How Much Input Does the GM Get on Player Characters?

 

This was stirred into motion by a post on an RPG Facebook group that pushed some buttons for me. In general it described how someone was starting up a new campaign and in so many ways it was the complete opposite of  my thinking on the subject. I figured this might be worth some discussion.

One of the statements was about how they usually start a campaign and this included some perfectly reasonable and expected stuff like world info but then it mentioned "... reasons they are there, some drives, and background story ... " mentioning that this could be a group one and some personal ones.

I have to ask even here - whose characters are these again? Why are you giving me drives or background at all? Reasons to be there is a little more flexible but even that can get tricky.

As for the specifics of the new campaign they mentioned some totally acceptable things but then it got into a family tree chart that showed how they know each other and some NPCs, along with a comic strip the GM created covering the starting story and background for the PC's.

For the chart there were more than 20 characters connected by various lines showing how one knows another - this is the beginning of a campaign with 5 PC's. I was kind of surprised as 

a) that seems like a lot of relationships for a game that hasn't even kicked off yet -if you have to chart it out like that maybe that's too many connections, and 

b) did this come from the players? or is this the GM setting all of this up?

It just seems like a really heavy GM hand for the start of an ongoing campaign. Defining the starting situation I get completely - Paladin Steve is setting up a new campaign that allows whatever background situation you want but it has to end with "you joined a caravan and travelled to a new city" and then he's starting the game in that new city. This example just seems over the top to me. This isn't a convention game - it's supposed to be the start of a new ongoing campaign. I am much more in the camp of "here is are the rules, the setting, the time period, and the situation - now make up your characters" and then any connections the players want they can work out themselves and run by me afterwards.  I don't care if "traditional party roles" for this particular game are covered - if the party cares they will work it out. I certainly wouldn't presume to start telling them who they know or are related to unless the game has mechanics for that kind of thing  - like Hero's Dependent NPCs or Shadowrun's Contacts - and they need some likely suspects.

I have been playing with the same group for quite a while so I am wondering how common this is out in the wild?  I don't remember it ever being too common except for maybe a brand new GM. Is this a generational thing, maybe a new GM,  or just a one-off?

Real Life Plot Hooks #1

 

Well I'm sure nothing bad could come from this. Mysterious radio waves coming from under the ice in Antarctica you say? I'm sure it's fine ... noting to see there ... move along!

This feels like an excellent plot hook for any modern era game, any superhero game, a pulp game ... I mean that's going to get some attention in any era. One of Scion's Trinity RPGs would probably handle this well, as would various Savage Worlds books. 

Alternatively it might be an alternate start to a Robotech campaign. "That ship's been frozen down there for a million years. I'm sure whoever it belonged to is long dead." - says the remarkably confident researcher investigating the source of the signal.

Supers campaign: Newly unfrozen alien dusts the remaining ice from his shoulders and says "hey thanks for getting me out of there. Those fourth-planet bastards must have hit us with a fast-acting polar inverter - froze us before we could stop it. How long were we out? And who are you all anyway?"

"What? Oh, we're from the fifth planet ... why do you ask?" 

So many possibilities.

The Mountains of Madness are calling ...

The "Barriers" to Old and Out of Print RPGs.

 

Thought I would put an AD&D PHB cover here didn't you?

This post was spurred by a couple of things:

1. A post asking why anyone would choose to play AD&D (1E) over another game
2. A post discussing the best ways to get players to try a new game where one of the responses was that a game needed to have merch, like T-shirts, because that helped get players interested.
3. Discussions on "when is an RPG dead?" and "what a successful RPG looks like"

So let's discuss ...

First up - Why would one choose to play an "old" game? Or at least an old edition of a game with newer editions? "Because I like them better" is all the answer anyone needs to give. RPG's are not technology. Newer is not automatically better - which is not even true of technology but that's how people tend to see it. RPGs are art, not science, and don't let anyone tell you different. Are there innovations in game design from time to time? Sure. Does that make a game that uses them "better" than one that does not? No.

Innovative but not a replacement for many

Let's talk about an example: Advantage/Disadvantage as described in 5E D&D. It's a solid mechanic. It simplifies a lot of what used to be separate modifiers, often found in charts, and lets the game play faster. It can be included in new games (and should be in some) and is pretty easy to retrofit to existing games, even non-d20 games like Traveller. But ... some people like granularity. Some people don't mind checking multiple modifiers for range, light levels, target movement, attacker movement, etc. That adds to the fun or immersion or realism for them, and abstracting it into advantage/disadvantage just feels less good. Sometimes this could vary by genre or specific game for the same person. Sometimes speed of play or simplicity is not the ultimate goal but that's where a lot of recent game design trends have been headed. "People don't have time to play games with complex rules" - maybe you don't. Maybe I do. Maybe I want to count every bullet in my Twilight 2000 game and not really worry about it in my Star Wars game.

Also nostalgia should not be discounted. I suspect that for many people the edition of D&D that you first played, or the one that "clicked" for you is what D&D is for you and that person would always be open to giving it another try. I started when AD&D was still coming out and we played it (and the various Basic, B/X, BECMI sets too) for a decade+ and so while clunky in places we know it is eminently playable and it feels like home to some degree. To someone else it may well look clunky, needlessly complex, and just old. That's fine. No one can make you play a game you don't want to play.

As someone who has taught multiple members of the Next Generation to play RPGs I can tell you they have been interested in some old games because they are good, not because of any nostalgia. Moldvay Basic, Runequest, and Warhammer FRP are all old at this point and all feel very different and the younger set liked all of them when they got the chance to play. RQ 1-2-3 in particular is not like any modern RPG and has a whole different feel to it. It's nostalgic for me to run these - it's  just cool and different to them to play them. Heck Blaster started out loving d20 Saga Edition Star Wars and then after playing just a few sessions became a d6 Star Wars Die Hard and refuses to play any other version - and this is a game that published its last supplement the year before he was born.

