Hey, is this a post about gaming?!

Hello World!

I haven't talked a great deal about gaming lately.  I've been busy.

Lately I've begun to feel the gaming itch again, and have talked about doing some Shadowrun, and thought about doing some more D&D/fantasy gaming.  I'm going to dump my thoughts here about D&D and running a game of it.

I spent a goodly bit of time talking about 4e during '08 and some of '09.  We ran it right when it came out, and by and large, we all enjoyed ourselves.  I developed some gripes about it, and as I recall, I grew a bit frustrated that combats became so long, and seemed so.. constricted.  Bear with me here.

I wavered back and forth between enjoying the openness and lack of 'constricting rules' with old school 0e/1e D&D.  Combat is short, somewhat narrative, often fatal.  I won't get sidetracked here with long discussions about the merits of old school gaming vs new school gaming.  Combat in 4e is longer, very tactical, with tons of options, but all of them are printed.  So to further clarify, in old school combat, the players have lots of creative room, if they're the creative type, to describe what their characters are doing, their only limitations really being their own imaginations and the box that the GM makes them work inside of.  In 4e, the players have tons of options for their characters, but they're all in the book.  There are few or no "calls" by the GM, and tons of rules searching and debate.

But this is all kinda background and staging.  I'm actually going to try to talk up 4e.  Here's what's on my mind:  4e combat is lively and fun, and full of options.  Narrative and descriptions are and have always been critically important elements in role playing.  We've all played with a bad GM - "There's a long hall and some lizard men, roll initiative!", "Okay you killed the lizardmen, you open the next door and there's a room with some goblins, roll initiative!".  The player's narrative is just as important as the GM's narrative.  Even with the most descriptive GM in the world, if the players sit around the table each taking turns with "I hit the goblin" , then it's simply a boring exercise in rolling dice until the GM says you're done.  Its an easy trap for anyone to fall into.  The same is true with 4e.  "Okay, I use my 'Elemental Whirlwind' power, its a daily." , it is just as boring.  It reduces the narrative game of D&D to a poker game in which you're simply "using" what's in your hand until its time for the next hand.  Perhaps Magic the Gathering is a better analogy.  I'm sure someone somewhere "role plays" magic, but its a card game.  D&D /should not be/ a card game.

Again though, its somewhat easy to fall into the rut of just naming off powers, letting someone else take their turn, ad nauseum.

My other gripe had to do with the rationing of magic items, and how magic items seemed to be generally castrated to me.  They were "special items", not magical.  Magic implies some sense of amazement and wonder, perhaps an air of mystery.  4e magic items are simply special equipment that confers bonuses.  Perhaps this was my own fault - did I not "magic them up enough"?

So, just off the top of my head, today I'm kicking around the idea of running old school adventures through 4e.  I'd be inclined to retool "magic item distribution", and maybe just old school it.  The matter of role playing combat is really Social Contract territory, and I think would simply need to be agreed upon by the players involved.

Alright, that's it for me, I'm going to go flip through my printed copy of Keep on the Borderlands.

4e Lightning Storm

Someone please use this idea, if you're running a 4e D&D game. I suppose this could be used in any game, really, but all of the juicy mechanical bits seemed right for 4e.

Take any outdoor scrap, and throw in a terrific lightning storm!

Jagged bolts of lightning crash furiously all around and amidst the fight. Each round, roll 1d6 each round for any character with significant metal (armor, weapon, etc). On a 1, let them make a save of some kind for half damage against a lightning strike. Use the Damage by Level thingy to figure out how much damage to dish out, but it should be on the high side, probably. Goes for PCs and monsters, of course. Keep in mind that if armorclad PCs are fighting some kind of non-armory opponents, it'll put the PCs at a more significant disadvantage than if they were fighting chainmail orcs or something. For anything not in armor, make it a 1 in 10 chance of a lightning strike. Oh, and let anyone hit, and anyone adjacent be stunned or dazed for a round.

For added fun, throw in some rain-slick, anyone moving more than 10 feet makes a save or ends up prone.

D&D 4e, a year later.

Some of my fellow RPG nerds have been doing these 'D&D 4e, a year later' posts, and I figured, "Hey! I like posting about nerdy gaming stuff. Why don't I hop on this?" And so I am.

About this time last year, D&D 4 was on the shelves, and gamer nerds were still split on whether it was the most awesomest [sic] ever, or whether it was bringing death and ruin (and not the cool kind) to gaming. Ohhh, the D&D4 = MMORPG/WoW threads were so long. sigh. Good times.

Before 4e came out, I'd sworn off D&D. I'd gotten fed up with 3.x, and had gotten somewhat heavily into the indie gaming scene. I had a blast with some of these games, and as I've mentioned before, it was a great run for me, because it really opened my eyes up to a lot of neat stuff about the deeper theory and mechanics of gaming. As a total aside - posting sentences like that always makes me cringe just a little. But hey, nerds get into whatever they're nerding out about. I'm sure that somewhere, right now, someone is posting about the minute differences in two brands of fishing rods. /nerdtastic

Back on track: I followed the pending release of D&D4 like a stalker. You ever sit on a forum and hit 'refresh' like you're pushing the trigger on a morphine drip? That was me. I was stoked. Finally, I thought, a D&D that I can get back into.

So it came out, and I got my gamer buds together, and we ran some D&D. It was pretty awesome. Games were easy to prep for, mechanically speaking. "Powers", both for player-characters, and for monsters and bad guys were cool and fun. The players had a good time, and I had a good time. In the end, the arrival of babies in our lives put a nix on the game, but to be honest, after running the game for a little over six months, I'd begun to get burned out, mostly with the game system itself. So yeah, I'd gone from "D&D4 may be one of the most awesomest [sic] things ever", to "Eh, its fun." in six months.

Part of what turned me off was the combat system. I'm not trying to say that it was not fun or cool, just that after six months, the time it took to run even a simple combat had begun to outweigh the cool and fun. As a high fantasy tactical combat game that borrowed from action movies and games like final fantasy and world of warcraft, it excelled. But the fights were the focus of the sessions.

I'll pause here and concede that this has as much to do with system as it was the way I was running the game, but this quickly devolves into the System Does Matter argument. I was running the game, mechanically, as it was intended. We had time, in our game sessions, for about two fights, and some exposition and story before, between, and after the fights.

Anyway, my objective was not to rag on D&D4e. I suppose, instead, my goal was to compare Then And Now.

As I've posted here, I've begun to run some Labyrinth Lord games, which is a reworking of "old school" D&D, and have thought some about games like Shadowrun, and even Vampire the Masquerade (not Requiem, but that's for another post). D&D4 was fun, and I know a couple of folks who are still playing in other 4e games.

And that's all I've got.

Players as Monsters

My apologies to anyone whose eyes glaze over when I get all gaming nerdy. But I gotta get this one off of my chest.

Ideally done with two different groups of players. One group: the adventurers, other group: the monsters.

The monster group gets a dungeon layout, randomly generated, or drawn, or whatever. They get to lay out what goes where (Which is what I did in my previous Old School game, printed off a randomly generated map, and then figured out what the rooms where for myself, so we had a temple, and dormitories, and garbage room, and kitchen, and so forth). And the monster players get an allowance of some type to setup traps and things. They have a finite monster population in the dungeon, yknow, 40 goblins or whatever. Once setup, the adventurers get a go at it. I'm imagining in a completely different session, not "head to head" really. Anyway, the players move through the dungeon as best they can, dealing with traps and monsters until they are killed off or forced to retreat to rest and rearm. Then, during that lull, the monster players may get an opportunity to reset traps, make plans for how to deal with additional assaults, etc. And we proceed either until one side kills off the other, or until some scoring system declares a victory for one side.

Yknow, because only in the most arbitrary and static dungeon do the monsters stand around quietly waiting on adventurers to knock on their door and kill them.

Actual Play, Part II

I forgot to mention that I had planned to have all characters doing standardized damage. 1d6 for one handed weapons, 2d4 for two handed weapons. The players complained expressed a desire to do individualized weapon damage, and so I relented.

The party regrouped after Richard's fight with the mole man, and wanted to head into the small door. Beyond, they found a short, empty passage, ending in a stairway going down, and with a door on the left side of the passage. They checked out the door, carefully listening for sounds and so forth, then opened it to peer inside, and saw three faces peering back out at them. One character threw open the door, while two others rushed in to fight against three of the molemen and two rats.

Two interesting things happened during the fight. The first was that one of the badguys rolled and then confirmed a fumble. I rolled on my Wicked Table of Fumbles, and the result indicated that he'd struck an ally. I narrated him loosing his balance and his sword going out wide and opening up the guy to his right (molemen are right handed, you know), since he rolled enough damage to kill the dude outright. Also, I pseudo-killed the first character here. Michael's cleric had rushed in, and got jabbed twice, taking to 0 hit points.

I had initially set out to do it the old fashion way, where 0 hit points = dead, new character time. After perusing some house rules, I'd decided to try being somewhat less lethal, and so I created a house rule and table, so that when reduced to 0 hit points (And the GM was feeling benevolent), you got a 1d6 roll. 1 = dead, 6 = back on your feet, and between was varying degrees of nastiness, like coma and limb loss and such. So Michael's cleric hit 0 hit points, got his 1d6 roll, and got a 6, so he was still in the fight!

