Okay, so I have been bad about keeping this updated with campaign information. My Dark Sun game has turned into in an exercise akin to herding cats. Which to be honest is something that I really love about running more intrigue based games, but it does make blogging about it a bit of a hassle ;p
So instead I want to raise something that have recently really impressed me about this community of ours. The internet has done wonderful things to bring various players, gms, deck builders and other creative people together in support of their hobby. A quick [search engine of your choice] search will bring up user created content for most any game you play.
What I am really impressed by is how the companies that we "support" have taken to this. I've recently e-mailed a popular boardgame company with regards to some promos that was available for one of their games, and even though these same promos were available to buy in their online store I was sent the package and all they asked in return was that I mention to my FLGS that they will be giving away more promos at a later date. They even keep a strong presence on Boardgame Geek to answer questions even though they have their own forums.
A player from my group submitted a system question with regards to a game we were playing. Not only did he receive an actual useful answer to his question, but that answer came from one of the actual game designers instead of someone with some standard responses.
As a last example, I like collecting stuff, I like having complete collections of the games that I like. I came into one of my other games a bit late so I was missing some of the free adventures/modules that was released. I was very rude and e-mailed someone in that company that I have been following on RSS. Even though that person most likely won't be able to find me the adventures I did receive a very friendly reply telling me that they will see what they can do.
I would like to say a very big thankyou to all the companies that give us as players good service and support. The internet has definitely brought your product to more people and have exposed more people to the actual people behind your games beyond the few that would have met people at cons before that.
For the most part the public face of these companies are friendly open and approachable.
Thanks! =D
----
Next post I'll be back to detailing my Dark Sun run, but instead of doing it session for session I'll detail some of the characters and bounce around some ideas I have for them with regards to the main plot and side quests.
See you soon!
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Encouraging cooperation.
TheSheDM over at newbieDM.com made a good post about 'bribing' players to cooperate in building their game world on Obsidian portal.
http://newbiedm.com/2011/05/27/bribing-participation/
(I'll fix this link when I am back at me computer. In the mean time it can look all gritty)
This got me thinking since I've been having a similar problem getting buyin from players to contribute to the Dark Sun wiki on our Epic Words page.
There were some really good suggestions from other roleplayers and TheSheDM even posted her notes for me. Thankyou so much again :)
After toying with some of the ideas I've decided to go with the following:
The idea is to get the players on the wiki and get them to contribute in a way that is meaningful to their character. To this end I've roughly assigned each character a social group.
Each player can create npcs that are well known or friendly to them. They can decide all the who's what's where's and whens about the npc inside of the constraints of the setting.
The only real catch is that they cannot add a new npc if the previous one has not been added to the wiki.
This should encourage them to work at the wiki as well as their character backstory.
At least that's the idea, will bounce this off of my players this coming tuesday and keep you updated on how it goes.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
http://newbiedm.com/2011/05/27/bribing-participation/
(I'll fix this link when I am back at me computer. In the mean time it can look all gritty)
This got me thinking since I've been having a similar problem getting buyin from players to contribute to the Dark Sun wiki on our Epic Words page.
There were some really good suggestions from other roleplayers and TheSheDM even posted her notes for me. Thankyou so much again :)
After toying with some of the ideas I've decided to go with the following:
The idea is to get the players on the wiki and get them to contribute in a way that is meaningful to their character. To this end I've roughly assigned each character a social group.
Each player can create npcs that are well known or friendly to them. They can decide all the who's what's where's and whens about the npc inside of the constraints of the setting.
The only real catch is that they cannot add a new npc if the previous one has not been added to the wiki.
This should encourage them to work at the wiki as well as their character backstory.
At least that's the idea, will bounce this off of my players this coming tuesday and keep you updated on how it goes.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Dark Sun - Cell 17 : House Lavara
As I mentioned previously there was no game this week as I was out of town, watching a road race and all.
As such I'll use this post to highlight one of the organisations that is currently featuring in the campaign; House Lavara.
House Lavara is a trade house that was created by one of the players as part of their character backstory. I'm going to be purposely vague about which player created it so as to avoid spoilers as far as possible, chances are that this will be cryptic and read like my game notes ;p
The house is currently an up and coming trade house based in Tyr. On the surface they trade in textiles and have a very large interest in the gladiatorial games. Their support of the games have won them a large amount of fame with all levels of populace in Tyr and as such they are on the verge of taking their place as one of the major trade houses in the region.
