The Birth of a World - part 5

“He looks like a giant smurf.”
- Quoted from someone at the X3 movie about Hank McCoy, a.k.a. the Beast in the first scene.

Here’s a couple of movie reviews.

X3 – Disappointing
I hope you’re happy with what you’ve left Brian Singer. I almost hope Superman Returns blows so bad it ruins your career.
Say thanks to the new hack-director for ruining what should have been an awesome trilogy-conclusion movie.
Hell, Tarantino could have directed the thing and it would have looked the same, just more blood.
The movie reminded me of a poorly done mercenary movie; all full of expected one-liners and people getting together simply for the sake of the plot than what their personae would actually do.
Seriously, would Juggernaut actually work for Magneto just because Maggie freed him? No he’d say “Thanks chump!” and then run off. Granted Magneto would have used his powers to “convince” Juggernaut to stay, but that didn’t happen.
We were delivered a Hollywood shoot-em-up movie with a mutant twist.

The DaVinci Code – Disappointing
I, like many others, expected better of Richey Cunningham and the guy who got it on with a fish.
I’ve never read the book and I saw the plot twists coming five to thirty minutes before they hit.
My wife did read the book and she enjoyed it a little more because she enjoyed seeing how the book was put to screen.

On a score of 0 to 10:
X-Men III – 5.5 – Not a horrible movie, but should have been a lot better.
The DaVinci Code – 4 – Mildly entertaining but not worth paying $35 to see it and eat popcorn & nachos.

For comparison of my tastes in movies:
Anything with the word Tarantino in it – 2 (and it should be happy to get that)
Strange Brew – 5.5
The Fellowship of the Ring – 9.5
The Two Towers – 8
The Return of the King – 9
Fargo – 1
Left Behind – 0 (Think of me as a wolf in a trap while watching that pile of crap.)

That should give you a good idea of my taste in movies.

So in conclusion, I’d like to say that the summer movie season is off to another poor start.

But anyway, time to move on to the thought at hand.

So far I’ve covered the bigger issues with this creating this game world.

That means that the remaining issues I’ll be talking about in future entries are going to be smaller and more defined. And as time goes on, they’ll get even more so as there is less to talk about.

This subject isn’t so small though; the world map.

I’ve said before that I’ll be using hexagons for the world map rather than a drawn map. This stems from my love of my first D&D world, The Known World, a.k.a. Mystara. That world was made of almost nothing but hexagons. Even the rivers actually flowed on the edges of the hexes.

It wasn’t realistic, but it didn’t matter.

My world map won’t be that bad, but it’s not going to be small.

The Mystara map never really had every single hex created to start with. Instead they chunks of it here and there.

That’s what I’m going to have to do because right now because the current size of the map is huge. I’m talking over 500,000 hexagons for me to fill in.

I have two words for that: “screw” and “that”.

A group of hexes at a time should be perfect. It also prevents me from being boxed into a corner, game-wise that is. If I want to add a new continent, then nothing is preventing me from doing so. I probably won’t do that, but you just never know when a new idea hits you and you just have to add it right this very minute.

When doing this world, something will have to be sacrificed; the numbers of towns and cities and a realistic map.

If you’ve played a Japanese RPG, then you’ve perhaps noticed that there are only a couple dozen cities in the whole game world and how the map was just as far across at the poles as the equator.

Even if you only count cities on this planet with over a million people, you’re going to get more than a couple dozen of them.

Okay, I could be wrong on that, but you get the point.

Even in the Forgotten Realms there are more than just the labeled cities. There are many small villages and farming communities out there that just aren’t named. There just isn’t space on the maps or room in the books to accommodate that much information.

And the same goes for this world, there will be only a couple dozen cities worth noting.

But that’s ok; I already have a reason for why that is. I just can’t list it here. It needs to be saved until that matters to the game itself and the players discover it.

Yes, this map will also have the polar areas be the same size as the equatorial areas. It’s just easier that way. Don’t blame me. If you must blame someone, blame Sid Meier.

The types of hexes in this world will be pretty simple; there is only going to be a few types:
Plains – for simple prairies and such
Hills – for hilly and transition to mountainous areas
Mountains, passable – giant rocky areas that can be traveled through with difficulty (a skill check will need to be made to traverse it)
Mountains, impassable – giant rocky areas that cannot be traveled through without magical aid
Desert, Ice – frozen wastelands
Desert, Dry – scorched wastelands
Water – lakes, seas, & oceans
Forest – woodlands where only happy elves live (ha!)

Additionally these areas may have a road, river, village, city, castle, ruins, or dungeon added to them.

How am I going to do random encounters since I made such a big deal about them before?

I’m glad you asked.

Well once again we’re throwing out believability in favor of playability.

Also, for this next part I must give credit where it is due. Back in February, the group went to a game-day in Dayton. While there we played under some local DMs who did random encounters in a way I liked.

The DM rolled a d12, and the players each rolled a d12. If the DM’s die matched any of the player’s dice then there was an encounter. If multiple players had the same result as the DM, then the number of critters that would appear was multiplied.

In a 10,000 monkeys at a typewriter kind of way, that could lead to a TPK on a freaky night of dice rolls.

So I’m taking their idea and making it work with my world with some changes.

First only one d12 will be rolled by only one player while I will roll a number of dice based on the terrain with other modifiers increasing or reducing the number of dice I roll.
If multiple dice match the players’ die, then I increase the EL of the random encounter by one for each die that matches beyond the first.

I will also keep my rolls secret in order to fudge things in a way I choose. But don’t expect me to make things easy on the party if they’re took weak from overextending themselves. Remember that sometimes you have to run and if you have a character that can’t run, well then you didn’t think things through very well now did you?

If there is no encounter then the party has survived a day of travel and they’ve moved to their intended hex. But if there is an encounter, and they survive it, then we roll dice again. I will roll less dice for each repetition of this until they finally pass through, but I will never roll less than one d12.

It has the potential to create some kind of nightmare of never-ending random encounters, but I’m not that bad of a DM so as not to ruin the real fun for a freaky dice night.

Yes, you did read that correctly, each hex of travel takes one day of travel whether you’re crossing a mountain or riding a horse on a paved road. But the road will probably only have 1 or 2 dice being rolled while the mountain may have 8 dice being rolled.

You also might have noticed that I have not given a distance that a single hexagon spans. And I never will either. In order to keep the whole thing simple one hexagon = 1 day, nothing more, nothing less.

Sometimes actually giving numbers to work with just gives unneeded complication to a game. Yes we all know that a horse has much more stamina and a greater stride than a man, so it can cover more distance because of that. But can it move twice as far than a man? How about on a forced march? What about hilly terrain? How much does a paved road help either one of them? What if there’s a fraction in the result? Forget all of that, 1 hex, 1 day, and 1 handful of d12’s and those problems go away.

When believability gets in the way of a good time, believability can take a back seat for a while.

For those of you who must know all the little things about how every little thing works in a fantasy game, haha they cancelled Star Trek.

(Well I thought it was funny.)

To backtrack just a bit here, the EL of the encounter will be determined by a variety of factors, but the PC’s levels will not affect the base EL as much as the terrain and the danger level of the region, if their level affects it at all.

The dangerousness of a region is based on how far away it is from a city versus how close it is to a bad site.

This acts as a natural “bouncer” for the PCs, and is also a kind of radar for the players to use on those nights where they know about where to go, but not exactly. This supposes that my plans to speed up combat works.

This system gives the poor, neglected, d12 a lot more use.

Here’s something else I’ve thought about to speed the game up a little bit.
When you first make your PC, you go crazy and buy all of the stuff your PC will possibly need, and then you never ever worry about it. I think Kal still has 6 of his sling bullets he had back at level 1. I don’t think we’ve ever really worried about the amount of food he has, the number of waterskins that are full, or even whether or not we’ve had to worry about if we had enough sacks to carry around our gold in.

So I’m just going to say that every PC has a basic list of equipment that they have and wipe 50gp off their starting gold each. This gives them the standard starting junk would commonly be bought (backpack, belt pouch, clothes, food & water, ranged weapon ammunition) but nothing non-standard like weapons, spyglasses, alchemical items, masterwork anything, animals and so on.

If a player tries to abuse the system, well he’s going to feel pretty foolish by the end of the night as I force him to write every single thing his PC owns, including weight. Then we compare what the PC’s strength score compare to weight. Then for the rest of the night he has the weight, or higher, and a correspondingly low combat speed.

That should probably put an end to any of that.

The Shark-style Campaign

A few weeks ago the ENWorld forums had a pretty nasty database crash.
They lost four months of threads.
I lost 300 of my own posts.
The WLD spoiler thread lost 1/3 of its posts (600 posts)

And the thread that I started a week prior to the crash was lost.
It's the one where I asked Shark to give an in-depth explaination of his campaign-style.

