I wasn't planning on running a game last Friday, but my plans to be out of state fell through, so when one of my players asked whether we were gaming, I said yes… about an hour before we started gaming.
I've made progress on this list, except that I've done very little mapping, and the mapping I've done has been on a continental scale, when what I really needed to run my next game was more dungeon mapped. What to do?
Joesky to the rescue! Earlier that day I had read his Carcosa adventure and thought it was really good, so I decided to use it. Instead of sending my players to Carcosa, though, I decided that the White girl was a kobold from my megadungeon and rolled for the other colors on my Carcosa Race Conversion Chart. The Jale men turned out to be lizard-men, the Purple man became a satyr and the Bone woman became a human.
The PCs began the session like they normally do: heading to the megadungeon entrance, expecting to be met by a few well-armed kobolds requiring a toll to enter. Instead, they found a few hundred kobolds preparing to destroy the local village, their home base. The PCs have made a few attempts at cultivating good relations with the kobolds before, which paid off now; the kobolds were accusing the village of stealing a kobold girl but agreed to delay their attack on the village until sun-up the next day, giving the PCs time to find and return her to the kobolds.
Heading back to town, they found that an old man who lived out in the hills had come to town complaining of his daughter being kidnapped as well. The PCs asked around to try to find out if anyone knew anything or had seen anything suspicious and were directed to "the old ruins," where, of course, Joesky's adventure was.
I really like the tree Joesky has outside the ruins. Unfortunately, I messed up when running it, so the tree became a much harder obstacle. This did serve to warn the players that they were up against an adventure that was more challenging than the 1st level of the dungeon that they've been hanging out in, though.
After the players killed the tree, the lizard-men who had been watching attacked. The 1 HD lizard-men were relatively easy for the two dwarves in the party to kill, but the hard-core orange-painted ones proved more of a challenge; one character ran away in fear for a few rounds and multiple rolls on the Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage Table were made for one dwarf. I really do need to figure out a way to introduce my players even more to the idea of combat as war…
As the combat raged, the PCs saw that the cult boss and his consort were watching from the other side of the river (the orange-painted lizard-men had crossed the river). To prevent them from attacking or escaping, the party MU used Stinking Cloud, the first time she's ever used a level 2 spell, she said. It worked to keep those two choking and distracted until the dwarves reached them and killed them.
The PCs then proceeded to loot the bodies, finishing off one of the lizard-men who was lying on the ground, clutching his leg because his Achilles tendon had been severed. Suffice it to say no paladins were in this party. (Incidentally, there's a campaign idea: a party of paladins and clerics gets sent to Carcosa…)
They then explored the rest of the ruins, except for rooms 4 and 5, looting as they went. Joesky gives out a lot more treasure than I usually do, so the players were very pleased. They couldn't figure out a way to get into the room behind the metal door, since they haven't met any space aliens or dinosaurs or explosives; they didn't even try their laser-rifles, but I would have ruled that they wouldn't work if they had; this is, after all, space alien technology. The only room they ended up never exploring is the Ankylosaurus stable; I'm sure they'll get to meet him at some point, though, as I'm sure he'll get fed up with being all chained up and break free some time before the next session.
They found the two cowardly, "maybe-killing-young-girls-(kobold-or-not)-and-summoning-monsters-isn't-such-a-good-idea" lizard-who promptly surrendered and offered to guide them to the prisoners, the beat-up satyr, the young kobold girl and the old man's daughter, Gertrude. The MU picked the locks on their chains, calmed the kobold girl down before she got stabbed for her trouble (it's nice to speak Low Draconic as a result of Arduin's Special Ability Charts), they said goodbye to the cowardly lizard-men (just like that?! yep, just like that; my players' moral compass confuses me) and headed off to return the kobold girl to the kobolds before the sun came up and hundreds of raging kobolds killed all their friends in the village.
If you've read Joesky's adventure, though, you'll know that poor Gertrude actually died before the party found her, eaten by a shape-shifting Spawn of Shub-Nigurath, which replaced her. I asked for marching order and who should be in front of this monstrosity but the dwarf who had already made a few rolls on the Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage Table! She changed shape and started to strangle him, doing 6 damage to our buddy the dwarf on her first hit (and auto-hitting every round after), making every round into a fun roll on the table for the dwarf, as he'd only gotten something like 6 hit points back from first aid in the first place.
The MU had her hands full with the kobold girl and supporting the beat-up satyr, and the other dwarf wasn't having much success attacking the spawn-thing. The newest character, a sprite, had a blow-gun, which he decided to use on the spawn-thing… and missed. In my games, when a character fires into melee and misses their target, I assign a number to every other character that could possibly get hit, roll a die to choose one and have the player roll to hit that character instead. It's a fairly harsh consequence for firing into melee combat, and I always check that, yes, my players actually want to do this, but firing into melee happens way more often than you'd think it would. Anyway, I roll to see which character gets a chance to be hit, and roll the kobold baby, which has 2 hit points! The sprite's dart does 3 damage!
Perhaps this makes me a poor referee and a softy, but I gave the kobold a roll on the Death, Dismemberment and Dangerous Damage table, seeing as she was important to the plot of the session. Part of me wishes I'd just ruled the kobold dead right then and there; the party couldn't say they hadn't asked for it. The kobold made her roll and only lost consciousness, though.
In the end, the satyr took the sprite's maul and finished the spawn-thing off, getting to save the day. The PCs returned the kobold baby to the kobolds before sun-up, the satyr went off to find a forest where he could recover and frolic with wood-nymphs and the PCs went home significantly richer and built a cottage for themselves. The fact that they got off relatively lightly, considering the tactical errors they made, is perhaps tempered by the fact that they realized, from interrogating the lizard-men cowards, that there's a good bit of weird fantasy/cthuloid horror in this setting… they've already encountered a few spawn of Shub-Nigurath, but without quite realizing what's going on. Now they're starting to see that there may be a price their characters have to pay for living in a fantasy world with laser guns and the simplest psionics system ever, and they are far worse than just running into guys who look like MUs but don't cast spells and try to cut you with big swords (which also caught my players off guard)…
Joesky's adventure is a great adventure and I thank him for it. Not only did it save my hide, it was a lot of fun for me to run, what with the creative mechanics for the tree and the Ankylosaurus and the classic Joesky surprise face-stabbing style of the Gertrude-eating spawn-thing. It also proved just how easily Carcosa adventures can be used in a more standard setting with less than 20 minutes of re-working, which is nice to know when you want to give your players a taste of Carcosa but don't want to actually take them there. (Thought: since this isn't on Carcosa, should the metal door lead to Carcosa? What an evil thought!)
One of the coolest things about this adventure is how it includes the reactions of the NPCs. They cower and bide their time when the PCs are fighting the tree, but they hear fighting noises and join in otherwise. The bosses hang back, but the boss' girlfriend tosses flaming oil. The Ankylosaurus is mad and will break through the wall if he hears fighting. Carrying action into surrounding rooms is something I'm really weak at and Joesky's adventure gave me a chance to practice that; Joesky's adventure, then, isn't just great because it has great monsters that want to stab you. It's great because it taught me, as a referee, how to be a better one.
Exploring games that were published before I was born - and the games inspired by them.
Showing posts with label Play Report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Play Report. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Paperwork…
My players didn't do a whole lot this session; we even ended early because one of my players is sick and the other was fading. The players found a library, which they looted about 40 books from (using the library tables from Vornheim) and then were ambushed by dopplegangers, which they defeated disappointingly quickly. While the characters themselves didn't do a lot, I've got a lot to do before our next session:
- Start mapping the second level of my dungeon; they found a stairway down to it today.
- Map another section of the first level that they explored close to today.
- Define the mechanical benefits that the books they looted can give.
- Determine Thoth Razylym's response to her assassins' deaths. I've already determined that she's sending an intelligent 6 HD creature after the party; she may make things even more difficult for the party too.
- Roll up another dragon, since the party was noticed by another dragon for killing the dopplegangers.
- Figure out building cost rules; the players want to build a house where they can keep their books and their Magic-Users can do experiments and research. This may be my first chance to incorporate ACKS into my game.
- At least start mapping the area around the dungeon, as they discovered a local map in the library.
- [Edit] Also, I need to come up with two evil cults and a few gods, as many sacred texts and commentaries were discovered in the library.