Under the surface though the house is something completely different. House Lavara is ruthless family organisation that specialises in espionage and assassination. The original plan for the House is lost to all but the most ancient members of the family. The current head of the house is in the dark as to their original purpose and mainly just building towards political power.
Hargan Lavara, the trader that the group met in session 1, is a minor member of the family and as such mostly overlooked. He has recently made some discoveries that made him question his loyalties, as such he is currently make a play for power.
House Lavara has one very closely guarded secret, their ace in the hole, they have available to them a wrinkly old master of the way called Stone.
Stone is able to overwrite an operatives peronality and psyche completely, creating a totally convincing and impenetrable personality with its own memories, hopes, dreams etc.
These agents are programmed with explicit triggers and instructions to perform once those triggers are met. They form the core of House Lavara's assassins.
The player that created the house is playing one of these sleeper agents. Usually I really dislike characters with amnesia or anything which is mostly the player saying 'I don't want to do character history' but since this player is usually very invested in roleplaying the character I allowed it.
We had a very long talk about how it is most likely to play out and whether what I envisioned the rp-payout to be was the same as the player's expectations. In the end we settled on it playing out like a mix between the Family of Blood pt2 episode of Doctor Who (s3e9) and the first Bourne book. The character should be fairly straight forward at least until I start seeding the real personality and start toying with what's real and what isn't.
Really looking forward to it.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Dark Sun - Cell 17 : Session 1
The plan for session 1 was to introduce the group to the 4th ed system as well as introduce some of the plot hooks that they can latch themselves onto.
I printed the character sheets for the players, and made and sleeved cards for each of their abilities using Magic cards as a basis. This went down rather well, and the players were actually excited about having their attacks readily available to them.
As far as system goes I had two combats planned. The first with some little silt runners to give them the basics, taken from the "adventure" [I use the term loosely] at the back of the campaign book. In this encounter I wanted mainly for the players to get used to how their characters fare in combat, and familiarise themselves with their skills and abilities.
The encounter went as expected, I had a chance to show them what the poison on the darters do, and had players curse being immobolised. Luckily the shaman made good use of his spirit and helped out with the various saves. It bodes well for their future planning and encounter tactics. Optimistic :)
The second encounter was the Sinruth Redux encounter from the Astral Sea blog. Sinruth was reskinned to be a half-giant, called Syd, using cahulaks. The stones from the original encounter was replaced with Obsidian Facades from the Dark Sun Creature Catalog.
This encounter played out fabulously, I got to show them how dangerous forced movement can be especially in conjunction with terrain. It went rather fast with the first 2 phases of the encounter dropping very quickly, unfortunately the dice gods abandoned the party in phase 3 dragging out the encounter and costing them the life of a party member. Which in retrospect is a good thing, since it drove home that the setting really is a dangerous and deadly place. One player actually asked in a shocked tone "Does that mean he has to draw up a new character and everything?"
Hopefully they won't just rush in and apply brute force to problems, hoping that the encounters and the death will break some of the bad habits the group picked up in Dark Heresy Ascension.
So much crunch... now for some fluff!
========================================================
The story thus far.
The players started unlike most in the slave pens, mostly because a small girl was seen wandering up between the pens marvelling at all the fantastic beasts and slaves, her eye caught the half-giant in cell 17 and she started rattling off questions at break neck speed. The encounter showed a bit of a softer side of Jaryx, the half-giant, it was originally added by the player as a bit of back story but i thought it would make an excellent springboard.
She was ushered away, but new people means customers and customers mean that they will most likely be exhibited in the arena later. Lloyd [a vindictive jailer, added by another character's story] confirmed this when he brought their food, which consisted of meat instead of their usual slop. Only catch is that that Lloyd only brought 5 pieces of meat instead of the 6 they would need, smirked at Krath and wished them "luck". Some of them just grabbed some meat and scarfed it down one piece was left giving Krath a chance to sacrifice his meal and go hungry instead.
I was thinking of giving the hungry player a penalty during the encounter, but the RP that the player put into giving it up and rather having the healer fed made me wave the penalty to reward the player.
