See part 1 here.
Cursed item to the rescue!
The session’s first scene was eventually concluded with the adventure more or less back on track. We had a 20′ tall Flaming Angel instead of a draconic blob. I was cool with that. Heck, I would have been happy with the Marshmallow Colossus from Ghostbusters as long as it moved the game forward.
That’s when something very interesting happened:
Stef (Impatient, but calm, as always): Can I go shop for a magic item now? I need a new armor.
Chatty (distracted): Yeah, sure, sure.
…
Chatty (His groove slowly coming back): Wait a minute, you can’t expect to find the magic armor you need in an hostile city. Roll me a Streetwise check.
Stef rolls and misses… crestfallen
Chatty: Here’s what’s going to happen…
Frankie (perking up): Oh, he’s going to pull a Mouseguard on you.
Chatty: Okay, I’m going to give you a choice. You either fail to find your armor, or you do buy one, but it turns out to be cursed!
Stef: Hum, well…
Chatty: The curse will have no combat effect, it will be a minor, possibly annoying thing.
Stef: Then I’ll take the cursed item.
Chatty: For real? Okay well then, whenever you use this armor in combat, you will (ad libbing like crazy)… Develop a lisp after combat until you take an extended rest!
The whole table exploded in laughter and we spent the next 5 minutes making lisping jokes about nipples and much much worse.
Yeah, we’re all 15 year old nerds on game nights.
Later in the evening…
Stef: How about I start lisping as soon as I get hitin combat? That would be funnier.
Chatty (Thinking “Did the guy just made his curse worse?): … huh, sure.
I don’t know about you, but that my best introduction of a cursed item ever in a D&D game… apart from the Gygaxian Girdle of Sex Change in Temple of Elemental Evil.
Bridge Battle for Control
After Stef’s humorous acquisition, I described that the next challenge would be that agents of the Overmind would try to wrest control of the Angel Monster on the way to the castle. The PCs failed. The Overmind’s agent (a Neogi slaver) took control of the Angel (freezing it in place).
I explained that some sort of skill contest would be needed to take back control.
That’s when Yan chimed in with another game defining suggestion.
Yan: Could the check be an athletics roll to bodycheck the bad guy?
You see, he wanted in the game too, and I finally took the hint.
Chatty: Okay, the Neogi’s got a Umber Hulk guardian but if you succeed you can take him out and free the Angel. If you fail, you get intercepted by the Umber Hulk and we start a fight.
He failed, The fight had an objective to take out the Neogi controller on a bridge flanked by buildings. As soon as the controller was dealt with, I told them that the Invoker (who controlled the Angel Monster) could kill one monster per round as a standard action.
The encounter turned out all right. The Controller was rapidly thrown into the water and the Angel monster reverted under the party’s control.
Issue #5: I was getting tired at the end, having spent a lot of energy trying to salvage the game. When I get tired, I revert to my core personality/DMing style which is very ‘Big Picture’. So when I drew the battlemap for the Bridge battle, I drew a Gatehouse in the middle of the bridge. As I was drawing, I thought aloud:
Chatty: I wonder if the Angel was frozen before she smashed the gatehouse? I’ll just play a Saving Throw (clatter clatter, rolled a 9). Nope she stopped before the gate (and I drew the Angel).
Mike: What kind of Saving Throw?
Chatty: Don’t worry about it, it’s not something you can do anything about (ouch!)
Mike: Wha? But if it’s a save…
Chatty (Getting annoyed): I said forget it, it was just something I rolled to see what happens.
Of course, Mike’s frustration spiked. It’s not the first time (and it won’t be the last) that we get in such a situation. In times of stress, details aggravate me and I tend to sweep them aside with no regards for their validity (or the needs of those asking for them).
I’m ashamed to say that I’m very much of the ‘Be Brief, Be Bright, Be Gone’ school of management. It’s very useful in crises or to quell endless droners (which thankfully, none of my players are) but not always appropriate in a D&D game.
In hindsight, I could have afforded a few minutes to ask him what he wanted to know, and explain how I used a wrong term for what I wanted to do (a coin-flip decision). Hell maybe his idea would have lead to something cooler.
It didn’t help that Mike’s situation in the fight wasn’t ideal, hindered by the presence of line of sight-blocking buildings and monsters standing outside of his powers range.
