Some thoughts about Shadow, Sword and Spell

Shadow, Sword and Spell is a fun game. Or at least I had a fun time playing a recent two adventure mini campaign.  Though I will say that I really enjoy playing games and I find that in many instances the actual game being played is secondary.  Get some decent players, let them do what they want and see where it goes.  Generally a pretty good recipe for a fun night.  But every system certainly brings new things to the table and enables different styles of gaming.  SS&S is designed to emulate pulp fantasy, the world of down and out heroes and low magic.  And it does those things pretty well.  Having just finished up this short game I have some recent thoughts about everything.

1st Edition, The Ghost Tower of Inverness and premade adventures

I was feeling a bit nostalgic lately and sort of really wanted to play some old school 1^st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  There are so many retro style D&D clones out there these days, but I don’t think that they really interest me.  Most of them are just a stripped down easy to learn fantasy game, but lack the personality and daring that truly define the early versions of D&D. So I decided to go back to the source and run a one shot adventure using a module. I didn’t want to start up a new campaign (I have a Shadowrun game going on currently and I certainly don’t need two games a week in my life right now) and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time writing an adventure so this seemed like a great way to dip into the game and then jump right back out. After much searching through all of my old modules I settled on the classic C2, The Ghost Tower of Inverness.

I’ve written before about my general dislike of dungeoncrawls so I won’t go into the reasons why, but the Ghost Tower seemed workable.  For starters, the dungeons of the adventure are so absurd that it’s easy to throw plausibility out the window and just accept it for what it is.  I’ve seen it referred to as a “funhouse” adventure and that makes total sense.  The premise is that the PC’s are all the prisoners of some Duke and he frees them from his dungeons in order to have them retrieve the fabled Soul Gem and bring it to him in exchange for freedom.  The Gem was the possession of some wizard who constructed an insane tower filled with monsters and traps to protect the Gem. Eventually the wizard disappeared but the Gem remains! Alright, that’s not too bad.  I suppose one could ask some questions about why the Duke (who has tons of resources at his disposal) is choosing this motley crew of vagabonds to undertake this important quest, but whatever. If I start asking questions now I’ll be at a million words by the time I reach the underground chessboard that electrocutes people when they make a wrong step. Ghost Tower was originally a tournament module run at Wintercon VIII in 1979 and featured five characters, so I rounded up five players to fulfill the roles of Lembu, Discinque, Hodar, Li Hon and Zinethar the Wise.  And we’re off…

Call of Cthulhu and the challenge of fantasy gaming in a normal world

A couple of weeks ago I ran my first session of Call of Cthulhu.  It did not go well for a variety of reasons. But I think that the crux of it was the inherent clash of playing a fantasy game but one that is so firmly rooted in a real, actual world.  Cthulhu is a horror game and a substantial portion of that horror is generated by the knowledge that you as a normal person are pretty much entirely powerless against the strange things in the world that you find yourself in pursuit of.  That degree in Accounting? Not going to help against one of the Elder Gods, nor is your buddy’s ability to use a library going to fend off Dimensional Shambler.  That’s a frightening thought, the notion that the closer that you get to the thing you are seeking the more danger you are putting yourself into. I planned on using this basic struggle of everyday normalcy versus the unknown as the basis for the building horror that would ultimately drive the investigators to the precipice of insanity and fear.  Turns out the players preferred normalcy in their fantasy life and I can’t say that I blame them. 

Survivor Style Dunegons and Dragons

The D&D campaign that we just finished up last week featured a significant amount of character death in the last several sessions. The entire campaign went for about 20 sessions or so, and in the last third of that there were four PC’s killed (in a party of five players). (That doesn’t include the final session in which four of the five characters were killed when they acted like cowards with a red dragon around.) I’m not a stranger to character death, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take it’s toll on the narrative arc of the campaign. Parties embark on certain paths that are determined by the characters involved and they put into motion story lines that have to do with those decisions and motives. Which is great. And then those characters die and are suddenly replaced by new ones that may not have the same agenda. It creates a problem. So what’s a DM to do in that situation?

There are a lot of options that I am not going to get into right now, though I would like to explore them in the future. But I did dream up with something the other day that sort of got me thinking about what to do in this situation. What’s even worse than having a character die? How about having your character die and then not being allowed to make a new character and join the game again! I know, it’s totally rotten, but I would like to play around with this idea of a knockout/survivor type of campaign. Essentially when you character dies you are out of the game. “Sorry buddy, we’ll call you in a couple of weeks.” Obviously everyone would need to know this ahead of time and be on board with it, but it could be a nice change of pace for everyone involved. And as a strange side effect it also allows a player to sort of “win” dungeons and dragons. Which, as far as I know, is otherwise impossible.

So how would this work? For starters, it would need to be setup to be a shorter term game since the number of players would be growing less and less with each session. And I don’t think it makes sense to play until everyone is dead, that has a certain Sisyphean quality to it that seems overly morbid. No, the goal here is to survive and that denotes that there can be an actual ending to it. Similarly, the game would need to start with a larger number of players than what one would typically run a game for. For me the sweet spot of players is usually four, but for this I think that starting with six or seven makes sense. And yes, I know that the primary rule of roleplaying is that the game is supposed to be fun for everyone involved over everything else, and this sort of flies in the face of that. Yeah, well, fuck that. This could be sort of fun for a little bit. I mean, we’re not talking about life and death here. Okay, we are. But it’s make believe life and death.

The first thing that came to mind when I thought of this is that characters would generally act like cowards for fear of getting killed. No one will want to be the first one through the door or to open up the trapped chest. But at the same time this is supposed to be a “heroic” group of people who have chosen adventuring, one of the most dangerous professions in all of the world. They can’t actually be cowards, it doesn’t make any sense. So I think the driving force behind this needs to be individual rewards. Experience points won’t be divided evenly among all survivors and treasure needs to be disbursed in a different manner. Bravery really needs to count for something since the result of character death is a little more severe than in other games. If your rogue just wants to hang out in the back and play it safe, they are not going to be as rewarded as well as the barbarian that charges into battle knowing fully well that the ogre with an enormous club could easily swat him down. Same thing with weapons and other treasure. If you charge into battle and strike down the enemy with a gutsy move, then maybe that sword of yours just became magical. I think this could work! The same would apply to roleplaying at the sake of one’s own survival. The first example that comes to mind is a cleric and their cure spells. Common sense says they should horde those spells for themselves, but if you actually spread the wealth and help some people out there should be a reward in it for you.

Normally I am very against this, but for this style of game I would also advocate that all dice rolling be done out in the open. It just seems more fair this way. A game like this would naturally lend itself to a competitive environment among the players and it does seem fair that everything should be on the up and up. I’m not saying that as a DM I’ve cheated, but I’ve certainly misread the dice a couple of times for the sake of the story or just because I thought it made sense at the time. I think it would actually be somewhat liberating in a game like this to be freed of the burden of secrecy when it comes to the dice.

I suppose that a game like this isn’t without precedence either. In a lot of ways it’s like a tournament style game in which players do receive points for surmounting obstacles and making it to the end. And in a short game, like a tournament, dying once usually means the end of your day anyway.

I guess the big question about all of this is why. Why set up a game in this manner? In a way it’s sort of a strange, meta way of running a game. There is some inherent knowledge that we possess as players that our characters can never really know, essentially that they are just pawns in our elaborate game of tabletop fantasy. As characters, death should always be treated as something to be avoided at all costs. After all, it is death and that’s sort of the end of everything. But as players we know that’s not the case. We know that at the end of a bad roll or a tough break is a brand new set of dice and attributes waiting to find stats. But what if there wasn’t? What if the game ended and you lost? If you knew that the game went on and you weren’t going to be a part of it, would it change everything about how your character acted? How would you feel if you could actually win dungeons and dragons? Would you go for it?

DM Theory: Does Someone Really Have To Be a Cleric? Thoughts on party composition.

