so shit for brains…
You all got that? Even you Jersey? Ya did? Good! Now stop grinning like the moron you are and give me twenty.
Where was I? Oh yes, each session is a series of encounters on one of various planets where you all get to exterminate disgusting, deadly aliens.
Now, unless I wasn’t clear up until now, the game is about killing bugs, lots and lots of them. In fact, the surviving grunt who kills the most gets a shiny medal at the end of the session. Ain’t that grand?
The game is skill-based and features an impressive list of TWO skills: Fighting Ability and, wait for it, NON-fighting ability.Fighting lets you shoot, gun-butt-to-death, shoot, stab, shoot, dropkick, shoot and generally try to brutally put an end to an alien’s existence. The other skill is for everything else. From changing your weapons during combat, moving around or licking your superior’s boots to obtain a favor.
Guess which one I suck at?
Damn it Roberts! You just stepped in what’s left of Jenkins… again.
Supporting this colossal tribute to RPG design thoroughness is the wounds system where our Marines can suffer any of of the following delightful progression toward gory oblivion:
- Healthy
- A Mess
- Crippled
- Dead
See the painfully messy logic here? It’s a damn work of art if you ask me! It would bring tears to my eyes if I hadn’t lost my glands back on Tau-R6.
Weapons do not deal damage per say but rather kill a certain number of bugs per attack, depending on the weapon used and the range. To hit, you need to roll a d10 under one of the two skills I mentioned before.
Hey Jersey, try to guess which one! Yeah? I thought so. Gimme another twenty you clueless idiot. You’ll make Brigadier someday, mark my words.
Oh yeah… About range… The image here is what ALL battlemaps look like. PCs are little blips in one of the 3 ‘range spaces’ and all aliens are abstractly represented by threat tokens which don’t translate to fixed numbers. All successful attacks by Marines, on top of killing from one to a gazillion bugs, removes one threat token.
When there are no more threat tokens, there are no more bugs to kill, the encounter ends and we move on to the next scene.
Confused? Good! Grunts aren’t expected to think.
Oh yeah… when the aliens hit during combat (they have only one skill: Alien Ability which governs everything they can do), all marines take a ‘kill’ and move down that sublime slide of delayed putrescence. A trooper’s power armor can absorb one “kill” per game session, saving the lucky sumbitch from going all Campbell on us by negating a hit by an alien.
Oh you used your armor already? Well you better stand away from me, I just had mine buffed.
In the Trenches, your thoughts are your only friends.
Finally the last core mechanics of the game focuses on actually building the character’s personality through play. Ya see, all dumbass grunts start as a clean slate. No one cares about who they are or what they did before starting the first mission. Apart from a name, a one-liner description (Slack Jawed Yokel, Cliched Iceman, Hyperactive Hispanic, etc) and a rank, all PCs are pretty much empty shells with guns.
Get it? No? (Sigh) You’re all morons!
Where players start building their PC’s background is when they invoke one of two encounter-breaking elements: Strength and Weakness Flashbacks. In each case, the player creates and describes a memory from the past that explains how the PC would destroy all remaining aliens (a Strength) or lose an encounter on his/her own terms (a Weakness, usually used to prevent certain death).
Such game-breakers are limited in numbers and can’t be used again until a new free memory slot opens up when the character “levels up” later in the campaign. Said level ups also bring upgrades to gear, rank and weapon efficiency.
And don’t any of you asswipes try to force me to use my weaknesses or I swear I’ll have you suck my Hand Flamer like it was the tit of the goddess of lite beer
So who’s behind all this?
Sorry grunt, you don’t have clearance. Just trust your Sarge when he says that you’ll never have to worry about finding fresh planets and new bugs to kill. Rest assured that a marine’s life will get more complex and that there may be a deeper meaning to all this… but for now, the rules are simple: You point that shiny toy toward everything that doesn’t look human and you shoot till they stop moving.
And no, regulations force me to say that you can’t shoot Jersey either.
At least, not when I’m looking.
However, what you are encouraged to do is to show initiative. All grunts, corporals and sergeants PCs are expected to participate in creating each scene. The game is not driven by some godlike Grand Masturbator hiding behind some fleece curtains trying not to get caught. Flavor, plot and narrative control, much like the Andromedan clap after R&R, is shared by the whole squad.
The only things you don’t get to decide is where you’ll land, what your mission after landing will be and what the bugs will look like.
That’s about it… You got enough? I don’t care, I’m done. Dismissed!
