I was scheduled to run some D&D on Saturday, but that fell through. It's annoying, because I just have to get through this one game before I can restructure things into a sandbox style where the absence of a player doesn't matter. But that's life as an adult, I'm afraid, and we made the best of it by going to the movies to see Conan.
I've been a Conan fan for a long time, starting with the movies from the early 80s. I still love the first one despite its less than accurate portrayal of the lead character. That Conan may not be much like the one in the stories, but Schwarzenegger is undeniably charismatic in the role and I feel like the atmosphere of movie Hyboria is very cool. I'm not so keen on Conan the Destroyer, but it's still a fun movie despite lacking the thoughtfulness of the original.
From there I moved into the comics, around the time that Roy Thomas returned and pretty much disavowed everything that had happened since he left. (I think he declared that the last decade's worth of comics was a year in Conan's life, and then got back to adapting Robert E. Howard stories.) I'm a big fan of Conan in comics, particularly the 70s stuff and the current Dark Horse run. If you haven't read any, the first volume of Savage Sword of Conan is out there, and is fairly cheap. That's about as good as Conan comics get.
The comics, and most especially the essays Roy Thomas would include in them, got me to read the Howard stories, and those I love. Red Nails and Black Colossus are probably my two favourites, but I've got time for just about all of them. Howard's a great writer.
As for the new movie, on the whole I enjoyed it, and this is entirely based on the performance by Jason Momoa. When he's not on the screen, it's terrible, in the way that all modern swords-and-sorcery movies are. But Momoa has real presence, and is very much recognisable to me as Howard's Conan. And the dude knows how to glower. He's got that look down, where you just know some guy is going to get killed hard.
Of the Conan movies we've had, the modern one has a great Conan, and the old ones has a great Hyboria. It would be nice to mesh the two together at some point. And, of course, I'd love to see an actual Howard story get the treatment. Hour of the Dragon is the one that I think would make the best movie, but Momoa's not old enough to play that Conan. It doesn't even have to be a Howard story, just a good script would do, because I really want to see Momoa have another crack at the role.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Save or Dying! And an Announcement
Okay, first for the announcement. I was looking over my posts just now and I saw that I started blogging my way through the Monster Manual in September last year. That's unacceptable to me, so I'm forcing myself to start up the Ultimate Sandbox again. Expect the posts to start rolling in soon enough.
And now for the game mechanic stuff. Now a lot of the design decisions in later iterations of D&D have come about as a way to make the game less deadly. Or less unfair, depending upon your perspective. Chief amongst the changes the game has undergone is the nerfing of save or die effects. I'm personally ambivalent about the subject; in principle I like that the save or die stuff is there to keep the players on their toes, but I've also seen some characters killed in pretty crappy and unsatisfying circumstances.
There's a simple way to alleviate save or die effects. It only works if you're using the optional death's door rule of death at -10 hit points, but to be honest I never see games being run with out it. Anyway, this is how it goes: if your character is hit with a save or die effect, roll 1d10 and subtract the result from 0. Voila, that's how many hit points your character has left. You might die outright, but it's less likely. I don't think I'd use it in a regular game of D&D, but in something more story-based like the Dragonlance campaign I might put it into practice. It seems like a good rule to me for preserving story flow, for DMs who like that sort of thing (which I do on occasion).
And now for the game mechanic stuff. Now a lot of the design decisions in later iterations of D&D have come about as a way to make the game less deadly. Or less unfair, depending upon your perspective. Chief amongst the changes the game has undergone is the nerfing of save or die effects. I'm personally ambivalent about the subject; in principle I like that the save or die stuff is there to keep the players on their toes, but I've also seen some characters killed in pretty crappy and unsatisfying circumstances.
There's a simple way to alleviate save or die effects. It only works if you're using the optional death's door rule of death at -10 hit points, but to be honest I never see games being run with out it. Anyway, this is how it goes: if your character is hit with a save or die effect, roll 1d10 and subtract the result from 0. Voila, that's how many hit points your character has left. You might die outright, but it's less likely. I don't think I'd use it in a regular game of D&D, but in something more story-based like the Dragonlance campaign I might put it into practice. It seems like a good rule to me for preserving story flow, for DMs who like that sort of thing (which I do on occasion).
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works - Initial Thoughts
Castle Zagyg finally arrived on Monday. I haven't had a lot of time to read it (I have too many comics to read, as well as Grant Morrison's Supergods) but I'm quite impressed with what I've seen on a casual browse.
For those that don't know, Castle Zagyg was released a few years ago by Troll Lord Games, and it was to be the first in a proposed series detailing Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk, the original D&D campaign. Alas, Gary wasn't able to complete the project before he died, and now it's somewhere in publishing limbo, almost certainly never to see the light of day.
