Author Archives: Rick Neal

What the frak?

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So, something interesting happened on Friday night.

I had a bunch of friends over, and we played the Battlestar Galactica boardgame. It was a lot of fun, as usual, but I messed up in setting the game up – I mistakenly added an extra Cylon loyalty card to the mix. That meant, in a five-person game, we had three cylons and two humans.

But we thought we had three humans and two cylons.

When the first two cylons revealed themselves, we were in decent shape – we’d jumped a distance of five, we had no cylon ships on the board, no damage on the ship, and all our resources except morale were above the red line, and morale was just into the red. I was Admiral (and human), and the President and I were working closely together to keep things under control. I thought we were going to make it.

Then the President revealed that he was a cylon, too.

Now, on one hand, that sucked, because the three cylons just took us apart effortlessly.

But it was also very cool, because we hadn’t been expecting it.

It speaks well to the balance and playtesting of the game that the addition of one extra cylon to the game really tips things in their favour. Of course, Fantasy Flight Games is known among our group for it’s interesting and powerful game balance features.

But I’ve got to say that knowing how many cylons are in the game does take some of the edge off – it gives the players metadata that can be used to make judgements, decisions, and guesses that would not be available to the characters*. The sheer surprise of the third cylon really made the game come alive**, and it made for a very exciting game.

I don’t know that there’s a way to incorporate the surprise of extra cylons into the game while keeping the balance intact. I can’t think of one off the top of my head.

But I think it would be very, very cool.

And, for the record, I have never once got to be a cylon in the game.

 

 

*Yeah, I know. That’s a real, whiny, roleplayer kind of complaint. But what can I say? I’m a roleplayer.

** For the two rounds that it lasted after the revelation.

Farewell, Dave Arneson

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1947-2009

When I was in high school, first playing Dungeons & Dragons, lo, these many years past, Dave Arneson was how you established your geek cred.

See, everyone knew about Gary Gygax – I mean, even my parents knew who Gary Gygax was. But you had to be a real geek to know who Dave Arneson was.

Our hobby owes some of its most fundamental basics to Dave Arneson. From the vast body of geek lore that I absorbed, it seems that it was Dave who took the first step to build the idea of modern roleplaying games. He suggested the idea of single characters, he came up with the idea of gaining ability through play, he built Blackmoor, the first ever campaign world – really, he came up with the idea of campaign worlds.

Now he’s gone.

Let’s take a moment to remember what he left us, and say thank-you.

Roles, Optimization, and Building Characters in 4E

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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So, here’s the thing.

Back when 4E first came out, one of my friends and I had a conversation about the builds they present for each character class. He was talking about optimal builds for individual classes, and I was talking about options for creating the kind of character you want to play.

We had a bit of a disconnect over the issue, because we were coming from two different sets of assumptions, and weren’t really talking about the same things at all when we talked about building characters. He was coming from a World of Warcraft mindset, where there is* a right way and a wrong way to build a character that works in the system. I was coming at it from a tabletop game mindset, where there isn’t a right way and a wrong way to build a character as long as it fits with your concept.

One of the words my buddy would throw around was “optimized” and it’s various forms.

“I’m trying to optimize my fighter,” he would say.

“Optimize for what?” I’d ask.

He’d blink at me, and say, “Optimize him for being a fighter.”

I’d blink at him, and say, “He’s already a fighter.”

And round we’d go.

What he eventually bludgeoned into my skull was that, when he said “optimize,” he meant “choose the correct build elements to be the best at what the role entails.”

Which led me to ask, “Well, what do you want him to do?”

“I want him to be a good defender.”

And we were off again.

These sorts of discussions have led me to do a lot of thinking about the way you build characters in 4E, and what things the game seems to encourage.

Roles

I was very leery about the idea of roles in 4E. When people started talking about them online, I got nervous that they were going to be very restrictive, very rigid, and very limiting. The idea that each class would be slotted into one of only four party roles sounded way too much like a video game, where the limitations of the medium lead to a narrowly-defined play experience.

I like my pen-and-paper RPGs to be open, and rollicking, and full of choice. I like the rules to open up possibilities, not shut them down. I want the character concept of the player, and not the design limitations of the rules, to shape the build of the character. I didn’t want a bunch of cookie-cutter classes, where this class does exactly what that class does, but wears a different coloured hat.

So I was looking long and hard at the implementation of the roles in the PHB when it came out. And it turns out I didn’t find them limiting at all.

The thing that I discovered about the roles in play is that they are a useful starting point for your character. Each character tends to spread out from the primary role into at least one secondary role as they develop, which really increases the variety in characters of the same class. The PHB2 acknowledges this head on in the class write-ups, talking about which secondary roles the individual classes will fulfill the easiest.

For example, in my Storm Point game, I’ve got a fighter, a rogue, a cleric, a warlord, a ranger, and a swordmage. That’s two defenders, two leaders, and two strikers. But the fighter has concentrated on powers that let him move his opponents around the battlefield, giving him a strong secondary role as controller. The other defender, the swordmage, concentrates on movement and damage, giving him aspects of the striker. The cleric is doing his best to double as a striker, and the warlord, ranger, and rogue make good secondary defenders.

Now, the fighter is still best at his defender role – he gets up close and personal with the biggest, baddest enemy and whups it back and forth all over the battlefield, keeping it tied up and focused on him. He doesn’t do a lot of damage, and he doesn’t handle large numbers of enemies as well as a wizard would, but he’s got that monkey wrench ability that controllers have. The rogue easily dishes out more damage, but he tends to fall down a lot more if he gets caught in melee.

That’s just within one group of six players. The flexibility of the roles, and the way characters can be built to fulfill a secondary role** makes for a great deal of player choice and variety. And that’s not even getting into multiclassing.