The party dispatched the molemen and rats. Combat was a breeze for me to run. I didn't watch the clock, but the fight with four characters and five bad guys lasted probably 15 or 20 minutes. Far less time than with stuff I've run recently. And more fun too, in a way. I narrated the players through the combat, and it was fast and fun and loose. No one looked at rule books.

After the fight, the characters were bloodied, and so they headed back to the Keep to recuperate. Arriving back at the cave later, they wanted to keep an eye out for any sign of traffic or recent activity. I told them that they could see some sign - there were a few objects sitting just in the entrance of the cave. As they carefully approached, they saw that it was 4 human heads. Payback for the 4 molepeople that they'd dispatched. They proceeded inside once again, back through the secret door, and into the passage.

There was some discussion here about which way to go. They could take the stairs that went down, or they could check out the door at the end of the long hallway. They elected to check out the door. (Note - Michael and Jerry chose the door because they were totally in the spirit of old school, and were concerned that going down the stairs was in effect going to the Dreaded Second Level of the dungeon.) I described it as a large wooden door with a pull ring in the center of it. They lined up before the door, ready to do battle with whatever lay on the other side. One character pulled the ring, which came out slightly, and then the floor dropped out from beneath them. When I designed this particular trap, I wondered how many characters it would kill. It was 10' wide, the width of the passage, and 20' long, surely enough to capture most or all of a party as they tugged the ring (the trigger). I hadn't though a lot about it, but I'd planned to have anyone standing on the trap fall into the pit, and take the damage (2d6 for the 20 foot fall, 1d4 x 1d6 damage for hitting spikes at the bottom). Now, with the entire party standing on the trap, I wavered, and flipped through Keep on the Borderlands, which I had nearby, to see if the folks who originally wrote this stuff had a method for throwing characters into pit traps. I found one, which suggested a 50% change of falling in, so I went with it. Even so, the players were a tad skeptical of how their characters could avoid falling in, but we handwaved it to an extent, figuring the mechanical noises right before the trap opened were a sufficient alarm. By luck three of them avoided falling in, but Michael's thief went into the pit. He took *a lot* of damage, far more than he had hit points. I went ahead and let him roll the Last Breath 1d6, it was generous on my part, but I did so because we were playing our first 'test' session, and I was still enjoying fiddling with my Last Breath chart. He ended up not dead, but in a coma for 4 weeks, plus a few weeks of recovery time. I explained that in the future, when a character took massive damage like that, he would simply be dead, with no followup roll.

I do not recall which time, but once, when Michael's character was reduced to 0 hit points, he offered the character sheet to me, and asked if wanted to rip it, or keep it, etc. We did the Last Breath, so it was not a big deal. Michael was not bothered by his near death experience(s), and in fact had indicated to me previously that he had an interest in seeing a character die. He's played RPGs lately that treat characters with kid gloves, and every fall has a bunch of big comfy pillows beneath it, it was in an odd way, refreshing to play in a setting where there were in fact lots of sharp pointy things that could very easily kill a character.

The party managed to get the unconscious thief out of the pit and headed again back to the Keep. Michael looked over his other stats, and after a few minutes, decided to make another thief-ly type. He was also pleased when his randomly generated starting money allowed him to buy better armor this time around.

Back to the cave, they went quickly to the secret door, only this time, the molepeople had been busy preparing for them. Jerry's elf moved the right rock in order to open the door, but was doused in oil from a hidden tube. He then ducked JUST IN TIME as a gout of flame shot out from nearby, rigged to light him up. BB-Q Elf. Yum. The party paused, and Jerry wisely wanted to try to wash the flammable oil out of the elf's clothing. There was a still pool in one corner of the cave, which the elf began rinsing his clothing in. At this point, Michael, really getting into the vibe of old school play, expressed some concern about the dark pool, and that it had not been searched or really declared 'safe', and I pointed asked Jerry if the elf was bathing in the water. Jerry said no, that he was on dry ground, just rinsing his clothing. One of Michael's character started probing the water with his 10' pole, and it was deep. Michael wanted to do a little testing and exploration with the pool, I believe, but Jerry convinced him to press on into the labyrinth.

They made it through the secret door this time, as it apparently needed to be manually reset. They ignored the large door and its pit trap, and went through the small doorway again, narrowly missing an improvised dagger trap, and then fighting against some rats. I'm using Morale rules, so at one point, the last rat fled. They headed down the stairs, and into the labyrinth proper. Now we were doing some real dungeon crawling. The hall was somewhat narrow, only 5 feet wide, and they took a right, explored about 150 feet of dungeon corridor before coming to a door. They went through, into a room with eight molemen, armed, sitting around a table, with two more sleeping in the corner, and a giant rat lying beneath the table. The party charged in, and the elf cast sleep, putting 5 molemen and the rat into a deep slumber - one that they would never awaken from, as it turned out. The characters charged in to do battle, and to slay the sleeping molemen. Almost right away, the molemen lost a morale save, and so the three remaining ones took off, running through a door on the far end of the room. The party paused long enough to make sure that they would not be followed before charging after the fleeing bad guys. They hit a fork in the tunnel almost right away, and Jerry wanted to know if his elf could tell which way they went, thanks to his infravision. I shrugged and said, sure, maybe, and rolled a d6. The dice gremlins smiled upon him, and he could see the faint heat of their footprints, quickly fading, but headed to the left. They followed, and the tunnel split again - and again the dice gremlins were on Jerry's side, but this time he could see that they'd split up. they picked a passage and continued the pursuit. They came again to a split, but this time, they could not tell which way their quarry had gone. But they heard the sound of a door close from down the right passage, so they charged that way, throwing caution to the wind. They rounded the corner and saw a closed door with two levers on the handle. Jerry's elf grabbed the handles and threw the door open, and fell right into the pit that opened up beneath his feet. Beyond the door was a large dining hall. One of their fleeing quarry, and two dining molemen were there, and they turned to do battle with the party. Richard the fighter leapt into the room. One of the molemen swung at him, but Richard dodged the blow and took the nasty creature's head off with one blow. The other two turned and ran.

We were out of time for gaming, and so they pulled the unconscious elf out of the pit trap. He'd been reduced to 0 hit points by the fall, but had rolled reasonably well on the Last Breath table, and was only unconscious for an hour or so, and weak for a few days after. They made their way back out of the labyrinth, as they heard the sounds of pursuit behind them - apparently the molepeople had gathered and were on the attack. They made it back to the Keep, and that's where we broke off.

---

I certainly had a great time. It was fun to run with the loose rules, making it up as I went. I think I did a good job of being descriptive enough to give the players a good idea of what was going on, and to immerse them into the game. I enjoyed that combats were short and sweet. I loved not having to spend tons of time flipping through pages looking for rules. It was both as deadly, and as forgiving as I'd hoped. I "killed" three characters, but each of them survived, and will fight another day, though it will take the thief a few weeks yet to recover. I'm going for a mix of fast and loose play, with a dose of simulationism - they have to keep track of which character is mapping, which character has the torch, etc. We are not tracking number of arrows, or rations and such, within reason. If they end up lost in a dungeon, then well get concerned about how many torches they have left, and how many days of food they have.

My demo game was, for me, and I believe for my players as well, a smashing success. And I'm looking forward to running it again when time (and baby) allows.

Old School D&D Actual Play

Big thanks to Michael and Jerry who got together with me on Saturday to play with Labyrinth Lord.

Now, straight to the game.

We chatted for just a few minutes about old school D&D, its mindset and comparison to more modern D&D. Turns out I was the minority, both Jerry and Michael had played old school stuff before, even if long long ago, while I only go as far back as 2nd edition AD&D. Anyway. We discussed some of the house rules for a moment, and then decided to go straight into creating some characters. I had each of them roll 5 sets of stats. Its done the old fashion way, 3d6 in order. We ended up with at least one 3. I do not think that we got any 18s. I told them that they could trash one set of stats if they wanted, and roll another set, which I know Michael did, and Jerry might have done as well. I told them that they'd each be playing two characters, so they spent a few minutes deciding what which sets of stats and which classes they'd be playing. We ended up with Jerry playing Richard, a Fighter, and Neemon, an Elf. Michael had Derek the Cleric, and Ciric, a Thief. I let Jerry pick the spells for his Elf instead of making him roll them randomly, and I think that going forward I'll stick with random rolls. They bought equipment, and before too long, we were off. Oh - I also had my AEG Toolbox book along, which is an awesome resource. Since I wanted to flex my dice, I offered them 100xp per character if we could randomly generate some of their character stuff, concept, traits, appearance, a miscellaneous personal effect, etc. It was kinda cool, and we got some odd stuff like a character that stutters, one that is being pursued by some kind of good aligned entities for some reason, a Thief that keeps being mistaken for someone else, and that someone else is ruining his reputation, and someone who has a woman who follows him from town to town, wanting to marry him. This was largely just flavor, we did not take the time to do much more with it, but it was entertaining nonetheless.

I'm using the Keep from 'Keep on the Borderlands' as the base of operations. We skimmed through their arrival in search of adventure, and their finding out that a small nearby village had been raided at night by parties unknown, stealing away some of the inhabitants. The local lord's men had tracked the unknown raiders back into the hills to a cave, but had not gone into the cave.

