The Roaring Bull Inn

Many people think there’s something tired and cliché about starting a campaign in a medieval inn. I disagree. All too often you have people using cliché D&D locations and ideas in a predictable and cliché manner.

Not every inn has a group of seedy people in the “dark corner”.

Not every inn is run by a greasy, fat man who supplements his earnings by not noticing the dealings of the seedy people in the corner.

Not every inn is a bar fight waiting to happen.

So not every inn should is a cliché.

But an inn could very easily be the jumping point for a game…

Welcome to the Roaring Bull Inn, in the beautiful city-state of Endrin.

This two-storied inn could be considered a landmark in the eyes of men. It has stood for 181 years and is now in excellent condition thanks to the efforts of it current owner William “Bull” McAllister.

He’s a large man, both in muscle and girth, without a single hair on the top of his head.

Bull, as he prefers to be called, is a happy, but no-nonsense kind of man who spent many years in the service of the king of Enrin’s military. It is wise advice to listen to the man who tells you not to start a fight or anything nefarious in Bull’s inn. He’s been known to transform from a jovial barkeep to a beast of a bouncer at the first sight of a “problem”.

This is rarely a problem as he has a keen eye and nose for people. And he has no reservations to kicking anyone out.

Three years ago Bull bought the tavern after retiring from Endrin’s military. Back then the inn was barely safe to enter thanks to poor upkeep and the local scum calling the place home. Just a few months of hard work and Bull had transformed the place to its current, almost new stature.

Now the inn is the destination of all manner of people looking for a pleasant evening of song and drink. It is rumored that Bull even had a wizard friend of his enchant the floors of the higher-priced guest-rooms to muffle excessive noise coming from the boisterous tavern.

On most nights Bull will be busy at the bar while his barmaids Ilia & Ronilsa are serving drinks and food to those at the tables. And usually the center of attention is Bordar, a newly hired bard that leads the tavern in song and will dance if he feels the need to liven the place up a bit.

And even today the Roaring Bull Inn is getting an early start to its daily festivities. The heavy fog pouring in from the nearby docks and the impending thunderstorm is actually increasing the patronage of the inn this evening, pushing the tavern to nearly its full capacity.

Now it is time for Bordar to start a new song, and everyone in the room pauses; waiting to see if the song will be one of their favorites or a newly penned one.

It turns out to be one he performs almost every night; a happy tune where he uses a bit of magic to make some fellow’s dinnerware to dance about.

The only face not smiling in the room is a middle-aged blonde woman who just came downstairs. Instead of a face with a joyous mood, she shows the expression of a confused person who just woke from a much too long sleep.

And so it begins…

The Birth of a World - part 9

Well Aaron’s game is kaput.
We had a TPK, and rather than reboot the campaign, we’re just going to move on to the next game.

Since Dale is going to be gaming about once a month for the next 3 months, he obviously can’t DM his campaign.

So that puts me next on the block.
And I believe I have enough to get started on, and we won’t be playing this coming Friday so I’ll have an extra week to prep up.

I’m not 100% ready, especially with giving enough information out to the group, so I’ll be doing it through the blog.

First we’ll start with character creation.

Races allowed: All PHB races (EL +0). Also if an elf is playing a wizard, he can change the +2 dexterity modifier to +2 to intelligence instead.

Alignments allowed: good alignments only

Books allowed: PHB, PHB2, DMG, DMG2, Unearthed Arcana, Spell Compendium, Book of Exalted Deeds, Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Complete Arcane, and Complete Adventurer (I probably even missed one). Not every single thing in the book is allowed, so before taking it, ask the DM.

Classes allowed: Most of them from the books with some restrictions due to alignment, “feel” of the class, complication of the class, and DM dislike of the class. The warlock class fits all four. The barbarian and druid are out as well.

Note: There are no gods in this campaign, so if you’re playing a cleric, pick 2 domains and don’t worry about a deity.

Suggested classes: Classes should cover the four “bases” (melee, divine, arcane, sneaky). The DM will attempt to work around any deficiencies as much as possible, but can only do so much.