So, like I said, the roles are a starting point, a place to begin with character creation, and it’s useful to understand what each one does. One of my worries, way back before the game was released, was that, with roles, I wouldn’t be able to play the swashbuckling fighter who relied on his agility and his rapier. And really, you can’t, using the fighter class. But if I look at the roles, I see that this concept fits the idea of the striker better than the defender, so I build the same character using the rogue class.

It’s a new way of thinking about it for me, but I’ve come to really like the idea of the roles. And the juxtaposition of role with power source gives a great way to differentiate between different classes that fulfill the same roll. The fighter and the swordmage are both defenders, but they play very differently. They feel very different. Even two arcane strikers, the warlock and the sorcerer, have a very different flavour.

And that’s all to the good.

Builds

Each character class offers a couple of builds for that class, listing feats, powers, class features, etc. that reinforce the idea of the build. I think that, as examples, they are very good for giving people ideas of what can be done with the different classes, and getting people to think about some of the synergies and combinations among the feats, powers, and features.

I don’t think they were presented very well, though.

In the class write-ups, the builds are presented in such a way as to make them seem like the only possibilities for that character class. You have to look in a section headed Creating a Character on page 52 of the PHB to actually see them explain that the builds are only suggestions, that they’re not meant to be a constraint, and that you don’t have to choose one.

With the experienced players in my Storm Point game, this wasn’t an issue. They tend to ignore anything that says they can’t create the kind of character they want, so the builds were viewed as suggestions or starting points only. Which is what they are.

In my other game, which started off as Scales of War, I had a number of newer players. If I hadn’t been careful to explain that they didn’t have to follow the build recommendations, they would have, and may have felt limited by it.

Just looking at powers alone, if a class has 4 At-Will, 4 Encounter, and 4 Daily powers available at first level, that’s 96 possible combinations at first level. Ninety-six. Not two. And then you have to factor in class features, feats, race, skills, weapon choice…

Don’t get me wrong. I think including the builds was a good idea to help people get started with the new rules. But I think that they would have been better handled if they were done like the examples of adventurers from the various races – illustrations of the kinds of things you can do as a fighter, cleric, wizard, whatever.

Which brings us to…

Optimization

How do you optimize a character?

Well, what do you want your character to do?

There are a number of optimization threads on the official Wizards of the Coast message boards. These talk in detail about how to build the “best” fighter, or cleric, or what have you. They focus primarily on powers and feats that reinforce each other in order to provide synergies and compiled benefits.

What I like about these threads is that they have a multitude of different ideas for a given class. They have acknowledged and embraced the idea that there is no one right way to build a fighter; it all depends on what you want the fighter to do.

What I don’t like about these threads is not a problem with the threads, but a problem with the basics of the game design and the assumptions behind it. I’m going off on a little tangent here, so bear with me.

The majority of rules pertaining to characters are combat-oriented. Most of the 4E rules revolve around combat. The default assumption of the game is combat. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the focus is, sometimes, a little too narrow.

At this point, the primary non-combat resources your character has are skills, which are chosen once and then just level up with you, and rituals, which get a little more involved but are restricted to those with the Ritual Caster feat. Powers and most feats are focused entirely on combat, and the majority of magic items are, as well.

This means that most of the optimization threads are based on optimizing your character to do something well in combat. There isn’t a lot you can do to focus and specialize your character in non-combat abilities.

And that, I think, is a limitation. Sure, the primary activity in the default D&D game is combat against monsters. And sure, you want your character to be able to hold his or her own in a fight, and pull out some cool tricks. And 4E does the cool tricks so very well.

But I miss the ability to build a character with a focus elsewhere.

This is my idea of optimization – being able to craft the abilities of the character to fit with the concept you have for the character.

Now, I know you don’t need a lot of rules for the roleplaying bits of the game, and the skill challenge rules add some structure (and a consummate reward) to non-combat situations, but there just aren’t a lot of choices for characters to make among the feats, powers, and class features that apply outside of combat. At least, not compared to the combat choices.

Anyway. That’s the problem I have with the optimization threads.

Having said that, I think that optimization really starts with having a clear concept of what you want your character to be. A strong concept that you keep in mind can inform each of your choices, whether for power or feat or whatever, and help make the character more of what you want. The ideal character for you may not be the one that does the most damage, or has the best AC, or the most fire spells. It may be the one with the broadest range of different kinds of abilities, or with the strange weapon choice, or the most spoken languages.

Optimization means making the character fit what you want it to be, sometimes in spite of lack of support from the rules.

So, What’s Your Point?

My point is that, despite the fact that I really like 4E, on the surface it can lean a bit too much towards a combat system/MMORPG feel than I generally prefer in a game system. I find it’s important for me to keep in mind that the game is not what’s in the rulebooks: the game is what happens at the table. Rulebooks can have a huge influence on that, but the responsibility for what the game is ultimately lies with those of us who play it.

I find that I can do all the things I like to do in 4E. If some of it isn’t as supported by the rules as I might like, well, there are plenty of other things that make me happy about it. And plenty of other games to play for a change of pace.

When it comes to making characters, the rules should help you bring the concept in your mind to life. Every ruleset has some sorts of restrictions that can prevent you from perfectly fulfilling your ideal, and 4E is no different in that respect. It offers a wide range of choices and customizability in the area of the game that gets the most development in the rules***, and doesn’t completely ignore the areas that were not the developers’ focus.

But your character is your responsibility. Your fun is your responsibility. Come up with a character you want to play, and then find the rules that let you do it. Take all the advice you can get, but ignore anyone who says you aren’t doing it right.

Have fun playing, or you’re doing it wrong.

 

 

*As I understand it, anyway. I don’t play WoW. I have nothing against it, but I have enough trouble trying to fit all my other hobbies into my life.

**Maybe even a tertiary one? I dunno. I’m going to be watching for it as the game goes on.

***I.E. Combat. This makes sense, as it is a central aspect of the game, and one of the more slippery elements that benefits from extensive, detailed rules. 4E does a good job of building rules that help cover a variety of situations and encourage cinematic, exciting fantasy combat.