Does someone really always have to be a cleric?  Sometimes it’s a drag to always have a priest around.  What if everyone wants to be a wizard? Will they all just hide behind one another whenever danger appears? Or, God forbid, what if the entire party is a bunch of Fighters?  How will they ever win? D&D is not just a role playing game, but also a game of well defined roles among the party.  Each character meshes with those around him to form a perfect combination that is well suited to wreak havoc on their environment. Sort of like Voltron. But what if the players just make the characters that they want to make and some essential aspect of party cohesion gets over looked? Well, it’s certainly not the end of the world. And as a DM I actually really like when traditional class roles break down and the party is forced to be creative to circumvent a problem that is tailored for a class that they may not have.  Watching a group of Fighters try to deal with a locked door is generally a lot of fun.  Or some negotiating when no one has a Charisma above eight.

Since it’s inception, D&D has sort of had the iconic four character party as the ideal.  The brutish warrior, the sneaky and clever thief, the cleric that patches everything up and the aloof wizard that saves the day when everyone else is overmatched.  And that’s all well and good, but it gets old and can be boring.  And divvying up the treasure is always far too peaceful.  Whenever we are starting up a new game and it’s character creation day I do my best to encourage players to make the character that they want to play, not the one that they think that the party needs.  Realistically, these characters were born and raised totally independent of one another so it seems highly unlikely that a group of strangers will have perfectly complementary abilities and skills. It’s fine if two characters both have Knowledge (Nature), it’s a good skill.

I’m currently DMing for a group of five players that has a party composition that leaves plenty to be desired.  They consist of a ranger, fighter, barbarian, monk, and dragon shaman. You’ve probably noticed that they have no arcane magic, no divine magic, and really no thieving skills (the monk and ranger can sneak around, but they ain’t getting in places without the key). So what have I done to make sure that this party isn’t chewed up by a world that expects certain attributes from it’s adventurers? Nothing. I have done absolutely nothing differently to cater to them. Why would I? Just because none of them wanted to be a rogue, it doesn’t mean that everyone in town forgets to lock their doors.  Or that treasure hoards don’t have wands.  For me, it’s very enjoyable watching them try to figure out how to deal with a problem that could easily be solved if they had a different type of character with them.  A recent example of this is a locked metal box that the Ranger found in the cabin of a ship that they had stolen.  He had no way to open it and was afraid to bring it to a locksmith for fear that it would be recognized and he would be caught with stolen goods.  Instead, he held onto it for about seven adventures and waited until the Dragon Shaman could breathe acid and melt the lock.  Of course, he then had to split the treasure with the Dragon Shaman, but that’s the way it goes. Teamwork!

It’s also interesting to watch the party begin to evolve and understand what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then try to set up situations to take advantage of what they are good it and to also hide their deficiencies.  When they do it well (which, admittedly, doesn’t happen too often) it’s awesome to watch and rewarding for everyone involved. In a way it’s a very advanced form of gaming because they need to think slightly long term and not just about what is in front of them. In a traditional party the group can sort of walk into any scenario and feel confident that they have what is needed to handles things because they can do almost everything.  Not so with this group. 

The other upside here is that it seems to be more fun for the players since they get to be the character that they actually want to be.  I have noticed that there is a pretty noticeable lack of clerics in games that I run. That's sort of too bad.

Why I Hate Dungeons; or You Can't Spell Dungeon Without Dung

I have a confession to make. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but the truth of the matter is that I hate dungeons. Endless poorly lit corridors with random encounters, challenges that get tougher the deeper underground that you go. I want no part of it. Can not stand them. Probably the last place I want to take a group of adventurers. Please don’t take my d20 away for this. I can deal with some caves, an underground passage that leads somewhere interesting, and maybe even some mines if something halfway decent is going on in them and they don’t follow some sort of monotonous layout for hours. But a real dungeon filled with T intersections, wall sconces, and bags of rotted things? No thanks. I don’t see the fun of placing player characters into an environment that is so one sided and thoughtless. There just doesn’t seem to be much to do other than walk from room to room and kill whatever you find. And take the treasure after wiping the blood off of it. Right? Even the classic dungeon crawls in the annals of D&D bore me. Tomb of Horrors? Really, what the fuck is that supposed to be? That’s fun? Queen of the Demonweb Pits? Come on, look at that map! Aside from being absolute nonsense (granted, I realize that it does exist on some sort of plane of chaos…) it is nothing but an exercise in rolling dice and hoping that the ones you roll come out better than the ones that your opponents roll. And we’ll ignore the fact that Lolth lives on a weird pirate ship, I suspect that some people think there is something cool about that. I am not one of those people.

Perhaps if I understood the general ecology of the dungeon better I would appreciate them more. But as it stands, they really make no sense to me in terms of how they actually exist. Some of these fantasy dungeons really are very impressive feats of engineering; traps all over the place, incredible architecture, secret passages cleverly hidden into the stones of some well carved walls, enchanted statues that animate and kill people unless the proper words are spoken. This is some serious shit going on. But that’s actually the part that really infuriates me. You mean to tell me that the same evil genius lich that had the chutzpah to put this entire operation together, is the same dude that sits in a tiny alcove all day hoarding some fantastic magic items (but not actually using them) and doing nothing proactively to stop the adventurers that are rampaging through his lair and killing all his minions one by one? It just seems inconsistent. And none of these monsters are smart enough to decide, “Hey, maybe we should all work together to kill these guys before we are all slaughtered one at a time.” That never occurred to them? They would rather play a card game behind a closed door and wait until it gets kicked down and a horde of murdering lunatics storm into the area and annihilate them? It just seems to me that all of these danger filled dungeons exist solely to be a foil to adventurers. What if the adventurers never arrive? Did the dungeon really even exist? I understand that a lot of them have some sort of flimsy backstory to explain their existence, but I’m not buying it. I like realism in my fantasy!

The point of all of this is that I have been thinking a lot about urban settings in fantasy worlds, and mainly about how much I like them. It’s true that they are much more challenging to run from the DM/GM/ZM/Keeper/Referee standpoint because of all the options that are available to the players, but that’s what makes them come to life and feel like you are actually having an open adventure as opposed to a semi-scripted jaunt through a dungeon. There are only so many decisions that you make at an intersection. And the worst part is that a slog through a dungeon generally reduces a character to nothing more than their stat sheet, they are usually only worth whatever they bring to combat and trapfinding. Come on, let’s be honest. Dungeons are lame and lazy on the part of the DM. I don’t think I have ever seen players get real excited about the prospect of trekking through the subterranean darkness in the way that they light up when learning some juicy information from a well placed NPC or in slaughtering the adversary that had been hanging around town and taunting them. Towns and cities have structure and laws, whereas a dungeon really has neither of those things. Having laws, customs, and structure forces players to think about their actions and to balance risk versus reward, as opposed to operating inside of the pseudo vacuum that is the Dungeon of Evil Wizard. Who cares what you do in there? I guess that I am just at the point in my roleplaying career in which I have seen every monster, given out every piece of treasure, and watched players die in every sort of horrid manner that there is. I want more than that and I don’t think I will be finding it inside of a dungeon. I like creating and designing cities for PC’s to run through. Coming up with an unusual shopkeeper or a tavern with a weird theme is fun for me, finding ways to work interesting combat situations into an urban environment is a rewarding challenge. Generally I homebrew all of this stuff, but there are lots of sources that I have drawn on over the years for both inspiration and examples of how this information should run and look. I’ve talked about my love for the City of Greyhawk boxed set before, but over the next couple of posts I am going to look at some of the other urban fantasy sourcebooks that I have used in the past.

Top 5 Weirdest Charts in the DMG

Gary Gygax was nothing if not thorough.  Recently I revisited the 1^st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide (Right up there with the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract as the key books of my formative years) and I was blown away by the massive amount of charts and tables that occupy a substantial portion of the book’s 240 content crammed pages.  There seems to be a numerical representation of just about anything that one could imagine. Fortunately for us, Gygax thought of it first and saved us the headache about wondering on this stuff. Of course, the important stats like Attack Charts and Saving Throws are in there, but I am much more interested with some of the more odd content in there.  Has some of this stuff ever been used?  Was Gary trying to micromanage every game of D&D played around the world by having a hand in seemingly every event that occurred everywhere? Was he worried that some bizarre situation would arise and the DM would have no idea what to do? 