The characters picked up here, and made good time to the cave. I worked on providing good descriptions of the land around them and such, without becoming overly verbose. We grabbed some graph paper, and determined which character was doing the mapping, though I did the actual drawing on the grid. I figured it was going to be too explain accurately enough for someone to draw stuff without the game devolving into a grid drawing game, so this was the simplest fix, and it seemed to work just fine. The party had the elf scout ahead a bit, into the cave. He did not have to carry a torch, thanks to his infravision, and the party followed at a safe distance behind. The cave had some alcoves and branches, but did not extend very far, and was only a few thousand square feet. It was all smooth, natural walls, and with no other apparent exits, though one side passage did end in a pool of water. They quickly began to scout the walls for signs of a secret door, and luck with with them, for not only did they search in exactly the right spot, right off the bat, but the dice smiled upon them and they discovered the door. We did some searching for traps and found nothing, and proceeded inside.

Beyond the secret door was a long hall, perhaps 80 feet or so, about 10 feet wide, with many old tapestries hanging from the walls. At the far end of the hall was a large wooden door, closed. The party began checking the walls behind the tapestries, and immediately discovered a door on the north wall, and a hole in the wall on the south side, large enough for a human to crawl into. They peered down it by torchlight, and could see that it went south pretty straight for thirty feet or so into darkness. While the rest waited in the passage, keeping a sharp eye out, Richard the fighter, with torch and ax in hand, shimmied his way into the hole and crawled along on his belly. He saw that the narrow space ran for about forty feet in total before letting out into a small, apparently closet sized chamber. As he made it to the chamber, he was surprised by an attack from a creature within the small room. Richard dove in and was wounded by an albino humanoid creature with a sword, before Richard killed it with his ax.

I should note here that I was having a blast doing narrative and descriptive combat, and just 'winging it'.

Also, I'm lazy and am going to break this up into more than one post.

More later.

Gearing up for some Labyrinth Lord

Sooooooo, it looks like tomorrow I'll be running a 'demo' Labyrinth Lord game for a few people.

I keep referring to it as 'demo' because, at least for me, it separates it distinctly from a 'non-demo' game. For me, its all about expectations. In a demo game, we will all agree that no one is super familiar with the material and mechanics, and things might be slow and/or wonky, but that we'll push through it. Its about experimentation, trial and error, and testing.

I'm super excited because I've been fiddling with Labyrinth Lord stuff in my head for weeks now, and this should be a fantastic outlet for all of this pent up energy.

I'm a tad nervous about it, since, well, I've never played in or run a game of it, and so the material and some of the mechanics are either foreign to me, or still somewhat unfamiliar. For instance, I'm going to try running without a mat and grid. This was how I played D&D for years and years, until 3.x, and I've become so accustomed to that style of play that its strange and intimidating to think of playing without it. I kinda have no idea how I'm going to keep up with more than three or four monsters, and keep the players in the same headspace that I am, and track mechanical stuff like hit points and so forth.

But I'm excited.

I'm excited about rolling Random Wandering Monsters.

I'm excited about somewhat arbitrary traps and monsters.

I'm excited about the prospect of killing a character or three. (!!!!!!)

I'm excited about kicking it old school.

3D6, straight down, baby.

Labyrinth Lord House Rules and Notes

When I run a Labyrinth Lord game, which is available for free download right here, I will be making use of the following house rules and notes.

Much of this is gleeful borrowed from JRients.

Notes and Stuff To Be Aware Of:

Destiny Is For Suckers
The GM is not going to hit you with some world-spanning epic plotline that he expects you to follow. Adventures will be proposed, but if you choose to not take the bait that’s entirely okay. The GM is entirely prepared to just make stuff up on the fly if you opt to go off-script, though he may call for a brief recess to whip something into shape. Either way, you are free to seek out the adventures you want.

The Games Rules Are Not a Physics Engine
Labyrinth Lord is a great refinement of the awesome Basic/Expert D&D of yore. The GM is in love with many of his house rules. But neither the rules as written nor the house rules are as important as having a fun, exciting, imaginative adventure. Sometimes things will happen that aren’t described in the rules. For example, let’s say your PC falls into a 20’ pit. The rules say you take a couple d6 of damage and get on with the game. But the GM might say “You don’t lose any HP, but you landed awkwardly and you’re pretty sure from the pain that you broke something in your left arm.” On the plus side, if you want to attempt something not handled in the rulebook the GM will generally give a lot of latitude. In fact, the more you do stuff that isn’t strictly in the rulebook, the better your chances are of making it to second level.

Cleverness and Spirit of the Rules
The Labyrinth Lord's job is to be a neutral party and run a fun adventure, making rulings, running the bad guys, and basically keeping life interesting for the players. Players are totally encouraged to be clever with their use of spells and anything that they can get their hands on. With that said, the LL will be keep an eye on the Spirit of the Rules, meaning that stuff that seems to break the game or give a weird loophole will be adjudicated and we will move on.

Dungeons Aren’t Just Big Lairs
When you go down into a dungeon you are leaving the normal world behind you. Different laws of nature can apply, almost as if the entire dungeon is located inside a nightmare. Staying too long in a dungeon drives men insane or transforms them into horrible monsters. Only the brave or foolhardy would dare venture into these hell-holes. Still, that’s where all the best treasure is to be found.

God is a Dragon and Satan is a Frog
The Lawful faith is basically a faux catholic medieval affair called the Church of the Great Gold Dragon. Chaotic types tend to worship various loathsome toadlike demons.

All Politics Are Local
At the present there are no world-spanning empires and few decent-sized kingdoms in this world. Certain city-states are able to rule over nearby towns and villages. But for the most part urban areas have a great deal of independence for outside authority and the feudal ties between the various rural Lords are often quite tenuous.

Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It
Dwarves, elves, halflings, goblins, orcs, trolls, and all those other standard D&D monsters can be found on here in this world. But they don’t always look or act exactly like their baseline D&D counterparts. For example, elves always wear hats and many goblins know strange magics. It is up to the players to find out more about the difference between the monsters here and run-of-the-mill monsters.

Its a Cruel, Cruel World
Its important to note that death is a very real and likely result of walking into monster infested dungeons. Characters will die. While more modern systems make the game all about your character, this game is really more about the party against the dungeon. So when a character dies, we mourn and move on. There are some house rules below that try to make death slightly less frequent, and govern bringing in new characters.


House Rules

Turn, turn, turn that gang of vampires. That gang of vampires.
When a cleric succeeds at turning undead roll 2d6 for number of creatures affected, regardless of hit dice. (This really gives turning some oomph at higher levels. And it gives me an excuse to use oodles of badass undead.)

The gods loathe fence-sitters
Low level clerics can be of any of the three alignments, just like any other class. However, upon achieving seventh level a neutral cleric must choose to align themselves with Law or Chaos. Staying with neutrality means you’re stuck at sixth level forever. If you’re a neutral cleric of the Lawful-oriented Church of the Great Gold Dragon the presumption is that you’ll go with Law. Similarly, neutral clerics of the Frog Gods of Chaos generally join the chaotics. You may opt to go the other way, but you are considered to have secretly converted. Only clerics of chaos can cast the reversed versions of standard cleric spells and they cannot cast the normal non-reversed spells.

It’s not just an adventure, it’s a job.
Every cleric is a member of a hierarchy of their faith, and must answer to that hierarchy. When a cleric reaches third level they can expect an appointment to a post as a village priest, whereby they will be responsible for maintenance of the local shrine, oversight of the lay members of the faith and officiating at the proper festivals. Reaching sixth level generally leads to further promotion to a bishopric, resulting in either appointment to the leadership of a large urban temple or as a supervisor over a group of village priests.

No double dipping
Miracles are not dime-a-dozen repeatable events and therefore the same spell cannot be memorized twice. That is to say a second level cleric can memorize one cure light wounds and one resist cold, but not two cure lights or two resist colds.

Ordinary People in Extraordinary Circumstances
Character statistics are rolled 3d6 in order. The human classes do not require any stat minimum to qualify, so you can play a stupid Wizard, foolish Cleric, klutzy Thief, or puny Fighter in the dice rolls go that way. If you are unhappy with your character to the point of considering kamikaze attacks, at least get killed as smartly as possible by absorbing some hits that might land on better qualified adventurers. Finally, you can march your character off to the ogre's stew pot if you desire, but wouldn't you rather be playing D&D than holding up the game doing another character?

Random Bonus Languages
The additional languages granted by a high Intelligence score indicate starting languages only. See the [not yet] attached random bonus language charts to determine additional starting languages. Anyone, regardless of Intelligence, may attempt to learn more languages in play.

Fast Equipment
[I plan on using some pre-made adventuring packs for people who don’t want to take the time to buy equipment.]

Shields Shall Be Splintered!
[‘Nuff said.]

Critical Hits & Fumbles
A natural 20 on the ‘to-hit’ roll indicates a potential critical strike. Another 20 on a confirmation roll calls for a percentile roll on the Labyrinth Lord’s Super Secret Critical Hit Chart of Doom. Similarly, a natural 1 indicates a potential fumble, with another roll of 1 confirming, sending the poor character to the Double Secret Probationary Fumble Chart of Wailing, Moaning and Gnashing of Teeth.

It’s All in the Wrist
Two handed weapons only automatically lose initiative when the optional Individual Initiative rules are being used. Which won’t be often.