For anyone who has been following my presumptuously named Ultimate Sandbox series (on hiatus, not dead!), Castle Zagyg is a vital piece in that campaign. I want to centre the campaign around Castle Greyhawk, and I want to make said castle as authentically Gygaxian/Kuntzian as possible. To that end, Castle Zagyg is the only possible starting point. So when I saw it available as a Buy It Now on EBay I didn't have to think very hard about snapping it up.
A few thoughts. The dungeon map is much sparser than I was expecting. I've studied the various maps of Castle Greyhawk that have appeared on the Internet, and they use every available space on the page. The Castle Zagyg maps (part of which are visible above) are much more spread out. I'm not sure if it betokens a change in the way Gary's game developed, or a desire on his part to make a more commercially appealing product to modern sensibilities, or something else entirely. They're still cool maps, though.
I'm also pleased to see that the book doesn't stray too far from the monsters in OD&D and Supplement I. My initial desire for the campaign is to use only the things that appear in the original D&D booklets, and Castle Zagyg is set up in a way that will let me do that.
I can't wait to really dig into this product, which means that the Ultimate Sandbox posts will probably remain on hiatus for a while longer. (Currently they're being delayed by the fact that I have to prepare for actual gaming, something I haven't had to do in years.) I'm sure I'll post more about The Upper Works in the next month or so, when I find the time to read it.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Castle Zagyg is mine!
Holy shit, I just bought Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works!
I'm stoked. More when it arrives in my hands in a week or so.
I'm stoked. More when it arrives in my hands in a week or so.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
A system for determining starting character level
In my last post I talked about some ideas I had to solve the problem of what level I should introduce new PCs at. I’ve been getting annoyed at the way these guys just show up a out of the blue with no history, not having earned the levels they have. So here’s an example to illustrate the system I’m tinkering with.
Okay, so Jim-Bob’s character was just eaten by a ghast, and it’s time for him to introduce his new character. He decides to play as a fighter named Brorg, a wild hillman from the north. Normally I would have had him start at 4th level (two levels below the lowest level character in the party), but instead I decide to use the system below.
First we determine the maximum level that this character can be. This is easily done, as it’s the same level as the highest level character in the party. In this case, Brorg could potentially begin the game at 6th level.
Next we need to work out the pivotal encounters of Brorg’s adventuring life thus far. There will be one such encounter per level to be gained. Brorg will have five encounters that could possibly raise him to 6th level (he gets level 1 for free).
It’s chart time!
Roll - Encounter Type
1-3 - Combat (CR -1)
4-10 - Combat (Equal CR)
11-13 - Combat (CR +1)
14-15 - Skill Challenge (Easy)
16-18 - Skill Challenge (Medium)
19-20 - Skill Challenge (Difficult)
Brorg rolls on this chart five times and gets the following results: two combats with an opponent one level lower than himself, one combat with an opponent equal to his level, a difficult skill challenge, and a medium skill challenge.
Easy combat:
Brorg has an encounter with an opponent whose Challenge Rating is one lower than his own level. Since he begins at level 1 this isn’t possible, so he’ll have to fight something with a CR of ½. There are 24 such monsters in the 3rd edition Monster Manual, and a random roll gives me the result of a locathah. A weird result for a northern hillman, but such are the vagaries of random tables. Brorg must fight it out with this Locathah, and the table below determines how well he has done.
Result - Reward
PC loses battle - Nothing
PC wins, but has lost over half hit points - 50% chance of level gain or treasure (player’s choice)
PC wins, but is wounded - Level gain, 50% chance of treasure
PC wins without being harmed - level gain and treasure
Brorg wins this combat, and only loses a couple of hit points. He advances to second level, and also has a 50% chance to gain some treasure. The dice favour him, and Brorg gets to roll on Table 3-5: Treasure in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Alas, all he finds is a lowly 500 silver pieces, but it’s better than nothing.
Medium Combat:
Brorg now has an encounter with a creature of a level equal to his own. He’s at level 2 now, and there are 45 monsters of the same level in the Monster Manual. Oh no, it’s a monitor lizard! Hardly the stuff of legend. Brorg has a hard time of it fighting this guy, and gets hammered before taking it down. With only a couple of hit points left, he gets a 50% chance of gaining some benefit. If the roll goes against him, he gains neither treasure nor a level. If the roll goes in his favour, he can choose to either gain a level or roll for treasure. Luckily for Brorg he rolls well, and chooses to advance to third level.
Difficult Skill Challenge:
Brorg has to make a difficult skill challenge, which I am defining as three skill checks of Difficulty Class equal to 20 plus your level (which in this case would be DC 23). We need to randomly determine what skills will be tested. The three I got via random determination were Sleight of Hand, Survival and Craft. It’s up to the DM and player involved to come up with a rationale for the three skills required. The above three to me seem like Brorg went on an arduous quest into the wastelands to recover a treasure and fashion it into a gift for his chieftain. Anyway, Brorg fails the Sleight of Hand and Craft checks, but makes the Survival check. Let’s consult the table below.