Oh, I’m sorry… you expected a real review? Do I look like a damn writer? Now get your gear and haul ass before I stick my foot so high in it you’ll cough up tonsils.
Finding the Game
Up next: A real play report, being master RPG thespians while killing BEMs in a suburban backyard.
Gears of Ruin: When it Bombs, it Bombs.
Previously in Chatty’s game
Our heroes are sent on a gnomish airship to act as security for crucial peace talks to end an 8 year-long global conflict between sentient machines and numerous factions of the dying world of Sikkara. As negotiations start, a portal bomb goes off on the ship, summoning a rampaging demon. At the same time one group of negotiators falls on the other one and all hell breaks loose. Our heroes eventually prevail, identifying the son of their patron as the ring leader of the operation. Now comes the time of finding the other bombs on board before the ship explodes.
The Plan
Our last D&D session wasn’t one for the books. Caugt in the home stretch of seminar season, I found myself prepping the game just a few hours before the actual game (as in, right before). My plan was to have the whole game session revolve around a Skill Challenge-like scene where the remaining bombs would be searched for, found and potentially deactivated or triggered by PCs.
I also put a “timer” on the game in that every minute that passed saw an increasing % chance of having one of those chaos-driven bombs explode. Whenever a bomb exploded (whatever the trigger was), some monster from the elemental chaos would spew out.
This time, I chose Slaads from The Plane Below (graciously offered by Wizards of the Coast) because I wanted to weave a sub-story about them taking an interest in the party and how their eradication (or prevailing) could affect the upcoming collapse of the multiverse. (The Plane Below offers many great roleplaying leads for the Slaads’ unfathomable view of worlds and events).
Lastly, if the last bomb exploded, the ship would collapse and crash on the jagged mountains a few thousand feet down.
I chose a series of elite slaads and a few chaos larva swarms. The idea was that one or 2 bombs would likely explode on the ship while the others would be saved making the fight not too hard or long…
I mean, what were the chances of all 3 elite monsters being on the board at the same time right? Right?
(Cue ominous music)
The joys of being an Instigator
The game started with the PCs searching for bombs and getting the gnome crew to help out. Franky informed his adventuring partners that the gnome privateers were also slavers as he found one of the “secret” cargo holds full of naked humanoids natives to Sikarra. When that secret got out, the gnome captain tried to activate his “Screw that we’re leaving!” teleportation device that would return all feyborne (ship included) back to the Feywild, leaving behind (and in the air) everything else.
That is… until Franky broke the mechanism that activated it and kicked the captain’s butt out of the encounter.
As the party were looking around, one bomb went off (by random die roll) near Mike’s Monk. Summoning a White Slaad and 2 swarms of Chaos Larva. Fighting started. During that time, Franky and Yan checked the runes glowing on the young viscount at the origin of all this trouble and found that it was an enchantment that would open a gigantic portal to the Elemental Chaos upon his death.
Franky tried to deactivate them (mini-skill challenge based on Arcana) and eventually failed one roll. I gave him a choice of loosing his turn or succeeding in deactivating the gate-portal yet letting one summoned entity through, critically wounding the young antagonist (Alien style). Franky chose to let another beasty in.
Now here’s where one of my natural DMing style (instigator/psychodrama) played against me. You see, I could have picked any elemental/demonic creature that would have made the fight more interesting… but I often feel the urge to put into play as many adventure elements I prepared as I can. So instead I chose the next monster that would appear had another bomb exploded and popped another, elite Slaad on the battlegrid.
Then at a later point, since gnomes were supposedly searching the ship, I had a Gnome crew member shout to Franky (who had more or less taken control of the damaged ship) “We found another bomb sir”
Franky: Throw it overboard
Gnome: Are you sure?
Franky (Busy figuring his next move): Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now in one of those classic cases where the DM gets stuck with an internal story he hasn’t shared with the players yet, I didn’t quite know what to do with a non-adventuring NPC handling an unstable chaos-laced explosive device… so I rolled a Saving throw for the poor schmuck and failed. So he exploded on deck (Grey’s Anatomy season finale style), bringing the 3rd elite monster on deck in a situation where the frustration of some had started rising sharply.
Franky: WTF man, I thought they could help us!
It tumbles down all around us
Needless to say that the next 2 hours were long and frustrated to many. The session was fraught with bad rolls, emotional outbursts and analysis paralysis. As the evening progressed, I could see frustration spread around the table.
Sadly I too was irritated and like many males I was stonewalling the whole group for juvenile reasons. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of “bring back the fun” whatever the cost and I even lashed out against the use of the iTouch as a 4e enabler at the game table, a sure sign that things were going down the drain fast.
