Super Saturday - City of Titans

The first of the City of Heroes successor projects is in funding mode.

Their site is here. The Kickstarter is here. The video is right down below:

I think it looks pretty promising. I'll be kicking in. There are other projects in the works but these guys organized very quickly when the shutdown was announced and have been consistent and open about what they want to do and are clearly out in front right now. Thumbs up and good luck!

Super Friday - M&M 10th Anniversary Edition

The big new shiny arrived a few days back:

This is one of the few Kickstarter's I have backed. I am completely satisfied with the result. I've had the PDF for some time but I held off reading it because I wanted to explore the book for the first time, not the PDF.

I like the game, I like the company, and I trust them to get things done - and they did!

It is very nice though I'm worried about that slick paper cover getting torn up - this will not be the book the kids use when we play.

It has all of the rules form the standard book plus about 130 pages. The new material includes the quickstart generator for a random character creation option, some essays on this origin and history of the game, a section on Freedom City and Emerald City and an adventure set in each, and closes out with some old classic characters reworked for M&M 3E.

I'm very happy to have updated stats for AB, Omega, Superior, and the like. It makes for a nice guide for additional conversions too.

Some version of this book is going to be on sale too. If you already have the MM3 Handbook or the DC Adventures handbook you may not need it - but you may well want it. It's pretty nice. Also note: some RPG Kickstarters do actually work out alright!

Now, to get that M&M campaign fired up...

An Experiment in Gamer Motivation

I know gamer types/motivations have been a thing for a long time now, since Strike Force at the very least - thanks Mr. Allston for that entire book - but to me it's always been one of those theoretical things that I never thought had any practical use. Then I finally got around to reading the 4E Strategy Guide and there's a nifty little ten question test in it that is supposed to identify your gamer motivation. Being an old school DM at heart I did exactly what you would expect - I made my players take it.

Now I've known most of my players for a very long time.You can read the basic rundown here.

• I've known Lawful Steve for 25 years now and there's almost always been a game on that we were playing in together or one that I was running and he was playing
• Eclectic Dave goes back 17 years, I think. He's almost always involved in at least one of our current games as well.
• Mastermind Will has been around since my first D&D 3E campaign so about 12 years now.
• Lady Blacksteel I have known for about 15 years but she's only been playing for 5.
• Barbarian Warlord Jeremy is the newest member of the group but even he's been in for about 3 years plus.

So I'm not running a new table here. In normal life they're a mixture of office workers, accountants, amateur thespians, techie guys, parents, married guys, single guys - a fairly normal mix of things. In gaming it's pretty much D&D first and then if we can work something else in we will give it a try. Steve, Dave, and Jeremy have all run other games at some point and I've played in some of those. Most of the time when we get together though, I'm the DM and they are the players. After this much time I think I know them and their gaming preferences pretty well but I've never tried to officially test and score any of this stuff - it's always seemed kind of pointless, but I thought about it and figured it was worth 15-20 min out of our game session to see what came of it. 

My group's general tendencies:

• Plan A or "Frontal Assault is a perfectly viable strategy"
• One or two characters may be good at sneaking but it's rarely going to be used other than to find which door to kick in first
• At least one will be good at talking but it's not the main way the team operates. That same character generally also has some kind of mind control power as well so they're not in it for the conversation.
• The most memorable sessions generally involve some kind of fight where some ridiculous tactic or stunt or plain stroke of luck worked out spectacularly or failed just as spectacularly. Also: fun with dead dragons.

Heck, you can read a few of the session reports and get a feel for how things usually go. My thinking was that doing this little quiz might reveal something I had not noticed or some hidden interest that one of them had that I could include in our current games, but I wasn't expecting major revelations.

The results tie into eight different "gamer motivations":

1. Actor
2. Explorer
3. Instigator
4. Power Gamer
5. Slayer
6. Storyteller
7. Thinker
8. Watcher

I'm sure you can figure out the details. 