Stat generation: Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, in front of the DM for just one set.
If that is insufficient you choose from a 25 point-buy or place the following array into your stats: 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 15 and then add 1 to any one stat in the array.

Power level of the game (magic and otherwise): medium to start with, high towards the middle and end.

Starting level: A base of level 3, with modifiers based upon story.

Expected leveling frequency: I want to jump start the game, so probably once every session for the first few sessions, then about once every other session. This is more dependant upon the players than the DM.
Players, please be prepared to level your PC at any time.

Starting money and equipment: Unless the player is told otherwise, each PC has 2500gp with no more than 50% of starting funds being spent on any one item. Also, money does not need to be spent on your standard minor equipment. Don’t worry about having basic sacks, backpacks, lanterns, food, and the like. For most games I’ve played in, that tends to be a waste of time. Unless the DM says otherwise, it’s not going to be an issue (like crossing a desert).

Magic items and magic shops: If I do it right, the players will find many different magic items over their adventuring careers. But they may not find everything they want in their journeys, so they might to have to create or buy them. Healing potions can usually be found at a temple and their might be a wizard willing to sell you a scroll or two but don’t expect much, and expect prices to vary upon demand. There are very few stores out there that sell magic items, but there is the occasional store that specializes in selling one particular magic item (usually weapons and armor).
All but the most mysterious of magic items will not need to be Identified. It just speeds the game up.
Also, if you’re playing a wizard give the DM a list of spells you would like your wizard PC to add to his spellbook. This will aid the DM in when placing scrolls into treasure hordes.

Crafting magic items: This one won’t be popular; if you want to create a magic item you will have to have certain gems on hand. Most gems will not be rare, but those worth over 1000gp only make up 10% of the overall gems. And don’t worry players; many towns have a jeweler or two, and the cost of crafting the item is reduced by the cost of the gem – so the price is the same.

Also instead of XP coming solely from the crafting player(s), I might rake in some XP from the group over time, but I’m not sure on this one. I’ll get some player input before going any further.

Spells: Early on I wrote an essay about the power of spells being too high or used too often. And now I’m revisiting the issue for the final, or almost final, word.
Haste – It will still be level 4. Although level 4 is too high for the spell, level 3 is too low for it and it gets used too often, so it got bumped.
Slow – Because it is Haste’s evil twin, it gets bumped as well.
Enlarge Person and Reduce Person – I’m making no changes to these spells. The armor class drawback from Enlarge Person definitely makes up for the improved damage output.
Invisibility – This spell is not getting changed.
Keen Edge – This spell will affect blunt weapons just as well as edged ones. I know there’s a spell out there that does the same thing for blunt weapons, but it seems silly to have 2 spells for that.
Identify – No longer a needed spell.
Wind Walk – Add this sentence to its description “The DM will screw over any group who abuses this spell.”
Find the Path – Does not exist. That spell is broken and you know it.
Wish/Miracle/Limited Wish – This spell is only usable for the creation of magic items that require it. Rings of Wishes do not exist, but some creatures may grant powerful boons akin a wish.
Polymorph (and any other kind of shape shifting spell) – Will be strongly and harshly adjudicated. I know they supposedly fixed it in the PHB2, but I’d rather just toss it out. In fact, you will find very few shape-shifting creatures in the campaign.
Lawful and Chaotic based spells and abilities – They do not exist. While the alignments exist, only good and evil really matter.

Feats:
Power Attack is not getting touched as damage output does not scale as much as hit points as you level. But a warning to someone who uses it too often, I will be using options like disarm and Combat Expertise more often to reduce its effects. And let’s not forget the new and improved shield feats from the PHB2.

Flaws & Quirks: The Unearthed Arcana has some interesting character modifications that allow you to take a penalty in order to get an extra feat or two, or allows you to take a modification that gives you penalties and bonuses together. If the player can work this into the story, and isn’t too extreme, then it’s allowed.