Traiy called over the beast trainer that he has built up a slight rapport with and enquired about what they might be facing in the arena. The beast trainer wasn't very forthcoming but he did let slip that the betting odds are currently heavily in favour of Cell 17. And also that there was 2 buyers currently at the pens, the first a trader from House Stel [father of the little girl they met earlier] and the second a frequent customer and trader from House Lavara.
[House Lavara was created for the campaign by the players and will probably be the main focus of their activities during the Heroic tier. I won't be able to run the game next week because of other commitments, so I'll use that blog post to detail Lavara and some of the other locations and organisations we created for the story.]
The characters discussed some quick tactics, mainly which House they would actually want to impress if any, and how to go about it. Lively argument was had by all, and eventually they decided to each do whatever they please and see which trader is most impressed.
Afterwards they were ushered off to their exhibition [encounter 1]. Their tactics paid off and they made short work of the Silt Runners, with only Traiy, the dray, being knocked out by poison darts. Down but stabilized quickly by Krath, the ever helpful Noble.
The combat finished up, and Nuuta noticed that the one trader has pretty much frozen in place, mug still half way to his mouth, staring into tha arena. He quickly recovers as Garruk, the slave master, adresses him and he flies into a heated discussion waving his arms around, taking out money pouches and poking Garruk in the chest. As this is going on the characters are ushered back to their cell.
Back at their cells they ask around and from some friendlier guards find out what happened. The other prospective customer is Hargan Lavara from House Lavara, apparently he challenged Garruk to show them a proper fight and suggested that he pits his own champion against Garruk's wares.
Garruk was a bit wary, since he doesn't really want his wares damaged before he sells them but caved as Hargan has been a very good customer in the past.
The characters were woken the next day by Lloyd banging their food dish against the bars. They noticed then that not only was Lloyd there but they had another visitor, Hargan Lavara himself came down to see them. Hargan in the style of annoying pompous jerks everywhere didn't make eye contact rather focusing on a spot above and to the left of them.
"I didn't expect to find you here, I know your father said he was getting you out of the way but this is just rediculous. I think I'll take it on myself and just get rid of you for him." Hargan than grabbed the food they were supposed to receive, threw it into the closest beast pen and skulked off. The characters did a quick tally of their respective fathers and came out of the exchange rather confused since those with fathers couldn't think that their fathers could be the father in question.
[I have several ideas on where to actually take the above comment as more than one of the player's back stories make the above relevant. I know where I would like to take it for the narrative's sake, but can change it if something else proves to be cooler.]
Again I was going to extend the hunger penalty to the group, but after checking their performance in the first battle I felt it might actually be too harsh, instead I'll "attack" each unsupplied character with sun sickness after the battle because of the exposure to the facades.
The fight went well, Syd [the House Lavara champion] actually killed Traiy before they managed to rally and take Syd down. Before Nuuta could actually finish him off he cried out to her in broken elven, calling her by the name of her tribe and asking for mercy. This gave her pause since her tribe, the Seekers, aren't very large or generally well known. [more on them next week]
Syd cast his gaze to the balcony asking for forgiveness, Hargan extended his right arm, spat and gave the thumbs down. The characters did notice [some silly perception rolls here ;p] his right arm to be a mummified husk, which probably coloured their decicion to spare Syd. Hargan stormed off, and the guards once more collected the characters/
A broken and battered Syd was also taken by the guards and deposited in Cell 18. Nuuta questioned the dying half giant and found out that her brother was actually bought by Hargan a month ago and travelled with Syd for awhile. He taught Syd elven, and some Seeker customs. Syd also mentioned a second elf from the Black Feather clan that travelled with them for a short while, this elf disappeared when Hargan took them to the Silt Sea. Syd has no knowledge of Nuuta's brother after they returned to Tyr. All the time Krath and Fullgrin is tending his wounds as much as possible.
This conversation was cut short as Garruk stormed in in a huff, ranted and raved about how they are a drain on his resources and just cost him a significant amount of money. Hargan Lavara has left the pens but he has left a parting gift for Syd and "message" for Cell 17. Garruk removes a small glass vial from his robes, inside is a single purple catarpillar. He removes to stopper and holds the vial to Syd's face, allowing the catarpillar to crawl into Syd's nose. Which soon starts to bleed profusely.
Fullgrin recognizes it as the catarpillar form of the Drillmoth. It will bore into Syd's brain, slowly lobotomize him and burst from his eye socket once it matures.
Fullgrin doesn't know a cure, but they will have roughly 2 weeks to find one should they want to save their new ally.
