Long time no see, but lets see if we can get this back on track.
We've just started a new campaign in my current poison of choice Dungeons & Dragons 4th ed. Having scrabbled around a couple of times coming from level 1 (including an extremely brief stint actually playing as a Modron Fighter) I decided I wanted to run a game at Paragon Tier.
For Those of you going 'Para-wha!?' let me explain.
4th Edition is split into 3 tiers of play, 1st to 10th level is heroic tier where you fight goblins and humans and generally faily natural stuff. Next us is Paragon tier from 11th to 20th level where you'll spend alot of time beating up really Harry Housen shit like cyclopses, demons, hydras and the interesting dragons. Essentially Paragon is where you fight big monsters and smite their ruin on the mountain side. Abover this from level 21 to level 30 is Epic tier where you graduate from the school of monsters bashing and start crunching your way through greater demons, elder dragons and occasionally demon princes and gods.
We were part way through our Planar game when I pitched the idea for running a Harry Housen wilderness journey 'Into the frozen north!' and everyone loved it so much that we almost immediately dropped the campaign we were doing so that I could run this one.
I'm a little bitter that since buying the core books on release day I have thus far managed to play only once. Still, looking on the bright side this was a great opportunity to use some of the cooler magic items and monsters on offer and to unleash all manner of nastiness on the party.
Now I'm a bit of a pain for writing things down so I decided to try something with this campaign and adlibbed the first session. I wrote down all the encounters and some basic guidelines to keep things moving but everything else I made up on the fly, just letting my imagination inspire me whenever a question was asked. Thus far its worked quite well and it's helped that a stint playing Dark Heresy seems to have given everyone a bit of impetus to roleplay rather than just move their minis around the battle-mat. Our party then looks something like this:
Dave- Katarakis, the garrulous (and often grumpy) Draganborn Paladin of Bahamut.
Gareth- Caradoc Burrows, Halfling Paladin of the Raven Queen (Aka the Halfling Tank)
Amanda- Skurmesh Anklebiter, Last of the Anklebiters, Dwarf Warlord
Rachel- Du'nn'o Me'name, Eladrin Rogue 'Hassassin' of the Raven Queen
Gareth's Halfling Paladin took me aback when I saw it turn up (and the only mini we had that got close to looking appropriate was the plastic citadel Samwise, which lessens the overall effect) but as you will see its actually quite strong.
Our heroes gathered at the northernmost Dwarven citadel of Farpont, a distant spire of rock (172ft 3in because they always want to know) upon which sits a great temple to Moradin within which the foremost heroes of the Hearthlands now sit around a great octagonal table. They were summoned by Caradoc Burrows an aging Paladin of the Raven Queen to answer his call to arms and he details an audacious plot to travel into the north to seal the Gods Gate and put an end to the threat of an invasion by the gods.
I was shocked, they were roleplaying. Katarakis was garrulous, Skurmesh was possibly drunken and quite hilarious and even Caradoc, played by our resident munchkin, was having a good turn detailing his fears and his reasons for this final jaunt into the north. They interacted well with my NPCs they didn't try to loot anyone who stab someone up just because they were bored. I was pleased.
The party, having spent two days preparing probed King Raminos' Alchemist; Caspian, for information and he advised them upon three known routes into the mountains. The party elected not to go over the mountains (no cyclopses and hill giants for me) and not to go through the Ashfall Forest (Caradoc wisely deciding that nopthing good could come from a place where is rained ash from the sky constantly; they annoyingly missed my Beholder and Basilisk) instead they elected to 'pull a Frodo' and headed through the Neminoan Barrows beneath the mountain.
'It's a barrows, with two paladins undead dont stand a chance!'
I had intended for them to then enjoy a skills challenge, something I'd never really got to do running Keep on the Shadowfell. Now I'd heard that some DM's aren't big fans of the way Skills Challenges work but I was determined to find out for myself and so decided they should wander the wilderness for a while and how well they did would determine whether they found their chosen path or strayed into one of the other ones.
It was at this point, having had the game run far too smoothly that Gareth threw a huge gold-plated spanner into the workings of my mental process: 'Does this place have a library?'
Bugger, I hadn't considered that they might not just womble off into the wilderness and might actually research the location of these fabled barrows. In the past I might have said no but I wanted the players to shape the world with their questions and actions and so taking a bit of advice from the Dungeon Masters Guide I said yes. I retooled my skills challenge and let the players decide what there characters would do in a library that sprung up full of tightly packed shelves with brass bound tomes, dwarven librarians sleeping on some small stacks pipes still in mouths and low slung passageways in what evolved into an almost labyrinthine library. The haracters eventually found their map after Katarakis leafed through a tome and found it quite by accident.