Finally, when the Angel was saved, he got to slay the Umber Hulk in one stroke but instead of playing out the cleaning out phase of the fight (allowing him to enjoy more killing stuff), I had all remaining monster flee ( I wanted to conclude the adventure early enough), cutting off his toy.
I’m sorry Mike… I noticed all that, I just ‘realized’ it later. I’ll make it up to you with some sweat Controller action next game.
The game ended with the players deciding to send the Angel to draw attention at the front of the Castle while they snuck behind the castle, crossed the moat and unlock an ancient door with the recombined key…
roll credits…
Lessons Learned (Oh Boy!)
- When planning something big, do an expectations check with players. Especially if you change your plans mid course.
- Any skill challenge that exclude a PC needs to be opened up, unless it lasts less than 5 minutes.
- If a player asks a question, no matter how busy or flustered, take a few minutes to answer, at your earliest convenience. Brushing off a friend never achieves anything meaningful and isn’t worth the time saved.
- Creating a fight on the run (the bridge one, I had the monster mix but nothing else) is Hella fun!
- I’m done with mystical ‘weave the fabric of the universe’ skill challenges… been there, done that.
- The Revised Errata DCs are a joke to my players who have very high skills. I’ll likely keep using the pre-errata ones.
- I didn’t talk about it, but I HATE the treasure rules of 4e and I’m working on eliminating them like I got rid of XPs. Yan and I have a prototype “Level your items” system in the works. I’ll keep you posted.
Instead of a save, I’ll usually explain “OK, the whatzit may have slamfargled the whoozit. I’ll give it a 4 in 6 that the whatzit is down, if I get a 5 or 6, the whoozit is down.” :rattle: It’s quick and easy – and I’m like you, once I get rolling, I tend to start forgetting stuff. I hate having to stop in the middle and look up stuff on tables and what – so I tend to keep stuff in my head that “feels” right.
.-= Chgowiz´s last blog ..Making clerics relevant =-.
That’s what I did in essence. And I was thinking ‘What would Chgowiz do?’ (great t-shirt idea BTW) when I came up with the idea. I just made the mistake of calling it a ‘saving throw’ in front of the players.
🙂
I agree with you about the taking time out during the session to handle player questions promptly rather than just blowing them off. For the longest time, I subscribed to the “not now, it will disturb the flow of the game” philosophy, but all that does is take all the little disruptions and let them pile up into one huge disruption later.
.-= silent stone´s last blog ..Hecatonchires: A NaNoWriMo Project =-.
I really didn’t care for treasure rules in 4e. I know players deserve rewards, aside from XP, but in 4e and even 3.x (yes Chatty I’m speaking against my beloved system of choice) the way it is handled is players feel ENTITLED to items, although IMO I think it is worse in 4e. I remember playing 2e and getting a dagger that did an additional 1d4 bleed damage when I was a 3rd level rogue. I cherised that dagger for about 4-5 levels! Through the other levels we honestly only recieved like 3-4 other items and other people in the party could use them to better advantage.
So I look forward to seeing yours and Yan’s system change.
Good save on the game!
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Pathfinder Bestiary and MMI Breakdown =-.
I hated the post-errata skill challenge DCs as well until reading through the skill challenge rules in DMG2. Yeah, it’s pretty hard to fail if the players are using their heads, but the margin for error is incredibly slim during complicated encounters. 3 failures = challenge failed, no matter how many successes they need to get.
Honestly that whole chapter is great; completely turned skill challenges around for me.
I know what Mouseguard IS, but I never played it.
So what does “To Mouseguard something” mean?
Also, there all ready exists rules for levelling up items and such, even under the current ruleset.
@Rechan: In mouseguard if you fail something a check you still get to do what you wanted but you get a complication. In this case Phil gave in the choice to either decide that the failure meant he did not found what he wanted or he got it but with a curse.
As for the leveling up of items… Well Phil intend to post about it suffice to say that it is more to simplify thing for DM then it is about the how you could level up item in the game. Like you said this his already described in the rules.
@Silentstone: It’s incredible who easy it is to forget that the fun of the people you play with are the reason why you play the game. So yeah, that’s a reflex I’ll strive to quell.
@Wrath: Yeah, that’s the one part about 4e I’m growing tired about, Looking forward to posting our piece on simply treasures.
@echo: I haven’t had the time to properly read DMG2 yet… which is insane given that I live and breathe DMing.
@Rechan: It means that whenever a player makes a skill roll, the DM gets to decide what happens… including giving the player what he wants, but with an added twist. In Stef’s case I was generous and I gave him the choice of failing or getting his item with a curse on it.