They decide that they have had enough, and if they wish to save this slave they will probably have to start planning an escape. They have heard some interesting rumours from Tyr, apparently Kalak is missing; either killed by a slug, or eloped with a haram girl, or killed in a construction accident at the ziggurat, or in seclusion.
Either way Tyr seems to them by far the better destination, especially to Nuuta who has finally picked up her brother's trail again.
End Session 1.
Phew, wall of text >.>
Future posts will focuse more on story and less on crunch, so should be shorter.
...I hope.
I printed the character sheets for the players, and made and sleeved cards for each of their abilities using Magic cards as a basis. This went down rather well, and the players were actually excited about having their attacks readily available to them.
As far as system goes I had two combats planned. The first with some little silt runners to give them the basics, taken from the "adventure" [I use the term loosely] at the back of the campaign book. In this encounter I wanted mainly for the players to get used to how their characters fare in combat, and familiarise themselves with their skills and abilities.
The encounter went as expected, I had a chance to show them what the poison on the darters do, and had players curse being immobolised. Luckily the shaman made good use of his spirit and helped out with the various saves. It bodes well for their future planning and encounter tactics. Optimistic :)
The second encounter was the Sinruth Redux encounter from the Astral Sea blog. Sinruth was reskinned to be a half-giant, called Syd, using cahulaks. The stones from the original encounter was replaced with Obsidian Facades from the Dark Sun Creature Catalog.
This encounter played out fabulously, I got to show them how dangerous forced movement can be especially in conjunction with terrain. It went rather fast with the first 2 phases of the encounter dropping very quickly, unfortunately the dice gods abandoned the party in phase 3 dragging out the encounter and costing them the life of a party member. Which in retrospect is a good thing, since it drove home that the setting really is a dangerous and deadly place. One player actually asked in a shocked tone "Does that mean he has to draw up a new character and everything?"
Hopefully they won't just rush in and apply brute force to problems, hoping that the encounters and the death will break some of the bad habits the group picked up in Dark Heresy Ascension.
So much crunch... now for some fluff!
========================================================
The story thus far.
The players started unlike most in the slave pens, mostly because a small girl was seen wandering up between the pens marvelling at all the fantastic beasts and slaves, her eye caught the half-giant in cell 17 and she started rattling off questions at break neck speed. The encounter showed a bit of a softer side of Jaryx, the half-giant, it was originally added by the player as a bit of back story but i thought it would make an excellent springboard.
She was ushered away, but new people means customers and customers mean that they will most likely be exhibited in the arena later. Lloyd [a vindictive jailer, added by another character's story] confirmed this when he brought their food, which consisted of meat instead of their usual slop. Only catch is that that Lloyd only brought 5 pieces of meat instead of the 6 they would need, smirked at Krath and wished them "luck". Some of them just grabbed some meat and scarfed it down one piece was left giving Krath a chance to sacrifice his meal and go hungry instead.
I was thinking of giving the hungry player a penalty during the encounter, but the RP that the player put into giving it up and rather having the healer fed made me wave the penalty to reward the player.
Traiy called over the beast trainer that he has built up a slight rapport with and enquired about what they might be facing in the arena. The beast trainer wasn't very forthcoming but he did let slip that the betting odds are currently heavily in favour of Cell 17. And also that there was 2 buyers currently at the pens, the first a trader from House Stel [father of the little girl they met earlier] and the second a frequent customer and trader from House Lavara.
[House Lavara was created for the campaign by the players and will probably be the main focus of their activities during the Heroic tier. I won't be able to run the game next week because of other commitments, so I'll use that blog post to detail Lavara and some of the other locations and organisations we created for the story.]
The characters discussed some quick tactics, mainly which House they would actually want to impress if any, and how to go about it. Lively argument was had by all, and eventually they decided to each do whatever they please and see which trader is most impressed.
Afterwards they were ushered off to their exhibition [encounter 1]. Their tactics paid off and they made short work of the Silt Runners, with only Traiy, the dray, being knocked out by poison darts. Down but stabilized quickly by Krath, the ever helpful Noble.
The combat finished up, and Nuuta noticed that the one trader has pretty much frozen in place, mug still half way to his mouth, staring into tha arena. He quickly recovers as Garruk, the slave master, adresses him and he flies into a heated discussion waving his arms around, taking out money pouches and poking Garruk in the chest. As this is going on the characters are ushered back to their cell.