- [Edit] Also, I need to finish working on fleshing out Thoth Razylym. This doesn't have to be finished before next session, though, as my players don't even suspect that anyone powerful has taken notice of them.
Well, looks to be a busy game of game prep; better get crackin'!
Saturday, January 28, 2012
… and Sometimes They Go Really Well!
Last night I enjoyed myself greatly running a session of my Skype campaign; it was the kind of game that makes this kind worth playing.
We started slowly, and two hours late (we ended up playing two hours later than planned as well). The party consisted of:
Gunt Vor, Dwarf Warrior (Level 3, I think)
Velmont Pirok, Dwarf Warrior (Level 1, I think)
Sorvana, Magic-User (Level 3)
Firgon, Warrior (Level 1)
Shavasta, Scoundrel (Level 3, I think)
The party went back to an area of the dungeon with irregularly cut, cyclopean stonework where they had discovered two ray guns on a previous expedition. They found their way into a large throne room with rows of statues down both sides and a yellow skeleton on the throne, pointing to the floor in front of it (thank you, Dungeon Alphabet).
Examining the floor, the players found a loose stone and were able to lift it out of the floor with a crowbar and some effort. The stone had been covering a lever, which the players promptly pulled. Blue lights came on near the tops of all the walls… and the 18 statues in the room animated and attacked the party!
This is a combat that I had been concerned about the party encountering when I first laid it out, but I had decided that, first of all, the players had to activate the encounter themselves and that I would stand by the Old School dogma of allowing "unbalanced" encounters that the party should run away from, as heavy-handed as it felt. I did decide that the batteries for these statues wer low so that they would attack every other round, but it turns out that I needn't have worried.
First off, both Gunt and Velmont took advantage of the "Unstoppable" house rule we use, which is fairly common in the OSR. It states that if a Warrior/Fighter kills an enemy in melee then that warrior gets an extra attack that round. Gunt and Velmont both dropped multiple statues in a few rounds.
Secondly, though, I hadn't taken into consideration the unpredictable effects of using Arduin's Class-based Special Ability charts during character generation. Velmont's player had rolled a 77 or 78, the result of which reads: "Roll d6 - Add this number as a bonus with any one weapon type." Velmont's player had proceeded to roll a 6 on his d6 roll and added it to any time he uses axes. This bonus (to both to-hit and damage rolls, I ruled), along with the Unstoppable class ability, meant that most of the statues fell to Velmont's axes.
One of the most fun things I've learned from another member of the OSR is to ask "please describe the [thing your character just killed]'s horrible death." (I learned this from Tavis Allison at SoCal Minicon.) Velmont's player actually started declining to answer the question with more than one word; I asked him if he was sure he didn't want to describe Velmont rocking out in combat, but, once again, I needn't have worried about him losing his spotlight. After it had been established that there were only a few statues left, Velmont started singing "We will Rock You" as he smashed the last of the statues to bits. As the last statue crumbled at his feet, Velmont assumed this stance and belted out "We Are the Champions."
Exploring this throne room, now that the statues were vanquished, they found that the large cyclopean stones that made up the walls all had court scenes depicted in reliefs. Looking at them carefully, they found six figures that stood out from the rest; three figures held coils of rope while the other three bent over and held lanterns to the rope.
There is a secret door here, and the way to open it is to bring a light source near the depictions of rope three times. It's a difficult secret door, and they weren't able to figure it out, but they ended up finding another way to the treasures behind this door, though they haven't taken it yet.
We started slowly, and two hours late (we ended up playing two hours later than planned as well). The party consisted of:
Gunt Vor, Dwarf Warrior (Level 3, I think)
Velmont Pirok, Dwarf Warrior (Level 1, I think)
Sorvana, Magic-User (Level 3)
Firgon, Warrior (Level 1)
Shavasta, Scoundrel (Level 3, I think)
The party went back to an area of the dungeon with irregularly cut, cyclopean stonework where they had discovered two ray guns on a previous expedition. They found their way into a large throne room with rows of statues down both sides and a yellow skeleton on the throne, pointing to the floor in front of it (thank you, Dungeon Alphabet).
Examining the floor, the players found a loose stone and were able to lift it out of the floor with a crowbar and some effort. The stone had been covering a lever, which the players promptly pulled. Blue lights came on near the tops of all the walls… and the 18 statues in the room animated and attacked the party!
This is a combat that I had been concerned about the party encountering when I first laid it out, but I had decided that, first of all, the players had to activate the encounter themselves and that I would stand by the Old School dogma of allowing "unbalanced" encounters that the party should run away from, as heavy-handed as it felt. I did decide that the batteries for these statues wer low so that they would attack every other round, but it turns out that I needn't have worried.
First off, both Gunt and Velmont took advantage of the "Unstoppable" house rule we use, which is fairly common in the OSR. It states that if a Warrior/Fighter kills an enemy in melee then that warrior gets an extra attack that round. Gunt and Velmont both dropped multiple statues in a few rounds.
Secondly, though, I hadn't taken into consideration the unpredictable effects of using Arduin's Class-based Special Ability charts during character generation. Velmont's player had rolled a 77 or 78, the result of which reads: "Roll d6 - Add this number as a bonus with any one weapon type." Velmont's player had proceeded to roll a 6 on his d6 roll and added it to any time he uses axes. This bonus (to both to-hit and damage rolls, I ruled), along with the Unstoppable class ability, meant that most of the statues fell to Velmont's axes.
One of the most fun things I've learned from another member of the OSR is to ask "please describe the [thing your character just killed]'s horrible death." (I learned this from Tavis Allison at SoCal Minicon.) Velmont's player actually started declining to answer the question with more than one word; I asked him if he was sure he didn't want to describe Velmont rocking out in combat, but, once again, I needn't have worried about him losing his spotlight. After it had been established that there were only a few statues left, Velmont started singing "We will Rock You" as he smashed the last of the statues to bits. As the last statue crumbled at his feet, Velmont assumed this stance and belted out "We Are the Champions."
 |
| Subtract a meter, add two axes and a beard and you've got what happened last night. |
There is a secret door here, and the way to open it is to bring a light source near the depictions of rope three times. It's a difficult secret door, and they weren't able to figure it out, but they ended up finding another way to the treasures behind this door, though they haven't taken it yet.
Pulling back the tapestry behind the throne, the party found a much less concealed secret door, made of some kind of silvery metal, without locks or hinges, but which they couldn't open. I allowed Gunt to use his laser-gun to cut out a section of the door; reaching through it, he found a wheel on the other side fo the door, which he turned. After turning it enough, the door opened and they found what looked to be a long-abandoned, dusty bedroom. Looking around and investigating the desk and rotting bed, they still failed to find the treasure hidden in a hole in the wall behind the desk.
The room they were in has three other doors, all with wheels to unseal them. Taking one, they found themselves in an abandoned alchemist's lab. The cyclopean stones in the walls, floor and ceiling were constantly changing shape and size and shifting among each other. They found a workbench covered in broken glassware (Sorvanna was disappointed, as I'd just discussed the usefulness of libraries and laboratories for Magic-Users with her at the beginning of the session) and a cabinet. Investigating the contents of the cabinet, they found three spheres of glass that seem to contain some kind of smoke (when a sphere is broken, it will release the "Outfire Fog," which puts out all fires it comes in contact with) and a bag with powdered roots necessary for the Carcosan ritual "Chaining the Formless Aspect." If the party encounters a sorcerer, the sorcerer will likely want the contents of the bag.
Moving on, the party discovered an old prison, with many of the inmates' skeletons left in their cells. The skeletons were mostly human, but some had longer, thinner, more fragile bones, bones they didn't recognize and skulls not built with jawbones (mind-flayer skeletons- yeah, the guys who ran this prison were that tough).
Connected to the prison was a chamber with a lever on the wall and a red square outlined in the middle of the room with a large pile of powdery dust in the middle. This was a summary execution chamber. Shevasta's player decided to have her experiment by having Sorvana command her Unseen Servant to pull the lever while Shevasta stood in the circle. Failing her save, Shevasta disintegrated into dust. The party, saddened by this turn of events, decided to leave the dungeon. As they headed towards the exit, however, they met a Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, an three-eyed, toothy worm-like thing that they were able to kill after a less one-sided battle than the fight with the statues had been.
