OK, session 7 had a number of excellent points I wanted to touch on briefly.
First, we had the tracker of doom. The group knew that they only had 10 minutes to rescue the dwarves before Paldemar arrived. Before the game I set up 100 poker chips, one for each round in three colours, 50 green, 30 blue and 20 red. If they rescued the dwarves in the green section they could get away scot free. If they dipped into the blue then they must face Paldemar but at a place of their choosing. If they ended up in the red then they faced him somewhere of my choosing. At any point when they still had chips left if they weren't in combat they could run away leaving the dwarves behind.
The idea was to use it as a tension setter, to see time trickling away and also a way to push people to make decisions quickly. Any hesitation or time wasting would result in lost chips. I also used them for the short rest effect. In general I ignore the 5 minute short rest requirement as being pointless, if its a new scene they get their encounter powers back. In this scenario I charged them 10 chips.
Fortunately for them the group blasted their way through like nothing I have seen before. The first room was cleared quickly and they pushed on into the boss. He didnt prove too tough but the battle against the Sorceress was tense as the group were trying to conserve time and not renewing powers. Morn had his best tanking run yet, surrounded by three enemies and Artemis went all Crouching Tiger dancing on the heads of dwarves.
In the end they cleared the place fairly quickly, still just in the green zone. They could have left easily but Assamber was all for killing Paldemar and grabbing a chance at his legacy item. They decided to ambush him in the room he arrives in, a fairly small and cramped area. The trick with the Hat was inspired and I reduced the number of allies he brought with him as a result.
The battle with Paldemar was about as one sided as I have ever seen. The players are down on a lot of healing surges but he cannot get away from Morn and Azhanti. The Void Spectres reduce the players to at wills but all of Paldemar's powers are Ranged and so provoke an AoO. Assamber also gets him trapped in a Bigby's Icy Hand so he cant even relocate somewhere. One level 9 elite and two level 6 normal mobs go down very fast and Assamber claims his legacy item.
I have given it a potentially broken property so its set as a playtest version at the moment. He can chose an encounter power of his level -10 (minimum 1) and make it an at will. Very strong, possibly too strong, time will tell.
The flight through the caves follows our normal pattern of skill challenge for exploration and the players introduce all sorts of interesting elements. Mushrooom forests, underground rivers, ancient lurking evils and the Bridge of Kazad Dum! Morn has been desperate for his Gandalf moment to break a giant stone bridge with the Hammer and now he finally gets his chance.
I give the system yet another twist. Previosuly I have had one sort of penalty for any failed check on the challenge, I now start introducing different penatlies for different skills. Failed athletics result in tumblin cave ins while failed nature checks has swarms of venemous spiders. It works well and is something I will be using in the future.
I also throw out all of my hang ups about appropriate primary skills. Assamber wants to use history to get the dwarves to remember any hidden or secret ways to home. I say yes but the route passes through an area they once imprisoned some lurking undead monster. We agree, the dice hit the table, he fails and the group are now running for their lives from some undead horror.
The session with the dwarves is primarily just played out with the odd diplomacy check to guage some reactions. I drop various hints about events for the Paragon and Epic tier although it isn't anything I havent mentioned previously on our game message boards.
Overall I would rate this session as one of our best. Next week will I think be better, more game reveals and Artemis and his mother finally have a talk thats been coming for many years!
Showing posts with label Game Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game Theory. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 October 2008
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Session 6: Discussion
So Session 6, how did it go?
Personally I think it was our best session yet with the possible exception of the first. We had lots of interesting bits of character development and interaction together with some highly entertaining and tactical combats. A few key pieces for me:
Azhanti decided to multiclass into Warlock. Mostly this is because he finds the Cleric Utilities wholly underwhelming. He really doesnt need more healing, the group is absolutely dripping with it. The Fey Pact (flavoured to elemental desert spirits) is also very fitting for him. His ultimate goal is to overthrow and ultimately devour his own God and replace him. He is starting to gather allies in the form of disgruntled spirits pushed to the very edge of extinction.
The convincing Udun and the travel through the Badlands was handled as a skill challenge which we have used several times before. I had set up Udun to have some auto success options (offering him food and wine) which Assamber ran with without even realising it. Matt is just a genuinely nice guy and that always come through with his characters. It has created some tension in the past (not KO'ing minions) but its nice to see it pay off occasionally as well.
The section in the Hall was cribbed largely from the Thunderspine Labyrinth module. I have stolen various parts of the setting and the name and added a variety of conflicts between the residents and quests. I also heavily reflavoured a bunch of stuff. I didnt want the Dwarves in charge of the hold so they and the orcs got shifted to various human scum. I also knew something as silly as beard spines would produce only mockery from my group so instead they got little glass vials of acid which worked much better.
The group turned down the chance to help the Tiefling, not really surprising given their feelings on Tieflings. They did decide to take on Rothaars quest to kill his treacherous brother and try to free his people.
The Chewi manouver is one we have used several time before in different games. Its an old one but a classic and the gate guards weren't very bright. Assamber also bluffed like a madman despite not having the skill. The fights throughout the first area were fast and brutal. We had a time limit of 10pm so were motivated but I am continually impressed by the speed of 4e combat, especially for a group not really used to it.
The section in the Great Hall was interesting. Artemis had been scouting ahead and had successfully locked one sleeping guard in his room with some Thievery shennanigans. We have a tendency to introduce stake setting into any game we play and D&D is no different. If he succeeds he gets info on the layout of the upcoming areas. If he fails something bad happens, generally a guard walks in on him or an alarm is raised. His Stealth roll was a 1, miserable failure. He surprised a slave who managed to alert the whole place.
Of course he could have remembered that Udun blessed them when they left allowing each of them one reroll but he didnt...:)
The fight with Rundarr was great fun. Stinking Cloud is very dangerous, as are criticals from magic great axes with the high crit property. Rundar was an elite with 180 HP, he lasted maybe 4 rounds and suffered about three criticals.
We also had our first use of the "stunt point". So far we have had a few people stunting in combat but it can sometimes be difficult, either because different people have different ideas of what should happen or what is cool. I have given each player a "Stunt Point", like an action point. It lets them have a go at some unlikely combat move without an option for sayin "no." It might not work, it might be really difficult, it mgiht be a "yes but" answer but the player gets to choose. They work like action points and encourage players to go for the more dramatic rather than just using a power.
If only Artemis hadnt fluffed his stealth roll the main building might still be blissfully unaware of their presence.
Finally, one of the best things about this session was that we fitted the entire thing into about 4 hours. It didnt flag at any point, everyone got to be invovled and interested even when it wasnt them "on stage" and the pacing was great.
Personally I think it was our best session yet with the possible exception of the first. We had lots of interesting bits of character development and interaction together with some highly entertaining and tactical combats. A few key pieces for me:
Azhanti decided to multiclass into Warlock. Mostly this is because he finds the Cleric Utilities wholly underwhelming. He really doesnt need more healing, the group is absolutely dripping with it. The Fey Pact (flavoured to elemental desert spirits) is also very fitting for him. His ultimate goal is to overthrow and ultimately devour his own God and replace him. He is starting to gather allies in the form of disgruntled spirits pushed to the very edge of extinction.
The convincing Udun and the travel through the Badlands was handled as a skill challenge which we have used several times before. I had set up Udun to have some auto success options (offering him food and wine) which Assamber ran with without even realising it. Matt is just a genuinely nice guy and that always come through with his characters. It has created some tension in the past (not KO'ing minions) but its nice to see it pay off occasionally as well.