Result - Reward
PC fails all three skill checks - Nothing
PC makes one skill check - 50% chance of level gain or treasure (player’s choice)
PC makes two skill checks - Level gain, 50% chance of treasure
PC makes all skill checks - Level gain and treasure
Again, Brorg has a 50% chance of gaining a reward. He makes a bad roll, and is stuck at 3rd level.
Medium Skill Challenge:
I’m defining a medium skill challenge as three skill checks of DC 15 plus your level (in this case 18). Random determination this time gives us these skills: Intimidate, Intimidate, and Concentration. Perhaps Brorg was sent to browbeat some lesser tribes into submission, and had to impress them by firing an arrow while his hair was set on fire. Brorg makes all three challenges, is raised to 4th level, and also gets to roll for some treasure. Given that this is a medium challenge, Brorg rolls on the level equal to his own on the treasure table (3rd level – always roll for treasure before levelling up!). He ends up with 100 gold pieces and a minor magic item: a potion of spider climb.
Easy combat:
Brorg gets another easy combat. Now that he is 4th level, he has to fight something of CR 3. A derro! Alas, the little bugger’s poison use and spell-like abilities do Brorg in, and he loses the battle. No level gain or treasure for him this time.
So that leaves Brorg at 4th level, pretty much where he would have been had I went with my usual method. He does have a little more treasure, and a minor magical item, which is more than I would normally give out; I don’t allow new characters to start with treasure beyond a normal first level character. What he does have now is some background. He’s a hill tribesman, but it might be worth making him from warmer climes given the encounters he had early on. He went on some raids with his fellow tribesmen on a number of locathah settlements. Once proven as a warrior he was sent across a lizard-infested wasteland to get back his clan’s stolen ruby, but he was unable to do so. Still later he was part of an expedition sent to intimidate some villages into servitude, and was forced to beat them in an archery contest while they set his hair on fire to impress them. Later he set out alone for a life of dungeon delving adventure, and deep in the underground he had a disastrous encounter with a derro. After his first setback as a solo adventurer he decides to seek out some companions, and that’s where he comes in to the campaign.
Obviously this system could become unwieldy at higher levels, but by that point the PCs have access to raise dead, so it’s pretty unlikely that it will get used beyond level 8 or 9.
Note that at no point can the character die during this process. The combats involved here are symbolic of the trials the character went through to gain those levels, rather than representing actual combats that he fought.
Okay, so Jim-Bob’s character was just eaten by a ghast, and it’s time for him to introduce his new character. He decides to play as a fighter named Brorg, a wild hillman from the north. Normally I would have had him start at 4th level (two levels below the lowest level character in the party), but instead I decide to use the system below.
First we determine the maximum level that this character can be. This is easily done, as it’s the same level as the highest level character in the party. In this case, Brorg could potentially begin the game at 6th level.
Next we need to work out the pivotal encounters of Brorg’s adventuring life thus far. There will be one such encounter per level to be gained. Brorg will have five encounters that could possibly raise him to 6th level (he gets level 1 for free).
It’s chart time!
Roll - Encounter Type
1-3 - Combat (CR -1)
4-10 - Combat (Equal CR)
11-13 - Combat (CR +1)
14-15 - Skill Challenge (Easy)
16-18 - Skill Challenge (Medium)
19-20 - Skill Challenge (Difficult)
Brorg rolls on this chart five times and gets the following results: two combats with an opponent one level lower than himself, one combat with an opponent equal to his level, a difficult skill challenge, and a medium skill challenge.
Easy combat:
Brorg has an encounter with an opponent whose Challenge Rating is one lower than his own level. Since he begins at level 1 this isn’t possible, so he’ll have to fight something with a CR of ½. There are 24 such monsters in the 3rd edition Monster Manual, and a random roll gives me the result of a locathah. A weird result for a northern hillman, but such are the vagaries of random tables. Brorg must fight it out with this Locathah, and the table below determines how well he has done.
Result - Reward
PC loses battle - Nothing
PC wins, but has lost over half hit points - 50% chance of level gain or treasure (player’s choice)
PC wins, but is wounded - Level gain, 50% chance of treasure
PC wins without being harmed - level gain and treasure
Brorg wins this combat, and only loses a couple of hit points. He advances to second level, and also has a 50% chance to gain some treasure. The dice favour him, and Brorg gets to roll on Table 3-5: Treasure in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Alas, all he finds is a lowly 500 silver pieces, but it’s better than nothing.
Medium Combat:
Brorg now has an encounter with a creature of a level equal to his own. He’s at level 2 now, and there are 45 monsters of the same level in the Monster Manual. Oh no, it’s a monitor lizard! Hardly the stuff of legend. Brorg has a hard time of it fighting this guy, and gets hammered before taking it down. With only a couple of hit points left, he gets a 50% chance of gaining some benefit. If the roll goes against him, he gains neither treasure nor a level. If the roll goes in his favour, he can choose to either gain a level or roll for treasure. Luckily for Brorg he rolls well, and chooses to advance to third level.
