Middle School RPG Demo

The Montessori school that my kids attend goes  through middle school (7th/8th grade), and they have a Friday Speaker series, where parents come in and talk about their career or hobby or what have you.  I've been doing one about tabletop role playing games since 2012 or 2013, and its always a lot of fun.  I've learned a few tricks along the way too.

Its a one hour deal, and there are usually about a dozen kids involved.  So the challenge is to run a fun demo game within that time period, and being able to engage that many people.

Some of the kids involved have played tabletop RPGs before, some aren't even certain what a "roleplaying game" is.  Turns out they've all seen Stranger Things, when I mentioned instances of D&D and rpgs in current media.

I brought a stack of game books in order to show folks that there are games for every interest, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, etc, as well as very simple games, like the one-page Laser & Feelings, and the light weight Fate Accelerated, to more complex games like Shadowrun or GURPS.

We quickly get to playing our demo game.   I put a bucket of dice on the table and hand out some character sheets (those sheets, zipped).  They're very simplified, in order to not have to spend much time worrying over mechanics and system.

I've found that what seems to work best is having an engaging initial setup that provides some exciting adventure and lends itself to the party being split up to approach the goal in parallel. This year they had gotten information about the evil wizard Varyx, who was holed up in his skull mountain fortress, working to complete a ritual that would summon armies of undead.  I'd decided to offer a few avenues: they could talk or sneak through a mercenary camp, go through a haunted and forgotten underground tunnel, climb the side of the mountain past the wyvern guardians, or fly on giant eagles through a magical storm and shadow wraiths.  I steer them toward splitting into three groups of four, and deciding how each group wants to approach.

We had one group do the giant eagles and magical storm, one decide to scale the mountain, and one go for the forgotten tunnel.

My overall approach is to start one group, describe their journey, throw some complication or attack at them, ask them  how they're going to deal with it, and then tell them that we'll come back to them.  I then turn to the next group, describe their journey, throw a complication, and leave them  hanging and move to the third group, do the same, before coming back to the first group and asking them how they plan to deal with the problem before them.  It takes a couple of minutes to go around, so usually by the time I get back around to a group, they've had four or five minutes to think about what they want to do, so usually they have a plan.  I let them describe what they want to do, if necessary, try to frame it correctly in scale or scope, and then ask them to roll dice to see what happens.

If they get a full success, I let them narrate what happened, only providing guidance if they seem hesitant or if they get well outside the scope or scale of the roll.  If they roll a failure, I try to make it an interesting complication.  Maybe not a simple failure, but instead a success, but that something unexpected happens -- a cleric tried to blind an approaching wyvern, but rolled a fail.  He and the wyvern were both blind!

I end up going around the table a few times.  For this adventure, I'd basically planned that most of the action would be in the approach to the mountain.  The characters flying on eagles battled against shadow wraiths, and then a particularly strong wind that threatened to blow them out of the sky, and finally against evil henchmen with ballista atop the mountain and an evil cleric.   Those going through the forgotten tunnel had to deal with the ghosts of the miners who had been sealed in centuries ago.  They then had to deal with a huge stretch of booby traps, and finally with a snake infested tunnel up into the mountain.  This group rolled well against the ghosts and booby traps, but had failed roll after failed roll against the snakes.  Finally I narrated the snakes clearing the way, but a snake with glowing eyes caused them to glow red- this was a complication which I was really unsure about, as I was running out of time and needed them to get through the tunnel and into the mountain to finish the game, but it worked out great because when they met back up with the other parties, it turned out the red glow caused the other characters to think that they were evil, and for a moment it was tense, before someone removed their curse.  The party that went up the side of the mountain had to deal with perilous climbing and with wyvern nests.  They had a mix of successes and failures, dispatched a dangerous young wyvern and blinded another, eventually making their way up to the top of the mountain, having to fight through a final dangerous wyvern guardian near the top.

Once they were all through those perilous passages, we were nearly out of time, and I was pretty much out of material, so I narrated them making their way through the skull mountain, had the little bit about the party who glowed red, and then they had to figure out how to get into Varyx's ritual chamber, which they did and rolled some dice.  Again, we were mostly out of time by now, and I'd planned that their confrontation with Varyx would just be a short bit, so they cast a spell to open up a volcano beneath him, which was a mixed success, but it stopped the ritual. Varyx fled, and they had to deal with standing atop a crumbling floor over a volcano.  They cast a teleportation spell to get away, and we were done.

I'm always anxious leading up to those - a bit of performance anxiety, but they always end up going really smoothly and are super fun.