Finally the party was off.
Borrowing horses from the Thane of Farpont, an old ally in their past exploits our heroes rode out to the Neminoan Barrow and found it in the shadow of the northen mountains a long path into darkness overgrown with moss and tall grass. The party were cautious, almost annoyingly so; but I won't blame them since they've met me before*.
Eventually we got going down a long corridor onto which graven images of a god from the beyond Sholonoth the Unnamable were carved representing a journey from life to death and Du'nn'o scouted ahead using her low light vision to discover a chamber in which two skeletal figures stood with some hunched, bloated creature. For the first time ever the party got to launch an ambush instead of being on the back foot and set about their foes with gusto.
Du'nn'o was particularly deadly in the opening rounds and the party spent most of the battle getting her combat advantage to get the most mileage from her frankly rediculous +3d8 sneak attack bonus. Skurmesh was batterred repreatedly by four armed monstrosities that only eventually his by rolling a critical; which Katarakis instantly dismissed by channelling the will of Bahamut.
Caradoc didn't fare quite so well.
The hulking figure seemed to take exception to the champion of the Raven Queen and spent the entire battle enveloping him within black tendrils and imprisoning him in a zone of darkness within his exposed ribcage. This was the Soul Devourer which my party seemed to have some difficulty getting to grips with. That said Caradoc is built as a redirect Paladin, he has four different ways of redirecting an attack onto himself to spare his party members. With a Constitution of 19 and an AC of 28 he's quite difficult to hit and can only get tougher as I found out later.
It took some time for the party to slay the monsters but for their troubles they recieved an ancient ring of dwarven design (which wound up in the hands of Caradoc; not the Dwarf) and got to venture deeper into the Barrow.
The next session saw the party venture deeper into what I've dubbed 'The Undermanse' and came out of the passageway onto a platform with a string of Lord of the Rings quotes. In the darkness the party could see only echoes caught in torchlight of distant buildings; until we remembered that Skurmesh is a dwarf and so has Darkvision. Skurmesh saw distant towers of irregular shapes and relaying it Katarakis and Caradoc managed to work out that they were arranged in a formation that spoke of some sinister mathematics. Hanging from the ceiling of the hollowed mountain were great stalegmites (stalegtites?) between which walkways of stone had been constructed.
The party took a staircase and headed down, stopping only to examine the decayed remnants of a mural which had crumbled into dust of many colours including an 'unnatural' pink which offends Katarakis for reasons he cannot explain. Skurmesh decides to taste the chalk to try and discern its make up and finds it tangy and metallic, although not in a manner like blood. D&D veterans might childe Skurmesh for doing this and rightly so; I decided to give Skurmesh a disease the next time he woke up partly as a warning (It ended up being the non-fatal Cackle Fever) and partly because I wanted to see how they worked; forgetting that Caradoc knew Cure Disease.
The party continued on until they reached a brazier which lit as they approached casting a sickly yellow light; though no device or magic seemed to have activated it. In the distance to the north Skurmesh sees something move in one of the towers and despite Katarakis' grumbling the party head east into a series of passageways and walked for many hours; eventually becoming weary.
They found a room after some searching that was irregular in shape (they didn't ask me how many sides it had, but lets say 17), it had one entryway and spigots of wood were laid about. At one end growing out of the wall was a thick boughed tree that seemed to be made from the stone itself and loomed over the room. On its greyed stony branches buds that glowed with black light hung and the party decided (and their respective rolls confirmed) that this was no tree they'd ever seen.
The party rested for several hours Caradoc shirking his guard duties since Du'nn'o only requires four hours meditation and it was during her watch that she heard the singing, a voice high pitched and distant that at first seemed to echo from outside before coming closer and finally resting in the room with them. A golden light came brom the trunk of the tree and Caradoc identified the singing as being Supernal the language of the gods.
Fortunately Caradoc knows Supernal (along with Common and Halfling) and so heard the voice speaking of plains of forests and trees and of marching at the head of armies and of the slaying of its enemies. Caradoc interrogated it and it answered in more strains of past heroes and of a longing to march once more at the heads of armies and speaking of the breaking down of walls. Katarakis, growing impatiant (and still sulking over the party's decision to not head north and 'crack some heads'), decided the best course of action was to heat the stone with his breath and then hit it with his hammer to release whatever was inside; however at the last moment Caradoc plunged his hand into the tree and pulled out a sword of golden steel which cast a glow about them.