At that point, I knew I had hit bottom and some of it was my fault. I tried to do what I could to salvage the game and I had one of the 3 Slaads go after the last bomb. All slaads had hinted that they could perceive the various ways this conflict could go, the ship blowing up at their hands being the most likely one.
This created a chase between the slaad and 2 of the 6 PCs (The Monk and the Warden) and ended up with one PC sitting on the ticking bomb, daring the monster to make a move. It included a nice mini-roleplaying scene where the Slaad had the bomb in its claws and was convinced by the warden to put it down and walk away because “the universe might be a more interesting place if they were allowed to live and kill the Slaad’s patron instead”.
At that time, it was well passed 11h00 PM and all the Slaad were still alive. So they conceded defeat (The bomb had been deactivated) and jumped off the ship ending the game in a rather brutal way.
Post Mortem
It has been a long time since I left a game with such a feeling of unsatisfaction. I know that there were many factors that lead to such a ‘meh’ sessions. First and foremost being that bad sessions happens and we need to accept them. The hasty preparation, putting all my prepared pieces in game at the same time (where they weren’t supposed to) was one too. The the lack of communication among players to coordinate their strategy better was another. Outburst and interpersonal conflict also corrupts the underlying social dynamic of a group.
All things that have been addressed or will be by open communications with the others.
Finally, I’m now convinced that our preferred style of play: short roleplay/story scenes followed by elaborate tactical combats may no longer be supported by the duration of our play sessions (2h30-3h30, every 2 weeks) and upper paragon play, at least not without hacking encounter math like monster Hit Points and Damage.
I checked my old posts, 2 years ago I was complaining that we could only manage 2 roleplaying scenes and 2 combat encounters per evening… now we barely manage one of each…also, I’m now getting direct feedback from players that they are no longer as satisfied with the game experience. Some long for the time we played 3.5, others are annoyed at the length of combat (finally!) while others are unsatisfied with the performance of their PCs.
That’s crucial feedback that require discussion and action in the near time.
And I’m sick and tired of trying to “fix this”, I’m currently unhappy with our 4e games but was at a loss about turning things around until mid-week.
…and when it’s all said and done, an unhappy Dungeon Master is the surefire sign of a dying campaign/gaming group.
So for tonight’s game I’ve created one last adventure plan (using a combat-light model) to see the mini campaign to a good stopping point somewhere in the next 2 sessions or so. I’m also going to discuss this with the players, maybe even let tempers flare a bit to let the accumulated steam out. My goal is to go home with a revised list of player motivations and expectations so I can come back for a new proposal (new campaign model, new game, who knows?) for the next season.
Stay tuned, tonight’s game is called: “Here’s 250 000 gp, now go take back your city”.
My RPG DNA: Part 3: The Oughts, D&D 3.X
Inspired by Rob Donaghue’s gaming DNA post, I decided to share my gaming history first with the early 80′s (with the 1st edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) and then with the bipolar crunchy/fluffy 90′s with GURPS.
Now let’s start the decade where one polyhedral was chosen to rule them all.
A New Era…
Shortly after my 28th birthday party, I sat in my living room with the D&D 3rd Edition Player’s Handbook in my hands. After a decade away from Trolls, Drow, Mindflayers and other Gygaxian-branded fantasy tropes, I felt the strong pull to return to the world of D&D. However, remembering my attempt at re-reading the 2e Player’s Handbook back in 1998, I expected the book to be really bad…
…Instead I discovered one of the best written, most enticing role playing game book I had read in ages (surpassing my then favorites BESM and Gurps Wizard). It wasn’t long before I purchased all core books. My pleasure at reading the D&D 3.0 books only expanded from there and to this day, Monte Cook’s Dungeon Master Guide remains one of the RPG books I enjoyed reading the most (in fact, all but the 2e DMGs have a permanent space in my small gaming shelf).
D&D 3e fixed pretty much all the things that drove me away 10 years before. Gone were the subsystems, disparate XP charts and most of the annoyances I felt with AD&D 1e.
I was back baby!
I rapidly set out to create my first 3.0 campaign with my players of the time: Math, Yan, Nick (Babounne), JeeEff and Stef. Franky joined us early on while playing The Sunless Citadel. The campaign was a mix of homebrewed and published adventures that culminated in playing the first chapter of the adaptation of Gary Gygax’s Against the Giants where the players led 300 orcs to attack a host of giants and ogres.