I went through the book and chose my favorites.  Here are the Top Five Weirdest Charts in the 1^st Edition DMG:

5) Type of Harlot. There is a section in the back of the book that contains numerous charts for randomly determining NPC’s that the party may come across in an urban setting. Okay, I’m with you here, there is some purpose to that and it could be fun.  A nighttime roll of 44-50 means the party has come across a Harlot! Sounds exciting!  The odd thing is that the Harlot roll further yields a secondary roll that goes into more detail for the specific type of harlot. (Along with Drunk it’s the only NPC type that gets a roll for more info. That’s odd. And telling.) Among the Harlot subtypes available for perusal are the Slovenly Trull, Brazen Strumpet, Saucy Tart, and Aged Madam. That’s quite a list! And I am also slightly suspicious of Mr. Gygax’s vast knowledge of the world’s oldest profession.  I guess adventurers need to do something to blow off steam after all those lethal dungeons crawls. 

4) Maximum Height of Opponent that Can be Stunned by a Monk.  The poor Monk, as if it’s d4 Hit Die and bizarre set of abilities isn’t rough enough (not to mention that at high levels Monks are required to fight one another to the death in order to keep advancing), now there is a set in stone guideline for how tall someone can be if they are going to be stunned.  Considering the types of giants and heavyweight monsters out there, it’s not all that good.  A monk needs to be 10^th level to stun someone that is 8 feet tall. Which pretty much includes any type of giant, troll, dragon, ogre, etc…

3)Spy Failure Table. I’m not sure I understand this section of the DMG at all.  There is a chart showing an Assassin’s chance to successfully spy on something based on level and difficulty.  But the better chart is the one that shows what happens to the spy if they fail.  If they are caught and a roll of 81-95 turns up the spy is caught with proof of their spying and then they are tortured.  This then leads to another chart that details the torturing of the worthless spy (1-2 dead, 3-4 reveals everything, 5-6 turncoat). Of course there is an additional note stating that if they spy was fanatical he will just kill himself instead.  I don’t know about any of this. Isn’t that an adventure? Shouldn’t all this stuff be roleplayed out? Where can I hire a fanatical spy?

2) Unexplained Sounds and Weird Noises.  This is located in the Dungeon Dressing section of the DMG, just some details to spice up an otherwise randomly built dungeon.  I do feel that this chart is a bit of an oxymoron.  I mean, the title says that they are Unexplained Sounds, but then it goes on to explain what they are.  Okay, let’s see how this works. 

DM: You are walking down the dimly lit stone passage and you hear a noise.

Player: (worried) What does the noise sound like?   

DM: (rolls dice) A gong. 

Player: What sort of gong?

At this point the DM would then consult the type of gong chart located on the next page.  I’m kidding about that, it’s actually located in the DMGII.

The entire Dungeon Dressing section is absolutely bizarre and remarkable in it’s thoroughness.  There is a chart that describes the Air Currents in the dungeons.  Yes, 15 different types of Air Currents are detailed including such diverse items as “Breeze, slight” and “Breeze, slight, damp”. 

1)Damage Taken by Lycanthropes During Transformation Due to Armor Worn.  Wow.  I don’t know what to say about this.  Does it matter? Does a DM really need to consult a chart for this? Is it important to know that a were-tiger will take 2-5 points of damage if they are wearing splint mail when they begin to transform? I really hope that somewhere in the long annals of D&D a character has died from this damage.  That would be the ultimate tribute to Gygax, for both his legendary lethality and his superhuman attention to detail.    

The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

I haven’t had much time lately to concoct compelling fantasy role playing universes, so in order to get my role playing back on track I decided to dig into some published modules and source material (which I have oodles of around the house). The first adventure that I decided to run was the classic Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (U1), one of the favorites of my youth. It tells the story of a spooky haunted house and what is really going on inside of the abandoned manor on the outskirts of the remote fishing village, Saltmarsh. Originally published for 1st edition, I decided to run it for 3.5 since that is the version that most of the players know the best. I saw that there were some 3.5 conversions of it out there but I figured I know enough about D&D to convert it on the fly. And besides, the whole point of a module was to save myself some time. Additionally the 3.5 Dungeons Masters Guide II has an example of a premade city, which just so happens to be Saltmarsh. So plenty of stuff for me to draw on.

The main reason that I am generally not into modules is that they require the players to follow a somewhat linear path, which is not really the way that I enjoy playing the most. Sure, I will lure the players in with hooks but I really like when they just sort of pursue the agenda that they are most into, which is usually killing things, rejecting authority, and then looting all the corpses that they have left behind. And yes, I actually play with adults. But it’s a lot of fun. So my hesitation in running a module is that they would break from it right away. But the Sinister Secret is a well thought out adventure and I though that they would be into it. And they were. At least the first half of it.

The Sinister Secret is actually the first in a series of three related modules (the U series of old D&D) but I planned from the beginning that I only wanted to run the first. The following two (Danger at Dunwater and The Final Enemy) are a little too heavy on dungeon crawling and require the party to act nobly in order to progress the story and I knew that was not going to happen. So I modified some of the background info and made the haunted house of Saltmarsh stand on it’s own as an adventure. For example; the smugglers are working closely with a merchant in town rather than selling weapons to lizardmen or sahaugins or whatever it is that they are doing in the published module. This way it can all wrap up neatly and the party can move on.

The module is broken up into two sections; the first is the investigation of the “haunted house” and subsequent uncovering of the smuggling ring; the second part is the taking of the smugglers boat with the help of some townsfolk, ultimately smashing the smuggling ring for good. The party that I played with had zero interest in the second half of the adventure. They knew that the boat was out there, but did not seem to care about it one way or the other. In fact, they never even told anyone in town that the house was actually filled with smugglers and not ghosts! Instead, they came back to town with some gold and confirmed that yes, the house was haunted and the townsfolk should continue to stay away from it. Hmm, I did not expect that. What it came down to was a desire to head off to a bigger city or a place with more opportunity. They came out of the house with some strange, and valuable, items like a skull made of solid gold and an apple that was also solid gold. They knew they couldn’t get good value for them in the small fishing village so they were on their way to greener pastures.

It has been a long time since I have run a 1st edition module and some things really jumped out at me as to how the game has evolved over the years. One of the most interesting involves the nefarious waghalter, Ned Shakeshaft. Ned is planted in the house to slow down the party, ideally he joins the party under the guise of being a thief that was waylaid when he came into the house and at some point attacks the party after earning their trust. Now, the way that the module is written makes it so that there is really no way for the party to prove that he is up to no good. Which I thought to be really odd and strange. First off, what sort of adventurers are not going to suspicious of this guy? His story sort of adds up, but come on? The text of the module says, “...it will not be possible for the party to unmask Ned simply.” He is well prepared to answer their questions and has a somewhat plausible story to tell them. Ultimately it comes down to what the party wants to believe and how they want to act towards him. It is sort of forcing the party into a metagaming role, I think. Basically, there is no mechanic to determine if he is lying or not, nor is there one to represent Ned’s obvious skill in weaving a tale to tell. Now, of course, 3.5 D&D has a mechanic for this. Sense Motive vs. Bluff is all about this. As it happens one of the party has a very high Sense Motive and used it in this situation (unfortunately for them Ned had a high Bluff and the party wound up buying his fishy story). I think I prefer this way. One of the other characters firmly believed that Ned was up to no good, but sort of fell in line when the investigator character said that Ned was on the up and up. This is a more accurate reflection of a character’s in game skills than just letting the player’s decide what is happening. I think it also encourages better roleplaying in the sense that the party will then have to play along with their perceived view of Ned, even if it is what they, as players, do not believe.