The test is 10 questions long, there are 4 answers to each question, and there is no set pattern to the answers (i.e. "A" is not always "Slayer"). I read the questions out loud and had my players write down their answers without a big group discussion. Scoring is that 2-3 answers for a certain type means it's a secondary motivation for that player while 4 or more mean it's a primary.

So what did I get back?

• 4 of my 5 players are "Instigators" - one as primary, three as secondary. Yeah. The sh*t I get to deal with...
• 3 of my 5 are "Slayers" - two primary, one secondary. No big surprise there.
• 3 of my 5 (not all the same three as above) have "Power Gamer" as secondary. Not a huge surprise either.
• Beyond these I had one Actor secondary, one Storyteller secondary, one Thinker secondary and one Watcher secondary. 

What does that mean? ACTION BABY! They are a very action oriented group. they don't want a long backstory, they don't want the complete history of the region, they want to DO SOMETHING! Exposition is best presented in sentences, not paragraphs. 

Definitions form the book:

• Instigator: "You enjoy making things happen. You prefer action over planning, and sometimes make deliberately bad choices to see what happens." My addition: "The clock is ticking - to boredom or potentially disastrous choices if you leave them alone too long"
• Slayer: "You just love to kill monsters and you prefer combat to any other situation." My addition: it's the point of the whole game and most of the stories later involve what they fought and how that fight went"
• Power Gamer: "You like to optimize your character, choosing the best mechanical elements to create a perfect build." My addition: "Which one does more damage" is a common question when leveling up.

Any big surprises here? Not really, though the Instigator factor was higher than I expected. Lady Blacksteel actually had 3 secondaries and no primary. I'm not sure what that means, but they fit right in with the rest of the group. I'd say my Instigators are more disciplined than some - I've had a wild child before and that player would do deliberately crazy stuff and typically played characters like an illusionist thief that were good at getting into trouble. My current crew is not nearly as random as that.  

I was a little disappointed at the lack of "Explorer" - I tend to think that I have that in my own mix somewhere but apparently none of my players does.

To feed this what do I do?

• For the Slayer I try to come up with varied and interesting opponents. I think I've done OK here, but they hate it when their character bites it.
• For the Power Gamer I allowed pretty much any class/race combo in 4E in my latest campaign and I don't say no to much as they advance - if it's in the game it's fair game. 4E's character builder and inherent balance makes this a lot easier to deal with. That said they hate it even more when their character bites it.
• For the Instigator I try to come up with interesting environments, from terrain to NPC's, that change fairly often and have different ways to interact with the PC's. Red Hand of Doom has a fairly varied set of scenarios and I've mixed it up way beyond the original module. The tools for 4E make this fairly easy to do when prepping and skill challenges give us a nice mechanical structure to work around. 

Now I don't know that I succeed on every one of these in every session but I do keep them in mind. They all really just involve variety and 4E specifically has a fairly good set of mechanics and systems for keeping that variety, at least in ways my players seem to like. 

Thoughts on what else I could run for them:

• Could I run Pendragon for this group? Probably not, and I'm 100% sure D&D is a better fantasy game for what they like anyway. A fantasy Savage Worlds game would probably work well.
• Shadowrun? Not as much as I thought at one time. It does have a lot of action but it also has a lot of planning, scouting, and NPC interaction and that's clearly not or main thing.
• Traveller - combat is deadlier and less flashy, and a lot of the game ties into accounting or engineering. Probably not.
• Trek? Old school two-boots-to-the-chest diplomacy Trek maybe but it will be a tough sell.
• Star Wars? it didn't go that well last time but I'm wondering if it's because Saga is a little heavy. A d6 Star Wars game might give them all the action they want and still have fun for builders.

Trendy Stuff:

• 13th Age - less tactical combat, more story game elements - uh oh. Wrong direction. probably not "better" than our current games.
• Numenera - lots of emphasis on exploration, less detail on combat and action, less complex character construction - all of these scream "NO" to me right now. 
• D&D Next - Less character detail but still fairly combat-intensive. I suspect it would be alright.
• Pathfinder - Detailed characters, detailed combat, lots of quirky options for race/class/feats/skills. This would be just fine - one reason we're running it as Game #2

I also feel it in my bones that this set of motivations and personalities would have a blast with a superhero RPG. Action heavy, detailed character builds, lots of funky abilities to mess with things - right! Plus the Necessary Evil campaign went really well a few years back (it might as well be tailor made for my group) and our limited runs with M&M went well too so I have some evidence alongside. One of these days...