Difficult Skill Challenge:
Brorg has to make a difficult skill challenge, which I am defining as three skill checks of Difficulty Class equal to 20 plus your level (which in this case would be DC 23). We need to randomly determine what skills will be tested. The three I got via random determination were Sleight of Hand, Survival and Craft. It’s up to the DM and player involved to come up with a rationale for the three skills required. The above three to me seem like Brorg went on an arduous quest into the wastelands to recover a treasure and fashion it into a gift for his chieftain. Anyway, Brorg fails the Sleight of Hand and Craft checks, but makes the Survival check. Let’s consult the table below.
Result - Reward
PC fails all three skill checks - Nothing
PC makes one skill check - 50% chance of level gain or treasure (player’s choice)
PC makes two skill checks - Level gain, 50% chance of treasure
PC makes all skill checks - Level gain and treasure
Again, Brorg has a 50% chance of gaining a reward. He makes a bad roll, and is stuck at 3rd level.
Medium Skill Challenge:
I’m defining a medium skill challenge as three skill checks of DC 15 plus your level (in this case 18). Random determination this time gives us these skills: Intimidate, Intimidate, and Concentration. Perhaps Brorg was sent to browbeat some lesser tribes into submission, and had to impress them by firing an arrow while his hair was set on fire. Brorg makes all three challenges, is raised to 4th level, and also gets to roll for some treasure. Given that this is a medium challenge, Brorg rolls on the level equal to his own on the treasure table (3rd level – always roll for treasure before levelling up!). He ends up with 100 gold pieces and a minor magic item: a potion of spider climb.
Easy combat:
Brorg gets another easy combat. Now that he is 4th level, he has to fight something of CR 3. A derro! Alas, the little bugger’s poison use and spell-like abilities do Brorg in, and he loses the battle. No level gain or treasure for him this time.
So that leaves Brorg at 4th level, pretty much where he would have been had I went with my usual method. He does have a little more treasure, and a minor magical item, which is more than I would normally give out; I don’t allow new characters to start with treasure beyond a normal first level character. What he does have now is some background. He’s a hill tribesman, but it might be worth making him from warmer climes given the encounters he had early on. He went on some raids with his fellow tribesmen on a number of locathah settlements. Once proven as a warrior he was sent across a lizard-infested wasteland to get back his clan’s stolen ruby, but he was unable to do so. Still later he was part of an expedition sent to intimidate some villages into servitude, and was forced to beat them in an archery contest while they set his hair on fire to impress them. Later he set out alone for a life of dungeon delving adventure, and deep in the underground he had a disastrous encounter with a derro. After his first setback as a solo adventurer he decides to seek out some companions, and that’s where he comes in to the campaign.
Obviously this system could become unwieldy at higher levels, but by that point the PCs have access to raise dead, so it’s pretty unlikely that it will get used beyond level 8 or 9.
Note that at no point can the character die during this process. The combats involved here are symbolic of the trials the character went through to gain those levels, rather than representing actual combats that he fought.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Starting Level for New Characters
I was thinking last night about what level new characters to a campaign should start at. My knee-jerk old-school instinct tells me "Level 1", as my preference really is for characters to be built from the ground up. And while I get the feeling that can work in earlier editions of the game, particularly in sand-box play, I don't think it's a viable option for a 3rd Edition campaign that's mostly plot-driven. Either that first level character is going to die very quickly, or the campaign plot is going grind to a halt while that character is nursed to the higher levels.
My current method is to start a new character at two levels below the lowest level character in the party. This keeps new characters useful, while still a little bit less powerful than everyone else. But I've recently gotten annoyed with the necessity for these mid-level character to just pop up out of nowhere. And as I said above, I don't like starting characters at higher than first level. It's kind of like cheating if you don't play through it.
So I'm thinking of methods that I can use for players to sort of simulate the experience of playing through those low levels. In my younger days I might have contemplated just running the character solo, but time is at a premium now, and besides that there's always a chance that the character could die. Another much quicker method would be a simple chart that determines your character's starting level. Like this:
Roll : Result:
1 Start at Level 1, loser!
2-5 Three levels below the lowest level PC in the party
6-10 Two levels below
11-14 One level below
15-17 Equal to lowest level PC
18-19 Equal to highest level PC
20 One level higher than highest level PC
That gives a greater spread of potential levels, but doesn't really solve the problem I have with these characters springing up out of nowhere with no background.
Here's another thought I had. Get together with the player and hash out the rough background of the character. I generally don't require a background for first level characters, but I always like one for characters of higher level. From this background, work out a number of pivotal moments in the character's life equal to the amount of levels he could start at (for me, this would be equal to the highest level character in the party). For each of these levels, design a simple encounter that represents that moment, possibly a combat or a skill check or even a bit of roleplaying. The result of that encounter determines whether the level was gained, and possibly if the character gets some other benefit like treasure or a magic item. If the encounter is botched the character won't die, but he won't get any benefits either. Play through every encounter, and eventually you'll have a history for that PC and some levels that feel like they've been earned.
