Category Archives: What’s he playing?

And what does he wish he was playing?

DFRPG Q&A 2

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Just one set of questions today:

Iorwerth says:

How do weapons and armour work? Do they just add stress levels / subtract stress levels?

Yup. The system is pretty chunky – what I mean is, there aren’t extensive weapons and armour lists. Each has four categories, rated from one to four, that tells you how many stress levels it adds or mitigates. Given how much difference a single level can sometimes make, this is about as detailed as you really need in the game. And with the idea of setting up the kinds of cinematic, rollicking action scenes you see in the novels, that’s about the level of detail you want to keep things simple and fast.

As to magic, when drawing down power do you need to roll, or do you just draw down a level equal to the relevant skill, whatever that skill is?

Once you have drawn down the power I believe you roll your control. Do you need to get a score above the power level to control it? if you don’t, I presume it spills out and has unforseen effects, and may do the caster damage?

With a stress inducing spell, does it do the power level in stress points, or the level of control you have, or something else?

Okay. Quick-and-dirty breakdown of spellcasting. First, you decide how much power you want to use. If this is an evocation, you take one point of mental stress for drawing up to your Conviction skill rating, then an extra point for each level above your Conviction.If this is a thaumaturgical ritual, you don’t take that first level of mental stress, so if you stick to using power equal to or less than or equal to your conviction, actually calling the power doesn’t give you any stress for thaumaturgy.

Then, you need to beat that power down with the strength of your sovereign will and force it to do what you want. This is a Discipline roll, where you have to equal or exceed the levels of power you have called. If you don’t, you either take the difference as backlash (hurting you as either mental or physical stress) or give it to the GM as fallout (hurting the environment and maybe your buddies – this is how Harry manages to burn down buildings). How things are split up is your choice – you can be selfless and take all the damage, selfish and take none, or somewhere in between.

There are, of course, other factors, like focus items and preparation and taking extra time, that can come into the mix, but those are the basics. Basically, even a minor spellcaster with plenty of time to research and prepare can accomplish a great deal safely, while even a fully tricked-out badass wizard caught offguard can push himself over the edge pretty quickly, wearing himself out and melting his brain.

Just like in the novels.

That’s today’s questions. Keep ’em coming.

DFRPG Q&A 1

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
2 Comments

First off, a clarification from Chad Underkoffler, one of the authors of the game:

Point of fact: Chicago is not fully game-statted as Baltimore is, but it’s got a METRIC TON of cool, real-world (not necessarily series-based) weirdness in it.

My bad, folks. I was skimming the sections for the previous post, and missed this. Thanks to Chad for setting me straight.

Now, on to questions:

Lanodantheon says:

Question: Does the magic section talk about the limits of magic’s interaction with technology?
What I’m talking about is the magic items/foci/whatever-they’re-called that interact with technology to work.
(Specifically, Elaine’s chain thingie that she charges in a light socket.)

Well, there are rules for hexing, which covers the basics of magic and technology interacting. Elaine’s chain would be an enchanted item, like Harry’s force rings, I believe. There are no explicit rules for how it charges up in the light socket, just like there are no explicit rules for how Harry’s force ring charges from him moving his arms, because really it’s just jazz. Looking at the guidelines in the section on hexing, though, I would rule that it might cause problems around sensitive electronics, but not more than Elaine herself would. That is, unless I was using it to throw a complication at the player, in which case I’d give him or her a Fate Point to go with it.

Rechan says:

Hey Rick! I lost the URL for your site, I’m really glad to be back. :)

Welcome back! You’ve been missed.

The DM chapter, does it talk about how to make adventures? To be honest, the DFRPG scares me in terms of GMing, because coming up with a cohesive mystery every “week” is really daunting! I know “Tie it to your players aspects”, but for instance if they smoke one PC’s nemesis, that aspect – that avenue – is gone. Same thing if they shut down something one player is very concerned about, then it’s hard to bring back. Not to mention other matters of maintaining a good Noir/Mystery/whatnot feel to the game, like clues and how to make things not obvious, does it address this well?

Lenny Balsera actually posted a really good answer to this in the comments of the post. Thanks, Lenny! About all I can add to what he says there is that, at the end of the city creation process, you will have so many good locations, themes, threats, and NPCs that ideas for adventures are fairly squirting out of your ears. And if you get the players involved, then they’re going to have a lot invested in those things, and their own agendas – more rich and fertile ground for adventures. Also, the section on advancing cities talks about how to deal with changes to the established environment like killing off a nemesis or solving a major problem in the city. In short, the advice in the book is very good on this subject, but the rest of the book supports the idea of making good stories so well that really it’s just the icing on the cake.

Are Pure Mortals the only ones that can take mortal stunts?

Anyone can take mortal stunts. They’re called that because there’s no supernatural powers involved. Having said that, supernatural characters are less likely to have mortal stunts because they’ve spent their Refresh on supernatural powers instead.

How is Sponsored Magic different? Is it a template that can be dropped onto any PC? Or access to new stunts/powers? It handles stuff like deals with Fey too, right? Or is that just “Hey, look at Emissary”.