Now of course, all of this information and reflection leads me to what I think is an obvious question: I've been playing with these guys for years - do the preferences shape the game, or does the game shape the preferences? Are they Instigating Power Slayers because that's what they like to do and I run a game that caters to that, or do I run a game that caters to that so they develop a taste for it? If it's not DM-inflicted then  how much of it is self-generated and how much is rubbing off from the other players? The general thought seems to be that players come to the table with these motivations built-in and stick around if the game feeds into them or leave if it does not. I am not convinced that it's that one-sided. I'm juts not sure of the real breakdown.

That's probably enough of this for one post. Tomorrow, back to the Savage Swords!

This is a problem?

Savage Swords of Impiltur - Session 26:

So, uh, yeah, bit of a timeline jump here. "When you find yourself deep in a hole, stop digging." My last session summary on my "main campaign" was in March of this year and it was for session ... 6. We've been playing the whole time, I just stopped writing up the summaries, and if you let that kind of thing go it can pile up on you. To head off any further growth in my backlog, I decided I needed to start posting the more current stuff as it happens, and I'll work on catching up later. Think of it as artsy flashback/timeline tomfoolery, like "Lost", or BSG's "One Year Later" episode. It's actually more than a year between #6 and #26 in real time, and quite a bit less than that in game time. Enough...

Our Heroes (now 10th level):

• Dar Bloodmane, Shifter Paladin
• Lt. Alex Gravis, Water Genasi Warlord
• Zarra, Drow Vampire
• Gartok, Dwarf Earth Warden
• Izenheim, Dwarf Cleric of Marthammor Duin
• No-Name, Elf Bow Ranger 

Roster changes:

• Dar Bloodmane left the material plane back in Session 17 under circumstances to be described in that post. As a clue to avoid any unnecessary stress on the reader, the most relevant word in his demise is "Behir". Dar's replacement is Torin Tsai, Half Orc Slayer

• Izenheim left the party a bit earlier, claimed by that all too common enemy of gaming - "family"

• As Gartok and The Elf with no Name were both out for this session, Apprentice Blaster filled in with Maximus, Human Fighter (Gladiator).

We begin in the city of Brindol, Impiltur, Faerun. Still stinging from their failure to stop the summoning ritual that allowed an aspect of Tiamat into the world, our heroes use the old portal once again to return to the city. They are greeted by Lord Cartwright and his aide who are relieved to see them alive but have an urgent problem: the Lion Knights of Brindol are battling the encroaching Red Hand army to try and stave off a siege but a group of hill giants has separated from the main army. One mob is attacking one of the gates while others bombard a section of the city wall with boulders. The city watch is being overwhelmed and the rest of the defenses are still being organized - can the heroes help? With barely the time to catch their breath, the party agrees to check the raid.

Gravis wants a tactical advantage if they are going to be fighting giants and requests the aid of the Tiri-Kotor elves who have forces in the city. They agree and soon the team is mounted up and airmobile. they sweep over the wall and swoop in behind the giants attacking the gate. It's a small force of only four brawny giants swinging a battering ram, a shaman-looking leader, and his pet - a monstrous scorpion beast.

The defenders of Brindol dismount and charge! Torin, Gravis, and Maximus cut down the shaman almost immediately while Zarra uses her uncanny charms to dominate the giant scorpion pet, turning it against the other giants before leaping into the fray herself! Not the brightest of beings, and befuddled at the sudden assault and their turncoat pet the giants die to a man in front of the gate. The heroes are battered but driven to carry on, so they whistle for the owls and remount to extinguish the second assault.