I have an idea about trying to be certain that every player gets enough opportunities for dice rolls that they can get a complete success and narrate the result themselves.  To do this easily, I'd need to mark the players who have already gotten a complete success.  I may grab this set of coins online and give one to each player who gets a complete success, and let them keep the coin.  I have each player also take and keep a dice of their choosing from the big bucket o' dice.

The Sprawl RPG, Episode 1

I was primed to start Blades in the Dark today, but I want to have all of the "for sure" players in attendance for the first game, and one was unavailable.  I'd grabbed a copy of The Sprawl by Hamish Cameron, Ardens Ludere.  It's one of the "Powered by the Apocalypse games", which I'm really very into at the moment.

So we ran The Sprawl instead, and it was pretty terrific.

Jacob and Billy showed up to play.  Billy and I have been trying to get a game together for a year or two, so it was good to make that happen.  Jacob played in my earlier Dungeon World game, and is as into a couple of RPG systems as I am.  These guys come from different RPG backgrounds, Billy has played a lot of D&D for awhile, and Jacob comes from Mouse Guard and Apocalypse world and the like.

We chatted for a few minutes about cyberpunk (neither has played Shadowrun!!), but our time was limited and I wanted to move things swiftly along toward actual play.  I talked a little about how the system works, and then we started to look at characters.  I felt super scattered, and sortof went back and forth about filling out playbooks, and the other early steps.  We made corporations, which we were pretty minimal about - just did names and types, didn't go into any depth about their goals or themes.  We spent a good bit of time on playbooks and moves and such, but I think that's unavoidable, with it being brand new to folks.

As simple as PbtA is, it still does require some system understanding I think, if the choice of moves and cyberwear are to mean anything.

Billy settled on playing a Tech who went by the moniker The Machine, and Jacob took a Hunter called Ritter.

They made some choices about how they'd acquired their cyberware: Ritter screwed someone over to afford his, The Machine is in debt to no one, but his cyber is +unreliable.

With two players, creating Links was a little wonky, but still alright.

And then we moved pretty quickly to play.

To be honest, I was having trouble jumping in.  I just couldn't get comfortable with describing it, and felt really rusty.  I had a really hard time just with the classic "Your phone rings, it's your fixer." And to be honest, the game suggests just jumping right to the interesting bits, and skipping all of the drawn out setup.

Eventually though they Johnson was chatting with Ritter and Machine, and had a job - an extraction - for them.  Again I felt awkward, figuring out how much negotiating to do before we did the move and dice roll.  But again, we soon went to the get the job roll.  They hit in the middle, and got some [intel] from the employer.

Once again I struggled - they had the job, but I wasn't sure how to start on legwork.  The players seem to flounder a touch as well, so I buried my nose in the book for a minute, and then started walking us through what information was already known, and what they needed to know.

The legwork was probably the toughest for me, and I feel like I was really getting too consumed by the mechanics of the game, and wasn't working enough on just running a fun game.

Eventually we sort of found a groove, and some contacts started appearing.  They ended up planning to create a situation by getting their mark to come out to an event that they'd lure him to.  It involved a corporate-world contacted named Dall, who could schedule him for it under the guise of a job offer from a rival corporation.  Dal was happy to help them, but he'd need their help in return.  He had a Russian mobster leaning on him for something, and so our protagonists set off to fix Dal's little issue with Viktor.

Viktor has an office in a run-down strip mall, and they parked nearby to observe.   They watched two guys in cheap suits hang out in a temporary-looking office space, then leave and hop into a car.  Ritter and Machine followed from a distance behind, relying on one of Machine's drones to keep tabs on them.  They took the north highway, which doesn't go to much other than Canada and the Docks.  They ran into a traffic jam, and were considering deploying the heavy combat drone when police started showing up in force, on account of the military cargo that had overturned ahead.  That curbed the violence option.  After a bit, traffic was diverted, and they followed a very long, slow line of cars off of the highway and onto surface streets.

Ritter called on his knowledge of the city streets, and directed them back under the overpass and up a side-street, betting that their target was heading for the Docks.  And sure enough, after a while, the car with the two men from the strip mall came around the corner and pulled up to the ramp, which they blocked - and then the combat drone came out.   Negotiations were swift, and Victor agreed to leave Dal alone for now, but implied that he'd be on the lookout for our protagonists in the future.

In short order, Dal had set them up with the extraction target.  The meeting was planned to go down in a private room at a local club.  Their target believed that it was an interview with a rival corporation, so he showed up without his employer-provided body guards.  Machine parked by the back door, with the combat drone in the back of the truck, while Ritter went in, and waited on the mark.

Soon enough, the mark arrived and made his way to the private room - and immediately set upon by Ritter, in an attempt to quickly subdue him for extraction.