Luckily for me, I saved the text of his entry.

So here it is. I did some editing to it, but only to get rid of several of those irritating red & green squiggly lines that MS Word uses. Those irritate me, so I edited them and without thinking that someone other than me would read it.

Also remember that I do not agree with every single thing he says, but the spirit of what he's talking about it what I want to obtain.

Greetings!

I have compiled some thoughts from various posts to begin a discussion describing "SHARK-Style Campaigns." I will elaborate in further discussion, as this serves as a rough introduction. :)

I have a particular view on Epic-Level gaming--that seems for every person who agrees wholeheartedly, and is inspired--there are two, three, or four people that bristle against it vehemently, or are simply too intimidated by Epic-Level gaming, as they have never--ever--"played or run a campaign that lasted beyond 12th level." I believe that such attitudes are generally folly on one hand, and sad and unfortunate on the other. To me, the game offers so much more than what many seem capable or comfortable--in really grasping and getting a hold of.
Still, I submit some of my thoughts here for discussion, hoping that many will enjoy the points that I make and the style of gaming that I embrace.

I have prepared a series of base template characters in advance--say, from level 1-30. I have wizards, fighters, clerics, rangers, etc. Most use base stats of 18/18/16/16/14/14. Then, I have a sub-list of special characters with 18/18/18/16/16/16. The characters are made up with complete skills, spells, items and gear, ready to go. All that is needed are names.

I can select a character, and easily swap out a particular spell so as to fine-tune them, or create a specific theme. I add some specialized treasure items of gold, jewels, and a few magic items, and the character is ready to go. This kind of preparation takes an initial investment that is substantial—but future character creation is far less time-consuming.

I might also suggest that--contrary to some philosophies--that you select a theme for the character, and simply run with it, making good choices, but not necessarily seeking to maximize and optimize the character in every way as to feats or spells. Making potent and effective characters is the goal, and is certainly possible without absolute maximization. Of course, the problem faced is that with absolute maximization, seeking the perfect feat chains, the best spells, etc, makes the characters, after a few are created, seemingly cookie-cutter and boring. They become formulaic. This kind of rigid pursuit of maximization actually sucks the "life" so to speak, out of the character.

Avoiding such will allow you to easily and quickly create a variety of characters of various levels that have character and unique characteristics.

As for the abilities, a careful reading of the Epic Level feats reveals that unless a particular character has several abilities in the 25-up range, most of the book--and hence, most of the benefits--of reaching epic levels are simply beyond the reach of most characters unless they have a base-line of abilities that include several 18's, in order to benefit from magic and stat-increases allowing them to reach over 23 and 25, so they can make use of many epic-level feats. Personally, I don't really find it enchanting to make a character that has three 12's and three 10's as stats. In my philosophy, adventurers, whether players or NPCs, are above "average"--and usually far above average. Such characters are the mighty champions and powerful villains that stalk the land. If such characters do not have a brace of really excellent abilities, then such individuals should consider taking a job as a militia guard, or grab a shovel and dig a ditch!

"SHARK-style Campaigning" is perhaps bewildering and frightening upon first glance, but I believe that some deeper thought reveals something of a philosophy that is sublime in it's simplicity, yet elegant in overall flow. Ultimately, I think that when one fully embraces "SHARK-style Campaigning" there is more fun in the game for the DM and the players alike.

First off, I think a little of my gaming history is useful, so as to provide you with some of the creative inspirations and experiences that have shaped my own philosophy. I started playing D&D in about 1978. In 1988 through 2000 I also added long-term campaigns playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Talislanta, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, and Rolemaster. I embraced D&D 3E in 2000 or so, and have been running D&D 3E ever since. And, as an aside, I gain additional inspiration from my studies as a scholar in Ancient and Medieval History, specializing in ancient Greece and Rome, and the Middle Ages through about 1500 A.D.

D&D is a great game, but let’s face it--it has some problems. Always has, really, but it's a great game, and a great system. I decided that as I kept running into irritating rules or other conventions that just disrupted the campaign stories and the mood and atmosphere I was trying to create in my campaigns, I would have to take the bull by the horns, and just change it. Along the way, however, I also discovered there to be some somewhat contradictory conventions and dynamics going on.

I realized that deeper within the text of the rules are some implied dynamics that are not necessarily brought to the fore in actual play. I also encountered some major problems with using the rules as written--I guess someone came up with the elegant acronym of RAW --and campaign verisimilitude. For example, just off the shelf as it were--if the low-level campaign assumptions of many are practical--and they are certainly implied, and stated fairly distinctly in the RAW--it is also plainly clear that unless you are scrubbing much of the Monster Manual, that such a set-up just doesn't make much sense. This syndrome kinda evolved out of some criticisms of Warhammer Fantasy--the foundation being, "Hey, with all of these dreadful all-mighty uber-champions of Chaos running around, with hordes of demons and beastmen at their command, how the hell could humanity survive?" After close reflection, I realized that it probably couldn't—and wouldn't. That dynamic also holds true for D&D. The idea that everyone is under 4th level, with dragons, demons, giants and monsters--let alone bands of greedy, power-hungry adventurers, too, running around, such communities would never get off the ground. They would all likely be eaten or enslaved.

Now, if you open up the level and power expectations--such problems are dealt with, because human societies and other humanoid communities as well, have inherent reasonable access to powerful characters that can do something about problems instead of just leaping into the maw of teeth!

From Rolemaster, I was already accustomed to powerful characters and deadly criticals from that game, as well as from Warhammer. High levels and great power in those games didn't prevent a character from dying a sudden and horrible death, so why not in D&D, too?

Plus, I became frustrated that when I looked at what a Vallorean Legionnaire could do, and should know--closely based on Roman Legionnaires--I realized that the D&D 1st level Fighter just didn't cut it, let alone the warrior class. I carefully worked up the fighter, skill by skill, and level by level, and discovered that it wasn't really until about 6th-8th level that such a professional soldier possessed not only the appropriate feats--but also enough skill points to meet expected essentials, and have enough left over to meet the non-combat related skills that you might reasonably expect such a professional soldier to possess, like engineering, history, tactics, survival, listen, spot, among others. Then, I realized that 1st level Commoners or even Experts don't really reflect what a skilled adult should be able to do and know. Another aspect of my background is that I am a veteran of the United States Marines, and served in combat arms as a machine-gunner in a Rifle Platoon. Now, I'll grant that many 18 to 22 year old kids living at home spoiled by their parents may not know very much about much of anything--but I was amazed by what some fellow 18, 19, or 22 year old Marines knew! Besides killing, fighting, and weapons, they often possessed college degrees, or vast knowledge on mechanics, farming, professional sales, making things, musicians, and on and on. Guess what? Ancient Roman Legionnaires--at roughly the same ages at enlistment--they also knew a great deal of stuff, from craftsmanship, to sailing, to fishing, to getting along in the big city--they too even at first enlistment--say 1st level fighter--they too knew far more than what the game rules seemed to assign to a 1st level fighter. The more my knowledge of the ancient and medieval worlds increased, as well as what we know from modern observation and research--the abilities and skill sets of a 1st level character as seen in the RAW just didn't seem to make sense. Then, on top of the fact that the RAW and many campaigns assume that most adults—even after years and years of hard work and professional dedication--are not often higher than 4th level.

I just didn't buy it. So, I changed some of the base conventions and paradigms of the game, and ran with it. I also didn't like ending campaigns at 8th or 12th level. I remembered a bit of philosophy from my first DM when I was a kid—he said, "Not that you want to go nuts as a DM, or necessarily be a god as a player, but what is a Vorpal sword for? It's in the rules--what good is it if no one ever gets to enjoy using one? What's the point? I'm not really interested in playing just so I can have a +1 sword. We play to have fun, we play to do exciting cool stuff from history, legends and mythology--and that means we want to enjoy having awesome weapons, mountains of treasure, and fighting huge monsters like dragons and demons! I get enough reality at school and at work--when we play D&D, I want to have some fun with crazy fantastic stuff!" I've always remembered that, and it has always been a part of my gaming philosophy as well.

Which leads me to the next philosophical point--with the ELH, I said, "Cool!" and said "Why not?" Indeed, I edit and control some things--you have to keep order and *balance* to a certain extent--but I also run dynamic campaigns, where the players get to control stuff, and have a real impact on shaping and defining the campaign world. I'm not afraid of players becoming 40th level. It doesn't bother me that a player has a spell that can rain fire down on a city for three days causing 30d6 fire damage per round. It doesn't intimidate me that a player has a +8 Holy/Flaming Burst/Ghost Touch/Vorpal/Holy Avenger longsword.

