So another Sunday session of D&D is upon us and after the washout that was last week I’ve been spending some time with the players wish list I’ve come up with a suitable plan for getting everyone back into the swing of things.
Next up comes a site based adventure which is quite simple, it resorts to tried and tested techniques and will hopefully allow the players to do some of the roleplaying which has gone by the way side in recent sessions but was so prevalent in the first.
We’ve encountered this problem which I’m certain many other parties have encountered before where the role playing takes a back seat to combat mechanics and adventuring. This is especially jarring after the first session was so strong with this particular aspect. One could blame the players for not playing their characters but that’s unfair when they’ve been in the wilderness for weeks and have been given no opportunity to interact with creatures who didn’t instantly try to bite their faces off.
I’m fortuitous in this respect since I’ve been running World Top largely adlibbed and that means dungeons and the like only go on as long as I really want them to. It also allows me to drop things in at the last minute; such as the Malboro forest, which I only had a vague idea about before the session began; and then these adventures need only go on as long as the PC’s are interested. Since the Malboro forest was a bust this Sunday the party will be leaving it for Zendicon.
In other news with the Monster Manual II coming out soon we may soon be fighting a new swathe of nasties. Personally I’m hoping for a Paragon level Rust Monster or something that steals magic items so that I can get rid of the party’s annoying ‘Horns of Plenty’.
Showing posts with label roleplaying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roleplaying. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Monday, 20 April 2009
On Top of the World: Session 3
Easter delayed the next part of our Paragon Tier campaign, with over half the party (and I) sat on a hill drinking cider and watching the sunset rather than trawling the Undermanse in search of treasure. That said we are finally resuming as normal and this week promised some interesting combat.
Or at least that was the plan.
Originally the party were destined to get ambushed by a Lich and its friends when they followed the path after their battle with the (underwhelming) Hydra. Now Liches are usually tough opponents but with two Paladins in the party (Caradoc the Paladin of Redirect and Katarakis the Astral Weapon) I was looking forward to seeing the party take one down ‘old-school’.
Instead Caradoc in a bout of meta-gaming declared that since the cowled figure (read: Lich) had gone through a portal there then there must be a way of opening it through hand signals, gestures, using bits of detritus and the like. In a retcon roll we discerned that Katarakis had seen the moves that the Lich had made before opening the portal.
Dungeon Masters of old will be remembered by the faithful as hateful architects fuelled by malice, every thread and sinew of their being toiling ceaselessly to forge mazes of agony for their friends to stumble through. Fourth Edition tones this down by removing level drain, statistic loss and instant death and you might suspect that this means an age of party friendly Dungeon Masters. I refute this with a single line:
“The figure appears to have made a series of arcane gestures and then ended with some word of arcane power, from your vantage point you could hear something that sounded like... Macarena.”
I am still grinning.
The portal opened and the party wandered through a dreamlike wilderness unique to each of them (with one consistent theme; a dead Peter Andre) until they came out on a ledge far above the Undermanse. The party were stood upon one of the Stalactites mentioned in the last session and below them could see the strange geometric patterns of the Neminoan barrows. Before them is an irregular archway surrounded by mosaics made of irregular tiles (called ‘tessera’ as Katarakis informed me) and beyond a room in which they found a pillar of metal with copper cables coming from the top of it. Blue light pulsed along the cables and was carried along cables bordering a ramp on the far side of the room that led out from this stalactite to another one. From within the pillar came the sound of distant thunder and a dull throbbing.
This room was to be the resting place of the ‘Lord of Thunder’; a maul that was rather good at knocking things down; hence the rumble of distant thunder. I was counting on my party’s natural curiosity (along with the greed that grips all adventurers) to cause them to crack this open and get the aforementioned magical item. The trade off being that doing this would take power that was being bled through the cables to a room further on in which there were sarcophagi containing all manner of nastiness.