Fluff-wise, Sponsored Magic is different because it’s something that originates with an outside power source, like an angel, demon, dragon, magic talking sword, or, yes, one of the Fey. Emissarys are one of the templates that have the option of taking Sponsored Magic, but Changelings and Knights of Faerie also have it. Crunch-wise, you get a little extra oomph in some of your spells, but you are subject to the whims of your patron – if they don’t want you to work a spell, it just don’t work. And they can attach any strings they want to it. For example, if you’re the Winter Knight, and you want to use your Unseelie Magic in a manner that your Lady disagrees with, she can just not let the magic work. Or, she may allow it to work, but demand a favour in payment.

This is also a general question for you. You talk about multiple character creation sessions. How do you deal with players who want to Get to the Game RIght Now? A lot of people I know would not be patient enough for spending more than x hours doing that sort of thing. And, doing City AND character creation simultaneously sounds very… ADD. How do you organize that?

Good questions. There are options for quick play, when you don’t want to spend the time up front building the city or the characters. In these cases, the characters and city get built during play, on the fly, adding Aspects and Skills and whatnot as they come up in the story, and paying any Refresh cost then. If you’ve seen the quick play options in Spirit of the Century, then you’ve got the basics.

Now, as for the time involved, character creation goes pretty quickly – the sessions I’ve run have all taken less than three hours, and that includes explaining the system to the players. And the character creation system is fun, in itself; in fact, the game takes the point of view that making the city and the characters should be part of the play, and as much fun as all the other parts.

Doing city and character creation together would be a little taxing, I agree. The way it’s spelled out in the book, you work it in stages: once you get to a certain point in creating the city, you have enough of a framework to build characters that really fit in with what you’re doing with the city. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a single session, either; I can see doing portions of the city creation (like, say, research) independently, getting together in a session to work up to the point where you’re ready to build characters, then having another session to build characters and finish off the city stuff. Two sessions.

James Cartwright says:

Great write-up, can’t wait for these books.

Thanks! I’m anxious to get my hands on the physical versions, myself.

Are there stats for ‘Mouse’ in the books and is there the ability to make your own temple animals like ‘mouse’?

thanks

Yes, there are stats for Mouse. There’s also an extensive write-up – almost a full page – on Temple Dogs, that would make it very easy to create other Temple Animals. There’s also a note in the in-characters notes that, as statted, Mouse is a viable player character, if you choose the right power level.

Jon Hammersley says:

So how are enchanted items handled? Some (potions) are obviously single use items but how do you limit something like Harry’s ring that stores kinetic energy?

Each crafter has a number of slots allowed to them, based on the kinds of powers you’ve taken, which they can fill with enchanted items. By default, enchanted items have a limited number of uses per session. You can remove that limitation by having it take up more than one slot. Expending extra slots can also increase the power and flexibility of items.

Does using a specific created foci (ritual knife, blasting rod, staff, etc) decrease the difficulty of controlling magical forces and how does it do so?

Okay. Magic is comprised of two phases: gathering the energy and controlling the energy. When you create a focus, you choose whether it will help you gather energy or control it. If it helps you gather energy, then you can safely call in one more level of power than you would otherwise be able to. You can still exceed this amount, but then it starts causing problems, like fatigue. If you choose to make a focus that helps you control energy, then it gives you a bonus level to the skill that you roll to control the power. And if you fail that roll, bad things happen to you, your surroundings, or both.

So, that’s all the questions I’ve received so far. I hope the answers are helpful.

Let me know if there are other questions I can answer, but I won’t get to them before tomorrow evening.

Digging a Little Deeper

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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So, judging from the traffic coming in this past day, people are very interested in the Dresden Files Role Playing Game preview sent to the playtesters a couple of days ago. I’m still working my way through the books (did I mention it’s almost 700 pages?), but I figured I’d do two things to help satisfy the desire for information.

First, I’m going to invite questions. Want to know something about the game? Leave a question in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer it. One proviso: I’m working from the preview and, while it’s fairly complete, there may still be some last-minute changes. From what I’ve seen, I doubt it, but you should know.

Second, I’m going to put a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the two books below, with a brief comment on what’s in each chapter. That’ll give you some idea of what to expect when the book comes out and you go buy it.

Because you are going to buy it, right? Right.

Volume One: Your Story

This book is about playing the game. It’s a combination of player book and GM book; the co-operative nature of setting up the game advocated in the book makes this a natural choice.

Chapter One: Harry’s World

This chapter gives a short overview of default game world, based on the Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher. It lays out some important concepts that you need to understand about the underlying assumptions of the world and game, including a section on Maxims of the Dresdenverse.

Chapter Two: The Basics

Here you get the bones of the FATE system, the modified version of FUDGE that’s the engine driving the game. It covers the mechanics of your character sheet, the dice you roll, what they mean, and how to use Fate Points.

Chapter Three: City Creation

Part of the fun of playing DFRPG is creating the city to be a home base for the game. This chapter walks you through the steps, including showing you where in the process you create the PCs. The system is more structured and focused than the playtest version, and you wind up with a nice collection of aspects and NPCs for your city, as well as some good dynamic situations for your players to deal with.

Now, there’s a sidebar in this chapter that talks about how you don’t really have to do this step as a group with your players. They recommend doing it as a group, though, and so do I. Why? because that way you make sure that the city you build has all the pieces for the kinds of stories and conflicts that your players are interested in dealing with. And it’ll give you some interesting surprises throughout the process.