The section in the Hall was cribbed largely from the Thunderspine Labyrinth module. I have stolen various parts of the setting and the name and added a variety of conflicts between the residents and quests. I also heavily reflavoured a bunch of stuff. I didnt want the Dwarves in charge of the hold so they and the orcs got shifted to various human scum. I also knew something as silly as beard spines would produce only mockery from my group so instead they got little glass vials of acid which worked much better.
The group turned down the chance to help the Tiefling, not really surprising given their feelings on Tieflings. They did decide to take on Rothaars quest to kill his treacherous brother and try to free his people.
The Chewi manouver is one we have used several time before in different games. Its an old one but a classic and the gate guards weren't very bright. Assamber also bluffed like a madman despite not having the skill. The fights throughout the first area were fast and brutal. We had a time limit of 10pm so were motivated but I am continually impressed by the speed of 4e combat, especially for a group not really used to it.
The section in the Great Hall was interesting. Artemis had been scouting ahead and had successfully locked one sleeping guard in his room with some Thievery shennanigans. We have a tendency to introduce stake setting into any game we play and D&D is no different. If he succeeds he gets info on the layout of the upcoming areas. If he fails something bad happens, generally a guard walks in on him or an alarm is raised. His Stealth roll was a 1, miserable failure. He surprised a slave who managed to alert the whole place.
Of course he could have remembered that Udun blessed them when they left allowing each of them one reroll but he didnt...:)
The fight with Rundarr was great fun. Stinking Cloud is very dangerous, as are criticals from magic great axes with the high crit property. Rundar was an elite with 180 HP, he lasted maybe 4 rounds and suffered about three criticals.
We also had our first use of the "stunt point". So far we have had a few people stunting in combat but it can sometimes be difficult, either because different people have different ideas of what should happen or what is cool. I have given each player a "Stunt Point", like an action point. It lets them have a go at some unlikely combat move without an option for sayin "no." It might not work, it might be really difficult, it mgiht be a "yes but" answer but the player gets to choose. They work like action points and encourage players to go for the more dramatic rather than just using a power.
If only Artemis hadnt fluffed his stealth roll the main building might still be blissfully unaware of their presence.
Finally, one of the best things about this session was that we fitted the entire thing into about 4 hours. It didnt flag at any point, everyone got to be invovled and interested even when it wasnt them "on stage" and the pacing was great.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Session 5: Experiences
OK, another session down, another chance to look at how the game ran and what lessons were learned.
The focus for this session was on Artemis again. He has a lot of plot hooks in his background and they are coming to the fore quite strongly. We got to meet a lot of his Clan members and some of them were rather strange. I need to remember not to overplay some npc's. The Shaman in particular probably ended up coming acorss as more kooky than creepy. I was particularly pleased to see him develop in this session and to see more of Azhanti coming out in his chat with the Witch.
The trip into the underways of the mountain went quite well. Assamber put his recently acquired brew potion ritual to good use in creating a poison detector (I dont bother with cash costs of rituals, making them more of a plot device). I again ran it as a skill challenge to find where they were going with the players describing the results of succees and I failures.
When I have done this before I have had failures result in an encounter of some sort. I didnt really want to bog this session down with inconsequential encounters so I planned to simply narrate their failures. They might flee from a nest of shadowhunter bats or get swept away by an underground river. The penalty for failure was loss of a healing surge. There were raised eyebrows around the table and a bit of sputtering but I reminded them of the power of the Viking Hat and they simmered down.
In the end I think it worked quite well and the players seemed to accept the idea. I wonder what they would have thought of the penalty for failing the challenge (arriving at the pumping station, losing 2 surges, expending a daily power of their choice and then getting surprised by the enemy).
The second part of the game was very cool. The group got to fight their first dragon in an ancient crumbling temple. Artemis pushing the Chieftain to join them did give me pause for thought even though I had introduced the idea with Isaac wanting to murder his Uncle. I had prepared some stats for them to join the fight but reconsidered at a late stage and had the npc's explore a different part of the temple. Fights can be complicated enough without adding in a bunch of npc's even if I did try and palm them off on the players at first.
I didnt bother to lay out the area befroehand, I simply dropped all of the temple tiles from that set onto the board and allowed everyone (including me) to lay down five tiles in order. When we had the map I also gave the players a list of special areas, hazards, pits, strange altars etc to add. I got to add one element for each they added. There were beneficial and harmful options and, classic for my group, they added a bunch of stuff to make life more difficult for them.
I have talked before about how wary I am of solo encounters and this was one against a level 5 solo dragon modelled on the young Black and Blue dragons in the MM. 260 HP, high defences and decent damage output had me slightly concerned, especially as it is an undersized group. Good use of tactics made the battle much easier than I thought it would be as the group hid in a narrow corridor where it couldnt get at the back lines.
Taking my cue from one of the players I had the dragon retreat and seal the corridor. The players got to recover their encounter powers but their daily effects ended and the dragon got to recover some HP and its powers. They came back at it hard and fast in a much more open environment and we played chase the god damn nippy Ranger until it went down. Splitting the fight up like this really made it feel much less like a padded sumo fight. Next week I am going to give waves of monsters a try and see how that works (I can hear the MMO comparisons already).
One thing that is becoming very apparent is that daily powers need some setting up before you use them or they become way too unreliable. That's tricky at level 5 in a 4 man group when you dont get a lot of bonuses to attack rolls. It may improve as they get more powers but in the meantime I may start throwing a larger number of slightly lower level monsters at them. That might also let Assamber feel that he is more than just a minion clearing machine.
The focus for this session was on Artemis again. He has a lot of plot hooks in his background and they are coming to the fore quite strongly. We got to meet a lot of his Clan members and some of them were rather strange. I need to remember not to overplay some npc's. The Shaman in particular probably ended up coming acorss as more kooky than creepy. I was particularly pleased to see him develop in this session and to see more of Azhanti coming out in his chat with the Witch.
The trip into the underways of the mountain went quite well. Assamber put his recently acquired brew potion ritual to good use in creating a poison detector (I dont bother with cash costs of rituals, making them more of a plot device). I again ran it as a skill challenge to find where they were going with the players describing the results of succees and I failures.
When I have done this before I have had failures result in an encounter of some sort. I didnt really want to bog this session down with inconsequential encounters so I planned to simply narrate their failures. They might flee from a nest of shadowhunter bats or get swept away by an underground river. The penalty for failure was loss of a healing surge. There were raised eyebrows around the table and a bit of sputtering but I reminded them of the power of the Viking Hat and they simmered down.
In the end I think it worked quite well and the players seemed to accept the idea. I wonder what they would have thought of the penalty for failing the challenge (arriving at the pumping station, losing 2 surges, expending a daily power of their choice and then getting surprised by the enemy).
The second part of the game was very cool. The group got to fight their first dragon in an ancient crumbling temple. Artemis pushing the Chieftain to join them did give me pause for thought even though I had introduced the idea with Isaac wanting to murder his Uncle. I had prepared some stats for them to join the fight but reconsidered at a late stage and had the npc's explore a different part of the temple. Fights can be complicated enough without adding in a bunch of npc's even if I did try and palm them off on the players at first.
I didnt bother to lay out the area befroehand, I simply dropped all of the temple tiles from that set onto the board and allowed everyone (including me) to lay down five tiles in order. When we had the map I also gave the players a list of special areas, hazards, pits, strange altars etc to add. I got to add one element for each they added. There were beneficial and harmful options and, classic for my group, they added a bunch of stuff to make life more difficult for them.