The second group of hill giants is gathered in the ruins of an ancient shrine outside the city walls. They are picking up everything from fallen masonry to grave stones and hurling them at the wall and seem to be having quite the time doing so - it's possible alcohol is involved. The party is soon over though as the owls drop down out of the sky and five deadly warriors close in around them like the fingers of a deadly fist! under Gravis' direction Maximus leaps in and draws their attention (gladiators!) while Zarra and Torin rip into the behemoths with no mercy. The giants fight back with clubs and boulders, knocking some of the heroes for considerable distances but the counteroffensive is unstoppable and this fight can only end in one way. Soon enough the giants are down while the party rests for a moment. Soon enough they call the owls down and take flight back to the city, mission accomplished - for now.

DM Notes: This was a get-things-going-again session after schedule issues caused us to miss most of the summer. I normally want a minimum of four players to run (I build the crunchy stuff for 5 players - bring 4 and I have an advantage, bring 6 and they have an advantage) and that's been the rule since very early on. After losing one of our regulars though it got a little tougher to keep the schedule going if more than one person couldn't make it. Three were available so I drafted Apprentice Blaster to fill in with a new character and he did really well as 4E fighters are fairly complex in play with the whole marking thing. 

The session before this was a really tough marathon fight that ended with mixed results but the players felt like they had not succeeded. I wanted to keep it fairly simple with a straight-up (and more level-appropriate) fight to let us all get back in the groove again and that's exactly how it went. No time for dilly-dallying around with social interaction or skill challenges - we're under attack! Help us! 

(That other stuff will come next time)

One technical note: adding decent mobility to this all-melee party made it incredibly vicious when it came to inflicting harm. A fighter, plus a tac warlord and two nasty melee strikers meant they were not at all afraid to mix it up in close and they were easily peeling triple digit hit points off of the poor giants every round. Nasty. They are truly Savage.

So in the end the city is being surrounded but the heroes have returned and quite directly and visibly established themselves as the top defenders of Brindol. Tune in tomorrow for Session 27!

Wrath of the Righteous - Session 1

Note: There are spoilers below. There are always spoilers in my summaries but since this is a new adventure series, not an old one or a homebrew I thought I ought to specifically mention this.

Heroes gather in the crusader city of Kenabres on the edge of the Worldwound. The annual festival of Armasse draws in scholars and warriors from all over the region. Among them are four of special note:

• Relyn Steelguard, young Paladin of Iomedae
• Graidin Cratchet, aspiring Wizard
• Arken, newly minted Cavalier of the Order of the Lion, in service to Queen Galfrey of Mendev
• No-Name, Dragon Sorcerer

After gathering in Clydwell Plaza at noon for the opening ceremonies for the festival the characters find themselves awakening in darkness, battered and covered in dust. Their memories gradually return as they begin to  collect themselves. As the festival was about to begin, there was an explosion, then a mighty flame and lightning wrapped Balor swooped in as the silver dragon xxx threw off her human shape and blasted out of the crowd to meet it. Things went badly from there, as more demons appeared, some of massive size, smashing buildings aside. As the crowd scattered, the dragon was taking the worst of it, but still managed to magically break our heroes fall as the square collapsed. While the darkness closed in, the last sight for the plummeting crusaders was the demon warlord hoisting the severed head of the dragon for all to see.

Now, awakened, battered, and worried about might be going on above them our heroes discover that most of the people around them are dead, though a few have survived. One, a female human scout has a broken leg. Another, an elven mage was blinded by a demonic slash. A third human male seems to be physically undamaged but has a rather unfriendly attitude and is anxious to find his way home. The group pokes around the rubble, splints her leg, finds her a crutch, and bandages the wizard's gashed eyes. They also decide to travel together to find a way back up to the city.

Exploring the caverns beneath the city is a slow business, and there are signs of the upheaval everywhere, but they do make progress. Though some vermin is dispatched and Relyn suffers a venemous snakebite, there is no sign of civilization until the party discovers a small shrine to Torag. The shrine turns out to have one "inhabitant" - the skeletal remains of its builder and priest who is now an undead creature! The foul thing is destroyed quickly and the party tries to set things right, even though none of them follow Torag. That night they dream about the shrine, and the life of the sole dwarf who chose the spot, built it, and worshipped in it alone for decades until despair and madness turned him from his path. The next day the heroes take their time restoring it to a proper state before moving on.


