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.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
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
Nerves
*Looks at calendar*
Its T minus 4 days. This game it seems is taking on a life of its own. I actually have to run this thing on Sunday when I havent run anything much more than one shots for about two and a half years.
I have even managed to host the game at my house so now I cant break down on the way or something.
At least I have done enough preparation. Or have I...
*goes off to scribble more notes*
Its T minus 4 days. This game it seems is taking on a life of its own. I actually have to run this thing on Sunday when I havent run anything much more than one shots for about two and a half years.
I have even managed to host the game at my house so now I cant break down on the way or something.
At least I have done enough preparation. Or have I...
*goes off to scribble more notes*
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, 22 July 2008
Session 1: Curiosity Killed the Cat
Quest: Recover the Heart of Fire
On arrival in the City you were taken to a Rebel base in the cellars of a disused warehouse. There Akbar explained that he wants you to recover a gemstone, The Heart of Fire. The mythical gem is said to have been carried by the long dead Sun God Ashura whose remains now lie moldering in his crypt in the centre of the Plaza of Dead Gods. He introduced you to Azhanti, a Dragonborn priest and gladiator who will help you to recover the gem and who knows the layout of the Plaza.
The gemstone is needed urgently for use in a ritual to be performed at the summer solstice to banish powerful Hounds of Shadow used by the Cabal’s secret police. The solstice is only a few days away and so he has asked you to go to the Temple tonight to recover the stone. He will meet you back at the cellar at dawn.
Dangers:
The Plaza is home to many ghosts, worshippers of the gods interred there. Some are harmless but there are however a number of malignant spirits which should be avoided or appeased if possible.
The tombs are all thousands of years old. In their day powerful magical wards and traps were set and infernal forces were summoned to guard them. Most of these will have failed over time but some may still remain potent. The Spirit of Ashura will most likely have blown away to dust and memory in the four thousand years of his imprisonment.
You are warned not to remove any other objects that you might find in the tomb as this may well provoke the Spirit of Ashura if it still exists.
Rewards:
The trust of one member of the Rebellion High Command
Enough cash to live like rich men for a month
Quest Giver: Akbar the Rebel
Time to Complete: One night
Completion Location: The Rebel safe house
You have arrived in the City of Kings this morning on a boat belonging to the powerful Merchant Lord Nabonidus. You have been brought to the City by the Rebellion hoping to elicit your aid in the overthrow of the Cabal. Your contact in the Rebellion is a man named Akbar, a retired pirate captain who has seen too many abuses by the Cabal since he hung up his cutlass.
On arrival in the City you were taken to a Rebel base in the cellars of a disused warehouse. There Akbar explained that he wants you to recover a gemstone, The Heart of Fire. The mythical gem is said to have been carried by the long dead Sun God Ashura whose remains now lie moldering in his crypt in the centre of the Plaza of Dead Gods. He introduced you to Azhanti, a Dragonborn priest and gladiator who will help you to recover the gem and who knows the layout of the Plaza.
The gemstone is needed urgently for use in a ritual to be performed at the summer solstice to banish powerful Hounds of Shadow used by the Cabal’s secret police. The solstice is only a few days away and so he has asked you to go to the Temple tonight to recover the stone. He will meet you back at the cellar at dawn.
Dangers:
The Plaza is home to many ghosts, worshippers of the gods interred there. Some are harmless but there are however a number of malignant spirits which should be avoided or appeased if possible.
The Cabal has ordered that the Plaza is off limits to all denizens of the City. They warn that powerful demons have been set to guard the tombs and ensure they remain undisturbed.
The tombs are all thousands of years old. In their day powerful magical wards and traps were set and infernal forces were summoned to guard them. Most of these will have failed over time but some may still remain potent. The Spirit of Ashura will most likely have blown away to dust and memory in the four thousand years of his imprisonment.
You are warned not to remove any other objects that you might find in the tomb as this may well provoke the Spirit of Ashura if it still exists.
Rewards:
The trust of one member of the Rebellion High Command
Enough cash to live like rich men for a month
Permanent lodgings in a Rebellion safe house if desired
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Imagery
I have added some images to various posts to try and give a feel for the game and because I like cool looking fantasy art. The following posts have been edited:
Kallista
Hu'Maa
The Sundering
The Palace
The Labyrinth
Recent History
The Beginning
The City
Kallista
Hu'Maa
The Sundering
The Palace
The Labyrinth
Recent History
The Beginning
The City
Advancement
I have been giving some thought recently to the issue of advancement for the D&D game in light of the plan to play through all three tiers of play. Three options come to mind:
1. Play the damn game as written you compulsive tinkering noob!
As written it takes 10 encounters to go from one level to the next. This remains the same throughout the entirety of the level spread. Encounters can include both combat and non combat and you also get xp for completing quests.
This is fine until you factor in that our games tend to be rather light on the combat side. Of course I expect the social, political and investigative side to be fairly significant and I will certainly be awarding xp for them but it does raise an issue of speed of advancement.
Bear in mind that across 18 months or so of Crescent Sea we managed to hit the heady heights of level 8.
2. You finished the session, have a level, welcome to Monty Haul!
Super fast advancement at one level per session gives me a definate timescale for the game, three Seasons of 10 episodes each. Making that match the actual pace of the game might be trickier and it isnt a particularly elegant solution.
3. Xp, we dont need no fricken xp.
Just give you level ups as and when it seems appropriate. This could be at the end of an adventure, on resolution of some big character issue or for any other reason really. When you finish the Heroic tier game arc just advance you to the Paragon level and move on from there. Repeat for Epic tier.
On the face of it this is really quite tempting but it is a bit of a jump away from the rules and I know how some of you like to play using the rules (at least initially). It also removes any obvious method of tracking your own progress.
So, any views, opinions, alternate suggestions, preferences?
1. Play the damn game as written you compulsive tinkering noob!
As written it takes 10 encounters to go from one level to the next. This remains the same throughout the entirety of the level spread. Encounters can include both combat and non combat and you also get xp for completing quests.
This is fine until you factor in that our games tend to be rather light on the combat side. Of course I expect the social, political and investigative side to be fairly significant and I will certainly be awarding xp for them but it does raise an issue of speed of advancement.
Bear in mind that across 18 months or so of Crescent Sea we managed to hit the heady heights of level 8.
2. You finished the session, have a level, welcome to Monty Haul!
Super fast advancement at one level per session gives me a definate timescale for the game, three Seasons of 10 episodes each. Making that match the actual pace of the game might be trickier and it isnt a particularly elegant solution.
3. Xp, we dont need no fricken xp.
Just give you level ups as and when it seems appropriate. This could be at the end of an adventure, on resolution of some big character issue or for any other reason really. When you finish the Heroic tier game arc just advance you to the Paragon level and move on from there. Repeat for Epic tier.
On the face of it this is really quite tempting but it is a bit of a jump away from the rules and I know how some of you like to play using the rules (at least initially). It also removes any obvious method of tracking your own progress.
So, any views, opinions, alternate suggestions, preferences?
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