Chapter Four: Character Creation

In the previous chapter, they recommend that you do the character creation as part of the city creation, to help tie the characters more tightly into the setting. This is a good idea. They also recommend doing character creation as a group. I think this is essential for any FATE game. The novel phase of character creation pretty much demands it.

They also mention the idea of having the GM create a character, and I found this to be a great idea in the playtest. We had multiple playtest character generation sessions, and I created a number of NPCs this way. It gave me a nice stable of NPCs with ties to and history with the PCs. I’m going to go one step farther than their recommendation, though; I’m going to suggest holding a couple of extra character creation sessions to have your players help put together some NPCs.

Chapter Five: Types & Templates

This is where they list the different types of characters available, and what powers and stunts you need. The options outlined here are:

  • Pure Mortal
  • Champion of God
  • Changeling
  • Emissary of Power
  • Focused Practitioner
  • Knight of a Faerie Court
  • Lycanthrope
  • Minor Talent
  • Red Court Infected
  • Sorcerer
  • True Believer
  • Were-Form
  • White Court Vampire
  • White Court Virgin
  • Wizard

There’s also a discussion about what to do if you don’t want to play one of these archetypes, but instead want to play something different, like, say, a Ghoul. Really, it’s pretty easy and flexible.

Chapter Six: Advancement

I haven’t looked closely at this section yet, but along with the standard information about how the characters advance, there’s also a section on how your city advances, which I think is a brilliant idea.

Chapter Seven: Aspects

Aspects are the meat of the system. They’re what makes FATE work. The discussion in this chapter spells out everything you need to know about them, including the kinds of things that make good Aspects, and what I call the Aspect Trick – picking Aspects that do double or triple duty for you.

Chapter Eight: Skills

Not much to say about this chapter. It’s skills -  the list of them, how to use them in different situations and for different purposes, stuff like that.

Chapter Nine: Mortal Stunts

Stunts are what give mortals their edge in the game. The way things balance, mortals will be the ones with the most stunts available to them. These are usually special ways to use some skills, or a different thing you can spend a Fate Point on, little things like that. Nothing huge, but stunts can really add flavour and variety to a character.

The chapter consists of three pages of rules for creating your own stunts, and then about nine pages of example stunts. This is very nice; one of the things my group had asked for during playtest was an expanded list of example stunts. And Evil Hat came through in spades.

Chapter Ten: Supernatural Powers

The counterpart to the stunts of the previous chapter, supernatural powers are the extra gravy you get for playing a supernatural character – the things that set you apart. These are expensive, and really cut into the Refresh Rate of Fate Points. This is the primary balance mechanic between mortal and supernatural characters, the thing that lets you play a Karin Murphy alongside a Harry Dresden. There’s about thirty pages of these, and it covers a wide enough range to let you build just about anything you want.

Chapter Eleven: Playing the Game

This section covers pretty much the entire mechanics of the game – it’s about thirty pages (well, twenty-eight), and handles actions and physical, mental, and social conflicts. Except for spellcasting, this is all the system you need. The system is great for running very cinematic, action-packed scenes, and we found that physical conflicts were threatening enough that the players were worried every time one came up that their characters would die. This is, I think, important for a game – there needs to be some risk, or success and failure stop mattering. It also led to some great roleplaying, as players (and characters) did their best to figure out ways to avoid the risk of combat, sometimes even just running away.

Chapter Twelve: Living With Magic

Here’s where the nature and flavour of magic in the Dresdenverse are laid out. Here, you find out about things like hexing, The Sight, soulgazing, the Laws of Magic, Thresholds, and Wizard biology and senses. The next chapter tells you how magic works, but this is the chapter that tells you how magic feels.

Chapter Thirteen: Spellcasting

It’s a game about modern magic, based on a series of books with a Wizard for a main character. You better bet that spellcasting gets some love, here. I’ve already talked a little about how the system has been changed to bring spellcasters into balance with the other character types. There have been a couple of other things added that really fill in some gaps: first, along with Evocation and Thaumaturgy, they’ve added a section on Sponsored Magic, which is essentially what you get when you make a bargain with a demon or a god. Second, they’ve included a nice list of examples of all the different things discussed in the chapter: evocations, thaumaturgical rituals, focus items, enchanted items, and potions. Very useful, because this is the most complex part of the game.

Chapter Fourteen: Running the Game

This is the GM chapter, and covers the GM side of all the things spelled out in other parts of the book. As is usual with Evil Hat stuff, it’s solid, useful, and detailed. The advice is practical and insightful, everything focused on telling a good story with the game.

Chapter Fifteen: Building Scenarios

One of my favourite bits of Spirit of the Century is the section on building adventures. This chapter does at least as good a job, showing how to build the kinds of situations and events you see in the Dresden Files books. It’s all about connections, in this game, tying you into the city and characters you’ve already created, so that everyone has an emotional investment in what’s going on.

Chapter Sixteen: Nevermore/Baltimore

All through the city-building chapter, they use the example of Dresdenifying the city of Baltimore. Here, they give you the results of of the fleshed-out example, a ready-to-play city for your use.