As much as the players can dream, well, so can I. and so can the Forces of Darkness that stalk the world!

Now, let's see. I'll just dive on in!

First thoughts--players want to dream, and the verisimilitude of the campaign implies that player characters should be doing something besides endless gladiator-style dungeon fights. At lower levels, such gets boring. At Epic levels, not only does endless fights room-by-room get boring too--that doesn't change--but the fights take up even more amounts of time. It's also important to realize that characters only gain experience points for creatures up to eight CRs--If I recall correctly--lower than their current level. This means that anything lower than that not only takes up time--in a real sense--to kill, but the player characters gain no experience points for defeating them. Essentially, such encounters are a thorough waste of time--for the players, and just as importantly--for you the DM as well. Thus, these dynamics lead--but obviously don't require--that you create other stuff for characters to do, learn, experience, and accomplish. Things like building cities, forging kingdoms, building temples, going on epic quests, marshalling armies, and leading great crusades on desperate battles against hordes of foul creatures and legions of dread soldiers! In my view, at epic level, the DM has to develop confidence to let go and allow the players to really become the powerful heroes and champions of legend and myth, and do the legendary and mythical deeds that such mighty heroes are famous for!

However, as you ease up on the reigns, and allow the players to create increasingly more powerful magic items, build huge fortresses, and raise vast armies, you also have to be prepared to get a little crazy with how you view the ENEMY. Add class levels to giants--not one or two levels, but ten, fifteen, twenty. Then things start getting interesting! Ask Dragonblade sometime about his character's experience at target practice for a squad of Fire Giant archers/Fighter 20. His character was a Monk 20/Sorcerer 20, and wow!—you should have seen the look of absolute disbelief on his face when in 1...2...3...rounds his supposedly uber-tricked out character that he thought was *invincible*--was shredded by barrages of Flaming Burst Ballista shots fired by the Fire Giant archers! Ask him--he has fun stories to tell!

As some have mentioned, the CR thing gets out of whack after level 25 or so. A character that is 28th or 30th or 35th or 40th level can take on opponents far higher than in earlier, lower levels. The power differential changes hugely. For example, your group of 4 25th or 30th level characters can take on and shred a 40th level character. An opponent *ten* levels or more higher than the players may still not last more than four or five rounds. Of course, there's a chance he might kill one or more of the players as well, but the players--unlike the difference between 10th and 20th level, say, do not have to run away in terror. They can leap in with confidence that they have a good chance of emerging victorious.

At the same time, Epic level play can be something of a paradox. On one encounter, players can take on a CR ten or fifteen levels higher and win. Yet, at the same time, Epic level characters in SHARK-style Campaigning learn a new sense of respect for their foes. Foes at epic level, in my philosophy, should be heavy-hitters, capable of really laying the smackdown on players. Thus, despair and a grim, sudden death are always near at hand! It makes epic-level play in my campaigns terrifying, as round by round, anything can happen! In another game, Dragonblade and the group were fighting against a 60th or 80th level vampire lord with 12 attacks per round. Round by round, the party battled back and forth, on one round, seeming to be at the brink of defeat, and then rallying back and driving against the vampire lord in a fury, where it seemed he was about to be defeated--but then he would heal, and counterattack with some terrible spell, or a whirlwind of blades, and the players would wonder if this round was going to be their last!--and then, *Whomp*--suddenly, the vampire lord was defeated, and the players breathed a sigh of relief and high-fived each other in triumph over their victory! In my experience, monsters close to the players in CR can often--but not always—be defeated far more swiftly than you might expect; so, raising those CRs through added class levels, templates, and so on, usually makes for a better and more challenging encounter.

Of course, at Epic levels, in my view, players should be fairly rich. Remember, according to the rules and the price listings, most of the really good epic treasure is absolutely astronomical in price. So, don't be afraid to set up really epic treasures to thrill the players. Give them a giant statue of a white mithril elephant, inlaid with diamonds and sapphires, worth 5,000,000gp! Go ahead. It might buy them a decent epic level sword, or build a few new towers for their fortress. Dream big!

"SHARK-style Campaign" philosophy for encounters also embraces a sense of epic scope and fantastic visuals. Of course, you don't want to overwhelm the players--for even Epic-level players can be overwhelmed and killed, but I am often motivated to create fantastic, sweeping scenarios where the players at least feel like they are *in* a fantastic, mythical world. Keeping in mind some of the things that I discussed earlier about encounters, it can be more effective and inspiring to dream big on the encounters, too.

For example, say the party is on the march to stop a giant invasion of an allied human city. Instead of the more standard--and flaccid--description of some Hill Giants and orcs ambling along to attack the human city, perhaps like this--

"Under the lead-grey skies a chill wind blows across the barren plain below. A light drizzle begins to fall, and in the distance, several dozen dirty, filthy hill giants, dressed in tattered beast furs and carrying spiked clubs, approach the human city from the east. All about the hill giants are several hundred orcs, mostly armed with spears, running to and fro, shouting and growling, working themselves into a frenzy, as they prepare for battle."

Not bad, really. However, there isn't really anything terribly different from this encounter, than a similar encounter the players may have had when they were considerably lower in level. As an Epic-level player--unless the DM has secretly added something to make the encounter surprisingly different--for an Epic-level party, this encounter probably isn't very epic. There's nothing here to write home about, as it were. No sagas will be sung about the hearth fires about an encounter like this. Now, it's important to realize that my next example isn't appropriate for every encounter, either, but the encounter above doesn't communicate anything epic or mythical to the players. Too many such encounters, and Epic Play can easily seem to be a boring repetition of the same old stuff that the players have always been facing up to their epic levels. What's so different now? Ho hum.

However, something like this--

"The party gallops swiftly along the old road heading to the human city, and before long, the party reaches the top of a sloping ridge before the road heads down, crosses a small stream, and proceeds to the gates of the city to the north. There--from the east, a great horde seems to be moving swiftly towards the city. The lead skies promise more rain to come, and as a drizzle of cold rain begins to fall, the scene becomes all too clear:

From the dark clouds over the mountains, a deep rumble of thunder echoes over the plain below. In the distance, great pounding drums sound in a steady rhythm, and a vast host of some 10,000 Fire Giants, all arrayed in gleaming golden mail, glittering swords and axes shimmering in the dying sunlight, march in a dreadful column, singing in the ancient speech of the giant kings of old. Hundreds—even thousands--of ferocious, grim-looking orcs, armored in black hauberks and carrying great curved pikes, jagged axes, and glittering spears, march like a black tide of steel towards the walls of the city. The ground trembles and groans as several hundred Dire Elephants, armored for war, and mounted by regal-seeming Fire Giants, gathers before the gates of the city. Fell banners whipping in the wind, a loud and mighty horn, like the roar of the gods, sounds as the Fire Giant lord raises a huge, black sword over his head, shimmering to life with waves of shifting blue flames, and shouts for the attack to begin!"

In the first example, the encounter is rather ordinary. The second example may serve as something the players may be proud of--something bards will sing sagas about. Story-wise, feeling-wise, the second example notes to the characters that this encounter is special, epic--worthy of great mythical heroes to charge into the battle, and into the campaign's history.

Note that mechanically-speaking, the party may still only really need to fight several dozen fire giants, including the fire giant leader--like in the first example, that is the meat or focus of the encounter; the rest can be fodder to be annihilated in a few meteor swarms. Depending on your style of play, the rest can be mowed down to allow the party a sense of additional heroism and triumph before, during, or after they fight the several dozen giants that you want them to fight. Or, alternatively, you can use some pre-generated stats for tougher giants, elephants, and orcs, to provide the party with an instantly-scaled encounter, depending on your mood, story needs, or the player’s moods as well--whatever will lead to more fun and more excitement.

Naturally, not *every* encounter--even at Epic level--needs, or should be so...dramatic. That, too, like the first example, can seem to be more of the same, and become boring. However, being prepared and eager to develop such encounters clearly distinguishes epic encounters--"SHARK-style Campaigning"--from mundane, flaccid encounters that seem little different except for some more hit points from encounters the party may have had as part of their routine experiences in lower levels.

In my view, "SHARK-style Campaigning" includes grand visions, gripping visuals and fundamentally different encounters and experiences than from lower levels. It isn't merely the difference in hit points and armor classes--or even numbers encountered. It certainly includes such, but it's different on virtually every level--from numbers, to AC, to equipment, to visuals, to the skills and tactics used, on down the line--many encounters are very memorable in epic, SHARK-Campaigning.