Player’s Handbook 2 – Nice Work, Folks.

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Well, I’ve had the PHB 2 for a couple of weeks, now, and ran the World Wide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day adventure with the new material over at Imagine Games. About time I spouted off on my opinions.

In general, I want to say that I was really impressed with the overall quality and ideas presented in the book. I love it. Some bits more than others, but that’s the way with every sourcebook, right? I’m going to walk through the book section by section, but I want to talk about some of the overall things I noticed in the book.

  • One of my main complaints about 4E at the time it was released was that there weren’t enough options for my taste. Specifically, I bemoaned the fact that there was only one class that filled the Controller role. Well, now we have three, and I’m very happy about that.
  • The ways the various roles are filled by the different classes show a nice variety in approach and jazz. Even when the same power source powers the same role, such as the Warlock and the Sorcerer both being Arcane Strikers, the difference in powers and outlook really makes the two classes different in feel and play. This is a good thing.
  • A great many of the new classes work in interesting and surprising ways, giving me a lot of ideas for different characters I’d like to play. This is what I want out of a character book.
  • Nothing in the book is necessary to play 4E. You don’t need this book. But it’s a bunch of good stuff that builds on what has come before. It is a true expansion, giving new options and choices, but not required for play.

Now, on to the specifics. I’m gonna go chapter by chapter.

Introduction: The Primal Power Source

I was a little leery of how they were going to fit Primal power into the whole range of power sources, and what they could do with it outside of Druids and Barbarians. I was especially wary of how it would fit into the story elements of the gods vs. primordials background myth. Well, they made it work, and I like it. It makes for an interesting difference between Clerics and Druids, and gives a basis for an “Old Religion” style paganism in the midst of the polytheistic basic D&D religion set-up. Very flavourful, adding interesting choices, without adding too many built-in difficulties, such as rivalries between Druids and Clerics, or between the primal spirits and the gods.

Chapter One: Character Races

New races never really thrill me. Most races seem pretty bland, and there always seems to be overlap in the design goal of various races. I mean, we still get three different types of elf in the core rules (elf, eladrin, half-elf), and one almost-an-elf (halfling). Given that, I’m not very taken by the addition of the gnome, though I know there are people out there who love the little guys. The half-orc is fine for nostalgia’s sake, but I didn’t really feel the loss when it didn’t show up in the core rules. And I never cared much one way or the other about goliaths in 3E, and still don’t care much about them in 4E.

The shifter I cared about, because I’m an Eberron fan, and I really liked the way they worked in that world. I found their roles interesting and their culture rife with gaming hooks. Also, they did cool stuff when they shifted. I’m not as impressed by the new mechanics of the shifting – it requires the shifter to be bloodied, and doesn’t seem as flavourful as in 3E. The Razorclaw Shifting power doesn’t seem to make your claws very razorlike, for example. And the racial feats don’t do a whole lot to add to the flavour. It’s not that the shifters are a bad race, now; they just don’t have the same flavour that I used to like.

This is balanced by the devas. I really like the idea behind the race, which seems to be inspired by the aasimar and the kalashtar of 3E. They have an interesting background, a fun little racial ability to draw on their past incarnations, and a cool look to them. Score.

The Racial Paragon Paths are another thing that I think was really needed in the game. The requirement to either take a paragon path or take paragon multiclassing at 11th level is something that I’m still not sure I like, but adding the racial paths is certainly a step in the right direction. My only regret is that there aren’t more of them, because I’m greedy for choices, but I expect we’ll see some show up in Dragon.

Chapter Two: Character Classes

This is, of course, the meat of the book. Eight new character classes: four Primal, two Divine, two Arcane. This brings us to a nice range of four of each power source in the PHB and the PHB2, not counting the Swordmage from Forgotten Realms or the Artificer playtest. It’s a nice field of choices.

One thing that struck me was the way this book acknowledges that the four roles are not restrictive. Each class has a primary role, but can focus on different secondary roles based on their choices of power. This means that, even without multiclassing, your character can reasonably fill multiple roles. Now, it won’t be as good at the secondary role as at its primary role, but the options are there. The roles are guidelines, not straitjackets.

So, the classes.

We’ve got the return of the Barbarian, the Bard, the Druid, and the Sorcerer. Nothing terribly surprising, there, though I was very impressed by the way they implemented them in 4E. The Druid’s wildshape, the Barbarian’s rages, the Bard’s musical ability, and the Sorcerer’s innate magic, all of it was handled in very interesting and playable ways. In the WWDDGD adventure, I got to see the Barbarian in action, and it was a thing of beauty.

For new classes, we’ve got the Avenger, the Invoker, the Shaman, and the Warden. In play, the Avenger and Invoker were a lot of fun, each of them fitting into their niche nicely, but complementing each other in what they could do. I love the idea of the Shaman with a spirit companion, as well. The Warden has got one of my players drooling over the ideas it puts into his head.

All in all, the classes are a win. All of them.

I only skimmed the Paragon Paths associated with the different classes, but they each look as solid and fun as any in the PHB, giving interesting focus to the base class. Same thing with the Epic Destinies – nothing stands out as amazing, but nothing stands out as terrible, either.

Chapter Three: Character Options

The background system offered in this chapter is primarily useful for new players, and for giving idea seeds to others trying to come up with their backgrounds. Granting a minor mechanical benefit to the background is a nice way to encourage folks to come up with a backstory, and the suggestions are not overpowered. A good, if not really earthshattering, addition to the game.

The feats mainly focus on the new races and classes presented in the book, as they should, though the addition of Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise feats will be very popular with other classes, if my play groups are any example.

Not a whole lot to say about the new gear, though they have some useful charts consolidating the masterwork armour types from both the PHB and Adventurer’s Vault in a way that clears up some of the confusion about those things. New magic items are primarily for use with the new classes and races, and seem a decent assortment.