For the second part let's just combine those other two entries- "merch" and the current state of a game:

Right up front I will say I don't care about either of these things when it comes to RPG's.

Merch? Seriously? Does having a t-shirt for Game X make it a better game? A more interesting game? Does it make playing it more fun? I suspect this is the mark of some of the newer type of player we see that is more interested in tying themselves to a thing than in actually playing a game. I really don't understand this mindset when there are so many other hobbies out there one could join. It's the same with "does it have a YouTube following" or some other social media presence - who cares? Why does it matter? Does any of that make the game better?  How did we survive before these things existed? This kind of stuff is really satisfying something else as it has no bearing on actually running or playing the game.

It's the same for "is a game dead?" or "is the game still in print?" - why does it matter? A good local game store will have a used game section, there are online used game sellers like Noble Knight, even Amazon sells quite a few old games, and eBay is basically the world's attic or garage where you can find the most obscure stuff for pretty reasonable prices most of the time. That doesn't even get into PDF's which are widely available for the more known games, legally and not. So the question can't be a concern about availability.

Definitely on the TBD list

Is it about finding players? It's not on store shelves or it's not widely discussed on the socials so someone thinks finding players might be more difficult? I mean, it might be, but isn't everything outside of 5E a bit challenging now? maybe your players have never heard of Lords of Creation - if you want to run it then it's time to make a pitch*. You really only need 3 players for a fun time with most RPG's, maybe as few as two, so this is not an insurmountable obstacle. 

* You are talking about running it right? Otherwise you're going to have a hard time with any slightly obscure game. 

I'd be happy to run this tomorrow if someone asked

A fair chunk of the games I've run over the last 20 years were out of print, sometimes drastically so, at the time I ran them. The aforementioned d6 Star Wars, RQ2, WFRP 2E, Mechwarrior 3E, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, B/X D&D, 4E  D&D ... the publication state of a game means very little in reality. If you have the core book for any RPG I can think of you could run a campaign for years with no outside support if you have interested players. Maybe you need to spark that interest at the beginning but that's often the GM's job, regardless of how current the game is. There's really no reason to not pull out that old game you've been thinking about running and make your pitch - take the grognards home and take the noobs somewhere interesting.

40K Friday: Introducing Some New Players to 40K

 

I mean I've done this before - starting around 2008 - but it has been awhile. Apprentice Boom Gun Brandon has been getting interested in 40K for a while. Not enough to actually read a book on it - that's a real challenge with the younger set now - but enough to keep asking me to play a game. Battletech Terry, longtime veteran of the Succession Wars, has also gotten interested. Invisible Patrick has also gotten interested but was not a part of this game. So, with a pool of interested players and having had a few tryout games in the past year I felt like it was time to get the wheels turning more consistently.

So we did 1000 points per side, Terry playing Eldar, Brandon playing Marines. I had things set up before they arrived and I picked the armies but I gave Terry some options on speed vs. firepower for a few units and Brandon mostly played his own forces with a few reinforcements from mine.

The Eldar - pretty much a sampler force to try them out:

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Xenos - Aeldari

+ DETACHMENT: Warhost

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1025pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char1: Maugan Ra

+ ENHANCEMENT:

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 10

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char1: 1x Maugan Ra (100 pts): Warlord, Maugetar

Char2: 1x Spiritseer (65 pts): Shuriken Pistol, Witch Staff

5x Dark Reapers (90 pts)

• 4x Dark Reaper: 4 with Close combat weapon, Reaper Launcher

• 1x Dark Reaper Exarch: Close combat weapon, Missile Launcher

5x Dire Avengers (80 pts)

• 4x Dire Avenger: 4 with Avenger Shuriken Catapult, Close Combat Weapon

• 1x Dire Avenger Exarch: Close Combat Weapon, Avenger Shuriken Catapult

5x Wraithblades (170 pts): 5 with Ghostaxe and Forceshield

1x Warlock Skyrunners (45 pts): Destructor, Shuriken Pistol, Singing Spear, Twin Shuriken Catapult

3x Windriders (80 pts): 3 with Close Combat Weapon, Scatter Laser

1x Wraithlord (140 pts): Ghostglaive, Wraithbone Fists, 2x Flamer, 2x Starcannon

1x Falcon (130 pts): Pulse Laser, Wraithbone hull, Bright Lance, Shuriken Cannon

1x Wave Serpent (125 pts): Wraithbone Hull, Twin Shuriken Catapult, Twin Bright Lance

 I don't have the Marine list handy but there was a Gravis Captain leading some Aggressors, some Bladeguard, a Ballistus Dreadnought, a Repulsor Executioner ("Boom Gun" needed the biggest gun the marines have of course - he has that nickname for a reason), and some assault intercessors.

Initial deployment

So we had the big marine tank plus the dread facing off against the Falcon and the Wave Serpent at one end of the table. Aggressors and the Captain looking at the Wraithlord in the middle. Bladeguard & half the assault intercessors just looking to secure an objective at the other end. The Marines went first.

Somewhere in Turn 1

Here the Jetbikes + Warlock are already thinning the Aggressors while the tanks are busy hurting each other  

The big fight in Turn 2

In turn 2 the Marines jumped out of the Repulsor and onto the objective but the Wave Serpent moved up on the Eldar turn and dropped out 5 Wraithblades and a Wraithseer who eventually wiped out the Marines completely.

We only managed a few turns as this was the first time in a long time for both of them and this was also before our weekly D&D game so there was a hard time limit. We ended up with a score of 8-5 in favor of the Eldar but the main point of this game was to shake off the rust and also to learn how Secondary Objectives worked since we had been leaving that out thus far. It's very energizing to fire the game up again with new players and certainly engages the painting circuits once again. We had a lot of fun and we have another game coming this weekend - which I will try to document better

Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter for Player's Guide 2

 

Well they have finally gotten around to a new book of major interest. I know monster books are a Kobold Press signature but I was hoping the first add-on to the line would be a character supplement, not a monster book, but at least now that is being corrected.