Katarakis went back to sulk in a corner over not getting to hit something.
In the morn, or at least when the party woke up in their twilight underworld, they pressed on and the path began to head north until they came upon a path that opened upon a ledge. Du'nn'o crept forwards and spied a being coweled in a dark robe; which might have been significant had the figure not been stood next to a HYDRA. The figure disappeared into a dimension door and the party prepared themselves for battle.
Now the Hydra is a Solo Brute a level above the characters and can do a ton of attacks per turn; which I expected to put it in relatively good stead and having seen how long encounters usually take my party I decided to adjust its Hit Points down. This was a good idea but not for the reason I thought it would be.
In this session the party really came into its own; the two Paladins set about the beast with gusto; Katarakis making it vulnerable to radiant damage and Caradoc putting his new sword to good use and directing the beasts attacks against himself to force damage on it from Katarakis' divine challenge. Du'nn'o spent the entirety of the fight flanking it as the creature was boxed in between her and the ledge the two paladins were stood on. Meanwhile Skurmesh, despite falling on his face stood tall as a warlord using a clever combination of powers and feats to grant a string of standard actions to Katarakis who smote the beast with holy flame.
I'm glad I reduced the things health as the extra Hit Points could only have dragged the fight out with what was an underwhelming Solo. The Hydra was menacing when it was put on the table, but any party that can heal like mine can soak up the damage it does with ease and after that the Hydra doesn't have that many tricks. That said we were using Dave's converted citadel Hydra (out of a carnosaur no less) which is frankly quite beautiful so I'm glad we got to use it.
I was feeling generous at the end of this session so I handed out two more magic items: Aevis Sandals for Du'nn'o who can now fly, albeit briefly, and the Shield of God's Breath for Skurmesh which wards away arrows with a divine wind.
Katarakis then sulked about not getting any shiny stuff; I now have him down on my sheet as 'Katarakis the Grumpy'.
*I and some of my party had listened to the Podcast of Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins and Scott Kurtz taking on the Keep on the Shadowfell so I decided to mix it up a little. In the first room where the false floor put was I replaced it with a poison needle trap (Level 6 Blaster) which almost killed some of the party. Since then they have become suitably wary of a DM who thinks things aren't quite fatal enough.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Sunday, 20 July 2008
We Send Superheroes Now
Much has been said recently about the 'Tyranny of Fun' a perceived change in Dungeons & Dragons away from challenging and engaging players to simply giving them fun and making them cool. Y’see Dungeons & Dragons used to be all about the challenge, save or die effects, fiendish traps, confusing teleporters, it was up to the players (not the characters) to find a way around these obstacles to “Huge-Pile-of-Shiney-Stuff-#17”.
However over time we started to shift away from this simple ethos of survive and get rich. First came the power inflation, arguably an attempt at first to curb the raw killing power of Original Dungeons & Dragons, but ultimately a push in the direction of PCs as heroes rather than adventurers trying to survive. The challenges ended up being there to be overcome not through ingenuity but character skills and a d20 roll.
Arguably 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons pushes this further with characters able to heal themselves to a degree and all possessing a nigh on unlimited reserve of abilities for each encounter, turning heroes into superheroes capable of taking massive punishment and surviving. Gone are the save or die effects and most of the non-combat spells, D&D is now a game about kicking ass and doing cool things.
But is this good or is it bad?
By removing much of the challenge from the standard encounter 4th ed. is unlikely to see a party wiped out by a random encounter with wandering orcs, indeed from the carefully regimented encounter structure given in the Dungeon Master’s Guide it seems that most encounters will be road bumps along the way to the final encounter, simply serving to emphasise the characters as heroes. In this regard I don’t mind it. Sure most encounters can be broken in a few turns by my current (large and very co-ordinated) party and their super-powers; its fun and I don’t see that as being in some way counter-intuitive to the whole experience.
What I would say is that sometimes the encounters could use a little back-bone. Running ‘Keep on the Shadowfell’ with a decent sized group was relatively easy, but now with out +sized group even upping the numbers of monsters doesn’t help and I’ll now need to raise the levels on everything to keep it a challenge and perhaps this is where the Tyranny of Fun might have something. With their tough characters a well drilled group such as mine (despite their relative inexperience) characters are capable of felling much more powerful foes, meaning I need to introduce more potent enemies and traps to foil them; this causes monster inflation and I end up with a 4th level party who slay vampires when they’re bored; but if I don’t introduce more potent encounters then their boredom will increase.