This is all pure thought experiment on my part at the moment, as I haven't tried it out yet. And it does require some prep work. But I like the idea, and I might try and work up an example in the next few days to test out.
My current method is to start a new character at two levels below the lowest level character in the party. This keeps new characters useful, while still a little bit less powerful than everyone else. But I've recently gotten annoyed with the necessity for these mid-level character to just pop up out of nowhere. And as I said above, I don't like starting characters at higher than first level. It's kind of like cheating if you don't play through it.
So I'm thinking of methods that I can use for players to sort of simulate the experience of playing through those low levels. In my younger days I might have contemplated just running the character solo, but time is at a premium now, and besides that there's always a chance that the character could die. Another much quicker method would be a simple chart that determines your character's starting level. Like this:
Roll : Result:
1 Start at Level 1, loser!
2-5 Three levels below the lowest level PC in the party
6-10 Two levels below
11-14 One level below
15-17 Equal to lowest level PC
18-19 Equal to highest level PC
20 One level higher than highest level PC
That gives a greater spread of potential levels, but doesn't really solve the problem I have with these characters springing up out of nowhere with no background.
Here's another thought I had. Get together with the player and hash out the rough background of the character. I generally don't require a background for first level characters, but I always like one for characters of higher level. From this background, work out a number of pivotal moments in the character's life equal to the amount of levels he could start at (for me, this would be equal to the highest level character in the party). For each of these levels, design a simple encounter that represents that moment, possibly a combat or a skill check or even a bit of roleplaying. The result of that encounter determines whether the level was gained, and possibly if the character gets some other benefit like treasure or a magic item. If the encounter is botched the character won't die, but he won't get any benefits either. Play through every encounter, and eventually you'll have a history for that PC and some levels that feel like they've been earned.
This is all pure thought experiment on my part at the moment, as I haven't tried it out yet. And it does require some prep work. But I like the idea, and I might try and work up an example in the next few days to test out.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Post-Game Roundup
Finally, after three long years, I have played D&D. It was a good session, though not a great one. It's to be expected after such a long hiatus.
The first thing to note is that I was incredibly rusty and self-conscious. In my old games I was guilty of some amateur dramatics when acting out my NPCs, and it took me a little while until I was comfortable doing that again. It probably didn't help that there were some non-gamers floating around. It took until the first combat for me to get back into the groove. The next session won't be at least for another month, but I suspect that I'll be better next time.
The game itself was supposed to focus on the siege of the PCs' home base by an army of orcs, but we didn't really get that far. (It's always the way; we never get through as much stuff as I'd like to.) While the siege was going on, the players spent most of their time exploring a dungeon full of wonders from a previous age, looking for things that can help them beat the orcs. The first thing they dealt with was a pit to the land of the dead that they had found last session, from which they could summon people back to life. (Read my last post for some of the issues surrounding this.) They submitted their freakishly long list of fifteen characters, and had to defeat a skeletal monster of my own devising to get them back. The catch was that this monster had an extra hit dice for every dead person requested, so I ended up with four characters of level 6-8 against a 20 hit dice monster. They would probably have died, except that I went a bit stupid with the magic items in the last session.
They have what I named an Arcane Warsuit, which is kind of like a small mech with wands mounted on the arms like a gatling gun. I think I got overexcited when designing this thing, because I'd forgotten that it has the capacity to fire meteor swarms, and to cast disintegrate. I don't know what I was thinking. Luckily it's an experimental model, and it's eventually going to explode and mess up whoever is inside it at the time. No such luck this time, but eventually the dice will fall that way if the PCs keep using it. In this game the meteor swarms may have saved them from a TPK, so I don't mind.
So the PCs destroyed the skeletal guardian and resurrected a bunch of guys, including three very high level fighters. Legendary guys like King Peramis I, the First King of Men, and Gwynian Purehand, founder of the order of paladins. I think I managed to succeed in having them not take over the game, but I was helped in that most of the action took place in the dungeon and not during the siege. What did happen was that a lot of my long-standing NPCs got lost in the shuffle, including one guy who I want to make the shift into major antagonist very shortly. I have to remember not to get too caught up in playing the high-level guys.
The majority of the rest of the game involved a lot of the players following clues and deliberating about how to follow them. And I do mean deliberating; I threw them a number of nuggets to help them get where they wanted to go. They did find the Skull of Vecna, a leftover from my 2e campaign, which they may be able to use to raise an undead army. They also found "The Body of the Light", part of my campaign's shattered sun god. This one involved a lot more difficulty, in that it was housed in a series of rooms full of random teleporters, each room with a monster inside it. The result was a lot of bouncing from room to room with characters getting into solo combat. It was fun at first, but eventually the random teleporting got a bit tiresome. It even resulted in the death of the thief, who was unlucky enough to be paralysed by a ghast and eaten alive.
