Some Odd Experiences

Although my current RPG campaign is on hiatus I got two chances recently to introduce novices to roleplaying using Chris McDowall's Into the Odd. This is not a review so much as a breakdown of what works and what doesn't work for me.

WHAT WORKS

Character generation is simple and yields perfect shabby-Victorian protagonists for this weird industrial setting, more punk than steam. Starting equipment is derived super quickly, balancing out poor stat rolls with better stuff. All magic resides in things (arcana) and nobody is extra at anything. You are only as good as your starting rolls, your stuff, and later your levels which let you survive better.

The Oddpendium is a fabulous gaggle of percentile tables that let you quickly generate info about characters, places, and things. It conveys and embroiders the setting.

New players love the quirky characters and the quick dive into action. There are real Every-beings without super-powers or fancy tricks. The system forces low cunning and inventiveness to get by.

WHAT DIDN'T WORK

Behind the screen (well, the uptilted book) I was sweating a little. The system outright omits some features I am used to in judging adventurous events.

No skills, just saves vs. ability scores. I guess this makes a statement about the replaceability of characters and importance of possessions in an industrial world. I found it more fun and characterizing to roll a random former profession and give an extra roll, or "advantage" in 5e terms, on saves related to it. And "saves" can be proactive, covering any player action that is unsure to work. New players really need all the hooks for character they can grab.

Combat is simple and safe-till-it's-deadly; being in combat means you score a die roll's amount of damage which is taken first from hit points, which high level characters and monsters have more of, and then from Strength. Each wound to Strength requires a Strength save or you are incapacitated, and dead if not tended to. Advantage and disadvantage in combat means using a bigger or smaller die. Armor can only reduce 1 point of damage, or more for certain monsters.

I like the limited armor - that's in-setting - and randomly deadly wounds. But -- I find there's something you miss by not having a hit roll or the possibility of defense in melee. There's firearms, so taking a long shot seems particularly poor to model and not well covered by the disadvantage idea. You can try to flee when your hit points are zero, but they'll always be able to "hit" you as you run.

At a minimum I suggest: To get a shot in at long range with a ranged weapon, save Dex at disadvantage. Medium range, just save Dex. Automatic damage at close or point blank range.

In close melee, damage with fists (d4) or short bladed weapon (d6) or claws/teeth is automatic. With surprise, damage is also automatic. At swords' length, each attacker saves vs. Dex to hit, and each defender gets one Dex save against one attacker to parry or evade. To speed up a fight you can take Disadvantage on the attack to force the defender to do the same on the defense. If a successful hit is met with a successful parry, both sides roll damage and the difference is applied to the loser.

It's
Odd!

Steal the Eyes ... Scratch That

That feeling when you're playtesting your long-delayed megadungeon and there's a 20' high bird god idol with glowing orange eyes and one of your players -- who has in fact probably never seen this picture:

follows her rogue's instinct to climb up and see if those eyes are a) gems and b) pry-able ...

but no, they are just magic light cast on stone eyes.

In what is not really a fit of pique and more like dogged mission completion mode, she then takes hammer and chisel and chips off all the light-bearing stone, raining a shower of little half-glowing, candle-strength chips on the floor ...

which turn out to be a useful small treasure in their own right.

Confirming that it's much more fun to redraw the path of ages, then follow it.

Tekumel: The Island

Yesterday a group of four players started my Tekumel campaign. In the great tradition of "barbarians coming to the big city and learning the setting" they created characters, members of an island tribe. They each took party roles.

The Speaker (caller in social situations) was a necromantic shaman with a blow-gun, who contributed that the tribal totem was the Wild Dog. He follows He Who Sets the Night In Order, lord of the moons and planets, ordainer of bad fortune, and casts fortunes by scattering bones in moonlight.

The Rememberer (note taker and mapper) was a not particularly competent hunter. He decreed that the rival groups on the island were the Wild Cat tribe and a group of Hlutrgu frog-men, all separated by mountain ranges and a dormant volcano.

The Keeper of the group's resources was a blind healing shaman ("Can I be blind like Daredevil?" "No, you're just blind"). He determined that what the tribe trades with one Captain Tarshar, boss of that big canoe with wings, is red-flecked volcanic obsidian in return for trinkets, hatchets, cloth and food.  He became blind by staring too long in search of She Who Hides Behind The Sun, ordainer of good fortune.

The Defender, lord of military strategy and the initiative die, was a strong and resilient barbarian warrior whose weapon of choice is a big rock on a rope. To him fell the invention of why the PCs, their zero-level followers and about 20 other tribespeople had to leave the island. Famine, due to increasing heat and decreasing water, was the answer. The other three were among the least necessary members of the tribe. The other twenty also had less desirable qualities -- lazy, complainer, drunk, quarrelsome -- and somehow got the short end of the "random" selection by lots conducted by the Wild Dogs' elder shaman. The Defender took pity on them and decided to accompany them. The tribal legend says that across the sea, in a place where people build mountains and live in them, is the Greater Eye of Shaping the Earth, relic of the dawn age, which can bring prosperity to the most ravaged land.

The elders decide that Captain Tarshar, whose seasonal visit comes any day now, must be convinced to take the surplus tribespeople to this built-mountain-place. The quest of the Eye seems like a good use of these exiles. How big, after all, can the world be?

Next: The Hunt

Surprise Kills Obmi

Obmi is dead. That supervillainous boss of the third level of the Castle of the Mad Archmage, uncatchable nemesis of Gary Gygax's players, was rushed in his lair and taken apart by the terrible force of the Muleteers. And they weren't even at full spells and hits. Here's how (spoilers for CotMA obviously).

"Just go right at 'em" - Captain Aubrey

1. Strategic surprise. Good intentions paid off. Over the last few sessions, the adventurers had been probing and chipping away at the force of hobgoblins, bugbears and goblins in the northeast of the level. A rival party, the Lightning's Hand, had meanwhile fallen foul of Obmi; in cleaning out the last of the orcs in the southeast, they ran across the hobgoblins, with whom they thought they had a deal. But Obmi had been doing dungeon diplomacy to unite the humanoid groups, and the hobgoblins turned on the Hand, killing their main fighter with the aid of a hold person spell from their cleric. Fleeing, they ran into the conveniently placed Obmi and his minions, and (seeing as I rolled snake eyes for the success of this encounter, when playing through the actions of the NPC party) had to surrender after some brutal treatment.

The party was originally planning to go after the hobgoblins, at which point the tribe would have sent a runner to warn Obmi, who would have hooked around with his gnoll squad and a couple of other friends to block their retreat. Even with the aid of the Knights of Antonius, a group of holy warriors who were helping them out, this would have been serious Surtrouble for the Muleteers. But then the voice of morality spoke up in the form of Freya, the hermit, who reminded them of their duty to rescue the Hand.

In their reconnaissance the Knights had found a couple of passages forking off with the intersection marked with the dwarven rune for "O." It was there that dungeon doctrine was again ignored, and the Knights and Muleteers split up, each having one passage to search. Luck, too, came into it as the Muleteers picked the one that would lead them straight to Obmi's lab and lair.

2. Tactical surprise. Ordinarily on their way to Obmi's lair the Mules would have run across a small group of orcs, all that remained of the once mighty Grinning Skull tribe, who had be set by Obmi to patrol the maze. However, at the very same time, the goblin runner from the hobgoblins had been banging on one of the one-way doors into the maze, and the orcs were escorting him back to the door of the lair, which a gnoll guard opened.