As it was after some debate and some ‘advice’ from Caradoc about greed (this being the same player who carved his name onto the family tree in a crypt near Winterhaven and declared himself the lost son of Lord Padraig) the party decided to leave it and I watched my shiny magic item disappear off into the sunset.
After some more walking they came upon the sarcophagus room in which they found a flesh golem (in actuality 2 flesh golems squeezed) in the aforementioned sarcophagus. Again in a fit of common sense they decided to leave well enough alone and walked away without releasing the deadly monstrosities.
I was feeling defeated. The party had evaded 2 combat encounters and the treasure for this week; that said Skurmesh Anklebiter was spoiling for a fight and I didn’t want to end a session of D&D without some actual combat. I toyed with the idea of throwing the Lich back in but that felt a bit cheap especially since the party had been lucky and avoided that encounter.
Instead I decided to let the party out of the mountain in a valley with a river of fire and gave them an encounter worth fighting: a green dragon, specifically Melgoroth of the Eternal Blight. I was wary of running another solo, especially since the hydra was soundly beaten and didn’t provide much entertainment. Mercifully Melgoroth provided much more entertainment.
Now you might be wondering what a green dragon, a race of dragon that commonly makes its home in forests, would be doing in a blasted volcanic waste. Indeed my players were likewise interested in how I planned to dig myself out of this hole. Luckily in the first session Caradoc asked about dragons and I had mentioned they were driven into the north; Melgoroth specifically was driven north by the Knights of the Order Rosenkavalier after it killed the other dragons in the area and gorged itself on one too many local towns.
The party opened poorly, the rogue squandered her surprise round destroying the nearby rock face and everybody else got close enough to cause some damage before it unleashed its breath weapon. Then came Du’nn’o’s (!?) moment of glory as she used her Close Quarters ability to leap on the dragons back and stab it for some reasonable damage. Melgoroth however was having none of this and flew high above the lava and shrugged Du’nn’o off ditching her into the lava.
I wussed out on the lava damage and Du’nn’o actually ended up taking very little damage from the lava and Skurmesh used Knight’s Move to allow her to fey step out of ‘Firey Flamey Death(tm)’. If I should ditch someone into lava again the damage will be colossal; I’m thinking damage, healing surge damage and ongoing damage.
The rest of the fight was a tough affair that consumed most of the party’s resources (the way a good solo should), fortunately Melgoroth’s breath weapon refused to recharge and with Caradoc being a Hospitalier and Skurmesh on healing duty the party was rarely in danger. Melgoroth eventually was felled by Du’nn’o when I forgot about an ability she had in play that dealt damage when it attacked her and it claimed the last of its hit points as she met its incoming attack with her dagger.
Overall this session had a much more satisfying fight and I think I’ve learned what makes a good solo (ready for making my own ‘Hydra 2.0’). However given that I was a little strung out the colour and roleplaying seemed to suffer. The players were all willing but I wasn’t as enthused as session 2; hopefully for next time (a fortnight away as Katarakis is fighting the ‘Black Gate’ at work next Sunday) I’ll be a little more enthusiastic and have some interesting encounters planned out.
Until next time; add parting witticism here.
Or at least that was the plan.
Originally the party were destined to get ambushed by a Lich and its friends when they followed the path after their battle with the (underwhelming) Hydra. Now Liches are usually tough opponents but with two Paladins in the party (Caradoc the Paladin of Redirect and Katarakis the Astral Weapon) I was looking forward to seeing the party take one down ‘old-school’.
Instead Caradoc in a bout of meta-gaming declared that since the cowled figure (read: Lich) had gone through a portal there then there must be a way of opening it through hand signals, gestures, using bits of detritus and the like. In a retcon roll we discerned that Katarakis had seen the moves that the Lich had made before opening the portal.
Dungeon Masters of old will be remembered by the faithful as hateful architects fuelled by malice, every thread and sinew of their being toiling ceaselessly to forge mazes of agony for their friends to stumble through. Fourth Edition tones this down by removing level drain, statistic loss and instant death and you might suspect that this means an age of party friendly Dungeon Masters. I refute this with a single line:
“The figure appears to have made a series of arcane gestures and then ended with some word of arcane power, from your vantage point you could hear something that sounded like... Macarena.”