This is my dilemma, I like 4th ed. in theory but sometimes it’s a little too easy, I can either start having them fight vampires or level up the goblins; and who wants to fight 7th level goblins?
However over time we started to shift away from this simple ethos of survive and get rich. First came the power inflation, arguably an attempt at first to curb the raw killing power of Original Dungeons & Dragons, but ultimately a push in the direction of PCs as heroes rather than adventurers trying to survive. The challenges ended up being there to be overcome not through ingenuity but character skills and a d20 roll.
Arguably 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons pushes this further with characters able to heal themselves to a degree and all possessing a nigh on unlimited reserve of abilities for each encounter, turning heroes into superheroes capable of taking massive punishment and surviving. Gone are the save or die effects and most of the non-combat spells, D&D is now a game about kicking ass and doing cool things.
But is this good or is it bad?
By removing much of the challenge from the standard encounter 4th ed. is unlikely to see a party wiped out by a random encounter with wandering orcs, indeed from the carefully regimented encounter structure given in the Dungeon Master’s Guide it seems that most encounters will be road bumps along the way to the final encounter, simply serving to emphasise the characters as heroes. In this regard I don’t mind it. Sure most encounters can be broken in a few turns by my current (large and very co-ordinated) party and their super-powers; its fun and I don’t see that as being in some way counter-intuitive to the whole experience.
What I would say is that sometimes the encounters could use a little back-bone. Running ‘Keep on the Shadowfell’ with a decent sized group was relatively easy, but now with out +sized group even upping the numbers of monsters doesn’t help and I’ll now need to raise the levels on everything to keep it a challenge and perhaps this is where the Tyranny of Fun might have something. With their tough characters a well drilled group such as mine (despite their relative inexperience) characters are capable of felling much more powerful foes, meaning I need to introduce more potent enemies and traps to foil them; this causes monster inflation and I end up with a 4th level party who slay vampires when they’re bored; but if I don’t introduce more potent encounters then their boredom will increase.
This is my dilemma, I like 4th ed. in theory but sometimes it’s a little too easy, I can either start having them fight vampires or level up the goblins; and who wants to fight 7th level goblins?
Friday, 27 June 2008
WoAdWriMo
Jeff Rients has announced the Worldwide Adventure Writing Month a chance for all us budding adventure writers to drag out some ideas from the back of our minds and stretch our legs a little.
For myself, despite my attempts to write my own games system I am considering just running it under an already established system, in part because I hope that if I write it people might actually play the bloody thing. To this end I have a problem, which system to write for? The shortlist is:
Original Dungeons & Dragons- OD&D has been appealing to me recently. The system may be brutal by comparison to the more 'heroic' later editions but I am enamoured with the simplicity of it and the freedom that the DM has to interpret the attributes of characters and the adventure components in a way that is unique to the DM.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition- A decent system and the 4th ed Dungeon Master's Guide is very helpful to DMs trying to make their own adventures. The problem is that 4th edition is very much system based, having a resolution system with skills for completing roleplaying encounters; which I'm not entirely sure I like. However 4th Edition is what my players are rolling with now and I am intimately familiar with its intricacies.
FUDGE- A good, simple and free to own system, I like FUDGE but I'm not entirely sure I want to run it.
So what's the answer? Well; 4th edition it seems. It would fit seamlessly onto my groups current adventures; sliding onto the end of the Keep on the Shadowfell by returning the characters to a city in which they can sell their ill gotten loot and become embroiled with some intrigue and a city based adventure. And so...
... It begins with a dead man in a tavern. Slumped face down over the side of his bed, a vial in his hand and a women swears through quaking lips his name is Pacobel the clown, jester and retainer to the late king...
Can you run a murder-mystery in 4th ed? I'm about to find out
For myself, despite my attempts to write my own games system I am considering just running it under an already established system, in part because I hope that if I write it people might actually play the bloody thing. To this end I have a problem, which system to write for? The shortlist is:
Original Dungeons & Dragons- OD&D has been appealing to me recently. The system may be brutal by comparison to the more 'heroic' later editions but I am enamoured with the simplicity of it and the freedom that the DM has to interpret the attributes of characters and the adventure components in a way that is unique to the DM.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition- A decent system and the 4th ed Dungeon Master's Guide is very helpful to DMs trying to make their own adventures. The problem is that 4th edition is very much system based, having a resolution system with skills for completing roleplaying encounters; which I'm not entirely sure I like. However 4th Edition is what my players are rolling with now and I am intimately familiar with its intricacies.
