At Will

Glad to be back with you in the land of the RPG-living!

I’m glad to see that while I was away, the RPG-blogging community never paused in its wonderful antics and content.

Here’s something I wanted to share with you in case you missed it.

The Chatty DM wrote a blog series about RPG blogging.  Great read and worth it if, like me you’re doing an RPG blog.

Much of the items I’m already aware of, having started and stopped countless online magazines in the past.  Chatty’s series, however, puts everything into a neat package, complete with bow-tie.  A lot of the information I knew, but there was a lot I missed.

Four (soon to be five) sessions into 4e, I’ve learned the following bits as GM:

• Rangers deal massive damage.  Return volleys…not so much.
• PCs can deal with creatures a good deal above their level.  If you throw a big nasty at the group, be prepared to see at least one PC drop.
• Rogues are much more finesse now.  Players need to make opportunities to deal damage to realize the classes full potential.
• Ignoring the Paladin’s Divine challenge can kill your NPCs pretty quickly.
• Slyblade + a bin full of minions = pin the tail on the kobold, and is good times.
• Skill Challenges are a black art, but can be worth it.
• It’s not the size of the fight in the bugbear, it’s the size of the bugbear.
• My current battlemap doesn’t cut it.
• Dungeon Tiles almost do, but are an indescribable pain to store and work with.
• Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork.  Loners get mauled.
• Minions are a great mechanism to add weight but not impossibility to your encounters. Plus the squish real purty like.

So 4th ed GMs, what have you learned running 4th edition so far?

This question to start this session:

What was your character’s highest point in his life, pre-campaign?  What was his/her lowest point?

Get some provocative answers here.  There are themes in the characters that I’m starting to pick up now, and I already have a lot of awesome hooks and tie-ins to each of the PCs backgrounds. 

Marc Greysun, our resident tank/servant of Pelor, takes center stage this game.  Marc joined a mercenary band at a young age, seeking to avoid a lifetime of farmhand drudgery.  The band of sellswords he joined revealed themselves in time to be the lowest of the low.  He dealt with it for many years before one day, after his squad perform abominable acts on a civilian populace, he could stand idle and watch no longer.  He slew his commanding officer and ran for his life.

He found shelter in a temple of Pelor, and found a calling more to his liking.  Not truly made for the life of a priest, Marc could at least use his talents to create or defend good, to protect instead of destroy. 

His former compatriots are still around, however…

After the PCs rout the shadowbats, the delve further into the grotto.  Screams echo through the cavern (unfortunately the players skipped searching out the source of the screams, so they are in for some big surprises).  Bobric (Chuck switched back from Bolthi after much heated debate) scouted ahead, setting up a surprise attack into a room with a small group of human fighters.  In the heat of the battle, Marc didn’t notice their insignia, but when the last merc cried the warning “Finneas Jack, they’re coming!”  the memories came flooding back.  Finneas Jack was a member of Marc’s squad.  He wasn’t a great fighter, but we was a master of psychological warfare, and the cruelest, most sadistic member of the mercs by far.  It was an orchestrated session of torture and barbarism beyond anything Marc had yet seen with his squad that caused the paladin to snap. 

Marc’s temper flames quickly, but first there is a bandit to catch.  The group chases him into another room.  He gets to the middle, and a Deathjump spider falls upon him, dispatching him with a bite and a few rends.

This fight gets crazy, and would have ended  Bobric’s career if not for the paladin’s healing, as poison quickly took him out.  Tyrst almost succumbs to the poison as well.  The paladin’s divine challenge ends up contributing to the deathblow, as the spider snaps back instinctively at the rogue for dealing high damage in one turn.

The paladin is able to save Bobric, but now the whole party is utterly exhausted –low action points, low healing surges, low hit points.

The PCs debate here on taking an extended rest, and fatigue wins out.  The players take turn on watch, and I have them roll Perception, but this is just to fake them out.  “Finny” Jack has something much more for them in place of a simple ambush.

The players, rested up, come back to the bandit’s room.  Sprays of blood are everywhere.  Scrawled in blood on the floor:

“Come and Play”

The persistent screams flooding the cave have died sometime during their rest, but their is now a loud pulsing buzz filling the cave.  Bloody footprints, one pair human and one set a large bear-like paws, lead the players down a path.

They debat whether to walk into the obvious trap or not only briefly.  Marc and Bobric are ready to put Finny down for good.  Tyrst is contemplating being sick, especially when she sees the dismembered bodies strewn across their path purposely by their foe.