One Last Breath
Any time a PC runs out of hit points, that character is allowed to make a single d6 roll on the table below. This is at the Labyrinth Lord's discretion, and and the LL is well within his or her right to declare the character dead outright. If the character dies, see rules for replacement PCs below. This table can only be rolled on once per session by a player. If a PC rolls a 6, hops up, and ends up getting whacked again, she's just dead.

1 "He's dead, Jim."
2 "He may never walk again." Character has suffered a brutal and grievous injury and is unconscious. 2d6+12 weeks to heal. Permanent disability, possible limb amputation (up to DM, expect something nasty)
3 "It looks bad.." Character is terribly injured and unconscious. 2d4+9 weeks to heal. Permanent disability. (Up to DM, perhaps loss of 1d4 points from one or more ability score)
4 "I think she'll pull through." At 1 hit point, unconscious. 1d4 weeks to recover. All ability scores at -2 for 1d4 weeks after recovery.
5 "That was a nasty hit.." At 1 hit point, unconscious for 3d4 rounds. -1 to all ability score for 1 week.
6 "And she's up!" Regain 1d4 hit points (count up from 0), no adverse effects*!
*probably

Hi! I’m the new party member!
Replacement PCs will be made just like starting PCs (3d6 in order, 0xp). A new PC can join the party immediately if the player desires. Alternatively, the replacement PC can be designated the heir of the dead PC, and as such is entitled to the old PC’s non-magical treasure (minus a 10% inheritance tax) and one magic item of the player’s choosing. However, the heir can only join the party when it returns to civilization or at the start of the next session, whichever comes first. Heirs must be of the same race as the deceased. As an additional alternative, a replacement may be created in the usual fashion, but begins with half of the XP that the deceased possessed. This is a safety mechanism in case you die and do not have a handy henchman around to promote, and don't want to start over completely.

Every hero needs a sidekick
To avoid the hassles of starting over with 0xp and rolling up a new character in the middle of a game, the players are encouraged to recruit henchmen. Henchmen earn experience at half rate and normally expect a half share of treasure. They are generally loyal and normally the player runs them as secondary characters, though the Labyrinth Lord reserves the right to step in when needed to protect the interests of the NPC proletariat. If a character with a henchman is incapacitated, the player may immediately promote the henchman to full PC status. The new PC may be bumped back down to the ranks of the sidekicks should the original PC be raised from the dead or unpetrified or whatever.

Friends, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Bob’s cleric. What was his name again?
When an adventurer dies and the party is unable (or unwilling!) to have them raised from the dead, a promoted sidekick (see above) may opt to give the corpse a Heroic Sendoff. This requires at least 24 hours and something cool like a bigass funeral pyre, the raising of a burial mound, or a funeral ship floated down the river. The corpse must be armed and armored for combat, as appropriate to the class of the character. Each party member may donate up to 100gp times the level of the stiff as additional grave goods, the amount being spent is converted to bonus XP for the donor. Each party member may also donate one magic item to the grave. Scrolls, potions, and other one-shot items net a bonus of 250xp, while more permanent items get you 1,000xp. Magic items that would have been unusable by the deceased do not count.

You Shall Be Avenged!
Horus, the God of Vengeance, was slain some time after the fall of the long-gone Venuzian Empire. Yet somehow a trace of his power lives on. When a party member dies and the party causing the death is not immediately slain, a fellow party member may try to invoke the Vengeance Oath. Swearing “by the Dead God” that their friend’s death shall not go unpunished, the party member(s) roll d20. On a 1 they are filled with the Horus-Power. They are immediately under the effect of a quest spell (no save), but d6 statistics of their choice are temporarily boosted to 18 until they achieve their vengeance! Promoted sidekicks and heirs can take a Vengeance Oath, but non-heir replacement PCs cannot.

How do you afford your Rock-N-Roll lifestyle?
At the beginning of each session all PCs will be assessed living expenses for themselves and their henchmen, at 1% of their XP in gold pieces, minimum 1gp.

Ale & Wenches
Optionally when paying expenses as per above a PC may opt to ‘live it up’ by spending 1d6x100gp on general debauchery. The amount spent is converted into bonus experience points. However, rolling above your character’s level of experience indicates a roll on the Secret Carousing Mishap Chart. The 1d6 x100gp figure only applies in backwater burgs like the town near the starting dungeon. Should you travel to bigger towns or cities you can roll a larger die when raising hell.

Alternate Monster XP Rules
Each gold piece worth of treasure brought back to civilization still earns you 1 experience point. For defeating monsters will yield 100xp per hit die. That makes low level monsters worth a lot more but high level monsters score fewer points. Also no bonus XP are gained for special abilities, so a four hit die ogre is worth as many XP as a four hit die wraith that drains levels and is impervious to normal weapons. Pick your foes carefully!

Pick a Faith
Cleric’s must belong to one of three religions in the setting. Lawful clerics must choose between the Church of the Great Gold Dragon (a faux medieval Catholic sort of thingy) or the Twelve (a ‘pagan’ type pantheon with a dozen or so gods and goddesses). Chaotic clerics must choose between the Twelve or the Frog Gods (slimy, grinning amphibian demons). Neutral clerics can opt to be priests of the Gold Dragon, the Twelve, or the Frog Gods. There aren’t a bunch of mechanical differences between the three faiths, but it can make a difference when dealing with NPCs. Other PCs are encouraged to pick a religion, even if they aren’t particularly pious.

Dungeons is Dangerous
Ending a session inside a dungeon requires a roll on the Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom. Make sure you get out before the session ends!

Home Is Where the Spellbook Is
Magic-users, elves and other arcane spellcasters are not required to carry spellbooks on their adventures. After six or more hours sleep and a brief period of meditation a wizard is able to realign their neural pathways into the patterns needed to focus spell energy. This allows the caster to recharge the previous day’s load of spells. Studying a spellbook is only required for initial memorization and to change the wizard’s spell selection.

No Double Dipping, Mages either
Memorizing the same spell twice sets up destructive interference in the brain of a wizard. Thus a second level magic-user (who can cast 2 spells per day) may safely memorize sleep and charm person, but not two sleeps or two charms.

Membership Has Its Privileges
Newly minted level 1 magic-users and elves are assumed to have apprenticed in the traditions of the Sorcerer’s Guild of H’Kaag, an ancient city ruled by a council of magic-users. As a benefit of belonging to this long line of wizardly inheritance, new PCs begin play with a spellbook, written in the language of their choice, containing the mystic formulae for all the first, second, and third level spells taught by the Guild (see attached list). However most of these spells are not yet fully understood by fledgling mages of 0xp. The player rolls d6 plus their Intelligence modifier (minimum result 1) to determine how many spells they actually understand well enough to memorize and cast. The rest of the spells in the spellbook are not fully understood and may not be memorized.

Each time a new level is achieved the player may attempt to understand more spells by making an Intelligence roll on a d20. If the roll is under the Intelligence of the character, the spell is completely understood. If the number is higher than the Int score, the spell remains incomprehensible and cannot be used. If the roll exactly equals the Int score the spell is partially understood and may be memorized and used if the character is brave enough. Dice are then thrown only for spells that the character could possibly cast. The player may then pick one additional unknown spell or two partially-understood spells that are now automatically understood by the wizard.

The Alchemist Option
The automatic spell(s) learned upon leveling up assume that the magic-user has been studying spell formulae during the course of gaining the level. Alternately, a wizard may opt to putter around with potions instead. This option costs 2d6 x 500gp in laboratory expenses, paid at the time a new level is gained. The decision to take this option must be made before the dice for cost are thrown and if the magic-user cannot afford the cost what money they have is forfeit and nothing gained by their efforts. If the cash is available, the player must roll lower than their character’s Intelligence on a d20 to gain knowledge of a random potion formula. Potions are created at a rate of money and time set by the Labyrinth Lord, but typically around 500gp and 2 weeks. Roughly 1 in 6 spellbooks include a potion recipe. (And 1 in 12 spellbooks contain miscellaneous useful arcane knowledge.) Elves may not select the alchemist option.

Scrolls for All
Magic-users of any level may make scrolls of any spell they can understand. The cost is 250gp and one week of time per spell level. Up to three spells may be inscribed upon a single scroll. Starting at 9th level the magic-user can roll to understand spells of levels higher than they can cast, which allows them to make scrolls of spells they could not otherwise use. Elves follow the standard scroll creation rules.

Books or Beer?
Magic-users and elves must choose between being studious scholars of the magical arts or carousing with their adventuring buddies. Taking advantage of the Ale & Wenches rule makes the Alchemist Option impossible and cancels the die rolls for comprehending new spells. You still get your automatic spell pick, though.

The Right Weapon for the Job
Player character weapons that are one handed do 1d6 (plus modifier) damage. Two handed weapons do 2d4. Longbows and heavy crossbows do 2d4, other ranged stuff does 1d6.

Ready Team? Go!
Flickering torchlight gleams off of a blade as it spins through the darkness. A sickening crunch from behind you where the Magic User is supposed to be. A terrible cry of agony from off in the darkness ahead. The chaos of battle swirls around you. Let's face it, fighting monsters in a dark dungeon corridor is not a football game. There is no time for a huddle or a time out. Players are strongly encouraged to play their characters, and to strategize with the other characters [instead of with the players]. Combat will be run with brutal efficiency. Don't discuss the fight during the fight, unless your character is taking a moment to yell something over the din of battle.