FUDGE- A good, simple and free to own system, I like FUDGE but I'm not entirely sure I want to run it.
So what's the answer? Well; 4th edition it seems. It would fit seamlessly onto my groups current adventures; sliding onto the end of the Keep on the Shadowfell by returning the characters to a city in which they can sell their ill gotten loot and become embroiled with some intrigue and a city based adventure. And so...
... It begins with a dead man in a tavern. Slumped face down over the side of his bed, a vial in his hand and a women swears through quaking lips his name is Pacobel the clown, jester and retainer to the late king...
Can you run a murder-mystery in 4th ed? I'm about to find out
Friday, 13 June 2008
Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.
I've been reading the rebuttal to FATAL, that old chestnut of the RPGnet community, and whilst I don't want to get into the minutiae of internet disagreements I did start to think about the way in which an amateur of RPG design can go wrong. There are several obvious rules that I think we all know, but it can be very easy to lose sight of those simple rules. Here I think are the obvious one and I write this not so much to educate (there are plenty of better resources and designers to listen to than me) but to remind myself of the things that I want to use to make my game:
Keep It Fun- Obvious really, the problem with this is that what people think is fun is dependant upon your source of origin. Plundering tombs of an ancient necromancer is fun for some people but for others role-playing a paranormal investigation with interesting NPCs is fun. Ultimately you’ve got to go with your gut, choose to make something that you yourself would like to play, and hope that the system that evolves from this appeals to those people who share your interest. I prefer fantasy style games so it’s unlikely I could sway the Vampire of Call of Cthulu guys, and I think trying to make an all singing all dancing universal system would ultimately weaken what I’m trying to do with the game. I guess this leads on to:
Stick to your Goals- It’s important to know where you’re going, to have a clear vision of what you want your game to achieve, but it can be easy to get sidetracked. I’ve been writing EasyType for a while now and I’ve dabbled with lots of other ideas in setting and tone before I actually got a group together to play the damned thing, but I remained true to what I wanted; an easy to play beer and pretzels (or tea and crumpets, I’m English don’t-you-know?) kind of game, and I’d like to think I’m achieving that.
Be humble- Most of us, and by most I mean 99% of us, are not going to change the role-playing landscape with our homebrewed system, and that’s fine. However the one thing we should never do is announce ourselves as the second coming with a system that will cast all others and their followers into the sea for daring to defy the one true game. As far as I’m concerned it’s enough to make a competent system that is enjoyable to play, anything more than that is a bonus. Finally:
Keep. It. Simple. STUPID!- This is more a personal rule. Some people like complicated games with random hit locations and long critical hit charts, perhaps more complex rulings to make for realistic combat and the like. However for me this is a game and I want to play, and I wanted to make it for my friends who are pretty new to the whole gaming experience. I don’t mind adding some interesting flavour on top, but I must remember that for them simple is better than more crunchy, in-depth systems.
It’s easy to stray from these rules without thinking, you keep dreaming up cool stuff, crazy powers and weird monsters but every once in a while I want to look at these rules and ask myself ‘Did you get the basics right? Is it fun? Is it easy? Is it what you want to do?’ and if it ever isn’t I’ll have to pull it all down and start again, perhaps a little wiser than I was before.
Keep It Fun- Obvious really, the problem with this is that what people think is fun is dependant upon your source of origin. Plundering tombs of an ancient necromancer is fun for some people but for others role-playing a paranormal investigation with interesting NPCs is fun. Ultimately you’ve got to go with your gut, choose to make something that you yourself would like to play, and hope that the system that evolves from this appeals to those people who share your interest. I prefer fantasy style games so it’s unlikely I could sway the Vampire of Call of Cthulu guys, and I think trying to make an all singing all dancing universal system would ultimately weaken what I’m trying to do with the game. I guess this leads on to:
Stick to your Goals- It’s important to know where you’re going, to have a clear vision of what you want your game to achieve, but it can be easy to get sidetracked. I’ve been writing EasyType for a while now and I’ve dabbled with lots of other ideas in setting and tone before I actually got a group together to play the damned thing, but I remained true to what I wanted; an easy to play beer and pretzels (or tea and crumpets, I’m English don’t-you-know?) kind of game, and I’d like to think I’m achieving that.