The adventure is designed for character levels 1-3, which is really nice. There seems to be a dearth of cool, low level modules that provide a decent challenge. However, it is also written for 5-10 players! Wow. That’s a lot of players. Again, it’s a reflection of the early days of D&D when a much larger group would gather for the game and probably play for an entire day. I’ve done the big group thing and I’m not much of a fan of it, but it was easy to alter it for a smaller group (four players). I do like the premade characters in the back of the book, especially Megaron the Bold and Gerald the Seeker. Who would name their character Gerald? Also strange is Caine the Despised, the Cleric/Magic User with a 17 strength and 10 intelligence. I see why he is despised.

One other aspect of the module that was top notch was the artwork. It wasn’t just generic fantasy work pulled from a neutral source, but actually detailed drawings of what was happening in the module. I thought that it was great and actually helped me understand the setting better since I could actually see what it was supposed to look like. An excellent inclusion.

The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is a really solid adventure. The plot is well thought out and makes a lot of sense. It is not just a group of bad guys hiding out and stocking up on magic items, waiting to be killed by adventurers and looted of their booty. It is through no fault of the module that the party did not follow it through to the end, they just had a different agenda. Which is really the beauty of D&D. The players can go anywhere and do whatever they want. And on that note, it’s on to Greyhawk! Which I am totally geeked about.

More thoughts on All Flesh Must Be Eaten

I recently wrote about some of my initial thoughts and impressions regarding All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie themed horror roleplaying game. Well, we just finished up our second session of it and I have some more to say, having now actually played the game. I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable of a game it was. The whole group had fun and it was a nice change of pace from what we had been playing. However, I couldn’t see our group playing a whole campaign of it though, or at least I wouldn’t be interested in running one. Not because it isn’t fun (it is) but I think this genre is more conducive to a shorter, quick game. I also think it’s strength lies in the characters just being normal people, who may not live very long. AFMBE also has options for playing tougher “Survivor” characters and others who have magical powers. That doesn’t seem right for this game world, but longer term games are more geared to those types.

Since this game was not really going to have a strong central plot (it was more about survival and we only planned on two weeks) I wanted to keep the pace of the game rather frenetic and chaotic. If they stopped to rest there were zombies, every time they tried to go somewhere there was pressure to keep moving. In trying to create a panicked environment I thought that this was key. Keep them on their toes since death lurks around every corner! And the game mechanics work with this. Most things are resolved with a single roll and combat is fast. I’ll be honest, I barely learned the rules to the game but I knew enough to keep it going. The rules do seem pretty simple though. It uses something called the Unisystem, which is d10 based. Hey, whatever works for you.

As I had felt going into it, controlling a bunch of zombies is not necessarily the most fun tool in the gamemaster arsenal. I do like that they are virtually infinite, but none of them are all that memorable. Sure, some of them had on distinct outfits and made different noises but when it came down to it they were all sort of the same. The game does have options for making all sorts of zombies (some of which breath fire, are immune to all sorts of things, and really everything else) but I stuck to the basics for our first time. I did have one big showdown planned, but the party never went for it and I did not want to railroad them an unlikely scenario.

The real strength of AFMBE are the characters. We opted to go with the Norms, the least powerful of the options. Zombies are scary because you are just a regular person, if we had made some of the more powerful types I don’t think that we would have enjoyed it as much. It was interesting to see what everyone created, usually they are making some sort of character that is anything but the norm in society. But not here, that’s just what they were. We wound up with a stripper, a weed smoking butcher, a cocaine addicted homeless street performer, and a totally inept Lord of the Rings obsessed bus driver. What a crew! Everyone also did a good job roleplaying their characters. Those who had addictions made it a point of playing that up (such as breaking into a police station to get into the evidence locker for some blow). Sometimes they were cowards. And they were all realistic in their builds. Why would a bus driver know how to shoot a gun?

I think the best part of it was we set the game in present day Philadelphia, which is where we all live. This allowed them to draw upon actual knowledge of their environment and put it to use, rather than making a roll to see if they know where to find something. It was fun to see. They knew about the bus depot on Moyamessing, the gun shop in the Italian Market and the police station on 11th. Just like their characters would know. Blurring the lines of fantasy and reality indeed! This made it both easy and hard to plan for, definitely a mixed bag. In one sense I didn’t have to make much up, I really just drew on my knowledge of Philadelphia and zombified it. However, it was also impossible to predict where they were going to go and do. For example, in other games I have some control over that. If the party needs to get to another town I know that the only ways that they can go are through the forest, along the main road, or take a boat. I have some idea of what each has in store for them. In Zombie Philadelphia that’s not the case. Just going from South Philly to Center City they could choose a ton of options, right down to which block and where they were going to turn. And they all expected it to be realistic. It had the potential to be hyper detail oriented. In the end I just sort of made it up as I went, which I'm fine with in this type of game.

DM Theory: Total Party Kill

In some campaigns it is merely a hushed whisper never given life, in others it is an all too harsh reality. The Total Party Kill. For the uninitiated it is just what it sounds like, the death of every player in the game and, by default, the current campaign. Now, I don’t think that a GM should ever kill a party deliberately, but I do think that there are plenty of situations in which the entire party gets themselves annihilated. Let us discuss.

At the end of one of our most recent Shadowrun sessions one of the players remarked, “I can’t believe that worked.” As a GM I liked that comment for a lot of reasons. For one, it was rewarding for the group to develop and execute a plan. They had a lot of fun with it and ultimately accomplished their goal. However, the reason that I really liked it was because it shows the outcome of the situation was genuinely in doubt. The players know that if they mess up there is a very real chance that they are all going to die. I can’t imagine playing in a game where the outcome is essentially predetermined, which I think is the case if there isn’t the actual threat of death hanging over their heads. I’ve talked to many fellow GMs over the years and I am shocked at how many of them never have PC death, let alone a total wipeout of the party. It blows my mind. Like I said, I don’t intentionally kill players but dungeon crawling and shadowrunning and exploring the far reaches of space are dangerous professions. If people aren’t dying from time to time then something is wrong. But the total party kill is more than just a death because it means the end of the game. But that’s just an opportunity to make new characters and get a new game started up. It’s like a forest fire. Sure, it seems like a gruesome and pointless thing, but in actuality it’s necessary in order to keep things healthy and moving along.

So, how exactly does a Total Party Kill come about exactly? Well, it’s just like one character getting killed but it happens a couple of times in succession. Which is actually plausible if you think about it. Characters rely on one another and they all fill roles, and sometimes if one or two of them are unable to fulfill their function (because they are dead) then the whole house of cards crumbles. It could be bad rolls that gets the ball moving against the party, or it could be a poorly executed plan. If it’s the result of the party coming up against a vast number of superior foes than I feel the DM is to blame. That seems like you are just setting up a party to be killed. Of course, running away is always an option but I find that it is one that players rarely go for. If the assumption on the part of the GM is that the party will recognize that they are outgunned, than it’s a bad assumption. But other times it just happens. Like I said, these are dangerous times.

I think that the biggest argument against the Total Party Kill is that it ruins everyones fun. Only a rotten GM would do such a thing. Essentially all of these nice people have gathered together to share in this fun, communal activity and now it is destroyed. All that they have worked for has been left unfinished, food for the crows of the battlefield (or the alligator filled pit or the underwater science lab, whatever it may be). So what? It’s a game and a new one can be started right away. But it gets back to the idea of accomplishing something in a roleplaying game. Now, treasure and levels and money and all the other rewards that players receive are all fake. We all know this. This is a game and none of it is real. However, success isn’t as fleeting when measured in accomplishments. If you don’t always win there is a chance for a real reward. Knowing that you and your friends looked at a problem and found a solution to a difficult situation is a lot of fun. So is getting some lucky rolls and feeling like you got by on the skin of your teeth. But sometimes it goes the other way. You can’t have one without the other.

And the other side of this is that “winning” does not necessarily mean you have had fun. Shockingly, I have seen smiles on the faces of characters as they are all being painfully killed one at a time, slowly becoming aware that their number is up. Everyone gets to go out fighting or empty their bag of tricks in a last ditch effort to save the day. Some die as brave heroes and others go out as chumps. But as players, rather than characters, we all get to try again some other day.