Just then Titus the gnome and self-styled muleborne knight decided to try to sneak down the corridor behind them, wearing metal armor,and thus failing. "Hey!" The orcs swiveled around and everyone rushed forward, led by Titus, who started incanting the syllables of his Choke spell... only to fail and cast a different random spell of the same level instead at the targets (he must have mispronounced Choke as Shock) ... the most fortuitous Lightning Bolt. Bouncing around in the confined space, the bolt fried all the humanoids and miraculously stopped just short of hitting the caster.

The path to the huge lair room was now clear and everyone rushed in as fast as they could. Five gnolls were at various places in the room, Obmi was over by the wall tormenting one of the Hand party captives, who were all strapped and locked into various devices and tables. A huge swiveling brass machine with a pointy end was installed in the middle of the room. Bort the fighter, running to engage Obmi, placed himself in a position to fight the six remaining gnolls as they tried to come out of their adjacent barracks room. This was a crucial if unwitting decision that gave the party tactical control of the room.

With a few good decisions and strokes of luck the party had given themselves a huge positional advantage, which was to widen when Obmi, acting out a tragic flaw, chose to use his invisibility ring and boots of speed not to get away, but to make it to his pride and joy, the repulsor ray machine in the middle of the room. (This flaw was activated by some unusually high morale rolls I threw for Obmi.) The beam pushed back a column of party reinforcements as they tried to enter the room, but the energy wizard Orbit managed to get off a Shatter spell that blew a hose on the contraption. With most of the gnolls in the lair now dead, and the rest hemmed into their barracks, the party swarmed around the dwarf, cutting off his escape and eventually finishing him.

I could have further ruled that the invisibility and boots of speed would allow Obmi to slip past engaging enemies, but the result felt like a just reward for audacious action, phenomenal luck, and the folly of the usually slippery villain. Things would have been very different if Obmi had been shielded by a swarm of gnolls and able to pound the front line with his returnng hammer. What I observed years ago was borne out that day: the advantage of surprise is not always to the home team.

Running and Hacking the Lantern of Wyv

At London's one-day convention Dragonmeet last weekend I ran one of the One Page Dungeon Contest winners from this year, "The Lantern of Wyv" by Michael Prescott. As usual, I find one-page adventures near perfect time-wise for four-hour convention slots (though this slot was more like 3 1/2), but can't resist tinkering with the adventure as written.

The pregenerated characters were all based on rock stars from the 60's, mostly associated with the Rolling Stones, in homage to the song "Lantern." Each one had a secret goal - to use the Lantern to get back home; to gather white "moon pebbles" or wyvern venom for, um, alchemical purposes; to experience new sensations; to rid the Bay of the wyverns that had taken over since the owner of the Lantern died; to scrounge spells; to make sure the wizard buried there is resting easily. Some changes were:

1. The adventurers start from a village a half day's walk away from the bay,populated by refugees from the wyvern plague. They had 1/6 chances of encountering a wyvern and a human hunting party from the survivors in the bay, and got the latter. These gave useful information that the wyverns are attracted to shiny and colorful things, and traded a dose of anti-venom for some food and equipment.

2. More detail about the tower where the flying barge "docks" (25 feet above the top). The wizard Radomenus has only been dead 20 years and the tower was the site of her funeral and wake. It's a three-floor octagonal construction some 20' wide and rises 25' with its top levels blasted away (the stone appears melted, which wizards may know is the signature effect of a high-level white fireball). All around the tower in the long grass are melted chunks of stone and the pieces of a dismantled spiral stair.

Also in the grass and leaves by the tilting wooden door is a small iron figurine of a cricket-bodied man in the act of playing the fiddle and bow. If brought within 5' of a place where Radomenus has lain (the biers in the tower and the barge, the black table in the Lantern) the residual radiation will inspire the figure to chirp out a slow rhythm, which gets more hectic with proximity to the white sand or to Radomenus herself.

Inside on the ground floor are scattered, decaying folding chairs (the wizards at the wake quarreled on leaving and the place was never properly cleaned up) surrounding a bare wooden bier with few surprises. A few balled-up scraps of paper when put together reveal a neatly scribed program for the funeral. In the game I prepared this prop on the train up and threw wadded-up pieces of the puzzle at the players as they scoured the floor. This gave such clues as "shrouding and shielding of the body", the hymn "that is not dead which doth eternal lie,"and the conclusion of the wake with an "abolition of the tower."

Using rope to go up past the middle level, with some uninteresting long-spoiled food and drink left over from the wake, the adventurers found themselves on the melted stump-roof of the tower and waited until the flying barge came to stop there, 25' up. A levitate spell from the gnome and some ropework had everyone up there quickly, although the healer fell and broke her ribs.

Using the information from the hunters, everyone lay low and covered up their armor for the ride and survived without a wyvern attack (1/6 chance, up to a certainty if showing bright or shiny objects).

3. There had been a lot of ropework getting up the stairless tower and onto the barge, and rather than go through all that again I decided to make the central shaft of the Lantern different. The levitating magics that allowed people to move between levels are still in place, but have become unstable. For each level in space, each 5' area around the rim of the shaft and each minute in time roll a d6, where 6 = "going up quickly" and 1 ="going down quickly." Various ways to navigate were tried, including trial and error, rope, and throwing flour into the air to see which way the currents go (adventuring use #2,407 for flour). The slight chaos thus caused had the gnome on the third level and the rest of the party on the first.

4. The first level, along with the radioactive "new flesh" healing slab, had the addition of some formless lumps of flesh that used to be servants. I was ready to use them in a fight (as lemures) but seeing no need to kill time I instead had them just be features in an empty room, that protested and asked to be returned to oblivion when put on the resurrection slab.

5. The second level was mostly unexplored, although the shaft room was the venue for the final fight. I had prepared a map of my campaign world with crossing ley lines for the players to find, as well as a kind of a game where a wizard could piece together torn up and incomplete spell names and descriptions to create unreliable new magics.

6. The third level was pretty much as described. The gnome tiptoed past the bulk of the transformed Radomenus (sleeping, by my dice) and messed around a bit with steering crystals and the pit of radioactive sand before filling a wineskin with the stuff and, casting it into the flux currents, found one to gently go back down.

At that time, looking at the less than 30 minutes remaining, I decided that Radomenus would wake up and crawl down for the final boss fight. Well, 8 hit dice of blob don't last long against eight level 4 characters, and the one lightning bolt she licked off before Hideous Mirth and a hail of arrows got to her only critically injured a henchman. I didn't even think to have her summon wyverns before descending, so the party got cheated out of that experience as well. Next time she will be better prepared...

Resolution 1: Prep without mercy. These are one-shot characters and there's no need to be gentle.

Resolution 2: The one-page format lends itself to four hours pretty easily, so any padding added at the front will detract from the meaty, cool stuff at the end.

