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Post Tenebras Lux Report

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Some pretty big changes in the Post Tenebras Lux game. I’ve held off on writing about them until things sorted themselves out.

First off, two players decided, for various reasons, to leave the game. We’ll miss them, but thanks for playing with us as long as you did, Michael and Dillip.

This left us with only four players, and one who was waffling about whether he wanted to continue. Four was the bare minimum I wanted to run with, and it would have made for less redundancy in players to support our absentee player policy*.  It was also somewhat discouraging for me, as I was trying to break free of the dungeon-crawl, combat-oriented aesthetic of the Scales of War adventure path that had soured on us, but hadn’t had much of a chance to do so, yet.

So, it looked for a while like the game would fold. Then I suggested we try and recruit some replacement players.

Way back when this started, I had started the game with eight players. Two dropped because of group size. I asked them if they were interested in rejoining the game, and they said yes. So, in a flurry of activity, we whipped up two new, 3rd-level characters, complete with backstories, and worked them into the game.

This solution was enough to pull the player who was thinking about leaving back into the game, though he decided that he wouldn’t continue with his current character, but play the cleric of one of the departing players, instead**. So now the group is:

  • Torrin, dragonborn paladin of Pelor
  • Akmenos, tiefling rogue
  • Sergheia Jackalope, half-elf ranger
  • Arcos Strand, human cleric of Erathis
  • Ruingast, eladrin avenger of the Raven Queen and multiclass shaman
  • Kara, half-elf dragon sorcerer

One defender, one leader, four strikers. Kara and Ruingast can, in a pinch, pull double-duty as defenders pretty well, and Kara has some good strong controller options, so the balance is not as skewed as it might look on paper. Still, their focus is on pumping out the damage, as opposed to sucking it up or mitigating it.

All that done, I worked up a little scene where the two characters depart and the other two join. I also noticed, while helping the new players create their characters, that the four characters who had been playing all along were rather woefully short in the treasure department compared to the new arrivals, so I worked in a distribution of magic items as gifts from a group of patrons to help bring things up to par.

Now I was ready for the actual adventure to start.

After wandering out into the Witchwood looking for the mysterious barrow that appears only under the full moon and getting spanked by an owlbear, some fey panthers, gnomes, and a pseudodragon, the party limped back to Witchcross trying to figure out how the townsfolk managed to gather firewood without an armed guard. Back in the inn, we ran the scene where the two characters leave and the other two join, and the Santa Clause scene where the four original characters got their goodies.

And that’s when they met Adrianna the Young, who was not pleased that they had run out into the wood and started slaughtering everyone they found***.  After a rocky start, they got her calmed down, apologized, and persuaded her to give them her blessing to seek out the barrow, which she called the Winter Castle, to make sure it hadn’t fallen to corruption and evil, the way Rivenroar Castle had****. She even gave them what little information she had about the site: that it was warded by a magical maze of cold.

Next morning, the party bought some potions of resist cold and some heavy clothing, then headed out into the wood. Careful progress led them to Rest-by-Water, where they waited for the moon to rise in order to make finding the Winter Castle easier. The peaceful forest spirits of the place made them welcome, and made resting their quite beneficial*****. As they were leaving, they spotted a unicorn running off through the trees away from the path to their objective, and decided to follow it, in case it was leading them somewhere important.

It wasn’t but it did lead them somewhere interesting: the Stone Door. They spent a little more time examining the site and learning how it worked, then got back on the trail. The sun was setting by that time, and it was full dark when they were jumped by the single combat we had in the session.

They spotted the stirges in time to avoid a surprise round, but didn’t see the vine horror hiding in the underbrush******. I rolled crazy high for the monsters’ initiative (27 for the vine horror, 26 for the stirges), so the fight pretty much started with a surprise round, anyway. When the first character came up in the rotation, all but one of them were restrained and taking ongoing 10 damage, and about half of them had a blood-draining stirge attached to them, doing another ongoing 5. Still, they pulled through, though the cleric dropped at one point. Stacked ongoing damage is nasty.

So, that’s where we left it. Everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves – including me – and I think we’re all feeling much more positive about Post Tenebras Lux continuing.

Yay!

*Basically, I run if more than half the players are going to be there, and missing players have their characters played by one of the present players. Wtih six players, we can run with as few as many as two players not making it to the game. Fewer players means fewer people can miss the game and the game still take place.

**He and the other departing character had worked up a pretty in-depth backstory for their two characters, and one leaving and one staying didn’t make much sense within the group dynamic that had developed. Also, he didn’t want the group to lose the healing capabilities of the cleric.