I have talked before about how wary I am of solo encounters and this was one against a level 5 solo dragon modelled on the young Black and Blue dragons in the MM. 260 HP, high defences and decent damage output had me slightly concerned, especially as it is an undersized group. Good use of tactics made the battle much easier than I thought it would be as the group hid in a narrow corridor where it couldnt get at the back lines.
Taking my cue from one of the players I had the dragon retreat and seal the corridor. The players got to recover their encounter powers but their daily effects ended and the dragon got to recover some HP and its powers. They came back at it hard and fast in a much more open environment and we played chase the god damn nippy Ranger until it went down. Splitting the fight up like this really made it feel much less like a padded sumo fight. Next week I am going to give waves of monsters a try and see how that works (I can hear the MMO comparisons already).
One thing that is becoming very apparent is that daily powers need some setting up before you use them or they become way too unreliable. That's tricky at level 5 in a 4 man group when you dont get a lot of bonuses to attack rolls. It may improve as they get more powers but in the meantime I may start throwing a larger number of slightly lower level monsters at them. That might also let Assamber feel that he is more than just a minion clearing machine.
Monday, 8 September 2008
Session 4: Discussion
Key things we had happen this session.
The group got some much needed time to talk things out about why they are here and why they are fighting for the Rebellion. Morn revealed himself as Luke Skywalker (although a rather more brutal one), Assamber as a man with way too soft a heart for our Conanesque world and Artemis as a man only interested in revenge against the man who raped his mother. The fact that Artemis sold out Kyia, Morns love/lust/owner pushed things into stark relief, player on player action ahoy!.
We also got to see a lot more of Azhanti this session who took off to his home to talk to his mentor. This nicely revealed his dreams of a jack booted Dragonborn empire ruling over fractious and divided humans too busy fighting each other to stop them. Also, if his god is alive he fully intends to kill him to take his power!
For the meeting with the Rebellion I originally planned this as a skill challenge with the group trying to sway the different elements of the rebel leadership into the direction they wanted them to go. I abandoned this fairly early on when it was obvious people were generally leaning in the same direction. This was my fault, I should have put the leaders more strongly in opposition to each other which would have helped push things.
Decisions having been made the meeting broke up and we got our major fight of the evening. The daughter of the rebel leader was revealed as a fake and the group decided to take her down. Unfortunately she was controlling her "father" so they had both of them and the household guard to deal with.
At the start of this fight I activated the death flag. As a group we generally only do death by agreement between GM and player. When we began this campaign I raised the issue of non consensual death and the possibility of flagging certain fights as "death on." I did this here which, with hindsight, was a bad idea. The battle simply wasn't important enough to engage it and it had certain unintended consequences.
Things were tough. The daughter could fly and had access to a number of powerful magical effects, including Flaming Sphere, Blur, Wall of Fire and Mesmeric Hold (thats level 1, 9, 10 and 13 Wizard dailys). Mesmeric Hold had a recharge although it never came up. I gave her Flaming Sphere at will so she could make multiple attacks (necessary as an elite). Unfortunately she only got one out during the fight but it was very effective. One thing I did learn is that Wall of Fire is brutal especially when the two level 6 elites both have immobilising effects.
Azhanti went down as did Morn. Morn got pulled out of the fire before dying but Azhanti didnt. As they piled on the damage things looked bleak for my little succubus. She was down to a dozen or so HP and Artmis pulled out crit number 3 on her, 40+ damage in one hit. This left me with a difficult choice I knew it was possible that Azhanti would die on the next round but Nabonidus also had an ability to take a hit for an adjacent ally. I could "forget" about his ability and let Artemis have his dramatic moment or ramp up the tension even more and stress the brutal nature of the setting.
I chose option 2.
Nabonidus takes the hit, the succubus flees escaping into the night and Azhanti dies. Feeling a little guilty I give him the second chance. He is dying in a City which houses the spirit of his God in the nearby Plaza. His presence has stirred that spirit to wakefullness. I ask him if he has the will to live. If he does he gets a second chance but his God lays a geas on him (this is the God he wants to kill and replace!).
After the session one of the players notices I got Wall of Fire wrong. It doesnt do its damage when it first appears, only when you start your turn or move into it. Azhanti would still have gone down but wouldn't have died. I give the player the choice, he gets a dramatic edit and he was just badly burned rather than dying or we stick with what we have. I wonder which one he will take.
The group got some much needed time to talk things out about why they are here and why they are fighting for the Rebellion. Morn revealed himself as Luke Skywalker (although a rather more brutal one), Assamber as a man with way too soft a heart for our Conanesque world and Artemis as a man only interested in revenge against the man who raped his mother. The fact that Artemis sold out Kyia, Morns love/lust/owner pushed things into stark relief, player on player action ahoy!.
We also got to see a lot more of Azhanti this session who took off to his home to talk to his mentor. This nicely revealed his dreams of a jack booted Dragonborn empire ruling over fractious and divided humans too busy fighting each other to stop them. Also, if his god is alive he fully intends to kill him to take his power!
For the meeting with the Rebellion I originally planned this as a skill challenge with the group trying to sway the different elements of the rebel leadership into the direction they wanted them to go. I abandoned this fairly early on when it was obvious people were generally leaning in the same direction. This was my fault, I should have put the leaders more strongly in opposition to each other which would have helped push things.
Decisions having been made the meeting broke up and we got our major fight of the evening. The daughter of the rebel leader was revealed as a fake and the group decided to take her down. Unfortunately she was controlling her "father" so they had both of them and the household guard to deal with.
At the start of this fight I activated the death flag. As a group we generally only do death by agreement between GM and player. When we began this campaign I raised the issue of non consensual death and the possibility of flagging certain fights as "death on." I did this here which, with hindsight, was a bad idea. The battle simply wasn't important enough to engage it and it had certain unintended consequences.
Things were tough. The daughter could fly and had access to a number of powerful magical effects, including Flaming Sphere, Blur, Wall of Fire and Mesmeric Hold (thats level 1, 9, 10 and 13 Wizard dailys). Mesmeric Hold had a recharge although it never came up. I gave her Flaming Sphere at will so she could make multiple attacks (necessary as an elite). Unfortunately she only got one out during the fight but it was very effective. One thing I did learn is that Wall of Fire is brutal especially when the two level 6 elites both have immobilising effects.
Azhanti went down as did Morn. Morn got pulled out of the fire before dying but Azhanti didnt. As they piled on the damage things looked bleak for my little succubus. She was down to a dozen or so HP and Artmis pulled out crit number 3 on her, 40+ damage in one hit. This left me with a difficult choice I knew it was possible that Azhanti would die on the next round but Nabonidus also had an ability to take a hit for an adjacent ally. I could "forget" about his ability and let Artemis have his dramatic moment or ramp up the tension even more and stress the brutal nature of the setting.
I chose option 2.
Nabonidus takes the hit, the succubus flees escaping into the night and Azhanti dies. Feeling a little guilty I give him the second chance. He is dying in a City which houses the spirit of his God in the nearby Plaza. His presence has stirred that spirit to wakefullness. I ask him if he has the will to live. If he does he gets a second chance but his God lays a geas on him (this is the God he wants to kill and replace!).
After the session one of the players notices I got Wall of Fire wrong. It doesnt do its damage when it first appears, only when you start your turn or move into it. Azhanti would still have gone down but wouldn't have died. I give the player the choice, he gets a dramatic edit and he was just badly burned rather than dying or we stick with what we have. I wonder which one he will take.