Muleteers: Joy's Return

The Muleteers on Sunday had a surprise visit from dwarf Joy and henchman Little Pig Man, eager to follow up rumors of an adventurer's republic being established in Garyburgh. They had picked up a wandering hermit, Freya (possibly pictured in the transplanar daguerrotype to the right, or in any event, a representative of that type). This mystic of St. Sylvain, carrying a rope made out of her own hair, seemed more inclined to stick around with the Muleteers in the end than the former members of the party. Perhaps they found the small scale of the "republic" unimpressive, with fewer than 200 civilian souls and a score of adventurers to defend it, and the only fortification a waits-high barricade around the town square.

In any case, the arrivals found the Muleteers coming back from the Castle around noon and persuaded them, uninjured, to turn around for a second chance at adventure! Grimnir, however, declined, citing a splitting headache, perhaps brought on by cognitive dissonance at the sight of a young hermit of the Church named after one of the holiest gods of his religious tradition.

The others quickly traced their steps back to the sinister temple they had been exploring on the second level, defeated the lone baboon ("Ugly Boy") who had been guarding the place and proceeded to  loot, smash, and defile (re-file?) with holy water the altar and great statues of Demogorgon. Tracing a circuitous corridor, they completed what appeared to be the southwest corner of the dungeon map. Along the way they encountered a puzzle that defeated their powers of deduction and dealt out harsh shocks that turned Mantog into a twitching wreck tied to a mule, and if not for luck would have made Freya's adventuring career very short indeed. Some storerooms, a pair of shriekers guarding the corpse of a rabbit adventurer clad in remorhaz-hide armor, abandoned orc barracks (not surprising given the recent depopulation) and a room with a dismantled blade mechanism.

At the end, the party decided to make their own adventure, and assailed a nest of giant ants with the aid of a gnome-summoned lizardman, truly a champion of his kind with near-maximum hit points. Alas, the ants were lucky too, and a series of high damage rolls soon had the Muleteers in full retreat, leaving the reptile to perish in involuntary bravery.

And so, the megadungeon, where boredom and clearing-out can always be remedied by taking a tilt at the nearest unsolved mystery or unconquered redoubt.

Mad Archmage Campaign: Village Invasion

I realize these play reports may  not be the most exciting reading, but hell with it, I do need to document my campaigns like this, and it helps the players if this kind of collective memory is preserved.

In the meantime, I do have about three more meaty posts on the slow, slow go.

And still bummed I have to miss Dragonmeet this year.

Session, Nov 30, 2014

Fingauble, the wizard who had been paying the Lightning's Hand party to grant access to the library of the Mad Archmage, opened negotiations with the Muleteers for a cheaper deal if they could find out the secret to opening the doors, which he thought was a password. After reviewing their analysis of the 25 puzzle rooms he opined that they must have made an error somewhere, and that there should be a way to determine in what order the path adds letters of rooms to the word. The Muleteers inadvertently gave away their guesses about the password to the final interior door of the library, which Fingauble "charitably" repaid by casting a Detect Magic spell for free. Fingauble further agreed to give the party 50 pieces of gold and a scroll and holy robe that would help in fighting the demons in the upper castle cellars if they gave him the secret to entering the library.

The next day, Grimnir wandered off and the remaining Muleteers headed to the Castle to study the puzzle rooms. On the way, they were approached by a pack of five beak dogs, which their tame beak dog seemed all too eager to meet. As the beak dogs loped toward them, they staked down the tame dog and opened up with missiles. The pack charged and managed to seriously injure Erasmo's head and arm, also giving Titus a good scare with a near-miss beak to the throat, so that against such odds there was no such choice but to flee. The beak dogs soon freed their fellow beast and after a short test of dominance accepted him into the pack. With what remained of the day the Muleteers decided to make haste to the Grey City, leaving the still-injured Nixington and Erasmo in Garyburgh to heal more.

On arriving at the Silver Eel Inn these travellers found a large beer cart parked outside and a drinking contest about to begin courtesy of the Fickle Firkin brewery. The contest was eventually won by a dwarf (of course) but for a while Winmore held him neck and neck, and got a forty ounce bottle of beer as a runner-up prize. The members of the party were wheeled into their rooms afterward.

Back in Garyburgh, in the common room of the Wizard's Wench, as the end of the evening drew into sight, a peasant ran in shouting "Orcs in the fields!" The initial order of battle of the defenders of the village consisted of the barkeep and a following of drunkards; Captain Rurik and a detachment of six Grey City-State guards; the novice adventuring party Free Roamers, down to four active members after taking injuries in a fight with kobolds; the five-strong Lightning's Hand, their lightning wand, alas, depleted; and the weakened, leg-maimed Muleteer wizard Nixington.

The night was wracked by strong-gusting winds and rain. The defenders saw torch lights behind a line of trees and charged there, only to find the lights were an illusion, and came back to find the village green surging with Bloody Axe orcs, the same tribe seen and fought in the dungeons. Nixington, exposed, almost took an arrow. Spellcast and sound fighting held off the central thrust of the attack, but not before another Free Roamer went down injured. Fingauble came down the stair of the inn, grumbling about roisterers outside disturbing his sleep, opened a window and casually lobbed a ten die fireball into the midst of a cluster of orcs before heading back upstairs.

But on the flank, fighting between the houses, orcs slaughtered the barkeep and drunks, then outflanked and slew all but one of the guards. An old man was spotted at the back of their ranks, consorting with a baboon and two young, strong fellows - the same group the party had heard tell of before, travelling to Garyburgh and then vanishing. This old man was a spell caster, incapacitating foes with stinking vapors and placing a charm on Rurik. When the flanking group emerged into the square and saw charred bodies and smoldering grass, they beat a retreat into the night, Rurik among them.

In the morning after the slaughter, it became clear that no law or government would be left in Garyburgh, as Pennypacker the tax collector loaded a cart with worldly goods and family and set off back to safer places. For now, it was enough to bury the dead: 10 humans and more than 20 orcs. One captive orc commander remained to tell the tale.

Megadungeon Playtest Without the Dungeon

Last Saturday in London we had a small meetup of variously 8-10 Old School gamers who couldn't wait for Dragonmeet (wait, Dragonmeet has an updated website and schedule in early October? Surely these are the last days and times...)

In the corner of a pub near Euston Station, it was decided that I should run the first game, an encounter with pregenerated 52 Pages first-levels going after the low-level bandits holed up in caves near the entrance of my megadungeon project, Manden Gouge.

A rough idea of the style

I haven't talked much about this project - preferring to show rather than tell, perhaps overcorrecting for the tendency of gamers to hype vaporware.  As of now I have about 120 areas written up, enough for the first installment, which now lacks only a bunch of connecting material. The design goals are:

• Emphasis on exploration, finding out the history of the nearly abandoned castle Karthew's Legacy and the warrens beneath.
• Setting-neutral - can be dropped into almost any pseudo-European fantasy world with few assumptions about the universe
• Subverting cliches -- few things, be they monsters or treasure, are "by the book"
• Detailed rather than general descriptions -- but detail for a purpose.
• "Gormenghast" feel to the upper rooms and cellars of the castle -- a society of eccentric inhabitants, with mad and dangerous things lurking in the corners, left by a long line of previous weirdos
• Run-friendly, with detail maps and monster stats on the same page as descriptions
• Lots of goodies -- a menu table, social relations map, reference illustrations for the player, a dream dungeon-within-the-dungeon, family tree and heraldry

And that's all folks - no Kickstarter, no hype, no set date. You'll see it when it's here.