Skills: The basic skills in the game will not be changed much, but given the way the world is and how I run games one skill is going to be heavily nerfed and another will be removed from the game.
Knowledge – Monsters, and any skill the gives you information about powerful monsters, will have the DCs raised. This is a world where fantastic monsters like beholders, dragons, and giants live only in legend, so most information from there will be limited.
Knowledge – History is out the window. I’m the kind of DM who likes to control the flow of plot information. If your PC knows something that happened a century ago it’s not because he spent some points in a skill.

Character Background: The player will supply what he wants and the DM will fill in the blanks and give optional bonuses and penalties based on the background (including flaws & quirks). This will continue until both the player and DM are satisfied.

Gold and treasure: For simplicity’s sake, I won’t be handing out piles of copper, silver, gold, platinum, or even electrum. I’ll simply be handing out an amount of gold. Gems will be defined, but jewelry/art I’ll just make up on the fly. The price of equipment and magic to a store is 50% plus any demand modifiers the DM adds. Jewelry and art objects will catch 75% with similar demand modifiers. And gems will have a much more supply and demand scale where the party will average 90% selling gems unless there is a glut of them then it is reduced. But if there is a demand for certain gems, then it could be much higher. Buying these items will face the same modifiers.

Note: For speed and simplicity’s sake, the “demand modifiers” for everything but gems will be plot-related.

Combat speed: Be ready for your action; otherwise you might drop a couple spots on the initiative stack. This DM will be keeping the heat on the players. You have 30 seconds to decide what your PC will be doing during his 6 seconds. Newer players will be cut some slack, spellcasters will not.
No, I will not be breathing down your necks while holding a stopwatch, but when you are one of 6 people plus the DM playing, it doesn’t take much to kill the flow of the game.

Travel: Traveling through the world will be the meat of the adventuring. A good chunk of the encounters will happen during treks to and from locations.
And as I’ve mention before one day of travel will move you one hexagon on “the world map”. Your group’s speed, skills, and other factors will modify the chance of random encounters (re-explained below).
The type of terrain you’re in will have an effect on the type of encounter you have and various factors will affect how the DM decides to implement the encounter.
There are eight types of terrain:
Plains – simple prairies, grasslands, and basic farmlands. It easy to move through and only 3 dice will be used for random encounters.
Hills – Standard non-flat terrain and sometimes a transition from flatlands to mountains. Hills tend to be inhabited by more wild individuals and are not easy to travel through, so 5 dice will be used for random encounters.
Mountains – Rocky, high-elevation terrain. These are dangerous and hard to travel through areas. Unless a pass through or under the mountain is used, horses will have no effect on the number of dice rolls. Also traveling over a mountain will require an increasing survival skill check by the PC leading the group. The DC of this check varies and the DM will let the PCs know the DC before traveling (starting at DC25). Traveling in a mountain hex uses 6 dice for random encounters. A failed survival check means no movement for the day.
Water – This includes all large bodies of water. The further away from shore, the more dice are used for random encounters.
Desert, Ice – These are the frozen wastelands of the world. Like mountains, a survival skill check must be made to move into an ice desert hex, but the check is the same for all, DC25. These lands are dangerous, but not heavily inhabited so only 4 dice will be used for random encounters.
Desert, Dry – These are your dry and scorched wastelands. Like mountains, traveling through a desert hex requires an increasing skill check, but the players will not know the difficulty until they try it. There also exists the potential for the group to get lost. Like its frozen counterpart, it is very dangerous but sparsely inhabited so only 4 dice are used for random encounters.
Forest – Your standard lands with dense-tree coverage. Many creatures survive in the forests so 5 dice are used for random encounters.
Quicker and more efficient travel affects the number of random dice used, as does slow and clumsy travel so the following modifiers apply:
Roads – Any clear and up kept road or path reduce the chances by 1 die.
Horses (and other beasts of burden) – If a horse is used in an area where they are not clumsy, a horse reduces the chances by 1 die.
High survival skill – Anyone in the group with 10 ranks in Survival automatically reduces the chance by 1 die.
Wild Lands – If a land has been overrun by monstrous creatures it is considered wild and the encounter chances increase by 2 dice. The PC’s actions and inactions may have cure or cause this condition.
River – Using a river as a means of travel decreases your chances of an encounter by 1 but doesn’t combine with horse, obviously.
No matter how many modifiers, there will never be less than 1 die rolled.