One final point is that campaigns, or any long term games, have to end somehow. I’m not a fan of the eight year campaign. Maybe it’s because we play every week and the idea of playing the same characters in the same world for that long would drive me insane. So assuming that a game has an end it really only leaves a couple of options. The players achieve what they were trying to do, the game just sort of dwindles away or everyone chooses to end it, or everyone dies. I have been involved in multiple campaigns of each variety and they all have their merits, but in some ways the TPK is the most memorable.

By the way, the Shadowrun game I mentioned above ended the following week with a Total Party Kill.

Macho Women With Guns!

I decided to dust off the shelf and introduce the gaming group to another fun game from my youth. Wanting to change things up a bit and not commit too much to an intense game, we opted to go with the incredible Macho Women With Guns. MWWG is a thoughtful, delicate role playing game that requires tact and patience on the part of the players. That’s not at all true. It’s actually just what it sounds like. The players are essentially pissed off females with guns and knives, out to kill the oppressive and dumb males that rule society. It’s not meant to be serious (obviously) and seemed perfect for a single night of gaming. The version we played was the original from 1988. The rulebook is all of 12 pages. Totally awesome!

Character creation in Macho Women is a lot of fun for both it’s simplicity and humor. The entire game is actually really funny, but especially making the character. For starters it is just a point based system and allocating them is very intuitive and easy to do. You want your lady to look good? Put a lot of points in Looks. Is she strong? Then her Strength should probably be high. The best part are the skills. Not many roleplaying games offer such areas of specialty as Running In High Heels, Hit Things With Other Things, and Do Technical Stuff (my favorite). As if all of this wasn’t enough to get your inner teenaged boy excited, there is also a blank template to draw your character. Oh, the fun we had! Seriously, more games should encourage players to draw their characters. I’m sort of torn if this game is a parody of the fantasy and roleplaying depictions of women, or just about the most egregious example of such chauvinism. I mean, it’s not really a surprise that I discovered this game when I was thirteen. Our group is half female and they all thought it was funny, if anyone takes this game seriously they should probably be arrested.

This version of the game was made during the height of the Reagan years, and as such the Gipper is attributed to causing many of the world’s ills. With it being well into the 2000’s I didn’t think that was rather relevant or funny any more, but it was shockingly easy to update everything to George Bush era USA, so that is the world that our Macho Women were unleashed into. Throw in some hell gates, a little bit of mysticism and a blatant disregard for order and we were ready to go. Since the book is only 12 pages there really isn’t much source type information, which I found to be totally cool. If anything the book sort of gives mixed signals about the world. For example, the cover shows a woman with a baseball bat and a pistol fighting aliens. Yet, J Edgar Hoover and Puppies of Tindalos are listed among the main enemies. To me this said to just do whatever I wanted to. And I did. And I think that more people should take liberties with fantasy worlds and just shape them to be whatever you need them to be. This is a point that is clearly spelled out in just about every role playing game handbook, yet I feel that a lot of people cling to what is written in them as gospel. That’s too bad, but a rant for another day.

Since the point of all this was to have a quick, fun game I pretty much let the players have and do what they wanted. When we started one character was driving a monster truck and their weapon was an extension cord with a padlock at the end. Another was wearing a Soviet style thong bikini and fought with a hammer and sickle. Another was weaponless, armed with only a pink catsuit and her feminine wiles. It was an excellent crew and no one spent very long coming up with their character. Leaving us plenty of time to play. Which is a good thing because the session was filled with explosions, murder, a thrilling car race and an orgy with JFK and Taylor Swift. Wouldn’t want to run out of time on any of that.

I’ll admit that I’m not sure if Macho Women is actually even a roleplaying game, it seems like it may be more of a table top game (later versions of it certainly are). Regardless, there are very few rules and the ones that do exist are either really easy or real easy to ignore. I found that rolling a character’s Macho was about the most important thing and frequently came up in interactions with the characters. This is not a game for rule lawyers. They will find precious little to work with. Everyone really enjoyed it and I am certain that it will find it’s way back to the table when we are between campaigns again. I do not really see this as being a long term campaign type of game, and I’m sure the designers would agree with me. But not everything needs to be. Macho Women With Guns is perfect the way that it is.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten initial thoughts

With our current Shadowrun campaign having ended we’ve decided to play a couple of other games over the next several weeks before we start up another. Next up on the agenda is the zombie horror game All Flesh Must Be Eaten. No one in the group, including myself, has ever played this before so it will be a new experience for all of us. Character creation is scheduled for this week so I’m trying to learn the rules since I will be adding Zombie Master (ZM) to my resume. Going into the game I do have some concerns about how the game will go. Before proceeding I would like to say that All Flesh Must Be Eaten is the greatest name in the history of roleplaying games.

The zombie genre is characterized by hordes of mindless combatants overpowering a group of survivors who are, most likely, at each other’s throats. To me that does not sound like a great game to run. Except for the players being at each other's throats. Why? Well, for starters the main enemy that I will be throwing at the party is mindless. Not even mindless in the way that gnolls and robots are mindless, but more like masses of gelatinous cubes coming after the party. What do I do with that? I mean, I love gelatinous cubes. Once every other campaign it’s great for an unsuspecting rogue to get trapped inside and have their equipment eaten. But if the vast majority of the opposition are all cubes? Even the occasional ochre jelly wouldn’t be enough to spice it up. It’s hard to play it dumb. I’ve always taken the approach that I place enemies in the world and they have an agenda and then they just sort of do their own thing. Sure, I’m controlling them but they are really like windup toys unleashed against the players. I think with All Flesh Must Be Eaten I need to take a more active role in things happening to the party in relation to what they do. Normally I wouldn’t do that, but I think it might make for a better game. More dead ends when being chased (as opposed to Path A being a dead end, and Path B leading to freedom), more crumbling staircases, more party strife and the like. I think I would also like to experiment with more “smart” zombies, but that is a little further down the road.

The other aspect that really concerns me is combat. In general combat against great numbers of weak foes is about the most boring approach. It takes a while, the party is never really in danger, and there is not much reward for it. From time to time it’s fun to do and allows the party to kick some ass. Right when that wizard gets Fireball or the rigger picks up a new autocannon, hordes of enemies are great to just mow down like target practice. But when that’s the norm? I’m not so sure. But that’s the thing about zombies. They are scary because they are essentially endless. You can never kill all the zombies. I hope that the party doesn’t try to. And I realize that an adventure in AFMBE isn’t about killing the boss, it won’t be structured that way but I would hate to see things drag as a result slow combat. And since this is the first time that we are playing I imagine that things won’t be running at top speed.

I like games and I always excited to try new ones, as is the case with AFMBE. If nothing else we have a fun group of players and I’m sure that we will enjoy the game. There are several types of characters in the game, ranging from norms (just what it sounds like) to Inspired (who have magical powers). We have chosen to play norms because it seems most representative of the actual genre. I think it’s also worth noting that no one in our group is a total zombie fanatic (not that I know of), so I don’t feel a ton of pressure to adhere to the genre to a tee.

DM Theory: The Goblin Cave

It’s easy to think of role playing games as sprawling, epic adventures in which the fate of the very universe hangs in the balance. The players are heroes (or villains) in the utmost, with each of their actions sending ripples through the entire world that they inhabit. And while that can be true, there is also nothing wrong with the Goblin Cave (or as it known in some circles, Bargle the Wizard). Often players and DM’s get caught up in these gigantic story arcs that ultimately crumble under their own lofty ambitions, thus squashing a game before it ever has a real chance of succeeding. To those games I say, have you been to the Goblin Cave?

The Goblin Cave can take many forms but at it’s heart it is a straightforward adventure that allows the players to make decisions, roleplay, learn something about their characters and have a good time. It goes like this: the party is somehow hired to kill the bandits that are stopping the local caravans. They lay in wait, defeat the goblin bandits, find some way to track them back to their cave lair where they kill the leader of the crew. They probably find something in the cave (a map, a hostage) that plants the seeds for the next adventure. I know, it sounds totally simplistic and it is. But it’s also fun. And for new players and DM’s it is a great way to play the game in a relatively closed environment and figure out what it is all about. Think of the opening scene of a lot of action movies. In many cases it is just a way to meet the characters and highlight some key traits that will pop up later on. This is just like that!