Be humble- Most of us, and by most I mean 99% of us, are not going to change the role-playing landscape with our homebrewed system, and that’s fine. However the one thing we should never do is announce ourselves as the second coming with a system that will cast all others and their followers into the sea for daring to defy the one true game. As far as I’m concerned it’s enough to make a competent system that is enjoyable to play, anything more than that is a bonus. Finally:
Keep. It. Simple. STUPID!- This is more a personal rule. Some people like complicated games with random hit locations and long critical hit charts, perhaps more complex rulings to make for realistic combat and the like. However for me this is a game and I want to play, and I wanted to make it for my friends who are pretty new to the whole gaming experience. I don’t mind adding some interesting flavour on top, but I must remember that for them simple is better than more crunchy, in-depth systems.
It’s easy to stray from these rules without thinking, you keep dreaming up cool stuff, crazy powers and weird monsters but every once in a while I want to look at these rules and ask myself ‘Did you get the basics right? Is it fun? Is it easy? Is it what you want to do?’ and if it ever isn’t I’ll have to pull it all down and start again, perhaps a little wiser than I was before.
Playing Easytype Chapter 1- The Ostensian Bazaar Incident
Long time no see.
Recently I started a new system and a new test group consisting of my girlfriend playing her cross dressing thief boy (Hitori) and his priestly guardian (Faud). We'd run a single session which found the dynamic duo in possession of a magical dwarven sword before we ended the session, the next time we added my girlfriend's buddy to the mix with her tiefling and had a long roleplaying encounter within the city of Ostensis where Hitori and Faud had gone to get the sword identified by Old Man Kilik.
This session was pretty low on actual mechanics, which was unfortunate since this group is in effect testing the rules in a controlled manner. However it was home to some of the best roleplaying I've ever gotten out of the group, with interesting characters popping up at every turn and possibly the best botched roll I have ever seen.
Let me set the scene, Kilik tells the party that they need to do something for him, taking from them the sword for analysis and asking a favour as repayment, to quiet the undead beneath Ostensis in the Nekumeth Cyst, however to gain entry they needed the find Brother Belubute, a local priest of Apeostis (A lawful deity and a group of Chaotic characters did not mix well) and he told them they would need to complete a ritual to teleport to the Cyst involving 7 fallow candles, 8 coins, a bar of silver and some drops of infernal blood.
The party hit the bazaar and they had the gold for what they needed, but being a chaotic lot they decided to follow the path of greed and steal the candles from a merchant. In broad daylight. In the middle of a busy bazaar. It's not as insane as it sounds.
Allow me to explain. Easytpe, the name of the new system I've been dabbling with works on a very simple system. You have a skill and a number in it from -1 to +3, Hitori being trained as a thief had a +0 and had snuck around using his stealth skill to blend into the crowd, so I gave him a +1 to his thievery attempt. Unfortunatly the dice were not with my girlfriend who proceeded to roll a 2 and was caught by not just the shop keeper but also the local guard. Running time had come.
With my usual party I could have expected this to devolve into a fight, a blokey lot we are and not adverse to rumbling with the guards, however these girls were little more crafty. Our friend decided she would start screaming "thief!", leading the guard to her and away from the actual thief, soon Faud did the same and Hitori slunk back into the crowd and blended in, sidled up to the merchant she'd just tried to steal from and slipped the candle off the counter. This time the roll was good and the party waltzed away with their prize.
This was a good session as I had done no planning for it, just come up with the setting and a couple of characters and some vague plot outline, the players really filled in the blanks and the system was unobtrusive and flexible, when dice were rolled there was no pause in the action and the flow was maintained. Furthermore my decision to not include social skills (relying instead upon players acting out their parts to a degree) was entirely justified when my girlfriend (playing androgenous crossdresser Hitori) attempted to seduce a merchant into giving them a deal on buying a silver candlestick, the roleplay was good (if a little creepy) and has laid down some good threads for future sessions.
Next session will be in the Nekumeth Cyst itself, an interesting localé that with enough time I'm sure the party will be able to get through and should set up the central thrust of our future story arcs, I will post more when we get around to it:
What we liked:
*Kilik, the old bastard
*The bazaar incident was awesome
*Scenario largely sandboxed
What we disliked:
*An absence of combat
*A bit short
What we learned:
*Sandboxing a game is entirely doable and Easytype is simple enough to allow it.
Recently I started a new system and a new test group consisting of my girlfriend playing her cross dressing thief boy (Hitori) and his priestly guardian (Faud). We'd run a single session which found the dynamic duo in possession of a magical dwarven sword before we ended the session, the next time we added my girlfriend's buddy to the mix with her tiefling and had a long roleplaying encounter within the city of Ostensis where Hitori and Faud had gone to get the sword identified by Old Man Kilik.