And this is how the random encounters work. The DM will have several potential encounters loosely planned out. Then for every day of travel the party has, the DM will roll the number of d12s worked out as shown above and the party will roll a single d12. If none of the DM’s dice match the players’ die, then no encounter for that day. If any of the DM’s dice match, then there is an encounter for that day (the exact time is determined by the DM). If multiple dice match, then the encounter will be +1 EL tougher for each match beyond the first.

Note: In the event that the creature(s) encountered has treasure, but is not carried with the creature, the party may have to do some searching to find the creature’s hoard, if it indeed has one. To prevent too much time being drained, the DM may occasionally hand-waive the act. This is one of those times where playability trumps believability.

Also, there will be a re-roll, using less dice, after the encounter is over to see if other monsters joined in on the fun.

To prevent nasty luck from ruining the campaign, the DM will freely fudge in any direction he so chooses.

Character Death: In Japanese RPGs resurrecting a character is pretty easy, just pay a scaled price and you’re good to go. And I like that, and I’m removing the level loss. Oh, you’ll still lose XP; you just won’t have to de-level your PC. That way you don’t lose power, but there is still a price to pay. All major cities will have someone who can raise a dead PC at a flat price of 5000gp and no diamond required. PCs casting a raising spell will still be required to supply a diamond of course.

Teleportation: There’s an ability that ruins a lot of DM fun, so I’m boosting and nerfing it. Teleportation is now error-free, but only works in a limited fashion. You can only travel to a teleportation “node”. Each major city will have one. To use the spell you simply cast it while drinking from the special town fountain (or similar place), all others who may want to travel with you will have to drink as well. From that point on, you can teleport back to that town’s fountain and bring those that qualify with you.

Experience Points – Each PC will gain XP at an individual rate based on his level. The DM will keep track of that. This allows those who are behind in levels to better catch up.
As said before, the DM will be raking a small amount aside for magic item creation.

If a player is going to miss the game, he has the option of having his character not be there, or to leave his character with the DM and allow someone else to play the PC. The XP the PC earns will be split three ways; 50% to the PC, 25% raked away to the magic item pool, 25% lost. This was done the same way in the WLD, but 50% of the XP was lost.

As always, I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can think of for now.

The Birth of a World - part 8

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these entries.
It’s not from a lack of want, but I really didn’t have anything interesting or new to say.

This entry is about general campaign design and character creation, and even now I’m not 100% sure how I should go about it.

I keep looking at maintaining a balanced game from all side and keeping it fun. It’s a weird thing when you try to keep a little bit of realism in a game while adding the element of high fantasy and then trying to keep game balance. Although they aren’t mutually exclusive elements, they aren’t easy to mesh.

And let’s put it this way, if this campaign ends up not living up to what I’m trying to get it to be, then I’ve wasted a lot of work and I’ll feel heavily let down. And the only person to blame is me. I’m putting way too much onto myself, but if I don’t do it, then I won’t like what I’ve done and that will bring the game down even more.

With the accumulative amount of time I’ve put into this game so far, if everyone doesn’t say “Wow!” at the end of the first night, then I did something wrong. My goal is to leave them wanting to come back wanting more. I’m going to be their D&D crack dealer.

The first session of a new campaign should set the tone for the rest of the sessions. It is the DM’s job to get the group interested in his world. If all you do is throw monsters at the group without a good story behind it all, then you’re really just playing D&D Miniatures and you should call it that.