Note to self: be sure to offer to let the player do the narration, since we know what the outcome is already.

In this case, it led to a somewhat epic struggle between Ritter and their target.  It was a brutal fight, that ended up spilling out through the floor-to-ceiling glass, and into the corridor.  But in the end, Ritter had the upper hand, and despite being pretty seriously injured, he carry-dragged the extractee out and toward the back door.

Shortly after the target had entered the club, another car pulled into the back lot and parked near Machine.  The two guys inside were clearly corporate security types, keeping tabs on the mark.   Machine was positioned closely by the back door, but made plans to open up on the security goons with the combat drone in the back.

Ritter was confronted by a security guard in the back hall, but when Ritter produced his pistol, security split, and Ritter made it to the back door -- just in time to hear the clatter of the combat drone's mini-gun opening up on the security guy's vehicle.  They'd armed themselves and were about to go inside when Machine moved to keep them pinned down.

Ritter made it into the vehicle with the target, and they rolled out.  The security guys fired at them ineffectually, and could not follow them.

They contacted their employer and arranged a meet to hand over the target, and the rest of it went off without a hitch.  They did the get paid move, and then we were done.

I did have a great time at this game, but I felt really off my game.  It took me forever to get into the groove of it.

I attribute this to the still seeming-newness of PbtA, and trying to describe cyberpunk setting to folks who didn't have the same experiences with it that I did.

Would I run this again? Fuck yes.  I really had a good time.  I'm about to start a blades in the dark campaign, but will keep The Sprawl handy as stand-by or fill in and such.

That is all.

I haven't gone on at great length about abstract gaming ideas in quite awhile.....

So here goes.

Let’s compare a role playing game to someone telling a story.  When someone is telling a story, they are likely in complete control of the narrative.  They talk, others listen. They dictate what happens in the story.  The audience are just passive observers who have no control at all on what happens or the outcome.  The narrator has complete control over the story and it’s characters.

You could also consider a shared story.  One person might be the primary narrator, and through some means the audience can have some impact on the story itself.  It could be as simple as a binary yay/nay, up/down, and the narrator tunes the story as he or she goes, influenced to some degree by the audience who is now interacting.  The narrator still has complete or near complete control, but has agreed to give the audience some voice in the story.

A more shared story might go round robin, where one person tells some story, and then the next person continues telling the same story.  In this case, each person who is at that moment telling the story is in complete control.  Thus participants have complete control over the story when it is their turn, and no, or little, control when it is someone elses turn.

In a typical D&D style RPG, the GM/Narrator is assumed to have complete control over the story.  The players don’t dictate what happens, the GM does all of that - but the GM might give players a chance to influence the story in small ways, no directly on the story but instead indirectly through their characters.  Thus you find that the players can perform specific actions in the hope of having some limited control over the story.  Their interface to the story is through their characters.

In other, more ‘indie’ style games, you might find an arrangement where the GM is considered to be in primary control of the story, but the players are also given some narrative ability.  The difference in this and the previous D&D example is that in D&D, the players can try to convince someone of something, or to perform some physical feat, or to kill a monster, or save a friend, but that’s the limit of their interaction.  In this indie example, they might still control a character in the story, but they might have the opportunity to have more narrative control - to perhaps change the story itself in some mechanically appropriate way.  The electronic game Scribblenauts comes to mind.  

GM: “Men in armor with swords burst into the room. They seem to be searching for something, or someone…”

Player, exercising narrative control: “They bear the colors and sigil of Duke Harald, and the man leading them is my father!.”

I theorize that a story that lets multiple participants have the control to introduce elements or in some fashion to narrate will be a better story.  When we play, we all aspire to be like an author in some fashion.  But unlike writing, role playing is live - you don’t have the luxury of an editor or rewrites.

Players can gain some level of narrative control - or influence perhaps - when they say to the GM “Hey, I’d like to do so and so in the game.” And the GM says sure, and later incorporates some element of that into the game.  This is just a slightly different way of giving the player some control.

Some systems specifically give the players means to control the story, or rather to move it in directions that they think are interesting.  There are a few systems that allow a player to say “I know that person” when an NPC is introduced.  Thus they can make the story more interesting, and feel/be more involved with the story.  