So the PCs ignore the other path where the sound is coming from and plunge right into the encounter with Finny. 

The lean, scarred, wolf-eyed old veteran recognizes Marc instantly.  He makes some comments about how he hates the servant of Pelor’s “self-righteousness”.  “I’ll see your righteous nonsense and raise you a dirt-nap!” The prisoners are seen clearly in the corner, as are more kobolds.  And another Bugbear. Linose the elf NPC locks horns with her slyblade nemesis immediately.

Finny stays in the back firing crossbows at the PCs.  His aim is bad, but his bugbear ally’s is not. Bobric flays him with a damaging twin strike, and the bugbear responds with a critical hit that sends him down immediately.  When it looks like the PCs are putting enough pressure on the minions that Finny fears for his own life, the lowlife quaffs a potion of invisibility and makes a run for it while the PCs are still engaged.

Marc, who had been pushing through the crowd to get at Finneas, returns to the ranger, performing a lay on hands and bringing him back to conciousness.  In one of the coolest sequences, Bobric gets up (he’s still right next to the bugbear) and pops an action point to first twin strike, then jaws of wolf the poor bugbear, dismantling him with brutal fury.

The characters rescue the prisoners.  There are three — a halfling (Jon Goodstaff), a dragonborn (Ketha Mulsha), and Huxer, the grizzled captain and friend of Arbrand.  He warns the players that he speaks Draconic and so overheard the kobolds’ plans to unite all the tribes and attack Newwater in a few weeks.  He has more details and needs to get to town as soon as possible.  The players loot the area (naturally) and race back to town…

Everybody leveled here, and we spent a little time going over the player’s options. For just having the core books, I think the players have a lot of options.  Taking one skill or power over another can have huge effects on how your character plays. Each game I’m finding new synergies and combos even as a DM.  I also think that retraining is a great option to have, so you can recover from mistakes all the way.  It also encourages you to experiment.  You won’t be stuck with a bum skill through your whole career.

Overall, a great session.  Everybody was in it, and the roleplaying is starting to flow a bit more.

“Homecoming” by GreyWulf

We’ve got a few sessions under our belts, and the rules are 90% clear for everyone but Rachel.  Rachel is still struggling with her options in the game, and a string of bad rolls have left her feeling out of touch with the game at the moment, something I need to correct.

I also want to get the players into character.  The way I like to do this is by asking each player some question about their character.  The trick is to ask for something concrete, revealing and open.  Concrete so a player can’t give a weak answer.  Revealing in that the answer gives you insight about the choices the character makes.  Open means something that you can follow up with more questions for more detail. 

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The d12.  A die doomed to roll itself back and forth  between other more utilitarian and beloved dice.  The d12 wishes sometimes for six less sides.  In happier, more expansive moments it dreams of eight more sides.

Don’t mistake my intentions for a sudden urge on my part to use it –that would be silly.  Instead, I will honor each face of the lonely, iconoclastic d12 with a question of our esteemed interviewee, Levi Kornelson.

Amagi Games has had a brief but fruitful life in the RPG blogosphere.  His gambits have something to offer GMs of any system.  I’m personally a huge fan of his work thus far.  Each visit to my RSS reader has turned into an a-ha! moment when I witness one of his clever designs.

Here are twelve rolls.

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You’ve decided to build an adventure for WoAdWriMo.

Once you start writing an adventure that other people may see, you realize quickly that it’s not trivial.  Your home games run off sketchy notes and your own brainpower.  When someone reads your adventure, they don’t have your brain –I know this because I just checked.  Your job in publishing adventures for others is not only to craft the adventure but to convey to others your cool idea in a way that will mostly survive the transition from your mind to a reader you have never met.  You’ve read adventures before, so you know how they convey the information to GMs — they use maps, visuals, and proper structuring.  So that’s what your going to do.  People who publish adventures professionally often have a team of people to provide them the props and visuals they need.  How are you going to compete with that?

You can start with the tools that follow. The following are a collection of tools I use in adventure making (even my home games) that help me break through the tedious, required bits most easily, and bring my focus back to creative work.

The Journal or Google Notebook. 

I obsess over keeping notes for my game or preparing for it.  I like having a singular digital place that leaves information right where I need it –at my fingertips. 