The preview PDF looks pretty interesting:

• More subclasses - I mean, this was pretty much a given and I would say necessary given the ridiculous number of subclasses in 5E. It looks like we are getting at least 3 new ones per class giving everyone 5 subs per class which should be enough variety to keep multiple campaigns fresh for a long time. Good.
• More Talents - good, they need to expand this area to some degree
• More Boons - this is an area I assumed they would expand in my initial review and I am glad to see it happening.
• Base building - My players are specifically interested in this as they are contemplating building a base in or near Hommlet (yes possibly pushing Rufus and Burne aside) and so this has direct relevance to what they are doing in-game. This is also a potential good outlet for all of the gold coming out of their temple-trashing expeditions so yes, please - bring it on.
•  New Classes: looks like we are getting the Theurge, the Vanguard, and the Witch. I haven't seen much about the Theurge yet but from one of their other 5E magic books:
•  "... the new Theurge class, an Intelligence-based spellcasting class capable of casting both cleric and wizard spells!" and I believe that was the point of the class going back to the 3E Mystic Theurge so sure, OK. Will this mean it gets to pick from both the Arcane and Divine lists? That's a lot of flexibility if so.
• Looks like the Witch is going to be the new second Wyrd caster which is fine - might as well even that out. I don't have a Warlock in my campaign so I don't have much experience with those spells.
• The Vanguard is the most interesting to me - a ToV take on the 4E Warlord, a martial leader/support type character. I had one of these in my 4E campaign and it was a real eye-opener. I've hoped we would get one of these for some newer version of D&D and it looks like we finally might be there. There was a lot of granting another character a free move or a free attack with the 4E version and it looks like that is continuing here. The banner thing also feels a lot like the Pathfinder 1E Cavalier which had a similar ability so this is definitely one I will be watching.

So yes I'll be backing this one and hoping for an early draft of the thing so we can use it in the campaign this year. We might finish out the Temple with just the existing material then if we move onto a new adventure open it up to the new stuff. Not sure and it doesn't really matter until it's available in some form anyway but we will be crossing our fingers here.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 8: The Moathouse Finale

 

Yeah that's a pretty terrible picture of him

Back in Hommlet our heroes rest and prepare for another expedition into the dungeon beneath the Moathouse. Our Heroes:

Braeden (Human Ranger)played by Battletech Terry

Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve

Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon

Xyzzifax (Human* Wizard) played by Blaster

Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will

Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David

 All are level 2 or 3 at this point. Grognard Mike is out this week so Malice is hanging out in Hommlet and Inigo the Rogue is also absent - as he often is)

The much more entertaining players account, written in-character again "As told by the Illustrious and Mighty Xyzzifax" is here.

The Ranger and Cleric head to the Temple of St. Cuthbert seeking holy water and information. They acquire the holy water and then meet with Terjon to discuss the symbol they found on the guards/bandits/armed hostile humans in the last expedition (The Flaming Eye). Terjon knows a little about about the organization of the temple and explains that while theoretically unified under "Elemental Evil" the four major factions compete with and seek dominance over one another. He also mentions that they have always sought to control the lands around the temple as well and so are probably building an army. 

The rest of the party makes some minor purchases and checks in on friends. Samson constructs a crossbow that can be attached to Lantor's arm & armor giving him an easier ranged option when called for as having to swap between a crossbow and his greatsword has been tricky for him. Samson is happy to help and Lantor is happy to have it.

After two days in Hommlet the team returns to the Moathouse and heads down to check out some of the areas they did thoroughly explore before. Spotting a pair of bugbears via the Miraculous Recon Owl they start a pretty serious discussion about how to proceed as the bugbear fight (see Session 6) was a tough one and they do not want to end up fighting the human cultists from last session and the bugbears at the same time, possibly being cut off by one or the other. They end up deciding to have the mage wizard-lock the door to the cult area first and then go back and deal with the bugbears. It's a solid plan - shame it didn't work.

Most of the party hangs back while the Braeden and Xyzzifax sneak up towards the cultist door and I will transition here to the first-person account:

The recently promoted Minion #3, Braeden, accompanies Xyzzifax, to provide support. The Ranger loses all recently gained respect, and falls in the rankings to minion #4, when he fails to spot a noise trap, a tripwire is triggered, causing a cascade of scrap metal to fall, with the clanging and crashing echoing through the dungeon. The pair’s presence is now surely known.

Xyzzifax ceases all pretense of stealth, spreading his wings, and launching himself into the air to cover the remaining distance to the door. Upon reaching it, he immediately begins to chant, casting his arcane lock spell on the door, betting that he can resolve his spell before the guards open the door. 36 seconds later, 4 cult guards fling the door open, brandishing crossbows! All four loose bolts at the chanting wizard, yet arcane shields spring forth, and all four bolts fall harmlessly to the ground. Combat ensues!

Yes, the all-about-perception-and-sneaking ranger blows a check and snags a tripwire and blows the entire plan to hell! This turns into a pretty serious fight with eight guards including another leader type who does not go gently.

After this the mage tries to wizard lock the door again and is again interrupted by more guards who kick the door open and start another fight! They push these guards back, heal up, and decide to push on into the cult lair. 

Passing through the second door (now safely wizard locked as well) they encounter a third door and pick the lock, open the door, and immediately encounter the cult guards and leaders waiting for them with spells and weapons readied. The cult leader orders his men to kill the party and the battle is on. 

Kentor, Lantor, and Samson all take a good beating - which is becoming pretty normal. Samson drops at least once and Lantor gets Held when Lareth the cult leader manages to get a spell off and then later gets Blinded. Xyz invokes a flaming sphere which is also becoming a pretty standard tactic for him. Eventually Lareth is the last bad guy standing and finally drops as the entire party lays into him. The party gets a ton of loot from this including +1 plate, a Staff of Striking, and a Ring of Free Action, all of which will prove to be a thorn in my side for the future. 