This spawn had 6 HD which means that the party qualified for a roll on the Puppet-Master Machination Tables to see whether a dragon has noticed the party or not. They only had a 10% chance to be noticed, but they "made" their throw, being noticed by a dragon which I'll now have to generate. This dragon, I found out after rolling further on the tables, has decided to get rid of the party by sending some of its minions to rub them out. We'll see what happens; the minions will have 4 HD, so if the party kills them it will increase their chance to be noticed by other dragons as well!
Connected to the prison was a chamber with a lever on the wall and a red square outlined in the middle of the room with a large pile of powdery dust in the middle. This was a summary execution chamber. Shevasta's player decided to have her experiment by having Sorvana command her Unseen Servant to pull the lever while Shevasta stood in the circle. Failing her save, Shevasta disintegrated into dust. The party, saddened by this turn of events, decided to leave the dungeon. As they headed towards the exit, however, they met a Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, an three-eyed, toothy worm-like thing that they were able to kill after a less one-sided battle than the fight with the statues had been.
This spawn had 6 HD which means that the party qualified for a roll on the Puppet-Master Machination Tables to see whether a dragon has noticed the party or not. They only had a 10% chance to be noticed, but they "made" their throw, being noticed by a dragon which I'll now have to generate. This dragon, I found out after rolling further on the tables, has decided to get rid of the party by sending some of its minions to rub them out. We'll see what happens; the minions will have 4 HD, so if the party kills them it will increase their chance to be noticed by other dragons as well!
All in all a great session. The loss of Shevasta was severely tempered by the fact that, well, no one, including her player, really liked her (for good reason). Her replacement character, to my glee, will be the first character in my campaign to be a member of the Order of the Green Hand, as I mentioned in my last post. Along with figuring out what will be ambushing the party next session, I need to figure out which spells the Order has. It's going to be interesting to see Magic Users of very different backgrounds interact; Flynn's new character will have access to many, many spells, as a perk of being a member of the Order, while Sorvana, the other Magic User, as the apprentice to an independent master, has access to comparitively few spells; this is complicated by the fact that members of the Order are not allowed to share their magical knowledge without express permission, and such permission is rarely granted.
All in all a very fun session, especially because I'm beginning to see how the party's actions are going to influence how the world treats them from here on out.
All in all a very fun session, especially because I'm beginning to see how the party's actions are going to influence how the world treats them from here on out.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Sometimes Things Go Badly…
So, when you run a typical open-ended, sandbox, Old School game, you leave things up to chance and make sure that there's a real possibility of failure. The idea is that if failure isn't a possibility then success isn't real.
Sometimes it works out really well.
Other times, though, necessarily, it doesn't. Like tonight.
I think it really started during a character generation towards the beginning of the session. I've been having my players roll on Arduin's special ability charts, which are tables of 100 quirky adjustments to characters, one table for each general type of class. (Arduin, unlike my campaign, has a LOT of classes.) Anyway, this player rolled a result that gave his character +3 to saves against magic spells, but -4 to Charisma because the character is now arrogant.
And then this character (Shevasta) fires into melee a few times. And actually does more damage to the other PCs than the monsters do, critical hitting one character (Tamaren) and cutting open his throat with a crossbow bolt. Despite Shevasta and Tormick's best efforts, they were unable to save Tamaren, who died.
I attribute this to a few things. One is that I messed up the order of combat towards the beginning of the session, so that may have confused things some. Another is that this player hasn't been able to make it to our virtual table in probably more than a month, so, though he's been able to run and play in 3.5 games, he's probably out of practice so far as Old School games go. He was definitely kicking himself over what he made his character do. So far as the player goes, he's really sorry he did what he did.
His character, though- Shevasta- isn't. Remember that she'd been given extreme arrogance by the chart? Well, her player had her do some soul searching, hoping that reflecting on her reckless behavior and the death of a party member that she caused would temper her arrogance. Taking a cue from Pendragon, I ruled that if he rolled at or under her Wisdom score, then she could have 1 point of Charisma back, reflecting a change in her character.
Even this roll was failed, much to Shevasta's player's dismay. Shevasta's player did have her forfeit her share of the loot for the night, though.
I'm blessed to have mature players who are good friends with each other. We knew each other for a few years before we ever started gaming together. While Tormick (who also was a victim of Shevasta throwing a dagger into combat) is on the verge of killing Shevasta if she does anything reckless again, my players are still on good terms with each other. Tonight was an example of when a player honestly plays a character's personality rather than what he wants to do. I think that's actually a key to determining the acceptability of the excuse "that's what my character would do": if the player isn't happy with the character's actions, it's definitely legitimate roleplaying, rather than just trying to cause trouble. None of them were exactly thrilled with the results tonight, though.
Tonight, in many ways (except for getting a few dozen silver pieces) was the kind of failure that is possible in open-ended Old School games– the cost of this kind of giddy, spectacular success. That's OK, though, since failure is the risk we all knowingly took when we went into this session. Tonight's session will sweeten my players' later successes just that much more.
Sometimes it works out really well.
Other times, though, necessarily, it doesn't. Like tonight.
I think it really started during a character generation towards the beginning of the session. I've been having my players roll on Arduin's special ability charts, which are tables of 100 quirky adjustments to characters, one table for each general type of class. (Arduin, unlike my campaign, has a LOT of classes.) Anyway, this player rolled a result that gave his character +3 to saves against magic spells, but -4 to Charisma because the character is now arrogant.
And then this character (Shevasta) fires into melee a few times. And actually does more damage to the other PCs than the monsters do, critical hitting one character (Tamaren) and cutting open his throat with a crossbow bolt. Despite Shevasta and Tormick's best efforts, they were unable to save Tamaren, who died.
I attribute this to a few things. One is that I messed up the order of combat towards the beginning of the session, so that may have confused things some. Another is that this player hasn't been able to make it to our virtual table in probably more than a month, so, though he's been able to run and play in 3.5 games, he's probably out of practice so far as Old School games go. He was definitely kicking himself over what he made his character do. So far as the player goes, he's really sorry he did what he did.
His character, though- Shevasta- isn't. Remember that she'd been given extreme arrogance by the chart? Well, her player had her do some soul searching, hoping that reflecting on her reckless behavior and the death of a party member that she caused would temper her arrogance. Taking a cue from Pendragon, I ruled that if he rolled at or under her Wisdom score, then she could have 1 point of Charisma back, reflecting a change in her character.
Even this roll was failed, much to Shevasta's player's dismay. Shevasta's player did have her forfeit her share of the loot for the night, though.
I'm blessed to have mature players who are good friends with each other. We knew each other for a few years before we ever started gaming together. While Tormick (who also was a victim of Shevasta throwing a dagger into combat) is on the verge of killing Shevasta if she does anything reckless again, my players are still on good terms with each other. Tonight was an example of when a player honestly plays a character's personality rather than what he wants to do. I think that's actually a key to determining the acceptability of the excuse "that's what my character would do": if the player isn't happy with the character's actions, it's definitely legitimate roleplaying, rather than just trying to cause trouble. None of them were exactly thrilled with the results tonight, though.
Tonight, in many ways (except for getting a few dozen silver pieces) was the kind of failure that is possible in open-ended Old School games– the cost of this kind of giddy, spectacular success. That's OK, though, since failure is the risk we all knowingly took when we went into this session. Tonight's session will sweeten my players' later successes just that much more.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Light thoughts on Tonight's Game
Ran a game tonight. Just two players, but I'm hoping for two more next week. We'll see what happens.
An idea that I got during the game from the chatter of my players: a pool that can imbue mundane items with magic. Like, say, you dip your crowbar in the pool and now it's a Crowbar of Returning. You can throw it in combat and it'll come back to you. (Also, roll under your Dex or it'll hit you in the face.) Or choose some other magic effect, make sure it isn't too useful, or that it can have drawbacks so the PCs won't dip absolutely everything in it, and put it in a lower level of your dungeon: instant fun thing for your players to mess with.
One of my player's magic-user elf character died tonight in a fight with giant centipedes. They only had 1-2 hit points and had poison that (if a save at +4 was failed) crippled for 1d4 rounds, but there were eight centipedes to two PCs. A fighter, with the ability to make another attack whenever an enemy with less than a full hit die is killed, would have been really helpful for them to have. Using flaming oil earlier would have helped too. The nice thing is that she's still interested in using a magic user, something that is new to my players, who haven't been interested in them until very lately. Magic users are probably my favorite class to play, so it's nice to see them played by my players, especially since it means that I get to see some of the thought I've put into magic users actually used in my games.