After this, there follows a glossary and index, as well as copies of the various forms and sheets used in the game. The index isn’t filled in, yet, but the rest of the stuff is complete and useful.

Volume Two: Our World

This is the setting book for the game, though some of the setting elements are covered in Volume One. As I said previously, you cold probably play the game without this book, but I think you’re really going to want it. Especially if you’re a fan of the books.

It looks like the book is going to open with a new story by Jim Butcher; for now, they have the short story Restoration of Faith as a placeholder.

Chapter One: Old World Order

Here we’ve got the low-down on the various power groups in the Dresdenverse and how they relate to one another. There’s a detailed discussion of the Unseelie Accords, as well as a lovely little section called Supernatural Conflicts That Could Kill You RIGHT NOW. Fun stuff.

Chapter Two: What Goes Bump

This chapter has a complete, detailed, statted roster of monsters, spellcasters, animals, and mortals. This does double-duty, both as a section of adversaries, and as a blueprint for building characters. It also has a very useful little list of how the various different supernatural baddies stack up against each other, so you can answer that vital question, “Who would win in a fight between a Faerie Queen and a Dragon?”

Chapter Three: Who’s Who

And this is where you find all your favourite characters from the Dresden Files. And the ones you love to hate. And the ones you’ve completely forgotten about. This section is amazingly complete – even if you never play the game, if you’re a fan of the Dresden Files, this book is a wonderful guide to the world.

Chapter Four: Occult Chicago

Carrying on in that theme, here we have Harry’s city: Chicago, in all it’s supernatural glory. Yeah, that’s right. Between the two books, you get two, fully-worked up cities, in case you don’t want to create your own, or if you need some inspiration. Because of the wealth of source material in the series, Chicago is a little more fleshed-out than Baltimore, and it’s got a lot of good information for play.

That’s it. After that, you get the index.

So, there’s the look at the two volumes of the game. I gotta say, it’s impressing me more and more as I read through it. It’s good stuff. I can’t wait to buy my hard copies this summer.

But that’s enough out of me. What are you folks interested in? What questions can I answer? Let me know, and I’ll do my best.

In My Hot Little (Virtual) Hands

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Yesterday, those of us who were lucky enough to be part of the Dresden Files Role Playing Game playtest received a special treat from Fred Hicks of Evil Hat: .pdf copies of the (mostly) finished game.

Guess what I spent last night reading?

I’m not done yet, but I wanted to talk a little bit about my first impressions of the game. Keep in mind that not everything in these files is quite complete; of particular note, the introductions and indices are blank, the short fiction by Jim Butcher isn’t in there yet, none of the page references are completed (page XX), and a few – but not really all that many, from my initial look – pieces of art are missing. That said, here are my initial observations.

The books are gorgeous. The layout is attractive and readable. It’s busy without being distracting or illegible. The marginal notes are a nice touch, being comments from Harry Dresden, Billy the Werewolf, and Bob the Skull from the game world. They entertain, give insight into the game world, and help to clarify some rules points.

The books are big. Combined, we’re talking about nearly 700 pages. Now, from my initial glance, it seems like you might not actually need the Our World book, as all the rules for actually playing exist in the Your Story book. Having said that, the Our World book contains all the statted creatures and characters that you might want for running the game. For example, you can create a changeling character using only the Your Story book by making up the powers and abilities of a fey of a given type in conjunction with the GM, but the Our World book will give you a list of different types of fey and their powers and abilities, so you don’t have to do that work. And it’s always nice, speaking as a GM, to have a bunch of statted NPCs to throw into the game spur of the moment. You might not need Our World, but I really, really think you’re going to want it. Especially if your a Harry Dresden fan, just as a reference book for the world.

City building is substantially fleshed out, with more detail and structure, to help you create the kind of setting you want to play in. The running example is Baltimore, and it turns into a very interesting place as it gets Dresdenified.*

The section I went to pretty much right away was Spellcasting. See, during the early playtests, Wizard characters pretty much walked all over other character types, not so much because of their powerful, but because they were so flexible. A Wizard could, with a little time and effort, be great at anything, which caused them to overshadow other characters from time to time. The specific issue was with Thaumaturgy, which lets Wizards do pretty much anything they can imagine. I wanted to see if this was dealt with in the final version.

It is dealt with. Wizards still have their signature flexibility, but the price of using magic is higher. They get worn out and damaged (and possibly crazy) faster, which leads them to husband their resources more. The difficulty of accomplishing some of the bigger things with Thaumaturgy is increased, meaning that, if you want to do this, you’re going to be spending more time, more effort, and taking a bigger risk to get it done. I think it’s a very nice balance that lets a Wizard accomplish almost anything if they have the time, materials, and dedication, but limits what they can do within the game to things that are simpler and don’t step on the toes of the other characters.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. I haven’t finished reading both books (did I mention 700 pages?), but plan to do that this weekend. So far, I am very impressed with what I’ve got in hand. Kudos to the folks at Evil Hat for putting together such a fantastic game, and thanks again to Fred for making these files available to us playtesters.

It’s got me wanting to run a new Dresden Files game in Winnipeg.