Long gone are the high school days where your session consisted of some haphazard dungeon layout filled with monsters that had no reason to be there, and you and your adventurer buddies would raid the dungeon killing every inhabitant one by one, followed by taking their treasure so you could do it again next week with even bigger monsters. It was fun back then, not so much now.

I lose interest in those games quickly. I’m your standard 50%/50% roll/role playing kind of gamer. If I’m playing in your game don’t be surprised if I’m under whelmed when all you do is give a footnote of an excuse for us to go kill some –insert standard low CR critter here–.

I’m also not a big fan of the groups that spend hours upon hours of just role-playing with dice rarely being used. I’ve done that on occasion, but the following week was usually full of dice rolls.

I remember a Valley game where the party had discovered some papers in their adventures that named a city councilman in some power-grabbing scheme. They spent the whole night talking to a variety of people and then accusing the councilman himself. The only die roll of the evening was a diplomacy check to get people to believe them. In the end they succeeded in their goal and the councilman went into hiding but that whole session also led them to a bigger evil that allowed me to use my favorite basic D&D module – Skarda’s Mirror. And that next whole session was almost exclusively action.

So, to me, the role-playing aspect of D&D should be the part of the game that leads to the action of D&D. I have nothing against groups who don’t do it, but I certainly would not enjoy the game.

But in my normal campaigns, that is how I run them; the story leads to the action which then creates more stories and more action and so on.

Although it doesn’t appear so from my lack of “Birth of a World” entries, I actually have done quite a bit of preparation for the early sessions of the game. I have even more loosely sketched out, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself in case the party does something unexpected.

Most of my recent work involved a huge amount of data entry and testing. Yes, it’s incredibly geeky, I know. But many of you would be amazed, ok; maybe you’ll find it slightly interesting, that the core of D&D is pure math.

Take a look at the XP chart. Once you get past the early levels, the XP chart is pretty predictable. The designers even note that they expect a group of 4 PCs to take on 13 1/3 challenges of a CR equal to their level before leveling. That knowledge can help you in your adventure design so you can keep a tight control of how often the party levels.

One thing that isn’t so obvious is treasure progression per CR. At level 6 and up the overall treasure you get from a CR is roughly 130% higher than a CR one lower. This assumes that the challenges have treasure, and that you use the mundane and magic items charts as listed. And, as usual, this breaks down once you get past level 20.

But when you know why certain things are the way they are, you can alter them and understand how much they affect the balance in another area.

And that’s why I decided to drop any changes to the Power Attack feat. Once I took a look at the math, I understood that changing the game might actually harm it in the long run.

As your levels increase, so does your BAB, AC, damage, and hit points. And monsters were designed with that in mind. But the melee damage you deal doesn’t increase at the same rate as hit points unless you use Power Attack, so combats last longer unless the casters do more damage. And using a two-handed weapon increases that further but at the cost of AC (or an action if you have an animated shield).

Seeing these patterns really helps me understand the nature of the game design, and aids me in planning everything out and allows me to tweak things I consider a little off. Like potions and scrolls for instance.

For your minor magic items, about one quarter of them are supposed to be potions, and another quarter scrolls. That’s too many scrolls for me to figure out how to put in to a module and make sense as to why they are there, so I upped the chance of potions and lowered the chance for scrolls. Yes it throws off the perceived mathematical balance, but I’m willing to live with a little imbalance than hearing the whine of “Another scroll! Come on! Well at least the wizard loves this campaign!” Plus it makes more sense for an orc to have a potion of Bear’s Strength than a scroll of Bear’s Strength.

Now, what about character creation?

I keep changing my mind on that one. I want to allow everyone to have as many options as possible but I still need to keep my “vision” of the game intact. So I need to find a balance there.

One day I like gestalt, but then I look at the power they have and having to adjust for their needs throws balance off a lot, so then I change my mind on that. As of this moment, gestalt won’t happen for this campaign.

What about stat generation? Should I let everyone roll 4d6 dice and drop the lowest until they’re happy? Or should I go use the good old point buy method? And if I use point buy, how many points?