The biggest problem with the game was that I crashed and burned at around midnight. Perhaps it had something to do with me getting up at 7:30 am and looking after three kids all morning. It could just be that I'm three years older than I was the last time I played. But it wasn't just that I got tired; my head was friggin' killing me. I seriously could not think any more. I frequently stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning without any ill-effects, but for some reason D&D just fries my brain. If anyone knows how to head that off, I'd appreciate the help.
The next game should wrap up this whole siege thing. The players have the means in their hands of repelling the invasion already; they could seriously wrap this baby up in about an hour. But I figure that with all of their deliberating and dithering around that will stretch out to a decent session.
The first thing to note is that I was incredibly rusty and self-conscious. In my old games I was guilty of some amateur dramatics when acting out my NPCs, and it took me a little while until I was comfortable doing that again. It probably didn't help that there were some non-gamers floating around. It took until the first combat for me to get back into the groove. The next session won't be at least for another month, but I suspect that I'll be better next time.
The game itself was supposed to focus on the siege of the PCs' home base by an army of orcs, but we didn't really get that far. (It's always the way; we never get through as much stuff as I'd like to.) While the siege was going on, the players spent most of their time exploring a dungeon full of wonders from a previous age, looking for things that can help them beat the orcs. The first thing they dealt with was a pit to the land of the dead that they had found last session, from which they could summon people back to life. (Read my last post for some of the issues surrounding this.) They submitted their freakishly long list of fifteen characters, and had to defeat a skeletal monster of my own devising to get them back. The catch was that this monster had an extra hit dice for every dead person requested, so I ended up with four characters of level 6-8 against a 20 hit dice monster. They would probably have died, except that I went a bit stupid with the magic items in the last session.
They have what I named an Arcane Warsuit, which is kind of like a small mech with wands mounted on the arms like a gatling gun. I think I got overexcited when designing this thing, because I'd forgotten that it has the capacity to fire meteor swarms, and to cast disintegrate. I don't know what I was thinking. Luckily it's an experimental model, and it's eventually going to explode and mess up whoever is inside it at the time. No such luck this time, but eventually the dice will fall that way if the PCs keep using it. In this game the meteor swarms may have saved them from a TPK, so I don't mind.
So the PCs destroyed the skeletal guardian and resurrected a bunch of guys, including three very high level fighters. Legendary guys like King Peramis I, the First King of Men, and Gwynian Purehand, founder of the order of paladins. I think I managed to succeed in having them not take over the game, but I was helped in that most of the action took place in the dungeon and not during the siege. What did happen was that a lot of my long-standing NPCs got lost in the shuffle, including one guy who I want to make the shift into major antagonist very shortly. I have to remember not to get too caught up in playing the high-level guys.
The majority of the rest of the game involved a lot of the players following clues and deliberating about how to follow them. And I do mean deliberating; I threw them a number of nuggets to help them get where they wanted to go. They did find the Skull of Vecna, a leftover from my 2e campaign, which they may be able to use to raise an undead army. They also found "The Body of the Light", part of my campaign's shattered sun god. This one involved a lot more difficulty, in that it was housed in a series of rooms full of random teleporters, each room with a monster inside it. The result was a lot of bouncing from room to room with characters getting into solo combat. It was fun at first, but eventually the random teleporting got a bit tiresome. It even resulted in the death of the thief, who was unlucky enough to be paralysed by a ghast and eaten alive.
The biggest problem with the game was that I crashed and burned at around midnight. Perhaps it had something to do with me getting up at 7:30 am and looking after three kids all morning. It could just be that I'm three years older than I was the last time I played. But it wasn't just that I got tired; my head was friggin' killing me. I seriously could not think any more. I frequently stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning without any ill-effects, but for some reason D&D just fries my brain. If anyone knows how to head that off, I'd appreciate the help.
The next game should wrap up this whole siege thing. The players have the means in their hands of repelling the invasion already; they could seriously wrap this baby up in about an hour. But I figure that with all of their deliberating and dithering around that will stretch out to a decent session.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Status Update
First things first, this blog is not dead. It may be hovering at -9 hit points, but hopefully this post is the bandage needed to save its life. I do intend to continue with my 'Ultimate Sandbox' series, once I get some other pressing tasks out of the way.\
Second thing, if you are playing in my campaign, stop reading now. I mean it!
Now on the subject of D&D, the game I mentioned in the last post, scheduled for May, fell through. Unavoidable circumstances. The good news is that it's been rescheduled for this coming Saturday, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking after a three-year hiatus from the game.
My so-called current campaign is 3rd edition, and the upcoming game is a sort of grand finale for the mini-setting I developed. The world is a post-apocalypse in which the sun has been extinguished, and the PCs are living in a sky-castle that's about to be besieged by an army of orcs riding dragons. So yeah, this is going to be a complicated one, especially when you factor in the dilemma I'm having.