Saturday, 9 August 2008
Session 2: Bringing the Awesome
Its a well known fact that sequels rarely match the hype of their predecessors (and Empire still doesnt count, Return was better!). This I think can equally well apply to gaming sessions. A great starting session leads to higher expectations for subsequent sessions which can be hard to deliver on.
We play Session 2 tomorrow so I get to test that theory. Session 1 worked in part because it was (a) new, (b) very linear (c) massively over prepared and (d) had lots of enthusiasm behind it. Session 2 has (d), to a lesser extent (a) (newness wears off fast) and much less of (c). It also has almost no (b). I have various events which the players can get involved in but its entirely up to them what they do and I have been actively soliciting ideas from them for scenes they would like. I plan to adopt a PTA lite approach of giving each player (and me) the chance to set a scene and see where that takes us.
This means I have sketched out some outlines for various possible scenes, knocked together some stats for possible encounters (reusing some of the stuff we missed from Session 1) and am trying to second guess like crazy just what the players might decide to do.
I am also left wondering a little whether this is really necessary. My players seem inclined to accept a fair amount of viking hatedness (unusual for us) but I cant bring myself to do it. Its just a style of GM'ing I have moved away from a lot.
It may be a bit cathartic to give it a go again. Who knows, lets see what tomorrow brings first.
We play Session 2 tomorrow so I get to test that theory. Session 1 worked in part because it was (a) new, (b) very linear (c) massively over prepared and (d) had lots of enthusiasm behind it. Session 2 has (d), to a lesser extent (a) (newness wears off fast) and much less of (c). It also has almost no (b). I have various events which the players can get involved in but its entirely up to them what they do and I have been actively soliciting ideas from them for scenes they would like. I plan to adopt a PTA lite approach of giving each player (and me) the chance to set a scene and see where that takes us.
This means I have sketched out some outlines for various possible scenes, knocked together some stats for possible encounters (reusing some of the stuff we missed from Session 1) and am trying to second guess like crazy just what the players might decide to do.
I am also left wondering a little whether this is really necessary. My players seem inclined to accept a fair amount of viking hatedness (unusual for us) but I cant bring myself to do it. Its just a style of GM'ing I have moved away from a lot.
It may be a bit cathartic to give it a go again. Who knows, lets see what tomorrow brings first.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Session 1
Well, we have done it, we have finally played our first session of 4e. Three of the players have already blogged about the experience so much of what I am going to talk about here is likely to be a bit repetative.
First I want to give a brief overview of the game. We have 4 players, a Cleric, Paladin, Wizard and Ranger. They are about as iconic a party as you can get and have the perfect spread of class roles. As a small scale tactical team they have the potential to work extremely well. They are also a group of characters oozing with potential drama and conflict. Overall I am immensely pleased with the characters.
The first session was intentionally set up as a small scale exploration/dungeon delve, pretty linear without too much opportunity for the players to go "off rails". The players have been hired by the Rebellion who are anxious to recover a mythical gem from the tomb of the dead Sun God Ashura. The stone is to be used in a ritual to drive the Hounds of Shadow, supernatural agents of the Cabals secret police, out of the city.
Some may scream "railroad" and to an extent you would be right but for a first session of a totally new game I wanted to ease both myself and the players into things gently.
So, how did it go?
THE GOOD
The system is excellent. It does what I want a system to do, it mostly gets out of the way and when it does come into play things are resolved pretty quickly and easily. We referred to the books perhaps twice all night. Once I become more familiar with the rules and print out the status conditions effect page I think this will be reduced to nil.
In order to reduce player book referencing I produced a set of power cards for each character. These allow the players to see at a glance what each of their abilities do and to have pre calculated numbers for each of them. This is a great way to reduce player (in)decision time.
Combat ran smoothly, quickly and kept everyone engaged and interested in the game. Each players turn is passing so quickly that you know you will be getting a chance to act soon. We had three combats, one a small skirmish near the start which took about 15 minutes, a large battle in the Tomb Crypt which took about a hour and a 5 minute slaughter right at the end.
My players grasped the tactical issues fairly quickly. In the first fight they bottlenecked the opposition at a street entrance with the Paladin and the Cleric protecting the squishies. In the second they struggled with a teleporting bad guy and two decent ranged opponents. They managed reasonably well and only one of them went down during the fight. The third was pretty much a cakewalk.
The skill challenge system works well for us. We are used to the idea of more abstract conflict resolution and I ran with that idea adapting the skill challenge rules. I pretty much designed the entire session as an extended skill challenge including the tomb exploration. I broke it down into four scenes, getting to the tomb undetected, reaching the burial chamber, looting the gem and getting away undetected. As there was never any doubt the players would reach the burial chamber I set penalties for failure as added complications.
1. Get detected crossing the Plaza and the Cabal release Hounds of Shadow to hunt them down on their way out (increasing the DC's for scene 4).
2. Fail the tomb exploration and the spirit of Ashura would be awake and active, attacking with surprise as they enter the Tomb.
3. Fail the tomb looting phase and they wake up Ashura and have to deal with him.
4. Fail to get away after looting the gem and they are confronted by the Cabal Inquisitor and leader of the Secret Police.
Those were failure conditions for failing the challenges overall but I also set failure conditions for failing individual rolls in scenes 1, 2 and 4.
1. In the Plaza you encounter some angry ghosts or a demon patrol.
2. In the Tomb you wake some Guardian devil or blunder into a trap
4. In the getaway a Hound of Shadow tracks you down and attacks.
As we dont bother with xp I simply set the challenges at the PC's level and fix a number of successes for victory and failure as normal. I dont want to drag out these scenes with lots of dice rolling so I kept the number of successes fairly low at 2-3.
I am also a big fan of player narration so the players got to describe the scene and what happened on their successful rolls. For example, I had the Paladin and Wizard players describing how they worked together to disable glowing magical rune traps barring the entrance to the final chamber.
Props were also a very helpful part of the game experience. We had miniatures and dungeon tiles, something which is completely new to us as a group and had a blast using them. I only mapped out those areas where their was an encounter with the rest of the exploration being handled purely narratively.
The biggest plus in running this game was the sheer level of player enthusiasm. This may be simply because we havent been playing for a bit, because we are back to the same 5 people who started together 8 years ago or because we have an evocative setting generated by us all. In that time we have played a lot of games, D&D, Pendragon, Buffy, PTA, Exalted, Cthullu and others. We have had fun with all of them but I get the feeling that there is a freshness and a conherent focus about 4e which is playing to our current group desires.
THE BAD
The use of skills is excellent but it has some pitfalls. I need to make sure that I am challenging people to describe what they are doing when using their skills and to promote a bit more interaction. I need to emphasise the mechanical benefit for a decent description (+2 - 5 on the check) and make sure I push for them.
I was also a bit too free with the benefits of secondary skill use, allowing them to add +5. This probably made things too easy. In future I think this will be reduced to +2 which combined with description and the aid option should be enough secondary benefits.
I also need to remember to apply armour penalties to physical skills, especially as I effectively allow one persons stealth skill for example to apply for the group.
The props were good but we dont have enough. In particular we need some 3x3 and 5x5 templates for our Wizard player to mark his aoe effects.
I need to be much more careful about monster abilities. The group were level 1, the main encounter was a Level 4 elite and 2 normal level 4 monsters. This is within the expected encounter difficulties but might have been a bit much for a group totally new to the game. I had thought the group would have had a couple of encounters inside the tomb but they passed the skill challenge without a single failure.