It helps to think of in epic, mythical, and dramatic terms--how does an epic encounter, SHARK-style, differ from non-SHARK-style? How does it look? How does it sound? How does it feel? As my friend Wizardru has mentioned, it's campaigning turned up to 11! On a scale of 1-10, what does an 11 look like? To know what 11 looks and feels like, one has to know what 1's, 5's, or 8's look and feel like, in order to recognize or to *visualize*--in your mind—before creating it on paper and in the game what an 11 looks and feels like. Does this make sense?

I hope you find this discussion interesting and useful! I hope I'm helping by describing "SHARK-style Campaigning" adequately, and in a helpful way.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Dale's Campaign - Session #15

A drop of Nelson’s blood won’t do you any harm.
Well that’s what the guys at Dragon’s Landing Inn sing anyway.

As some of you have noticed, I’ve made a few minor changes to the links.

I added some gaming related podcasts that I’ve been listening to; The Dragon’s Landing Inn & Gamer: the Podcasting.

Dragon’s Landing Inn is a couple of guys chatting about various table-top gaming related topics, with a bent towards D&D. They cover some interesting topics and have a section called “The Frugal Gamer”, which are basically some nice ideas that are free or cheap to use/get.

Gamer: the Podcasting is similar, but their main focus is on live-action role-playing, or LARPing. They give plenty of tips and tricks for running or playing in a LARP.

I am actually quite surprised that I listen to them at all, as I have a low opinion of LARPers.
That stems mostly from the Vampire LARPers a decade ago who felt that rules didn’t apply to them at gaming conventions and generally ruined the fun for those not in their games. And the rumors of game books disappearing when they’re around are pretty prevalent too.

Yeah, it’s probably not a fair depiction of most LARPers nowadays, but it’s the one I have until shown that the average LARPer has improved.

And finally I’ve added a link to a new blog my wife and I have started. You’ll have to visit that one yourself to find out more. A little warning though; it’s a bit scary.

Also, a topic that hasn’t come up in a while, and something the above podcasts has gotten me wanting to do; a podcast for our sessions.

Recently someone wanted a copy of one of our gaming sessions, so after an aborted attempt at reducing the 75MB file size to something more manageable, he got an uncut one.

(It’s so uncut he got to listen to me eating pizza, Aaron reading his 20 month old daughter some books, and my rants about security cameras aimed at your employees in an office.)

But I’ve looked into the amount of time and money to get this all started, and unless I can get my group to join in with the editing, the starting costs, and the upkeep costs, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

And that’s a darn shame because I think there a lot of people out there who don’t have a gaming group who would love to listen in on a standard group of geeks playing their favorite game.

RPGMP3 has finished their run through the World’s Largest Dungeon, so there’s probably a vacuum for D&D podcasts.

Moving on to another subject, many of us have bought the Player’s Handbook II. And our opinion of it is that is pretty good and worth the expense. It has many new options, spells, feats, teamwork actions, and so on plus a few new rules that might actually help more than hurt.

The only bad part of the book to me is probably still worth putting into the book, just if to aid the newer players; character concepts. It gives some basic character ideas, backgrounds, motivations and so on. Anyone who has played D&D long enough has no need for that, but if it helps newer gamers, it’s worth it.

Justin has us totally in the dark about when he can and cannot show up to a game anymore. He basically just shows up or doesn’t. This time he didn’t.

Everyone else was around though.

And there will not be a session next week thanks to the holiday. That just gives me a chance to see X-Men III that much sooner.

But anyway, we’re finally on to the game at hand.

We stopped last session with the defeat of a pair of giant zombie-like creatures.

We also noted that although the keep of Radiance Rest was supposed to be ruins, it was instead in pristine condition.

While our early buffs were still working we searched around the perimeter of the courtyard and any buildings that were not part of the central keep.
We didn’t want to be doubly screwed over in case we had to flee from the central keep only to have our only escape exit blocked.

The first building we encountered was an honest-to-goodness sauna. Unfortunately 3 slaughterwights were protecting it. We fought one of these creatures before, and we didn’t care for it then either.

Round 1:
Mark charged one of them and scratched, but since he’s wielding a disrupting mace, damage really isn’t the issue, forcing it to make a DC14 willpower save is.
Jaxil casts Death Ward on Culan.
Kineo casts Arc of Lightning at two of them. Both of them save, but they still take some nice damage.

Brian: “Ah hell; Dale’s rolling good tonight.”

Culan, still large-sized thanks to buffs, moves forward and puts a hurting on an undamaged one. It is still standing afterwards, but only barely.
One slaughterwight swings at Mark, forcing Mark to use the 2nd charge of the day from his ankh (the first was used last week against the elder water elemental).
Another slams at Culan, but Death Ward protects from the 1d8 hit to Constitution.
And the last slaughterwight is able to maneuver past the front line to get to Kineo, draining him of several points of Con.
Kal casts Haste.

Round 2:
Mark isn’t fooling around now. He uses a smite evil on the slaughterwight he is facing. This time it fails the save versus disruption. He then takes a 5’ step over to Culan’s target and finishes that one off.
Jaxil casts Cure Moderate Wounds on Kineo.
Kineo steps away from the slaughterwight and casts Orb of Electricity, bringing it down to about 50%.
Culan takes a 5’ step to get to the slaughterwight and hits with all three of his attacks. Damage isn’t rolled as the minimum damage he’ll do is 111 damage before dice are rolled.

Combat is over and Jaxil moves to Kineo’s to cast Restoration on him.

After searching the magically renewed building, a sauna, we move on.

We searched through the rest of the outer buildings, finding various items, some of minor interest, but mostly not.

All that was left was the main keep. So we cast our remaining buff spells and moved in.

It had a large, but empty antechamber followed by another room with a dais that had a jeweled chalice atop it.

Kineo began searching each of the steps of the dais, twice.

We thought he had triggered a trap, but instead we were being attacked by the keep’s only inhabitant and didn’t realize it.

Holtrus, the Heart of Evil, a dread wraith with some spellcasting ability, cast a general Greater Dispel Magic at us, unraveling some of our best buffs.

But since we thought it was a trap, Kineo went about searching the dais again while we rebuffed with what little buff spells we had left.

At least until Jaxil was attacked from above.

Round 1:
Holtrus hurts Jaxil pretty bad by doing 10 points of damage and draining 5 of his 12 points of Constitution. It then moves through the wall into the antechamber, almost safely out of sight.
Jaxil uses his Staff of Illumination to cast a Daylight spell, mostly because I incorrectly thought that Daylight would hurt or incapacitate the thing.
Culan readied an action in case it returned.
Kal, able to see it barely through a doorway, casts Flame Strike. But I fail the 50/50 roll versus incorporeal target.
Kineo readies an action.

Round 2:
Holtrus flees combat.

We immediately tended to Jaxil, getting his Con back up, before continuing on.

Jaxil also handed Kal the Staff of Illumination because Jaxil can’t use the Sunburst effect, but Kal can.

Every room and door was thoroughly checked by Kineo while the rest of us explicitly stated that our PCs were on full paranoid readied actions in case something moved and it wasn’t one of us.

So when Holtrus showed his incorporeal body to us this time, he was hit with a fistful of...not much.

Round 1:
(Readied actions)
Kal uses the undead blasting Sunburst from the Staff of Illumination, but I once again fail to make the 50/50 roll.
Jaxil casts Sanctuary because he has nowhere to run and will probably be the target for Holtrus.
Culan is able to get into melee, gets a single swing at Holtrus, and is able to connect.
Mark is also able to get into melee but he fails to connect thanks to the incredibly high Dexterity score that a dread wraith has.
(Initiatives)
Holtrus easily breaks through Jaxil’s Sanctuary spell and hit the poor cohort. Jaxil loses 8 points of Constitution in addition the 2d6 slam damage. He goes from nearly 50hp, to a mere 17hp.
Kineo stops with dealing with the door he is searching and casts an Orb of Force at Holtrus, but he barely misses.

Round 2:
Kal wastes another three charges from the Staff of Illumination as I once again fail the 50/50 roll.
Jaxil takes a step away from combat and begins casting Lesser Restoration on the defensive.
Culan is able to solidly connect yet again.
And Mark fails to connect yet again.
Since Holtrus foolishly let us get into melee with him, he takes a swipe Culan and runs away. That gives Culan another free swing on Holtrus, taking another small chunk out of him.
Holtrus is now sticking halfway out of the wall as the walls are too small for him to easily hide in.
This allows Kineo to target him with a Magic Missile.
Kiss Holtrus, the Heart of Evil, goodbye.

And that begins the end-of-module drama.

Storm clouds quickly gather drop a torrent of rain that lasts for days.