Definitely better with the helmet on

DM Notes:

This was the big finale for the Moathouse and ended with an appropriately spectacular battle that they kind of stumbled into. That last fight went about 5 rounds and they fought Lareth, 2 guard captains, 11 guards, and a Cult Fanatic. With spells going off on both sides, some vicious melee engagements, and at least one PC dropping, it felt like a pretty dangerous fight. Certain trends are emerging:

• The Ranger is the sneaking specialist who mostly fights at range with his bow, jumping into melee when one of the fighters drops. He's very much a pragmatist and rolls with whatever comes the party's way.
• The Cleric started off as the healing guy but has moved into more of a combat role as the game has gone on. He usually opens with Spiritual Weapon and goes from there. Now he has the Staff of Striking and will quickly develop into the Kill-Stealing Cleric as he wades into battle and clocks somebody already wounded with a triple-charge staff strike and blows them into vapor. Yes, it is annoying. Yes, the player is eating it up.
• The Fighter is not really a glass cannon but he does tend to be the one who drops in most fights. He's armored up but he uses a two-hander so he cannot use a shield and that means of the melee types he has the lowest AC. He also is the youngest player and tends to charge into a fight in round one regardless of what the rest of the party is doing so he ends up surrounded and gets pounded on first and most. As the campaign goes on this continues but he does work on upping his armor class so it gets a little better.
• The Paladin is the experienced melee combatant who is taking all of the "tanking" type abilities that he can. Most of these punish an enemy for not striking him, as in giving them a negative modifier or giving him a free attack. He is very conscious of his AC and wants it to be the highest in the party - and it usually is, barring some spell going off. Also Smite is a devastating thing and he is very good at choosing his moment of glory to use it. He's still being played as Lawful Good even with alignment not being in the game and his loyalty to the party is unquestionable.
• The Mechanist is an interesting new type of character. He doesn't cast spells but he can buff his party (including himself) with various gadgets and enhancements to equipment. Here the paladin is carrying a hammer enhanced with a +1 and "returning" to give him a good opening ranged attack. The fighter now has a light crossbow built into his armor keeping his hands free for melee.
  
  Samson is also good as a skill monkey focused in on detecting traps and picking locks - any gadget-related thing he is unstoppable. Also, he can basically "Identify" magic items by touch. This is also pretty annoying at first as a DM because that whole sub-section of the game of figuring out what an item can do has been part of the fun for a long time and this just eliminates that entirely. It does get to be fun later when they find a cursed item though so it's not entirely one-sided. There have also been many jokes about "hey, bring your magic hands over here ..."
• Xyzzifax - the wizard has been the real revelation here. He speaks in an immediately identifiable voice, he has questionable morals, some fuzziness on party loyalty, and often refers to the other characters as "minions", sometimes ranking them on the fly. Game-wise he is powergaming the shit out of ToV's wizard options and showing me just how ridiculous they can be at maximum effort which I suppose I deserve since he is my kid. The familiar rules are very lenient and he has used them ruthlessly to make mapping the dungeon and recon in general a very low-effort undertaking for them. He knows his spells like a pro and knows when to cast them, when to use a wand, and when to just go with Ye Olde Firebolt. He is also not averse to jumping into a fight up close when needed, made easier with his built-in wings (He's a ToV "Beastkin" lineage, which gives a fair number of options to cover a variety of animals, one of which is wings & flight = to your walking speed). That said, he is also quick to jump out of combat when hit with anything significant as he is fairly concerned with his own skin.

It's been a lot of fun up to this point and it only gets better.

40K Friday - Monday Edition: Death Guard

 

The Death Guard codex coming out and all the hype around DG being good again did get my attention and inspired me to break out the Plague Marine kits and get those built. I'm also working on finishing or fixing some of the unfinished & broken vehicles etc. to be able to get them on the table in a presentable fashion as opposed to the "well if this helbrute had an arm it would be an autocannon" kind of approach. Since they are "good again" my poor Defiler is even being reassembled after losing legs and guns etc. in various drops and moves and I'm pretty happy about that. I may even manage to get the various terminators all built (finally!) and usable as well. 

My vision for this army is built around 2 squads of Plague Marines in Rhinos moving up the board built for up-close melee with melta and flamers as the main ranged weapons. I'll have a 3rd and maybe a 4th squad built more for shooting to either hold the backfield or move up as a second wave. A max squad of Deathshroud Terminators with a Lord of Contagion will be one of the heavy-hitters, deep striking in. Blightlords will be utility players, likely in 5-man squads. 

I have the aforementioned reassembled Defiler, various Helbrutes, Daemon Princes, Blight Drones (also being built and painted), Blight Haulers, and Plagueburst Crawlers to add in as needed. I don't know that it will fit The Meta but it should look like a Death Guard army at least and I'm looking forward to playing it. 

Also of note - we actually played a game of 40K this weekend  which has inspired me to make some more progress. I'll post up some pictures in Friday's entry.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 7: Ghouls, Guards, and a Giant Crayfish

 

Back at the remote camp near the Moathouse our heroes prepare for another expedition into the dungeon beneath ...

Braeden (Human Ranger)played by Battletech Terry

Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve

Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon

Xyzzifax (Human* Wizard) played by Blaster

Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will

Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David

 All are level 2 or 3 at this point. Grognard Mike is out this week so Malice is back in Hommlet and Inigo the Rogue is also absent - as he often is)

The much more entertaining players account, written in-character "As told by the Illustrious and Mighty Xyzzifax" is here.

The goal this time is to explore the passage downward hidden in a column that they had discovered previously. The portcullis is still down so they work around that and make their way to the prison area where they had fought the zombies and start inspecting the passage. 