So far that means that I gave my player her choice of having her magic user be a member of the Order of the Green Hand, have gone to a magic academy or be apprenticed to a higher-level magic user. She chose to have her PC apprenticed, so I'm going to have to roll up a master for her her character. Cool.
I'm going to have to do some more mapping this next week, as my players have almost reached the end of my mapped territory. Having dungeon dressing, the results of just a few random rolls per room, really, really slows them down. Perhaps wandering monsters will teach them to speed up, but none of my rolls this session brought any wandering monsters there way. Oh well, there's always next time. If they'd gone any faster, they would have hit the end of what I've got mapped, so it all worked out for the best.
But, yeah, dungeon dressing is definitely a must for a megadungeon. It slows the party down and also gives them lots of things to use in the dungeon as tools. For example, the main entrance of the dungeon is guarded by a bunch of kobolds that charge a toll of any who enter and one PC tried to get on their good side by giving them some mice that he found in the dungeon. The PCs are also deathly afraid of a mirror I left out in the middle of one of the rooms. It's mundane and harmless, but they're so afraid of cursed items (after one character went for maybe a month with Buck's Hat of Misery on her head last year) that, though they added it to their inventory, both of them took pains not to look in the mirror. Lots of fun.
And that's what roleplaying's about: fun with friends.
An idea that I got during the game from the chatter of my players: a pool that can imbue mundane items with magic. Like, say, you dip your crowbar in the pool and now it's a Crowbar of Returning. You can throw it in combat and it'll come back to you. (Also, roll under your Dex or it'll hit you in the face.) Or choose some other magic effect, make sure it isn't too useful, or that it can have drawbacks so the PCs won't dip absolutely everything in it, and put it in a lower level of your dungeon: instant fun thing for your players to mess with.
One of my player's magic-user elf character died tonight in a fight with giant centipedes. They only had 1-2 hit points and had poison that (if a save at +4 was failed) crippled for 1d4 rounds, but there were eight centipedes to two PCs. A fighter, with the ability to make another attack whenever an enemy with less than a full hit die is killed, would have been really helpful for them to have. Using flaming oil earlier would have helped too. The nice thing is that she's still interested in using a magic user, something that is new to my players, who haven't been interested in them until very lately. Magic users are probably my favorite class to play, so it's nice to see them played by my players, especially since it means that I get to see some of the thought I've put into magic users actually used in my games.
So far that means that I gave my player her choice of having her magic user be a member of the Order of the Green Hand, have gone to a magic academy or be apprenticed to a higher-level magic user. She chose to have her PC apprenticed, so I'm going to have to roll up a master for her her character. Cool.
I'm going to have to do some more mapping this next week, as my players have almost reached the end of my mapped territory. Having dungeon dressing, the results of just a few random rolls per room, really, really slows them down. Perhaps wandering monsters will teach them to speed up, but none of my rolls this session brought any wandering monsters there way. Oh well, there's always next time. If they'd gone any faster, they would have hit the end of what I've got mapped, so it all worked out for the best.
But, yeah, dungeon dressing is definitely a must for a megadungeon. It slows the party down and also gives them lots of things to use in the dungeon as tools. For example, the main entrance of the dungeon is guarded by a bunch of kobolds that charge a toll of any who enter and one PC tried to get on their good side by giving them some mice that he found in the dungeon. The PCs are also deathly afraid of a mirror I left out in the middle of one of the rooms. It's mundane and harmless, but they're so afraid of cursed items (after one character went for maybe a month with Buck's Hat of Misery on her head last year) that, though they added it to their inventory, both of them took pains not to look in the mirror. Lots of fun.
And that's what roleplaying's about: fun with friends.
Friday, September 2, 2011
The Megadungeon is a Go!
So, my two most regular players lost their character sheets in the move to their new house and still haven't been able to find them. Last time we tried Risus out, but this time we rolled up some new characters for them.
Quite quickly, one of them started complaining about his attributes. I use 3d6 down the line. In the past, I've allowed re-rolls of attributes when the sum of the modifiers is less than 0. This time, though, I remembered this.
I had him make up his own attribute scores. Then his wife wanted to do that as well.
Here's the attribute scores he decided on: 18 13 13 9 3 4
And here's her's: 10 13 10 16 8 13
Wow, that didn't break the game, even when you let a player with very gamist tendencies do it!
The way he put it, "It's no fun to play a character that's good at everything."
No arguments here. Thank you, Jeff Rients.
We actually spent about three hours doing character generation, mostly because we took our time. I also had them roll on charts for their background from Monsterous Civilizations of Delos and the special abilities chart from Arduin. Those worked as well as I hoped they would and added some nice flavor. Once I've tweaked and worked and changed them to the point where I feel sharing them wouldn't be a copyright violation, I'll do so; in the meantime, both books are for sale…
Then, since we only had an hour left, I decided to run them through the start of my megadungeon. I only have 18 rooms done(or mostly done) right now, but I figured they wouldn't get too far. I was right; they only went into three rooms and only had one combat, with a Saucer Fungi. They interacted a lot with the dungeon dressing. If I had been using my wondering monster tables, they would have had quite a few rolls on those, but it was interesting to see them take every random piece of debris I had lying in a corner of a room (or the middle of the room) seriously.
This is also motivation for me to get cracking on expanding my megadungeon! There needs to be more ready for them by next week! So hopefully you'll see some more megadungeon posts around these parts soon.
Also, I have some kobolds that guard the main entrance to the dungeon and charge a toll. It was fun to see one player irked at having to hand over a silver to the kobolds. He expressed a desire to fight them, though he knew he was too weak and outnumbered right now. This should be interesting, as the kobolds are one of the most powerful factions in the megadungeon as I plan it, so getting on their bad side can make life very, very interesting.
Quite quickly, one of them started complaining about his attributes. I use 3d6 down the line. In the past, I've allowed re-rolls of attributes when the sum of the modifiers is less than 0. This time, though, I remembered this.
I had him make up his own attribute scores. Then his wife wanted to do that as well.
Here's the attribute scores he decided on: 18 13 13 9 3 4
And here's her's: 10 13 10 16 8 13
Wow, that didn't break the game, even when you let a player with very gamist tendencies do it!
The way he put it, "It's no fun to play a character that's good at everything."
No arguments here. Thank you, Jeff Rients.
We actually spent about three hours doing character generation, mostly because we took our time. I also had them roll on charts for their background from Monsterous Civilizations of Delos and the special abilities chart from Arduin. Those worked as well as I hoped they would and added some nice flavor. Once I've tweaked and worked and changed them to the point where I feel sharing them wouldn't be a copyright violation, I'll do so; in the meantime, both books are for sale…
Then, since we only had an hour left, I decided to run them through the start of my megadungeon. I only have 18 rooms done(or mostly done) right now, but I figured they wouldn't get too far. I was right; they only went into three rooms and only had one combat, with a Saucer Fungi. They interacted a lot with the dungeon dressing. If I had been using my wondering monster tables, they would have had quite a few rolls on those, but it was interesting to see them take every random piece of debris I had lying in a corner of a room (or the middle of the room) seriously.
This is also motivation for me to get cracking on expanding my megadungeon! There needs to be more ready for them by next week! So hopefully you'll see some more megadungeon posts around these parts soon.
Also, I have some kobolds that guard the main entrance to the dungeon and charge a toll. It was fun to see one player irked at having to hand over a silver to the kobolds. He expressed a desire to fight them, though he knew he was too weak and outnumbered right now. This should be interesting, as the kobolds are one of the most powerful factions in the megadungeon as I plan it, so getting on their bad side can make life very, very interesting.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Risus Review/Play Report
Did some gaming tonight. Only two players made it and one felt sick and dropped out halfway through.
The two players recently got married and did a lot of moving, so they had lost their character sheets. I figured that was the perfect opportunity to try out another game system: Risus.
Risus is a six-page, rules-lite, universal RPG. Characters are described by a name, a sentence or two of flavor text describing the character and, lastly, several "Cliches." Cliches are basically character classes, occupations or backgrounds. Players get 10 dice to divide between their cliches, which they make up. A sample character, presented in the rules, goes like this:
Whenever a character is faced with a challenge, the player chooses whichever of the character's cliches seems most appropriate (or most fun, or most advantageous, depending on the style of play) and rolls as many d6s as the character has for that cliche. If the roll meets or beats the target number of the challenge, the character is successful; if not, the character fails.