The ritual assortment is small, but has a number of good things in it. The Bard rituals are nice, and give that class a bit of the musical and language-based abilities that make the Bard feel like a Bard. The other rituals fill in some gaps that existed in the ritual list – it’s not completely filled, but it’s a nice addition, and I expect more in Arcane Power this month. The section on alternate ritual books, while short, opens up some good roleplaying possibilities for the various classes.

Appendix: Rule Updates

Very much an appendix. The section on reading a power clarifies a few things nicely, and the Stealth errata is useful, but nothing actually necessary, seeing as the errata exists in several other places. Handy, but far from essential.

 

So, that’s my take on the PHB2. A very good book that bodes well for the continuation of the game line. If they keep producing books of this quality, I will be very, very happy.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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It’s been a while since I posted anything. I blame the flu that’s still hanging on nearly two weeks later.

This past session of Storm Point, I wanted to try something a little different with the group. I wanted to give them a session where the optimal solution to their problems was not combat. Now, this can be a bit of a risk, because this group likes fighting. And bullying. And intimidation. And just generally being jerks.

But sometimes it shades a bit too close to them being an evil party, with the underlying assumption that they can do whatever they want because they’re tougher than anyone else around them*. So, I wanted to capitalize on one of their suggestions in the previous session, which was that they wanted to turn the captive eladrin who had attacked them over to the town watch and press charges of brigandry. For that to be effective, though, they would have to behave, at least for one session, less like brigands than the people they had accused.

The catch is that there still had to be interesting things for them to do, and challenges for them to overcome. I thought about setting things up as a skill challenge, but I wanted things to revolve more around their choices than around dice rolls. And yet I still wanted to give them an experience award for handling things in a non-violent manner.

So, I did what any GM worth his salt does when the rules don’t quite do what we need them to. I made stuff up.

Basically, what I did was set an experience point value for the various challenges based on the party level and the importance of the scene to the ongoing story. Then I planted a few moments in each scene where the party got to make decisions about how to react to something, how to proceed, etc. Combat was an option at pretty much every one of these moments of choice, so I built encounters based on the experience point value of the scene to spring on the characters if they chose to go for their swords. I also worked out the probable consequences of starting a fight in terms of the broader story and the situation in town.

So, for example, they got a letter from the head of the halfling clans in Rivertown, asking for a meeting to arrange a cessation of hostilities. The meet was set at a halfling tavern near the waterfront, and they were warned in advance that Granny Magda, the head of the clans, was going to have a number of guards with her, and that the party was welcome to come armed, as well. The discussion determined that the heroes had no plans to continue their vendetta against the halflings now that Jemmy Fish and his goblin connection were out of business, and that they had no interest in involving themselves in any of the “untaxed businesses” that the clans ran. They parted on relatively good terms, and earned a nice experience reward. There were a couple of moments where they could have reacted badly and started a fight with Granny and her boys, but they managed to control their tempers and not be complete dinks, so I didn’t have to trot out the stats for the fight, along with all the little surprises that were hidden under the floor of the tavern.

Using set-ups like that, we ran through settling the halfling feud, the trial and escape of the eladrin, and some arms-length dealing with the ambassador of the Empire Reborn, all without combat. But the ambassador is an even bigger jerk than the party**, and decided to make one last attempt to take them out using some summoned firebats and hellhounds. After the first round of the fight, I was worried that I had made things too tough*** – the auras of the hellhounds and the fiery swoop ability of the firebats dropped the dragonborn rogue on the first round, and bloodied both the sword mage and the fighter. But the group pulled things together, and won, though it was a tougher fight than I had anticipated, thanks to the stacking of the auras and the ongoing fire damage from the bats.

N0w they’ve got a real mad on for the ambassador, but don’t know what to do about it, because he’s got extralegal status in Storm Point, and has also hired a few local dragonborn mercenaries for personal protection.

I’m interested in seeing what they come up with.

*This is not actually the case, but they haven’t gone up against anyone tougher yet.

**Hard to imagine, but there it is.

***Three firebats and two hellhounds, 1200 xp, a level 5 encounter for 6 PCs. My group is level 4, but were fresh, so I expected the fight to be pretty easy for them.

Hunter: The Vigil Campaign Frameworks

By | | Hunter - Shadow Wars, What's he playing?
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Well, my players were fairly quick to respond to my questions about a new Hunter: The Vigil campaign. I got all their answers in, and looked them over.

Here’s a little secret about asking these sorts of questions before starting a new campaign: you gotta be ready to listen to the answers. The very act of asking the question tells the players that they’re going to get to call the shots on at least some of the campaign elements. If they aren’t – and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for a GM to do all the work in designing a campaign – then don’t ask the questions.

However, if you do ask the questions, don’t expect any sort of unified voice to speak through them to map out the game for you. That’s the pr0blem with open-ended questions that have little context. You’ll get answers all over the map, and many of them will only tell you what the player doesn’t want, rather than what he or she does.

What it does give you is a look at the acceptable ranges for the parameters you questioned, and a very solid idea about what matters to the players.

So, what did I get from the responses?

  1. Everyone wants in, though there are scheduling concerns.
  2. Everyone’s okay with me ditching a lot of the World of Darkness canon about the various types of monsters (vampires, werewolves, faeries, etc.) and making stuff up.
  3. Everyone wants action in the game, though not necessarily a lot of combat.
  4. On a light-dark scale, the players tend toward a range near the middle, shading slightly to light. So, not a grim, gritty game, but not silly either. Some difficult moral and ethical choices, but those aren’t necessarily central to the game. A little bit of humour is good, but shouldn’t dominate the mood. And the characters should be heroic, though perhaps flawed.
  5. On a lethality scale, fairly lethal, with some qualifiers. The players tend to want normal humans to go down pretty easily, but the heroes and the supernatural threats should be tougher.
  6. On the supernatural scale, we got responses all over the board, with the compromise idea seeming to be that anything goes for the bad guys, but fairly limited supernatural resources for the player characters. This question is the one that gave the widest spread of answers, though, so I’m sort of postponing it.
  7. Campaign structure-wise, there were strong votes both for road trip style and stay put style. Pretty even split (as even as you can get with five answers), so I’m hoping we can work out a compromise.