In the last game, the PCs discovered a well from which they can summon the dead back to life. I intended it as a way for them to bring back some extra firepower in the form of some deceased characters and a couple of minor heroes from the recent past. The problem came when the players finally twigged on to the fact that this is world is a continuation of my 2nd edition campaign; armed with that knowledge they had a list of three ancient heroes who by all rights ought to be very high level.
At this point I could very well have refused the request to resurrect these guys. It's not knowledge their PCs should have at all. But I decided to reward them for finally figuring it out, and remembering those ancient heroes that I only ever mentioned in passing. I considered the possibility that at least one of these guys might have died of old age, and would be decrepit and useless when brought back, but looking over my notes I saw that I'd already chronicled the manner of their deaths, so that was a no go.
(For any of you out there wondering why I didn't just change that history to suit my needs, that's something that I don't like to do. Like fudging die rolls, or altering things behind the scenes during a game. As far as I'm concerned the things I have already written are sacrosanct, and I won't knowingly change them for any purpose. Just as I expect my players to be held to the scores on their character sheets, I myself must be held to the notes I have written down as the DM. That's the game part of role-playing game.)
So that leaves me with an adventure designed for 6th level PCs that suddenly has three 16th-18th level NPCs in play, which is not a good situation for me. Luckily I have another ace-in-the-hole in my old notes, in that I have established already that the supreme commander of the orcs is a guy called the Reaver, an immortal orc who was around at the same time as the aforementioned NPCs. I had kept him out of the adventure by saying that he's away besieging the dwarf strongholds, but I can bring him in once his messengers bring him word of what's going on. After all, he's bound to want to come and do battle with his old enemies.
But that presents another problem, and potentially an even bigger one: these high-level character could very well overshadow events. I'm hoping that the fact that I'm aware of the problem will mean that I can head it off. It may even set up an interesting obstacle, having the First King of Men around to muck up the chain of command. But I still plan to have the PCs make the decisions, and they do have a number of very powerful items in play.
The feeling I get as I ponder this game is that it's either going to be the best damn session I've ever run, or a complete and utter train wreck. I'll let you all know next week how it goes.
Second thing, if you are playing in my campaign, stop reading now. I mean it!
Now on the subject of D&D, the game I mentioned in the last post, scheduled for May, fell through. Unavoidable circumstances. The good news is that it's been rescheduled for this coming Saturday, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking after a three-year hiatus from the game.
My so-called current campaign is 3rd edition, and the upcoming game is a sort of grand finale for the mini-setting I developed. The world is a post-apocalypse in which the sun has been extinguished, and the PCs are living in a sky-castle that's about to be besieged by an army of orcs riding dragons. So yeah, this is going to be a complicated one, especially when you factor in the dilemma I'm having.
In the last game, the PCs discovered a well from which they can summon the dead back to life. I intended it as a way for them to bring back some extra firepower in the form of some deceased characters and a couple of minor heroes from the recent past. The problem came when the players finally twigged on to the fact that this is world is a continuation of my 2nd edition campaign; armed with that knowledge they had a list of three ancient heroes who by all rights ought to be very high level.
At this point I could very well have refused the request to resurrect these guys. It's not knowledge their PCs should have at all. But I decided to reward them for finally figuring it out, and remembering those ancient heroes that I only ever mentioned in passing. I considered the possibility that at least one of these guys might have died of old age, and would be decrepit and useless when brought back, but looking over my notes I saw that I'd already chronicled the manner of their deaths, so that was a no go.
(For any of you out there wondering why I didn't just change that history to suit my needs, that's something that I don't like to do. Like fudging die rolls, or altering things behind the scenes during a game. As far as I'm concerned the things I have already written are sacrosanct, and I won't knowingly change them for any purpose. Just as I expect my players to be held to the scores on their character sheets, I myself must be held to the notes I have written down as the DM. That's the game part of role-playing game.)
So that leaves me with an adventure designed for 6th level PCs that suddenly has three 16th-18th level NPCs in play, which is not a good situation for me. Luckily I have another ace-in-the-hole in my old notes, in that I have established already that the supreme commander of the orcs is a guy called the Reaver, an immortal orc who was around at the same time as the aforementioned NPCs. I had kept him out of the adventure by saying that he's away besieging the dwarf strongholds, but I can bring him in once his messengers bring him word of what's going on. After all, he's bound to want to come and do battle with his old enemies.
But that presents another problem, and potentially an even bigger one: these high-level character could very well overshadow events. I'm hoping that the fact that I'm aware of the problem will mean that I can head it off. It may even set up an interesting obstacle, having the First King of Men around to muck up the chain of command. But I still plan to have the PCs make the decisions, and they do have a number of very powerful items in play.