I experimented with this in a Shadow of Yesterday game.  The party was searching for someone, and had a few clues, and then wanted to go to dice to determine whether they found the person.  Dice rolls are commonly seen as having a binary outcome.  Did you find the person, yes or no.  The players want to find the person, and the GM wants the players to find the person too, but the GM wants they players to have to work for it.  A dice roll is commonly seen as that work.  But what if they dice are unkind, and they say no?  Instead of simply deciding yes or no, let the dice be an arbiter of what’s going on - you could say that a failure results in a twist.  “Did we find uncle Bob?”  If the results are a success, then great - there he is.  Story continues.  If the result is a failure, it does no good for them not to find uncle Bob. The whole story revolves around him, or he’s the next step in the story.  But instead throw in a twist.  Yes, you found uncle Bob, but he’s about to be killed by evil aunt Wilma, or his house is burning down when you pull up in front of it, or he’s just plain dead.  At best, it’s a conflict/encounter that may be interesting, but again has the potential to be show-stopping - what if the party gets TPK’d or the fight doesn’t go as planned?  If you go for heavy twists (bob is dead), you can’t just drop that on your players without a plan for them.  There needs to be a lead - can he be resurrected? Can the information that they needed from him be found some other way?  A twist should be interesting and exciting, rather than frustrating and disappointing.

An interesting story is generally going to be one in which some sort of adversity was overcome.  No one wants to hear a story about how you went to the grocery store - unless you were mugged upon your arrival.  A good story is always going to have at least one conflict.  Two sides who want two different things.  It may not involve violence or war, but it could instead involve some sort of negotiation or compromise.

If you think of stories in terms of RPGs, you can imagine the dice rolling behind any blocking or conflict scene.  Is that door locked, can the party get through it?  Can the party escape from their pursuers?  Can the Duke be convinced to support the claim?  Will the owlbear kill the party?  Can the group find its way through the labyrinth?  Each of these are questions that have the potential for more than one answer.  The door is locked or barred and the party must find another route. What happens when the pursuers catch up to the party?  And so on.

RPGs are still basically a game about storytelling.  The GM is telling a story and the players are helping.  Stories require details.  Details make a story come alive.  Details make a story interesting.  They introduce new elements or possibilities.

Player input and dice rolls are commonly going to be informational or factual.  Informational might be whether they spot a secret door, or pending ambush, or interesting clue.  Factual is whether they were able to succeed or fail at some task. Climbing a wall, riding a horse, killing an orc, convincing a shopkeeper.  There is some logic that insists that informational dice rolling be dispensed with.  

There’s another facet here - and that’s random twists.  Much like the random encounter chart.  Consider that the party is traveling through a dark and sinister looking forest.  A player asks “Do I hear anything, or notice anything suspicious?”  The GM has not intended to drop an encounter here, and can simply say “no”, and move on.  Or the GM can have them roll a dice, the dice roll determines whether there IS in fact something to be encountered.  Random twists can be fun, but they can also distract when there is a story being told.  Some games could be very nearly one random twist after another - but this will result in a disjointed story.

So, what kind of control do the players want?  How do they want to interact with the story?  Do they simply want to be told what’s happening, and try to push buttons to influence the story?  Or do they want more control, and to be able to modify the story in significant ways.

When players create characters, they are making decisions about the kind of game that they want to play, and how they want to play it (and how they want to interact with the world around them, and the game before them).

Most popular RPGs, no matter the genre, boil down to the same effective level of control for the players.  They are provided with opportunities to tweak the story in small ways by the mechanics and by the GM.

Consider that there are already many elements of decision making done by the GM via fiat.  Is there a car on the street? asks a player.  Is the castle gate open?  Do the orcs notice us?  Is the Baroness mad?  All of these could be determined by GM fiat, or a random (or semi-random) dice roll, or even by player input.  “Say yes or roll dice” is a line from Dogs in the Vineyard.  That game encourages a GM to give the players what they want in the story, and if the GM is unsure of the outcome, to go to dice and let the game’s mechanics sort out the answer.

Those of us who are familiar with RPGs oftentimes have learned how to play “correctly”, or the way that we are accustomed to.  People who are new to the game will be interested in exploring how much control they have and what they can accomplish.  

What type of story or game is the GM going for though?  If they are trying to tell a very specific story, then giving the players more control can be problematic for them.  If the Lord of the Rings were taking place in an RPG environment, and the GM had already planned out much of the story, letting the players have more control could derail the story.  The GM wants it to be about the difficult journey to Mordor, fraught with difficulties, and the fate of the Ring and the protagonists.  Player control could send the story spinning off in some other direction though.