Anyway, following up a mission hook to deal with some bandits with the advantage of night-vision, the party decided to set a counter-ambush for the bandits and then lure them out of their cave, managing to bag the leader under a dropped goods cart thanks to Barry's creative abuse of the Featherweight spell. So the megadungeon playtest never entered the megadungeon. But I'll be damned if I railroad.

Eggs on a Plate Without the Plate - Salvador Dali

Then Barry took the reins for an adventure in Tekumel using Lamentations rules -- a really nice introduction to that exotic and hierarchical setting that had the party carrying out a tenement eviction, with rainy, moldy atmospherics that brought to mind a cross between The Raid and Se7en.

It was a great day with the opportunity to put faces to a lot of names across the British blogosphere and G+alaxy. I hope there's another such one of these days.

Gencon 2014 Report

GenCon this year was one of those experiences where I knew what I wanted to do, I did it in moderation, and it went well, producing a satisfied feeling. I wanted to:

* Play and run old school roleplaying games, meeting up with like-minded players and writers.

I think my first ever appearance on the official GenCon Schedule was a success, running the Mule scenario. Despite a few glitches in my preparation, the players had fun facing the challenges and coming out with all six slots on the Necromule filled with named corpses.

The midnight run happened on my Five Rings group's party floor, and while a little more distracted by raucous goings on, drinking and equipment mishaps, did take the players to a different area of the Crypts with a strange social encounter and a rousing final combat against plague zombies, who yielded only two nameable corpses.

On Saturday I went and played in Tavis' ACKS scenario using a Dyson Logos map and exploring an ancient tomb. A really good group of creative role-players assembled, including Tavis' 12 year old son, and I'm grateful he found space for me. We ate a burger, discussing insider stuff about the Dwimmermount kickstarter with one of the backers, and then headed off to our party floor to play a really good off-the-grid Ars Magica introductory scenario with GM Rob. Even better, Brian "Trollsmyth" Murphy stopped by briefly to say hi.

* Try new games of all descriptions.

Thursday morning kicked off with a definite "SCORE" at Gaming On Demand- getting first pick and picking Jason Morningstar's run of The Warren, an Apocalypse World game that does Watership Down/Bunnies & Burrows. Jason's scenario was a bayou with appropriate creatures and challenges, including a memorable Cajun raccoon named Boupignon. AW rules sets seem to hit the right notes between rules-light and cool subsystems. In particular my rabbit, Tunguska, made good use of the Seer procedure in which the other players write single words on pieces of paper and the seer has to make up a vision involving them.

I did the usual walking the dealer hall and trying new games. I can report that a) playing a demo and then not being able to buy the game because it will be "out in November" is a frustrating experience b) if you walk on to an empty demo table it may be because the game sucks; good games seem to create their own buzz and interest c) so the only game I played and got was the PvP deckbuilder Star Realms, whose computer version is indeed fiendishly addictive. Also bought the usual ton of miniatures and accessories, and got but did not play Hillfolk - my impulse is to start with anything but the.vanilla-Hebrews default setting.

Also memorable - bottom feeding on the party floor (thanks Eric, I think) with weird card games using Magic mechanics for questionable simulational purposes, like Ultimate Combat where mana is "conditioning" and "fighting spirit" and so forth and creatures are combat moves, all illustrated with amateur photos of karate dojos -- or god help me, Furoticon where the mana is one of four genders and you can send minions to block your enemy's erotic assault before your orgasm points or whaatever are worn down.

* Do some networking.

As well as catching up and connecting with the new brand manager for the L5R CCG, and other people in that enterprise, I went to a seminar "Gaming as Other" where useful advice was given about helping to diversify the gaming world, and made some more connections there. There is even some possibility of a seminar next year on academic research and non-computer gaming. Would be great if I could wrangle my research fund to pay for the trip...

We're all getting older. There is less wild partying,more retiring at a reasonable hour, more reaching out and getting into new spheres of activity. Jet lag kicks my ass, too. But as a way to spend part of your vacation it's not half bad.

Running 5th Edition

I wanted to introduce D&D to my other brother-in-law's kids (age, 9, 13, and 15 with the latter having played 4th edition before). The best thing for their gaming future was to give them the industry standard experience. So I bit the bullet and downloaded 5th edition Basic, figuring that what with all the conversion resources out there I could lead them to the familiar Citadel of Evil.

They never got there but they had a blast, over two sessions. Below are some of the pro and con features of my experience.

PRO: Character creation is long by old school standards, but the best parts are backgrounds and their associated roleplaying hooks. Backgrounds are great and the implicit idea that splatbooks will focus on them rather than mechanically new classes is genius. Choosing the non-optimal background from the starter set gave two characters some interesting "multiclass" dynamics as an ex-acolyte wizard and an ex-criminal fighter who in action operated more like a combat rogue. It is great to have the mechanical elements pull one way and the roleplaying elements pull another way.

The three starting characters came raring out of creation with reasons to adventure: take back the halfling folk-hero's village while ducking minions of the tyrant; defend the wizard's Zen-like faith against the more military offshoot of the same (literally, a case of Mumon vs. Musashi); find a lost heirloom stolen from the reforming highway robber.

Trinkets are a thing I have used before so they also provided nice hooks, in particular the coincidence of "defend a sacred text" with "diary with seven pages missing" would have been immediate plot fodder in a longer campaign.

Combat, when it came, was very simple and classic-feeling. I ported in some of my "good ideas" like morale rolls, and used Stan Shinn's monster conversion formula for a random stirge encounter and for the climactic battle with the hobgoblins and evil wizard occupying the halfling village. Using this system, 12 hobgoblins and their boss were a very even match for the 3 PCs and handful of halfling refugees, and that only because the kids showed excellent tactical sense, doing a thorough recon, and shooting from high up in trees, by preference at the hobgoblin bowmen. If I had used the 2d8+1 HP, AC 18, +2d6-damage-when-team-fighting ho-gos from the Dragon Queen monster list, the good guys would have been utterly crushed. As it was, two of the PCs and one NPC emerged successfully from the Land of Death Saves.

Knowing how tough monsters actually are in 5th edition, the leveling numbers make a little more sense. The 300 xp needed to get from 1st to 2nd is almost like a 0-level "funnel" now that classic cannon fodder like orcs are best matched to 2nd and 3rd level parties. From there things proceed pretty much as they do in 3rd edition and my own old school rules.

Inspiration I had doubts about, but for these starting roleplayers it was a good, limited and non-intrusive way to have them think about whether their actions in the game reflected their character concept at the end of a session.

Nine-year-old boys have a hard time playing Lawful Good.

CON: My biggest gripe with 5th was the lack of class role differentiation. Spells and special abilities themselves muddle the classes (fighters can self-heal and clerics get a sweet damage spell, for instance), but this doesn't bother me as much. It's more the decision to boil the mechanical class benefits for skills, weapons and equipment down to a proficiency bonus which starts at +2. This means that a rogue isn't much better at lockpicking than a fighter or wizard with a DEX bonus; and in our party, the melee combat beast was the lucky wizard who rolled high stats for STR and DEX as well as INT, meaning he did the best damage with the quarterstaff and, once buffed with Mage Armor, had the highest AC. The Santa-Claus-like handout of ability numbers, "highest of 4d6" plus race, subrace, class and background ability bonuses further tips the balance away from class and toward abilities, so that a +0 bonus was the new -1, and +2 and above was standard.