 
 
 

*Yes. That’s a word, now. Why? Because I said so. Back

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day March 20, 2010

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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On Saturday, March 20, I will be back behind the DM’s screen at Imagine Games, running the Game Day adventure celebrating the release of the Player’s Handbook 3. Here’s the blurb from the site:

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day
March 2010
Celebrate the release of Player’s Handbook 3 with a day of adventure! Psionic characters, skill powers, and hybrid classes abound in this essential rulebook. Test out the new classes and rules as you play a unique adventure and grab a copy of Player’s Handbook 3 while you’re there.

Now, that’s not a lot of information, so here’s the intro blurb from the adventure:

Beneath the Lonely Tower

An adventure for five 6th-level characters

The Far Realm’s distance from other planes, reinforced by wards erected at the beginning of time, protects those other worlds from the outer madness. Over the course of history — particularly in the wake of the Dawn War—the wards’ power has weakened, permitting the madness to leak into other planes, including the mortal world.

Recently, a rift to the Far Realm opened beneath an abandoned fortress called the Lonely Tower, twenty miles from the frontier village of Beorunna’s Well. Ten days ago, a troop of foulspawn emerged from the rift and began luring mortals for sacrifice. As each victim dies in the dungeon beneath the tower, the foulspawn ritually gather the escaping life force to expand the rift and to prepare for the arrival of a greater evil.

The braver folk of Beorunna’s Well—barbarians, rangers, and other warlike folk—have mounted two investigative assaults on the Lonely Tower. No one has returned.

This adventure challenges characters to find and close the rift. If they fail, more creatures of madness will pour forth and corrupt the land.

And just to further whet your appetite, here’s a list of the characters available to play:

  • Balashi, Shardmind Psion
  • Caewin, Elf Seeker
  • Foostus, Minotaur Runepriest of Kord
  • Izera, Githzerai Monk
  • Kalen, Half-Elf Ardent
  • Zazenna, Wilden Battlemind

So, if you’re in the city, and you like D&D, or you’d like to try D&D, come on down and play.

It’ll be fun.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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We were back on the Floating Island this past Sunday, now hopelessly adrift in time.

Well, maybe not hopelessly. But still. Adrift in time is not encouraging. And faced with a fire elemental and four hellhounds can be a real downer*.

It wasn’t as bad as all that, though. Even though I got the rules for auras wrong, and dished out extra fire damage for multiple overlapping auras*, the gang managed to tear the elementals apart fairly quickly. Indeed, the fire elemental (a level 12 controller) didn’t get to unleash his best attack at all before dying. The hellhounds gave the group more problems, because of the huge raft of hit points each had.

After that, they made their way up toward the only shelter they could see on this island: the temple with the crystal spires at the top of the central hill. I ran this as a skill challenge, with them trying to make their way through the driving rain and wind, each turn taking a half-hour, and requiring an Endurance check to keep from losing a healing surge from the effort and harsh conditions. I considered throwing in a chance of lightning strikes, as well, but they’d already been through three encounters, and I knew what was waiting for them at the temple.

What was that? Well, a blue dragon*. And a network of smaller crystal spires that kept arcing lightning across the battlefield.

Now, the group was fairly beaten up, and I had some doubts about their survivability, but I didn’t want to pull any punches on this fight. Dragon fights are supposed to be tough and memorable. On the other hand, the warlord was out of healing surges and down to about 75% hit points, and I’m pretty sure the daily powers in the group were all gone. Maybe one or two left.

But that’s okay. If the players start feeling that the DM will never kill them, then the spice is gone from combat. It was a real threat, and they had to deal with it. If they fell, so be it. I wasn’t going to be vicious, but I was going to play the dragon as smart and deadly as I could. I made one concession to the party’s depleted condition, and that was starting the dragon on the ground. Blue dragons are artillery monsters, and I had originally planned to sit it up on the side of the temple where it could blast away with it’s lightning with impunity, but I put it on the ground in front of the temple instead.

Which made a huge difference in the fight. Once the fighter got up close to it, it was stuck. A bad tactical choice got it a little breathing room and it took to the air, but then the cleric trotted out his command and brought it back down, thanks to his elven accuracy power to reroll the attack. Once they got the dragon surrounded, it was quickly bloodied, and the warlord had managed to duck into the temple doorway, where he kept using his powers to get other characters to thump the dragon*.

At this point, I pulled out the dragon’s frightful presence power, which stunned the adjacent party members, including that blasted sticky fighter. The dragon then took to the air, and used an action point to blast out some more lightning at the group. Next round, it flew away to lick its wounds*.

So now the party is resting in the temple, hating the dragon with all their might. And the dragon is resting in a hidden lair, hating the party with all its might.

You know what that means, right?

Grudge match!

 
 
 

*Fire elemental firestorm, 4 hellhounds, 1900 xp, a 7th-level encounter for 6 characters. Back

*One of the players said he thought I was doing it wrong, but I thought I was doing it right. He didn’t press, and I looked it up later. He was correct: similar auras don’t stack their effects. Sorry, guys. Back

*I scaled the adult blue dragon, normally level 12, down to level 11, which set it at 3000 xp, or a level 10 encounter for 6 characters. Tough for a 7th-level party, but not insurmountable. Back

*In what I consider to be perfect warlord fashion. Back

*I gave the party a third of the xp for driving the dragon off in their weakened condition, because I thought that was a pretty impressive accomplishment. If they manage to take it out, they’ll get the full xp on top of that. Back

Hunter: The Vigil – War Stories

By | | Hunter - Shadow Wars, What's he playing?
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Saturday was the next episode of the Shadow Wars campaign for Hunter: The Vigil. We only had four of the five players show up for it – one was in Mexico – but we’re running this by quorum, so we play unless two or more players can’t make it.