The back and forth of player input and GM narration can be configured in a variety of ways.  Consider the question of “How will the party get to Mordor?”  The party can likely choose a variety of paths to get to their destination.  Each choice may result in descriptive and narrative differences, and in conflicts or further decisions.  In an RPG environment, this can be approached either with the “all roads lead to rome” philosophy in which the story still progresses in much the same way.  A better example is perhaps a party in a cave system.  They arrive at a fork in the tunnel and can choose to go left or right.  In some games, the GM may have prepared for each choice, having descriptions and encounters and such ready for either choice.  This requires more work certainly, and leaves the possibility of some of that work going unused.  Another approach is for the GM to let the players make their choice, and to run descriptions and encounters much the same either way.  The hazard here is if somehow both choices are invoked.  “Well we chose the left path, but lets go back and do the right path instead.”   This forces the GM either to make sometimes arbitrary and meta-seeming decisions: “Rocks fall and block your way back.”, or to come up with something for the other choice.  

A common pitfall (or feature, depending on your perspective) for a new GM is giving the players a choice, and having designed their game in such a way that the players are required to make a certain decision.  If the players make a different decision, or ignore the GM’s offer/bait, then the GM is potentially left struggling with something important that was missed.  “The party completely ignored the basement, where they were supposed to find the ghost!”  The simplest answer to this sort of problem is to simply present what you need/want the players to find.  You WANT them to find the ghost in the old house.  If for some reason the ghost needs to be in the basement, then the players need to be guided to the basement, or placed into the basement (the floor collapses, or what have you).  Having a McGuffin that the players need to find can result in a boring search, especially if the players realize that they are trapped in the scene - and even worse if the players don’t know what is required to leave the scene.  

The party finds itself in the old McLauren house.  The GM wants the players to find the ghost of old Ms. McLauren in the basement so that they can get a quest from her and put her to rest.  

That’s the story that the GM has prepared for the night.  The players are initially unaware of the ghost though.  One player says that they want to look for the way out.  The GM is naturally opposed, so has 3 choices.  Say yes, say no, or roll dice.  The GM in this scenario is unlikely to say yes or roll dice, since he wants the players to remain in the scene and find the ghost.  The players may feel frustrated, and try increasingly escalating methods of leaving the house, once they see that they are blocked.  

The doors are all stuck?  Fine, we’ll chop them down.  

Now the GM is forced to start using weird meta devices, or to simply tell the players that they can’t leave, which is still frustrating for many players.  Instead, give the players what they need!  Have the ghost pop right out, or give them a trail of breadcrumbs to the basement.  But remember that players may ignore breadcrumbs - either they fail to notice the trail, or they decide that they’re not interested, or they think that it is unimportant.

Composure as a stat

I've played a few games that have a 'Composure' trait or something similar.   I think more systems should have this.

Think of it this way - most likely your character has a strength score or something along those lines.  This is how the group can all have an idea of how strong the character is, and there's a way to adjudicate what he/she can do.  "I bash the door down" -  not with a four in strength, buddy.

So what about when the group meats a 30 foot tall, fire breathing dragon?   Or is involved in a firefight with bullets whizzing by?    Its super easy, from the comfort of your game table, to declare that Bob the Bad Ass shrugs off care or concern and advances grimly to meet his foe.  We don't get the quiver of fear in our stomach, or the paralyzing terror from having someone else try their best to kill you.

Granted, when we sit down to play these games, we want to be heroic.  And this can still work.  We also want to be ridiculously strong and have awesome abs.

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.

Running AND Dice!

Two birds, one stone.

So I've gotten my fat and lazy ass back into running again. After more than a year "off", I've managed to get back on the bandwagon and started doing some regular running again. At the moment, I'm working on doing four or more instances of 3 miles around the park in our neighborhood. Its an added bonus that Krissi gets Piper out in the stroller to go around, so I have excellent company.

I've also been keeping my gaming bug going, lately with some Play by Post gaming. I'm running a few games, and playing in a couple as well. Most of the games are full, but if you're interested, email me, or create a login on RPOL.net and rMail me at xjermx.

I'm running a Vampire the Masquerade game, and a pair of Horror games, as well as some Houses of the Blooded. I'm also playing in a Labyrinth Lord game, a couple of "free form" games, and a Vampire the Requiem game.

Gaming related annoyances

Awhile back, I posted a question to the too-clever-for-their-own-good gang over at The Forge. Its the place you go to talk about indie games, or how to play games - and I mean 'how to play' them in the snooty Simpson's comic book guy voice.

I asked a simple question, and gave some context.

All of the answers completely ignored the question, and provided tons of feedback about my context.

Let me analogize: Let's say you post on a home repair website, "Hi, I'm replacing the garage door to my home, and I wonder if you would recommend brand A or brand B?"

And you receive some responses:
"Interesting project. Sounds like your home must be aging some. Have you checked to make sure that your roof is not leaking? A leaking roof can really kill your home, it causes all sorts of problems."