DM aside: Once again we have the totally engaging exercise of the wizard's familiar scoping out the various rooms and tunnels like a recon drone. I have been a fan of wizards having familiars since I started playing way back but this version is pretty ridiculous and has become an annoying thorn in my side with it's unlimited range-flying-stealthy-darkvisioned self. Yes the owl is the power choice here and of course my son jumped on that right away and has been abusing it ever since. I am seriously considering locking it back down to the earlier 5E limit of 100' or whatever it was. The running joke is that Bubo's nemesis is the closed door which is the only thing that stops his out-of-control scouting. Coincidentally just about every door in the dungeon is closed and some new doors might have been added recently ...

Once they determine it is safe to proceed the group climbs down the hidden rungs and figures out they are in a crypt area as demonstrated by the large number of burial niches and the smaller but still concerning number of ghouls. The Cleric turns most of them and they run a pretty good distance away while the party handles the one that sticks around. As the turn wears off, the other ghouls come back but the party is ready and has a chance to hit them at range on the way in, thinning the numbers and in the end only the Fighter gets bit and paralyzed.* The area is searched, minor loot is found, and the party continues on ...

Next, to quote from the players log ...

Xyzzifax and his minions venture forth after some scouting by the faithful minion Bubo, and advance down a set of stairs into a square room with a pool of water in its center. To investigate the pool, minion Samson creates a 10 foot pole, and gives it to the only one in the party stupid enough to do it, Minion Lantor, who sticks it into the pool. Before he can react, minion Lantor is seized by a giant claw which locks onto his torso and clamps down, locking him in place!**

...and the battle against the giant crayfish is on!

For one (1) round!

Even at only (only?) six members, this group is hell on single large targets. Everyone in the room opens up on the thing and the Fighter (even grappled) and Paladin just tear it up using their special abilities. I thought it would be tough enough to go a few rounds with them - nope! So the pool is searched and looted of some scrolls and jewelry and the party continues onward.

Coming down the long diagonal passage they encounter locked doors - which they unlock - and then armed guards - who proceed to feather the party with crossbow bolts! The fight starts with just 3 guards and then escalates as 3 more plus a leader type charge around the corner  to join the battle. This proves to be a bigger challenge than the crustacean as at the end we have the Paladin, the Fighter, and the Ranger all in melee with the guard captain who finally succumbs but not before dealing out some punishment of his own as his minions fall around him. 

The team quickly checks the fallen then heads out and back to Hommlet to recover and recount their adventures.

They are still not completely sure what's going on with the Moathouse but they are almost done with it. signs of Bandits up top then Bugbears, Gnolls, and organized humans in the dungeon have them discussing who or what is running this place which is a good thing to have. Mechanically it's working well with PC's feeling like they are in danger but not dropping dead like some of our older edition attempts at this one. My group works together at this point like a machine most of the time and there is a ton of banter along with teasing Lantor's player about dropping every fight. They are having a lot of fun so now I have to maintain it.

For a better fight with the Crayfish from back in 4E here's a link to one of the old session reports.  Where we had a different mix of players and characters.

*This will be a recurring theme as Lantor (the Fighter) is constantly in melee, uses a greatsword, and so has a lower AC than some and is in a position to get multi-attacked almost every fight.

** See?

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 6: Bugbear Battle

 

Time to start catching up!

This is the DM's Summary and Notes - for more details and the players' take on things take a look here.

We begin in Hommlet after a night's rest. The prisoners have been escorted to safety and various abilities have been recovered. After some light shopping the party returns to the Moathouse area and sets up a camp some distance away. Our protagonists are:

Malice (Human Bard) played by Grognard Mike

Braeden (Human Ranger)played by Battletech Terry

Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve

Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon

Xyzzifax (Human* Wizard) played by Blaster
     (He's not an Apprentice anymore, and really past Journeyman, but I just will not call him the obvious)

Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will

Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David

All are level 2 or 3 at this point

Heading down into the dungeon beneath the moathouse they start poking around some empty rooms and manage to trip a falling portcullis. The sound draws the attention of some Gnolls which starts a fairly vicious fight where Malice the Bard starts to look a lot like a 4E Warlord and the Flaming Sphere spell plays a big part. As the fight winds down the magical owl familiar spots a new set of creatures creeping down a corridor towards them.

As the party reforms to face the new threat Braedon the Ranger starts taking shots at anyone he can see and the flaming sphere rolls over to intervene as well. The beasts manage to drop Lantor the Fighter with concentrated javelin fire but their follow-up charge is thwarted by the traps laid down on the way in by the ranger. Kentor the Paladin is bearing the brunt of the melee attention now and he too drops. The bugbear leader is a tough customer as he stays on his feet despite multiple melee attacks, missile attacks, and being partially petrified! 

More of the bugbears drop but Lantor and Kentor  are healed and then fall again. The wizard uncloaks, revealing some insectile wings and starts throwing thunderwaves to drive the creatures back which actually works. The enemy leader is beaten and battered when he finally shakes off the petrification and staggers back with his one remaining warrior ... "next time, humans ..." is the last exchange as they slink off into the darkness. 

The familiar monitors their retreat as the party pulls itself together and heals up to the point of mobility. Our heroes find the way back out blocked by the fallen portcullis and Sir Kentor has to strain and break it to open the way.

Back at the camp Xyzzifax shares his origin story as a once-normal man warped by his former master into an insect-man on a quest for power.

DM Commentary

This session started with some banter and exploration but turned into one long, running fight through a small complex of rooms as the noise from the initial trap drew the attention of the gnolls and then that noise drew the attention of the bugbears. It's all fun and games until the Fighter and the Paladin both go down and the Cleric and the Ranger become the new frontline with the halfling Mechanist trying to help out. The Bard usually fights from the second line when needed - with a glaive so she has reach - but she's much happier doing that with the two tanks in front. 

Having realized that a group this large was going to be tougher to challenge and knowing how this level was set up I started making notes on who would react to the alarms and also to the sounds of fighting in different parts of the dungeon. The familiar being both recon drone and security system continues to be a bit annoying and I'm having to get picky with the wizard about when he is seeing via the owl vs. seeing out of his own eyes at times.