Back at their cells they ask around and from some friendlier guards find out what happened. The other prospective customer is Hargan Lavara from House Lavara, apparently he challenged Garruk to show them a proper fight and suggested that he pits his own champion against Garruk's wares.
Garruk was a bit wary, since he doesn't really want his wares damaged before he sells them but caved as Hargan has been a very good customer in the past.
The characters were woken the next day by Lloyd banging their food dish against the bars. They noticed then that not only was Lloyd there but they had another visitor, Hargan Lavara himself came down to see them. Hargan in the style of annoying pompous jerks everywhere didn't make eye contact rather focusing on a spot above and to the left of them.
"I didn't expect to find you here, I know your father said he was getting you out of the way but this is just rediculous. I think I'll take it on myself and just get rid of you for him." Hargan than grabbed the food they were supposed to receive, threw it into the closest beast pen and skulked off. The characters did a quick tally of their respective fathers and came out of the exchange rather confused since those with fathers couldn't think that their fathers could be the father in question.
[I have several ideas on where to actually take the above comment as more than one of the player's back stories make the above relevant. I know where I would like to take it for the narrative's sake, but can change it if something else proves to be cooler.]
Again I was going to extend the hunger penalty to the group, but after checking their performance in the first battle I felt it might actually be too harsh, instead I'll "attack" each unsupplied character with sun sickness after the battle because of the exposure to the facades.
The fight went well, Syd [the House Lavara champion] actually killed Traiy before they managed to rally and take Syd down. Before Nuuta could actually finish him off he cried out to her in broken elven, calling her by the name of her tribe and asking for mercy. This gave her pause since her tribe, the Seekers, aren't very large or generally well known. [more on them next week]
Syd cast his gaze to the balcony asking for forgiveness, Hargan extended his right arm, spat and gave the thumbs down. The characters did notice [some silly perception rolls here ;p] his right arm to be a mummified husk, which probably coloured their decicion to spare Syd. Hargan stormed off, and the guards once more collected the characters/
A broken and battered Syd was also taken by the guards and deposited in Cell 18. Nuuta questioned the dying half giant and found out that her brother was actually bought by Hargan a month ago and travelled with Syd for awhile. He taught Syd elven, and some Seeker customs. Syd also mentioned a second elf from the Black Feather clan that travelled with them for a short while, this elf disappeared when Hargan took them to the Silt Sea. Syd has no knowledge of Nuuta's brother after they returned to Tyr. All the time Krath and Fullgrin is tending his wounds as much as possible.
This conversation was cut short as Garruk stormed in in a huff, ranted and raved about how they are a drain on his resources and just cost him a significant amount of money. Hargan Lavara has left the pens but he has left a parting gift for Syd and "message" for Cell 17. Garruk removes a small glass vial from his robes, inside is a single purple catarpillar. He removes to stopper and holds the vial to Syd's face, allowing the catarpillar to crawl into Syd's nose. Which soon starts to bleed profusely.
Fullgrin recognizes it as the catarpillar form of the Drillmoth. It will bore into Syd's brain, slowly lobotomize him and burst from his eye socket once it matures.
Fullgrin doesn't know a cure, but they will have roughly 2 weeks to find one should they want to save their new ally.
They decide that they have had enough, and if they wish to save this slave they will probably have to start planning an escape. They have heard some interesting rumours from Tyr, apparently Kalak is missing; either killed by a slug, or eloped with a haram girl, or killed in a construction accident at the ziggurat, or in seclusion.
Either way Tyr seems to them by far the better destination, especially to Nuuta who has finally picked up her brother's trail again.
End Session 1.
Phew, wall of text >.>
Future posts will focuse more on story and less on crunch, so should be shorter.
...I hope.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Dark Sun - Cell 17 : Session 0
And the Dark Sun campaign has officially kicked off.
Session "0" was spent drawing up the characters, discussing house rules and building back story.
After the Eberron session where we had some people play numbers instead of their characters I had some ideas to engage the players with their characters before and during character gen, essentially giving the character life instead of just making it a set of numbers.
Firstly I asked the players to think about their character's motivations and back story, the only criteria I had was that the character must end up in slave pens at the end of the back story. These slave pens would serve as the starting point for the actual campaign proper.