Another nice aspect of the Goblin Cave scenario is there is no pressure to create some sort of lasting villain that always gets away and continues to harass the party at every turn. The leader of the goblins dies in the goblin cave and then he is looted by the party. He is recognizable only by his slightly better weapon than the one’s wielded by his minions (perhaps a short sword to their clubs?). Maybe he yells out to the party just as the melee is joined. If he needs to be a little more memorable than sometime earlier in the adventure the party can learn his name and a little physical description, so that the party knows who he is when they go up against him (“The goblin with the short sword and long red hair, that must be Greasy Garth!”). There is a sense of accomplishment when he is defeated, knowing that he had been wreaking havoc on the townsfolk and now that has been ended by the actions of the party. It’s an immediate reward for the group.

I’m a big fan of promoting discussions amongst the party regarding their motives and intentions. To me it’s kind of what makes a roleplaying game so much fun and different from video games and board games. And the Goblin Cave has many opportunities to get the players talking and learning about their characters. Why are they taking on this assignment? Is there a bounty on the goblin bandit? Do they feel the need to protect the community and undertake the mission for altruistic reasons, or do they just love violence and despise goblins? What happens when they find stolen merchant cargo in the cave, is it returned to the original owner or is it claimed by the party as loot? The point is that there is a lot that can go into such a seemingly simple adventure.

DM Theory: Planning Too Much?

Running a successful, long term gaming campaign is a lot of work, and there is no guarantee that it is going to be worth it in the end. I’ve seen many games that lasted less time than a goblin in padded armor. So, what can you do to make your game fun and lasting? Well, there are a near infinite amount of ways to approach gaming but I can’t talk about all of them here. One that I would like to comment on is the amount of preparation that goes into a single session and into the ongoing campaign. Contrary to popular opinion it is possible to plan too much for a game, sometimes to the detriment of all involved.

If you are (un)fortunate enough to be the GM, DM, Keeper or whatever for your group there is no need to burden yourself with additional planning and long term masterminding that may never come to pass, or even worse, be forced upon the group of players. In my experience one of the worst things that a game master can do is to plan too far in advance, have the whole arc of the campaign scripted out before the first dice are rolled. It’s important to realize that the Game Master is just one half of the equation, with the players comprising the more volatile, explosive part of the game and the GM providing the framework that it can all exist inside of. It has to be a collaborative effort or it’s going to fall short. A couple of years back I was running a D&D campaign and when I was putting together my initial thoughts on the story I had in mind a plot involving the poisoning of the land by a clan of evil blighter type druids. Ultimately I assumed that the players would battle the druids and find their way to a mystical isle of legend where they could find the cure for the blighting that would be tearing through the land. I had some plot hooks that would interest all of the PC’s, but the PC druid was going to sort of be the driving force as to why they were getting involved in all of this. Well, guess what? The druid totally sucked as a character (she was fun and everyone liked her, but grossly ineffective) and wound up getting killed halfway through the campaign. But even before that I was able to adjust where the game was going by letting the players steer the course and in the end we had what may have been the best long term game that the group had experienced. It was a ton of fun. However, if I had spent a month writing up NPC’s, drawing maps and creating monsters I think that I would have been much more hesitant to scrap it. And this allowed me to adjust to what they did want to do, rather than just going along with what I had planned.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is that sourcebooks are there to help you. Honestly I’ve never been a big fan of the D&D books for specific locales (Greyhawk being the major exception) but the Shadowrun ones are great, as are a lot of other games. Use them, make it easy on yourself. Especially if you are new to running a game, piggyback on what others have done before you and play around and see what you and your group are most into. No need to reinvent the wheel.

It’s also very useful to have some key plot points or NPC’s that can be used in any location, that is to say that they are not tied to a certain inn or an event that will only happen if the party decides on a certain course. For example, the party is looking for a piece of information while investigating the disappearance of a college professor. You know that the info that they need is inside the head of a colleague of the professor’s. Now maybe that guy is usually hanging out at a certain watering hole, but he doesn’t have to be. Guess where he is going to pop up? That’s right, wherever the PC’s wind up. That seems simple, but look at it from the player’s standpoint. You have not railroaded them anywhere, they have been free to check out a whole bunch of places and ask around for this guy, which is good. Players don’t want to be told where to go. But in the end they find what they have been looking for and also get explore the location a bit. And you’ve really just created one NPC (of course, you are going to need to be able to adlib your way through some social encounters. If you can’t do this, you may be in the wrong line of work.)

In the end nothing is more important than understanding the group that you play with, and it takes time to breed that familiarity. But I know that I like to game every week and I don’t always have 10+ hours to set aside for preparation so I’ve learned to get by on less and less prep time. And some of the best sessions we’ve every had came as a result of having virtually nothing planned (don’t tell the players that) because it becomes a real group effort with everyone contributing to the action.

Sage Advice: An Archive of Bizarre Questions and Answers

In my formative role playing years I was a big fan of Dragon magazine. What I liked best about it were the insights into the games of other players. I really enjoyed the letters column and Sage Advice, where gamers would write in and ask questions of the gurus at TSR. Most of the time they could easily be answered by anyone who actually owned any of the books for D&D, but other times they were totally off the wall and represented, what I felt was, the real way that people play the game. Fortunately for all of us someone has taken it upon themselves to post years worth of Sage Advice and put it out there for all to read. Thank god for the internet.

This glorious page can be found here:
http://jgrimbert.free.fr/add2/advice/?order=id&debut=0

I’ve spent some time reading through it and I am happy to say that it is as entertaining as I remember. Some of my favorites include the following questions: “We are having an argument over an issue that has us divided. My friends say that with a ring of telekinesis they can make an arrow spin at the speed of light and then release it, having it do between 100 and 600 points of damage to their target. I say this is impossible! What do you think?” The Sage answer sides with the questioner, in case you were wondering it is not possible to do such a thing. Apparently the arrow would disintegrate if it was to spin that fast. Hmm.

Another: “What is the difference between chain mail and plate mail armor?” What kind of a question is that? There are dozens of books that describe both of them in detail. No one at this gaming table was able to answer this question? They had to write to a magazine? I love it.

Some more: “Will a monster join a character party if invited?” There are a lot of these subjective questions going on as well. Some of the others include “Is my character dead”, “What is behind the secret door” and “Is the sword I found magical”. The Sage Advice guy was a lot kinder with these questions than I would have been.

This also got me thinking about some of the questions that my game of 13 year olds would have asked back in the early 90’s. One of them would definitely have been, “Is a wish spell capable of giving the character an army of water breathing minotaurs? And, if so, what needs to be done to insure their loyalty? Is the promise of pillaging enough?” That was big in our game. Very important. I’ve also always wondered about “How many ballistas can fit onto the deck of the boat that my party stole at the end of the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh?” If you are a player of a certain age the answer to just about any question should be yes. It just makes sense to try to do everything. And, in a way, it’s easy for the DM because they all lead to murder and treasure.

There is something inherently strange about asking questions about D&D, since there are specific rules for the game and the DM’s word is law for anything not covered under those rules. But at the same time I am so glad that people ask these questions.

One Page Dungeon Codex 2009

No matter how creative and hardworking a DM may be, we could all use a little help from time to time when it comes to putting together that week’s adventure. I know that, personally, sometimes I just don’t have the time over the week to put together exactly what I want. Actual, non fantasy life does get in the way. It usually works out well, but in an effort to alleviate some of the pre D&D stress that occasionally comes along I went looking for some DM resources that I could plug into an existing game. I was delighted to come across The One Page Dungeon Codex 2009. What an interesting and well executed concept. It is a free collection of system neutral dungeons that can pretty easily be plugged into most campaigns. The common theme is that they all follow a one page format that contains both a map and a description of everything in it.

