At Will

Last Time: The characters ran through the city as wraiths attacked, defending townsfolk where they could and looking to grab the wraithstones that brought the wraiths there.

This Time: Lot of fast combats with boards full of minions.  No time for extended rests, so each combat wore the group down gradually.  The group acquired all the wraithstones, and then high-tailed it out of town, with hundreds of wraiths pursuing them, almost descending upon the group to bring the Pcs into their undead ranks…just as day broke, and the wraith horde dispersed.

The Twist: Some of the townspeople were being mind-controlled by the wraiths.  This was a fun and interesting combat as I also added two conditions: 1) the players could get XP by killing no one out of 20 possessed citizens and 2) because of their crazed nature, they couldn’t just choose to drop the citizens at 0 without talking an attack roll penalty.  The PCs managed to navigate this by isolating and killing the controlling wraiths.

Some Background: Finneas Jack, an old foe of the party, was yelling taunts out from the shadows.  The players know he’s involved with this somehow, but they don’t know what yet.

The Best Part: The final skill challenge of the evening with the PCs high-tailing it out of town with an “entourage” of soul-thirsty wraiths.  The players were in absolutely no shape to fight anything.  Low on HP, no healing surges, the PCs could not have survived anything close to a real fight, so the tension was pretty high on the results of the skill challenge.  When your players themselves audibly breathe a sigh of relief, you know you’ve done your job.

Last Time:  The characters confirmed that the Doppelganger menace is quite real.  The Tillwood, a forest close to the city, is surging with an evil mist and the townspeople are prepared to fight whatever emerges.

This Time:  What emerges are hordes of wraiths descending on the city.  The PCs fight off the menace and find wraithstone placed all around the city. The wraithstone attracts wraiths to their locations and appears to be have been placed on foortops all around the city.  The PCs decide to gather all the wraithstone they can and run it out of the city.  But first they have to get past the stone’s defenders.  They also need to get people to the church district where they can be safe from harm.

The Twist:  The PCs are alerted that there has been an outbreak in the Radiant Temple of Pelor (our paladin’s church) in the Hall of Fangs.  The PCs run over to put a stop to the rampaging werewolves, with some help at the end from Umbrian Shaw, a cocky paladin who is a prominent member of the Radiant Knights.  Emerging from this, the players direct people into the church as they make their way to various wraithstones.  Walking the streets is a skull lord who the PCs force to retreat.  “Raxxamun will return, fleshy ones…”

Some Background:  I started introducing “Combat quests” into the game.  Basically, some condition that the PCs can fulfill and get extra XP.  In one of the initial combats I had a a condition to save 6 townsfolk out of 10 from being turned into wraiths.  The players responded well to that, so I’ll be using it a lot more.  Also, my minionizing seemed to work perfectly for the wraiths.

The Best Part:  The PCs dialogue after running into that seemingly random skull-lord:  “Who was that guy?”  “Why is he just walking the streets like that?”

In twenty years I’ve never spent much time thinking about the RPGA.  My adventures in the roleplaying universe have moved in parallel to the rises, dips and turns in the venerable organized play organization.  This past weekend I went to the Council of Five Nations at the behest of a friend to try the RPGA out.  Sixteen hours later, I’m excited to have gotten my feet wet and am anticipating future participation as both a player and a GM.  It’s great to get a chance to play for once, which I rarely ever get to do.  I played a Wizard in the Living Forgotten Realms setting since no one in my group plays a wizard, and I wanted to get a chance to see what the class is all about.  I’ll talk more about this later, but I found the class to be a pleasure to play.

So, for those who have yet to participate in the RPGA, here’s what good about it?

It’s Free.  Just go to a con, sign up and play.  You can get an RPGA number and that’s all it takes.  No membership fees means you lose nothing if you can’t participate or don’t like it.

Take one character everywhere.  The structure of the RPGA ensures that characters will be made to a certain standard across the board.  That means it’s no problem to take your character to someone else’s RPGA game, and no problem with their character coming to yours. You can take the same character to conventions and play all weekend, as your schedule dictates.  It’s a great way for strangers to play together with as few arguments as possible.

Structured play.  RPGA adventures will have a skill challenge or two, some combat encounters, and some basic roleplay opportunities.  The adventures are designed to fit within a four hour time span. There are standardized ways to assign treasure.  Every time you participate in an RPGA adventure, you know what to expect. This format allows for tons of variation, so you don’t have to worry about playing the same adventure with different set pieces, but there’s an advantage to knowing that you’re not going to bring your uber-buff fighter into an intrigue-filled game, or vice versa.