Draft: We will primarily use party initiative rules. During the party's turn, players will go in order of Dexterity, with the player who has the highest DEX having the option of going first, or holding his action. If he or she holds their action, they may jump in at any point after another players turn. Important note from the rules cyclopedia: "In a round where things are happening simultaneously, every character and monster who chose to attack gets to roll all his attacks. Even if one character's attacks killed an opponent, the opponent gets to roll his attacks because they're taking place simultaneously."

Roll 'em
There is a character generator here. Feel free to use it. Bear in mind though that ability score rolls must be done at the table.


Other tables and awesome stuff that I'm borrowing:

Carousing Mishaps

1) Make a fool of yourself in public. Gain no XP. Roll Charisma check or gain reputation in this town as a drunken lout.
2) Involved in random brawl. Roll Strength check or start adventure d3 hit points short.
3) Minor misunderstanding with local authorities. Roll Charisma check. Success indicates a fine of 2d6 x 25gp. Failure or (inability to pay fine) indicates d6 days in the pokey.
4) Romantic entanglement. Roll Wisdom check to avoid nuptials. Otherwise 1-3 scorned lover, 4-6 angered parents.
5) Gambling losses. Roll the dice as if you caroused again to see how much you lose. (No additional XP for the second carousing roll.)
6) Gain local reputation as the life of a party. Unless a Charisma check is failed, all future carousing in this burg costs double due to barflies and other parasites.
7) Insult local person of rank. A successful Charisma check indicates the personage is amenable to some sort of apology and reparations.
8) You couldn’t really see the rash in the candlelight. Roll Constitution check to avoid venereal disease.
9) New tattoo. 1-3 it’s actually pretty cool 4 it’s lame 5 it could have been badass, but something is goofed up or misspelled 6 it says something insulting, crude or stupid in an unknown language.
10) Beaten and robbed. Lose all your personal effects and reduced to half hit points.
11) Gambling binge. Lose all your gold, gems, jewelry. Roll Wisdom check for each magic item in your possession. Failure indicates it’s gone.
12) Hangover from hell. First day of adventuring is at -2 to-hit and saves. Casters must roll Int check with each spell to avoid mishap.
13) Target of lewd advances turns out to be a witch. Save versus polymorph or you’re literally a swine.
14) One of us! One of us! You’re not sure how it happened, but you’ve been initiated into some sort of secret society or weird cult. Did you really make out with an emu of was that just the drugs? Roll Int check to remember the signs and passes.
15) Invest all your spare cash (50% chance all gems and jewelry, too) in some smooth-tongued merchant’s scheme. 1-4 it’s bogus 5 it’s bogus and Johnny Law thinks you’re in on it 6 actual money making opportunity returns d% profits in 3d4 months.
16) Wake up stark naked in a random local temple. 1-3 the clerics are majorly pissed off 4-6 they smile and thank you for stopping by.
17) Major misunderstanding with local authorities. Imprisoned until fines and bribes totaling d6 x 1,000gp paid. All weapons, armor, and magic items confiscated.
18) Despite your best efforts, you fall head over heels for your latest dalliance. 75% chance your beloved is already married.
19) When in a drunken stupor you asked your god(s) to get you out of some stupid mess. Turns out they heard you! Now as repayment for saving your sorry ass, you’re under the effects of a quest spell.
20) The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire! Accidentally start a conflagration. Roll d6 twice. 1-2 burn down your favorite inn 3-4 some other den of ill repute is reduced to ash 5-6 a big chunk of town goes up in smoke. 1-2 no one knows it was you 3-4 your fellow carousers know you did it 5 someone else knows, perhaps a blackmailer 6 everybody knows.


Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom (d20)

1. You lucky dog! You manage to somehow escape the dark forces of the dungeon. You return to civilization, naked and half-delirious.
2. Waitaminute, Lefty’s not right handed! Situation appears to be #1, but you’ve been replaced by a shapeshifting badguy.
3. Maimed. You escape but suffer the effects of a random critical hit. Also, 50% of your stuff is gone, randomly determined.
4. Alas, you are no more. If any comrades escape they are able to bring your remains and your stuff back to civilization.
5. Pining for the fjords. If any comrades escape they are able to bring your remains back to civilization, but your stuff is lost.
6. Dead as a doornail. The general location of your body is known to any surviving comrades.
7. Your stuff has become part of a dragon’s hoard and your body part of a dragon’s supper.
8. That is an ex-character. The location of your body is unknown to all.
9. Bought the farm. Your body and possessions irretrievable due to dragon fire, ooze acid, disintegrator beam, etc.
10. Also dead. Your body is irretrievable due to dragon fire, ooze acid, disintegrator beam, etc. but your stuff is still around for some other jerk to nab at a later date.
11. Held for ransom by seedy humans. A member of the Thieves Guild can arrange release for 1,000gp per character level. 1 in 6 chance the money disappears.
12. Captured by monsters. Escaping comrades know the level you were captured on and the type of monster holding you captive.
13. Captured by monsters. Escaping comrades know the level you were captured on, but not the type of monster involved.
14. Captured by monsters. Escaping comrades know the type of monster involved, but not what level to search.
15. Captured by monsters. Unseen monsters spirit you away to an unknown location.
16. A fate worse than death. Drafted into the ranks of the monsters. Roll d6: 1-2 undead, 3 lycanthrope, 4 charmed, 5 polymorphed, 6 other.
17. You and your stuff are sacrificed to the loathsome Frog Gods in order to gate in d6 Croaking Demons that are added to the dungeon key.
18. A gorgon or somesuch has petrified you. Escaping characters know what level to search for your statue.
19. Lost in the dungeon. GM sets your location each session. Re-enter play if the party finds you.
20. Opportunity for betrayal. Pick one other character who got away safe. Roll 1d6, 1-4 he takes your place and has to roll on this chart while you escape, 5-6 you both suffer the fate rolled by your victim.

Results 4 through 7 on the chart allow the surviving members of the expedition to swear vengeance against the killer(s), as per the You Shall Be Avenged! rule in the house rules info. Result 3 offers the same option if you make it out of the dungeon only to succumb to some lethal critical hit effect.

Anyone who is captured gets one chance to escape on their own power. The base chance is 1 in 6, increased to 2 in 6 if their character level is higher than the dungeon level of their prison. Treat successful escapes as result ‘1’ on the chart above. If more than one PC is trying to escape, all escape rolls are at 2 in 6 (3 in 6 for higher level characters). If you don’t escape you must be rescued or maybe ransomed. For each session of play that you languish in captivity or wander lost there’s a 1 in 6 chance of some worse fate befalling you.

Messing around with Labyrinth Lord

I'm still worrying over old school D&D. I have a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia, but every time I open it and flip through it, the rules go from pretty simple and basic to crazy 2nd edition AD&D complicated. And part of what has drawn to me to want to fool with 0e is its supposed simplicity, lack of thick volumes of rules, and "rulings, not rules" philosophy.

So I'm cracking open my printed copy of Labyrinth Lord. And I'm going to spin the wheels a little here.

Rolling some scores: 13, 12, 7, 6, 12, 12. I'll do 5 sets, and these are going to be 3d6, going straight down, by the way. 8, 7, 9, 11, 6, 14. 15, 14, 14, 9, 14, 7. 17, 7, 13, 13, 14, 11. 8, 17, 16, 8, 14, 9.

That gives us the following.

STR 13 | 8 | 15 | 17 | 8
DEX 12 | 7 | 14 | 7 | 17
CON 7 | 9 | 14 | 13 | 16
INT 6 | 11 | 9 | 13 | 8
WIS 12 | 6 | 14 | 14 | 14
CHA 12 | 14 | 7 | 11 | 9

Looks like we may be fighter-heavy. Characters are not created equal!

The first dude has a decent strength, and not terrible wisdom, charisma and dex. That makes him a fair fighter, thief, or cleric. With his terrible Con and Int, I'm going tentatively call him a Thief. Even though he won't get an XP bonus with his 12 Dex. If we set him up as a fighter, he'd get a +5% XP bonus. We'll keep that in mind. Meanwhile, meet Tim the Thief.

Dude number two has pretty terrible stats. Fighter is out, thief is out, cleric is out. His Cha isn't bad, and his Int isn't terrible. This might be our magic-user, maybe even an elf. On second though, with his low Str, he'd get an XP penalty, so we'll call him a magic-user. Mike the Magic-User.

Dude three would make a good fighter, or even a cleric or thief. Or dwarf for that matter. Looks like we've got theives and fighters taken care of, so I'm going to call him a cleric. Charlie the Cleric.

Dude four... Yeah, I'm gonna say Dwarf. That +10% XP bonus will rock. Dimili the Dwarf.

And five.. I'm thinking Halfling. His strength kinda sucks, but.... actually, I thought that halflings were thieves, but apparently they're not. They're just.. halflings. Weird. He's gonna be the thief, introducing Thomas the Thief. So that first dude, Tim, is now Frank the Fighter.

Fighter, Cleric, Magic User, Dwarf, Thief. Sounds like a damn well rounded party to me.

Money: Frank gets 90 gold, Charlie 170 gold, Dimili 150, Mark 170 and Thomas 100. (3d8x10)

Eh, I'm getting bogged down trying to buy gear for them, so I'll come back to boring details later.

How about hit points for some first level adventurers?