The Gnolls were Tome of Beasts Gnolls and they're fine - the "taunting bark" ability forces an opponent to move towards the Gnoll and attack it on its turn - shades of 4th edition! The Bugbears were led by a Bugbear Champion from that book and he is a little bit nastier and made the whole thing better. He is tougher, has more attacks, and has a Recharge reaction ability to change one miss to hit so he can really put out the hurt. He ended up becoming a bit of a nemesis as he spoke, survived their best efforts, and threatened to come after them again. They would hunt for him in the next few sessions but he did not return - though he will later. 

The wizard has become one of the stars of the campaign as Blaster uses a distinct voice when he speaks and tends to refer to everyone as minions. Getting his backstory out there for the group was a good moment and made everything that much more personal for everyone. Also his in-character writeups are pretty funny if you get the chance to check those out.

Overall I really like the system. There are some potential concerns with a few things and with the size of my group but we are going to finish the Moathouse mostly as-is and then see how things stand.

40K Friday: Grab Bag for May

 

Time to shout at some clouds ...

• It's been going on a long time and it's not exclusive to 40k sites or groups but when did people start feeling that posting a picture of a pile of boxes of stuff was worthwhile in some way? You see it when someone starts a new army, when a new set of units for an army is released, when someone gets their kickstarter shipment ... why? What possible value does it have? What does it contribute to a group? It's meaningless - "hey I bought some stuff ... and it arrived ... and ... I took a picture of it."? Yay. Congratulations. How about doing something with it and THEN posting about it?
  
  Build it and show us. Paint it and show us something. Play it and share a battle report or first impressions or a comparison to your other army or to another game.
  
  Acquisition is easy - it's a simple monetary transaction. The rest of it is what makes the difference. I say this as someone with several armies still in boxes, boardgames unopened on a shelf, and RPG's unread. You won't see them on the blog until I've built or painted or played or at least read the things.

• One thing that seems to be fading finally - the need to mix in what kind of alcohol one is consuming while painting or playing a game. This seems to be on the downswing now but for a few years there was some weird need to add some kind of extra ... credibility? ... to a post or a video for say a 40K battle report by talking about beer or wine or whiskey before (or during) the playing of the game. I don't know if this was some leftover trauma from the "nerds aren't cool" days or something but two guys playing 40K on YouTube is not a place I am going for craft beer recommendations. Just talk about the game - no one cares what, or if, you are drinking. Many of us have been able to drink or smoke or whatever for a very long time. It's not anything that's impressive or particularly interesting. Focus!

• The constant proclamations of doom or "Beyond Clickbait" takes in articles or on YouTube - things like "6 Reasons D&D is Doomed in 2025", "Is 40K dying?", "Games Workshop/WOTC/Hasbro about to go Bankrupt" etc. I know it's BS, you know it's BS, they know it's BS but they have to keep upping the hype to get attention. D&D has been the biggest RPG since the beginning, it's the biggest right now, and it will be the biggest a year from now and for a long time after that. Now that doesn't have to mean anything to you - I'm not sure why anyone not trying to sell RPG material would be too concerned about which game is more popular right now - but if you care there it is. Correspondingly 40K is the biggest miniature game, has been the biggest miniature, and will continue to be that until something wild happens. 
  
  Yes I am aware of the several quarters circa 2010 where ICV2 reported that Pathfinder was outselling D&D 4E. I was there when it was published amidst much crowing by certain parties but keep in mind that's a very limited sample of stores and included neither Amazon nor Paizo's direct sales. Hey, it may have been true, but there's the one time you can -maybe- point to a time when D&D wasn't number one. How has it been doing for the past decade?
  
  These days I see it even from sources I otherwise respect - bringing up things like Shadowdark having a million dollar kickstarter for the rules and then another one a year later for a setting and pronouncing that it is more popular than D&D. Sure. It's doing well and that's great. It's this year's retroclone flavor of the month. Remember OSE? Remember Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC and Shadow of the Demon Lord and Black Hack and 13th Age and a bunch of other tweaked D&D rulesets that everyone talked about for a year or two that have been pretty quiet for a while? It's one of those and it's not going to replace D&D even if the 2024 edition ends up less popular than 2014. 
  
  
  

  

  It has long been a dream of mine to find a reason to include a picture from "Wicked" on the blog and that day has finally arrived. The wife will be pleased.

  
  
• Regarding miniatures yes I saw the report a month or two back that said Battletech was the #2 game at a very small set of hobby stores. Cool. It was clearly a very distant #2. On Dakka I saw a discussion about Zeo Genesis, a new mecha skirmish game designed by Andy Chambers and Gav Thorpe (two former GW big names):
  
  "This seems to be the popular genre right now with BLKOUT, Gamma Wolves, this, and the name of the third one is escaping me at the moment...... "
  
  "Arsenal, from Blaster magazine issue 7, or maybe Steel Rift. It's a pretty saturated genre."
  
  Apparently it's a saturated genre with 4-5 games you've probably never seen or heard of and certainly never seen played.
  
  And don't get me started on "popular" here - will there be a dozen games of any of these played over the weekend world wide? The "popular genre right now" is 40K - just like it has been for the past 30+ years. Age of Sigmar, Old World, Flames of War, Bolt Action, and of course Battletech are also in the mix for "what's popular".  

Yeah that's Grand Moff Tarkin playing miniature battles. Your welcome.

• A final point for the day: The constant anxiety around the state of the various gaming hobbies is overblown and unnecessary. If GW went out of business tomorrow we would still play the games. If WOTC went under we would still play the games. If your FLGS disappears we will still play the games. Resist the lure of the clickbait and the anxiousness. Let the older cloud-yeller assure you that some of us were playing before "games at the store" was a thing, before the FLGS existed really. We survived the Satanic Panic. We played before GW was anything important. We played before WOTC and Hasbro made RPGs full-on corporate assets. We played before the internet existed. If all of it disappeared tomorrow we could still play.
  