I use the Journal –it’s fully functioned, organizes your notes as simply or fully as you want.  I’ve designed game systems within it easily.  Drawbacks?  Not free.  You can get a forty-five day trial, which should last you long enough to get through WoAdWriMo, though. Also, the Journal is Windows-only.

Google Notebook serves much the same function, though I like the interface on The Journal better, Google Notebook is free and multi-platform.

Both of these are superior to a standard word-processor package because they allow you to easily break down thought into modules and pieces.  You can reassemble within the programs or a word processor, which I probably will do later.  In the middle of writing an adventure though, there multiple threads to balance and manage.  Software that mimics that non-linear structure is a natural fit for this process.

Campaign Cartographer

Wow.  I’m not telling anyone who’s used the program anything that they didn’t know, but this is a great mapmaking program.  I like to use it mostly for making overland maps and cities.  Acquiring the knack for that took me one evening of experimentation.  Producing dungeon maps is more laborious I think, but producing maps for game use or as props is easy.

Campaign Cartographer isn’t cheap though.  If you are pressed for time and can’t spare the evening just to learn the program, you also might want to pass.

You invest in Campaign Cartographer and it rewards you with professional-esque maps.  Otherwise, you want…

Scanner and Photoshop/GIMP. 

Draw it out, scan it in, edit and color with one of the aforementioned image editors.  Getting decent with either package is not trivial, but skills with any of these programs is getting so common that many gamers already have them. 

Unless you have Photoshop through work, you’ll most likely be going with GIMP, which is free.

Dungeon Generators

You need to make a dungeon for a 4th edition adventure most likely, and starting with a framework that you tweak takes less time the building one from scratch. Random Dungeon Generators give you that framework. The two I use:

Jamis Buck’s Dungeon Generator

A 3rd ed classic.  Not fancy on the display, but fills the rooms with objects to jumpstart your thoughts.

Skeleton Key’s Dungeon Generator

Easy way to get good looking dungeons.  A little slow, but worth it.

4th edition Monster Manual PDF

Wizards just released DRM-free digital versions of the core books.  While I own the hard-covers, having digital copies of the monster manual in particular saves me time typing as I can open the PDF, and use image-editing software to yank out the monster block to paste in my adventure document.  It’s a huge time-saver.

iTunes

Not specific to RPG Adventure Writing, but I need my tunes!  I like moody indie hip-hop (Aesop Rock, Illogic, Sonic Sum, and Micranots are in heavy rotation) or episodes of Hearts of Space get preference here.  Anything that brings intensity without drawing my attention to words or particular sound is great.  Set the mood, don’t get sucked in to overly energetic tracks.

What tools are you using to build your WoAdWriMo adventure?  I’d love to know.

We have already seen the Rootwalker, so now it’s time to meet the shock troops of the Blacktree’s army –Ebon Dryads.

Ebon dryads are more intelligent than Rootwalkers, and typically are found leading mobs rootwalkers against those who oppose the Blacktree.  They also serve as recruiters, as anyone who is slain by the burning roots ability immediately becomes a rootwalker.

We’ve got a new player for this session, recruited off the RPG.NET forums.  his name is Matt, and he’s played slightly less 4e than we have — zero games to our one.  Over e-mail we discuss that he’s going to play a paladin with a bit of a chackered past as a mercenary.  This works out just fine, as it gives him an easy hook to join with the rest of the party.  I add in that Arbrand, the mercenary the PCs rescued in session one, was a fellow merc in another company.  He’s going to ask the paladin (Marc) for a favor.

Matt arrives at the session sans character generated, which is fine because Chuck needs to go on a beer/pizza run.  I’ve known Chuck most of my life, and one thing I’ve never known him to do was perform anything as a half measure.  He arrives back at my condo with two large pizzas and a *box* full of beer.  Poor Rachel barely made it up the stairs with the beer, but don’t worry — I was there to help.

If you’ve seen pictures of my lonely table from the last fated, never-played session, you’ll see that I made power cards for the players — pdfs + old MapleStory TCG cards + deck sleeves = success in short order. Matt had already picked out his powers and e-mailed them to me, so I was able to get them set up (last minute) for him as well.

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So, I’m doing WoAdWriMo this month.  What am I doing for it? My one-liner:

An ancient enemy that mystical flames have kept away from a dragonborn society is returning, as the flames are dying.

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That’s what I’m doing today.  No posts, but next week we have more creatures born from the Blacktree, and some more detailed progress of what I’m doing for WoAdWriMo.

Happy Independence Day!