This I asked them to do a week in advance, in total I received 3 very detailed written histories, the others aren't fully detailed but those players did spend time and are filling in gaps as they interact wcith the others. I will be "rewarding" the full histories with more plot hooks and NPCs I think. The other will have to work at building their contacts in game.
Secondly I asked them to detail what the characters have been upto in the last three weeks that they have spent in the slave pens. As part of this I had the players do a small scene where their character interacts with one of the other characters.
This actually produced some rather lovely vignettes, with some characters actually learning more about the other characters and even forming tentative bonds and loyalties.
The third thing was more something for me, a kinda "future promise" for the players. I asked each of them to write a short scenario/event that they would like to partake in. Or something they would like to do with their characters.
This actually gave some nice results, ranging from exploring the Forest Ridge to open warfare. Actually looking forward to seeing how I'll incorporate all of it into the campaign. Spoilt for ideas at the moment.
So at a glance all of the above gave me:
1. Nuuta, elven ranger, on a quest to find her brother that was captured by slavers
2. Mikki, a human gladiator, hoping to gain fame and fortune and rise in prominenece in house stel
3. Jaryx, a half-giant gladiator, planning escape and leading others to freedom
4. Krath, a human noble, forced into slavery for a crime he "did" commit, seeking absolution
5. Traiy, a dray trader, that sold himself into slavery to pay off debts, quite possibly the worst trader ever
6. Fullgrin, halfling shaman, fresh from the forest ridge
So I have characters and I have back story, next week will see whether all of this can withstand exposure to the most destructive force in roleplaying... players.
Session "0" was spent drawing up the characters, discussing house rules and building back story.
After the Eberron session where we had some people play numbers instead of their characters I had some ideas to engage the players with their characters before and during character gen, essentially giving the character life instead of just making it a set of numbers.
Firstly I asked the players to think about their character's motivations and back story, the only criteria I had was that the character must end up in slave pens at the end of the back story. These slave pens would serve as the starting point for the actual campaign proper.
This I asked them to do a week in advance, in total I received 3 very detailed written histories, the others aren't fully detailed but those players did spend time and are filling in gaps as they interact wcith the others. I will be "rewarding" the full histories with more plot hooks and NPCs I think. The other will have to work at building their contacts in game.
Secondly I asked them to detail what the characters have been upto in the last three weeks that they have spent in the slave pens. As part of this I had the players do a small scene where their character interacts with one of the other characters.
This actually produced some rather lovely vignettes, with some characters actually learning more about the other characters and even forming tentative bonds and loyalties.
The third thing was more something for me, a kinda "future promise" for the players. I asked each of them to write a short scenario/event that they would like to partake in. Or something they would like to do with their characters.
This actually gave some nice results, ranging from exploring the Forest Ridge to open warfare. Actually looking forward to seeing how I'll incorporate all of it into the campaign. Spoilt for ideas at the moment.
So at a glance all of the above gave me:
1. Nuuta, elven ranger, on a quest to find her brother that was captured by slavers
2. Mikki, a human gladiator, hoping to gain fame and fortune and rise in prominenece in house stel
3. Jaryx, a half-giant gladiator, planning escape and leading others to freedom
4. Krath, a human noble, forced into slavery for a crime he "did" commit, seeking absolution
5. Traiy, a dray trader, that sold himself into slavery to pay off debts, quite possibly the worst trader ever
6. Fullgrin, halfling shaman, fresh from the forest ridge
So I have characters and I have back story, next week will see whether all of this can withstand exposure to the most destructive force in roleplaying... players.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Ebberon - Episode 1
When not running a game for whatever reason one of the other players step in and run something.
Last night saw "Episode 1" of her latest idea. Pretty much the premise is the TV show Leverage set in the world of Eberron. The characters are all students at one of Sharn's prestigious schools. They threw around a hypothetical break-in plan over study group and decided to put themselves to the test.
The point of the game is to roleplay the planning, scouting and preparation of the heist. Now this is something that DnD 4e doesn't really cater for, the system itself is a combat system. Now this is true of a pretty large section of RPGs, the rules are there for players to use to beat up on hapless NPCs. This doesn't normally bother me, since it's easy enough for me to get players to actually roleplay.
But for some reason one of the players had a total RP breakdown last night. Usually this players is good at RP and loves coming up with creative ideas and colourful descriptions for his actions and whatnot. Cept last night he kept staring at his sheet, quoting numbers left and right instead of just playing his character in RP situations.