I even made paper tokens for every damn participants in that fight! It.was.Epic!
The End of the Honeymoon
The game eventually crashed at around the 10th level when I realized that I had lost control of the power of magic items in the campaign, had no strong plot arcs and handed the campaign over to Nicolas who shocked us to the core by showing us what the system could do in the hands of a merciless (but, it pains me to admit, fair) DM.
Never again do I want to be hated by a whole city because of dopplegangers nor have to fight said shapeshifters in full darkness! Nicolas showed us the darker side of 3e and we didn’t like it at all.
Reboot!
At about the time that (my) Nico was born (early 2002), we started our longest ever campaign where we played through the entirety of Monte Cook’s Return to the Temple of the Elemental Evil. While we enjoyed it immensely, it forevermore burnt some of us on long dungeon crawls (You spend 10 levels of experience in 4 different dungeons).
That campaign also saw us transition from D&D 3.0 to 3.5 right in the last third of that super adventure, where an innocuous Horned Devil became the campaign’s de facto uber-bad guy by getting boosted beyond the player’s ability to deal with it. He ended up being a cool recurring villain.
Eric joined us during this campaign while Nick and Jee Eff moved out of town. Nicolas went to Sweden (you’re still there right? he he he) while Jee moved to Quebec City.
You are not as good as you think you are
Shortly after the birth of my daughter Rory in 2003, I realized that up until now, I had been depending solely on my natural skills and experience as a DM to drive the game along with my friends’ good faith and enthusiasm. I had no grand ideas about player motivations yet, much less the 5 stages of a RPG group, Tropes or even the Rule of Cool .
At that time, about 25% of sessions bombed and I often found myself thinking about quitting RPGs right after a given night where we ended up arguing too much or where the whole thing fell flat. After some of my now trademarked over-analysis, I realized that I had reached that point in my DMing career where I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about the craft.
Turns out that like black belts in Judo, I had just dirtied my belt enough to start learning the true teachings of the art. I started observing more and actively sought to improve my DMing. We worked out some form of social contract that made our lives easier and we had a great streak of awesome games.
In 2005 the Dungeon Master Guide II came out at exactly the right time and exploded into my brain, starting a chain reaction that eventually brought me here to this website today. To this day it remains one of the most influential GMing books I’ve read.
We played that second campaign until level 17 or so… where the game more or less collapsed due to overlong fights dominated by save or dies and inevitable intra-party pressures from such long campaigns with the same PCs.
The Up and Downs
After 2 full campaigns of vanilla D&D 3.X, we were looking for something new and exciting while staying within D&D’s sweet spot of lvl 5-12. In August 2006 we started an Iron Heroes campaign that lasted about 6 months and included some incredibly cool The Truman Show tropes that blew my players brains out.
Iron Heroes was this high action, low magic d20 variant written by a certain Mike Mearls. It was loads of fun! We played some awesome action-driven games such as a full dungeon crawl underwater, with silent PCs using sign language!
After that, with the publication of Monte Cook’s incredible Ptolus, I tried to merge Iron Heroes with new city setting, which failed miserably by painting myself in a corner with too many house rules to maintain a gaming world I could manage in my head.
We rebooted the campaign again and it finally managed to work after a false start, leading us one last time through D&D 3.5′s sweet spot and culminating in the destruction of my 20 year old homebrewed game world. During that time, Mike, the last member of our current group, joined us.
By then (summer of 2008), we were all ready to switch to 4e. The idiosyncrasies of 3.5 weren’t compensated by any sense of newness brought by alternative settings/rule set or accessory book anymore (including the awesome Book of Nine Swords). We were ready for some fundamental changes and 4e was here to take us to the next experience.
The Sands of Time
Another change was brought about as the 1st decade of the new millennium came to an end. The ought years saw most of us go from our mid-twenties to mid/late thirties (2 of us are over 40 now). Our relationship to the game changed progressively and so had our motivations. Real life (i.e. mortgages, kids and pot-bellies) caught up with many of us and we’re still adjusting… with predictable impact on game attendances and expectations.
Philosophical aside: I often say that the 30s is that period of your life where you absolutely have to deal with crap from your past before it crashes into today’s crap so that you can have a fair chance at a crap-free future.
The feeling that a new crossroads in our gaming is nearing looms strong in my mind.I don’t know if I’ll outright post about it, but it sure has started leaking on my Twitter account.
How about you? How has the d20 years affected your gaming and personal life. I know that the last 10 years have been a coming of age for many of the 1980 and 90′s geek kids. Tell us how your story went!