When two or more characters engage in any sort of conflict, they roll however many dice they have for whatever cliche they are using for the conflict (conflicts can be anything from physical conflict to a battle of wits to a horse race to political maneuvering). The character with the lower result loses a die and they again roll their dice. When one character's cliche is reduced to no dice, the other character wins and the winning character's player gets to decide exactly what happens to the loser.
There are a few complications that let characters team up with each other and a few optional rules that let you mess with dice other than d6s and get to use more dice and things like that, but if you want to know about them you're probably interested enough in Risus that you should download it (for free) and read it. Like I said above, it's only six pages, and you can find it here.
The bottom line, before I get into the play report, is that we enjoyed ourselves. My players tonight are my more serious ones, but we tried to get into the spirit of Risus and loosen up more than usual. The characters played were James, a SWAT Operator who got the address for his SWAT operation VERY wrong (as in, we were playing in a pretty standard dungeon) and Smee, a handmaiden who moonlights as a black market bug smuggler. After Smee disappeared because her player felt sick, James met his doom at the hands of a huge animated omnibus edition of the Twilight series, which ate him. James found himself inside the Twilight saga, all of his guns malfunctioning, the prey of sparky vampires. So, yeah, we were pretty silly. It was fun.
We played in The Abandoned Temple of the Howling Obelisk, by STEM (thanks, STEM!), which was part of a recent Risus One Page Dungeon challenge. You can find all the OPDs here. Also, thanks to Risus Monkey for pointing them out to me; I've been wanting to give Risus a try for a while, but not having any adventures for it was holding me back. Risus OPDs removed that obstacle for me.
I went into Risus knowing that while it is rules-lite, it isn't an "Old School" RPG, though one of the influences it cites is Tunnels & Trolls. It wouldn't be fair, then, to critique it as an Old School game; that's not what it's trying to be. The fact that it has a unified mechanic, then, shouldn't be seen as a problem. What is is that we Old Schoolers like to say? "It's not a bug, it's a feature." The unified way dice rolls are based around the number of dice you have under your cliche is elegant, intuitive and is ridiculously easy to learn. I have a more difficult time explaining some house rules than I had explaining this whole RPG. That's really cool.
You're also supposed to roleplay descriptively in Risus, which is cool, and something I wish I was better at. I find myself falling into "the orc attacks you… [roll]… and hits for… [roll]… 3 damage" more often than I'd like, though I do try to be more descriptive than that. The Arduin critical hits and fumbles tables help with that, but not as much as Risus seemed to. First off, I'm amazed by how only ever rolling d6s simplifies things mentally, freeing up some brain-space to think about how to describe what's going on. Secondly, the advantage given to those who use "inappropriate"cliches (like "Hairdresser" in a barroom brawl) and describe how their character uses some ability from that cliche to engage in the conflict in a "really, really" entertaining way is enough that smart players will use this tactic, with the requisite entertaining verbal description, just about as often as possible. Getting to decide and describe what happens to whoever lost to your character also encourages roleplaying. (I wonder whether Tavis Allison got his "please describe your/your enemy's horrible death" from Risus…) Again, very cool.
One issue we ran into is actually a problem I'm familiar with from toying around with Tunnels & Trolls. In both T&T and Risus (if I'm understanding them correctly), when you have opposed rolls during a conflict, losing a round of that conflict decreases your likelihood of winning the next round of a conflict because you lose some of whatever makes you able to engage in that conflict, whether it's dice under a cliche in Risus or more complicated stats in T&T. The less well you've done, the less likely you are to do well this time around; I think I've seen it described as a death spiral somewhere. That's both been an issue for me when I've tried solo games with T&T and it was an issue in the game today that James' player brought up during a break.
Risus does offer a few partial solutions to this death spiral. One is allowing players to team up with each other during combat. All of the team leader's dice count, as well as all team members' rolls of 6, and if the team loses a round and one team member elects to take double damage, the leader gets double the dice during the next round of the conflict. That double damage/double dice, from what I can tell, leads to both sides getting in death spirals together instead of the first party to take damage pretty much automatically losing. It also allows a party to have a fighting chance against a single powerful foe.
The ability to switch which cliche you use from round to round during the same conflict, and some other tactical options (trading more dice this round for automatic dice loss at the end of the round and destroying three enemy dice instead of one if the cliche you're using is both inappropriate and entertainingly described) all help to mitigate this issue, but it still remains. Sure, you can take this monster with these tactics, but what about the next one, and the next one? You'll be too worn down from this fight.
So the death spiral remains an issue for me, especially because Risus strikes me as aiming for a laid-back, light-hearted style of gaming and the only way I can see a death spiral as an integral part of the game is when the players are doing resource management of their hit points, which can be fun, but is a different kind of fun than Risus strikes me as having as it's goal. Any illumination that anyone experienced with Risus (or T&T, for that matter) can give me on this topic would be especially appreciated.
This death spiral isn't a deal-breaker for me, though. Risus won't be my go-to RPG anytime soon, but it's certainly an RPG I'm glad to know how to play. It's something I'll keep in my mind as a great RPG for quick one-shots, especially when all the materials that are available are scratch paper and d6s. It's also a game that I'd like to play more. Over the last year or two I've run a few face-to-face one-shots with friends, trying to drum up interest in a campaign. If I ever try that again, I'll probably try using Risus, both because I want to mess with it more (and use advanced options, like pumping dice) and because it will be easy to use and easy to create characters for. Chargen alone should take less than half the time it usually does.
So, next time you're casting about for a new system to try out, especially if it's a one-shot, why not try Risus? It's quick and easy to learn, it encourages both role-playing and smart mechanical tactics, and it's as much silly fun as you want it to be.
The two players recently got married and did a lot of moving, so they had lost their character sheets. I figured that was the perfect opportunity to try out another game system: Risus.
Risus is a six-page, rules-lite, universal RPG. Characters are described by a name, a sentence or two of flavor text describing the character and, lastly, several "Cliches." Cliches are basically character classes, occupations or backgrounds. Players get 10 dice to divide between their cliches, which they make up. A sample character, presented in the rules, goes like this:
Grolfnar Vainsson the Viking
Description: Tall, blond, and grinning. Likes to drink
and fight and drink and chase Viking women
and fight and sail the high seas and raid.
Wants to write great sagas about himself.
Clichés: Viking (4), Womanizer (2), Gambler (3), Poet (1)Whenever a character is faced with a challenge, the player chooses whichever of the character's cliches seems most appropriate (or most fun, or most advantageous, depending on the style of play) and rolls as many d6s as the character has for that cliche. If the roll meets or beats the target number of the challenge, the character is successful; if not, the character fails.
When two or more characters engage in any sort of conflict, they roll however many dice they have for whatever cliche they are using for the conflict (conflicts can be anything from physical conflict to a battle of wits to a horse race to political maneuvering). The character with the lower result loses a die and they again roll their dice. When one character's cliche is reduced to no dice, the other character wins and the winning character's player gets to decide exactly what happens to the loser.
There are a few complications that let characters team up with each other and a few optional rules that let you mess with dice other than d6s and get to use more dice and things like that, but if you want to know about them you're probably interested enough in Risus that you should download it (for free) and read it. Like I said above, it's only six pages, and you can find it here.
The bottom line, before I get into the play report, is that we enjoyed ourselves. My players tonight are my more serious ones, but we tried to get into the spirit of Risus and loosen up more than usual. The characters played were James, a SWAT Operator who got the address for his SWAT operation VERY wrong (as in, we were playing in a pretty standard dungeon) and Smee, a handmaiden who moonlights as a black market bug smuggler. After Smee disappeared because her player felt sick, James met his doom at the hands of a huge animated omnibus edition of the Twilight series, which ate him. James found himself inside the Twilight saga, all of his guns malfunctioning, the prey of sparky vampires. So, yeah, we were pretty silly. It was fun.
We played in The Abandoned Temple of the Howling Obelisk, by STEM (thanks, STEM!), which was part of a recent Risus One Page Dungeon challenge. You can find all the OPDs here. Also, thanks to Risus Monkey for pointing them out to me; I've been wanting to give Risus a try for a while, but not having any adventures for it was holding me back. Risus OPDs removed that obstacle for me.