***Her view of the situation, not what actually happened.

****A mix of skill challenge and roleplaying. I awarded success and failures based both on rolls, when I felt they were called for, and on specific things said and done by the characters.

*****Resting there for more than an hour granted them each an extra action point. Originally, I had planned to make resting there replenish a number of healing surges, but they were all unwounded, so I decided on the action point instead.

******Seven stirges and a vine horror, 900 xp, a level 3 encounter for 6 characters.

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.

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.

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.

Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day – Player’s Handbook 2

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Just got word from Pedro and Wendy over at Imagine Games that we’re a go for March 21st for the next Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day – Player’s Handbook 2. I’ll be there running sessions in the demo at 12:30, 3:00, and 5:30, as long as people show up to play. For the curious, here’s the text from the Wizards of the Coast promo:

Ready an Action to Play on March 21st!

Prepare yourself (and your friends) to join D&D fans all around the world on March 21st for Worldwide D&D Game Day: Player’s Handbook 2. Everything you need to play will be on-hand, so it’s a great chance for new players, as well as veterans, to band together and find some adventure.

Come try out the new races (such as the gnome) and the new classes (like the invoker and barbarian) while you battle wicked fiends and thwart dark plots. No matter if you’re new to the game or a 4th Edition veteran; we’ll have everything you need to embark on an all-new adventure.

One Dark Night in Weeping Briar – A stormy night, an empty town, and a small girl that holds the key to thestrange disappearances. An adventure for 5 pregenerated 11th-level characters. The characters are:

  • Ilvarra, drow avenger
  • Markaria, tiefling invoker
  • Roswyn, gnome bard
  • Squeaks, warforged barbarian
  • Balasar, dragonborn paladin (uses material from the upcoming Divine Power product)

 

So, if you’re in Winnipeg and interested in trying out the new material from the PHB2, or you’re curious about 4th Edition or roleplaying games in general, 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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Well, last night finished off the current adventure for the party in Storm Point. They made their way down to the last two big set-piece fights, and killed the baddies.

I stole the last two encounters from H1: Keep on the Shadowfell, changing a few details of the monsters to make them fit the current storyline of the game. This is remarkably easy, as I was able to keep most of the cool mechanics of the main characters’ powers, but changed the jazz a little to reflect a dedication to Vecna instead of Orcus. I also swapped out some of the monsters, trading the pair of human berserkers for a pair of bugbear warriors and the Orcus priest for a Shadar-Kai witch. That meant I had to drop one of the vampire spawn to keep the encounter in the right xp range I wanted, but still very easy to do.

I used the first encounter to deal with a concern I sometimes have with the heroes going to fight a tribe of humanoids: when they get to the lair/village/stronghold, what do they do with the non-combatants? What do they do with the goblin women and children in this case? Do they let them live, or do they slaughter them all like genocidal lunatics? Sell them into slavery?

Now, in some games, this can be very interesting roleplaying ground to explore – what are the heroes willing to do? Where do they draw the lines? How do the handle the aftermath of whatever choice they make?

This group, not so much. We play, in this game, pretty much a beer-and-pretzels game, focusing on the fun, cinematic aspects of the game, not on the introspective soul-searching. And I’m fine with that. I’ve got other games where I can explore questions like that.

But I dislike just ignoring inconvenient practicalities. So, I decided that the best thing was to take the choice out of their hand, and have the Shadar-Kai witch and the scion of Vecna sacrifice all the non-combatants in the ritual to open the portal in the temple. This did two things: one, it eliminated the non-combatants without forcing the heroes to make a choice that I don’t think was warranted in the game, and two, it showed that the bad guys were really bad.

Everyone was running short on healing surges by this time, and several had already used their daily powers, so these two big boss fights were pretty challenging. The Shadar-Kai witch’s aura power turned out to be pretty useful for me and frustrating for the party, and the toughness of the bugbears made them very good meat-shields*. The deathlock wight on the lower level didn’t even get a shot off, because everyone decided it was the best initial target. The scion of Vecna and the thing in the portal that he was summoning gave everyone a run for their money, what with the 3-square threatening reach of the thing and its ability to drag people toward the portal and heal the scion. And the skeletons were surprisingly resilient and hit pretty hard.

It was a good couple of fights, and everyone got to do something cool, which made me happy.

It also got a couple of the players trying to figure out what the connection was between the Shadar-Kai, the halflings, the goblins, and the black dragon from the first adventure. It looks like there’s a bit of a direction manifesting in the campaign**.

Nice.

*One got lightning-lured into the open pit down to the next level in the first round of combat, and everyone grinned at how clever they were. Until he climbed back up a couple of rounds later and ganged up on the rogue with his buddy, putting him down in a single round.