Frank ends up with 5 (-1 from the 6 I rolled, due to his crummy Con), Charlie rolled a 1!!! But we'll use the option rule and let him reroll on a 1 or 2. He ends up with 5, thanks in part to the +1 from his Con. Dimili also rolled a 2 and will reroll, ending up with 9 hit points, including the +1 from his Con. Mike rolls a 1d4 for his hit points, and perhaps abusing the reroll a bit, finally rolls something not a 1 or 2, and has 4 hit points. Thomas the Thief ends up with a whopping 6 hit points. Kazam!

Letsee, their saving throws and THAC0 and all that are in the book, so I've got that.

Spells. Mike can choose two 1st level spells and a 2nd level spell to have in his spellbook, so he takes Sleep (of course), Charm Person, and Phantasmal Force. Charlie does not have to choose spells, and can pray for any available to his level.

Gee. Assuming we got all of those details worked out, we're pretty much ready to play!

That's it for now, I'll be back with more later on.

Day 31: 4D6

From 365

The gang met up today for our Saturday Dungeons and Dragons game.

In brief, they've been asked by a humble village couple to find their daughter, who was kidnapped by undead servants of a necromancer, and on the very evening of her 16th birthday.

They charged off to the old battlefield cemetery where the necromancer makes his home. They passed through the challenge of the spiked gate, and soon learned the danger of straying from the path through the cemetery. This week, they were set upon first by giant shambling mounds of dead corpses. They destroyed the abominations, and reached the tower of the necromancer. Inside, on the first floor, they got ambushed by a group of undead mastiffs. Rawr!

Oh, and Robert rolled four six-sided dice (4D6) for damage, and got all boxcars (pictured above). We were all impressed with his dice fu.

Day 24: Shadows Over Camelot

John picked up Shadows Over Camelot recently. Various gaming shops had been pimping it to us, going on about its qualities as a coop board game, where most are very competitive.

We played two games over it the other day, which were okay. We played again this evening and all had a blast with it. We worked well together as players and coordinated our efforts, and achieved a narrow, but well deserved victory. It was a blast.

We also got together earlier in the day for some D&D. In a fortuitous turn of events, while Maddie and John are away from the game, my cousin Robert has joined us. We worked together to create a 7th level warlock for him, which took two and a half hours. We got some playing done though, the group of them are off trying to track down a villagers daughter, who's been kidnapped by a necromancer.

Not that its different than any other session, but today, combat felt like it dragged on for. ever. So much so that it made me daydream about converting the whole campaign to 0e.

Finally, as a I ramble my way to a close, I noticed that some of my blog posts and photos are being picked up by the Main Street Journal, a local-to-Memphis print and online publication, which I thought was pretty darn cool. As an added plus, one of their folks is an avid board game nerd, like the rest of my crowd. Woo!


PS Happy Birthday to my sister-in-law, Keshia!

Small update

So I've been pretty quiet on here. Its not because there's nothing going on, but simply because I've been feeling lazy and haven't had the urge to come type on here. It comes and goes, y'know?

In brief:

My D&D game continues to go very well. I'm having a blast with it, even though I've gotten lax again about posting summaries. I'm still very much enjoying 4e. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have any quibbles with it, but we're all having a great time.

I'll hopefully be making somewhat frequent entries on my new other blog here. That blog will be dedicated to all things related to the upcoming addition to our little family. For a variety of reasons, I'm going to have two blogs now, this one, and the one related to baby things. If I was even more scattered, I'd have one for gaming, one for general stuff, and one for baby stuff, but I'm not THAT crazy!

Running: In the tank. I was just hopping onto my training schedule, late, when we got the bad news that Krissi's job was cutting her hours back to 60%, which is a pretty hefty pay cut for us. So we've tightened the belt, and will not be buying a new pair of running shoes this year, or registering for the marathon. Disappointing, for sure, but I'll look forward to next year. Meanwhile, I've been totally off the wagon, and its taking its toll.

I'm sure there is other stuff going on, but nothing comes to mind.

I'll be back when I have more exciting stuff to share!

D&D with your kids

Had this thought the other day after our gaming session.

Role playing games are great fun with children. Some folks shy away from elements like death and heavy violence. D&D is a game about fighting orcs, but it occurred to me that you could tweak it just a little, leave the dashing sword fights and magic battles in, and just cut away the death and maiming aspects.

Simple really: Rename Hit Points to "Bravery Points". This is how brave and courageous you and the bad guys are. When reduced to half, or Bloodied, call it "Shaken" or "Scared". And then when the points are all gone, they drop their sword and flee the battle.

Same is true for the players. If they're reduced to 0, they're going to try to run away. If you wanted to stick close to the mechanics, change the death and dying mechanics to a terrified and fleeing mechanic. Between 0 and negative "Scared" points, they are petrified with fear, and cannot move or attack or act at all, other than making a save. In regular D&D its the stabilizing save, to keep from dying. In Kids D&D, its to keep from running as fast as you can away from the fight. Your other party members can still "heal" you as normal, though everything becomes inspiring or making people brave, or what have you.

The descriptors for everything change. It becomes PG or G rated sword fights, with clashing blades and diving out of the way, and narrow misses.

D&D Session 14: Smoke Signal

This week we had our full set of players, plus one-half. Jeremy's nine year old daughter, Riley, was with us, and will be for the next few weeks. Jeremy and I talked about having her play a full on character in the session, but settled on having her play a critter that was aligned with the party. This let her roll dice in fights, and run up and bite bad guys, and such fun stuff. It was good.

The party is now 5th level. After last week's tough session, I went ahead and bumped them to level 5. They were a little shy of the xp for it, but they more than deserved a reward, and so the xp fairy sprinkled them with enough dust to put them right at 5.

We picked up where we'd left off. They'd killed the bad guys in the bone room, and now they made their plans about which direction to go next. They were all pretty low on resources, having few healing surges left. To my surprise, their dungeon delving instincts were strong, and they decided to go into the chanting room first, as opposed to skipping it and going for the room deeper in the temple.

The threw the doors open and kicked it off. Inside was a lecture room, with a podium and benches, as well as a priest and a dozen and a half acolytes. The acolyte minions were all bunched up, and so they were able to very quickly thin that number down to manageable proportions, while throwing damage at the priest. They made fairly short work of the fight, and then turned their attention back toward the doorway leading deeper into the temple.

They navigated a hallway, bypassed a trap, and then entered into what apparently was the Altar room for the temple. It was a large room with heavy metal grates on the floors near the walls, some large orcish statues bearing heavy bladed axes, an altar, a black robed human, an orcish high priest, and two orc guardsmen. Needless to say, combat was joined. As the party rushed in, being VERY concerned about the 4 large metal orc statues in the room, it quickly became apparent that they were not damaged by the party's attacks. Futhermore, they turned out to be mechanical, when our dragonborn fighter ran past one, it creaked and swiveled and the axe whirled through the air, leaving its mark on the fighter. They hit hard, and the characters adapted to avoid moving into range of the statue's axes. They rushed the dais where the orcs and black robed human awaited. The two orc guardsmen tied up the first few characters, trying to keep them from getting to their bosses. Illgiliant chucked some mighty spells into the room at the bad guys. The orc high priest responded in kind, using a crushing spell against Illgiliant. I rolled a 20, and suddenly our wizard was just a few hit points away from a nap. It was a great fight. The black-robed human used lightning, and pushed people away from him, sometimes into the range of the axe wielding statues, sometimes over that metal grate, through which skeletal hands would reach up and try to hold them and tear at them. The high priest used a skeleton-topped staff to rain damage down on those near him, as well as those closing in. The party fought well, using tactics and calling on all of their powers to bring down their foes, and in the end they were successful.

They looted the dead bad guys, and set about trying to blow up the temple, using the barrels of powder that they'd found before, combined with an accelerant that they found here in the altar room. They also found a letter which stated that they had infiltrated assassins into the Fort on the Red Water to kill its lord commander, hoping to clear the way for a large force of orcs that hoped to raid their communities. Apparently this was an advance strike, as they were assembling a larger army to bring war to the human lands. The party resolved to make their way to the Fort with all haste.

They traveled for a day, until they reached the Fort. They could see, looking down upon the fort and the village near it, that a finger of blue smoke rose from the fort, and that a long line of commoners snaked from the village to the fort. The blue smoke, they knew, was a warning signal. They rode to the fort and gained entry, seeking to speak with its commander, a man named Brightblade. They found him on the walls, overseeing preparations being made for the orcs that they knew were coming. As the party approached and introduced themselves, and began to explain that they believed that Lord Brightblade was in danger, they noticed that many of the nearby soldiers had scarred faces.... [this was the big 'tell', the black cloaked, evil humans back at the temple in the woods all had scarred faces.]

We left off here, and will resume next week, to see how this goes.



I found it very interesting to play with a nine year old at the table. I try to be descriptive, but we've all been playing D&D/rpgs for years, and so its easy to fall into the trap of "Ok, you hit it. 12 damage. Next." With a kid at the table though, I made sure to describe the action, describing how bad guys ducked and dived out of the way, how armor deflected swords, or how she - playing a wolf - was able to run up and grab the bad guys leg in her mouth, and shake her head around. It was fun, and I wish that I had the determination to be a very descriptive DM all of the time.

D&D Session 13: The Bone Room

We skipped a week of D&D, but got together this past weekend to continue.

