Current Campaign and OGL Fun

So how have you been these past several years?

This group has gone through several campaigns and our roster of players has ebbed and flowed.

The first 5E campaign I ran went to level 20, and after that someone else ran Curse of Strahd.

That campaign started off strong with the DM doing a good job and trying to create an atmosphere for the gothic horror flavor of it. But he also stretched himself too thin. It wasn’t too long before his sessions were “meh”.

He ran two other groups through the module simultaneously and had an active life doing other things. Towards the final chapters of the module we were only playing once a month. And that is not good for the health of a group that wants to play every week.

By the end the group was not the same. Not solely because of him, he was just one factor among several. That is something I may talk about another time.

Soon the group was only 3 players, so I went on a recruiting spree for local in-person gamers on Reddit and had a full group again. Some wanted a different kind of game, so it shrank and grew.

We had some good players. Like Nick who was a college kid and watched Critical Roll and wanted to try it out. But he was a college kid and we played on Friday nights. He didn’t want to quit but his last session was a good one and I think he enjoyed himself while he was playing. And there was Mike who wanted a different kind of game, but he added to every session he attended.

Then we had some bad ones…

Like the guy who we ended up having to walk on eggshells because he got grumpy too easily. For someone who didn’t like to talk politics, he talked politics a lot. He eventually stormed off after someone told a Jay Leno style milquetoast joke that can be told with every new president. He was not missed. In fact, we checked to make sure he didn’t come back armed.

And the guy who was a min/maxing munchkin and hated it when the DM tried to make things challenging. He would exploit weaknesses in the game and think he was clever. And when I would nerf one of those exploits, he would whine like it was a personal attack on him. I was quite upset one day when he avoided an encounter because it would cost him gear (rust monsters – my favorite). But I used that as a springboard for a very good role-playing situation that actually had another player (not PC) feel guilty for some things that happened. I finally lost my temper after he tried to force a change in the game because he made up a reason why his character wouldn’t risk himself. I didn’t look good, but in the end I had to boot him because his antics were causing other problems as well. He, of course, did not see anything wrong with what he was doing because it was within the rules of the game. Munchkins and power gamers rarely see themselves in the wrong.

There would have been more roster changes had Covid not forced us to switch to a VTT (Roll20).
Dale lives over 1500 miles away. So he’d have to quit if we didn’t stay online only.
Joy (his daughter) moved far away as well and recently joined us since we were online.
Michelle (Joy’s friend) joined us shortly after that.
Cameron joined us when he lived in Cinci but has since moved several states away.
Jessie (a longtime friend of Dale’s and mine) joined us recently. He gamed with us back in the 2E days. He’s a Cinci guy as well.

As for the current campaign it’s only started a few sessions ago and I’ll expand on it in another entry. Right now, they’re only in the early stages of it so it’s boring low level monster stuff while they figure out how things work.

When the current OGL drama hit, we had to decide if we were going to continue with 5E or if there was another game we wanted to try. A few rose to the top of the list due to online reviews and some experience a few of use already had.

I did not relish the idea of reading hundreds of pages of several gaming systems’ rules.

I was actually in favor of going back to BECMI, but I think I was mostly alone in that. Sure I could have convinced a few of them to give it a try because BECMI stuff was so …well basic, that it would be easy to modify to get what you want out of it.

But luckily WotC capitulated (for now) by realizing they burned all their gamer cred for a gamble on something that I consider a pointless risk (making their own VTT, which I talked about in my previous entry).

So we are going to work on things we can do to 5E to increase its speed of play and also add some things to it to get some of the flavor those other games gave.

For players I’ve asked that they have their turn prepped up before their turn hits. And if it’s a spell being cast, make sure they know that spell thoroughly enough. If you have to whip out the PHB during your turn, then I’m going to grumble (there are exceptions but you know what I mean).

For me, I’m going to batch monster initiatives. I don’t want all the monsters going simultaneously because that could be an easy win for the players or an easy loss too. If there are 20 goblins and all 20 go first, that a huge risk for the part. If they go last, it’s like much easier for the party.

Maybe I’ll take one of the few things I liked about 4E, minions, and bring them back. (Spoiler alert, I did. And it made running goblins so much faster.)

Another change is that there is a cost for going below 0hp now. We have semi-adopted the supposed 6E exhaustion system (-1 to attacks, saves, and skilled for every level of exhaustion). And if you drop below 0hp, you get a level of exhaustion. Each round you make a death save like normal, but if you fail you get another level of exhaustion. At 10 of those levels, you die. If someone gives you a 1d4 heal, and you get knocked out again, that repeats the cycle.

This removes the poor tactic in 5E that I call the Chumbawumba Effect. That’s when you get into combat, get knocked down, then the healer heals you with a low-level spell to get you up again so you can attack on your next turn. Then you get knocked down again, minor heal spell. Then you get up again and attack. Then you get knocked down again. Rinse, repeat.

With that small change it prevents what I consider an exploit bug in 5E. And don’t worry, I have added several ways to remove exhaustion (long rest gets rid of 2, once per day you can use a hit die to remove one, restoration type spells, potions, etc.).

We are working on other ideas as well and I’ll talk about those another day.