Based on the responses, I came up with four rough frameworks of games that I would be willing to run, and sent them out to the players for their votes. Here’s how I envision the process to go:

  1. Everyone votes on the attached campaigns, giving me your first, second, and third choices. I will compile the responses, giving a first choice three points, a second choice two points, and a third choice one point. The choice with the most points becomes our campaign structure.
  2. Everyone gets one black ball vote. I would rather you didn’t use it, but I want to have the option there. If there is an option that you absolutely will not play in, black ball it. It gets taken out of the running. Again, I would rather that it didn’t get used, because of the way it can let one player scrap a campaign framework that everyone else loves before it’s fully fleshed out. On the other hand, I need to know if there’s something that is completely out of the question for one of the players. So, you have the black ball if you need it.
  3. Once we have determined the campaign framework, I would like to have two sessions to flesh out the campaign and create the characters. The first session will be a sort of round-robin Q&A to fill in the basics of campaign world, where we will take turns asking and answering questions to collaboratively add details and structure to the framework. The second session will be a group character creation session.
  4. When those two sessions are done, I will build the first story, looking to run 1-3 sessions. I will also set up a campaign wiki on Obsidian Portal and invite everyone to join it.
  5. When the adventure is done, I will schedule a game session.

Which begs the question of what the four campaign frameworks are, right? Well, here’s what I came up with.

MoJoWeb.com

There’s weirdness out there, and that’s what MoJoWeb.com is all about. A popular website with the conspiracy and neopagan crowd, MoJoWeb.com makes enough from memberships and advertising to finance a small cadre of investigators.

That’s you.

Maybe you’ve believed in this stuff all along, or maybe something happened to make
you believe. Or maybe you didn’t believe, and just needed the job.

Doesn’t matter. You’re all believers now.

Your job? Finding the truth about the weird things that get overlooked by the more conservative journalists and officials – the weird murders, the monster sightings, the alien abductions, the Elvis appearances, whatever. You check it out. And you bring the story back to post for the elite members of your site.

Setting: One city as home base, frequent travel to the sites of interest.

Mood: Moderately light, though the supernatural is a real threat, so not silly. Big on the creepy. Remember Freakylinks? That’s my inspiration.

Theme: Curiosity, discovery, horror. Seeing the things ignored by the mundane, and trying not to be eaten by them.

Supernatural Level: The supernatural is rare, but powerful. And very strange. You may have the opportunity to gain some supernatural abilities, but they will not be big-league stuff.

Conspiracy Level: Low to non-existent. Some people know stuff, and know other people who know stuff. As far as you can tell, you are the most cohesive and organized group out there. But you might be wrong.

Neighbourhood Watch

This used to be a good neighbourhood. People cared. Made their homes here, raised their kids here, built their lives here. Sure, it was never a rich neighbourhood, and it never got gentrified like some of the places around here, but it was a good place.

Not so much, anymore.

You’re not sure when things changed, but they’ve crossed the line some time in the past few years. The working-class families are still here, but there are more crack houses, more gangs, more crime. It just isn’t safe anymore.

But there’s more to it than just urban decay. At some point in the past few years, you’ve had a glimpse of the darkness that’s gathering, the monsters and secrets hidden behind the familiar façade. You’ve seen something evil lurking in the heart of your home.

And you are not, by God, going to let it go on.

Setting: One neighbourhood in a city. This is a very location-based framework, with little taking place outside the neighbourhood, and nothing taking place outside the city.

Mood: Grim but resolute. Moderately dark. About X-Files level. Big on the unknown and seething malevolence.

Theme: Redemption and reclamation. Steadfast heroism, the defense of the home, the salvaging of hope.

Supernatural Level: The supernatural is dark and threatening, even at low power levels. Any supernatural abilities you pick up – and opportunities to do so will be very rare – will require great sacrifice and mark you as suspect.

Conspiracy Level: At most, the compact level. Realistically, you might know two or three other people in the city that know about this kind of thing, and maybe one or two outside the city.

The Shadow Wars

Maybe it’s in your blood, or maybe it’s something that happened to you. Maybe it’s the result of long study, or strange pacts with mysterious beings. Whatever the source, you have the… let’s call it a gift… that makes you aware of the big picture, the secrets of the world.

You might call it magic, or enlightenment, or the tao. You might see it as strange luck or just really being in touch with your own body or soul. You may not even know if you’re still human at all. However you interpret it, you’ve found out that there are others like you.

And others that will do anything to destroy you.

Because, whether you knew it or not at the beginning, there’s a war going on between those who would destroy humanity and those who would save it. By virtue of your awareness, you’re drawn into this secret conflict, and you need to pick a side.

You’ve chosen humanity’s side.

Because, no matter how strange you may find your abilities, they’re positively mundane next to the creatures that hide in the darkness and seek to steal the light. Once you’ve seen them – and you have – there can be no question as to which side you’re on.

And the war needs you.

Setting: The battle can take you anywhere, from the great cities of Europe to the frozen Antarctic research station, from the caves of the Grand Canyon to the neon- lit alleys of Tokyo. Or you may take up residence in a place of importance, as defenders. Or in one of the Free Cities, home to intrigue and deceit. You get to call it.

Mood: Suspicion, fear, dedication to a cause, secrecy, paranoia. The stakes are high, and the matter is serious. If you fail, people die. Or worse. Think Casablanca or Sandbaggers or Ronin with supernatural elements.

Theme: The burden of power, the lure of the dark, questions of trust and honour. The price of victory. What will you sacrifice?