I am still grinning.
The portal opened and the party wandered through a dreamlike wilderness unique to each of them (with one consistent theme; a dead Peter Andre) until they came out on a ledge far above the Undermanse. The party were stood upon one of the Stalactites mentioned in the last session and below them could see the strange geometric patterns of the Neminoan barrows. Before them is an irregular archway surrounded by mosaics made of irregular tiles (called ‘tessera’ as Katarakis informed me) and beyond a room in which they found a pillar of metal with copper cables coming from the top of it. Blue light pulsed along the cables and was carried along cables bordering a ramp on the far side of the room that led out from this stalactite to another one. From within the pillar came the sound of distant thunder and a dull throbbing.
This room was to be the resting place of the ‘Lord of Thunder’; a maul that was rather good at knocking things down; hence the rumble of distant thunder. I was counting on my party’s natural curiosity (along with the greed that grips all adventurers) to cause them to crack this open and get the aforementioned magical item. The trade off being that doing this would take power that was being bled through the cables to a room further on in which there were sarcophagi containing all manner of nastiness.
As it was after some debate and some ‘advice’ from Caradoc about greed (this being the same player who carved his name onto the family tree in a crypt near Winterhaven and declared himself the lost son of Lord Padraig) the party decided to leave it and I watched my shiny magic item disappear off into the sunset.
After some more walking they came upon the sarcophagus room in which they found a flesh golem (in actuality 2 flesh golems squeezed) in the aforementioned sarcophagus. Again in a fit of common sense they decided to leave well enough alone and walked away without releasing the deadly monstrosities.
I was feeling defeated. The party had evaded 2 combat encounters and the treasure for this week; that said Skurmesh Anklebiter was spoiling for a fight and I didn’t want to end a session of D&D without some actual combat. I toyed with the idea of throwing the Lich back in but that felt a bit cheap especially since the party had been lucky and avoided that encounter.
Instead I decided to let the party out of the mountain in a valley with a river of fire and gave them an encounter worth fighting: a green dragon, specifically Melgoroth of the Eternal Blight. I was wary of running another solo, especially since the hydra was soundly beaten and didn’t provide much entertainment. Mercifully Melgoroth provided much more entertainment.
Now you might be wondering what a green dragon, a race of dragon that commonly makes its home in forests, would be doing in a blasted volcanic waste. Indeed my players were likewise interested in how I planned to dig myself out of this hole. Luckily in the first session Caradoc asked about dragons and I had mentioned they were driven into the north; Melgoroth specifically was driven north by the Knights of the Order Rosenkavalier after it killed the other dragons in the area and gorged itself on one too many local towns.
The party opened poorly, the rogue squandered her surprise round destroying the nearby rock face and everybody else got close enough to cause some damage before it unleashed its breath weapon. Then came Du’nn’o’s (!?) moment of glory as she used her Close Quarters ability to leap on the dragons back and stab it for some reasonable damage. Melgoroth however was having none of this and flew high above the lava and shrugged Du’nn’o off ditching her into the lava.
I wussed out on the lava damage and Du’nn’o actually ended up taking very little damage from the lava and Skurmesh used Knight’s Move to allow her to fey step out of ‘Firey Flamey Death(tm)’. If I should ditch someone into lava again the damage will be colossal; I’m thinking damage, healing surge damage and ongoing damage.
The rest of the fight was a tough affair that consumed most of the party’s resources (the way a good solo should), fortunately Melgoroth’s breath weapon refused to recharge and with Caradoc being a Hospitalier and Skurmesh on healing duty the party was rarely in danger. Melgoroth eventually was felled by Du’nn’o when I forgot about an ability she had in play that dealt damage when it attacked her and it claimed the last of its hit points as she met its incoming attack with her dagger.