"When I'm replacing a garage door, one of the first things that I always do is mow the lawn. Why? Well because an unkempt lawn looks awful, and just drives me nuts!"

"Instead of replacing your garage door, have you considered tearing down your garage? You could convert it into a patio or a nice garden."

I even posted a followup, to point out that no one was really addressing my question, and that the context was just that - context. To which my replies were like this:

"Well, I don't understand why you are not concerned about your roof. Doesn't sound like wise planning to me!"

Gee, imagine that. Someone on the internet needs punching, AGAIN!


Second gripe:
Nit picking over pregenerated characters. I'm running a game with pregens. Thusfar I've had almost no problems, everyone is fine with playing what I've handed them. Except one dude, who wants to nit pick over it, and then when I'm less than willing to start changing stuff (or letting him play characters that are not available), he's not interested. Good riddance.

Players Wanted, Let's Try This Again

I'm either optimistic, or a glutton for punishment. After a less than amazing response to my post about skype gaming, I'm hoping that if I beg a little harder, I'll get a little pity and can get a few people to throw their lot in.

Here's what I'm running:

It's called Digging for Dead Gods.

Its a Call of Cthulhu scenario, but wait - don't draw your conclusions yet. This is not a CoC scenario in which the good guys do some investigating, and then beat up some cultists. This has been referred to as a "blood opera". Its nasty. And you'd be playing bad guys. Sortof. But you know, there's always someone worse - or in this case, something.

So if you're even somewhat interested, please drop me a note. It is a one shot, and I see it taking about 4 hours, but I'm pretty flexible about when we run it, and will try to coordinate in order to get 6 people together at once.

Players Wanted: Online One Shot

I'm looking for people to participate in a one shot skype-style role playing game.

I don't want to give it all away, but it's a horror themed game. We'd play most likely on a weekday evening, around 7pm central time until about 10 or 11 central. I've got six slots available, and its first come, first serve. Though if I can somehow find an even dozen, then its TWO one shot online games.

Serious, I need you. Post in the comments or email me.

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.

Labyrinth Lord

Ran another game of Labyrinth Lord this past weekend. I'd initially hoped to have as many as five people attend, but only Jerry and Jason were able to make it. Still, we played, and had a good time.

My two players each took two characters into the dungeon, plus two retainers that one of Jason's characters had hired, giving us six warm bodies.

In brief format, they went back into the temple, did some more exploring, fought a room full of skeletons, very successfully, I might add, fought some goblins, then fought more goblins, and actually managed to force a bunch of the goblins to drop their weapons and flee, leaving their treasure behind. So there was a goodly bit of treasure and a goodly bit of XP to be had.

The party continued exploring, finding a room with concentric iron circles in the floor, and through an accident later, discovered that it produced a vision in one of the characters, sending that character on a quest for the Iron God to cleanse his temple. Further in the temple, they found an area that produced bazaar illusions and hallucinations. After a bit, they retreated from that section of the temple.

After running a game two weekends in a row, I'm going to have to revert to something a little less frequent. I'm hoping perhaps every other weekend, but we'll see how it goes.

Online Game

Last night I had the pleasure of taking part in an online Labyrinth Lord game, run by James "Jim" Raggi. It was the second game in a limited session run, I was not present for the first.

I kicked the thing off on an crummy note for myself. It was scheduled to begin at 7pm Eastern time, and because I did my very simple time conversion backwards, I thought it was beginning at 8pm Central time. At 5:52 by my clock, my brain suddenly started working correctly, and I realized that I had goofed up. To make matters worse, Piper had been fussy all day, and Krissi was at her wits end. I had just begun to make supper, thinking that I'd be able to do some stuff until 8. So this was a fiasco of my own creation. I nearly bailed on the game, but with my forgiving wife's consent, I sat down and worked on getting hooked up. Yeah - a fiasco at first, I didn't even have skype installed on my PC, and even though I already had stats for my characters, I had not done the rest of the creation process, thinking that I had another two hours to do so.

Finally I got connected with Jim and the players, and after apologizing for running late, and after getting everything lined up and setup, we got going around 6:30 central time.

The game consisted of Jim running us through what I believe is an adventure that he's in the process of testing before publishing. Death Frost Doom. So I won't get into too much specifics. We played with Skype and a chatroom & dice roller via Dragonsfoot.org This seemed to work very well. I've used Skype a little bit before, and it seemed to perform flawlessly for this application. The other players were a great bunch of folks, and I need to get in touch with each of them and thank them for such a great game as well. There were five of us players, myself- playing a thief, Beecham the halfling, Seneva the dwarf, Roland the fighter, and Vander the cleric. (sorry about no link love for Roland or Vander, I don't have links).