Lots of games.  From cons to open games run from the home, there are a lot of opportunities to play.  You can even set up RPGA games for on-line play.  It should be much easier to find a game.

Say bye bye to prep.  If you’re GMing RPGA games, you have a whole stock of adventures at your disposal.  Just familiarize yourself with the adventure and you’re all set.

So is RPGA just another another way to say “Paradise”?  Unfortunately, nothing in this world is perfect.  some of the negatives:

No time for roleplaying.  you’ll get to do some roleplaying for sure, but the adventures are structured to be plot-driven, not story-driven.  This is a sacrifice that has to be made in the time limit of a convention RPGA game, but possibly something that can be opened up for a home game.

A tendency to min/max.  being combat-driven, the RPGA games are going to encourage people to min/max.  I don’t think you can truly avoid this, but you certainly need to prepare for it.

Paperwork.  I’m not so sure I can call this an outright flaw, but the paperwork that must be filed after each game for the GM and the players is a bit of a bringdown.  Again, I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker, and is definitely required for the concept to work at all, but be prepared to acclimatize to it.

Overall, I’m not sure the format is for everyone, but the price point is perfect and is worth a try.  I definitely am enjoying it thus far.

Does anyone not know the Gnomes?  Seriously? 

Regularly churning out great GMing articles, they took some time out of their hectic schedules to talk 4e with At-Will.

d1. OK, First introduce everyone who’s here.

Scott: Scott Martin, a long time stalker of Martin turned into blograde.

DNAphil: DNAphil…Gnome and GM For Hire.

Matthew: Hi. I’m Matthew Neagley. You can find me on Gnome Stew under that name, with the sexy gnome mechanic as my avatar. I’m a long-time GM with a very low attention span that shows both in my games and in my post count on Gnome Stew (I think I hold the record low number of posts). Frankly, I sometimes think the only reason the rest of the gnomes keep me around is because I’m a VeryRare (3% of monster population) Gnome with Pituitary Problem (GwPP: use stats for human) and when times are lean…

Patrick: Patrick Benson: gamer, geek, and goofball.

Martin: …and Martin Ralya, Head Gnome on Gnome Stew. Telas — Kirk ‘Telas’ Schneider — is here too, but he said he’s only allowed to answer 11 questions in any interview he does.

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Normally it’s up for debate, with people on both sides arguing the effectiveness of the surge.  Allow me to step in and slice the rope, thereby ending this tug-of-war.  The surge is in fact, working.

I’m speaking of healing surges of course.

I’ve liked healing surges from the outset, but after several months of running a game, and spending a weekend at a gaming convention getting the chance to sit on the other side of the screen, I can confidently say that healing surges work great for keeping the momentum of a game going.  Not only do they allow for players to not have to run back and forth to ye olde temple –always a bit of a pain –they provide players with a sense of where they stand for future encounters.  It could be hard to gauge correctly how ready you were for that next encounter in previous editions of D&D.  It was therefore quite easy to blunder into a TPK.  You can look at your healing surges and know how much bounce back and how much of a cushion you are going to have to fight that dragon.  It might be the time to take an extended rest, or if you decide to push forward, you are going into a tough situation knowingly.  Sometimes in the course of a story you’ll have to push –the villain is enacting his plan right now and extended rest means failure. 

This is the next benefit of the healing surge…drama.  I recently ran my players through a gauntlet.  Wraiths were attacking the village they were protecting, and they chased the clusters of undead around the city, fighting constantly all night.  Most of the encounters were fairly easy, but chained together one after the other, with healing surge draining skill challenges from one point to the next.  Over the course of two sessions the wraiths slowly chipped at the PC’s overall endurance.  When over a hundred wraiths were chasing them down right at the pitch of dawn (when they would retreat) the table was filled with tension.  The PCs at this point had used their dailies, used up all their healing surges…they were spent but they had to keep going, pushing themselves past their limits to save the days.  Isn’t that part of what heroism is about?

It’s not to say that simulating fatigue is impossible in other game systems, or even previous versions of D&D.  But healing surges are an elegant, cooked in way to simulate this.  The mechanics of healing surges signify endurance and sustainability. If you want characters to feel fatigued, you don’t take hit points or assign major penalties to stats.  You take healing surges away and you generate that effect intrinsically.  You can also reduce the effects of healing surges to simulate exhaustion or weakness.  Conversely, if you want characters to feel invigorated, give healing surges back to them, or make their healing surges more efficient than normal.

Healing surges rock because they can make the game go and they can make it stop.  As a GM it’s your job to know how to use them to control the flow and tenor of your game.