Scheduling for the New Campaign and a look back at my Agile-Style Gaming Posts

 

Schedule Magic!

A few years ago I was working through some schedule angst and came up with an idea that managed to cover just about all of the bases I needed. I brought it up again a year later and talked about how it had gone and in general it worked pretty well and looking back years later I can confirm that it really did. It's not a solution for everyone - I doubt most people are going to have the combination of things I did at the time but hey, if someone does and those posts help them figure out something that works for them then great! I'd love to hear about it. If you have people at home that play and friends that come over and everyone is on conflicting schedules it's worth considering a matrixed approach to keep the wheels turning.

I haven't said much about this style in the past few years because it kind of faded out as life changed. It's been 6-7 years since that was the problem I was trying to solve and as things have changed and kids have grown up and moved out and moved on I don't quite have the schedule chaos I was facing back then. I moved to a new place, set up a new game room, added some new players to the mix, and tweaked up the rest of life as well.

For about two years now RPG time has settled into a far more predictable routine. We meet once a week  on Saturday nights and after some experimentation with rotating through multiple games we've settled into that most basic of scenarios: we have one main game. Sometimes we have had a backup game for when part of the group missed but for this run I am looking at dropping even that. Whoever shows up can take whatever characters they want in whatever direction they want. This should especially help with the last-minute cancellations which are not a regular thing here but can really cause chaos when they occur. This means I have to enforce a little more structure than I normally do - i.e. they must get out of the dungeon if they are in one -  but it pays off in having the session-to-session flexibility. I think this will pay dividends in improved focus and immersion in the campaign so I think it's worth a try. 

I have a little more preparation to do in having things ready to go at different levels and for varying numbers of players but a) I have more time to do that with only one game in play and b) it's D&D so there is no lack of material to co-opt for my game. I don't think it will be a problem.

I do occasionally cancel for vacations or family stuff and that means no game that week but I try to keep that infrequent. Consistency and predictability go a long way towards keeping the game going and on people's schedules so I'm willing to set things up to get us there.

So yes, all of that complicated calculating has now boiled down to one game we play once a week, every week, on a set night. The Agile Approach is what I needed for a few years but time marches on and things are simpler now.  Change is inevitable and life is funny but it works for all of my friends and for me so this is a good place to be.

Players, Characters, Habits, and Choices

 

With a new campaign kicking off, particularly a D&D campaign and the associated character generation I got to thinking about my players and their characters and the mix we have had over the years. Some of them are remarkably consistent. Some of them change it up and never seem completely satisfied with any character. I find that often this applies regardless of the rules or genre.

One of my players in D&D terms is almost always either a Paladin or a Fighter. This habit/preference/tradition goes back to at least 2nd Edition AD&D because that's how long we've been playing together. In superhero games he tends towards a Superman-style Brick. In Deadlands he's always been a straight-up gunfighter, even when there are supernatural options available.  Now he has surprised me a few times - mainly when we ran multiple characters per player in a given campaign - by branching out and trying out a wizard or a sorcerer but it's always in addition to a fighter type, not instead of one. I know when I propose a new game that he will likely be playing a martial character of some type so that role will be covered by at least one player. 

In the new campaign he's playing a Paladin so the tradition continues and I am just fine with that.

In contrast I have another long-time friend who is the one who never seems quite settled in to whatever character he has chosen and he is the one most likely to switch out his character partway through the game. When 3rd Edition D&D was new he started out as a Halfling Wizard, later changed that out to a Fighter who was focused on breaking weapons and knocking people down, and then ended up as something completely different by the end of the campaign. In Mutants and Masterminds he tried to play a Batman-type but was repeatedly frustrated with how it played and what he saw as  its ineffectiveness and if the campaign had continued he probably would have asked for a change. He is unpredictable from campaign to campaign, which is not that unusual I think, really, but that restlessness even within the same campaign keeps things interesting. This often springs from some encounter early on, usually a fight, where he determines that his character is just not that effective. Now I often disagree with him and make him work through it a while longer because he has done this as quickly as the first session of a campaign and I'd like a little more stability than that! 