DM notes: This was the first part of "The Worldwound Incursion" and it kicks things off with an "en media res" style introduction. Knowing that 1st level PC's are not really up for a frontline role in a demon invasion, they get dropped into the mysterious caves beneath the city and have to find their way up into the  light again. It's not really a railroad as it happens before the game starts, and that makes the difference for me.

The NPC's in the adventure stayed mostly in the background as my players are old school and don't have a ton of use for them. They did arm the limping female with a bow so she could keep a lookout, and there was some conversation but their focus is on getting out, not making lifelong friends and I'm not going to force anything on them. I present what's there, the players act as they see fit.

This adventures does not have the usual kobolds or goblins as low level opponents. It starts out with mostly vermin type monsters and that's what they fought. Combat in PF goes quickly at low levels so I won't go into round by round details - no PC's or NPC's died. The poisonous snake gave us a chance to refresh on PF's poison rules but the Paladin survived without too much drama. Staying overnight in the shrine also let us review the healing rules - to some dismay. We'll just have to see how that holds up.

Production-wise I'm running this one with Hero Lab for character building  then Combat Manager for running the fights. As we started the first fight I realized that I didn't have a file for one PC as he had made his character in PC Gen. No problem - I whipped him up in HL in maybe 5 minutes and threw him right in too. It's a different kind of prep work but it's still less hassle than printing out my monster stats and notes. Also: No DM Screen, all open rolls. It didn't make a huge difference in this session but it might down the road.

Overall it was a good session, the players got along alright, and the mechanics were not a problem. We're all looking forward to the next session and there is a chance one more player joins in - who is already being pressured to bring in a cleric, for for it's thematic appropriateness and for the healing. Session 2 is this coming weekend so I'll post about it next week.

Motivational Monday

Cheap Shots

A few things that caught my eye on DriveThruRPG:

• "Moon Dust Men" - It's Kenneth Hite, it's for Gumshoe and you're chasing aliens in the 1970's for some reason - it's bound to be weird. I've been hearing about Gumshoe for a while now and I couldn't tell if I needed another book or what but I went ahead and spent my $2.95 this one to see. It's not complete - you need one of the other bigger Gumshoe games to get the rules - but it looks like a good enough treatment of the investigating-UFO-crashes-in-1978 genre if that's anyone's thing.

• Monster Hunter International RPG - looking here this is apparently a licensed game based on a book series that is using the Hero System! It's been awhile since I've seen anything licensed or new for Hero so I was kind of pumped. Then I started reading that it has the setting AND complete Hero System rules in a 300 page book ... hmmm ... that seems ... unlikely. Considering Hero 5th editon's core book was 372 pages, how could anyone fit a decent setting plus those rules into that size of a book? Then I checked Champions Complete ... and it's only 240 pages! OK, maybe this is possible. Maybe they finally have Hero moving in a more sane direction than it was going. It's a pleasant surprise. I'm not buying this particular book, but it's a nice thing to see.

• "100 Hungarian Sounding Names" - WTF? Is that a product or a google search? It's only 50 cents, but seriously, you would have to have internet service to get this product, and if you can do that you can type "Hungarian names" into your favorite search engine and have in seconds. Like this page. Beyond that, I can't think of a time I've ever said to myself "I really need a Hungarian-sounding name", although in one of my old Top Secret, James Bond, or Superhero games I might have used a few. It's a free market but this seems like effort that isn't going to see much use.

• "Evil Wizards in a Cave" - Wow, we are really scraping the bottom for adventure titles now aren't we? Not even trying anymore. Look for the sequel "More Evil Wizards in a Different Cave" coming soon. Title aside it's 88 pages long and appears to be a sandbox valley environment for OSR games - it may be fine as far as content. It's clearly no threat to my "Lots of Monsters in Really Small Rooms" megadungeon project.