The encounter was the spirit of the dead god Ashura and two of his fire balckened, skeletal priests. At one point I was worried it might be a tpk or we would lose someone (we dont do pointless random death).
When designing monsters I tend to either reskin stuff from the MM or tweak existing ones. I find myself doing a lot of level adjusting. We are aiming for a sword and sorcery genre so I want mad cultists, slavering demons, degenrate ape men and serpent priests not kobolds and goblins..
As a result I also tend to swap around monster powers and I gave Ashura quite a potent one, an aoe burst which damages and blinds his opponents and which had a recharge. I think this ability was probably pinched from a paragon tier monster so I need to be more careful as I ended up ignoring the recharge.
On the first round he gained initiative. The players had set up so the Paladin and Cleric protected the stairs with the squishies at the back of the room. Unfortuantely Ashura could teleport so he promptly moved into the middle of them, blasted away and blinded all of them! It didnt help that both Ashura and the priests also had abilities which inflicted ingoing fire damage.
At one point we decided to rename the encounter "Are you on fire" as we kept forgetting to apply the damage or make the saves.
One thing this encounter did do was to demonstrate just how important moving is in 4e. It also really helped to give my non wargamer players an excellent taste of tactical combat. While only one player went unconcious during the fight there was certainly a lot of tension in the room as the fight was a close run thing (damn that Paladin mark). At one point the players were seriosuly thinking of trying to kite Ashura around the room with Ray of Frost while the Ranger killed him at range.
THE UGLY
Nothing that comes to mind but I will wait and see how responsive the system is when I run something much more open ended in subsequent sessions. Can it survive the need to generate content on the fly? Only time will tell.
First I want to give a brief overview of the game. We have 4 players, a Cleric, Paladin, Wizard and Ranger. They are about as iconic a party as you can get and have the perfect spread of class roles. As a small scale tactical team they have the potential to work extremely well. They are also a group of characters oozing with potential drama and conflict. Overall I am immensely pleased with the characters.
The first session was intentionally set up as a small scale exploration/dungeon delve, pretty linear without too much opportunity for the players to go "off rails". The players have been hired by the Rebellion who are anxious to recover a mythical gem from the tomb of the dead Sun God Ashura. The stone is to be used in a ritual to drive the Hounds of Shadow, supernatural agents of the Cabals secret police, out of the city.
Some may scream "railroad" and to an extent you would be right but for a first session of a totally new game I wanted to ease both myself and the players into things gently.
So, how did it go?
THE GOOD
The system is excellent. It does what I want a system to do, it mostly gets out of the way and when it does come into play things are resolved pretty quickly and easily. We referred to the books perhaps twice all night. Once I become more familiar with the rules and print out the status conditions effect page I think this will be reduced to nil.
In order to reduce player book referencing I produced a set of power cards for each character. These allow the players to see at a glance what each of their abilities do and to have pre calculated numbers for each of them. This is a great way to reduce player (in)decision time.
Combat ran smoothly, quickly and kept everyone engaged and interested in the game. Each players turn is passing so quickly that you know you will be getting a chance to act soon. We had three combats, one a small skirmish near the start which took about 15 minutes, a large battle in the Tomb Crypt which took about a hour and a 5 minute slaughter right at the end.
My players grasped the tactical issues fairly quickly. In the first fight they bottlenecked the opposition at a street entrance with the Paladin and the Cleric protecting the squishies. In the second they struggled with a teleporting bad guy and two decent ranged opponents. They managed reasonably well and only one of them went down during the fight. The third was pretty much a cakewalk.
The skill challenge system works well for us. We are used to the idea of more abstract conflict resolution and I ran with that idea adapting the skill challenge rules. I pretty much designed the entire session as an extended skill challenge including the tomb exploration. I broke it down into four scenes, getting to the tomb undetected, reaching the burial chamber, looting the gem and getting away undetected. As there was never any doubt the players would reach the burial chamber I set penalties for failure as added complications.
1. Get detected crossing the Plaza and the Cabal release Hounds of Shadow to hunt them down on their way out (increasing the DC's for scene 4).
2. Fail the tomb exploration and the spirit of Ashura would be awake and active, attacking with surprise as they enter the Tomb.
3. Fail the tomb looting phase and they wake up Ashura and have to deal with him.
4. Fail to get away after looting the gem and they are confronted by the Cabal Inquisitor and leader of the Secret Police.
Those were failure conditions for failing the challenges overall but I also set failure conditions for failing individual rolls in scenes 1, 2 and 4.
1. In the Plaza you encounter some angry ghosts or a demon patrol.
2. In the Tomb you wake some Guardian devil or blunder into a trap
4. In the getaway a Hound of Shadow tracks you down and attacks.
As we dont bother with xp I simply set the challenges at the PC's level and fix a number of successes for victory and failure as normal. I dont want to drag out these scenes with lots of dice rolling so I kept the number of successes fairly low at 2-3.
I am also a big fan of player narration so the players got to describe the scene and what happened on their successful rolls. For example, I had the Paladin and Wizard players describing how they worked together to disable glowing magical rune traps barring the entrance to the final chamber.
Props were also a very helpful part of the game experience. We had miniatures and dungeon tiles, something which is completely new to us as a group and had a blast using them. I only mapped out those areas where their was an encounter with the rest of the exploration being handled purely narratively.
The biggest plus in running this game was the sheer level of player enthusiasm. This may be simply because we havent been playing for a bit, because we are back to the same 5 people who started together 8 years ago or because we have an evocative setting generated by us all. In that time we have played a lot of games, D&D, Pendragon, Buffy, PTA, Exalted, Cthullu and others. We have had fun with all of them but I get the feeling that there is a freshness and a conherent focus about 4e which is playing to our current group desires.
THE BAD
The use of skills is excellent but it has some pitfalls. I need to make sure that I am challenging people to describe what they are doing when using their skills and to promote a bit more interaction. I need to emphasise the mechanical benefit for a decent description (+2 - 5 on the check) and make sure I push for them.
I was also a bit too free with the benefits of secondary skill use, allowing them to add +5. This probably made things too easy. In future I think this will be reduced to +2 which combined with description and the aid option should be enough secondary benefits.
I also need to remember to apply armour penalties to physical skills, especially as I effectively allow one persons stealth skill for example to apply for the group.
The props were good but we dont have enough. In particular we need some 3x3 and 5x5 templates for our Wizard player to mark his aoe effects.
I need to be much more careful about monster abilities. The group were level 1, the main encounter was a Level 4 elite and 2 normal level 4 monsters. This is within the expected encounter difficulties but might have been a bit much for a group totally new to the game. I had thought the group would have had a couple of encounters inside the tomb but they passed the skill challenge without a single failure.
The encounter was the spirit of the dead god Ashura and two of his fire balckened, skeletal priests. At one point I was worried it might be a tpk or we would lose someone (we dont do pointless random death).
When designing monsters I tend to either reskin stuff from the MM or tweak existing ones. I find myself doing a lot of level adjusting. We are aiming for a sword and sorcery genre so I want mad cultists, slavering demons, degenrate ape men and serpent priests not kobolds and goblins..
As a result I also tend to swap around monster powers and I gave Ashura quite a potent one, an aoe burst which damages and blinds his opponents and which had a recharge. I think this ability was probably pinched from a paragon tier monster so I need to be more careful as I ended up ignoring the recharge.
On the first round he gained initiative. The players had set up so the Paladin and Cleric protected the stairs with the squishies at the back of the room. Unfortuantely Ashura could teleport so he promptly moved into the middle of them, blasted away and blinded all of them! It didnt help that both Ashura and the priests also had abilities which inflicted ingoing fire damage.