That said I have let him swap out characters multiple times over the years and not necessarily due to a character death - though that is an obvious opportunity if he wants to. Sometimes it's just not being happy with how a character works and wanting to try something different. In Deadlands he chose a Chinese martial artist - we've never really had a dedicated Kung-Fu character in our DL games before so I was looking forward to trying out those options - and he might have made it to Session 3 before declaring that the melee focus was not working in a world full of guns but I pointed out that a) you knew it was an Old West game when we started and b) there are defensive powers and movement powers as well as the punchy stuff. He stuck with it and after acquiring some XP and applying it to the problem he quickly became a very dangerous combatant who was fairly tough and stupid fast so he was quite capable of getting into hand-to-hand range and doing terrible terrible things to his opponent when he did and I would say he was pretty happy with things for most of that campaign. 

In the new campaign he's chosen to play a Cleric (of a war god) and we will see how that flows for him.

My son has been playing for almost 15 years now - still a strange thing to hear yourself say - and when we started with old school Moldvay Basic D&D it was "Elf" and then usually "Fighter" when we had a second character in play. Later when we had more options it was Elf-something, usually Ranger.  In both 4th and 5th edition the Bladesinger class was tailor-made for him. though in the last 5E campaign I ran he went with a Cleric and "Sacred Flamed" anything that came in range.

 Outside of D&D type games though he has not been all that consistent. In superhero games he likes his battlesuit guys/PAGs. In Deadlands he chose to play an Indian Shaman and had a lot of fun with that. In Star Wars he's a Jedi (even a barely-trained-wannabee Jedi) or he's a lot less interested in playing.

In the new campaign he's going full Wizard so  this will be interesting.

My other long-time friend in the game does have a recognizable pattern in that he likes to be "the ranged guy". He's usually inclined towards a fighter type character in D&D terms and from early on in 3E I don't remember a real tendency other than big melee weapons. By 4th Edition though that had changed as he discovered the power of the 4E Ranger which could participate in combat from an  entirely different table with all of the Bow power he could put together. In Deadlands he went for a rifleman approach moving into full-on sniper as the game went on. It has definitely become a theme for him.

In the new campaign he's playing a Mechanist, one of the new ToV classes, and maybe he's stepping away from the ranged thing this time - or maybe he's just looking for a new way to do it. We shall see.

It's funny to  call him one of my "newer" friends when I've been playing games with him for six years but my other regular kind of falls into that compared to the others. He may be the only other one that's been doing this as long as I have and it's a lot of fun because he gets my obscure RPG references and vice versa. He has played and run a ton of other games and is the most active "other DM" in the group. He is the one most into the "role-playing" part and will come up with interesting backgrounds for whatever kind of character he ends up playing and that's another key - he is unpredictable in that he could play any kind of character buuuuut he doesn't change his mind once he's committed. he is also very open to "what does the party need?" kinds of discussions with the rest of the group when a game is starting up. To him I would say it's less about playing a particular type of character than it is about just playing. He's also an asset to have aboard because I know if I propose trying out a less well-known game he will likely be the first to jump on board. In Deadlands he played a Mad Scientist. In our Marvel Multiverse tryout he played Beast. In our 50 Fathoms campaign he played the sailing expert and duelist and that character might be his archetype in my experience - a "sharp-tongued swashbuckler" that is capable in both social and combat situations.

In the new campaign he is playing a bard because ... that's the kind of player he is - give him something with some flexibility, that's not locked into one role in the party, and he will shine. I just don't see him ever playing a basic-style sword and board fighter - not because of a power issue but because other types of characters let him flex the muscles he enjoys the most. 

For me, "playing" has been far less common than "running" for at least the past 25 years. I'd say I had a fairly even mix of both through the 80's and 90's because I was fortunate enough to have another committed DM in my main group and we traded off for 20+ years. Starting with 3E D&D I really shifted over into running the games far more than playing. Some of this was less time with kids and spouse and career all eating into game time but I stuck with it and that's the side I chose - if you want to make sure there is a game then you'd better be prepared to run them. 

I'd say for 2E  mostly ran Clerics, with some Druid and a little Paladin sprinkled in. For 3E I played a little Wizard, some Barbarian, and some more Cleric and Druid when I had the chance. For 4th I played very little but I went with Fighter to fit a concept I wanted to try out. For Pathfinder I ended up with one of my longest-running characters played for years and up to about 11th level which was a cavalier of all things - originally just to try something new and then because I really liked his schtick and the campaign (Kingmaker) was not dungeon-heavy at all in my opinion. I've played very little 5E so no strong opinions there. In 50 Fathoms I played a Kraken Water Mage who could also fight so maybe my tendency is "some kind of spellcaster" given the chance but with the cavalier leading for actual time in the saddle in the last ten years who knows? 