Right now I kind of like the standard array. That is the really low powered version where every PC gets a flat 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, & 15 places them where they want and then adds the racial modifiers. This forces some tough decision making and is actually a 25 point buy. But that is a little harsh, so I will allow the player to add 1 to any of the stats.

But that takes away from the dice rolling of character creation. Call me old fashioned, but I like to roll dice for generating stats. So here’s what I’m going to do, you get to roll 4d6 for one character, if you like your rolls you keep them (like Aaron has recently done and averages about 30 on a point-buy), if you don’t then you get a modified standard array of 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 15 (28 points on a point-buy), and if you hate that then you can do a 25 point-buy.

Having that allows you a single chance to get lucky with the dice, if that doesn’t work to your liking then you can take slightly above average stats, or you can design your own with 25 points to get one or two high stats, and several not-so-good ones.

As for alignment, I’m allowing good alignments only. This is a good versus evil campaign, there is no room for morally grey.

What classes am I allowing? I’m still bumping barbarians and druids for reasons spoken before. If we have enough players, then I won’t heavily object to a bard PC – but I will feel obligated to pick on that player. Also any classes that have an evil “feel” to them, such as the warlock, are not allowed because there will be no morally grey PCs (the DM can use one though – but probably won’t).

I will also encourage the players to take spontaneous caster classes (sorcerer, favored soul, etc.) over the memorization classes (cleric, wizard, etc.) for the sake of speeding up the game. But this will not be required. There’s also the DM not liking the undead “on-off” switch that a cleric has.

All other classes are allowed so long as I own the book and the class “fits” the world. I own quite a few books, so that’s a lot of classes and prestige classes.

What races am I allowing? Only the simple PHB races are allowable. Also, with the exception of human, only one of each race is allowed unless both players work a real good story together. Yes, this is yet another human dominated world.

If the one person that is playing an elf is playing a wizard, then he can choose to lose the +2 dexterity bonus and instead get a +2 to intelligence. It just seems wrong to me that the elf race gets a stat bonus to a stat that doesn’t help their favored class directly.

I’m not too keen on half-orcs and gnomes for this world, but if someone wanted to play one I’m not worried too much about them.

Everyone will gain XP at rates dependant upon their own level. So if anyone starts at level 1 for instance, they may level quickly to start with, while someone at level 5 might take a little time to get that level. This will hopefully smooth out the XP to get all the PCs to within one level after a few sessions.

As for character creation itself, I want none of the PCs to know what the others are doing other than their base class. And that’s just to make sure that not everyone chooses the same class and allows them to cover the four base class types if they so choose.

Ideally I would like to see 2 fighter types, 2 healer types, 1 arcane caster, and 1 trap-finder as it allows the DM to create well-rounded adventures. But if the party is missing one class, and is loaded up on another, then the DM has to correct for that. No healers means the DM has to provide more healing items and so on.

Once the players have announced what they’d like to play, then each player and I will talk separately to get a decent, but not too in-depth, history. This history will be a collaborative effort to allow the player to get the PC he wants and the DM will be able to use the background for the overall story.

And if the player doesn’t want a background for his PC that’s fine, then his PC will have a standard and bland background and will be level 1. Because hey, level 1 characters aren’t supposed to have backgrounds, level 10 characters do. It’s a double-incentive, level one and less chance of being in the spotlight because you gave the DM nothing to work with.

Once the campaign officially starts, the DM will use and exploit your PC’s background, but he will not tell you how to run your PC.

Plus the background will have an effect on the character generation, which may give bonuses and penalties to the base character.

You can play a married father of four who is on a hunt to find his wife’s murderer. Something like that will give a PC some expert or commoner levels that can be bought off as he gains experience. But he will also be at the beginning of the middle-age category.

You can play an old seer who likes to sit by the fireplace at the inn to tell stories to anyone willing to listen. The PC would gain an extra level or two in an arcane magic class, but would be quite old and have his stats modified accordingly.