Last episode was a spooky haunted house adventure, so I wanted to mix things up this time. I found a webpage from a Philadelphia police officer talking about finding a decapitated goat in a park, with speculation about whether it was some sort of Satanic ritual or a gang initiation. I liked the idea, even though I had used dead animals as the hook for the last episode, and decided to steal it. So, I saved a copy of the webpage and altered it to reflect Winnipeg rather than Philadelphia and printed it out. It even had a couple of pictures of the goat, lying in the snow, half-wrapped in a cardboard box, which was perfect.

I had already decided that I wanted the next adventure to take place in Assiniboine Park in the middle of winter (I’m sticking to real world dates, so the game date is the same as the real date). It was easy enough to change the place names and dates in the blog I was using, and I went looking online for a good map of the park, which again was easy to find. I also did some looking and found some pictures of the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in winter, with the bronze statues covered with snow. They looked suitably creepy, so I printed a few of those out, too.*

The story I came up with was pretty simple. A member of the Mad Cowz gang, looking to move up in the hierarchy, found a magical spell on the Internet to summon and control a demon. He was killing animals, five of them over five nights, to create a big pentagram over the park. On the sixth night, he would go to the centre of the pentagram, carve a pentacle into his chest, and call the demon. This is where things were going to go wrong, because the demon would possess the summoner, transform the body into something fierce and nasty, and take over the gang.

The goat was the last of the sacrifices, and came to the attention of the characters only because it was weird enough to get a blog mention. One other, the sacrifice of a 12-foot boa constrictor, might also have made it, but that one wasn’t discovered by the police. What that meant was that the characters, though they didn’t know it yet, had about nine hours to track things down and put a stop to them.

They did a bunch of investigation, using mundane and not-so-mundane methods, but ran afoul of a bit of GM Omniscience Clue Syndrome. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about, right? It’s when the GM, who knows the solution to the mystery, lays out what he feels are useful and sufficient clues, but the players just don’t have the context to make them fit together into something useful. In this case, the hint was a little line in the blog about the goat being the latest in a rash of animal mutilations found in the park. The players seemed to skim right over it, so I had to do a little bit of finagling to get it noticed. That started them looking for the other sites.

With the sites spotted, and the information they had picked up from the Internet and talking to a contact in the Mad Cowz, they pieced things together in time to be waiting near the cricket pitch at moonrise, when the bad guys showed up and started trying to complete the ritual. I figured it would be a cool moment to have the leader possessed and transformed in the middle of the fight, so my plan was to have him complete the rituals after two rounds of combat, transform on the third round, and take things from there. Now, the demon stats I had put together were pretty nasty, so I figured that if the demon came through, the players would probably need to flee. This is not usually a safe assumption for PCs, but I had spent some effort in setting the whole campaign up to instill the idea that real supernatural creatures were scary-tough and deadly. I gave it slightly better than even odds that, if the demon showed, the characters would run after a round or two.

They didn’t need to. One kept the other gangbangers busy with kung-fu, while another used blunt-tipped arrows to drop the summoner on the second round. They managed to put down all but one of the bad guys, disable their cars, and the doctor lost a point of Morality for carving up the summoner’s chest to make sure the pentacle couldn’t be completed. I even tried to have one of the gangbangers complete the pentacle on his leader’s chest while the leader was unconscious, but he took an arrow to the head and that plan went south, too.

So, they wrapped things up successfully and scarpered before the police showed. A successful end.

The atmosphere wasn’t as horrific as the previous adventure, featuring more combat and only a few moments of creep factor, but I wanted a bit of a change of pace to let the fighter-types in the group have a chance to steal the spotlight, and that worked well. Everyone seemed to have fun.*

And now I have some ideas for the next game. I dropped a little continuity clue in this adventure, but I’m not entirely sure the players picked up on it. That’s okay, though. It just means I can keep building the connections.

 
 
 

*I’m starting to think this Internet thing just might catch on. At least for researching games. Back

*Despite Clint’s terrible dice luck in the early part of the game that caused him to say he hated the system. I think it redeemed itself when he started dropping the bad guys with some truly impressive bow shots. Back

Its Time Come Round At Last…

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Check out this press release.

Yep, after much work, the good folks at Evil Hat are on track to release The Dresden Files RPG at Origins this year.

In two big books.

This is big news for me, because I started this blog as a way to fulfill the terms of the Disclosure Agreement for the Bleeding Alpha Playtest of the game, and I know that everyone in the playtest group has been looking forward to the release anxiously.

I won’t be at Origins, but I will be at GenCon. Guess what I’ll be buying.

Character Building

By | | What's he playing?
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I’ve been a little lax about posting this past week or so because I’ve been caught up in preparation for a few games. One of the games is a playtest of the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay*, another is the next installment of the Hunter – Shadow Wars episodic campaign, and then there’s the bookkeeping for the Storm Point campaign, and the pregame development of Scio Occultus Res.