Supernatural Level: Moderately high. I have an idea for a system of narratively based supernatural powers for the PCs that can be as blatant or subtle as people want. Everyone will have the potential, and those who spend experience on it will get better at it, but I don’t think it will unbalance things if you decide not to focus on it for your character.

Conspiracy Level: Moderate to high. There are several different power groups on both sides of the war, and they can act as mentors, allies, enemies, or something in between.

Agents of Aegis

You are the grim wall between the creatures of the night and the unwitting mortals. As members of Aegis, you are an elite force of agents sent into hot spots to root out the evil. And burn it down. Then salt the earth. Then burn the earth some more.

Aegis does not fuck around.

On the upside, you get to travel the world, see exotic places, meet new people. On the downside, you mostly see the worst parts of it, and then cause an explosion.

On the upside, you get a bunch of neat toys: high tech tools, mystical rites, magical relics, ancient Egyptian potions, the works. On the downside, they’re often not enough.

On the upside, you have the backing of a powerful, wealthy, mysterious organization. On the downside, they’re likely to kill you if you step out of line.

Welcome to Aegis. Welcome to the last job you’ll ever have.

Setting: Globe-hopping adventure, baby!

Mood: Exciting and cinematic. Think James Bond vs. the things that go bump in the night. Hellboy, but less silly.

Theme: Good vs. Evil, the price of victory, the tough decisions about collateral damage.

Supernatural Level: Pretty high. Lots of big, scary monsters, lots of toys for the PCs.

Conspiracy Level: High. You’re working for the big boys, but you’re not the only big boys on the block.

So, there you have it. Four options, one of which will be further expanded and defined until it’s a playable game. I’ve only had two votes back, so far, so I don’t want to talk about which framework is the frontrunner for fear of skewing the responses from my players.

I’ll let you know which one they pick, and then what we do with it.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Not a lot happened in yesterday’s game – it dealt with the trip from the last adventure site back to Storm Point. Still, I got to apply some real pressure to the group, and I think they’re starting to realize that they aren’t invulnerable.

After the previous session, they had decided that they wanted to follow up on the whole “shadar-kai forming an alliance with the local goblins” angle. Unfortunately, they don’t have much of a clue as to how to do that – they haven’t found any real loose ends to start pulling at. So, Erik suggests that they go and see if the ambassador from the Empire Reborn has any information.

Now, the ambassador is a bit of a throw-away NPC that’s taking on a new significance in the game. He entered the game world by way of a little cut scene* I wrote, and then got used in a piece of player fiction**, which sort of established his character and role – a rather incompetent coward who is trying to use the adventurers to advance the plans of the Empire Reborn. He’s not good at it, but his clerk seems to be…

Anyway, after dropping a hint that they thought the Empire Reborn was in league with the shadar-kai, the heroes are hoping that the Empire Reborn will have done some digging into the situation, the results of which they can now intimidate out of the ambassador.

A plan so cunning it deserves its own Blackadder quote.

Despite their planning, they didn’t get to try anything. Still battered and worn down by cleaning out the goblin lair, they decided to make the three-hour journey back to Storm Point so they could sleep in beds. And, of course, predictable bastard that I am, I attacked them.

I used two griffons and two eladrin fey knights****, with the idea of one or two round attacks, in a hit-and-run pattern, harrying the heroes back to town.

First of all, the charging griffons and their riders hit like a ton of bricks. Man. Massive damage on the first round. And then they fight for a couple of rounds, and take off again. Good plan.

And, of course, the party decided they didn’t like the idea of running back to town, fighting off the griffon attacks as they ran low of healing surges. And Thrun, the dwarven fighter who is the primary defender, was right out of healing surges. Given that, they decided to find a place to hole up for a long rest before continuing back to town. Some pretty amazing Nature, Perception, and Stealth rolls got them a cave with a spring in it, under an overhang, with the cave mouth screened by bushes.

They set watches and took a long rest. During that time, the fey knights managed to find where their prey had gone to ground, and set up in ambush just outside.

This fight went a little more in favour of the party, mainly because they were at full strength, with all their dailies and healing surges. And they used most of them. Four 7th level creatures are a tough fight for six 3rd level characters. Still, in the end, they managed to put the griffons down and render the eladrin unconscious. A couple of judicious History rolls have turned up a tie to the Empire Reborn – the fallen Empire of Nerath used to have a unit of griffon-mounted eladrin air cavalry, called the 2nd Imperial Airborne, also known as The Immortals.

With their captives and the new information, they think they have enough to bring the law to bear on the ambassador. So, they’ve returned to town, turned the eladrin over to the local Watch, and went to get a good meal and some rest.

I’ve got some interesting ideas about where things go next.

*From time to time, about once an adventure, I post to our game forum a short piece of fiction that I call a cut scene. This is usually from the point of view of outsiders, commenting on what the adventurers are doing, and how it relates to them. It’s a way of providing a little more context and throughline for the game narrative.

**This bit of fiction was a sort of response to my cut scene and the events in the game. In it, the party confronted the (rather cowardly and incompetent) ambassador in his office, and threatened him*** for his part in the squad of Empire Reborn armsmen that tried to steal the goblin map from them. They also mentioned the shadar-kai, implying that they thought the ambassador was involved in that, too.

***Y’know, these heroes are kinda dicks.

****1200 xp, a level 5 encounter for 6 characters.

Hunter Redux: One Year Later

By | | Hunter - Shadow Wars, What's he playing?
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Last Friday, I ran my second of two playtests for Hunter: The Vigil. You can read about the previous playtest here.

We used the One Year Later quickstart adventure available for free at DriveThruRPG.com. This used the same characters as the previous playtest we did (The Hunt), with some experience applied. We all liked this, because it meant that the players were able to grab the same character as last time and have a great deal of familiarity with it.