The party was exploring and fighting their way through this Temple of Orcus that they'd come across in the woods. They made their way down the hallway, checking the doors that they came across. I was doing "find traps?" checks for Andrew, and kept rolling a 2, so he disarmed a couple of traps with his face.

While doing this exploration, the paladin spied some shadows moving, further down the hall, and went to investigate, an orc in dark, silent armor charged her, and combat was joined.

I'll not be too granular, but this was a terrifically fun fight against some orcish semininjas. These guys were 'lurkers', and so they moved a lot, and had special attacks that let them slide the players around. Plus, the three ninja types came at them from two different directions, so in no time at all, the party and the orcs were all mixed up, with the orcs apparently bypassing the armored melee defender types and going for the softer wizard and cleric. The party performed admirably though. One of the orcs would stick a character with his sword, and then begin to drag that character off into the darkness of the hall. This was super fun from a GM perspective. Players are accustomed to bad guys trying to whack them repeatedly with swords, but are less accustomed to bad guys trying to drag them away into the darkness in order to eat them. As I said, it was a good fight, and the players had fun with it, as did the GM.

They did some more exploring, finding some barrels containing a sulfurous powder which they knew could be explosive when combined with another particular chemical, so they resolved to keep an eye out for said chemical. They found a torture chamber and a secret passage, and continued their exploring. Then they entered the Bone Room.

We had a bit of disagreement at the table. The paladin opened a door, and inside was a large room with piles of bone, and a robed orc. She charged into the room. At that point, I asked everyone to roll initiative, and gave the paladin a surprise round to act, but had her beginning from the door that she had opened. She did not like that at all, and did not want to "back up". Instead she wanted to start in the room where she'd run before I called for initiative. So we went with that.

The group charged in, within a round or two, most of the party was in the room, or halfway across it, heading toward this robed orc. But because they were coming from a cramped passage, at least the wizard had not even emerged into the room when the piles of bone shifted, and animated skeletons emerged from them.

They managed to drop the robed orc pretty quickly, and some of the dark light radiating from the skeletons faded, but they advanced. The party was completely scattered, and there were about five skeletons, one of which was a large minotaur skeleton.

Put simply, this was a tough fight, and I think we were all a little concerned about some deaths, or even a Total Party Kill.

Further complicating things, when they entered the room, one of the exits which was closed double doors, had the sound of chanting coming from it. The chanting stopped.. and Andrew's thief went and dropped a bar across the door, right before someone on the other side started trying to open it. This was a good move on their part, since the addition of the chanting whatever on the other side of the door would have made this very difficult combat into something else entirely.

As I said, the party was scattered and disorganized. The skeletons were single minded in their assault, and to make matters worse, they exploded in waves of jagged bones when bloodied and killed.

This became a halting exercise in strategy, trying to defend the softer members of the party, while destroying the skeletons, while trying not to get everyone killed when they exploded. It was pretty brutal. The paladin lost consciousness at least once, and the cleric dropped twice. It was bloody and furious combat. In the end though, the party succeeded.



It is tough to really beat up on the characters. What I mean is that when I know a character is in a bad way, I feel reluctant to continue to beat on him or her. I find myself asking how bad off a character is. I set the expectation in the game that I would not fudge rolls or nerf things. Still, I do want the players and their character to succeed. I don't want to kill off a character. Fortunately, no characters were killed in the running of this session.

D&D Session 12: The Temple Entrance Hall

Previously, the players had followed a secretive wagon train outside of town. The wagons vanished into a forest, which proved to be harboring some orcs. Within the forest was a large building, a Temple to Orcus. They players fought some guards outside, expending a great deal of energy on stealth and silencing the guards before the alarm could be raised.

This week, we entered the temple.

I won't break it down blow-by-blow, but the party moved carefully and quietly through the first chamber, and as they came into the second, they encountered some humans. This was a little bit funny to me, because they players pretty much attacked them right away. I'm not saying that they made the wrong decision here, because they didn't, it was just amusing to see that they didn't really even pause before charging in for blood. The party was already low on resources, so this was probably the last fight that they'd try before trying to find a place to hole up and rest. The noise of the fight however attracted some bad guys from an adjacent area, who came to see what the fuss was, and jumped into the fight. Some of my players grumbled, fearing that I'd set them up for a TPK, but I know the capabilities of the party pretty well. They fought a rather tough fight, and near the end, they saw that there was a lever in the hallway just off of the room that they were in. It seemed as though one of the bad guys might go for the lever right before they killed him. As I said, they were very low on resources, and were now in need of rest ASAP. They were concerned about maintaining the element of surprise, and so they quickly discussed hiding the dead bad guys in a nearby pit trap, resting, and charging back in. As they planned to do this, one of the players said, "I pull the lever."

It was a poor decision, and I told the player that it was. The rest of the players were also upset, as this seemed like a rather shitty thing to do. Some other time I'll do a post about in-game consequences, and the problems that arise when players have different degrees of concern about those consequences.

It turned out not to be a lever that dropped cute puppies into the hall, and instead slammed down iron portcullises, blocking all exits from the room that most of the players were in, and leaving the one lever-tugging player trapped in a hallway by himself, while a gong sounded from deeper inside the temple. Tugging the lever again was completely ineffective, and the thief immediately set out trying to unblock the doors. The portcullises were not only heavy, but also locked in place. The thief disabled the the one that blocked their avenue of escape. The player trapped in the hall (not a thief) wanted to try to get free. With the portcullis locked, he had to try his hand a thievery against the locking mechanism. His prospects began to look dim. Then one of the doorways into the room began to rattle, and the thief rushed to block it. He wanted to use Thievery for this, but I made him use Dungeoneering - this was not a lockpicking scenario, it was a "block the door and portcullis so that the orcs can't get into here" scenario. He was successful. Meanwhile, the character trapped in the hall was still having no luck in getting out of the hall. It was only a matter of time before the hall started filling up with armed guardsmen. The mechanism was tough for the thief to reach, but I was generous, and he rolled well, and they finally managed to free the trapped character. The party split, and hid out in the woods. After resting, they headed back toward the temple where they observed a bunch of guards on the front entrance, and a not-quite-finished wall on the side, that was blocked with boards and had a couple of sentries at it. As they considered how to get back into the temple, there was a stir at the front. A human and an orc addressed forty odd soldiers, and told them that the infiltration of the temple meant that they'd have to speed up their plans, and that they were to go off and leave a skeleton crew at the temple, joining up with the others for the second phase of their operation. The forty marched off, and the players broke into the temple again.

They searched through a few rooms, finding the mutilated bodies of the men who'd driven the wagons here a day or two previous, a letter apparently from the Lathiens addressed to someone at this temple, and bloodstains leading from the dead men into another room. They followed the blood trail and soon found themselves in a kitchen. On a huge cutting table lay some pieces of one of the men, and nearby was a huge orc in a bloody leather apron, stirring a huge stew. He lifted a massive cleaver and the fight was joined. The orc threw one of the players into the fireplace, unfortunately for the orc, it was one of our tieflings, who was not as bothered by the fire as others might have been. They made a huge mess of a kitchen, but killed the orc.

And deeper they go into the temple.

D&D: playing catchup

I've been lax in my posting about my ongoing D&D campaign. I'm lazy.

Sessions 9, 10, and 11 have passed. I'll at least summarize.

In session 9, the party had just left Moore's Creek with a small group of slaves. They were playing impostor as Athurn, a henchman of the Lathien family. They were to get another "package" on their way back to Drugen, which turned out to be a pair of cowled people, one of whom did not speak, the other spoke in a harsh accent. They traveled through the cold night and arrived at Drugen before dawn. Shortly after getting through the gate, Jerry's character, Father Kreuz, who has a particular passion for Orcs, noticed an orc-like smell from these two cowled individuals. With his mace in one hand, he reached over and tugged the hood off of one, and oh hey! an orc! Battle was suddenly joined in the dark and quiet streets of Drugen, and the snow was turned red with blood. The two orcs, one a cleric sort, the other his guard, proved to be tough, but the party dispatched them and took off toward the Lathien estate, with their semi-freed slaves tow, avoiding the town watch. They made it to the Lathien's walled compound, and sought to gain entrance. Employing the Athurn impersonation again, the tried to bluff their way into the compound but were had. In the ensuing fight and flight, some of the slaves that they were escorting were killed, while the two shifty ones escaped into the night.

Afterward, the party decided to try to track down the Orcs, wondering how and why orcs were being arranged to be smuggled into Drugen. They went back to Moore's Creek, fighting a bugbear ambush along the way. They made contact with Velder and started asking their questions. Velder wanted them to help him, in exchange for their information. One of his rivals, Palmer, was bringing gemstones into the town from elsewhere, and Velder wanted to know where they were coming from. The party saw that Palmer had some dealings with mercenary guards of some food warehouses, and so they got jobs with the mercenary company guarding these food warehouses. After a time, they were told that a wagon caravan was leaving in the night, and they were to make sure that it was not followed. They were given very specific instructions to stop along the trail one mile outside of Moore's Creek, and to wait there for two hours to make sure that no one followed, and then to go back to Moore's Creek, and absolutely not to follow the wagons further from there.