I went into Risus knowing that while it is rules-lite, it isn't an "Old School" RPG, though one of the influences it cites is Tunnels & Trolls. It wouldn't be fair, then, to critique it as an Old School game; that's not what it's trying to be. The fact that it has a unified mechanic, then, shouldn't be seen as a problem. What is is that we Old Schoolers like to say? "It's not a bug, it's a feature." The unified way dice rolls are based around the number of dice you have under your cliche is elegant, intuitive and is ridiculously easy to learn. I have a more difficult time explaining some house rules than I had explaining this whole RPG. That's really cool.
You're also supposed to roleplay descriptively in Risus, which is cool, and something I wish I was better at. I find myself falling into "the orc attacks you… [roll]… and hits for… [roll]… 3 damage" more often than I'd like, though I do try to be more descriptive than that. The Arduin critical hits and fumbles tables help with that, but not as much as Risus seemed to. First off, I'm amazed by how only ever rolling d6s simplifies things mentally, freeing up some brain-space to think about how to describe what's going on. Secondly, the advantage given to those who use "inappropriate"cliches (like "Hairdresser" in a barroom brawl) and describe how their character uses some ability from that cliche to engage in the conflict in a "really, really" entertaining way is enough that smart players will use this tactic, with the requisite entertaining verbal description, just about as often as possible. Getting to decide and describe what happens to whoever lost to your character also encourages roleplaying. (I wonder whether Tavis Allison got his "please describe your/your enemy's horrible death" from Risus…) Again, very cool.
One issue we ran into is actually a problem I'm familiar with from toying around with Tunnels & Trolls. In both T&T and Risus (if I'm understanding them correctly), when you have opposed rolls during a conflict, losing a round of that conflict decreases your likelihood of winning the next round of a conflict because you lose some of whatever makes you able to engage in that conflict, whether it's dice under a cliche in Risus or more complicated stats in T&T. The less well you've done, the less likely you are to do well this time around; I think I've seen it described as a death spiral somewhere. That's both been an issue for me when I've tried solo games with T&T and it was an issue in the game today that James' player brought up during a break.
Risus does offer a few partial solutions to this death spiral. One is allowing players to team up with each other during combat. All of the team leader's dice count, as well as all team members' rolls of 6, and if the team loses a round and one team member elects to take double damage, the leader gets double the dice during the next round of the conflict. That double damage/double dice, from what I can tell, leads to both sides getting in death spirals together instead of the first party to take damage pretty much automatically losing. It also allows a party to have a fighting chance against a single powerful foe.
The ability to switch which cliche you use from round to round during the same conflict, and some other tactical options (trading more dice this round for automatic dice loss at the end of the round and destroying three enemy dice instead of one if the cliche you're using is both inappropriate and entertainingly described) all help to mitigate this issue, but it still remains. Sure, you can take this monster with these tactics, but what about the next one, and the next one? You'll be too worn down from this fight.
So the death spiral remains an issue for me, especially because Risus strikes me as aiming for a laid-back, light-hearted style of gaming and the only way I can see a death spiral as an integral part of the game is when the players are doing resource management of their hit points, which can be fun, but is a different kind of fun than Risus strikes me as having as it's goal. Any illumination that anyone experienced with Risus (or T&T, for that matter) can give me on this topic would be especially appreciated.
This death spiral isn't a deal-breaker for me, though. Risus won't be my go-to RPG anytime soon, but it's certainly an RPG I'm glad to know how to play. It's something I'll keep in my mind as a great RPG for quick one-shots, especially when all the materials that are available are scratch paper and d6s. It's also a game that I'd like to play more. Over the last year or two I've run a few face-to-face one-shots with friends, trying to drum up interest in a campaign. If I ever try that again, I'll probably try using Risus, both because I want to mess with it more (and use advanced options, like pumping dice) and because it will be easy to use and easy to create characters for. Chargen alone should take less than half the time it usually does.
So, next time you're casting about for a new system to try out, especially if it's a one-shot, why not try Risus? It's quick and easy to learn, it encourages both role-playing and smart mechanical tactics, and it's as much silly fun as you want it to be.
Friday, July 15, 2011
New Players…
… are awesome.
So, I ref a weekly game over Skype. My players are two and three time zones away from me, so this is pretty much the only way to do this. It's a lot of fun.
(Today we actually tried using Google+ instead of Skype. It worked pretty well, except that there seemed to be a short delay of my audio and the video was grainier than Skype's. We spent most of the session on Google+ until one of my player's browsers crashed for some reason and then we bounced back to Skype. We'll probably continue to use Google+ in the future, though, as it has that handy feature where you get to see multiple video streams of people you're talking to.)
Some of my players recently invited two middle-school-age kids to join in. The brother played last session and the sister joined in this session too. They've had some experience with RPGs before. I'm pretty sure, from his religious consistency when it comes to "looting the bodies," that he's played some sort of computer RPG before. They've also apparently tried to create some sort of RPG together at some point, but I didn't get to hear much about that. They were new to D&D and any kind of published tabletop RPG rules, though.
Anyway, encountering creative players who aren't bound by the normal conventions of roleplaying is awesome. The sister played Bob the Faun, who wields a "bighammer." When faced with orcs coming across a bridge, though, did Bob the Faun use his bighammer? No! Instead, Bob hid behind Rakvar, my regular player's 4th level Dwarven Weaponmaster who is about as tankish as this player can make him within the limits of my homebrewed Swords and Wizardry rules. From behind Rakvar, Bob the Faun uses his 3-meter pole to push an orc over the edge of a gorge! Marvelous! Spectacular! My regular player commented that she is quite possibly the most creative RPG newbie that he's ever seen, and I would have to concur. She's also planning on running a winged unicorn next session. That's… zany, even compared to my other players, who do things like run blow-gun-specializing weaponmaster giant toads and V [for Vendetta] look-alikes as characters. My players come up with this on their own, by the way, without my encouragement. I run a pretty "straight" setting, but I figure if players want to have fun, my job is to enable them, not get in the way; when I run a less messy, hacked-together setting with some kind of unifying vision besides "have something, anything, I can run my players through", I may be a bit more strict on the zany characters.
This unicorn apparently shoots a sparkly beam from its horn that has a stunning effect. Arg- I'm not happy about that, but I'll allow it unless it starts breaking the game. This is, after all, an experimental campaign. If I get a chance, though, I'll recommend that she reads Lewis' The Last Battle to give her an idea of unicorns that's more in line with my tastes. I'm much more a fan of Lewis influencing my games, than, say, Lisa Frank. (And yes, this is probably what influenced me to actually allow this.)
The brother also ran a character last session that, upon encountering a phosphorescent pool full of inert goo, decided to climb up to the ceiling where the goo was slowly dripping from and pry and whale on it with a crowbar. He started a cave-in, he did. He's a tinkerer, and he also runs characters that don't like to share loot. I suppose this might be a problem if I, and the other players, were also 13, but I didn't really have to lift a finger to try to stop him, as my older player stepped in, in character, and made sure he shared. He also had his characters scout ahead, which I thought was interesting and wise of him to do, until I realized that he was quite likely doing that so that he could pocket loot without other characters seeing, the scoundrel! He'll make a great roleplayer as well. ^__^
Here's an interesting observation, though. Both of the females that ran characters tonight ran characters that weren't nearly as interested in treasure as the characters run by males. The girl that played for the first time tonight actually offered some money to a band of brigands that tried to rob the party! Now, one character was a Ranger, who isn't supposed to amass large amounts of treasure, and her player role-plays that pretty well, but the other characters had no real excuse. My regular male character is as gamist as they come, and the younger boy has probably had MMOs shape his paradigms, so it's quite possible that this has nothing to do with sex, and quite likely that, if sex is involved, it's not the only factor, but I found that really interesting.
Both of my new players also got to see their first trap today. Both of their characters had run ahead and tried different doors. The sister's Bob the Faun started carefully examining the hallway through the door on the right; the brother's Vorlon the Elf traipsed right into a chute trap through the door on the left. Both of my older players had encountered this trap before, but they (probably gleefully) mostly kept their mouths shut, as their characters had been left behind. The trap was non-lethal, but it took some time to rescue Vorlon, and they almost had a run-in with a 9th level wizard. (If Rakvar wasn't a dwarf, with a bonus to saves against magic, he would have been polymorphed into a rust monster by the wizard as he slipped back up the chute. Rakvar wears plate armor. That would have been so sweet…)
Anyway, this is about as rambly as anything I've seen called a play report, but I'm going to call it a play report anyway. Staples signing out!