A few other general observations:

• We used to get a lot more non-humans in D&D but that has really dropped off over the course of 5E. I think they ended up making it too obvious of a "power" choice as it seems like there's a lot of effort being made to strip away the things that made each race mechanically unique and this left Human as the default best choice mechanically speaking. Not a real fan of this approach but I'm going to take it as it is for this run.
• We didn't see a lot of Rogues, Sorcerers, Monks, or Warlocks in the last few editions. I'd say we don't see Bards or Artificers either but I have a Bard and a Mechanist (close enough) in this game so I can't really say that for now. Even Druids have been pretty sparse around here for a long time and I thought they were one of the stronger classes this edition according to online opinion. Barbarian is another surprise given the regularity here of Fighters/Paladins/Rangers  - they were popular in older editions but I haven't seen one played long-term since 4E 10+ years ago.
• Another quirk is that we do not see a lot of duplicate character types in the party. Even into 2nd Edition AD&D we would have multiple fighters and even multiple clerics (of different deities - in 2E a specialty priest of Mystra and a specialty priest of Tempus play very differently) in a party at times. Now I don't really see that. We do have more classes now but we also have more subclass options as a way to differentiate two of the same class but I just never see it.

Well that's a lot of idle thoughts and observations but sometimes the inspiration strikes. More on the campaign down the road.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 2: Beneath the Tower of Zenopus

 

We begin in Saltmarsh at the Wicker Goat inn as our party prepares to return to the ruined tower. Our heroes (all at level 2 now):

• Paladin Steve: Sir Kentor -  Human Paladin
• Boom-Gun Brandon: Lantor- Human Fighter
• Shootist Will: Mechanist Cedric Theodore -Human Cleric
• Blaster:  Xyzzifax - Human-ish Wizard

They were all present for the last expedition and the dwarf warlock again remains in town getting to know the dwarf-owned mining operation.

There was some rules discussion pregame, mainly about how magic works in 5E and has been tweaked for ToV. I also reminded them about some of the interesting items on the gear list like oil, alchemist's fire, caltrops, antivenin, holy water, and the good old 10'pole.

Then it was time to gather the party and venture forth! Veering off from their prior course the group found themselves kicking in a door to a very large room notable for a group of stone sarcophagi, a collapsed wall on the north side, and a number of giant rats peering back at them!

Taking the lead Sir Kentor takes a number of serious rat bites as does Lantor but they clear out the vermin in short order. This leads to the inevitable opening of the six closed sarcophagi which leads to a number of interesting things:

• The first one has a skeleton holding a fine jeweled dagger.
• The second contains a skeleton holding a very nicely crafted sword
• The third conceals a skeleton with a bejeweled necklace.

Now during these explorations the skeletons are left undisturbed - at first. A few minutes in the wizard decides to very quietly use his Mage Hand to retrieve the dagger which flies up out of his grasp and moves towards the party. This is also when a pair of hungry giant rats emerges from the ruined wall to the north and moves in to attack as well. Another short fight ensues with the wizard staying back and throwing Fire Bolts while Cedric, Lantor, and Sir Kentor charge in. The rats are slain and the dagger is smacked across the room - apparently beating the magic right out of it - and then things settle back down. 

• The fourth burial structure contains a skeleton and a cloud of gas which knocks out the Paladin for ten minutes. The rest of the part uses this time to detect and identify the items so far and determines that the sword is in fact "Verminax", a +1 vermin-slaying blade. The dagger also has not had all of the magic beaten out of it as it is actually a +1 dagger as well.
• Number 5 has another skeleton with more jewelry
• The final un-raided tomb gives them some trouble until something inside it helps to push it open and a skeleton jumps out and starts swinging! The paladin sees his moment and proceeds to land a critical hit with a smite detonating the undead thing in a blast of holy light - one shot, one kill. 

Gathering themselves up and performing some minor healing the party moves out of the opposite side of the room and heads down to kick open another door. This one is empty though there are faint tracks in the dust on the floor and the upper part of the room is shrouded in darkness. As they move in cautiously a giant spider drops on Xyz from above but he dodges the move only to suffer a bite from the vicious arachnid. The rest of the team attacks but the spider scuttles back and runs up a wall, shooting webs as it goes. Our heroes pursue and finally dispatch the beast with no serious damage other than to the wizard's morale. They discover a twin to their dagger embedded in the spider's hide and also identify the tracks in the dust as goblin marks. These seem to run between two of the four doors in the room so the standard protocol is enacted and ...

