A Little More Information

Sorry for the delay between postings; the babies demanded tributes and sacrifices of sleep.

We didn’t play the week I had the chance. No one had the time or opportunity. I figure the group may start playing again without me soon though.

I was able to make it to Worldwide D&D Game Day at Yottaquest, as was Dale. We had fun.

I played the D&D mini-module, which was alright. If anything, playing with the group of people we were paired with reminded us why we interview players prior to letting them join our group. Half the players at our table were the poster-children for the stereotype of ADHD D&D gamers.

But the highlight of the whole day was not playing D&D; it was playing game after game of Red Dragon Inn. It’s a game best described as Munchkin after the dungeon.

You’re a group of 4 adventurers (fighter, priest, rogue, and a wizard with a crazed bunny familiar named Pooky) at an inn resting and drinking after a hard day in the dungeon. You each start with 10 gold, 0 alcohol, and 20 fortitude. You use a bunch of hilariously captioned and titled cards to gamble, drink, and so on to be the last one out of inn. If you run out of gold, the inn kicks you out for being a deadbeat. If your alcohol and fortitude meet then you’re wasted and your friends steal your gold – getting you kicked out of the inn.

I played that game at least 8 times throughout the day. Had it been in stock at the store, I’d have probably bought it.

As for our group, we’ve actually had a bit of interest in members wanting to join us. I’ve had to tell several people that we’ll be starting up again probably in the New Year and I’ll give them a shout if we have openings then.

We’re not quite sure who will even be in the group at that point. Some people may not have the time or ability to consistently play by then, so some spots might be open.

Or will they? We’ve kind of discussed that we’d rather have 6 consistent and solid players (five plus a DM) than more players with some kind of irregular in their showing up because the game goes that much quicker at times and everyone gets a bit more time for their own agenda in the game.

I think an optimal group size for our play style is 6 total people, and pretty much everyone else in the group agrees that it’s more manageable and fun that way. Five players and a DM should be enough people to cover the basics of the standard adventuring party and allow one wild card, while not being too many people around to create an unmanageable game.

As for Rappan Athuk, I keep doing a small but steady amount of work on it. I’m almost to the point where I should start reading the module again.

I want to add more things here and there, but I don’t want to go overboard with it. Too much information can both back you into a corner when the players crash into your plans or it can overload the DM to the point where he is scrambling through his notes trying to find that elusive single sentence that will allow him to properly respond to the PC’s question.

I’m more or less done with the village that will be the party’s base of operations, and I have the first adventure mostly ready (the one that preps them for things to come and gets them to level 3).

Plenty of NPC’s are quite fleshed out, and several just enough to get by on to allow me a little extra fun.

Several important shops and shop owners are designed enough to give the place a living feeling once the PC’s arrive.

A map of the village I need to work on, but I’ll take care of that after I reread parts of the module.

Now back to the topic of character creation, which I keep giving out info in a piecemeal manner. I’ll probably have to do “Character Creation Redux” post before the game starts.

I think this is the last little bit of information needed until we actually start playing.

For stats, I like how I did it in my last campaign which incorporated a little luck with a standard array. I kind of want to keep that, but gestalt PC’s tend to need some higher stats. But I don’t want to go too high. And adding random numbers opens up some issues of “should the DM watch to prevent cheating?”

So I’m going to go with the option of 2 arrays, or a point-buy to make it easier for players to make up PC’s for fun when they have some free time to kill. I’ve done that before for fun.

Option #1 – Array 18, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8
Option #1 is setup for gestalt PC’s whose classes need similar stats (35 points).

Option #2 – Array 16, 16, 14, 14, 11, 10
Option #2 is setup for gestalt PC’s whose classes are dissimilar and need a more balanced set of stats (35 points also).

Option #3 – 32 point-buy
Option #3 is for those difficult players who hate to be confined and just have to go their own way.

“I want to roll dice!”
Sorry, not this campaign.

As for character religions, unlike last time where I just had clerics pick 2 domains, I’ll be going the opposite and more traditional direction. Pick one of the deities from the PHB. If there’s a deity outside of that list you’d like, just ask. Chances are I’ll allow it unless it’s a screwy one or you want Orcus as your deity.

Now with increasing combat speed, I really thought I had it right during my last campaign. But it simply didn’t work out as I had hoped. I took some heat from couple of the players for being pushy and not doing the same thing with the monsters (which isn’t the same thing), while a couple other ones did their best to keep their actions quick and were ready the moment it was their action.

But in the end, it just didn’t work the way I wanted it to. So I’ve had to rethink the whole idea.

My solution is simple, bribery – on a small scale.

No, I’m not going to give money to the players.

Back when I had some of the big final fights, I gave a couple of the PC’s some cards that they could use that represented something outside of the direct conflict interacting within the conflict, like some archers shooting from another vantage point or a wizard tossing in a fireball.

I’m bringing that idea back, but not as big as wizard’s fireball or anything; just some cards that allow minor changes to the game.

Or, if you’ve been reading a lot of Knights of the Dinner Table, you can call them coupons.

Examples:
Reroll a 50/50 roll against an incorporeal creature.
+1 AC vs. a single attack, use just before the attack roll.
Usable only in a town, get 100gp and a potion of Cure Light Wounds.
Your speed is +10’ for one move action.
Treat a natural 1 on a crit confirmation roll as a confirmed crit.
Use on your turn; your AC is +4 until your next turn but all critical hits are confirmed.
Reroll a natural 1 for a hit point roll.
Reroll a climb or jump skill check, before results are determined.

And there are plenty more cards.
If a player doesn’t like a card he has, that’s ok, he can turn it in and redraw at the beginning of the next session.

As for handing out the cards, that should be pretty simple.

When a player pulls of some amazing tricks through excellent role-playing, or getting incredibly lucky with dice rolls at the right time, they’ll get a card.

When a player shows up on time and is “present” the whole night (not on the phone, sleeping, etc.), they’ll get a card.

If the DM shows up late, everyone who’s already there gets a card.

And finally, at the end of the night, each player who did his best to keep the game going smoothly and quickly will get a card.

The DM may throw some in as a “karma reward” when certain goals or missions are completed.

The DM may give some to monsters to help counterbalance the PC’s powers rather than give the PC’s an XP hit. Those cards will not be part of the treasure though.

I expect to hand out a lot of the cards early on, and then less and less as the levels go up and the game starts to drag a bit.

But by then 4E will be out and we’ll forget all about Rappan Athuk.