One important thing to note is that these adventures still require work from the DM. Since they are system neutral the DM, if nothing else, still needs to have stats for the monsters, place some treasure, work it into their world, etc…The thing that I like most about it is that the map is already made. I am not a dungeon map making type of guy so it is nice to have the most cumbersome aspect of adventure making taken care of for me. But really none of this is the interesting aspect of the One Page Dungeon Codex. The whole project came about as a collaborative effort from a couple of RPG blogs who developed the format and then had an open contest asking for submissions from readers. Judging ensued and then the best entries were put together into the Codex. It has three overall winners, but all together 21 entries are included. Some of them are great, others I don’t have much use for but overall it is a pretty nifty resource. It’s also nice to see people coming together to workshop and promote one another’s stuff.

The Best Overall Dungeon is called Secrets of the Old City by Simon Bull and it is put together very nicely. It is not ultra imaginative, it details an abandoned city underneath a city that is inhabited by a small thieves den and an ogre. But it is nicely done and can easily be slid into just about any urban setting. I am also a fan of The Grey Goblin Warrens, winner in the Best Hack and Slash category. It is a huge sprawling cave complex filled with goblins and many other nasties. I must say that I am extremely impressed with the amount of content that has fit into a single page. It is almost overwhelming. My favorite though is Arendt’s Old Peculiar. Taking the prize in the category of Best Pub, it is the story of a band of goblins that have taken over and reopened a semi famous but now in ruin bar. To be honest I don’t entirely see the adventure in it, it does not have a clear structure for the PC’s to follow. But not every adventure needs to be so linear and so apparent. The point is that it is a fun establishment and any worthwhile PC’s can have themselves a night in this place.

The file comes in at 54 pages, so it is substantial. The entire opening section is a sometimes tedious description of how the project came together. I enjoyed it, it’s always interesting to see how these projects come together. The adventures themselves remind me of the short adventures contained in the Greyhawk boxed set. Which is a good thing. At some point some of these adventures will wind up on our table. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hall of Fame: City of Greyhawk boxed set

As a young Dungeon Master in the early 90’s I frequently ran parties through the wonderful campaign setting of Greyhawk. Sure, from time to time we found adventure in the macabre land of Ravenloft or ran through Dragonlance as it burned, but our heart really belonged to Greyhawk. Nowadays I am strictly a homebrew setting type of DM, but there is one aspect of Greyhawk that I refer to from time to time. The City of Greyhawk boxed set is probably the most useful, thorough, and cool campaign supplement that I can possibly imagine. It came out in 1989 and I still find it to be extremely relevant and, despite the fact that I have read it about a thousand times, I always find something in it that I can throw into an adventure.

For a single supplement it really contained a lot of information. Inside of the box the eager DM finds waiting for him two books, four very large maps, and an entire series of short modules. The two books are really the heart of the boxed set; Greyhawk: Gem of the Flanaess details the actual city, while Greyhawk: Folk, Feuds, and Factions is all about the inhabitants of Oerth’s primary city. As a teenager I was really just beginning to hone the craft of creating adventures for players, most of the time they were one shot style games that had little to do with the previous sessions. The characters would continue and sometimes NPC’s would resurface, but the idea of actually having the PC’s inhabit a world that lived and moved not only around the PC’s, but even in their absence, was not just a novel idea but one that may have been over the head of a thirteen year old. The Greyhawk boxed set changed all of that for me. For the first time I saw a game world that existed outside of a module, that is the citizens of Greyhawk had lives that they lived that had nothing to do with the invasion of evil giants or the secret slavers latest attempt to capture unsuspecting folks. It made them so much more real, and in turn really contributed to the world that the PC’s were looting their way through. Something clicked with me and I continue to design worlds like this to this day.

I have a confession. I thought that the maps were so cool that I had one hanging on my wall as a poster. I was 27. Kidding about the 27 part, but it was hanging in my bedroom for a long time. The four maps are phenomenal. Three of them show the city from the same point of view and scale, but each has a different spin on things. One of them (my poster) has a nice color detail of the city. The buildings are all visible and the city teems with life and action. Another map shows the city with very little details, but all of the buildings and areas are marked with a number and letter, which corresponds to an entry in the Gem of the Flanaess book. I’d gaze longingly at my poster and when a building seemed intriguing to me I would look it up and learn all about it. What’s that weird building that looks like a temple at the foot of the Grand Citadel? Oh, it’s the Lord’s Tomb. It even lists the guards that will typically be there, even some of the jokes that they make when killing time. The third map shows the same view, but reveals the underground of the city. Sewers, secret passages, crypts, and even cisterns! Wow, that is some level of detail. The fourth map places Greyhawk in context with the world around it, which is cool, but why would you ever want to leave Greyhawk?

It’s not just that the boxed set contained so much information, for what is quantity without quality? But the information contained within was top notch. The NPC’s in particular were all well thought out and they all made sense. They were not just one dimensional foils for the PC’s or overly generous benefactors anxious to part with magic items. They had agendas! They had lives! They did things. One of my favorites was the detailed descriptions of Mordenkainen and the Circle of Eight. A group of nine powerful wizards, I had been using their spells for years without knowing a thing about them (for the most part, I had picked up some info here and there). Now I knew everything about them, including their relationships with one another and why they created the types of spells that they did. It was a revelation to my inquisitive mind. I had no idea that Otto was obese. Shocking. I also appreciated how several of the NPC’s were presented at several stages of their career, making it easy to drop them into any campaign. One of my favorites was Varmai Zendeihei, a young lawful good warrior working to benefit the folks of Greyhawk. Over time she discovers a paired of cursed bracers created by Vecna and slowly transforms over time into an evil, trusted agent of Iuz. The book contains stats for her various incarnations and levels of power over different points in time.

The adventure cards that came with the book were also excellent and great for a night of adventuring, usually on the outskirts of the city. Inside the box are 23 of these adventures. They were short (all the info was on both sides of a single piece of paper) and usually quirky and compelling. They range from simple (watching over a shop while the keeper is out of town on business) to deadly (retrieving a broken staff from the crypt of a lich). My personal favorite was Vote for the Goat, in which the party is hired to provide protection for a goat that is running for political office. Great stuff all around.

Of all the TSR products of my youth, the City of Greyhawk boxed set may be my favorite. Certainly the one with the most impact. It just seemed so limitless to me in it’s scope and ambition, and what was capable with a game of D&D. Do they still make things like this today? I have no idea. I hope so. I was at the bookstore the other day and noticed the obscene amount of 4th edition material that is out there, perhaps there is another City of Greyhawk out there somewhere. I would think not though. Flipping through the Greyhawk boxed set one thing that jumps out is the lack of numbers. It is not entry after entry of feats, spells, magic items, and prestige classes. It is about enhancing a game through NPC’s and a rich world to explore, rather than by elevating the power level and providing the PC’s with endless opportunities to specialize their characters.

One Shot Through the Heart

My usual D&D group is between campaigns so I decided to run a one shot last night to fill the void that would have otherwise been Tuesday night. I also decided to make all the characters for the adventure and have the players draw them randomly. I thought that this could be an excellent opportunity for them to try some odd characters, the type that you may not commit to for a full campaign. Plus, I had a fun little scenario in mind that I thought would work well for one night.

The approach I took to making the characters was that they were essentially D-List adventurers. Not quite good enough to make it in a real party and not likely to live for more than a couple of levels. I also thought it would be cool if they all had pretty opposite alignments, kind of going for the dysfunctional party thrown together due to circumstances. The characters wound up being a half orc hexblade (LE), a goblin rogue (NE), a half elf bard(NG), and a dwarf paladin(LG). There was also a fifth character I created that was not used, a CN elf swashbuckler. The setup was simple; they were all moments away from being combatants in an arena. Various circumstances landed them in the position they were in, but they had a common cause to bond them initially. Moments after the adventure started a huge minotaur was charging at them while a bloodthirsty crowd cheered on the prospect of death. They were also equipped with totally crappy weapons; a trident, dagger, light pick, and a whip. Oh, and no one was wearing anything better than leather armor. It was quite a crew.