As for the adventure itself, it was about as good as the previous one. Looking at my original post, it seems I was quite hard on that adventure, and that wasn’t my real intention. Both The Hunt and One Year Later are written for very specific purposes, and they fulfill these admirably. They are good introductions to the kinds of things that you do in the game, they provide interesting and challenging scenes with a range of activities, and they show you how the rules work. And they are designed to run in a limited time.

The main problem we had with the scenarios was that we weren’t under the time constraints assumed in the writing. We had a whole evening to play, rather than just two or three hours. That made the adventures seem sparse and linear, lacking in opportunity to follow player choices in unusual directions. They are very much designed as demo scenarios, or convention scenarios, pulling in a bunch of people with minimal preparation and completing an adventure in a very tight time-frame.

One Year Later continued this trend, and it worked just as well. Sure, I had to tapdance a little bit when my players asked how they got the information that led them to the guy they’re following at the start of the adventure, or when they killed the only vector in the adventure for a critical piece of information, or when they decided to completely break away from the way the final encounter was scripted, but that’s fine. I was able to adapt and deal with that.

On the whole, my players liked the adventures, liked the pregenerated characters, liked the game. After the game, I asked them what they thought, and they were all pretty positive about the experience. Then I asked them if they would be interested in starting a new campaign.

They gave me a qualified yes.

See, we’ve already got a large number of campaigns running. Pretty much any given weekend, I’m either running or playing in one or two games. But they’re all Dungeons & Dragons. Nothing wrong with D&D, but nothing wrong with mixing it up, either. A little variety, like a modern horror game, is just the thing.

But scheduling is tough. We’re all adults, with family and work commitments. We’re already scheduled pretty tight.

So the suggestion (from Sandy) was to make it an episodic thing, more a series of mini-campaigns. Each episode would be three or four sessions, then we take a break while I build a new one and run that one in a couple of months.

That seemed a popular choice.

I sent out an e-mail message to the five players containing a number of questions I want them to answer, the first question being, “Are you in for the game?” Other questions cover things like setting of the campaign, level of lethality, level of supernatural, level of conspiracy, how much combat, etc. This should give me a solid basis to start constructing a campaign.

On my end, on the advice of one of the folks who commented on the last post*, I picked up some non-free .pdfs for Hunter. I got pretty much everything on this page, and I’ve been working through it, mining it for ideas. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself until I get the responses back from the questions I sent to the prospective players, but I’ve got some ideas percolating.

Oh, yeah. And I bought these dice, because I’m a great big geek.

I’ll let you know how things go.

*Named, suspiciously, Chuck. Could it be…?

Post Tenebras Lux Report

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Last Friday night was the second of our Post Tenebras Lux sessions, the continuation of the campaign that started as a Scales of War adventure path. In it, our heroes arrived at Witchcross, met a few of the locals, took in some of the sights, and headed off into the Witchwood in order to find the barrow they’ve come in search of.

And promptly ran into trouble.

In designing this adventure, I did my best to depart from the standard dungeon crawls that this particular group has been playing through for the most part. I wanted different feeling adventure areas, more chances for interaction with NPCs and the environment, more choices that mattered, and so on. To that end, I designed a number of establishments in Witchcross, created a few local sites that might be of interest, and put together a more detailed backstory for the barrow and the ancient druidic folk that used to live in the area.

A lot of that got pretty much ignored in this session; the group is very mission-focused. This really came to mind when I explained that the engraving on the menhir in the middle of the village, marking it as the site where Terriath Ahmond first formed his pact with the Folk of the Stone, and then told them they knew nothing about those names or the incident it may describe*. Instead of interpreting it as local colour or an interesting detail, they said, “Red herring,” and went about trying to find the barrow.

I brought them into town on the afternoon before the full moon, so they have a day and a half to find the spot where the barrow appears. I also decided to do the cinematic full moon thing – giving each month three nights when the moon is considered to be full. That takes some of the time pressure off the party, and gives them the leisure time to explore and interact with the world without feeling they need to rush and push with no time for anything else.

I’ve set the hunt for the barrow up as a sort of modified skill challenge, with a number of nodes laid out in a matrix representing the woods around Witchcross. Every hour, the party makes a roll, choosing a skill from a list of about five, to find their way closer to the barrow. If everyone succeeds, I move them directly towards the barrow on the matrix. If most of them succeed, they get to choose a direction, and I move them that way on the matrix. If most of them fail, I move them away from the barrow, and preferably into something dangerous. If they all fail, I move them away from the barrow, and they each lose a healing surge from the hazards and exertions of their search.

Each node of the matrix has a scene tied to it. This may be a combat encounter, an NPC, an interesting site in the woods, or anything else I’ve thought of, but it’s some point where they can interact with the world and may get a benefit or a penalty for their search. When they make it through the matrix, they’ll arrive at the site of the barrow.

I felt this was a good compromise between mapping the woods out as a dungeon and just having a list of encounters that they have to fight their way through to get to the barrow. It puts choices back into their hands, and gives more of a feeling of decision, while still keeping the actual movement from site to site abstract and easily managed. It also allows the outdoorsy skills of the ranger to have some impact on the group and their quest.

Sor far, it seems to be working fairly well, though the group has walked into two combat encounters, and have started asking how the villagers manage to survive when they go looking for firewood**.

The first combat was an owlbear and two fey panthers***. The owlbear is another monster, like the carrion crawler, that I’ve always wanted to use, but never seem to get the chance. As I recall from previous editions, they’re pretty nasty. Well, the 4e owlbear takes the cake, in my opinion. It dropped the dragonborn paladin on the first turn****, which caused everyone to pause and take a breath. This is what I wanted: I never try to kill the characters, but I love the moment in the game when the players realize that they may lose a character in a fight. With the fey panthers harrassing the party from different angles, they couldn’t gang up on the owlbear at first, and that meant that it got to bat PCs around with impunity. The healing abilities of the party made sure they never lost anyone, but it scared them.