The feeling I get as I ponder this game is that it's either going to be the best damn session I've ever run, or a complete and utter train wreck. I'll let you all know next week how it goes.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
You want the good news or the bad news?
Okay, first the bad news. It's very probable that I won't be posting here as much in the next few weeks. That is a direct result of my good news, and that is that I'm actually going to be gaming again. I've been on a hiatus now for close to three years, which started because of the birth of my son and continued because I could never be bothered to get my group together again. But we've finally managed to organize ourselves, and it looks like I'll have a regular monthly game starting in May. Huzzah!
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
AD&D Monster Manual part 31
Mammoth: Mammoths first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in OD&D Vol. 2, but they get stats here for the first time. They’re pretty much exactly the same as elephants, only with more Hit Dice, and the ability to dish out a lot more damage. Their tusks are worth 1½ times as much as an elephant’s, as well. There are two types of mammoth, woolly and imperial, and I’m shocked that Gary didn’t separate them and give each its own set of stats.
Manticore: Manticores first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. Gary must have really, really liked the way he designed this monster, because the only change he’s made is to give it two extra hit points. (Although now that I think of it, those two extra hit points, taking it from 6+1 to 6+3 Hit Dice, mean that it attacks as a 7 Hit Dice creature, doesn’t it?)
Masher: This monster first appeared in Supplement II. It’s still a gigantic worm-like fish, but statistically it might as well be an entirely new monster. The old version was pretty much exactly like a purple worm, with a poisonous tail and the ability to swallow prey whole. The new masher has neither of these abilities, but it does have poisonous spines that can impale anyone who tries to attack it.
Mastodon: Mastodons first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in OD&D Vol. 2, but they get stats here for the first time. It’s kind of ironic that I was surprised earlier about Gary not making stats for both kinds of mammoth, because the mammoth and the mastodon are almost EXACTLY THE DAMN SAME. I give Gary points for thoroughness, but there's a lot of needless redundancy in the first Monster Manual.
Medusa: This monster first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. It’s been beefed up a little since then. Its Armor Class has improved from 8 to 5, and it has 6 Hit Dice instead of 4. I suppose Gary thought that it was a pretty weak monster with such a bad AC, and I’m inclined to agree with him; even with their eyes shut, PCs aren’t going to have much trouble hitting one. Their petrification gaze attack has now been given a range, but the biggest change here is cosmetic. In OD&D, medusas had the lower body of a snake. Now they are fully humanoid, with legs and all. They're now much more in line with their portrayal in pop culture, but it presents me with a problem. We have weaker mudusas with snake bodies in OD&D, regular medusas with legs in AD&D, and the Greater Medusa in AD&D 2e that has a snake body. Two separate species, perhaps? The two types of snake-bodied medusas could just be younger and older varieties of the same thing. The humanoid variety have to be different somehow. Maybe they're the result of a snake-bodied medusa mating with a human? (Just forget the logistics of the union and roll with it...)
Manticore: Manticores first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. Gary must have really, really liked the way he designed this monster, because the only change he’s made is to give it two extra hit points. (Although now that I think of it, those two extra hit points, taking it from 6+1 to 6+3 Hit Dice, mean that it attacks as a 7 Hit Dice creature, doesn’t it?)
Masher: This monster first appeared in Supplement II. It’s still a gigantic worm-like fish, but statistically it might as well be an entirely new monster. The old version was pretty much exactly like a purple worm, with a poisonous tail and the ability to swallow prey whole. The new masher has neither of these abilities, but it does have poisonous spines that can impale anyone who tries to attack it.
Mastodon: Mastodons first appeared in the wilderness encounter tables in OD&D Vol. 2, but they get stats here for the first time. It’s kind of ironic that I was surprised earlier about Gary not making stats for both kinds of mammoth, because the mammoth and the mastodon are almost EXACTLY THE DAMN SAME. I give Gary points for thoroughness, but there's a lot of needless redundancy in the first Monster Manual.
Medusa: This monster first appeared in OD&D Vol. 2. It’s been beefed up a little since then. Its Armor Class has improved from 8 to 5, and it has 6 Hit Dice instead of 4. I suppose Gary thought that it was a pretty weak monster with such a bad AC, and I’m inclined to agree with him; even with their eyes shut, PCs aren’t going to have much trouble hitting one. Their petrification gaze attack has now been given a range, but the biggest change here is cosmetic. In OD&D, medusas had the lower body of a snake. Now they are fully humanoid, with legs and all. They're now much more in line with their portrayal in pop culture, but it presents me with a problem. We have weaker mudusas with snake bodies in OD&D, regular medusas with legs in AD&D, and the Greater Medusa in AD&D 2e that has a snake body. Two separate species, perhaps? The two types of snake-bodied medusas could just be younger and older varieties of the same thing. The humanoid variety have to be different somehow. Maybe they're the result of a snake-bodied medusa mating with a human? (Just forget the logistics of the union and roll with it...)
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