Being able to cast spells in the face of melee further de-differentiates the classes. We had a two wizard, one fighter party but there was definitely no feeling of "protect the squishy wizards!"

I can see the logic of combat and, as others have said and I found out, it makes for tough experiences. At the same time, the challenge is definitely oriented toward individual fights rather than resource management over a longer haul, due to the healing and spell recovery effects from short and long rests.

But the point is, we had a good time and I feel like I know what I need in order to run this game in a fluid way. I will definitely be getting the Starter Set as a present for the kids ... if I can find a game store that has any in stock, that is ...

Treachery and Inebriation

Betraying your players is difficult. Nevertheless, I thought the most reasonable course for a band of pirates the players had been allying with for the last several game sessions was to set up a send-off that would put our heroes at a disadvantage and rob them of all that fancy loot. After all, the players did charm the captain's wife and put to sleep most of the pirate away party when they thought the captain might be possessed by a giant iron head, and despite their reasons for doing so, the wife is a wizard, a proud one.

All the same, I thought it wasn't fair to completely blindside them. I dropped some hints, a few details that got them suspicious and investigating further. But by that time, the revel on the pirate ship was under way. I brought the miniatures out on the pretext of having a number of carnival-like entertainments the characters could take part in - a dice game, a rope walk, knife throwing and storytelling contests (the latter along the lines of Baron Munchhausen), a dance area. And I gave everyone this drunkenness chart, and sent the drinks round generally, and as forfeits in the contests.

Long story short, half the party wound up "legless" and, without resisting, they were rounded up to be "honored" by the system of Doctor Webb and Professor Spell. A few alert ones who had feigned wooziness and dodged the drinks managed to escape the sticky strands and leap overboard, while others used various magical means to break the webs and get to a place where they could free themselves. A duel commenced, but the captain's wife was soon taken hostage by a leaping dwarf. The dark heart of Captain van der Masque faltered, and a truce arranged whereby the remaining adventurers would depart for the nearby land on a ship's boat.

The drinking system worked all right for these purposes. A normal person has about 1/3 chance of making a Body save in my system, these adventurers closer to 1/2 and more in the case of a dwarf. Experienced drinkers with low levels of adventuring should nonetheless be given some bonuses. 

Another Sunday, Another Mad Archmage Delve

Only three people showing up but going ahead and playing anyway and rolling up an even more miserable gnome henchman-fanboy so the gnome's player can play, still recovering from his injuries at the knife and fork of a Boschian spoonbill demon... (spoilers for Castle of the Mad Archmage follow...)

Rolling a crazy coincidence 6 and running into the orc and goblin with the dire badger and dire weasel you'd fought and defeated and let live last time and finding that the rubble kobolds ran them out of the castle tower where they went to live ...

And knowing they'll find some kind of acceptance in the grimy, raucous suburb of the Grey City where dogfighting goes on ...

And finding out they're lovers (...)

And then cleaning out the last corners of level 1 and down the small stairs to level 2 and blundering into a room with the usual trash in it and getting jumped by giant centipedes, losing a hireling to poison (count so far: 6 dead hirelings, 1 survived) and having the night elf weakened by it ...

And then along come some earnest rival adventurers, Lightning's Hand, up from exploring a deeper level and they trade a poison antidote to the night elf for maps and info about the first level and the possible secret library which excites their savant ...

And on into a room where there's a strange mural of clowns on the wall ... six zanies picnicking, Pierrot, Colombina, Harlequin, Pulcinello, Weary Willie and Pennywise ... frozen expressions behind painted smiles and halted gestures, with only Harlequin looking out of frame, smiling contentedly. What can it mean?

And on ... to the Moat of Knives, thousands of slashing and leaping blades crossed only with daring, ingenuity and a couple of planks lying around... to a treasure room where, without lockpicks, bashing opened only two of three chests ... a decent haul of coin, an oddly shaped piece of wood and a sword in a red leather scabbard with smoldering edges ... bags of coppers thrown over the gulf, one faltering and spilling its ruddy load beneath the swirling blades, a weird wishing well ...

And that was the climax, except on returning to the stairs, some of the rubble kobolds were waiting to roll a stone column on the party unless they gave up loot ... 500 coppers now, 500 later was the eventual deal, but later never came as a swift sleep spell dealt with most of them ... the bag disappearing with the last surviving kobold, and a thrown axe frightening the Mule into a headlong rush, getting pelted with sling stones by backup kobolds, injuring its leg ...

Limping, shaken, with one mottle-faced corpse on their sprain-legged not-quite-a-mule, they returned ... but richer ... richer!

13 Fun Facts about the Current Mad Archmage Campaign

1. Dwarf named Joy who started with a muleteer background, a mule represented by a warthog miniature who may or may not be a conventional mule, and a mule handler hireling called Little Pig Man.

Represented thusly.

2. Sociopathic gnome Titus Widowmaker who also got himself a mule, then a trained monkey, who died under a falling rock from a botched Find Familiar spell that Titus will continue to cast until he gets it right (0-3 so far). Quirk: Making Vietnam-style jewelry out of  body parts of fallen foes.
3. Wizard Richard Nixington, an expert at law, who fumbled his own Find Familiar spell and now has a hawk familiar made of stone;  useful for one-way communication during split-the-party situations.
4. Second level night elf with no name, sent by the Thieves' Guild to replace Jacob, dilettante son of the Guildmaster. Voice raspy and face marked up from fumble dodging stirge who plunged its beak down his throat, repeated fumbles from self trying to stab and pull stirge off (3 1's in a row). Should be dead were it not for his good luck (low damage rolls from all this misfortune.)
5. Grimnir, prophet of Ygg. Motivated by a thirst for hidden knowledge. Not the healing kind.
6. Rathgar, fighter. Tough and ugly customer with a facial scar. Means business.
7. Death toll: 3 hirelings, 1 PC. Remaining hireling, Richard's bodyguard Grubb, has a nervous look.
8. Little Pig Man is unperturbed, apparently a force of nature. MVP in the adventure of the Three Sad Wizards, he singlehandedly roused the party from the aranea's magical sleep, and bumped into her later with the lantern while she was invisibly hiding.
9. Forming murderous intentions against rival group the Five Fingers of Fazio, also involved in exploring the dungeons of the Castle of the Mad Archmage. Third rival group of angry peasants, the Jacquerie, has disappeared without trace. Tavern hangers-on and onlookers have already dubbed the PC group "The Muleteers" after PCs themselves tried out a variety of more flattering titles without any great enthusiasm.
10. Recently concluded the first-level Kobold Wars fighting on the side of the Am'rash tribe who defeated and enslaved the rival Yurog. Kobolds seem happy to overpay for reliable water supplies from the party after the huge reservoir under their well became tainted by a falling corpse while battling their furious escaped descented troglodyte. Kobolds don't know that the party secretly aided the troglodyte and that Jacob cut the corpse in two before it fell down the well.
11. Most recently, descended a mysterious spiral stair to the second level, where they encountered a variety of traps and strange phenomena proceeding variously from Mr.Bloch's imagination, Dungeon Dozen tables and frenzied improvisation. They won through to a secret empty treasure room but found the false bottom on one of the treasure chests,and retrieved some strength-giving gloves and sweet-smelling incense.
12. Going up the spiral stair, they find a ceiling of water through which daylight shines. Nixington took the plunge and emerged in a castle garden pool, where a court wizard and noble lady were conversing. He politely declined their invitation to a feast at midnight.
13. On getting back to the tavern, find wizard law enforcement officer and carnivorous ape bailiff charging the party with stealing potions from the insect wizard's house they had been hired to clear of rebellious arthropods. Charges that are entirely and demonstrably true. It's Nixington's toughest case!