At one point we decided to rename the encounter "Are you on fire" as we kept forgetting to apply the damage or make the saves.
One thing this encounter did do was to demonstrate just how important moving is in 4e. It also really helped to give my non wargamer players an excellent taste of tactical combat. While only one player went unconcious during the fight there was certainly a lot of tension in the room as the fight was a close run thing (damn that Paladin mark). At one point the players were seriosuly thinking of trying to kite Ashura around the room with Ray of Frost while the Ranger killed him at range.
THE UGLY
Nothing that comes to mind but I will wait and see how responsive the system is when I run something much more open ended in subsequent sessions. Can it survive the need to generate content on the fly? Only time will tell.
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Magic Items
One of the things I disliked about 3e was the magic christmas tree effect. That is, to meet the expectations of the CR system you were expected to be decked out in a dozen or so different magic items.
4e fixed this to an extent, three items are now "required" or at least assumed if you are to compete with equivalent level opposition. These are weapon/implement (adds to power attack and damage rolls), armour (adding to AC) and amulet/cloak/neck item (adding to other defences).
The advice on treasure generation suggests a group should attain 4 magic items over the course gaining a level. This raises a couple of issues:
1. Magic items in my mind should generally be iconic and important and therefore fairly rare. I would rather people only be using 1 or 2 key items. This would also seem to be in genre.
2. At the expected pace of advancement (at least every other session) I would have to rain magic items down on you like confetti.
So, what is to be done?
Legacy Items:
These are items which are intrinsically bound up with their owner. As the owner grows in strength so does the item. Over time they become part of their wielders destiny, their Legend growing with that of their owner.
Mechanically such items would give you some unique special ability tied directly to your character, the same bonuses expected of the "three big items" and a daily power per tier of the item. These bonuses would improve to match the expected bonus of items as you level.
For example, if you attained your Legacy item at level 1 it would work as a +1 item. It would go to +2 at level 6, +3 at level 11 and so on. It would start with one Heroic Tier daily power, gain a Paragon Tier power at 11 and an Epic Tier power at 21.
I would still occasionally add in the odd other magic item. These would be for flavour, the odd extra daily power or special ability. Legacy items would possess plot immunity, other gear might be broken, lost or stolen.
Because I wear the GM Hat of Viking Awesomeness I would initially decide on which items are Legacy. If you haven't obtained one by the time you hit Paragon Tier then you get to pick a piece of your own equipment to build your Legend with.
So, any comments, questions or suggestions?
4e fixed this to an extent, three items are now "required" or at least assumed if you are to compete with equivalent level opposition. These are weapon/implement (adds to power attack and damage rolls), armour (adding to AC) and amulet/cloak/neck item (adding to other defences).
The advice on treasure generation suggests a group should attain 4 magic items over the course gaining a level. This raises a couple of issues:
1. Magic items in my mind should generally be iconic and important and therefore fairly rare. I would rather people only be using 1 or 2 key items. This would also seem to be in genre.
2. At the expected pace of advancement (at least every other session) I would have to rain magic items down on you like confetti.
So, what is to be done?
Legacy Items:
These are items which are intrinsically bound up with their owner. As the owner grows in strength so does the item. Over time they become part of their wielders destiny, their Legend growing with that of their owner.
Mechanically such items would give you some unique special ability tied directly to your character, the same bonuses expected of the "three big items" and a daily power per tier of the item. These bonuses would improve to match the expected bonus of items as you level.
For example, if you attained your Legacy item at level 1 it would work as a +1 item. It would go to +2 at level 6, +3 at level 11 and so on. It would start with one Heroic Tier daily power, gain a Paragon Tier power at 11 and an Epic Tier power at 21.
I would still occasionally add in the odd other magic item. These would be for flavour, the odd extra daily power or special ability. Legacy items would possess plot immunity, other gear might be broken, lost or stolen.
Because I wear the GM Hat of Viking Awesomeness I would initially decide on which items are Legacy. If you haven't obtained one by the time you hit Paragon Tier then you get to pick a piece of your own equipment to build your Legend with.
So, any comments, questions or suggestions?
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Wealth
OK, one of the staples of D&D is the collection of wealth, whether gold, silver and platinum coins, precious gems, ornate statues or prising the lead tiles from the evil overlords castle. The wealth rules in 4e assume that you are keeping track of this wealth accumulation mostly because they also assume you will be able to trade it in for gear of the appropriate level.
4e allows you to accrue gear in three ways. Prrise it from the cold dead hands of your enemies, make it with the Enchant Magic Item Ritual or buy it. Of the three I have no issue with one or two but I cant stand three. Magic item shopping is something which I intensely dislike and it clearly falls well outside the genre we are aiming for.
You could argue that wealth accumulation falls well outside the sword and sorcery genre. Certainly characters dont seem to retain money between books or even chapters, normally squandering it on cheap booze or loose women or being tricked out of it by scheming thieves and underhand prostitutes.
Having said that I dont really want to do away with the idea of money as a factor in the game. However, I dont particularly want to have to be tracking every last copper piece you get and turning the game into Shiny Gold Coins: the Accounting.
So, one option is to use a rather more abstract wealth system. You will be able to loot golden demon idols or pry the jewelled eyes from statues of the Serpent God but I wont necessarily give you an exact GP value. Instead I could work off a more abstract wealth level with six points:
0 - Destitute
1 - Poor
2 - Craftsman
3 - Merchant
4 - Merchant Lord
5 - Prince
You can always choose to live at the destitute level. Rewards will allow you to live at a particular level of wealth for a set period of time. You can choose to live a higher level for less time or at a lower level for more. Time would work on a scale of Day, Week, Month, Season, Half Year, Year. Large purchases (lots of property, giant golden battle barges etc) would cost a period of expenses or force you to live at a lower level for a time.
For example: If you receive enough cash to live like a Merchant Lord for a Week you could instead live like a Craftsman for a Season or like a Prince for a Day.
This does still leave the issue of how to deal with magic item creation (assuming anyone wants to do it) but I am sure I can come up with something reasonable.
So, any comments, queries or suggestions? Would people rather just stick with the economy system as set out in the books?
4e allows you to accrue gear in three ways. Prrise it from the cold dead hands of your enemies, make it with the Enchant Magic Item Ritual or buy it. Of the three I have no issue with one or two but I cant stand three. Magic item shopping is something which I intensely dislike and it clearly falls well outside the genre we are aiming for.
You could argue that wealth accumulation falls well outside the sword and sorcery genre. Certainly characters dont seem to retain money between books or even chapters, normally squandering it on cheap booze or loose women or being tricked out of it by scheming thieves and underhand prostitutes.
Having said that I dont really want to do away with the idea of money as a factor in the game. However, I dont particularly want to have to be tracking every last copper piece you get and turning the game into Shiny Gold Coins: the Accounting.
So, one option is to use a rather more abstract wealth system. You will be able to loot golden demon idols or pry the jewelled eyes from statues of the Serpent God but I wont necessarily give you an exact GP value. Instead I could work off a more abstract wealth level with six points:
0 - Destitute
1 - Poor
2 - Craftsman
3 - Merchant
4 - Merchant Lord
5 - Prince
You can always choose to live at the destitute level. Rewards will allow you to live at a particular level of wealth for a set period of time. You can choose to live a higher level for less time or at a lower level for more. Time would work on a scale of Day, Week, Month, Season, Half Year, Year. Large purchases (lots of property, giant golden battle barges etc) would cost a period of expenses or force you to live at a lower level for a time.