  H.G. Wells published a set of miniature rules 100 years ago that you can still find today in book or online form. We have the books. We have the figures. We have the dice. Best of all, we can make more - ourselves, without needing sizable corporate entities to be a part of the process. 
  
  None of this is going anywhere. We're going to be OK.

Outgunned: A Short Review

 

I had high expectations for this one. It's not bad. It's just ... not clicking with me for some reason.

I picked up Outgunned as part of a modern-to-sci-fi binge last year looking for a possible Mechwarrior alternative after running MW3E for a few months. I started in on it, realized it would not really work for that, and set it aside. This year I wanted to give it another look for a potential campaign after the Temple campaign wraps up. So I started back in from page 1.

It's 200 pages long with a nice modern look and layout. From the book's introduction:

Outgunned is a cinematic action rpg inspired by the classics of the genre, from Die Hard to True Lies, passing through James Bond, Atomic Blonde, Kingsman, Ocean’s Eleven, Hot Fuzz, and John Wick.

In outgunned, Players take on the role of action Heroes facing terrible odds. They will be constantly surrounded by enemies while trying to carry out their mission, be it robbing a casino or saving the day.

That's a very specific take and the game does live up to that. There is a constant emphasis on movies as a guide to how the game should feel. Players will take on one of ten roles, each with suitable movie character examples:

• Commando
• Fighter
• Ace
• Agent
• Face
• Nobody
• Brain
• Sleuth
• Criminal
• Spy

A sample:

You have Attributes (5), Skills (there is a list of 20), Feats, and a Trope.

• Attributes are Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus, and Crime and are rated 1-3
• There are 4 skills tied to each of the attributes which are also rated 1-3
• There are 18 tropes and each character picks one. These are sort of templates/archetypes/personality types/alignment that grant some stat & skill bonuses and also tie in to how one wants to play their character. Examples are Bad to the Bone, Cheater, Good Samaritan, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Leader, and more. 
• Feats let you break the rules in various ways - mainly through re-rolls or avoiding an in-game cost of some kind. They are heavily tied to the mechanics of the game.

Mechanics: It's a dice pool system. It's not an add-em-up for a high total kind of system (like Star Wars d6) but it's not a look-for- individual-dice-over-a-target-number system (like Shadowrun/White Wolf/etc.) system either. You are looking for sets, or matches - like Yahtzee or King of Tokyo or the One Roll Engine (Godlike etc.). 

Difficulty is set by number of matches needed, starting with 2 as a Basic Success ranging on up to 5 for an Impossible though you can get more. There are examples of each difficulty level, a discussion of 'Double Difficulty" for more challenging or complex tasks where one success at level X might not be enough. There is also an option to convert multiple lower success levels into a single higher success level so if you needed a Critical Success (3 of a kind) but rolled 3 pairs instead you can bump that up. There are also some options on how to spend any extra successes by taking extra actions.

There is a handy odds chart in the middle of this section showing the likelihood of success with varying numbers of dice at each difficulty level. 

I can't help but think of these while I'm reading this game

There is a metacurrency called Adrenaline that can be used along the way for things like +1 dice on a on a roll. 

There is a bigger metacurrency called Spotlight that lets you just flat-out accomplish some things - no roll required like an automatic extreme success, removing a condition, or "do whatever you want" - discuss it with the GM. Sure.

There are various ways to acquire each of these during an adventure and I suspect the reason there are two of them is to avoid the "I'm saving them" problem you sometimes see in games with a mechanic like this. Here, Adrenaline is meant to be acquired and spent all through the session while Spotlight is meant to be saved for those big moments, finales with multiple explosions and the like. I get it, I'm just still not sure if we really need two of them running in parallel.

Also much like King of Tokyo (and Yahtzee) there is an option to re-roll: If you don't like your results you can re-roll, and if you don't like that roll you can go "All-In" and re-roll again. There is a downside if you had any success as you can lose those if you roll badly but there are things like Feats that give you "free" re-rolls in certain situations that do not have these negative consequences

There are additional sections on how to adjudicate failure, conditions, combat and damage and death, equipment and vehicles, chases, enemies, and how to run an Outgunned campaign. A few notes from these:

• Enemies are very abstracted and feel kind of generic as they are dice pools with a few modifiers. The GM is going to have to work hard to make enemy mook group #1 feel different from enemy mook group #2. 
• There is a dramatic clock mechanic in "Heat" which makes things more dangerous for the party as the scenario escalates. It's fairly basic but it's a good starting point.
• Plan B is a great idea for changing up a bad situation. It's described as a sort of group spotlight. There are 3 options described in the rules and each can only be used once in the course of a campaign. An example would be "Backup" where in desperate no-win circumstances an outside force shows up to help the PC's out. It's a neat idea on how to salvage a potential campaign-wrecking moment.
• Time-Outs are another campaign type mechanic that's somewhere between a planning session and a pre-finale montage where they bandage each other up, modify the cars, "make some calls", or pick up some guns. There is a list of things the PCs can do - of which they can each do two - and then we move on to the next scene. It's a cool idea and completely fitting to the genre.

 The book ends with a sample adventure and it's probably fine. I have not dug too deeply into it.

Backup!

So there is some really good action movie stuff here buuuuut ... it's just not grabbing me. 

I think a lot of it is the dice pool. Pretty much all of the mechanics revolve around adding or adjusting or manipulating the dice pool for whatever it is you're trying to do and I've seen that in other games but compared to say, Marvel Heroic, where a lot of the fun is in justifying the inclusion of a particular power or trait or quirk there really is not a lot of that here. It reads as just being a mechanical exercise. I realize that might change with some actual play but it's a problem for me right now.

This feeds into a dissociated mechanics issue that I'm feeling as well. The basic system is stat + skill = the number of dice in the pool which can then be modified and I believe the GM (or NPC capabilities) is just setting the target numbers - the players make all of the rolls. Gear is typically a modifier to a die pool, Conditions are a modifier to dice pool, and even Adrenaline is likely to be used for that as well. Between that and all of the abstract approaches to things (like opponents) built into the game I'm not sure it's going to feel particularly visceral. I think my players are going to be busy focusing on the dice and not on the "fiction" of the scene. 