To large figures appear in the sky. One is a golden-skinned angelic being known as Zaphkiel (from the Book of Exalted Deeds). The other is a red-skinned arch-devil we know as Asmodeus (from the Book of Vile Darkness). Their fighting in the rain causes much in the way of fireworks and causes some collateral damage to the nearby area.

The swamp changes to forest in a matter of days and the slow swampy river turns into a strong normal river, giving Darken Glen free access to the sea. This is not something Kal cares for because nature had reached equilibrium in the swamps, and a sudden change like that would have many bad side effects. But this is a magical land, so he gets over it.

Surprisingly, the ruins do not fall apart when Holtrus is finished off. So we are free to search the area and find his diary which explains how he survived his failure at becoming a lich. He had some wishes that he used to rebuild the keep and bring himself back as a creature of darkness. And there was a mention of his master not being very forgiving in failure.

The Brotherhood of the Radiant Heart appeared to us in ghostly form before we left. They thanked us and offered us their keep as a reward (plus we had found the deed).

Shortly after we left Radiant’s Rest, a black-cloaked lich appeared before us and chastised us in Yoda-speak, calling us busy bees and accusing us of tipping the balance by defeating Holtrus and redeeming the Brothers Grimm.

Before he teleported away he told us that he might have to get involved to fix things.

Next begins the end-of-adventure phase, where all of our outstanding issues are concluded.

Things like how Radiant’s Rest is ours, but what should we do with it?

Mark wants to take it over as it is a church to hi deity, while the rest of us have no interest in doing so. But we are neutral-greedy, so we want our share of it if he is going to do so.

But the solution presents itself to us in the form of many clerics and paladins of Mark’s faith seeking to speak with us. They offer to buy the keep from us.

After plenty of negotiation, we “give” it to them and as a reward for “finding” it they improve our Vests of Resistance +2 to a +5 version, we each get one free Full Resurrection, and we are always welcome in their temples.

And believe it or not, that is a fraction of the keep’s true value. It is in a prime location as a defense against the working of Baron Kordt, the continent’s only evil baron. Not to mention the actual value of the keep is probably more than double that of the reward we received.

Additionally, we returned to Bauer’s Tower to claim it, only to find that he had already prepared it for us. It was no longer haunted in any way, and it was now a powerful magic item. Similar to a Daern’s Instant Fortress, we now had a tower we could carry around with us and use as we needed, so long as we had some solid ground to place it on.

We had heard through the grapevine that the Brothers Grimm were doing quite well in reforming their ways.

And since the Heart of Evil is no longer around as magnet for fell creatures, Lindepohl has decided to move on. And because Lindepohl has decided to move on, that means Ian de Magi has to follow Lindepohl wherever he goes in order to guarantee a balance of sorts.

And finally we heard a rumor that there is some other poor town somewhere on the continent that just might need our help.

And thus concludes the adventure known as “The Heart of Evil”.
Our next adventure is called “The Devil’s Daughter”.

The Birth of a World - part 4

Now how do you all go about speeding up your games?
Seriously, I’d like to hear what you have done to increase your game’s speed.

For us, we’ve tried a few things here and there, some worked well, some failed, and some changed nothing.

It’s all a matter of trial and error. Oddly enough, the simple things worked the best.

Here’s a short list with long explanations:

First – When in combat, have your action planned before the initiative comes back to you. You’d be amazed how much a high level fighter can slow your game down. Thanks to buff spells being added and wearing off, a person playing a melee-freak may have to do more math than the guy playing the wizard. Our solution was to get the people playing the fighters into being ready before the action gets back to them. Also, I created a chart with MS Excel that does the math for you.

(I’m really quite proud of that chart. It’s unwieldy, but it gets the job done quicker than using your fingers.)

Second – Know your spells. For a DM, this part isn’t so easy, but a player has less of an excuse. If you have to look up a spell during your round, then you find out it doesn’t do exactly what you need it to do, so then you look up another one and you’ve spent 5 minutes of everyone’s time for 6 seconds of your PC’s life. The solution is to know before memorizing. Aaron does a lot of preparation for any spells his character has. He has several sheets, also using Excel I believe, that list all of his current and future spell choices. This can save a lot of time and works for both combat and non-combat situations.

Third – Take the average when rolling a lot of dice. This one could send some hard-core dice monkeys into shock, but at high levels when the spell slingers are whipping mass damage spells left and right, you’ll be rolling more d6’s than all of the other dice combined. So when this gets to be a bother, average damage might be a good call. Since the average roll of a d6 is 3.5, average damage for a 10d6 Fireball spell is 35. I would suggest only doing this when you have a lot of spells being used, the roller can’t add his dice very quickly, and all of this is hurting the pace of your game.

(If the player has to count the “pips” on the dice, I would strongly suggest using this.)

Here’s a cheat sheet, for those of you born in Arkansas:
d4 = 2.5
d6 = 3.5
d8 = 4.5
d10 = 5.5
d12 = 6.5
Multiply that value by the number of dice you need to you use, and round up if you need to.

Fourth – You have to know the rules. Ok, I am by no means and expert on the rules. And it chafes me when a player tries something new that is covered in the rules. The player isn’t doing anything wrong; it just shows my lack of knowledge of certain rules and brings the game to a screeching halt. And I have no one to blame but myself. Any amount of time I can save by being able to quickly add dice is lost by a single attempt to perform a bull rush.

And don’t get me started on Polymorph. I get around the whole nightmare of Polymorph by asking Aaron for his input. I’ve basically given up on even trying and gone with the simple concept of “If it feels overpowered, it probably is.”

I read somewhere that the PHB II has fixed it in some way or another. I’ll have to ask Aaron about it.

Fifth – In any campaign I’m playing, leveling does not come as a surprise to me (usually). Therefore it should not take an hour to level your PC. Choices for your PC’s feats, skills, and spells should be loosely planned out. And I mean that as a minimum. Barring changes in the way the campaign is heading, a fighter picking a feat should not be an hour long agonizing decision at the game table. Those decisions should have been made already. All you should have to do is change a several numbers, officially write your new spells down, and roll a hit point die.

(Yeah, I know that’s an over-simplification, but I don’t think leveling should your PC should take more than 20 minutes for an experienced player.)

(Over-simplification is kind of a long and complicated word huh? Quite the opposite of the word’s meaning.)

Sixth – The DM has to be ready for his job. Dale has done a good job of this, in spite of his tendency to lose things. When it comes to game time he has everything he needs for the evening ready. Now he doesn’t have every iota of information at hand. That is too much to plan for given how often players never go where you thought they were going to go.

Any half- decent DM should be ready for something the players do that is unexpected. Being able to “wing it” is a valuable tool that every DM should become proficient in.

(Note to DMs: If you do a whole lot of work and the players just go crazy by not following the plot, put away all of your stuff and sit there with your arms crossed and hold your breath until they agree to follow your carefully designed plot train. They will either agree to your demands and play, or you will pass out and they will draw on your face with permanent markers, wrap you up in shrink wrap, duct tape you to a wall, and then take pictures of it. At least that’s what I see them do on the internet. Or you could just be ready for what they do. It’s your choice.)

There are probably more, but all I’m coming up with now is even more rehashed stuff you have probably read before.

What am I, as this campaign’s creator, going to do to speed up the game?

I’m doing quite a bit really.

We’ll start off with combat actions.

Think about this through your PC’s eyes. Every combat round is only 6 seconds long. And that is a period of time in which everyone and everything is doing something. The fighters and running up to the dragon trying to pierce its hide while it swipes at them and shoot flames everywhere, the cleric is running up behind those fighters ready to heal at a moment’s notice, the wizard is shooting a lightning bolt across the room, and the rogue is trying to get behind the dragon to find that ever elusive weak spot.

That sure is an awful lot of things happening in a mere 6 seconds. And even though your PCs are trained to think in the heat of battle, that doesn’t mean you should get all the time in the world to determine your PC’s action.

I’m saying that the players should have a little bit of pressure put on them.
In other words, put a time limit on how long a player gets to decide his actions and get them done.

For low levels, I would say 30 seconds is plenty of time to decide what to do. And 1 minute is plenty to resolve those actions.

And if someone wants to help that player decide what to do, it had better be stated in less than six seconds of time. This isn’t a comic book where everyone is carrying on a full 2 minute conversation in the same span of time it takes to punch someone.
The helpful comment should be something like “Bob needs some healing” or “Magic Missile that orc” and not a minute long dissertation on the proper way to attack the dragon. Something like that should be done afterwards, when the heat of battle no longer applies.

What do you do if the player takes too long?
Simple, the PC delays his action until the player is ready.

At lower levels this should not be that big of an issue, but at higher levels the time limit needs to be increased. Take it easy on some players, especially the new players.