The next combat was a group of gnomes: 2 skulks, 2 arcanists, 2 iron defenders, and a pseudodragon*****. This fight was a blast to run, with the gnomes up in the trees sniping and messing with the party, the iron defenders chewing on legs, and the pseudodragon doing fly-bys with its tail sting. In the end, one of the arcanists and the pseudodragon escaped, and the party was beat up enough that they just let them go and hobbled back to town, planning to start again in the morning.

All in all, a pretty good session. I’m anxious for the next one, because some of the things they did in the last one will have got around town. I’m planning on updating the Witchcross entry in the wiki, but I’m going to hold off until the players discover more of the information in game, so as not to spoil anything.

Should be fun.

 

 

*I want a lot of the history of the ancient druidic folk to be a closed book, with just a jumble of confusing monuments and oral traditions remaining. I like the idea of the mystery in the past.

**The answer to this question is different for each of the two encounters. For the first one, the villagers know better than to go into the owlbear’s hunting ground. For the second, the Keepers of Eth in the village have a relationship with the gnomes, and don’t get attacked from hiding.

***1050 xp total, a level 4 encounter for 6 PCs.

****I had to use the owlbear’s action point to get in the bite attack, but it was worth it.

*****1000 xp total, a level 4 encounter for 6 PCs.

I Watched the Watchmen

By | | What's he watching?
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Just got back from seeing the movie. I’m a huge fan of the graphic novel, and had some real trepidation going in. Overall, I liked the movie. I’ve got some detailed thoughts outlined below, but first I want to put up a

Spoiler Alert!

Yeah, I’m gonna be talking about stuff that happens in the movie or the graphic novel. If you don’t want to know, don’t read any farther.

We good?

Good.

  • The cast is pretty much perfect. Not only does each actor really look a lot like the character from the comic book, they get most of the character traits down wonderfully. I can’t be happier. They are fantastic. Of special note are Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, but there really isn’t a bad word to be said about any of them, in my opinion.
  • Zack Snyder sticks very, very close to the comic book, both story-wise and visually. Whether this is being faithful or slavish is going to vary by viewer. For me, I like it most of the time, but it does make his departures from the source material, in those few instances when it happens, somewhat jarring for those of us who are really familiar with the comic book. Yeah, it’s a geek thing.
  • I heard a lot about gratuitous sex and violence before I saw the movie, and I dismissed it. There are a lot of that in the comic book, and it’s not entirely gratuitous; instead, it makes a sort of meta-statement about the use of gratuitous sex and violence in the medium. Having seen the movie, I gotta say, a lot of the sex and violence, while not necessarily gratuitous, is exaggerated and emphasized rather gratuitously. The rape scene is pretty over-the-top violent, as is the mugging scene, and the sex scene in Archimedes is about as graphic as you can get without being labeled porn. And I’m not sure it carries the impact in the same way the gratuitous stuff in the comic book does.
  • The ending, as most have probably heard, is not the same as in the comic book. They don’t do the alien creature manifestation/mock-up, but opt for framing Dr. Manhattan as the villain. This makes for a much tighter story, not having to run the whole kidnapped artist subplot, and speeds up the exposition at the climax, but I really wanted to see the giant alien thing, so I was a little disappointed.
  • They’ve only got three hours to tell their story, so a lot of the layers and depth gets compressed into easy explanations or dismissed entirely. I think that, for people who are not familiar with the comic book and its deep and intricate backstory, sections of this movie may feel rushed or confusing. In addition, certain bits were included that may have been better cut for time or continuity, but were great geek-joy moments that we geeks certainly wanted to see.
  • Time to complain about a specific storytelling choice. There is a scene, in both the comic and the movie, where Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Jupiter get mugged, and kick the crap out of the muggers. In the movie, they kill several of their attackers, deliberately, and in ways more violent than even Rorschach’s murders are portrayed in the film. I found this very jarring; in the comic book, Dan and Laurie are the most “normal” of the masked heroes; they’re the ones we can most easily identify with. To show them cold-bloodedly slaughtering thugs breaks that empathetic connection, undermining the link we’ve established with the humanity of the characters. It distances us emotionally from the only two characters presented in a human, sympathetic light, and I think that was a mistake.
  • Time to compliment a specific beautiful acting moment. Throughout the movie, I found I was missing the dynamic tension between the ideals represented by Ozymandias and Rorschach. In the comic book, they balance each other: one who will never compromise, and one who will do whatever it takes to do good. This didn’t come across very well in the movie, for several reasons that I’ll have to think about more before I can identify them beyond saying that it was led by the visual emphasis over story. Anyway. In Rorschach’s final scene, where he pulls off his mask and forces Dr. Manhattan to kill him, that entire dynamic tension, the pull between the man who will not compromise and the man who wants to do good, is made manifest completely within the character of Rorschach. He begs Dr. Manhattan to kill him, knowing that it must happen to preserve the peace Ozymandias has created. It was a beautiful, perfect moment that captured something vital and important to the work that Alan Moore introduced in the comic book. It captured the idea of monsters on both ends of the spectrum, and the torment of where they meet. That moment was almost worth the price of admission all by itself.
  • The opening historical montage sequence is worth the price of admission. My god, that was wonderful, filling in so much necessary backstory in such a beautiful, moving, and effective way.
  • One last complaint: having Dan and Laurie go back to crimefighting at the end of the movie really, drastically undermines the idea behind the comic book. It changes the meaning and nature of the entire work, and I don’t much like it.

So, in closing, I liked the movie, but not unreservedly, and not completely. The comic book, as an ironic, insightful look at the superhero phenomenon is so intricate and layered in subtext and superhero reference that it is pretty much impossible to do it complete justice in a movie. Having said that, Zack Snyder gave it a really good try, and made a movie I enjoyed. He came about as close as I can envision someone coming. The source material is just too dense and nuanced to translate with complete faithfulness in three hours.

It’s not the comic book, no matter how much it might look like it.

But it’s not bad, either.