Wrath of the Righteous - Campaign Prep

In case it might help someone else here's what I've been doing to get ready for the WoR campaign.

Rules Stuff - it has to be addressed so I tackled it first:

• Ability Scores: Pathfinder has several options for generating ability scores. As much as I like rolling the dice for this I thought we would try the new-school approach and make this another set of "interesting choices". I went with 20 points, which in PF terms is "High Fantasy". It gives good but not godlike scores, typically 16/15/13/12/10/8 or 17/14/12/12/10/8, slightly lower if someone wants to get rid of that 8, or more peaky if someone wants a full 18 before racial bonuses.
• Races: Core Book, standard D&D races. There are a lot of options for swapping out racial abilities in the Advanced Players Guide and I would probably let someone take them if they were interested but it didn't come up.
• Classes: Core Book + Advanced Players Guide. I included the APG mainly to bring in the Cavalier, which fits the theme of the adventure almost as well as the Paladin. I'm not a fan of all of the classes in this book, but I don't have to play any of them so it's not a real problem. When we get to the prestige class levels I'll probably add some more books to this list.
• Traits: An optional Pathfinder thing that ties into one's background, I kept them optional. Most of them took at least one and a little more flavor doesn't hurt.

As far as the rules in general I don't have enough experience with these rules to feel the need to change anything yet. I'm not going to try and solve problems that haven't come up, so we're going as-is for now. The only potential wrinkle I can see is that non-magical healing is almost as slow as in 3E and I find the whole "we'll just spend another day resting up to heal" to be a real momentum-killer in the middle of a time-sensitive adventure and throwing extra random encounters at the party to get them moving again is risky at the low levels. I'm going to ride it out for now and try not to make assumptions based on the older edition's rough spots.

Tools:

I am deliberately choosing to run this campaign using Hero Lab/PC Gen + Pathfinder Combat Manager instead of my usual on-paper approach. I've played around with it on some superhero games but not really used it for D&D. This changes some of the session prep work as most of the monster stats are already available, but I have to "build" the NPCs to use them. This is actually a positive as it means I am much more familiar with their capabilities after rebuilding them as it seems to stick better for me than just reading it off the page. It also means I can see what kind of shape my PC's are in during a fight and what resources they have expended too. So far I am enjoying it a lot.

Also, I'm not using a screen for this one. I always use a screen - except for ICONS - and have for years. This time it's rolling in the open, let the dice fall etc etc. I'm not big on fudging anyway, and with most of the monster stats on the laptop screen there's not much to conceal. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Prepping a Published  Adventure:

I read it once all the way through before doing anything else for the campaign This initial read-thru is really just to see what it's about - I read it about like I would read a book. Does it look like fun? Does it make sense? Is there any stupid sh*t  or things my players are going to hate in it?

Most of the things my players hate boil down to "forced railroading", stuff like the trap or fight that automatically knocks everyone out, etc. Most of the stupid sh*t boils down to a plot pivot or a writer being overly cute. I'm sure most of you know what I mean.

This adventure had no real problems. It begins with a somewhat forced situation and is fairly linear but then pretty quickly widens out into a sandbox set in a ruined city before focusing back down to a major confrontation with evil. I'm willing to accept a narrow beginning to kick off a new 1st level campaign and I like that it eases up soon after. The structure is good, the events taking place are interesting, and it does feel like there is a point to it all in my opinion.

A week later I read through the first half again from a "what are my players going to be doing" perspective. I look at how much plot and how much freedom the players will have. I look at traps and monsters to see what's in the mix, stats,  and how they might work together. I look over the maps and see how everything connects, sequences of  and if I understand the layout of each dungeon or wilderness area or city. 

Maps are critical. For a dungeon, maps show the connections between encounters and pretty much define the choices available to the players at any given time. Maps are also where sandbox adventures tend to fail, whether it's a printing error, a disconnect between the key and the map, or a simple lack of clarity. If I look at two maps and can't tell how Map A connects to Map B (where are the stairs to the next level? Where is this building on the city map? Where is this monster lair on the overland map?) then it's a problem, and it happens more than it should.This adventure looks good so far.