So, I ref a weekly game over Skype. My players are two and three time zones away from me, so this is pretty much the only way to do this. It's a lot of fun.
(Today we actually tried using Google+ instead of Skype. It worked pretty well, except that there seemed to be a short delay of my audio and the video was grainier than Skype's. We spent most of the session on Google+ until one of my player's browsers crashed for some reason and then we bounced back to Skype. We'll probably continue to use Google+ in the future, though, as it has that handy feature where you get to see multiple video streams of people you're talking to.)
Some of my players recently invited two middle-school-age kids to join in. The brother played last session and the sister joined in this session too. They've had some experience with RPGs before. I'm pretty sure, from his religious consistency when it comes to "looting the bodies," that he's played some sort of computer RPG before. They've also apparently tried to create some sort of RPG together at some point, but I didn't get to hear much about that. They were new to D&D and any kind of published tabletop RPG rules, though.
Anyway, encountering creative players who aren't bound by the normal conventions of roleplaying is awesome. The sister played Bob the Faun, who wields a "bighammer." When faced with orcs coming across a bridge, though, did Bob the Faun use his bighammer? No! Instead, Bob hid behind Rakvar, my regular player's 4th level Dwarven Weaponmaster who is about as tankish as this player can make him within the limits of my homebrewed Swords and Wizardry rules. From behind Rakvar, Bob the Faun uses his 3-meter pole to push an orc over the edge of a gorge! Marvelous! Spectacular! My regular player commented that she is quite possibly the most creative RPG newbie that he's ever seen, and I would have to concur. She's also planning on running a winged unicorn next session. That's… zany, even compared to my other players, who do things like run blow-gun-specializing weaponmaster giant toads and V [for Vendetta] look-alikes as characters. My players come up with this on their own, by the way, without my encouragement. I run a pretty "straight" setting, but I figure if players want to have fun, my job is to enable them, not get in the way; when I run a less messy, hacked-together setting with some kind of unifying vision besides "have something, anything, I can run my players through", I may be a bit more strict on the zany characters.
This unicorn apparently shoots a sparkly beam from its horn that has a stunning effect. Arg- I'm not happy about that, but I'll allow it unless it starts breaking the game. This is, after all, an experimental campaign. If I get a chance, though, I'll recommend that she reads Lewis' The Last Battle to give her an idea of unicorns that's more in line with my tastes. I'm much more a fan of Lewis influencing my games, than, say, Lisa Frank. (And yes, this is probably what influenced me to actually allow this.)
The brother also ran a character last session that, upon encountering a phosphorescent pool full of inert goo, decided to climb up to the ceiling where the goo was slowly dripping from and pry and whale on it with a crowbar. He started a cave-in, he did. He's a tinkerer, and he also runs characters that don't like to share loot. I suppose this might be a problem if I, and the other players, were also 13, but I didn't really have to lift a finger to try to stop him, as my older player stepped in, in character, and made sure he shared. He also had his characters scout ahead, which I thought was interesting and wise of him to do, until I realized that he was quite likely doing that so that he could pocket loot without other characters seeing, the scoundrel! He'll make a great roleplayer as well. ^__^
Here's an interesting observation, though. Both of the females that ran characters tonight ran characters that weren't nearly as interested in treasure as the characters run by males. The girl that played for the first time tonight actually offered some money to a band of brigands that tried to rob the party! Now, one character was a Ranger, who isn't supposed to amass large amounts of treasure, and her player role-plays that pretty well, but the other characters had no real excuse. My regular male character is as gamist as they come, and the younger boy has probably had MMOs shape his paradigms, so it's quite possible that this has nothing to do with sex, and quite likely that, if sex is involved, it's not the only factor, but I found that really interesting.
Both of my new players also got to see their first trap today. Both of their characters had run ahead and tried different doors. The sister's Bob the Faun started carefully examining the hallway through the door on the right; the brother's Vorlon the Elf traipsed right into a chute trap through the door on the left. Both of my older players had encountered this trap before, but they (probably gleefully) mostly kept their mouths shut, as their characters had been left behind. The trap was non-lethal, but it took some time to rescue Vorlon, and they almost had a run-in with a 9th level wizard. (If Rakvar wasn't a dwarf, with a bonus to saves against magic, he would have been polymorphed into a rust monster by the wizard as he slipped back up the chute. Rakvar wears plate armor. That would have been so sweet…)
Anyway, this is about as rambly as anything I've seen called a play report, but I'm going to call it a play report anyway. Staples signing out!
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Post-Play Ramblings
Ran a solo game on Friday, since my other two players couldn't make it. That actually worked out nicely, as this player, Flynn, had a character that was about to level. This character, named Guy, has been roleplayed as a pious follower of the Gnomish mole-god of Justice that Flynn invented, named Gnomistevala (I'm never sure of the spelling), even though Guy is a fighter, so I decided that now was as good a time as any to give Guy a prestige class as a Paladin.
I took the desecrated, abandoned temple setting from Greg Gillespie of Discourse and Dragon's One Page Dungeon Contest entry. It's set up so that players can "re-boot" the worship of a forgotten god, so I decided that I would switch out the identity of the god to Gnomistevala and just have it be an ancient, abandoned temple, without the forgotten god bit. It worked well I think. Guy killed a Water Weird that was being worshiped by the boglings, rescued a kidnapped kid they were planning to eat, discovered a magic dagger (Guy used daggers to fight- it goes with his get-up, which is exactly what V wears, down to the mask- Flynn is probably the most gonzo of my players) connected with Gnomistevala and then discovered a secret door behind which there was a statue of Gnomistevala that he bowed before and was commissioned, in a trance, by Gnomistevala to become a Paladin.
I'm looking forward to what Flynn does with this.
(Also, after that spurt of work on the Scoundrel, posting will probably be lighter for a bit, both because I'm compiling everything onto one document and because I'm taking a semi-break, house-sitting two dogs, catching up on blogs, etc. I'm still here.)
I took the desecrated, abandoned temple setting from Greg Gillespie of Discourse and Dragon's One Page Dungeon Contest entry. It's set up so that players can "re-boot" the worship of a forgotten god, so I decided that I would switch out the identity of the god to Gnomistevala and just have it be an ancient, abandoned temple, without the forgotten god bit. It worked well I think. Guy killed a Water Weird that was being worshiped by the boglings, rescued a kidnapped kid they were planning to eat, discovered a magic dagger (Guy used daggers to fight- it goes with his get-up, which is exactly what V wears, down to the mask- Flynn is probably the most gonzo of my players) connected with Gnomistevala and then discovered a secret door behind which there was a statue of Gnomistevala that he bowed before and was commissioned, in a trance, by Gnomistevala to become a Paladin.
I'm looking forward to what Flynn does with this.
(Also, after that spurt of work on the Scoundrel, posting will probably be lighter for a bit, both because I'm compiling everything onto one document and because I'm taking a semi-break, house-sitting two dogs, catching up on blogs, etc. I'm still here.)
Friday, June 10, 2011
Why Skills are Dangerous: A Prelude
So, we had a really awesome session tonight. My players, for the first time, made it into the second level of Matt Finch's excellent The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom. The players seem to be getting the hang of the changes to the combat system that I enacted recently, throwing lots of waterskins full of flaming oil to kill things very quickly. Even so, we had two rolls on the Table of Death and Dismemberment, but with the worst to happen being a broken bone.
My players really did me proud this session. Examining some fungus-cages, they tried using crowbars and 3 meter poles to pry them open enough for those inside to get out. When that didn't work, they used potions of diminuation to shrink the captives enough to let them out.
When trying to destroy a machine that was basically a wood-chipper for people, they started dismantling it and then stuck a corner of one of the fungus-cages, which they had been unable to destroy so far, into it and jammed the machine until it broke.
When trying to get past some minions of the Shroom that was chasing them, they pointed to the half-transformed-into-a-podman-minion guy they had rescued and told the podmen that they were clearly friends, I had one player roll under his PC's charisma, with a bonus of +2 to his roll for creativity, and he succeeded… three times.