This session was pretty low on actual mechanics, which was unfortunate since this group is in effect testing the rules in a controlled manner. However it was home to some of the best roleplaying I've ever gotten out of the group, with interesting characters popping up at every turn and possibly the best botched roll I have ever seen.
Let me set the scene, Kilik tells the party that they need to do something for him, taking from them the sword for analysis and asking a favour as repayment, to quiet the undead beneath Ostensis in the Nekumeth Cyst, however to gain entry they needed the find Brother Belubute, a local priest of Apeostis (A lawful deity and a group of Chaotic characters did not mix well) and he told them they would need to complete a ritual to teleport to the Cyst involving 7 fallow candles, 8 coins, a bar of silver and some drops of infernal blood.
The party hit the bazaar and they had the gold for what they needed, but being a chaotic lot they decided to follow the path of greed and steal the candles from a merchant. In broad daylight. In the middle of a busy bazaar. It's not as insane as it sounds.
Allow me to explain. Easytpe, the name of the new system I've been dabbling with works on a very simple system. You have a skill and a number in it from -1 to +3, Hitori being trained as a thief had a +0 and had snuck around using his stealth skill to blend into the crowd, so I gave him a +1 to his thievery attempt. Unfortunatly the dice were not with my girlfriend who proceeded to roll a 2 and was caught by not just the shop keeper but also the local guard. Running time had come.
With my usual party I could have expected this to devolve into a fight, a blokey lot we are and not adverse to rumbling with the guards, however these girls were little more crafty. Our friend decided she would start screaming "thief!", leading the guard to her and away from the actual thief, soon Faud did the same and Hitori slunk back into the crowd and blended in, sidled up to the merchant she'd just tried to steal from and slipped the candle off the counter. This time the roll was good and the party waltzed away with their prize.
This was a good session as I had done no planning for it, just come up with the setting and a couple of characters and some vague plot outline, the players really filled in the blanks and the system was unobtrusive and flexible, when dice were rolled there was no pause in the action and the flow was maintained. Furthermore my decision to not include social skills (relying instead upon players acting out their parts to a degree) was entirely justified when my girlfriend (playing androgenous crossdresser Hitori) attempted to seduce a merchant into giving them a deal on buying a silver candlestick, the roleplay was good (if a little creepy) and has laid down some good threads for future sessions.
Next session will be in the Nekumeth Cyst itself, an interesting localé that with enough time I'm sure the party will be able to get through and should set up the central thrust of our future story arcs, I will post more when we get around to it:
What we liked:
*Kilik, the old bastard
*The bazaar incident was awesome
*Scenario largely sandboxed
What we disliked:
*An absence of combat
*A bit short
What we learned:
*Sandboxing a game is entirely doable and Easytype is simple enough to allow it.
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
FIF and Dungeon Dive
Time to elucidate more upon the actual games Dice Junket is involved in making, of which details have been somewhat slim.
FIF is, at the moment at least, the name of our generic fantasy roleplaying game. The rules were penned by myself and are based in part upon White Wolf's Storyteller system. It operates based purely upon skills in which players have a number of dice. When attempting to complete a task they roll their dice and attempt to get a number of successes (3+ on a d6), success and failure being measured on whther they manage to make this roll.
It's been designed to be at once easy to play and easy to create scenarios for. Monster need very little planning and can be made on the fly along with traps and encounters with NPCs. It's designed to be a 'Beer & Pretzels' style game, one that can be picked up and thrashed by my friends with very little forwar planning.
Dungeon Dive is similar in principal but differs in execution. It's essentially a regression of FIF back to a single dice board game, with characters being simplified even further and put into a hack and slash kind of game, similar in principal to the old Warhammer Quest game. To this end it is my intention to use Pendraken's (http://www.pendraken.co.uk/fantasy.htm) line of fantasy 10mm miniatures and modular dungeon sets to create something a little more 'old school' and less roleplaying based.
More to come on both of these projects at later date.
FIF is, at the moment at least, the name of our generic fantasy roleplaying game. The rules were penned by myself and are based in part upon White Wolf's Storyteller system. It operates based purely upon skills in which players have a number of dice. When attempting to complete a task they roll their dice and attempt to get a number of successes (3+ on a d6), success and failure being measured on whther they manage to make this roll.
It's been designed to be at once easy to play and easy to create scenarios for. Monster need very little planning and can be made on the fly along with traps and encounters with NPCs. It's designed to be a 'Beer & Pretzels' style game, one that can be picked up and thrashed by my friends with very little forwar planning.