Monsters are important but are easier to replace or fix than almost anything else. I think I have spent 57% of the last 3 years of game time running kobolds. From Basic to 4E I have run kobolds. If this adventure featured kobolds I was probably going to swap them out. Fortunately this was not a problem. There are also plenty of notes about how different enemies in certain areas will cooperate, or not, and why, and that's how it should be.

One somewhat different aspect is that there are some NPC's that go along with the PC's for the early part of the adventure. They are higher level, but each is handicapped in some way so as not to overpower the party. they are capable enough to not just be helpless victims, but their individual problems keep it under control. The whole point is that the PC's relationships with the NPC's as it develops during the early adventure can open up some good and bad things down the road. It's interesting, but I' m glad it's limited and not assumed to be continuing all the way through the thing.

The only thing I didn't really like - and that's probably the wrong word - was that there is a heavy focus on one or two NPC's gender and orientation. I don't care about it on the surface, but instead of "like" let's say I think it's overkill and largely a waste of space for an NPC in a D&D game. Current gender is relevant, sure. The fact that it used to be different doesn't seem relevant at all as I can't see that coming up in a convrsation with strangers (the PC's) in the middle of a fight with monsters. Orientation, well, frankly that doesn't come up much in my games and I can't see a campaign that focuses on a desperate, heroic crusade to stop a demon invasion having a whole lot of time for worrying about that anyway. Sure, go ahead and note that these two female NPC's are married (and faithful), fine, but I don't know that I need a full page or more of text describing the entire history of their relationship. It's not a huge problem but it seemed like an odd sidetrack for an otherwise tightly written adventure.

Anyway, this one is a good one and I don't really see a need to change anything. Sure, I may retcon some relationships between certain PC's and NPC's as they are encountered, but the maps are solid, the monsters are not the usual fare, the plot stuff makes sense, the sandbox part is handled well, and the NPC's are well done. I don't mind a little railroading to kick a new campaign off "en media res", especially with a new mix of players and a new system to worry about. 

If I was changing something I typically use post-it notes on the relevant pages or I just rewrite the entire section in my notes and note that down in the book. I haven't needed to here yet but we'll see what develops in play.

Finally, a day or two before the first game I went through the entire adventure and made sure the monsters were all available in my tool of choice (Combat Manager) and if they were not (such as some of the monsters with class levels) then I built them in the tool. It's a little work but it's fun and makes things a lot easier during the game. The same goes for the friendly NPC's too - if it has stats it goes into the machine.

That might seem like a fair amount of work but it doesn't feel like it - and if it does then that's a warning sign. For me knowing an adventure inside and out is the key to a successful run. Writing your own means you are automatically familiar with it. The published stuff has a lot of advantages but this is not one of them - you have to make it your own on some level. Reading it, making some notes, putting some stuff into a program - this is what works for me. I'll let you know how it plays out.

Freedom City: Year One

The concept is to follow a number of new heroes during their first year of being superheroes. This is not a new idea, but one difference here is that I would set it in Freedom City, which unlike most of the comic book stories of this type already has a well-established and well-known super team known as the Freedom League. This would give the new heroes something to play against - are they aspiring to membership? Do they see the league as allies or competition? They are not the first heroes, nor are they the most powerful, at least at first. Then there is the opposite question ; how does the league see them? I don't normally like to play up an NPC group all that much when a campaign begins as it can make your players feel like they're playing the B or C team but I think I can make it work as a positive in this campaign. To set this interplay up one of the character creation rules would be that these new characters cannot have any defined relationship with the Freedom league or any of its members - we will develop that in play.

For players who don't want to play rookie heroes I came up with an option mostly inspired by Dark Knight Rises: you can play a hero coming out of retirement but it's been years, probably a lot of years, since he was active. This will take a little more background work to weave in but there is a lot to work with in Freedom City so I don't think it will be a problem. In this case the character may once have been a member of the league but resigned and has not been in contact with them for years.I'm also going to need some creative use of Disads/Complications/Limitations to reflect this whole state of affairs. I'm thinking something like Deadlands "Veteran o' the Weird West" where you get extra advancements but have to draw a card which tells the DM what interesting effects are lingering on from your greater experience.