But the work I’m doing on the games has got me thinking about building characters in games, and the different systems the games offer and why, and the different goals and ideals that players have when building characters. See, I’ve been building some pregens for the WHFRP playtest, some NPCs for the Shadow Wars game, and watching my players build their characters for SOR. I’ve also been reading some other games, like Starblazer Adventures, Mutant City Blues, Two-Fisted Tales, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Burning Wheel, and Mongoose’s latest iteration of the classic Traveller.

What I’ve noticed is that character building systems in game sit on a continuum of customizability, ranging from games where you pick an archetypical character and play it to games where you build each individual aspect of the character. There really isn’t anything at either extreme of the continuum; even a system that focuses on archetypes like Feng Shui or Shadowrun lets you customize a few aspects of the character, and even a game where you build almost everything from scratch like Unknown Armies or Spirit of the Century has a few predefined elements that you need to use to create your character.

In the middle of the road, though, you find the race/class systems, like Dungeons & Dragons, and the skill-based systems, like Call of Cthulhu. Each still has components of the other in it – you get to pick skills and feats to customize your character in D&D, and your choice of profession shapes your skill picks in CoC.

This says to me that , as gamers, we tend to like the ability to build the kind of character we want to play in a game with few restrictions, but we also want a bit of a structure to help realize the ideals we have in relation to the rules. It also seems that the more detailed and low-trust* the rules system is, the more the structure is needed to make the mechanics of character interact properly with the mechanics of task resolution and other systems.

Character building also sets the tone for the game. Consider that, in D&D, most players look at the concept of roles for picking their classes. Now, roles really only impact the game in combat, which leads to the tacit assumption that combat is going to be the most important part of the game. The majority of rules in the game deal with combat in one way or another, from the powers of the characters to entire books of monsters to fight. Now look at a game like Mage: The Awakening. In that game, first you build a normal human, then transform him or her into a wizard. That leads to the tacit assumption that the themes of transformation, alienation from mundane life, and the price of power are going to be present in the game, leading to a more introspective, internal focus for play.

Some systems even have mechanics for building in backstory for your character. The Burning Wheel is a primary example, along with Traveller and Spirit of the Century. Some things you get to pick, but some you don’t, and your choices may restrict or open certain other choices for you. Classic Traveller even had the chance your character would die during character generation, forcing you to start from scratch with a new character*. This can be very useful for games where you really want a bit of depth to the characters, and it leads to assumptions that character history and motivations are going to feature in the game.

Traditionally, once you have your characters created, you throw them together into a group, have them meet in a tavern, and they all decide to risk their lives together. Kind of cheesy, but it works. Now, however, many games are going out of their way to build in reasons why the characters work together, helping the GM give the disparate characters a history together. The brilliant novel idea from SotC and other FATE games is one example, where everyone winds up with connections to at least two other people in the group. WHFRP now has a party sheet, which gives the group a reason to work together, along with benefits and perils specific to that type of group. Traveller mixes and matches this, giving characters a chance to link themselves to other characters during character creation, and then pick a group skill package to represent why they’re together and what they get out of it.

As a GM, I like these sorts of ideas. It takes some of the pressure off when the players are the ones who decide why they’re together and what they want from each other.

And, of course, some character generation systems appeal more to different players than other do.

Me, I like random in character creation. I like rolling the dice and having them dictate aspects of my character, trying to fit the disparate pieces together into something that I want to play. Others I know hate the random method, because they have a much more developed idea of what they want their character to be, and don’t want to let the dice ruin it. And some just don’t like the inequity of randomness, where some characters may start out just plain better than others. I can understand that.

And then there are those players to whom the system trappings of the character are just so much decoration -  the real heart of the character is his or her inner life. See, I like a character that can do something mechanically different from the others in the party; it gives me the chance to stand out in areas where I excel, and it prevents me from stepping on other players when their characters have the chance to shine. But I know some players who are more than content playing the “other fighter” because the attitude, behaviour, motivations, drives, and reactions are all different.

These things come up in character development, too. Some plan out each little advancement, whether in a level-based system or a skill-based system, doing their best to tweak their character to fit the ideal in their head. Others take advancement as it comes, and make their choices based on what seems to fit best at the time. This has some connection with the optimization ideas I discussed back here, but it’s not always about min-maxing.

I think this is part of what keeps most character generation systems near the mid-point of that continuum I mentioned earlier. Developers are trying to make a system that works for the largest number of players. Which is good, because you want more player buying your stuff, but leads to a bit of conservatism in the big games out there. In RPGs, the big guns are definitely Wizards of the Coast, with D&D, and White Wolf, with their World of Darkness games. Both of these have stuck very strongly to their core race/class, abilities, and skills through multiple iterations.

It’s the independent games that are pushing the envelope, coming up with cool new ways to build characters. The FATE games, The Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the Vineyard all have innovative new twists to their character creation that can be looted for other games – the novel idea from FATE, the idea of drives from The Burning Wheel, and the crux moment from Dogs in the Vineyard are all things that can usefully be lifted into pretty much any game.