Remember - it started over a car

So yes, I should probably run it but I don't especially want to burn a session for my group to try it. It's not a bad game at all - I suspect for the right group it will hit all the right notes and it covers a lot of the expectations of the genre. That said I think there is a need in this kind of game for some specifics, particularly when it comes to gear. Players (my players at least) might be OK with a "car" with a speed enhancement but they would get a lot more excited and have a more specific mental image if they had say a 1987 Firebird Formula 350 with a supercharger. They'd be a lot more interested in a ".44 Magnum" than a "Revolver". Things like that. Even a feat to have a "signature" weapon or vehicle that does something special would be better. Right now an Ace is good at doing things with vehicles and a particular type of vehicle especially but their personal chosen & modified vehicle is just a generic thing with possibly extra weapons or armor added on. It's the same with some of the other Roles and guns. It's ... bland. Mechanically effective and quick in play - but bland, and that's the last thing I want in an action movie RPG. Give us a few specifics to hang some things on in this sea of abstraction and it might help.

So, final verdict - it's a well done game for a very specific genre but it's probably just outside my target zone for what I personally would want in a game like that. If you're interested though it is definitely worth a look. If I end up running a test game I will post about it here as well.

Pew Pew! Bounty Hunters in Space

 

It occurred to me after mentioning it in last week's post that I ought to talk about PewPew as a game because it's a great little effort from one of my favorite small publishers Fainting Goat Games.  They've made a lot of interesting things over the years, particularly superhero adventures for games like ICONS.  This game was a new direction for them and I really like it.

First up it is very rules light - if you're looking for crunch and "builds" this is probably not going to work well for you. The whole thing is less than 40 pages and includes the rules, pregen characters, and an adventure. Around half of the page count is spent on opposition and NPC's and a map for the adventure. This is a full-color production as well and it looks good. I give bonus points for the "action figure" marketing on the back - this is another Fainting Goat signature item like the snack cake ads in their superhero adventures and it tells you where they are coming from.

As for the rules themselves they are simple but interesting. They are borrowed from Havoc Brigade, a game I do not know beyond what I can see on DTRPG, but I may have to look into it. In a larger sense they are borrowed from Marvel Heroic, or Cortex+. When a character needs to do something they roll a d6 looking for a 4+. Beyond that basic d6 though you are looking to build a dice pool  - one from your skills, some from your equipment, (one for each relevant piece of gear), two from each relevant drive ... you get the picture. While it is only d6's, unlike Cortex+, you can build up a pool fair quickly and each 4+ is a success and this is how the whole thing works whether you are shooting someone, flying a ship, schmoozing your way past a guard, or repairing a ground vehicle. There is not a ton of structure here beyond the building of that pool. Some things have limited uses - like the armor on the sheet up above, or medpacks and some other items noted in their descriptions. 

Your character can have a spaceship and there are some equipment you could add to it and some basic rules for space combat and ship repair. There are no points or tech levels or speed ratings here - it's more about the flavor than the technical details.

Also much like MHR there is no character creation system. There are 6+ pre-gens and the suggestion is to tweak one of them if you don't like it. This is a game meant for drop-in type use, not an extended campaign so I am OK with this.

There is metacurrency in the form of "Embrace the Chaos" (steal the GM's dice), "You Owe Me One" (re-roll your pool dice) , and "Carefully Crafted Plan" (add 2 dice to a pool)which players can use a limited number of times per adventure to really push things over the top. These are entirely genre-appropriate and look like a lot of fun.

The GM uses NPC stats when opposing the players directly and the "Chaos Pool" for general difficulty levels not tied to an active opponent or as bonuses to add to a particularly capable opponent. This is very much the Doom Pool from MHR and begins with X dice based on the situation or location and grows when the PC's screw up. The players can, once per game per character, use the chaos pool themselves for some ridiculous stunt they want to pull off. Let me use their own description and example here:

Chaos can also be used to the bounty hunters’ favor. Once per game, every character can use the chaos to their advantage. Grab all the dice in the Chaos Factor Pool (whether the GM's rolled them this turn or not) and describe some awesome but unlikely thing that happens that benefits your character or describe an amazing action your character is doing. (For example: it turns out the infant that is your bounty secretly has telekinetic powers and uses them to oppose the attack of the monster who was about to kill you.) The GM rolls against you at the base suspicion value for the area.

After the PC has used the Chaos Factor Pool, it refreshes to the default level for the area.

I think that communicates the spirit of this game pretty well.

Some of this will be an exercise in justification - again like MHR - but is likely to be less strict about it since it is an even looser style of game.  There is no grid or range incrementation or variable difficulty levels - a lot of this is eyeballed by the GM and defaults to "roll more 4-ups's than the other guy" which should work just fine for this. 

The whole idea here is a one-off adventure for a team of bounty hunters in a vaguely Star-Warsian-Outer-Rim type setting. There are at least 3 other add-ons in this line and each one pretty much contains the rules and basic info plus an adventure and some other odds and ends - a random character generator, a random adventure generator, etc. As a fill-in game I think it's set up with just enough "system" to be fun without requiring a bunch of rules-reading and explanation and going through character generation. It's much more "pick something you like and get going".  I have not tried it out yet but it is on the short list for the next opportunity.

For those who want more structure there is a Savage Worlds version of these same books which runs off of that system and converts everything to those stats. The adventure is converted to a Savage Worlds One-Sheet format and is a little more structured. I can see a lot of groups preferring that so it's great that that version is out there and it would nicely supplement an ongoing Star Wars style campaign with some drop-in NPCs and an adventure complete with map. Given some of the crossover potential in Savage Worlds campaigns - like Rifts - having a one-shot like this with a limited scope and a set scenario can be a godsend and a heck of a lot of fun. 

When I get a chance to actually try it out I will post about it here.