For example: If you receive enough cash to live like a Merchant Lord for a Week you could instead live like a Craftsman for a Season or like a Prince for a Day.
This does still leave the issue of how to deal with magic item creation (assuming anyone wants to do it) but I am sure I can come up with something reasonable.
So, any comments, queries or suggestions? Would people rather just stick with the economy system as set out in the books?
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Performace Anxiety
I realised today that my first game where I have to try and make all of this stuff into some sort of coherent whole is less than two weeks away. I have four full relationship maps oozing with possible drama but I haven't really sat down and thought out what might come out of all of this.
So, in an effort to try and get the creative juices flowing over here I am going to adopt a technique from the last Cottagecon, Headlines. In brief, when we played Call of Cthullu the GM produced a little Headline for each section of the game. I am going to try and do the same for the possible issues which I think might form the basis for sessions of 4e.
Of course I am going to have to keep them at least a little bit vague to maintain some of the mystery. What I really need is some private spot where I can post some of my ideas in a palce my players cant see, word documents just dont really do it for me.
These are all Heroic Tier possibilities. I have various Paragon and Epic Tier options but I imagine the game setting will have changed so much by that time that they may well be obsolete.
The Prodigal Son
The Garden of Lost Loves
Hunting the Hounds of Shadow
The Key of Time
Bloodied blades in the shadow of the Sun
Thunder at the Gates of Time
Old Friends and Hard Choices
Flight of the Windrunner
Masters of Fire and Iron
The Iron Lord Walks
Curiosity Killed the Cat
Dark Rises, night of the living shadows
The Man who loved too much
Hard words and harsher lessons
The long dark teatime of the soul
Death is just the Beginning
These are not in any particular order.
So, in an effort to try and get the creative juices flowing over here I am going to adopt a technique from the last Cottagecon, Headlines. In brief, when we played Call of Cthullu the GM produced a little Headline for each section of the game. I am going to try and do the same for the possible issues which I think might form the basis for sessions of 4e.
Of course I am going to have to keep them at least a little bit vague to maintain some of the mystery. What I really need is some private spot where I can post some of my ideas in a palce my players cant see, word documents just dont really do it for me.
These are all Heroic Tier possibilities. I have various Paragon and Epic Tier options but I imagine the game setting will have changed so much by that time that they may well be obsolete.
The Prodigal Son
The Garden of Lost Loves
Hunting the Hounds of Shadow
The Key of Time
Bloodied blades in the shadow of the Sun
Thunder at the Gates of Time
Old Friends and Hard Choices
Flight of the Windrunner
Masters of Fire and Iron
The Iron Lord Walks
Curiosity Killed the Cat
Dark Rises, night of the living shadows
The Man who loved too much
Hard words and harsher lessons
The long dark teatime of the soul
Death is just the Beginning
These are not in any particular order.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Character Death
OK, I wanted to flag this issue up early and see what peoples views were.
In previous games as a group we have very much been against random character death. This has ranged from the occasional pulling of punches, giving second chances and occasionally outright ignoring the dice.
Now, I know why we do it and to a large extent I agree why. Its hard to sustain an ongoing narrative plot when one of the main protagonists is stabbed in the face half way through.
However, I want to raise the issue specifically in the case of 4e and this game. The game we are creating is one without a strong central narrative plot. This is not Crescent sea v2.0. I see this more like a series of Conan short novels set in the same region. There may be some ongoing plot arcs you involve yourself with and you can be sure there will be epic over the top action but I dont see the death of any individual character seriously screwing up the game.
So, should character death be on the table? Its a given that the group can fail but failure doesnt have to just mean death. Failure can and does result in lots of complications but should death be an option?
Looking at the rules it seems that characters are significantly more robust. You start with more HP, you can recover them mid fight more easily, there are minimal "save or die" effects and you get a large buffer between being unconcious and dead. The chances of outright death are relatively low unless the whole party is going down (and I should be able to avoid that!).
So, what do people think. Is random death an option or is a step too far for us.
In previous games as a group we have very much been against random character death. This has ranged from the occasional pulling of punches, giving second chances and occasionally outright ignoring the dice.
Now, I know why we do it and to a large extent I agree why. Its hard to sustain an ongoing narrative plot when one of the main protagonists is stabbed in the face half way through.
However, I want to raise the issue specifically in the case of 4e and this game. The game we are creating is one without a strong central narrative plot. This is not Crescent sea v2.0. I see this more like a series of Conan short novels set in the same region. There may be some ongoing plot arcs you involve yourself with and you can be sure there will be epic over the top action but I dont see the death of any individual character seriously screwing up the game.
So, should character death be on the table? Its a given that the group can fail but failure doesnt have to just mean death. Failure can and does result in lots of complications but should death be an option?
Looking at the rules it seems that characters are significantly more robust. You start with more HP, you can recover them mid fight more easily, there are minimal "save or die" effects and you get a large buffer between being unconcious and dead. The chances of outright death are relatively low unless the whole party is going down (and I should be able to avoid that!).
So, what do people think. Is random death an option or is a step too far for us.
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Player Empowerment and The Game
I was originally going to post this as a reply to a couple of comments that appeared on my last theory post while I have been away with work but decided it probably deserved a post of its own.
Thanks very much for that Helen. I have heard of but havent tried IAWA as yet, my understanding is that it is a very focused, possibly too focused for what I want at the moment (I may be confusing it with Mountain Witch). Thats fine but I really struggle to generate a more lengthy game from that sort of material (Cold City being a case in point). The Cold City one shot was ok but it only really sustained 3 sessions and I wanted this game to be more substantial.
I have been looking at The Shadow of Yesterday which I think is excellent although so far I have only managed to play one session at a Convention. I am also looking forward to the Dresden Files so I can rip out its magic system and add it to Spirit of the Century to run it for pulp fantasy or possibly Exalted.
On the 4e game I really can't take much of the credit. Of the stuff I have posted so far about 90% of it has been written by other people, one of whom isn't even playing and who has an allergic reaction to anything D&D related. I have some additional ideas that I will be incorporating but as I want a number of them to be "game reveals" I wont be posting about them until we reach them in game. Some of them might take quite a while to come out but I am pretty happy with my "lonely fun" as there's plenty of other stuff to keep the players occupied and interested until then.
"Can you illustrate some of the arguments around the GM being the sole bringer of awesome? I have to admit that the entire concept is pretty alien to me, both as a GM and a player! How do people think that the players can have ownership of a game and not have some stake in its development?" Neil
I have seen strongly GM authored games work in a few cases but they have generally involved the following elements:
1. A strong GM generated plot
2. Excellent GM delivery
3. Close meshing of the player characters within the GM authored plot
4. Lots of unexpected twists and turns within a well detailed background and setting
I hope that I managed this with at least some of the Exalted stuff I ran and Phil certainly managed it with a 3.x D&D game I played in.
Number 4 is particularly difficult to do with heavy playor authorship which is why I shall be wearing the Viking Hat of Awesomeness from time to time.
"AWESOME. I'm really enjoying reading about your game. It sounds very cool. Helen, who's been playing about with fantasy stuff recently despite having previously avoided it like the plague. Have you tried In A Wicked Age yet? I'm rather enamoured of it." Helen
Thanks very much for that Helen. I have heard of but havent tried IAWA as yet, my understanding is that it is a very focused, possibly too focused for what I want at the moment (I may be confusing it with Mountain Witch). Thats fine but I really struggle to generate a more lengthy game from that sort of material (Cold City being a case in point). The Cold City one shot was ok but it only really sustained 3 sessions and I wanted this game to be more substantial.