You and your identical twin sister have found a cursed item of great magical power that is slowly poisoning the both of you with an evil power and you are trying to find its creator to learn the secret to destroying it. This one gives two PCs a single powerful magic item that neither can do without and it is slowly killing them. This might give them a couple of class levels but have several points drained from their constitution and more to lose.

Maybe you want to be a twelve year old prodigy who is has forgotten more magic than most will ever learn. This puts you at a very young age but gets you the Spellcasting Prodigy feat for free. No adults will take you seriously and you would have stat modifications because you are 12.

You are a bounty hunter in search of a man who has taken the law into his own hands. This man has killed several lackeys of a known assassin because the assassin killed the wife of the vigilante and was mother of his four children. This gains you nothing but a contract for a gold reward for the safe return of your mark.

You can even be a noble knight on a quest to save the life of a princess. Yes it is cliché, but it still works. It gains your PC nothing but is always a good push for the campaign.

If you noticed, you saw a potential interaction already between two PCs. If the players were to explain their PC’s history immediately, then there could be some pretty bad results. Or maybe people can overhear the PCs talking and some bad things could result from that.

Now I’m not going to go all soap-opera on everyone. There won’t be any long lost relative that makes one of the PCs brothers with an evil bad guy. And as is usual, if there were to ever to be a romantic anything (shudder) it will be barely mentioned and not role-played out.

Remember, D&D is “guys’ night out”, as my wife likes to say. If it doesn’t get said at the poker table, it doesn’t get said at the D&D table.

Now here’s potential problem that could come to be, but hopefully won’t.

What if a player ends up not liking their PC?
Perhaps their PC just didn’t live up to expectations.

Well I say “Thank Bahamut for the Player’s Handbook II.”

With the addition of the PHBII to the game, there is virtually no reason for someone not to like their PC because you can just swap it out or remove it entirely. All the DM asks is that you have a role-playing reason that you’re changing your class/skills/feats/etc.

Beyond that the only reason would be a role-playing background issue that just ruins the PC for the player. And I’m kind of torn on that.

If a player doesn’t want to play his PC, well then I can’t really force the issue.

But what if I’ve done a lot of work to work that PC’s background into the story and the loss of that PC ruins a lot of that story? And this background is something that the player has to take the blame for too.

For now I’m hoping that it won’t come up, but if it does, I’m hoping that a good solution will present itself.

I don’t think this group has any issues at the moment with liking something one day and hating it the next. I’ve seen players like that before and have no intention of letting flakes like that every ruin my Friday evenings again.

Aaron's Campaign Session #2

This night was almost all combat.
There was not much in the way of role-playing.

Since we’re mercs Marna pretty much told us that the goblins that had caused the problems from before were displaced by orcs taking over their home.

We were to simply go to that home and cleanse the orc stench.

Aaron was sure he’d kill a PC that night.
He claimed so.
Listen for yourself.
Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2

And here’s a picture of us running the gauntlet to get into that home.

Aaron's Campaign Session #1

Well I finally have the podcast finished.
When all was said and done I had to split it up into two 2 hour files.
Part a
Part b
The editing might be a little choppy. In the first hour we started playing about 5 times thanks to interruptions.

I also took a picture of Aaron as he was running, but he looked all oily or sweaty or something, so I'll wait until I feel like picking on Aaron to release that.
;)

And now the podcast is pretty much official, though I kept Dale's #21 still available. That was a particularly good session.

There was actually a mini-game Aaron kind of ran after Dale's last game, but only Dale and I were actually ready to begin.

So rather than release a so-so 10 minute podcast, I'll just tell ya what happened here.

The PCs are a bunch of mercenaries who have shown up in Daggerdale in the Dalelands.

We're there to make 300gp to find out what happened to one of Daggerdale's sources of magic items.

There is a lady in the village of Daggercamp who made the items, but shipments have stopped and we were sent to find out why.

While waiting we introduced ourselves to one another, we were given 300gp (in pearls), and then we went out shopping (Bearmoor bought some spiked armor).

The next morning we set out.