And for crying out loud, don’t hammer it down the players’ throats. They’re at the game to have fun, not be lectured.

What about the DM, shouldn’t he be under the same restrictions?
Well yes and no. DMs have a lot or work to do and they should feel the pressure too. But players have the benefit of knowing their PCs quite well.
So a DM needs to keep the same pace he is pushing onto the game, but not at the cost of something important.

And no, I’m not saying that you need to have a stopwatch ready for everyone. Just keep the game flowing and moving at a good pace.

This is D&D, not chess. Magic: the Gathering turned into chess, that’s why I stopped playing it.
Well that and the money thing.

And finally this is possibly the biggest and most interesting change I’ll be making to the game; spell casting is going to be drastically changed.

This is still in the “alpha-stage” of development. So I’m interested in opinions for possible tweaks, loopholes, and so on.

Every single spell caster is going to be a hybrid caster. They will have the spell versatility of a wizard while getting a potential large number of spells per day. But they are also limited in the number of spells they know.

That sounds a little screwy doesn’t it? Well just sit back and read.

At lower levels, choosing spells is a simple affair of picking less than a dozen spells to memorize. But at the teen levels it becomes a tedious affair of looking for just the right combination of spells to memorize for what the party expects to face that day.

As I’ve said before, this can sometimes take an hour of game time for some of your more research-happy players (ahem Aaron).

But if they have a limited number of spells to choose from, and they can cast them spontaneously, this cuts out the memorization time and puts it onto the player during the time when they are leveling their PC.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Limiting the number of spells a PC knows makes that class less valuable.”
Oh contraire, I’m not limiting them to that small list of spells a sorcerer gets to choose from.

They list of spells they get to choose from is going to be 3 times the number of spells they can cast per level per day, base stat modifier included.

So now a first level wizard gets a base of 2 first level spells (1 plus 1 more for a high intelligence). This means his list of spell choices for first level is 6 spells. When he reaches level 2, he gets another spell per day to cast, and thus 3 more spells are learned. When he reaches level 3, he gets no new level 1 spell choices because he doesn’t get any new spells per day for level 1 spells, but he does get a new level 2 spell per day to cast, so that means he gets 3 level 2 spells in his spell list.

This works the same way for paladins, rangers, and so on.

For clerics it works a slight bit differently because they receive one more spell per day that would normally have to be a domain spell. Well they still get that one spell added to their daily spells, but they don’t get to choose 3 spells of that level to add to their list, they instead add their domain spells to their list and their cure or inflict spell. So at level 1 they receive 2 spells per day, and a list of 6 spells to choose from, 3 of their own choosing, 2 from their two domains, and either Cure Light Wounds or Inflict Light Wounds.

If I can think of too many problems with this, then it’s out the window. But there’s another problem if I do that; there will be no wands or scrolls on the magic item list (potions will fill the gap and not be limited to level 3 spells). This makes it very hard for a wizard to learn new spells. But I suppose I could think of a way around that (like more spells per level).

I have plenty of time to think and rethink all of this through. And I’m interested in hearing the opinions of others.

Dale's Campaign - Session #14

The Happy Fun Ball!
Still legal in ten states.

This session was one of what I call a “paperwork session”.
We spent at least 75% of the night crafting items and tying up loose ends.

Basically what happened was that Dale had more or less been giving us plenty of gold, but not giving us much of an opportunity to spend it.

With the hags defeated we then had plenty of time to catch up on what we lost.

Yeah, the undead necromancer Holtrus, a.k.a. the Heart of Evil, is out there somewhere, but we’re not about to go after him without proper preparation. Especially after those hags put up enough of a fight to bring two of us down.

Mike could not make it to this session, so Brian played Mark.
But Justin was able to make it, and there is a chance he might be able to show more often. But that’s still up in the air.

Dale has decided to let us use the Player’s Handbook II once this module is completed with the destruction of Holtrus.

As for the time we consumed with item creation, we probably spent at least four months of time crafting wondrous magic items, magical armor, and magical weapons.

Additionally, the order that sent us on this mission in the first place rewarded us each with a set of mithril full plate armor. And you better believe we enchanted it.

Since Kal can not wear armor, Jaxil is now one happy cohort.

But we can’t say that we did nothing for those four months. While creating items, you’re only working eight hours a day. That gives you plenty of time to get into trouble.

The Brothers Grimm had been treated well by us on more than one occasion, even when we had no reason to do so. This planted a small seed in them which we could try to use to bring them back from the darkness they embraced long ago.

So on several evenings we bought them drinks and talked.

At some point we asked them about the location of Radiant’s Rest, the ruined home of the Radiant Brotherhood that had been “dropped on” Holtrus before he could become a lich.
They told us that they had been near where it was and it even gave them a creepy feeling.

But they supplied us with a map to the place in the event we wanted to check it out.

And through much role-playing, many diplomacy skill checks, and the promise of fair chance at redemption we were able to convince them to give up their evil ways.

Ian de Magi was able to get a message to the local baron, Baron Barcum. And Marcum agreed to allow them a chance so long as they both atoned and gave up their dark magicks in favor of something more beneficial to all.

During this period of time, Dale wanted us to come up with a name for our adventuring group. I threw out some names and the one that stuck was “Brotherhood of Soul’s Honor”.

Oddly enough, Souls of Honour was the name of an EverQuest guild I helped found years ago.

So now our PCs will be collectively known as the Brotherhood of Soul’s Honor.
No matter how cheesy that may sound.

One fine day we noticed our not-so-good friend Javier walk back into town. He came into town on a busy day with a lot of people around going about their business.

He had the stones to declare himself the town’s new mayor by the law of town charter.

Culan wanted to behead the fellow. As much as Kal would have liked that, doing so in broad daylight would have had bad consequences for us.

Instead we announced to him that he was under arrest for crimes against the town.

What followed was Javier and us giving speeches back and forth to the crowd of townsfolk.

The farce ended when a neutral clergy offered to cast a Zone of Truth spell and we made the town aware of what had been happening to their daughters over the years.

(There was something about a blue pen too.)

Javier made a run for it but didn’t get far.

End result: Ian arranged to bring the Baron Barcum to the town to deal with Javier and the entire corrupt town council.

He personally beheaded Javier with his vorpal sword and sentenced the council to life, but would have beheaded them had we not protested that they may have only been afraid for their own lives and someone else would have done it instead.

Barcum temporarily took personal control of the town, and when he left he appointed Mark the mayor until the town elected a new mayor.

By the time we started adventuring again, a new mayor was elected.

When we were almost done with item creation, we all had a dream in which Bauer appeared and offered us his tower and all that was inside of it. But he said we could not occupy the place until the Heart of Evil had been destroyed.

Sean: “What were you smoking anyway when you thought up the magic canoe?”

So after the items were finally finished, and all of our loose ends were finished with, we moved on to the ruins of Radiant’s Rest.

Except that they were not in ruins. They appeared to be fully intact, and radiated pure evil.

And as we crossed the moat, an elder water elemental attacked us.

Round 1:
Arriseus blasted it with his Wand of Lightning Bolts.
Jaxil cast Fly and moved out of harm’s way.
The elemental pounded the nearest target, doing nearly 70 points of damage to Culan.
Culan stepped away and brought a Flame Strike down on it.
Mark moved into melee, swinging away.
Kineo casts a Flame Strike as well.
Kal casts Fly and moves out of the way, and casts a quickened Snake’s Swiftness on Mark who hurts the elemental

Round 2:
Arriseus uses his Wand of Lightning Bolts again.
Jaxil heals Culan about half the damage he took.
The elemental can’t reach Culan now, so he pounds the daylight out of Mark.
Culan moves forward into melee again, since he’s not a target any longer, and smacks away some of the elemental’s hit points.
Mark misses with all of his swings.
Kineo casts another Flame Strike.
Kal casts Mass Snake’s Swiftness, giving Culan and Mark another swing. Even though they both hit, it’s still moving, so Kal casts a quickened Magic Missile. But it still didn’t die.

Round 3:
Arriseus switches to his warlock eldritch blast and drops it with less than 20 points of damage.

While the dust still settled, those of use who were flying did a quick scouting from above. We saw two giant-sized corpses less than 50’ away and lumbering towards us.

By comparison to the water elemental, these guys were chumps and we dropped them even sooner.

And we stopped there for the evening.
Kal still has enough spells in him for another couple of fights at good strength, and maybe one or two more at real diminished strength.

Soon another Birth of a World entry.

Dale's Campaign - Session #13

Well this session was pretty good.

At least 75% of the evening was spent on an “End of Chapter” combat.

But because Mike was late, thanks to the wonderful local entertainment we call Friday evening traffic.

So we chatted it up for a while until he showed.