I have been looking at The Shadow of Yesterday which I think is excellent although so far I have only managed to play one session at a Convention. I am also looking forward to the Dresden Files so I can rip out its magic system and add it to Spirit of the Century to run it for pulp fantasy or possibly Exalted.
On the 4e game I really can't take much of the credit. Of the stuff I have posted so far about 90% of it has been written by other people, one of whom isn't even playing and who has an allergic reaction to anything D&D related. I have some additional ideas that I will be incorporating but as I want a number of them to be "game reveals" I wont be posting about them until we reach them in game. Some of them might take quite a while to come out but I am pretty happy with my "lonely fun" as there's plenty of other stuff to keep the players occupied and interested until then.
"Can you illustrate some of the arguments around the GM being the sole bringer of awesome? I have to admit that the entire concept is pretty alien to me, both as a GM and a player! How do people think that the players can have ownership of a game and not have some stake in its development?" Neil
I have seen strongly GM authored games work in a few cases but they have generally involved the following elements:
1. A strong GM generated plot
2. Excellent GM delivery
3. Close meshing of the player characters within the GM authored plot
4. Lots of unexpected twists and turns within a well detailed background and setting
I hope that I managed this with at least some of the Exalted stuff I ran and Phil certainly managed it with a 3.x D&D game I played in.
Number 4 is particularly difficult to do with heavy playor authorship which is why I shall be wearing the Viking Hat of Awesomeness from time to time.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Bringing the awesome?
OK, before I start to set out some of the details of the game we will be playing I thought I would talk a little bit about responsibility. Specifically who is responsible for what between the GM and Players. Its quite amazing just how much argument this issue seems to generate across various internet discussion boards. I dont want to rehash the tired old arguments about player empowerment, instead I will simply set out how I see this game actually being played.
First off an admission. I want my players to generate content for the game. I am very firmly on the "player empowerment" side of the fence. This hasn't always been true, a lot of games I have ran and played in have been very heavily GM controlled. Thats fine and I have played in (and I hope ran) some excellent games of that type. However, my tastes have changed for three reasons.
1. Time. I dont have the time to generate every detail of the world, even if I was inclined to, which I am not. Having other people create material saves me time for generating an excellent game using that material.
2. Buy In. Players who have written elements of the game material are more likely to be interested in the issues which we bring to the table.
3. Creativity. I have 5 (possibly 4 unfortunately) players who are all highly imaginative and creative people. Two have been long term GM's for the group. I want to draw on their creativity.
So, how have we actually gone about creating the game.
It happened in a rather unexpected way. Back in June last year Neil put up a post on our gaming message boards, The Great "Bored at Work" SotC Fantasy Throwdown Thread. It was a challenge, to create a pulp fantasy game in the style of Spirit of the Century. In the course of two days the bedrock for a game setting was established. It was then forgotten to lie dormant somewhere near the botton of the board.
When I was first thinking about running a 4e game this little experiment popped into my head. I knew I didnt want to run anything in the mould of Tolkein, Greyhawk, FR or Eberron, no cutesy elves, grumpy dwarves, chubby halflings etc. In fact, no-one under 4' period. Reading back over the thread we created in two bored summer days I decided it would serve our purposes very well. A dark, sinister setting, lots of dangerous groups, conflict and double cross in a pulp fantasy setting about as far from pseudo medieval fantasy as I could get and still be happy to play.
Much of the material for the game has been produced by the players, some even by people who aren't part of the game. I have written some elements and have more in mind that I wont post here so as not to spoil the surprise for my players. I anticipate as the game progresses that the players will generate additional content which is interesting to them. that they will create organisations or npc's, not just to help them but to fight with, scheme against and generally make the game a better, more entertaining experience.
First off an admission. I want my players to generate content for the game. I am very firmly on the "player empowerment" side of the fence. This hasn't always been true, a lot of games I have ran and played in have been very heavily GM controlled. Thats fine and I have played in (and I hope ran) some excellent games of that type. However, my tastes have changed for three reasons.
1. Time. I dont have the time to generate every detail of the world, even if I was inclined to, which I am not. Having other people create material saves me time for generating an excellent game using that material.
2. Buy In. Players who have written elements of the game material are more likely to be interested in the issues which we bring to the table.
3. Creativity. I have 5 (possibly 4 unfortunately) players who are all highly imaginative and creative people. Two have been long term GM's for the group. I want to draw on their creativity.
So, how have we actually gone about creating the game.
It happened in a rather unexpected way. Back in June last year Neil put up a post on our gaming message boards, The Great "Bored at Work" SotC Fantasy Throwdown Thread. It was a challenge, to create a pulp fantasy game in the style of Spirit of the Century. In the course of two days the bedrock for a game setting was established. It was then forgotten to lie dormant somewhere near the botton of the board.
When I was first thinking about running a 4e game this little experiment popped into my head. I knew I didnt want to run anything in the mould of Tolkein, Greyhawk, FR or Eberron, no cutesy elves, grumpy dwarves, chubby halflings etc. In fact, no-one under 4' period. Reading back over the thread we created in two bored summer days I decided it would serve our purposes very well. A dark, sinister setting, lots of dangerous groups, conflict and double cross in a pulp fantasy setting about as far from pseudo medieval fantasy as I could get and still be happy to play.
Much of the material for the game has been produced by the players, some even by people who aren't part of the game. I have written some elements and have more in mind that I wont post here so as not to spoil the surprise for my players. I anticipate as the game progresses that the players will generate additional content which is interesting to them. that they will create organisations or npc's, not just to help them but to fight with, scheme against and generally make the game a better, more entertaining experience.
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Pre Game Nerves
Ok, 4e D&D comes out on 07.06 and I am scheduled to start running it on 29.06. That shouldnt be a problem I hear you cry, surely someone as witty, intelligent and imaginative as you should be able to generate an intensely engrossing 20 session long campaing for 5 highly demanding gamers in a mere 3 weeks.
Sadly I am not Mr Nicholls who seemed to create the last hugely engrossing Sheffield game I played in on the back of an envelope in about 5 minutes.
So, what are my big issues. Well, for one I havent actually run any game in nearly two years. That's not entirely true, I ran one off games at both Cottagecon 1 and 2 which were well received and I ran a three session Cold City game which was ok. Still what I am looking at here is quite different. I want to try for something with more legs to it. I like the idea of 4e's tiers of play and I want to be able to play through all of them. It may require some hack of the advancement system to work or we would take years to play out. This works for some groups but didnt quite click with us when we tried the Great Pendragon Campaign.
Secondly is the game itself. Its D&D and I have 5 very experienced players who expect a high quality game. We have made D&D work for us as a group before and I think it can be done again but it remains an issue. Will it actually support our method of play or at least not get in the way too much? I am stuck with the nagging feeling that SotC or The Shadow of Yesterday might be better fits. The one wrinkle is that neither seem to possess a useable magic system, pretty much a must for any fantasy game for me. Who knows, maybe The Dresden Files will sort that out.
Thirdly are the players. I dont think any of them would disagree that they are a demanding group. If there are problems then they will be aired, in some cases, publicly disected with scientific rigour. This isnt a huge issue for me as I tend to do a lot of that myself and am generally open about it so hopefully it will help to improve the game not damage it.
So where does that leave me? Nervous about being able to deliver the game the group wants, excited about trying out a new game despite the vast number of naysayers and happy that I am still able to game with imaginative, thoughtful people after 20 years in the hobby.
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