In conclusion: Respect the mule.

Convention Game Sharkpocalypse

The Dragonmeet session was a lot of fun. I've found that a good formula for a one-shot game is to make sure that you have some sort of ticking bomb, relentless final guardian, or monsterpocalypse at the end of a fairly short adventure. Without the slow build that a campaign gives, you do well to build fun off the cheap heat, with CLIMAX written in broad strokes and bright colors.

With that in mind, I framed the original one-page adventure by Daniel O' Donnell thus: the Crown Prince of Crime in the town of Ushralec hired the party to sack the Fane of Drowned Men, sacred to the demon-gods Dagon and Charybdis, ostensibly because of a grudge he had long held before recently coming to power. There were some very subtle clues to his ultimate intent - through a crack in the door, Alinor the sea elf saw some minions of crime pouring barrels of salt water into a big vat, tapping the floor below in some sort of code and receiving taps from below in turn. The Crown Prince's audience room, also, had been stripped of all furniture and valuables.

Anyway, heedless of this, the party -- a rogue, a brawling sailor, a prophet of hoary Nodens, the sea elf, a somewhat out-of-place dwarf, and of course Gnaro the multidimensional gnome -- set off in a longboat at high tide to make a beeline for the back end of the shrine. Through incredible luck and bad rolls by the defenders they were not spotted by any of the people doing business at the front of the shrine or on the causeway.  Floating right over the deep-submerged tethered zombies, they were soon on the roof, interrupting a treasure donation ritual with arrows, spears and a Sleep spell cast through a grating.

After the high priest fought back with a successful hold person, the fight soon moved to the front of the shrine, where the sea elf cast a net to trap some of the defenders. The high priest, escaping the net, backed into the rogue's waiting stab around the corner, and having been the target of much of the previous damage, soon expired, cursing his fate to die on land.

Meanwhile, some of the surviving acolytes inside the shrine had wakened their sleeping companions and were ready to defend the doorway. But the resourceful sea elf had meantime clad himself in the high priest's sharkskin robe and triple-shark-mouth tiara, and using a Disguise spell, convinced the acolytes that he had sent these invaders to test them and that they had all better surrender. The one acolyte who had saved and disbelieved the disguise was bludgeoned to death by the others at the orders of the fake high-priest.

That out of the way, the explorers noticed a dark line on the horizon and an ominous rushing sound. The sailor recognized it as a tsunami and estimated that they had little more than an hour before it hit. Looting the fane, which consisted of a few cabins of a shipwreck atop a rocky islet pierced by a well, they came away with the jewelry of a nobleman preserved in a cask of sherry and some valuable books. But the same high tide that had eased their passage over the drowned zombies now filled up the well and access to the passages below, filled with the donations of the faithful. Gnaro threw some gnomish sausage into the water and quickly attracted one of the guardian seawolves, who provided enough deterrent for the party to gather up their spoils and head for the hills. A wise move, for when the tidal wave hit it was ridden by a giant sharktopus, unholy spawn of Dagon and Charybdis.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the party heard some strange stories circulating. Merchants and jewelers who had rushed back to their strongholds in the city, ahead of anyone else, had found emptied cellars and strongrooms they thought secure, their broken doors not wholly convincing as tsunami damage. Could the party have been set up to trigger the wrath of Dagon, God of Tides, King of Watery Death, as part of some larger, astoundingly callous caper? Best not to think about it, or the treasures you left behind in the passages underneath the Fane ...

In the afternoon we played a fun, short scenario in Paolo's Cthonic Codex world, with themes of goats, moss, and a ghost dragon whose fossilized ribcage was a bridge in a canyon. The AFG system is about as simple as it gets and I recommend it for anyone who wants to prioritize ideas and creativity over rules and process, plus it has one of the coolest magic systems out there. Paolo and I then played in a demo of Lords of War, a card-battling game with simple rules but very deep strategic play.

Dragonmeet lives up to the second part of its compound. It is a great place to meet people with all kinds of ad-hoc gaming going on, and you tend to run into a lot of people you know from the gaming scene if you have lived in Southeast England for a while. This time it continued till 11 with open gaming, which was a great improvement, even though I had to get dinner with some old L5R cronies and run off to catch the last train.

The Final Four Sins

Continuing the account of diabolic temptation ...

4. Gluttony.

The concept: Six imp chefs, cooks and butlers throw dangerous and tasty food at the party and the penitent, trying to get everyone to succumb to gluttony, using their powers of suggestion (once per day).
The execution: Three "courses" were served.

• The first was stew, siphoned through a hose from the imp's cauldron to the party's convenient defensive ditch. If you gave in and ate the stew, you were incapacitated for a round, then make a Body save in order to vomit or be further incapacitated while the stew was in you. 
• This was followed by the imps hurling animated cuts of meat - serpentine sausages, geese and fowl, legs and hams, racks and roasts and livers and a nasty haggis. The meat tried to get in your mouth and choke you, or make its way past you to tempt the by now two-days-fasting penitent. 
• The dessert was brought over the party on a huge tray by invisible imps. Breaking the fourth wall, I described just about every sweet and piece of junk food the Band of Iron's players had consumed over the past year. There was nothing sinister about the dish; the imps were just trying to upend it over the penitent for more gluttony temptation.

The verdict: This was a funny episode but I didn't feel that the party was that threatened by it. In hindsight this should have been mostly about throwing suggestions on the hungry penitent and trying to get the food past the wall of bodyguards. The imps went down quickly in combat.

5. Lust. 
The concept: This was a lone succubus. Hell didn't throw their all into this one because the penitent had pretty much had it with women.

We got gonzo here.

The execution: I worked the epicene incubus/ succubus for camp, having it deliver cruel Freudian analyses of the player characters - who had mostly been lustless in the campaign, turning down opportunities for romance - before settling on the henchwoman Lintilla, who, shall we say, had not been without lust in the campaign. The party quickly shielded her from the succubus' charm ability and engaged it with missiles and melee before it could use its suggestion spell. A mighty lightning bolt from the cleric's magic amulet sent it reeling, and swords and silver arrows did the rest. On being sent hellwards, the creature briefly showed its true form: rather than a fabulous Aubrey Beardsley androgynous fashion model, the succubus was just an ordinary, plump, bright red Coop hot rod devil girl.
The verdict: Probably, getting hit shouldn't forestall monsters' spell-like abilities. Could have been tougher.

6. Sloth.
The concept: Three wraiths attack. Instead of draining levels, they drain movement points equal to the damage caused (d6). At less than 3 move, you cannot attack and at 0 move, you fall asleep.
The execution: Pretty straightforward, slug-em-out.
The verdict: This one created some tension, with party members dropping out in rough proportion to the wraiths dispatched. I put it last - a move the players anticipated - following the setting logic that people would be more tired at the end of the last night, rather than doing what was strategically right, and putting them in the lineup at a position where they could take out party members in preparation for other sins.