And then there’s creating NPCs. This is, of necessity, different than creating PCs. As a GM, when you create an NPC, you generally have a specific purpose for him or her, a story role or goal that the character fills. Maybe he’s the villain, or the mentor, or the annoying dependent. Maybe she’s a love interest or a rival or an obstacle. This purpose shapes the type of character you create, but I also find that I shape the character based on what I know about how my group reacts to different things. In the Storm Point game, for example, I know that if I send a halfling NPC anywhere near the party, I’m just asking for him to be distrusted (and possibly stomped), so I only use a halfling if that’s the sort of reaction I want to provoke, or if I’m trying to prove to them that all halflings aren’t deceitful, manipulative crooks.

Of course, you don’t need nearly as much mechanical background for NPCs as you do for PCs. All you need is enough information for the NPC to serve his or her purpose. For longer-running NPCs, you may eventually need to come up with an almost-complete set of stats, but if the only reason the PCs are going to talk to the bartender is to find out that the guy they’re looking for isn’t in the bar, you barely even need a name.

Having said that, one thing that I did in the Dresden Files playtest is create a number of characters along side the players, and then use my characters as NPCs during play. This worked especially well using the DFRPG rules, because of the novel stage, where my NPCs wound up with nice connections to several of the PCs. This meant that the PCs had NPC contacts they could call on in play, contacts that they had a history with. I really liked it.

I think the point I’m trying to make in this post is that there are a myriad of systems for creating characters, and a myriad of ways that players – and GMs – look at making characters. Whatever method you use has got to suit both the game and the players, and that you shouldn’t be afraid of mixing and matching elements from other games to make the types of characters your group likes. Remember that the game isn’t what’s written in the rulebooks; it’s what happens at the table, when you and your friends sit down and start playing.

Do what you need to do in order to give yourself the characters that you need. Characters that you will remember and talk about. Look around, try out new things, read other games, experiment. If something doesn’t work, stop doing it. If something does work, keep doing it.

And remember. Games are supposed to be fun. Have fun.

*About which I will post a full report when the playtest is done. Back

*Low-trust is not necessarily a bad thing. It means that both the players and the GM can have a solid, shared understanding of just what is and is not possible for the character. High-trust is not a bad thing, either. It means that both the players and GM have more of a chance of surprising each other with something cool. Back

*Mongoose’s new Traveller has a more interesting (IMO) mishap table, where something bad happens and you have to leave your current career, but it retains the death option in what it refers to as Iron Man Character Creation. Back

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Last night was the latest installment of the Storm Point game. It was even more scattered than usual, because we started later, and had two missing players. Still, we got through the initial bits of the adventure to the surprise twist I had planned, which was good.

The combat we started with went on far too long for the challenge level it represented*, primarily because two of the players were running two characters each, and weren’t overly familiar with their capabilities. This meant they took substantially longer to decide what their characters were going to do on each turn, and slowed the combat a fair bit.

After the combat, we ran into a stumbling block. I’d been describing the increasingly bad weather as the floating island drifted through the eternal storm at the centre of Lake Thunder, and we got to the point where I told them that soon they wouldn’t be able to fly on their hippogriffs in it, and visibility was down to about twenty feet. I did this so that I could run an interesting exploration scenario, with the party wandering through the jungles and climbing the hills and creeping through the rain-drenched ruins of the dockside, all underneath the dramatic raging of the storm.

But I guess I overplayed it, because instead of setting out to explore any of the other adventure sites I’d dotted on the island – and on their map – they decided to wait out the storm in the ruined fort, then head up to explore the temple on the peak when the weather cleared. I tried to tempt them, because I had some things planned, by showing them a glimpse of what might be a blue dragon flying overhead in the raging storm, but that didn’t do the trick.

So, I had to advance the plot without them.

After they thoroughly searched the fort, they settled down for an extended rest. About an hour into it, the entire island shook, and started to vibrate, and a loud, long peal of thunder sounded. I gave each player two seconds to tell me what his or her character was doing at that moment, and several of them ran outside to look at what was going on. That’s when they saw the pillar of lightning stabbing down from the heart of the storm to the crystal spires of the temple on the peak, and a strange ripple rolling out from it to cover the whole island. As the ripple moved, the trees seemed to fall into the ground, and when it reached the fort, they saw the surrounding jungle shrink to a sparse brush covering the nearby hills, and the fort itself vanished, leaving everyone standing out in the rain.

They immediately realized that they had been thrown back in time to an era before mortals had claimed this part of the world, and only elementals ruled the islands. The big clue about this was the fire elemental and pack of hellhounds coming over the hill toward them through the hissing, steaming rain.

This is the twist I had been planning from the beginning of designing this adventure, about a year ago. This is a moment when the entire campaign might take a real left-turn from what everyone has been expecting. See, the lightning striking the temple causes it to jump through time erratically, and it might not get back to the “present” before the island moves out of the storm. The party’s going to have a chance to try and steer themselves home, but if they fail, then the rest of the campaign (or at least a good chunk of the next part of it) is going to take place some time in the past – possible during the establishment of the Arkhosian Empire, or during the war with Bael Turath, or even at the height of the Empire of Nerath.

So, I don’t know where things are going to go after this, and neither do the players. It’s fun. I look forward to seeing what they do and how things play out.

*5 ghouls and a rotclaw, 1600 xp, a level 6 encounter for 6 characters. Back