Overall this session had a much more satisfying fight and I think I’ve learned what makes a good solo (ready for making my own ‘Hydra 2.0’). However given that I was a little strung out the colour and roleplaying seemed to suffer. The players were all willing but I wasn’t as enthused as session 2; hopefully for next time (a fortnight away as Katarakis is fighting the ‘Black Gate’ at work next Sunday) I’ll be a little more enthusiastic and have some interesting encounters planned out.
Until next time; add parting witticism here.
Friday, 28 March 2008
Alignment and Roleplaying
Since the early days of Dungeons & Dragons alignment has been a key factor in the creation of characters, it can define classes, alter people's perceptions and change the way players play the game.
Is this a good thing?
As a mechanic alignment is at once, like many things, a useful tool and a terrible limitation. At a pinch it gives a good indication of those parties opposed to the player characters, a chaotic good character might be opposed by the evil wizard whose plans he meddles with, and the lawful constabulary who cannot abide his methods. As a games master it gives me an instant touchstone where I can set up oppositions and tensions before the character has even really acted. That having been said it also binds the player into acting a certain way, and whilst alignment can be changed it does bear with it some penalties, especially Paladins, for example, who lose all of their class abilities if they stray from their alignment.
Having no alignment system allows characters to act based upon their own intuition, acting in character or simply as they themselves would act. The problem with this is that without any guiding factor it also allows players to act arbitrarily, saving lives at one moment and torturing and killing at another. Whilst this might have a place in some campaigns (with an interesting, well played character) in most it just serves to break the illusion of the game world.
So is there a happy medium?
One option is reward based roleplaying, although this comes with its own caveats. In such a model we reward the players for acting in character, perhaps giving them certain qualities that they can aspire to (I believe many White Wolf games do this) and rewarding them with experience or new skill dice for consistant roleplaying or character progression. The problem with this idea is that it artificially manufactures roleplaying, players start acting in character in a way that is noticable in the hopes of scoring that precious experience that will give them the edge.
In the end alignment and roleplaying is always a contentious issue and it's about knowing what your party want. If they enjoy the smash and grab gameplay of a dungeon crawl then giving them an alignment is not such a sin since they are already treating the game mechanically, playing to win rather than for a narrative. This is entirely fine, but if your party wants some involved roleplaying then let them play their characters as they want and their commitment to the story will make them act accordingly.
Is this a good thing?
As a mechanic alignment is at once, like many things, a useful tool and a terrible limitation. At a pinch it gives a good indication of those parties opposed to the player characters, a chaotic good character might be opposed by the evil wizard whose plans he meddles with, and the lawful constabulary who cannot abide his methods. As a games master it gives me an instant touchstone where I can set up oppositions and tensions before the character has even really acted. That having been said it also binds the player into acting a certain way, and whilst alignment can be changed it does bear with it some penalties, especially Paladins, for example, who lose all of their class abilities if they stray from their alignment.
Having no alignment system allows characters to act based upon their own intuition, acting in character or simply as they themselves would act. The problem with this is that without any guiding factor it also allows players to act arbitrarily, saving lives at one moment and torturing and killing at another. Whilst this might have a place in some campaigns (with an interesting, well played character) in most it just serves to break the illusion of the game world.
So is there a happy medium?
One option is reward based roleplaying, although this comes with its own caveats. In such a model we reward the players for acting in character, perhaps giving them certain qualities that they can aspire to (I believe many White Wolf games do this) and rewarding them with experience or new skill dice for consistant roleplaying or character progression. The problem with this idea is that it artificially manufactures roleplaying, players start acting in character in a way that is noticable in the hopes of scoring that precious experience that will give them the edge.
In the end alignment and roleplaying is always a contentious issue and it's about knowing what your party want. If they enjoy the smash and grab gameplay of a dungeon crawl then giving them an alignment is not such a sin since they are already treating the game mechanically, playing to win rather than for a narrative. This is entirely fine, but if your party wants some involved roleplaying then let them play their characters as they want and their commitment to the story will make them act accordingly.
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