7. Pride.

As drawn by Crumb.

The concept: The temptation is not over with the cock's crow. The morning comes and the Son of the Morning sends his last best hope from another dimension - a certain blues musician who sold his soul to the Devil, at the crossroads, at midnight, so he could play guitar and sing like nobody else.
The execution: A strangely dressed, dark-skinned man with an odd musical instrument comes down the road from the west, singing this song (which I actually put on in the session). He is not unholy, or magical, or a devil; just a mortal trying to pay off the mortgage on his soul, and there will surely be trouble if he is struck or killed. The musician humbly approaches and congratulates the party on their victory, asking them what kinds of rewards they expect. He is really aiming at the NPC penitent, suggesting that some kind of acclaim and sainthood are in the offing for having resisted the three nights. This is entirely a psychological challenge, and the party must show humility and encourage the penitent to do the same, or all is lost at the last moment.
The verdict: One of my players fell for it, mainly out of wanting the blues singer to be the good guy. Another nailed the challenge, and all it took was one. This wise fellow denied all credit, offering praise instead to the saints and Creator. Everyone else followed suit, and Mr. Johnson graciously took his leave, marking the true end of the ordeal.

Anyway ... wait until May and you'll hopefully see if I can pack all of this into one page.

The First Three Sins

Continuing the account of how I tried to tempt players, characters, and NPCs on the last two Nights of the Devil ... the tale of Night the First.

1. Wrath.
The concept: Three erinyes, each armed with seven magic arrows of Wrath (Mind save or charge out to attack them), circle and shoot at the party. They at first used their illusion to masquerade as tempting ex-lovers of the penitent Diarmuid, but this was not done to excite his Lust, but his Wrath - right now he was feeling nothing but rage at the evil fay who had charmed him for year on year and drained over half his hit points.
The execution: As it turned out, the magic of the arrows did not exactly overwhelm the characters; only a couple of party members got hit once they got behind cover, and these were easily enough restrained. But the players! One of them got really, really mad at the whole situation - just taking incoming fire, not going to do a thing about it, not knowing if the DM had just set up a certain slow death situation! After cooler heads decided to stick it out some more, the erinyes ran out of arrows, fired a final salvo of the party's own shot arrows, and departed.
The verdict: Worked great as a player temptation. Magic arrows almost not necessary.

2. Avarice.
The concept: Seven bearded devils with magic sacks throw treasure at the party trying to get them to pick it up. For each one who succumbs to avarice, a devil may enter the magic circle and attack.
The execution: In practice this temptation was pretty obvious, so I had to step it up with numerous waves of treasure. Soon enough, the devils were throwing crowns that tried to land on people's heads, and snaky gold chains that dragged away pieces of equipment if they hit you. The last trick was for the bags to call out a large portion of coins from each character's purse. Now that hit them where they live! The self-same player who had succumbed to wrath now made to stomp on a fleeing gold piece, and thereby admitted one devil into the circle. The party defeated it in more or less short order, and the "temptation" paid off as that devil's sack, containing his stolen gold, got left behind ...
The verdict: Another great way to get under the skin of the players ... they're used to steering clear of treasure that looks to good to be true, but their materialism really shows when you start to take their stuff. I made all the treasure fake, but in hindsight it should have been real.

3. Envy.
The concept: Sixteen threads of ghostly, whispering letters, two for each person in the circle, come snaking in. If they get in your ear and you fail a save, they whisper envious words and make you attack another party member you have cause to envy.
The execution: Magic and silver weapons could fray and disperse the threads, but soon enough a large number of them were in threat range. A henchman and the dwarf succumbed. Cold holy water in the face allowed a repeat save, and the henchman rallied, but the dwarf did not, and he rushed and pummeled the lower-level fighter PC to whom the holy knights had given the devil-slaying sword, that cheesy noob! The brawling rules got a workout as the two ended up in the defensive ditch they'd dug.
The verdict: The actual challenge was not the toughest, but not knowing what the threads were and seeing them come from all sides made for a frightening experience, as did the possibility of turning the party against itself. I only later thought that maybe the players could be induced to feel envy if the threads redistributed experience points from one character to the other ... but how this feeling would lead to the characters committing the sin, exactly, remains to be seen.

I was also prepared for player skill to help break the threads - anyone who tried to think of ways their character was great, all right and really okay would resist them without a save. Maybe because the encounter played out as a combat rather than psychological challenge, this didn't occur to anyone.

Next: the final night and its four sins.

The Devil's Acre: Temptation

How do you represent spiritual temptation in an adventure game?

Well, you could play Pendragon RPG, a system that explicitly rates each character's vulnerability to different character flaws and passions. A Pendragon knight beset by an unearthly vision of lust would roll a 20-sided die, check his character sheet, and either succeed or succumb. In service of a more picaresque story, a Dying Earth RPG character might be overcome by a persuasive flourish and be compelled sit down at the gambling table with a known master swindler.

Temptation is part of those games' moral mechanics. It's not part of most other games, though. You may have alignment, or resistance to mental influence, but nothing stops the characters from making choices like perfect Puritanical optimizers, every day of the week. Except maybe under "carousing for experience" rules, which kind of proves the point.

As I threw wave after wave of diabolical tempters at the party on the last two nights of their ordeal, defending the praying penitent in the Devil's Acre, a number of options arose:

1. Have the tempters target the NPC penitent; the PCs have to stop them from getting into range and distracting the penitent, and the tempters will fight to get close. If the blockade fails, then being an NPC, the penitent has to make some kind of save or check against the temptation.

Um, yeah, just like that.

2. Have the tempters target the PCs, trying to pull them away from the penitent or claim them as prizes in their own right. "You succumb to lust unless you save" doesn't seem quite right, but magical temptation does lie with in the rules of the traditional adventure game, as a spell-like effect. And, what do you know, quite a few devils as written come with charm and suggestion effects.

3. Note the past behavior of the PCs and their allies, and use this to direct the efforts and outcome of strategy #2. It's not a matter of rolling a die, but of having raided a merchant ship for its treasure four sessions ago, so Avarice already has its claws in you. This makes the most sense if sin pays in your campaign, at least temporarily; for example, if spending gold on carousing nets you more experience points than donating it safely to a church does.

4. Target the players. I need to explain this some.

In the past here, I've argued for drawing on the concerns and tendencies of the players themselves to stand in for such traits in their characters as alignment and morale. Obviously, this won't always work. Some of these theological sins refer to the satiation of bodily needs: lust and gluttony in particular. All right, there were some pretty delicious chocolate and banana cakes on the table at our session, and I could have worked them in somehow ... but yeah, and then lust, no, yeah, forget it.

Other of the theological sins, however, serve the needs of the ego, the little character we all build for ourselves. I don't care if you don't play D&D. You are still walking around with a "character sheet" in your head, with some idea of your skills and abilities, where you fit in the hierarchy of things (level) and what road you walk in life is (class). It's part of the undying psychological appeal of role-playing - to create a character on paper more free, more disciplined, more interesting, more dramatic, than the one in your skin. But when you role-play, the two egos become one, as you defend the interests and dignity of your character.