The adventure consisted largely of exploration, we didn't have any combat, and the only dice rolling was thievery skill stuff. I loved the exploration, it was thoroughly fun and old school. The tricks were clever- difficult enough to require us to think and plan, but not so difficult that we had no chance to figure out a solution. Jim did a fantastic job, both with creating the adventure, and with running it. The players were awesome as well. Due to an odd sequence of events, there came to be a distrust and suspicion of my character, Cerran the thief. This provided for great role playing, and we all hammed it up immensely.

Sadly, I think that Jim intends for this project to be a very short arc, as in, I think that was it. While our party was not as successful as I'd have liked- the GM gave us a clue and we forgot about it, and it was a rather important clue - we all had a great time. I just feel might sorry for all of the people that live in that region of the world.

Just for the record, I'd totally do one of these again!

MUD Musing

I played on a MUD (a non-graphical, text only Massive Multiplayer Online Game) called Medievia a long time ago. In fact, its partly because of it that I became fast friends with quite a few very cool people. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is my short attention span, I moved on and haven't played on Medievia actively in many many years, aside from very short stints every six months or so.

I got a wild hair a few weeks ago and decided that I wanted to kill text-based monsters for virtual experience points, but that I didn't want to do it on Medievia. So I looked around for a few minutes and settled on trying Aardwolf. Its a pretty cool MUD, large player base, and not overly complicated like some MUDs can be.

I played Aardwolf here and there for a week or two, before getting bored and moving on to other interests. But while I played I made a few observations. Firstly, that the MUD is very well put together, from a player/newbie perspective. I'm not new to MUDs, but this one was new to me, and had a significant number of features that were new to me. The newbie 'walk through' was fantastic. It was informative and helpful, and even scalable - depending on whether you were completely new to MUDs or just new to Aardwolf. The staff and other players all were friendly and helpful. There were lots of little features that really seemed to make the whole thing really shine. One thing that I began to notice after awhile, that seemed to detract from it though, is the quest system. Briefly - to get levels, you kill stuff and get XP, but to get 'wishes', and sweet special items, you need quest points, which you get by running quests and campaigns. Quests are basically "go here and kill this mob" kind of thing, but always with some flavor, and they were fun and not difficult. These wishes and special items were sweet enough though, that quest points (with which to buy them) were a pretty important currency in the game, and not one that was transferable. "Quest grinding" was a major part of life on the MUD. And they're all solo too - at least at the lower levels (I seem to recall some mention that at very high levels, some campaigns were not solo).

One of the things that I did enjoy about Medievia was the way grouping, or forming worked. You and other players got together and killed monsters for XP. The same thing existed on Aardwolf, but the focus on solo questing seemed like a barrier to group play.

So anyway, the moral of the story here is that Aardwolf is a cool MUD, but that grouping at lower levels seems totally nerfed in favor of quest grinding.

Labyrinth Lord Game

I totally do not have the time (or really the energy, even) for the full attention that this deserves, but if I don't post something, it'll get nothing.

So here's my quite short writeup of our Labyrinth Lord (old school D&D) game from this past weekend.

Jerry, Andrew, Jason and I got together. We blazed through character creation, and we continued the trend of letting each run two characters.

The characters were off to plunder the ruins of the Temple of the Iron God, which had been destroyed recently by divine fury. The above ground ruins were just so much gravel and large hunks of rock, so they descended into the temple via the stairs that they found. Inside, they practically ran through the first room, right past a huge statue holding an urn, and through one of the available doorways. A long passage, a right turn, and a doorway. Through the door was a room, and in that room was another doorway. Through *that* doorway, were nine goblins. Battle was joined! They ended up a little over their heads when two of their fighter types charged into the goblin room. Jerry's figher, Richard, took a good hit and was down, even the Last Breath Chart couldn't save him. Jason's fighter was in the room and surrounded, and things were looking grim, when Jerry's elf, Neemon, used his Sleep spell to end the fight. The party had just finished dispatching the sleeping goblins when the door behind them, that they'd come through, burst open and eight more goblins came rushing in (they did not know that there was another guard post in the room just beyond, and upon hearing the sound of combat, the goblins ran around to come in behind the party). Things went from bad to worse when one by one, the good guys dropped. Jason's Cleric hit the ground, but was only unconscious for a few rounds. Jason's Fighter hit the ground next. Despite that the party was slowly killing off the goblins, they were being killed off even faster. Andrew's Thief, the aptly named "Deathly Ill" went to 0 hit points, but excelled on his Last Breath roll, and was back on his feet and still in the fight. It didn't save him from being dropped again though, a few rounds later. Neemon had the same luck, getting nailed, but then springing back to his feet to carry on the fight. Jason's Cleric, who'd dropped unconscious earlier in the fight, got back up, and they finally broke the goblin's nerve, and after dropping one of the goblins, the rest (failed their morale check) and broke and ran.