So what causes this? Why is it that people are more worried about numbers in DnD than in any other system? Is it that DnD is and always has been math heavy? Even so why does it feel that people [or my players at least] are more worried about numbers or... actually no... that's not it... it's a case of why are they afraid to play outside of the numbers?
I think I am more worried about this since I'm starting my Dark Sun campaign next week, which I plan to be more story than combat heavy. This means that if the people are expecting numbers and math they'll probably be disappointed.
I think I'll sit them all down and discuss my and their expectations from the game. And then make them do detailed character history and PC interaction. Have them interact with each other a bit and only then have them draw up their actual characters. Have them add some anecdotes about their characters, colourful descriptions, things that annoys the character. Detail the characters as much as possible and only then worry about actual crunch. I think I'll give that a go and see how it works out.
Last night saw "Episode 1" of her latest idea. Pretty much the premise is the TV show Leverage set in the world of Eberron. The characters are all students at one of Sharn's prestigious schools. They threw around a hypothetical break-in plan over study group and decided to put themselves to the test.
The point of the game is to roleplay the planning, scouting and preparation of the heist. Now this is something that DnD 4e doesn't really cater for, the system itself is a combat system. Now this is true of a pretty large section of RPGs, the rules are there for players to use to beat up on hapless NPCs. This doesn't normally bother me, since it's easy enough for me to get players to actually roleplay.
But for some reason one of the players had a total RP breakdown last night. Usually this players is good at RP and loves coming up with creative ideas and colourful descriptions for his actions and whatnot. Cept last night he kept staring at his sheet, quoting numbers left and right instead of just playing his character in RP situations.
So what causes this? Why is it that people are more worried about numbers in DnD than in any other system? Is it that DnD is and always has been math heavy? Even so why does it feel that people [or my players at least] are more worried about numbers or... actually no... that's not it... it's a case of why are they afraid to play outside of the numbers?
I think I am more worried about this since I'm starting my Dark Sun campaign next week, which I plan to be more story than combat heavy. This means that if the people are expecting numbers and math they'll probably be disappointed.
I think I'll sit them all down and discuss my and their expectations from the game. And then make them do detailed character history and PC interaction. Have them interact with each other a bit and only then have them draw up their actual characters. Have them add some anecdotes about their characters, colourful descriptions, things that annoys the character. Detail the characters as much as possible and only then worry about actual crunch. I think I'll give that a go and see how it works out.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Last night saw the culmination of a roughly 1.5 year Dark Heresy campaign. The players managed to infiltrate a chaos cult, sow discord from within and finally was brought into the fold as the ritual to awaken the cults dark master came to fruition.
The players where playing Ascenscion level Inquisitors with Deathwatch characters on the side that acts as their personal kill team to hit targets that they uncovered during their time undercover.
As the final confrontation would most likely see the Ascenscion characters and the Deathwatch characters fight in the same battle I needed something that could actually go toe-to-toe with that much firepower [6 Ascenscion level characters and 6 Deathwatch terminators]. Luckily I found a convenient Bloodthirster over at the Fantasy Flight forums. Thank you N0-1_H3r3.
Going through the stats for the beast I wasn't sure that the characters would be able to harm it in a straight stand up encounter. So I had to design the encounter so that they would have a secondary way to end the encounter. The main problem being that none of the Inquisition characters packed close to enough firepower to actually do significant damage to it past it's armour and considerable Toughness bonus.
So for the encounter I decided that the artifacts that contained the entity was still actively channeling energy into the host. Destroying all four artifacts would "overload" the host and lay the entity bare and looking for a new host. Similarly actually taking down the 'thirster would suppress the entity for a short period making it possible for them to bind the host. Since the entity regenerating [like some ruinious Doctor Who] was a major feature of the campaign straight out killing it wasn't really an option.
The first few rounds of combat went as expected. [Actually the fact that there was more than one round of combat was already a bonus, since the Deathwatch characters were making a habit of ending engagements in a single round.] The Ascension character were doing either no damage or minimal damage to it, with the exception of the Tech Magus that used a 1/combat ability to do a whopping 41 damage to it after subtractions. The terminators were holding their own doing average damage per chainfist hit.
