Tales from Draconis, Part 2

Draconis is a Montreal Gaming convention.  See part 1 here.

Saturday was a big day for me, I had 2 games to GM for, 2 seminars and a game scheduled (as a player) in the evening.

Saved by the Grell, English

Saved by the Grell was an adventure written my John Richter based on my original Dungeon Reality Show: Dungeon bowl edition and an idea I had of making a scenario about High School drama in the D&D world.  The adventure was written for our 2009 edition of Drunken D&D and it was an immense success.

For Draconis, I added an extra level of meta to it all. I asked myself “What if the Scenario was an actual show on the plane of games and the adventurers were forced into playing the roles of high school student in a show?”  You can read an excellent recount of the game here, so I won’t tell the story again, but here’s a few highlights:

#1: I was worried that players would not be willing or able to create their own “high School cliches” but it totally worked and I got:

• Dwarf Fighter: Party Animal Jock
• Halfing Rogue: Cheerleader
• Gnome Bard: Punk Rocker
• Barbarian: Science Nerd (De-liscious!)
• Eladrin Wizard (Homecoming Queen)
• Human Cleric: Whiny Emo Goth

#2 During the Dungeon ball game, the cleric focused on distracting the Ref.  When he asked me if Diabolus, his ex-girlfriend who had played a small part in the intro, was in the bleachers, I told him that the she was the ref !  What followed was a great scene of 2 Emo kids, standing dejectedly 10′ apart and discussing how nice it would be to maybe, like, get back together again… (All this while PCs and monsters were piling on illegal moves over illegal moves).

Chatty: So she’s willing to go back with you. She leaves the field to redo her black makeup.

Emo cleric: Okay, I go back to the middle of the field

Chatty: While you felt really happy about it when you started, it subsided and you returned to being downright miserable after the end of your turn.

#3: In the middle of the adventure I noticed that something was wrong.  The Dungeon bowl game was at half time, I had just described the birthing process of a Grell and the players were NOT all on the floor, laughing like crazy and they were floundering in the school chasing 2 goblins with no clue why they were doing it…

Then it dawned on me… the players weren’t drunk this time around.

The adventure makes no freaking sense, it was written as a drinking game. On top of it, I had added the whole ‘reality thing’ show that muddled everything.

When the players decided to kill all the opposing team so they could win by default, I tried to save the adventure by saying that the monsters were also indentured participants.  When they then offered to broker a deal to split the prizes ith the monsters, I had the show producers panic (as I was) and plead/haggle and threaten the players to continue as scripted

Oh yeah, i get the full irony of it all… but it gets a lot better.

I finally had the 2 running goblins pass by.  Everyone started chasing them.  It got every PC and NPC running after the goblins, for no clear reason.  I ended up puilling a Scooby Doo chase skill challenge out of my butt to save the scene.

And you know what? It worked beautifully!

#4: The game ended with all monsters crushed under the Zomboni and the PCs walking on the field to win the scenario by default.  I finished the session with the owner of the Plane of Games, a lich who get’s Fox on his Crystal Ball, offer the PCs a contract to replace his recently fired (and Mind Flayer food) show producers.

#5: I love the power of “Say yes and…” It totally saved the game.

Seminars, The Tricks of the Successful 4e DM, French

4 people showed up (The room had 10 seats or so, more like a janitor closet than a conference room).  There was one DM and two of his players.  There was also a French (as in France) author of 4e material who wrote adventures on a regular basis but had never really played the game much.

Call me naive, and I did hear about the dark 90’s where designers didn’t play the games they wrote for, but I was scandalized… Especially 4e where field experience makes understanding the game a whole lot more.

Anyway, The DM was struggling with his game, trying to rationalize why his players died so often.  The players weren’t sold on 4e, voicing the usual vacuous and vague “it’s like a Video Game’ “All classes are the same” ‘The Fighter is only good at making people attack him”

I had quite a challenge and I was willing to meet it head on.

I started with the players, asking questions about their game. From their answers I discussed how a party should be created at the same table, looking for synergies and story reasons to fit together. I told them of the power of team work and how PCs should not all beat up on thier own monster in different corners of the map.

I told the DM to use more brutes (with helping minions) and less soldiers, more artillery and less controllers.  I explained how Gotcha attacks should be hinted at, so that a player that ate 4d8+6 damage + Stun knew that he was at risk before he closed in melee range.

I discussed treasures and placement. The author mentionning that he needed to write much more than 10 scenes to to get a leveling up.  So I told him to combine Skill Challenge, Major quests and Monster XPs in the same encounter to “save space”.

By the time I was done, the players and the DM were all excited and pumped to give the game another try.

My work was done.

And I really think that there should be some sort of DMing university somewhere, I’d try to get tenure.

Up Next: The English Seminar, Dinner with Luke Crane and Mutant Future!