With these other sins, to attack the character is to attack the player, whose ego is the character's ego. Wrath? Touch upon the player's need to avenge harm done. Avarice? Throw loot at the player - or better yet, threaten to take it away. Envy? Make the player feel unfairly disadvantaged; take away some experience points and give it to the next guy. Pride? It's what makes them go "Let me tell you about my character..." Work with it.

All right. In the actual Devil's Acre session, some of these ploys worked better than other. Next post: a play-by-play of the seven-round knockout the Band of Iron dealt the Prince of Darkness.

A Marked-Up Map

I'm much too kind to show the influence map the Band of Iron left behind in the northern lands. Let's just say that purple worm example in the last post was their doing. It ate a whole section of the town of Goran's Anvil, and the town elders know who was responsible. They also left mortal enemies in the town of Parmentell when they discovered the worm ivory scam, left a controversial legacy in Kaserolle, and oh yeah, the Onyx Sorceress wants to have a word with them about how they shamed one of her agents in Ironhoof.

Here's their much more respectable career in the South. (Ignore the animal lairs for now.)

Made with Hexographer Pro.

They started out in the village of Poynemara at the top, where they left roots (the white triangle) by settling a retired hireling, Adrem, there, and picking up a new henchwoman, Lintilla. Villages are easy when it comes to fame; the party got two stars pretty much by showing up and having those interactions.

Next stop was the small town of Famorgane, a trading post corrupted by fairy-fruit addiction and de facto ruled by the crime boss Anton. Their adventures there initially got the party two crosses at the top, as they somehow fell in Anton's good graces. But Famorgane became occupied by a holy army during the war with Faerie and Anton has fled, so the party only count on one star there, legacy of a public duel with one of Anton's henchmen.

The larger town of Lugho is a place the party has never been, but due to services rendered on behalf of the Duke and Hierarch of the place, they enjoy two forward slashes (beneficial deeds) and one cross of high-level influence.

Schiecchi is the city of the region. It's harder to get fame there, but due to some carousing and a noteworthy incident in which the party's hermit prophet impressed a rich woman with her generosity, they are on one star. They also have a connection with the influential white magician Ulena, hence the one cross.

Finally, they are undoubtedly in the bad books of the faerie lady of the Vernal House for stealing away her mesmerized bard lover. Perhaps there should be "X" 's on top for enmity instead of influence with the ruler? At any rate, the whole house will be talking about the raid for years to come, so three stars.

The passage of time, and normal social forces, can alter the ratings. For example, fame can spread to settlements of equal or lesser size. If they do something that gets them two stars in Schiecchi, Lugho will almost certainly hear of it.

Influence can also spread, following political lines. The famous deed against the interests of the Vernal House will certainly cause enmity among the House's allies, and may even gain the party good will among its enemies. This is what happened in the north, as the warlord Hugo became friendly to the party largely because they were causing so much havoc among his rivals.

And of course, if enough years pass, fickle fame will fade from memory; but the party's roots, influence and deeds will live longer.

The B Team Can Relieve Your Campaign

A couple of recent gaming developments have made me really appreciate the practice of keeping up more than one set of characters in any long-term gaming group.

Part of my recent travels involved returning to the Cafe 28 on New York's 5th Avenue where some of the Red Box NYC games take place. Investigating, I found that a Glantri game was taking place the night before I took off back home, so I showed up to a table packed full of Erics (no, seriously, there were 4 Erics out of 7 guys at table).

One of these Erics was blogger "the Mule," who'd been present at my previous foray, and another was the GM. He ran a B/X game mostly by rules as written with some nice touches - no duplicate spell memorizing, declaring only spells and withdrawal from combat before the initiative roll. The players had maps of Eric's megadungeon from three years of continuous play, spanning five levels and hundreds of rooms. This "Chateau D'Amberville" is based on Castle Amber in the sense that The Lord of the Rings is based on the Elder Edda. It was truly a great glimpse into the potential of the format.

As it turned out, my newly rolled wizard character - Raz, son of Taz - was adventuring that evening with a B-list party consisting of players' secondary characters, mostly level 5 and 6. This explained the nonchalance when two of them got double-level drained, in merciless old school style, by some unexpected spectres, which we quickly fled from. I admired the good spirits of these players, who were evidently playing in a very free-wheeling table with drop-in party composition and multiple characters.

On returning home I unleashed the lead-in to an episode I'd been brooding over all January - a climax adventure that could take place in one session, and would cap off the plot of the "Faerie war" arc they'd been following since the summer. Today I learned the limits of plot-heavy climax adventures ... when one of the players called in sick and we realized that we just couldn't play on in this adventure without her.

So we decided to form a B-Team with the existing group, rolling up new characters and embarking ad-hoc on an adventure. The A team (Band of Iron) had started in the Valley of Milk and Cheese where I had also placed Jeff Sparks' Labyrinth Lord adventure Wheel of Evil, purchased but never engaged with, an appropriately cheese-themed adventure. And so, the new group started in the uneasy town of Renneton, got a good way into the cheese caves, and everyone seemed to enjoy the change of perspective and freedom from the burdensome importance of actions in the by now year-long main campaign.

Perhaps this is what most campaigns need past a certain point - a way to deal with missing or guest players, to blow off steam, and get the kind of fast-and-loose play that comes with an adventure rather than story focus.

Logs and Hogs

It was in yesterday afternoon's game session after a long absence, that I became aware that almost all the elements of the adventure were random. And it was good.

Our heroes were trekking across a long alley of scrubland, returning to civilization with the evidently plot-vital bard Diarmuid Sans Peer. I was using the "moor" encounter table from Red Tam's Bones and rolling a custom d20 where three sides indicated an encounter, and various other sides indicated other things (more on that sometime later).

First I rolled "encounter clue" - to a manticore. The party spemnt some time puzzling over some unusual, biological spikes stuck in a tree by the road.

Next I rolled - "encounter" - with the manticore itself! The monster was an awful shot with its remaining tail spikes and the group easily finished it off with arrows and the bounding assault of the evidently heroic Diarmuid.

After a few more non-results the party approached their old cache of purple worm ivory. But they were disturbed by Goatgamble, a spriggan who had been randomly generated as a hallway encounter as they entered the Vernal House in Faerie. The reaction dice said that he had fallen madly in love with Elidath, the elf henchwoman. In exchange for helping the party he had steered them to a magic mirror that would create an evil duplicate, and induced Elidath to stare into it, so he could have a compatible copy all his own.

Now Goatgamble was back, in giant form, with evil Elidath riding his shoulders. She knew as much as the real Elidath where the loot was buried and demanded a couple of tusks. No way! The log the spriggan threw did little damage and the ensuing hail of arrows drove them off.

Soon it was time to camp for the night. Two encounters! The first was with four wild sows, and they accounted well for themselves even after one was charmed and driven off by Diarmuid, using the tricks I've been talking about recently to create a grinding "piggy pile" melee where they had the upper trotter. And the first encounter solved the second encounter, with a pack of wandering wolves, who turned out amenable to being bought off with a hog carcass.

If only all sessions were this easy. The party's task as they see it is to deliver the bard to an uncoming religious synod which will likely be crucial for the outcome of the war with Faerie, as foretold by several converging prophecies. Asked whether they want to take part in this intrigue or adventure, they replied "Intrigue ... and adventure!"

Stay tuned for that, and I also owe my readers a review of Red Tam's Bones, now that we're done with it.