The party hobbled back to town, where we discussed their future. Due to their wounds, at least one member of the party required 17 weeks of recovery time (!!!!), and since supplies were hard to come by in this far-flung border village, staying there was costly. In fact, the bill came to 300 gold pieces per (living) party member. They'd be having to go back into the Temple just to pay off their hospice expenses. Before venturing back in, they hired a few retainers, a trio of crossbowmen, and a heavy infantryman. So armed and rejuvenated, they headed back into the Temple. They had better luck this time with their exploring, finding that there was a passage through the urn that the large statue held, and so they explored further into the depths of the temple.

We're scheduled for more next week! Good fun!

Come play D&D with us!

Anyone reading this and living in the Memphis area interested in getting together for some old school D&D gaming?

No experience necessary - on the off chance that you read this and are not a gamer nerd, but are interested, that's cool too!

I'm trying to find a few more people to fill out a group that would play occasionally on the weekend.

Reply in the comments if interested!

Monsters and Morality

I think I touched on this subject awhile back, during my D&D 4e game.

This has been on my mind again lately, and I've read or heard a few clever and/or insightful perspectives and thoughts on this subject.

In short, we're taking about killing stuff in your role playing game.

To give us a little more focus, lets talk solely about D&D/fantasy gaming.

Another blogger (if I were less lazy I'd link and credit, but I suck) recently had some similar musings, discussing how "intelligent monsters" in fantasy were largely an invention of Tolkien. Before him, most of the bad guys that Conan and others fought were human in nature. Whatever clever fellow it was that I'm talking about went on to describe that Conan typically did battle with whoever stood in his way and tried to stop him, and we did not really have evil races, the way we do in Tolkien with orcs and such.

Killing orcs and other baddies is a staple of D&D. And in its most simple (pure, if you will) form, there is no morality to it. It just never comes up, from players or the GM. Orcs and goblins and so forth live in dungeons, and its up the adventurers to go in and kill them and take all of their shit.

But as we all grow up, or invest a little more thought into our games, we wonder things like "What do we do with orcish children, or orcish prisoners?". Many a paladin has shuddered and writhed in angst and confusion, trying to justify killing defenseless children, despite his or her Lawful Good alignment.

Another clever fellow suggested that there's no such thing as orcish kids. Orcs, and all other manner of nasty monsters are not mundane biological creatures, the way that humans are. No, they are spawned from the energies produced from murders and rapes and torture hatred and all sorts of other nastiness. They aren't born and raised. They are formed from some nameless and invisible mist, and spring fully-formed and armed, ready to spread hate. In this scenario, there are no monstrous humanoid societies. Bands, maybe. This removes much of the morality from it, nipping it in the bud, so to say. They are, quite simply, evil. And I'm a big fan of this strategy.

You can certainly go far with morality plays in D&D, and have a great time with it, but I think that it depends on what kind of D&D game you and your players are after. Political and religious infighting and such is great territory for shades of gray.

But I think that killing monsters and taking their stuff is easier when you don't have to agonize over it.

'Course, there are whole games devoted to the morality of it all, like Vampire and Sorcerer and such. And I love those too.

(mmmm its nice to blog about gaming and get some of this stuff off of my chest!)

How I'm Ruining Gaming For Myself

I'm being a real jerk to myself.

I loaded up Civilization 4 and started playing. See, I practically grew up playing the Civ line of games. So I'm totally in love with them.

The problem is, I'm gaming the hell out of it. I'm trying to get 110% efficiency, and when something doesn't go the way I want it, I reload the game. And it totally freaking sucks, because instead of enjoying playing Civ, I'm letting myself get frustrated when it doesn't go how I want it to.

*headdesk*

Dominion: The Return of John

Alright folks, John has redeemed himself.

We got Jason involved as well, and played through a rousing game of Dominion, and despite my best efforts to dominate the victory cards, John managed to secure a victory for himself.

Its a great game, and we're looking forward to trying out different card combos.

Hurray for Friday. Zombie walk tonight, woozah!

Dominion: Great Success! (for me, at least)

We played Dominion last night at John's place, and he lost. Terribly.

I'm taunting him openly because I'll gladly allow a rematch. A chance for him to save his dignity, and avoid me taunting him on the internet.

So yeah. Dominion rocked my socks. I love love love simple-yet-deep card games, like this one, and For Sale, and Citadels, and even It's Alive and Guillotine.