Our conversations covered things like how PC deaths are about halfway split between bad dice rolls and poor player decision making.

Then there was something that I call “Cracking the eggshell”. It’s pretty simple; once one PC drops in a combat there is a much higher chance of another PC dropping.

That happens because of how well a group can work together and each person has their own job to do. If there is a sudden job opening, and no one is capable of replacing the now dropped PC, then the party had best end the combat ASAP or flee lest they lose more people.

And then we talked about clerical turning ability. We’re not big fans of how it works as is, but all of the alternatives we come up with aren’t any better.

Once Mike showed up, we got down to business.

The first thing we did was to get with the Brothers Grimm to make sure they were forewarned that we might break the tile they gave us a while ago, which would summon them to our aid.

(We’d heard rumors that there would be a lot of big nasty monsters in the hags’ employ.)

Next we met with Ian, who had determined the location of the hags’ lair. We cast our long term buff spells then Ian teleported us there.

We appeared not even 100’ away from a large cave opening somewhere in the swamps.

We cast all of our remaining buff spells that mattered (Kal had memorized some anti-drowning spells), summoned the Brothers and charged into the cave.

We had not buffed up that much since the WLD.

The combatants:
The “good” guys:
Culan, a level 8 fighter/cleric
Mark, a level 8 paladin/fighter
Kineo, a level 8 warmage/rogue
Kal, a level 8 druid/conjurer
Jaxil, a level 6 cleric cohort
3 Brothers Grimm, all level 9 gestalt casters who each had cast Greater Invisibility on themselves and made it clear that they were there for firepower only. If things got too hot, they were out.

The bad guys and girls:
5 ogres, level 5 barbarians
Uncle Ebb, ogre magi
A grey render, powered up
3 hags, all probably annis types, all with warlock levels
A magical cauldron called “the ghast pot”. It popped out a new ghast every round. When it was full it would tip over and the ghasts would charge. It would then start over.
A night hag, hidden in a secret area

No round-to-round description this time. It’s not as easy to keep track of that when you’re not the DM.

The combat starts off with Uncle Ebb turning invisible.

Kal then summons up an Evard’s Black Tentacles. Only one ogre gets caught up in the spell, but it does remove it from the combat.

The Brothers Grimm are very effective at working together, and each has a Wand of Fireballs and a large array of nasty spells. They fry anything that moves that wasn’t one of us.

Mark rushes forward for a fight, but he’s all alone as our only other melee guy is at the bottom of the initiative stack. So he’s standing there all alone as a trio of very charred and raging barbarian ogres pounds the snot out of him.

Since he didn’t know how much damage the ogres could do, he didn’t use his magical. That proved to be a very bad choice as he was left with less than half his hit points.

Jaxil, who had been delaying his action until someone was hurt, moved to heal Mark, but Mark had moved too far into the combat.

The hags curse and blast anything that they can see.

The ghast pot tips over, dumping out 6 ghasts. They run towards the hurting Mark.

Culan charges forward, rips up an ogre good, and use his Quickened Turning to send 4 of the 6 ghasts running to the other side of the cave.

The render charges Culan dealing a healthy chunk of damage.

Uncle Ebb reappears and turns Culan into a goat (nat 1 on the save). But he’s an enlarged, buffed up Billy goat.
Several Dispel Magic spells are wasted trying to fix this. I just couldn’t get the rolls needed to remove the Polymorph.

To make things even worse, the hags knock Culan into the low teens in hit points.

We are now on the defensive.

The combined attacks of the grey render and a single ogre finally bring Culan into negative hit points.

The attacks of the Brothers Grimm do the majority of the damage to the ogres and the grey render. They bring down four of the ogres and the grey render in the first three rounds of combat.

We hear a scream when the render drops. Kal, with a See Invisible spell active, sees a Night Hag entering the cave through a secret door.

Uncle Ebb pours salt onto Culan’s would. Well actually he kills him with a Cone of Cold at Culan, Kineo, and Mark. Amazingly and ironically Mark survives this by making his save and the cold damage preventing buffs that Culan had cast.

Kineo fails his save. Aaron is irritated because Kineo has never had an opportunity to use his Evasion ability because Aaron never makes the save DC.

Mark attacks a ghast while prone with his Mace of Disruption. And since Dale is on his usual low-rolling kick, it poofed.

Kal, unable to help in a defensive manner, finally gets to go on the offensive. He summons three celestial bison and places them around Uncle Ebb. They get one attack and make it count.

Forty-two points of damage later; Dale: “Scratch Uncle Ebb.”
Sean: “That was it. That little bastard could have died a long time ago.”

I should have had Kal do that much sooner.

And yes, three summoned magical buffalo killed an ogre magi.

One of the Grimms casts Revivify on Culan.
(Revivify is a Spell Compendium spell that works like a Raise Dead, but without the level loss. The catch is that it has to be cast within 1 round of the death.)

In spite of Jaxil’s meager healing, the hags use their eldritch blasts on Mark.
Say goodbye to Mark.

Kineo, seeing an opportunity, gets the three warlock hags caught in a Stinking Cloud.
That would be the beginning of the end for them. In short time the Brothers and the bison finish them off.

The night hag moves towards the unconscious maiden.
Nothing good can come of that, we all think.

Kal, out of any other options, and not wanting to see the girl die, sees no choice but to sacrifice himself.
He casts Dimension Door and places himself between the night hag and the girl.

(Dale actually asked me at least twice if I was sure.)

A giant load of spells is unleashed at the night hag, but only a third of them make it through thanks to her spell resistance.

But I think Dale pulled the punch on Kal.
He could have put a real hurting on Kal with that night hag, but she only cast Magic Missile at him.

Kal whips up another couple of celestial bison around the hag (since the others did so well).

Hoping that a cool tactic would pay off, Jaxil cast Silence on Kal. Kal chose to fail the save.
Kal holds a Greater Rod of Silent Spell, the hag is only 15’ away, the area of a Silence spell is 20’, and the celestial bison have her blocked in.

But that didn’t get to pay off.

An Orb of Force from one of the Brothers, and an empowered Orb of Force from Kineo turns her into paste.

The only enemy left standing on the battlefield is a lone ogre barbarian who just recently broke free of the Evard’s Black Tentacles.

Guess how long that guy lasted.

Then we went about helping the girl, looting the area, and destroying anything that was evil that we could destroy (like the ghast pot).

Although we didn’t care much for the Brothers Grimm, they did do quite a bit more than they needed to help us out, so we gave them nearly 3000gp in gems and told them how to get past the locking mechanism of the gold door to the ancient ruins we met them at oh so long ago.

That really threw them off.
They expected us to send them off, but we were nice to them.

Then some odd guy just wanders into the cave. After very little deliberation we conclude that he is Jaxil’s god, Saint Leonard the Traveler.

He removes all of our maladies and such, praises our good work, then offers us some words of wisdom, and moves on (through the cave wall).

Much brown-nosing was done by us. The Brothers tried to look as small as possible until he left.

Among the horde of loot we found was a large book that radiated much evil mojo that resisted all of our attempts to destroy it.

One of the Brothers offers to translate it for us. We say sure, but just give us the jist of it (just in case).
And it basically goes through the steps of draining an innocent girl of her charisma until it kills her and sucks her soul into Hell.

Lovely story isn’t it?

After a lot of thought, and showing the book to Ian, we remember that we still have to free the ghost Bauer.

Long story short, we found Bauer and gave him the book and another ghost appeared. It was his betrothed and they now rejoined.

(Insert your own mushy frou-frou stuff here.)

He then destroys the book and they fade away after letting us know that we have one more immediate thing to do.

The only task we can think of is to redeem the Brother’s Grimm. Or at least turn them away from evil.

That should be interesting.

The Birth of a World - part 3a

As what generally tends to happen, I’ve changed my mind on some things. In particular, some subjects covered in part 3 of this series (hence the “3A” title).

It’s no big deal though. I have plenty of time to make tweaks here and there.

After much deliberation and meditation I’ve decided not to do one potential tweak.

The whole power attack mess I’m simply not going to worry about.

Yes, I know I wrote about it like it needs to go, but as I thought about it I realized that on a weird level it is actually balanced.

Monsters and characters get more and more hit points while, theoretically, their armor class and base attack bonus increase at about the same rate. So if you put a cap on how much you can power attack, or if you increase or remove the limit on Combat Expertise, all you really do is decrease the amount of melee damage that can be done in a combat round. And in turn that makes melee fighting take longer and causes the fighter classes to be less valuable as the casters will have to take up the slack.

It’s a simple scalable numbers thing; as hit points go up, so should damage. Just like how AC and BAB scale to each other.