The 'thirster was holding his own, going so far as to drop the Tech Magus in a single blow. What? It didn't like getting shot! It was pretty cool though, the character took roughly 20 critical damage from the axe taking him down and out. Now usually when a character in WH40k RP "dies" the player can opt to burn [permanently lose] one of their fate points to miraculously save the character from death. The player just took the damage in mild disbelief and declared his Magus dead, describing how the warp blade cleaved him in twain. The other players were calling out and urging him to burn a fate point to stay in the battle. But he just calmly sat there and said "I can't justify anything saving me from a blow from a weapon like that." and packed up that character.
That did make the fight a bit more "real" for the other players. The Bloodthirster went on to also take down two of the terminators before they destroyed the last artifact. At the end of the battle the Bloodthirster was down to roughly 1/4 of it's starting life when the final artifact was destroyed. Since the two terminators toting the assault cannon and cyclone missile launcher was pretty much out of the battle fighting off chaos marines to secure the area for the others; chances are that if they did have a few more rounds they probably would have put the thing down without my building in another out.
On the other hand, not putting in that out would have left several characters at the table useless for the complete encounter. In which case I would have had several unhappy / bored people instead of it playing out as one of the better battles in the campaign.
---------------------------
Actually wish I thought of blogging the game or my thoughts on some aspects of it sooner. Next up I'll be running the group around Athas for a bit, so at least I'll be able to go on about that for a while.
Thankyou and goodnight.
The players where playing Ascenscion level Inquisitors with Deathwatch characters on the side that acts as their personal kill team to hit targets that they uncovered during their time undercover.
As the final confrontation would most likely see the Ascenscion characters and the Deathwatch characters fight in the same battle I needed something that could actually go toe-to-toe with that much firepower [6 Ascenscion level characters and 6 Deathwatch terminators]. Luckily I found a convenient Bloodthirster over at the Fantasy Flight forums. Thank you N0-1_H3r3.
Going through the stats for the beast I wasn't sure that the characters would be able to harm it in a straight stand up encounter. So I had to design the encounter so that they would have a secondary way to end the encounter. The main problem being that none of the Inquisition characters packed close to enough firepower to actually do significant damage to it past it's armour and considerable Toughness bonus.
So for the encounter I decided that the artifacts that contained the entity was still actively channeling energy into the host. Destroying all four artifacts would "overload" the host and lay the entity bare and looking for a new host. Similarly actually taking down the 'thirster would suppress the entity for a short period making it possible for them to bind the host. Since the entity regenerating [like some ruinious Doctor Who] was a major feature of the campaign straight out killing it wasn't really an option.
The first few rounds of combat went as expected. [Actually the fact that there was more than one round of combat was already a bonus, since the Deathwatch characters were making a habit of ending engagements in a single round.] The Ascension character were doing either no damage or minimal damage to it, with the exception of the Tech Magus that used a 1/combat ability to do a whopping 41 damage to it after subtractions. The terminators were holding their own doing average damage per chainfist hit.
The 'thirster was holding his own, going so far as to drop the Tech Magus in a single blow. What? It didn't like getting shot! It was pretty cool though, the character took roughly 20 critical damage from the axe taking him down and out. Now usually when a character in WH40k RP "dies" the player can opt to burn [permanently lose] one of their fate points to miraculously save the character from death. The player just took the damage in mild disbelief and declared his Magus dead, describing how the warp blade cleaved him in twain. The other players were calling out and urging him to burn a fate point to stay in the battle. But he just calmly sat there and said "I can't justify anything saving me from a blow from a weapon like that." and packed up that character.
That did make the fight a bit more "real" for the other players. The Bloodthirster went on to also take down two of the terminators before they destroyed the last artifact. At the end of the battle the Bloodthirster was down to roughly 1/4 of it's starting life when the final artifact was destroyed. Since the two terminators toting the assault cannon and cyclone missile launcher was pretty much out of the battle fighting off chaos marines to secure the area for the others; chances are that if they did have a few more rounds they probably would have put the thing down without my building in another out.
On the other hand, not putting in that out would have left several characters at the table useless for the complete encounter. In which case I would have had several unhappy / bored people instead of it playing out as one of the better battles in the campaign.
---------------------------
Actually wish I thought of blogging the game or my thoughts on some aspects of it sooner. Next up I'll be running the group around Athas for a bit, so at least I'll be able to go on about that for a while.
Thankyou and goodnight.
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