Dungeon Dive is similar in principal but differs in execution. It's essentially a regression of FIF back to a single dice board game, with characters being simplified even further and put into a hack and slash kind of game, similar in principal to the old Warhammer Quest game. To this end it is my intention to use Pendraken's (http://www.pendraken.co.uk/fantasy.htm) line of fantasy 10mm miniatures and modular dungeon sets to create something a little more 'old school' and less roleplaying based.
More to come on both of these projects at later date.
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Games or Simulations: A Ramble in G Major
Accepting that I have been making a game system that is essnetially for my friends, a group of novice gamers and CRPGers (a fine demographic from which I myself derived) I quite like the system I've created for them. Having said this my exploits and research around the net have raised one question for me that I feel is of crucial importance:
Is it alright to make a 'game'?
RPGs are not really games in the traditional sense in that typically they don't have a scenario for 'victory', there is success and failure but both are consummations of the game, the logical end points, neither is a victory or defeat in the face of a good scenario. Part of this is that most RPG (Wraith: The Oblivion aside) are geared towards a co-operative style of gameplay rather than competative gameplay like traditional tabletop or board games.
The idea is that a party comes together to complete an objective and that defines victory and all rules around that (Spells, movement, classes) are like Ludo rules, designed to extend the length of gameplay by putting restrictions (Often random, thanks to Uncle Gary) on what an individual can do.
'Rules light' systems such as FUDGE and even RISUS break this mould by allowing characters to be defined only by the limits of the player's imaginations and is often favoured by more 'story' orientated gamers.
So is one form superior?
I've been wrestling with this idea for a while and of course I can;t decide on an answer, if I could I would have already outlined it. Naturally we must consider what our parties want from an adventure and plan accordingly, but when making a system that you intend to push beyond the limits of the group it is important that a system has the flexibility and common sense to survive in the cut-throat world of RPG design.
So how does my beloved FIF stand up? Well FIF's problem, and perhaps it's strength, is that it is consciously a game. When drafting it I considered what my friends wanted; something simple to play, to make scenarios around (Our DM Mark is relatively inexperienced) and above all fun. I never set out to make a simulation the FATAL guys (although I'd rather not know what they were simulating) what I made was a game.
Alright admittedly my game, whilst having concessions to roleplaying, like the persuasion skill, is little more than a dungeon crawler. That's what my friends wanted and by jove I delivered a playable system, DM Mark added some (lots!) classes and all seems to be well for our new campaign, though in the background I intend to develope FIF into a fully fledged system with my own setting and even (le gasp!) a module eventually.
Just, y'know, patience. These things take time and testing and I still want to try OD&D at some point.
Is it alright to make a 'game'?
RPGs are not really games in the traditional sense in that typically they don't have a scenario for 'victory', there is success and failure but both are consummations of the game, the logical end points, neither is a victory or defeat in the face of a good scenario. Part of this is that most RPG (Wraith: The Oblivion aside) are geared towards a co-operative style of gameplay rather than competative gameplay like traditional tabletop or board games.
The idea is that a party comes together to complete an objective and that defines victory and all rules around that (Spells, movement, classes) are like Ludo rules, designed to extend the length of gameplay by putting restrictions (Often random, thanks to Uncle Gary) on what an individual can do.
'Rules light' systems such as FUDGE and even RISUS break this mould by allowing characters to be defined only by the limits of the player's imaginations and is often favoured by more 'story' orientated gamers.
So is one form superior?
I've been wrestling with this idea for a while and of course I can;t decide on an answer, if I could I would have already outlined it. Naturally we must consider what our parties want from an adventure and plan accordingly, but when making a system that you intend to push beyond the limits of the group it is important that a system has the flexibility and common sense to survive in the cut-throat world of RPG design.
So how does my beloved FIF stand up? Well FIF's problem, and perhaps it's strength, is that it is consciously a game. When drafting it I considered what my friends wanted; something simple to play, to make scenarios around (Our DM Mark is relatively inexperienced) and above all fun. I never set out to make a simulation the FATAL guys (although I'd rather not know what they were simulating) what I made was a game.
Alright admittedly my game, whilst having concessions to roleplaying, like the persuasion skill, is little more than a dungeon crawler. That's what my friends wanted and by jove I delivered a playable system, DM Mark added some (lots!) classes and all seems to be well for our new campaign, though in the background I intend to develope FIF into a fully fledged system with my own setting and even (le gasp!) a module eventually.
Just, y'know, patience. These things take time and testing and I still want to try OD&D at some point.
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