Kicking in our fourth door of the day we see an even bigger room than the first one containing some cots and clutter and ten very startled goblins - not surprised, as they heard the fight with the spider next door - but definitely startled, particularly the two that were clearly approaching the door quietly hoping the noises would stop before they got there.

The party moves in, the goblins move in, and the wizard unleashes the first Thunderwave of the campaign and blows away 3 of the goblins in one blast. Though they land a few solid blows most of the goblins are dead in seconds and the boss turns to flee but is also slain before he can get far. The last survivor drops his weapons and tries to surrender but is blasted by a firebolt as Xyz says "you are too weak". The room is looted with no particular items of note turning up.

Moving on the next door it turns out to be ... open! Within is a large statue of a wizard with a hand outstretched towards the door. The team quickly figure out that the statue can be rotated and that doing so unlocks the door it points at while locking the other three. Notes are taken and the group moves on having worked out via their ongoing mapping efforts that the corridor beyond may lead back to the "snake room" they discovered the day before. 

As it turns out they are right! They kick in what they now find to be the north door of the round room with the stairs and the big snake - as opposed to the south door they opened earlier. Sir Kentor drinks a potion of growth they found earlier and they charge in to confront the huge serpent. The snake rears up and ... takes a critical hit from the Large Kentor, a ridiculous critical from the fighter and then Lantor Action Surges for yet another mighty blow from his greatsword and slays the thing before it can land a single attack!

Taking a quick look around and upstairs and seeing nothing the adventurers push open the secret door they noticed previously and move down a long corridor that ends in what is likely another secret door. It too is kicked open revealing a wizard's workshop, some statues, a very surprised wizard, and his cutlass-wielding companion. As the violence begins the wizard recovers enough to make Lantor his new friend (a Charm spell) but is blasted by Xyz and slashed by the paladin before he can do anything else as Large Kentor steps around the table and bashes the bodyguard just as his eyes clear up and he says "wait, what"? The paladin is momentarily regretful but he was on the wrong side charmed or not.

After this the party does finish exploring the stair-connected rooms finding a few interesting items including a wand and some scrolls and potions. One of these is a scroll of stone to flesh and there is a fair amount of discussion on whether to use it on one of the statues in the workshop. In the end though they decide to hang onto it for possible future need and head back out of the dungeon to return to Saltmarsh. 

DM Thoughts on Session 2

This was a fun run and they were finally getting into some areas where there was a chance for some interaction beyond swordplay. That's one of the things I like about this dungeon in that even though it is relatively small there are several encounters where one can talk things over with the inhabitants or maybe learn something interesting about another area of the dungeon. Then in session1 they end up hitting a bunch of undead and vermin with zero chance to communicate barring the one cultist encounter

As it turns out they were not terribly interested in conversation. Here we had the goblins and the human wizard and guard as opponents and it was still a "nope" from the crew. Hey, they can tackle this thing however they want to but there were opportunities for more DM fun if they had left even on of those open. Ah well.

Rules-wise we used a lot of "helping another" type mechanics here. In the latest version (ToV PG Page 206 "Working Together")you don't even have to roll - you just give the acting character advantage on the roll. That's a little less dramatic but OK. Luck is working very well, being acquired and being used throughout the session. Combat flows very quickly at these levels and having my condition markers and area effect templates close at hand keeps that speed going. 

That said combat also flows faster when the second level paladin crits on a smite for 43 points of damage - 8d8! Honorable mention goes to the poor snake who got hit by a critical from the paladin, then another from the fighter, then a second attack from the fighter, all of which was enough to kill it before it could act once. Sometimes the dice gods just have it in for you.

As far as the dungeon we didn't make it to some of the other interesting parts but they hit most of it and had a good time. The original has the sword as just a generic +1 longsword so I jazzed that up with a name and a bit of a history and some extra utility in very specific situations. I'll probably add some wererats in at some point to give it a chance to shine. With it and a pair of +1 daggers the group has at least a few magic weapons available if needed. 

I have not been using much in the way of random encounters but that will change as we get more into the main adventure. The temple is an active organized base for an evil organization so it will be a little trickier than the tower. 

We should have a bigger group next time, likely the full 7 players I expect to be at this full-time, so there will likely be a bit more going on as the party makes it way to the Village of Hommlet.