Though wounded, they survived the melee and while being led back to their cells an opportunity for escape presented itself. The rich Lady that the Paladin was in service to had arranged for a boat to wait for her in the harbor. Bribed by the Lady, the guards showed the party an entrance into the sewers beneath the arena and told that it would lead out to the harbor. And the escape was on! Eventually the party wound up bickering with one another, fighting amongst each other, and going their separate ways. Most of them wound up being killed by a rat catcher who worked for the city and lived in one of the passages they were traveling through. He had a pet dog that killed the bard. The paladin did manage to make it to the harbor and onto the boat, safely sailing away from the ugly situation she had left in her wake.

I love the character development and relationships that develop over the course of a long campaign, but there is something very fun about disposable characters and simple plots. I think that in the intense world of power gaming and min maxing that simple games like last night’s somehow get lost, which is a shame. It’s okay to be a hexblade with a 9 AC or a bard that can cast Magic Mouth and not much else. And as a DM it’s a very nice, stress free type of game to run. I don’t have to worry about hooks for future adventures or the PC’s missing key plot points. I’m into it.

Campaign Summary

Our most recent D&D campaign ended last week so I thought that I would take this opportunity to look back on the campaign that was and see how it all went down. It was the third campaign that I have run with this group of players and I feel that it went pretty well. In some ways it was very similar to others that I have run, and in other aspects it was very different. I enjoyed it and I think that the players did as well, so I guess that it can be considered a success.

The campaign ran for 34 adventures spread out over around nine months, we played pretty much every week and each session lasted about three to three and a half hours. That’s a substantial amount of dungeons and dragons and allowed a lot of time for both character and plot development, though I’m not sure that we reached our potential in either realm. There were two major reasons for this and both of them were deliberate on my part. The first of which was that I decided going into things that I was going to make this game a bit more lethal than some I have run in the past. I’ve never been a cupcake DM and have certainly slaughtered my share of PC’s, but based on the type of world that the game was set in I felt that the environment should be particularly harsh and challenging. The end result was the death of five PC’s (which actually isn’t all that bad, though also many near deaths along the way), and another who was retired about half the way through the campaign. There were five players in the game and a total of 11 PC’s. No one was resurrected, death was final. I have to say that I like what death brings to the table. When the PC’s know that the chance of death is real it makes surviving that much more rewarding and that is a real nice gaming experience as far as I am concerned. I wanted to have that in the game, but it also has the negative experience of preventing some long term plots from developing. The fact is that many quests are character driven and when characters are coming through a revolving door they frequently have entirely new agendas than their predecessors. It sort of made it tough to move forward some plots. On the other hand it sort of pushed the spotlight to some NPC’s that were continually featured since the theatre of operations for the campaign was a relatively small area that was constantly departed from and revisisted.

The second aspect of the campaign was that it was a very open ended world. I took a couple of weeks to create a world and figure out what was happening in it, I did this before knowing what type of PC’s were going to be adventuring it. I wanted to have an actual living and moving world that the PC’s were dropped into and had to react to, rather than having a world that was built to facilitate their adventuring needs. Things went on that the PC’s never knew about, when they left certain areas events occurred and moved forward without them. I wanted it to be open ended and give them a chance to pursue what their characters wanted to do, which they did. I would not go so far as to say that they were lawful, but they were not nearly as chaotic as I suspected that they may have been given the loose constrains of the environment. The world was essentially a frontier region that the civilized arm of the human kingdom was expanding into. There were nonhumans (primarily orcs) native to the region that did not like this presence encroaching on their land. This was the area that the PC’s were dropped into. There was also a long standing pagan type god native to the region that was beginning to reawaken, with all the new life in the area feeding into his power. The land to the far south through the mountains was thoroughly unexplored. There were two primary human settlements in the area, one of which would be overrun before the campaign ended.

With eleven PC’s in the game most classes were covered at one time or another. Let’s see if I can remember them; two rogues (one had some fighter), two clerics, a duskblade, a hexblade, a ranger, a barbarian, a druid, a sorcerer, and a wizard. One of the rogues died on the second adventure. The Ranger made it to the highest level, getting all the way to 9th level.

On a selfish level I feel that this campaign was a great exercise for me as a Dungeon Master since I was constantly kept on my toes. It was a lot of fun trying to stay a step or two ahead of them, only to find out that I was walking down the wrong path. In the end I did get a little burnt out and it did not end nearly as well as I was hoping. But I still had a blast the whole time.

Cloakers Wild

I’ve tried to go through the Monster Manual and, over the course of the last several campaigns I’ve run, use every monster in it. Some of them are very dumb and will most likely not be used again, but others I’ve grown to love. One such beloved creature is the mysterious Cloaker. They sort of look like giant, flat bats and they live in caves and other underground locales. Unlike a lot of aberrations they are actually quite intelligent (Int 14 and Wis 15) and coupled with their abilities make some of the best sneak attacking monsters out there. Their physical attacks are nothing special (1d6+5) but they can wreak havoc on a party with effective use of their moans and engulf power. The moan can be used in several ways and affects an entire group. It can panic, weaken, and nauseate the opposition depending on which it feels like using. Also, different versions affect both Fort and Will saves so it can target various PC’s with effectiveness. For as great as the moan is, I think that engulf is even better. Cloakers tend to hang out in cave ceilings and then drop down on opponents, engulfing them with their billowy bodies. Once an opponent is engulfed, any damage done to the Cloaker is split between the Cloaker and the engulfed foe. Awesome. There is nothing like a PC having no choice but to injure their comrade to kill the monster. It also makes criticals rather bittersweet. They also have some minor illusion powers that make them even more ideal for setting traps.

I really get a kick out of the Cloaker description in the SRD. It mentions how they are almost impossible to distinguish from a common cloak, even the claws of the creature look like a cloak’s clasp. You know, the type of cloak that is frequently left hanging from the ceiling of a monster filled cave. I guess that Cloakers should starting hanging out in bars on the coat rack.

Adventure Hook: The PC’s have been hired to explore a cave complex on the outskirts of town. Growing deep in the cave is a strange, rare fungus that a wizard needs as a spell component. The wizard passes it off as a simple snatch and grab assignment, though the locals are well aware of the dangerous reputation that the caves have in the area. Rumors have grown over the years as to what exactly is in the caves, though no one seems to have a solid answer. In fact, a group was hired by the same wizard just the previous week to get the fungus and no one has seen them since.

While in the caves the PC’s enter into a large, cavernous room in the complex. Since they have entered into the caves they have periodically heard strange moans, some of which seem to be emanating from the room that they just entered. As they look around the room they see the body of an elf in tattered armor in the center of the chamber. As they near the center of the room the moan is heard again, this time right above them! As they suffer the effects of the horrid noise several large, batlike monsters fall down onto them, attempting to engulf them and extinguish their flames.

This is a pretty simple adventure hook, but there are a couple of things that I like about it. Any adventurers worth their weight in ten foot poles are going to try and find some info on the caves before going in, so through the use of some Gather Information or Knowledge (Local) they can learn about the reputation of the caves (of course there are going to be monsters in it, this is D&D after all) and about the missing adventurers. Whenever PC’s can use skills like that and get some actual information it makes them happy, so I like to make them dig a little and have some interactions rather than just have the local inn keeper freely dole out the information. Plus, if they have some idea of what is inside the cave it sort of makes the scene a bit more tense, rather than just unknown. If they score high successes on their checks they may even be rewarded with some specifics as to the type of creatures or the tactics that they use (“My uncle remembers those caves from when he was a kid…”).

The dead elf on the ground is actually a Silent Image created by one of the cloakers, but by planting the seed of some missing adventurers it makes it seem a bit more plausible that a corpse would just be lying there. Otherwise it just reeks of a trap. Of course, a Knowledge (Dungeoneering) check could identify the moaning and shed some more light on the capabilities of the cloaker, in which case the group will have a heads up on the trap.