Communication is one of the hardest things, especially respectful listening. I have a lot to learn there and my players are 10-12 year olds.
Love the Mouseguard twist. Mouseguard has so many brilliant ideas, I also recommend their standard hook-setting for characters (mentor, enemy etc) and use of “circles” to represent your ability to get hold of something through contacts.
For treasure I generally talk to the player about what would be a cool item, I have given my Barbarian a “favor from the primal powers” that will be fun but probably disruptive (he he he) and I let the fighter level up his sword by soaking it in the blood of the Dragon he just killed. I hate parcels. My son the Tiefling Rogue will get a cool power for his daggers when he tells me a good backstory hook to account for it…
Treasure should either be a development of something you already have or a surprise that takes you in a new direction. The vanilla halfling fighter just picked up Aeris (paladin sword from KotS) and I had her get the full attention of Bahamut, who gave her a temporary Lay on Hands because the sword needed to redeem itself for the murders it had committed…
Treasure lets me add twists. If it doesn’t it is just money.
.-= Tim Noyce´s last blog ..Ave atque vale =-.
Hey Tim, thanks for your comment.
Yes… there is however an aspect of table communication I didn’t touch on because I don’t have one at my table is the droning player. Not so much spotlight hoggers as those who talk ALL the time and take forever to make a point. In such cases, the DM needs to learn to brush off or politely but firmly to ask the player to stop talking to let others play and let the game move forward.
I’m pretty sure droners don’t last long in a campaign.
Re Mouseguard, I’m at a point in my gaming life where I’m telling myself “Dude, if you want to import so many indie concept to D&D, why don’t you play the indie games instead.” I’d love to replace money with a Ressource skill and have a skill between Diplomacy and Streetwise based on ‘circles’
These 2 skills would do wonders to beef up D&D’s non-combat aspects where you could obtain stuff and help without tracking wealth… I think D&D would survive such a transition.
Oh and agree 100% with your take on treasures and Magic Items.
Oh yes, ha…the droner. I have one of those! XD I made the mistake of giving him the task of handling the recap, thinking that would allow him to get it all out of his system. Didn’t work that well and the recaps started eating up, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes of play time, heh. I always have my little sand timer ready when his turn comes up…
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who has grown to loathe treasure parcels. I think I’ve come to enjoy, house rule, or at least accept everything in 4th Edition…except those. Not really worth house ruling but such a ridiculous pain to deal with. I *do* continue to use them as a rough guideline but that’s it.
C.DM, next time you have 30-60 minutes to read some RPG goodness…try DMG2 p. 80-89. Like I said above, completely turned my distaste for skill challenges around. The RAW skill challenge system is finally solid, the “preparing for failure” stuff, progressive challenge advice, branching challenge advice…great, great stuff.
.-= echoshifting´s last blog ..In the event that this blog has any readers… =-.
nice Posting. I just starting with Internet. My parents didn’t allow me this, before I was 16 years old. It’s very nice, becaus now can I improve my English language.
Cora from Frankfurt in Germany
I kinda like the parcels… what I don’t like is the items themselves.
Then again, I liked the setting where magical items were truly special and there were no such things as a “magic shop”.
I remember cherishing a bag of holding (and finding very creative uses for it) for quite some time.
Most of 4th ed magical items feel like unwieldly blocks of stats to me. I still browse the 2nd edition’s “magical compedium” books for ideas to create new items and try my best to refluff them.
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.
Part of the reason while you feel like that with Magic Items probably comes from your 2e experiences.
But yeah, 4e items feel like the discarded drafts of 4e powers.
A crafty DM could recreate the older edition feel by swapping Items and Powers. 🙂
Hey chatty,
Been away so i’m a bit behind the times.
Noticed you were thinking about using a ‘level your items’ system for the near future. Since i started DMing i have used a lvl your items system to mixed results.
One problem i’ve noticed is that PC’s who poor time and effort into items aren’t keen on replacing them even when something better comes along. Secondly, the numbers involved with ‘lvl your items’ can start to break the game if left unchecked for to long. i.e. A rogue who only leveled his Stealth infused Dagger for 6 lvls ended up 1-hitting a boss. Just a heads up from my experience with it.
Currently building my 3rd system which is a ground up reimagining and i have had some interesting ideas on items… They don’t really fit with 4e though as i Homebrew.