Timeline-wise I have been thinking about moving things back and setting it right after Centurion dies (or right before) instead of 10-20 years later as in the book. He might be the reason some of the heroes do what they do, and regardless of the exact timing the chaotic aftermath of Omega's assault would be a good time for new heroes to appear. I like the idea of giving the players a chance to make some personal connection between their characters and the self-sacrificing Roman Superman of the setting - I mean, what's the point of having that in the background if you can't hook into it, right, and what better finale (or kickoff) than a dimensional invasion and a big sacrifice? It's there, it seems like I should use it for something! That would also let me use the "history" in the book as an outline for events for a decade or so if I want to use them. Moving beyond Year One we could look at our runs as the "big events" of a year or so in the hero business (kind of like Pendragon) and advance the campaign calendar at whatever rate we choose using out-of-session talk to cover the in-between times. Comic books aren't all that linear or consistent when it comes to timelines so I'm trying to come up with a looser approach to that whole thing. I don't need a bunch of mechanics around this just something I can communicate to the players. In the end I may just go with the default timing of the 2E Freedom City book and give up trying to outsmart myself with this but at the moment it's still something I'm working through.

So nothing earth-shatteringly original but a little more structured than than the way I usually begin a campaign.  With some of the published adventures to kick things off, then detours through whatever personal agendas develop in play, and then a "Season 1 Finale" - perhaps using Time of Crisis if I go with the more standard timeline - I could arrange a decently satisfying run. By the time we run through all this there's a good chance we're into next year and there's a new 3E version of Freedom City out presumably with a timeline advance, and we could jump things forward a few if we felt like it or just play through and see where our version of the city goes.

The Non-Dungeon Stuff Update

It's been pretty D&D-intensive around here lately with the combination of Next, Pathfinder, and the ongoing 4E game - and there is more coming - but I wanted to talk about the other stuff.

• Icons: nothing new really. I'm reading Stark City but we haven't tried to do anything with the game for a few months now. I may turn SC over to one of the apprentices to see if they want to try running something. Team-Up did finally come out but I'm not going to worry about it until we start playing more.
• Marvel Heroic: The boys want to continue our Antarctic adventure but we haven't had time or have decided to play something else instead. these things come in surges and right now we're "surging" on D&D type games. It will come back around to this at some point though.
• Savage Worlds: If we run anything here it will probably be Deadlands. I have an outline for campaign but I don't have a timeslot for it. Someday I'd like to pick up our Necessary Evil game too but I don't  have a slot for that either. And of course there is always Weird War 2 which pushes a bunch of buttons for me. Ah well, SW is in the "want-to" bin right now more than anything else.
• Gamma World: I finally picked up the last box for the 2010/2011 edition of GW, "Legion of Gold" which expands the rules options in some nice ways and completes the campaign begun in the main boxed set with a trip to the moon of gamma terra. It looks interesting and one of these days we will play through it.
• Vague interests, nothing concrete: Traveller, Trek, Star Wars, Rifts, Shadowrun - the usual suspects, always interested but never enough to actually bump something else and start a game.  

The one non-D&D thing we have played semi-regularly (though there's been a gap for the last month or so) is Mutants and Masterminds. It's been all 3E this year but despite my proclamation a few months back I'm back to leaning towards running a 2E game because I sat down and worked out an outline using the published material I have and realized I could probably run for a year on it alone. Given that pile of plots, stats, and maps, and the near-zero prep time, why am I not running this? 

I have a concept in mind I am calling "Freedom City: Year One" which is comic book terms would be following the adventures of a group of brand new heroes who all appear in the same one-year period and begin careers as superheroes in the shadow of the well-established and well-known Freedom League. No, it's not super-original but it is more specific "concept-wise as opposed to my usual "make up some heroes and we'll figure it out" approach. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, yes, I am working on figuring out a timeslot to run this alongside my "dungeon overload" of late 2013.