When faced with a 50-foot tall water-fall they had to scale, one player had his PC tie a loose knot by the grappling hook on a long length of rope and then loop the eye formed by the knot over the end of a 3-meter pole. Swinging the pole like a trebuchet, he sent the grappling hook and line flying. I had him roll under his strength score to get the hook 50 feet high and under his dexterity to actually hook it on anything. It took his PC three tries, and cost a wondering monster check, but it worked.
What do all of these scenarios have in common? They are all scenarios where a later edition of D&D probably would have trained my players to ask to make a skill roll to attempt to achieve their goals. If I had been running a later-edition game tonight, I would have probably still had a fun time- I greatly enjoy my friends, after all- but I would have missed out on the fun I had during these scenarios tonight.
I should emphasize that my players did roll to resolve some of these scenarios. They didn't only roll, though, and they couldn't have rolled without roleplaying first. With the bluffing past the podmen minions, I wouldn't have let the party roll to bluff the podmen until the player who came up with the idea told me what he was going to try to do. Then, after he told me concretely what he was trying to do, I let, no, had him roll. He, the player, told me concretely what he was trying to do; I the referee, told him his chances for success.
My player at the waterfall at first said, "we'll throw a grappling hook up to the top of the waterfall." I asked, "how are you going to throw the grappling hook up 50 feet?" and he came up with his answer, which was creative, entertaining, and plausible enough for me to let him try it, so I told him how to roll. Again, he gave me something concrete for his PC to try and I gave him targets to roll under to succeed.
In both cases, my players asked to do concrete things. They didn't ask to roll the dice- I told them to. That meant that, when they came to a problem, they didn't reach for the dice. Instead, they approached the problems creatively. Once they had figured out how to make problems I had no idea how they were going to get past solve-able, I assigned chances to their success. This process made it so that we all had the immense pleasure of witnessing or practicing creativity. That's one of my favorite parts of roleplaying, and it's especially a pleasure, as I'm refereeing, when my players defeat problems in creative ways I didn't see coming.
And this is why skill systems are dangerous. I'm going to argue in the next few days that skill systems aren't inherently bad or anti-Old School. The important nuance, though, is that skill systems are also dangerous if not handled properly. If I had been using a more invasive skill system tonight, we all could have missed out on a lot of fun. I'm going to argue that a skill system doesn't necessarily have to preclude the kind of fun we had tonight. What's important when designing a skill system, though, is that the designer (and the referee) makes sure that the skill system doesn't train the players to approach concrete problems the PCs face in an abstract way, reaching for the dice, knowing what skill they are going to use.
Training players to use concrete creative problem-solving skills is good. Training players to roll the dice as the only part of problem-solving they engage in is, in my very strong opinion, bad. Any skill system I approve of will have to pass this litmus test.
My players really did me proud this session. Examining some fungus-cages, they tried using crowbars and 3 meter poles to pry them open enough for those inside to get out. When that didn't work, they used potions of diminuation to shrink the captives enough to let them out.
When trying to destroy a machine that was basically a wood-chipper for people, they started dismantling it and then stuck a corner of one of the fungus-cages, which they had been unable to destroy so far, into it and jammed the machine until it broke.
When trying to get past some minions of the Shroom that was chasing them, they pointed to the half-transformed-into-a-podman-minion guy they had rescued and told the podmen that they were clearly friends, I had one player roll under his PC's charisma, with a bonus of +2 to his roll for creativity, and he succeeded… three times.
When faced with a 50-foot tall water-fall they had to scale, one player had his PC tie a loose knot by the grappling hook on a long length of rope and then loop the eye formed by the knot over the end of a 3-meter pole. Swinging the pole like a trebuchet, he sent the grappling hook and line flying. I had him roll under his strength score to get the hook 50 feet high and under his dexterity to actually hook it on anything. It took his PC three tries, and cost a wondering monster check, but it worked.
What do all of these scenarios have in common? They are all scenarios where a later edition of D&D probably would have trained my players to ask to make a skill roll to attempt to achieve their goals. If I had been running a later-edition game tonight, I would have probably still had a fun time- I greatly enjoy my friends, after all- but I would have missed out on the fun I had during these scenarios tonight.
I should emphasize that my players did roll to resolve some of these scenarios. They didn't only roll, though, and they couldn't have rolled without roleplaying first. With the bluffing past the podmen minions, I wouldn't have let the party roll to bluff the podmen until the player who came up with the idea told me what he was going to try to do. Then, after he told me concretely what he was trying to do, I let, no, had him roll. He, the player, told me concretely what he was trying to do; I the referee, told him his chances for success.
My player at the waterfall at first said, "we'll throw a grappling hook up to the top of the waterfall." I asked, "how are you going to throw the grappling hook up 50 feet?" and he came up with his answer, which was creative, entertaining, and plausible enough for me to let him try it, so I told him how to roll. Again, he gave me something concrete for his PC to try and I gave him targets to roll under to succeed.
In both cases, my players asked to do concrete things. They didn't ask to roll the dice- I told them to. That meant that, when they came to a problem, they didn't reach for the dice. Instead, they approached the problems creatively. Once they had figured out how to make problems I had no idea how they were going to get past solve-able, I assigned chances to their success. This process made it so that we all had the immense pleasure of witnessing or practicing creativity. That's one of my favorite parts of roleplaying, and it's especially a pleasure, as I'm refereeing, when my players defeat problems in creative ways I didn't see coming.
And this is why skill systems are dangerous. I'm going to argue in the next few days that skill systems aren't inherently bad or anti-Old School. The important nuance, though, is that skill systems are also dangerous if not handled properly. If I had been using a more invasive skill system tonight, we all could have missed out on a lot of fun. I'm going to argue that a skill system doesn't necessarily have to preclude the kind of fun we had tonight. What's important when designing a skill system, though, is that the designer (and the referee) makes sure that the skill system doesn't train the players to approach concrete problems the PCs face in an abstract way, reaching for the dice, knowing what skill they are going to use.
Training players to use concrete creative problem-solving skills is good. Training players to roll the dice as the only part of problem-solving they engage in is, in my very strong opinion, bad. Any skill system I approve of will have to pass this litmus test.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Dawn of Worlds
This weekend is turning out to be much, much busier than I'd expected it to be, so this will probably be the only post this weekend. Sorry.
Last night we played our weekly Skype game, though we started late and ended early and so didn't get a whole lot of gaming done. The PCs are currently in the service of Damon Howell from Haldane because he previously saved them from being executed for invading his house and killing a bunch of his guards. He'd sent them to clear out a goblin warren (The Gray Goblin Warrens from the 2009 OPDC) and, since he'd heard that there had been no further goblin activity for a while (the PCs didn't completely clear it out, but the goblins left instead of sticking around to be slaughtered) he ordered them to return for more tasks. They returned, Damon Howell arranged for Xan the Ranger to have her cursed Buck's Hat of Misery removed by a magic user in his employ, and when the party woke up the next morning, Haldane had been "moved"- the surrounding countryside was completely different. The party chose to investigate a tower continually being struck by lightning in the West (yeah, I know that adventure is supposed to be for 1st level characters, but I don't see that it would really be that much easier for slightly higher-level characters). And the session ended with that.
Flynn, one of my players, though, told me about a world-building tool/RPG called Dawn of Worlds (first link on page, can't miss it). I've only skimmed it briefly, but am intrigued by the premise: a group of players collaboratively create a setting, probably in one session. This is awesome for a few reasons.
One is that it takes most of the hard work of world building away from the referee and gets it done much more quickly, in a fun group setting, than it would have probably gotten done if done just by the referee.
Another is that it makes for a fun, unpredictable setting. I'm a fan of every player, including the referee, getting surprised. Now the setting is the surprise.
Players famously (and generally) don't care about the history of whatever world they are playing in, being interested only if it nets them loot or lets them kill things more effectively. Now they would be emotionally invested in the history of the setting because they wrote it with the group. They'd be especially invested in the parts of history that they individually wrote themselves.
They would also know the history, because they wrote it with the rest of the group. No need to take up gaming time with learning history.
From what I can tell there are only really two disadvantages to the system. One is that the referee can't spring history-based surprises on the players, because they know the history from the point of view of nigh-on-omniscient gods; Hammers of the God, then, is out. The other is that it would be really difficult to play this in a non-table-top setting, like over Skype, although Flynn, who has actually played Dawn of Worlds, said that it might work to play by email if everyone had a program like Paint.
So, yeah, that's what I've got for the weekend. Off to finish a take-home test and drive a few hours to a college friend's wedding!
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