Naturally, the party decided to follow the wagons to see where they were headed. They soon saw that the wagons were headed into territory of the Red Hand orcs, some miles away from Moore's Creek. As they followed the wagontrail, they saw the site of an old battlefield. They noticed that there had been recent excavation, and it looked like someone was digging up mass graves, and extracting the bones. While some of the party picked over the excavation sites, the thief scouted ahead along the wagon trail, and where it entered thick woods, he spied some orcish sentries mounted on wargs. Under the cover of darkness, the party decided to stake out the excavation and the road, hiding within the treeline to watch both. Soon a group came out of the woods and onto the battlefield, and began to continue digging and putting bones into hand carts. The thief snuck closer, trying to see whether these were men or orcs, but he was seen by a guard, and he had his answer, half a dozen orcs mounted on wargs charged after him, while some of the diggers dropped their shovels and ran after as well. The party lured them into an impromptu ambush and soon overcame them. After, as night turned to day, they set off into the forest to see where the wagons had gone, and where these orcs had come from. After some distance, they saw ahead a clearing in the forest, and within the clearing, a large structure, still being constructed, but mostly finished. At its front, up some stairs was a large doorway, and before it, some empty wagons and some orc guards, as well as a large bell mounted from a frame with a mallet beside it.

They decided to attack, but wanted to keep the guards from sounding the bell in alarm. They had in their possession a scroll of silence and a scroll of arcane lock. There was a long distance from the cover of the trees up to the orcs and the bell. They formulated a plan to have some of the party, with the livery of the mercenary guards, approach the from the trees while two of the party snuck up from the opposite direction. Once their sneaks were in position to silence the bell and lock the main door, they attacked. Their plan went off well, and the alarm was not raised, as far as they could tell, with the bell silenced. They fought the orcs and overcame them, though one of the orcs proved especially tough. They looted the dead, and prepared to move into this structure, apparently a temple or fortress of Orcus.

Notes:

The players officially named one of their strategies "The Striker Sandwich". They've had a goodly amount of success putting their two strikers onto a single opponent in order to quickly drop that opponent. It is not without its drawbacks though. The strikers are not built to absorb a lot of punishment, and the thief took a short dirt nap while they worked on dropping the toughest of the orcs.

I've noticed a difference between the stats for monsters in the Monster Manual, and monster stats generated via the formula from the DMG, with this monster math cruncher. I've found that I like the stats from the DMG formula better sometimes than the stats in the MM, because sometimes the MM stats seem bizarrely under powered.

The hardest thing about monsters on the fly, instead of straight out of the MM is their powerz. Players and monsters both get to do cool stuff, like big heavy-hitting attacks, or pushing opponents around, or buffing people, etc. And while I say that this is the hardest thing about original monsters, I have been having a great deal of success with simply plagiarizing from the Player Handbook. If I have a level 5 "soldier" monster, I just flip through the fighter powerz in the PHB and start stealing! Sometimes I come up with stuff just on the fly too, which is pretty easy. All I need to know is how many dice of damage its going to do, or how far it can push someone, or what have you. The rest is largely cool effect/flavor text.

Next week, Session 12. We'll see how things going inside the Temple of Orcus.

Overly Complicated

So our most recent game of D&D had some difficulties, which I'll try to deconstruct here.

Since I know that at least two of my players read this, let me first make very clear that I'm not shifting blame to my players, or trying to be especially defensive. I'm just attempting to deconstruct things in the hope that I can work out what happened, why it happened, and how to avoid it or do it right in the future.

The problem, I believe, was that they players got frustrated with the lack of success or progress in their attempts to follow the plot. In a very broad sense, I think that I lost sight of what they were after, and I got way too tangential.

The players are following a thread in the game in which a family called the Lathiens seem to be somehow connected to a wicked cult of Orcus. The players have been trying to follow this down.

So far, they've sortof saved the neck of a fellow who was being hunted by the Lathiens, and they send that guy to Illyes. They discovered that a guy named Athurn was acting on the Lathiens behalf when he kidnapped a farm family. They ended up fighting and ultimately killing Athurn, and then did some sneaky stuff and intercepted a shipment of slaves destined for the Lathiens. They also ended up intercepting two orcs who were apparently being smuggled in to Drugen on the behalf of the Lathiens. However, this was where things got a little difficult. The players tried to sneak/beguile their way into the Lathien compound. As a DM, I had two choices, I could either start saying "yes", or roll dice. I went with rolling dice. Sometimes I like to keep things random, instead of just being the Ultimate Decider in stuff. In this case, the dice were not kind, and their ruse was foiled. The guards were onto them, the players fled, and the guards chased them. They fled from Drugen, and that was where we left off from the previous session.

In the future, I'm going to make a point to have some discussion at the end of a session if I don't have any idea what the players are going to get up to on the next session, so that I can prepare more. Last session, when they'd fled Drugen, we did not do any real discussion after, and so I didn't know what direction they were going to go. I don't feel that this has anything really to do with the problems of this past session, as I don't mind winging it, but I prefer to have some inkling as to which direction the players are headed.

After the session in which they'd fled Drugen, some of the players expressed some concern about having "broken" the adventure. I tried to explain that this is not the case, that they can't break it, cause its not written yet. I get the feeling sometimes that there is some conscious or unconscious reservations on the part of the players about not being on a tightly written adventure. And perhaps that ties in to some of the problems that we run into, or maybe I'm misreading my players. Put more plainly, when I tell my players "You are not on rails. THe story is not written yet. I'm responding to what you're doing.", they tell me something to the effect of "But its a giant sandbox and nothing is happening and we're bored!"

So, in my opinion, the problem was that I'd created plot that was too complicated, or too tangential, or my players are too easily frustrated, or all three.

I analogized that I'd blindfolded them, and placed them inside a home, and told them that there are three exits, and to find their way out. They felt along and found a door, went through it and were in a room, felt around and found another door, and when that door was not the exit, they threw up their hands in frustration. So either there were too many rooms in my analogy house, or they just gave up too quickly. Either way, like I said, I'm not trying to pass blame for a mediocre-at-best game session, instead just puzzle out what went wrong.

So lets assume that my players are blameless, and that I am responsible for fixing the problem. Going with that mindset, I need to simplify my plot and conspiracies, or at least make them more direct and less tangential.

In further detail, what happened previously was that after being chased out of Drugen, the players were still interested in the Orcus/Lathien thread, and figured that they had two routes to pursuing it, one being through the Lathiens, which they were at a loss on. They were completely unsure about how to get at the Lathiens. They figured that they could also pursue it via the orcs. The previous session had them picking up two orcs, that they later battled with in the streets of Drugen. They'd picked up the orcs via Velder (via Athurn, via the Lathiens). They decided to go back to Moore's Creek and talk to Velder and see if they could get onto the track of the orcs. I threw in a fight against some bugbears because, well, it IS D&D. They made it to Moore's Creek and tracked down Velder with only a small amount of trouble. As I recall, Velder was happy to give over some information, but not quite all. The party parted with some cash, and wanted to get in touch with the people that set Velder up with the orcs.

At this point, on a lark, I decided that Velder had some stuff that he needed doing, as opposed to simply wanting to get some cash for his info. Why? I like trying to create a world that lives and breathes around the players. I'm not interested in all of my NPCs simply being "quest givers", and entirely one dimensional. I like to try to give my major NPCs at least a couple of motivations and such. Anyway, I think that this was the beginning of our trouble.

Velder tells the group that one of his rivals in town, Palmer, is getting some gems from somewhere that he is using as payment and such. Velder wants to know where Palmer is getting the gems, and figures that the party isnt associated with his people, and could find out more than his own people can.

The party starts to track Palmer, trying to figure out an 'in'. Palmer goes to a number of warehouses and seems to conduct some business there. Also, Andrew's thief goes and breaks into Palmer's place to do some snooping. He finds a list of names with numbers beside them. One of the names is that of a mercenary company captain. This particular mercenary company guards the food stores for Moore's Creek. After a little more snooping, Andrew and Jason's characters ended up deciding to take jobs with the Merc company, guarding one of the warehouses, hoping to get an 'in'. The shift passed uneventfually, and shortly afterward, we wound down.

Now, without trying to show all my cards, my plan involved a link between Palmer, the gems, the food warehouses and its mercenary guards. The party was doing a fine job of trying to slowly pursue this, and all of their actions were moving them closer toward their goal. However, I think that my players felt that they were just floundering, and that I was letting them flounder.

So, I think that I need to have less convoluted plots. My players aren't stupid. They are however expecting more immediate rewards, I believe. I need to keep things to one or two levels of complication. If all of the cats in town are vanishing, it needs to be because a Nasty Monster is eating them, or it needs to be because a wizards apprentice is snatching them to give to his Nasty Monster, but it does not need to be... a wizards apprentice snatching them because his wizard master blackmails him into doing so because an orcish chief holds mystical power over the wizard and feeds the cats to his Nasty Monster. etc.

I also need to be more careful about getting too tangential. I need to remember that side quests are stand-alone, minor quests that are really pretty much optional. I need to keep my players goals in focus. Their goal in Moore's Creek was to find out how to get to the nasty orcses. Instead, I had them guarding food warehouses in the middle of the night to try to figure out where some gems are coming from. Simpler quests. Everything should work toward the goal, instead of going off in all different directions. I'll cite Lord of the Rings: everything in the books was done with focus on the main goal, that of returning the One Ring to Mount Doom.

So I need to find a balance. Crafting stories and adventures and plots that are memorable, and can hold a few surprises, but not ones that make my someone's brain hurt, or that start to read like the entire set of Robert Jordan books.