And here’s a dirty trick to throw onto any PC who uses Power Attack too much; disarm. When you power attack, your BAB goes down that same amount until your next action. This means you are more vulnerable to losing your weapon from a simple disarm action.

Think about your tricked out fighter/barbarian using a greatsword. Then he power attacks full against some harmless looking rogue, looking to cut the little runt in twain. The rogue sidesteps the swing, and with a flick of his rapier, the barbarian is now weaponless.

And so much for what I called a “solid” plan in my previous post, I’m dumping the personality concept of this campaign.

The reasoning to keep it was simple; I needed to be able to have as much the campaign mapped out as possible before we start.

But it was just not the best route. No one wants to play someone else’s PC for anything more than a one-shot game. People would quickly lose interest in the game for fear of “not playing the PC right”.

So say goodbye personality-concept and hello background augmentation-concept.

Prior to the campaign’s beginning, I will have the player send me (and not the group) a 100 to 250 word write-up about the PC. The write should be the general character concept, the goals for the character, and a story about the PC.

Then I will respond to the player with some augmentation of the PC. This can be about anything that I could use as a reason to include that PC into the story-line.

These augmentations can be both positive and negative to the PC on a mechanical level. The positives will be something like a +1 to the DC of fire spells, more starting gold, a re-roll a day, or whatever I think would work great. The negatives will along the lines of having an older PC, starting with negative XP, on the run from something, and possible even worse.

The augmentations on a story level will be simple DM additions to the PC back-story. The player then writes up a new story with this new information.

And all the while the players don’t tell one another about their character, at least not at first.

Why won’t they tell each other about their histories? Well because this is both a role-playing game, and I’m a jerk DM. Most normal people don’t go telling everyone their entire history. Especially if they are victims of plot that had them framed for a crime and there is a law man in the group.

The locking gestalt classes I’m pretty firm on (where you pick your two classes and keep them). If a player has a good concept for their PC, I might loosen it a smidgen.

And as for what classes and prestige classes I’m allowing, I’m still working on the list.

But here’s a little something I’ve got worked out so far; PCs cannot be druids, barbarians, or bards (but NPCs can).

Why? This is going to be a civilized kind of world, there is no “new frontier”.
A druid might appear to the PCs in some way or another, and only in some parts.
Barbarians will appear as class levels on some monsters, so there is a stigma against barbarians as a sort of throwback to the old, and thus wrong, ways of doing things.

And as for bards, well, I just hate bards as a class. So they are limited to NPC storytellers and entertainers. If there was one class I’d dump from the core rules, the bard would be nominated.

Yeah, I know some people can play them perfectly, but eh.

Tomorrow I’ll have the write-up of Friday’s game posted.

Right now I’m listening to the MP3 of it to make sure I didn’t miss too much, but it was 90% one big combat. And this combat was not the usual one-sided, two round combats we’ve had recently.

More about that tomorrow.

The Shark style Campaign

Follow this link to hear the words from the horses mouth (on ENWorld):
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=175747

I don't intend to follow everything he talks about, but his words ring to true to what I said in my previous post.

The Birth of a World - part 3

Ok, so I’m still trying to build the basics of this new world.

So far I’m just doing the giant draft of the whole thing. Building the skeleton I would say.

The minutiae of the world doesn’t matter that much at the moment – all of that will get fleshed out once the skeleton is built.

And I’ve actually worked out quite a bit of the world, but by no means enough to run a game on.

This part is scary, I’m putting all kinds of work into this campaign and I’m not 100% sure it’s playable to my style of gaming. I could be doing all of this for nothing.

But then again, I spent over a year and a half just doing minor stuff about “The Valley” campaign before I actually ran the first session. And from what I’ve been told, fun was had by all, even in spite of the TPKs.

So I trudge on; adding a little bit to it every day in one form or another. (And if I don’t write it down, it can sometimes get lost forever.)

All that said, next I’m going to cover how to deal with the special personalities that show up in Japanese RPGs.

You know what I’m talking about, especially in all of the recent ones. Back in the olden days of gaming, you just gave a character a name, a class, some semi-random stats, and you moved on through the semi-coherent plot. But as time went on, plots became more prevalent and the characters were pretty much already defined. Heck the most input you could have would be name, maybe. By then all the game was to you was a story that was broken up by fight scenes that you controlled.

But if you did that to an actual player for D&D, either you or he would be on the curb pretty soon after that revelation.

So here’s my current plan as it stands, and it’s probably pretty solid as a plan.

I supply the players with a group of character concepts and then they choose the one that they most identify with. With 8-10 concepts, or personalities, it shouldn’t be very difficult to find at least one for everyone.

Then once they’ve made this permanent decision, they get more information about the personality’s abilities and so on. There will be a list of choices in classes (remember this is a gestalt campaign), traits, and so on that can be chosen from. After that, the character is theirs, with some exceptions.

Number one, the PC gets only their 2 base classes for gestalt. So if they chose fighter and paladin, they are stuck with fighter and paladin from now until the end of time.

The exception is number two; they can freely take prestige classes that are in line with the base-personality. But when they do this, gestalt is gone for that level. So if that fighter-paladin takes a prestige class, he only goes up in that class and no others.

If you’re thinking that I’m being pretty restrictive, I’m not. Prior to this campaign I’ve only allowed a few minor things from outside of the core books. The entire WLD campaign limited everyone to the core books and some Forgotten Realms and Book of Exalted Deeds classes, feats, and spells. This campaign allows more choices, but restricts the options within a personality. So a personality that is a wizardly-type doesn’t get the option of taking a fighter prestige class, but archmage is probably fully allowable.

I’m doing it this to reign in some of the power of gestalt builds and to prevent any exploitation and confusion in gestalt characters.

Granted, if you’re someone who likes to give your PC 4 different base classes in order to create some get some odd combo at the right time, you won’t like this campaign.

But in my experience, very few people water down their characters to that level. And even then, they find out that their PC just plain blows, or just can’t compare to a more “class pure” PC.

This campaign will be the first one where I will allow some classes that before I would shudder in thought about taking. The Wild Mage is a good example.

I still won’t allow the Warlock though, that class irritates me as much as the Bard does.

But honestly, I will be allowing quite a few options into this campaign. If you like a feat and we both own the book (that part is important) then it might be allowed. The same goes for spells and prestige classes also.

In fact, this game will ALMOST be a Monty Haul kind of adventure to those who only read about it. But read further.

If you were to be part of the campaign, you’d still think of me as a cruel DM who throws stuff at the players and lets them deal with it how they may, and could care less if their PC died from a series of bad die rolls or a single bad decision. Just like in a casino, the luck works both ways.

You see one day, not so long ago, I was thinking about the Staff of the Magi. It’s a pretty powerful magic item, artifact to be precise. But in any “proper” D&D game, your PC would probably never get one. It occurred to me that this was kind of unfair. You are supposed to be this awesome hero (or villain) who affects the world as you go up in power.

But how often does this really happen? The last time it happened to any characters of mine, I was 14. And boy was that a Monty Haul kind of game. Back in those days we were throwing away spare artifacts, and taking out the Nine Hells in a weekend power session.

But at what point did anyone decide that owning Staff of the Magi meant you were a munchkin? Or worse yet, getting one was the final act in a campaign. Once you get it, the campaign is over.

That sounds like a cruel pile of smurf to me.

Then shortly after that semi-epiphany, I was reading a thread on ENWorld about epic-level preparation times. Someone mentioned something about the “Shark style of gaming”. I ignored it until Shark actually showed up and talked about his style of running a game.

This Shark fellow had already had this epiphany long before I did, and acted upon it.

Who says that a standard city guard is only a level 1 warrior? Could a group of 100 level 1 warriors even do anything to any real monsters? What about all of these horrid monsters that adventurers take out all of the time, couldn’t they wipe out the city guard in a single hit-and-run attack? So shouldn’t your normal city guard troop consist of something more than bunch of low-level warriors if they are too have the power to send a dragon running scared back to its lair? Doesn’t it strike you as odd that an 18 year old city guard is the same level as a twenty-five year old city guard? If all city guards were only level 1 warriors, shouldn’t they all be dressed up in red shirts, just waiting for the mystery monster to kill them?

I’m probably not doing Shark’s idea the kind of justice it deserves, but I’m hoping you get the point.

D&D is supposed to be about fantastical adventures with legions of powerful enemies fighting one another at the right times.

D&D is supposed to be about formidable villains being fought by heroes dressed in shiny armor.

That is what I want for this campaign.

I want the paladin to get his Holy Avenger; he just has to get it from whoever has it now.

I want the wizard to get that Staff of the Magi; he just has to get it from whoever has it now.

I don’t think such a thing is too much to push for, do you?