**In most campaigns, I plot out an overarching story. In this one, I didn’t because the players wanted somethng a little more episodic, with more freedom of choice. So, I’ve built a number of different threads and starting points into the game, and I elaborate on the ones that the players pick up and pursue. This allows them to have more control over their choices and options in the game, while still building in some ongoing mystery and narrative direction. But it’s player directed instead of GM directed, which I think is important.

Rituals – We Need More!

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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I had a discussion today at lunch with one of my players about optimization of D&D characters in 4E*. Some of the points we raised got me thinking about things which led me to the titular conclusion. Here are my starting assumptions:

  1. The majority of powers in 4E are designed to reduce an opponent’s hit points, either directly or indirectly.
  2. Most of the remaining powers in 4E are designed to protect or restore character hit points, either directly or indirectly.
  3. The durations of the few utility powers that are useful outside of combat are either instantaneous or about five minutes**.
  4. A substantial protion of the rules in the PHB and the DMG are concerned, in one way or another, with combat***.

I want to note that I don’t think these are necessarily bad things. One of the most complex facets of any RPG is combat, and even with a rules-light system (which D&D is definitely NOT), combat takes up a disproportionate amount of game time. It is also the most competitive portion of most game systems, and often benefits from having the most detailed rules to help adjudicate difficult situations if things turn adversarial.

What these assumptions mean, though, is that the utility of most powers, which are some of the primary identifiers of character in the game, do not extend outside of combat situations. It means that my cunning wizard cannot turn himself invisible to accompany other characters to an audience with a crime lord and act as surprise back-up. Hell, even with a ring of invisibility, I only get one turn of invisibility once per day.

Invisibility is only one aspect. What about my ranger’s ability to construct a well-concealed campsite, or my thief’s ability to set a trap? Where are the glyphs of warding or guards and wards or explosive runes? If I want to infiltrate the tribe of gnolls, I’ve got to put on a hyena skin, because disguise self no longer exists.

I know. I know. This sounds like some “Bring Back 3rd Edition” wonking. It’s not, though.

I don’t mind that powers deal primarily with combat situations, because the designers have taken a bunch of the rest of those abilities and made them into rituals.

I love rituals.

I love the idea behind them, I love the design of them, I love the feel of them in game, I love pretty much everything about them. One of my friends has complained that he doesn’t like the idea of rituals because it means that a wizard can’t just wave his hand to create his phantom steed, and that makes him seem less magical. Fair enough. But I think the idea of wizards and clerics using big books of eldritch formula to weave the phantom steed together out of mist and shadows is a cooler image to me. Gathering rare and valuable components to call up a mystical oracle to provide guidance just works in my mind, in a way that saying, “I cast contact other plane,” never did.

Yes. Sure. A good GM makes the rather mechanistic spells seem more magical. The feel is more a result of play than of design. I completely agree with that point. In fact, I’ve made it myself in other arguments.

But design certainly helps.

So, I like rituals. But we need more. And we need them to push the envelope of things.

We need to see some more of the utility spells from 3E show up as rituals. Longer-term, multi-person invisibility, for instance, could be patterned after the way they did the Overland Flight ritual. All the missing polymorph effects would work pretty well as rituals, as would the protective spells I mentioned above. And even though 4E deliberately stays away from buff spells, I think rituals that grant bonuses to skill checks for one scene or one endeavour would work nicely. Not combat stats, mind you; just buff one or more skill checks.

Goodman Games is off an running on this. They’ve announced an open call for their Book of Rituals, and their sample ritual shows that they’re definitely doing a fair bit with summoning rituals. I say the more, the merrier.

But I think things should be a little more open with rituals. After all, in 4E, anyone who takes the Ritual Caster feat can use rituals, whether they are a spellcasting class or not. We see some very rangerish rituals in the PHB, with the Nature skill as their focus. Why not expand this to include fighters, rogues, and warlords?

Okay, some of the defining identity of those three classes is that they are non-magical, but some of their powers seem pretty fantastic. The rules describe them as using the Martial power source to fuel their exploits. But what if, instead of a mystical rite that gave the fighter the ability to force one foe in the next battle to reroll an attack, he instead performed the Willow Dance Kata to limber himself up and focus on defense? And of course, he’d need to rub his muscles with valuable salves and ointments to keep them loose, right? Or maybe the warlord sketches the Battle of Horn Falls out on the dirt and walks through the strategy and tactics used in the famous conflict in order to give his allies a bonus on their attempt to infiltrate the castle of the Mad Duke? And the rogue performs the Intrusion Evaluation to figure out how to open a locked chest.

In this way, the rituals become, not necessarily magical ceremonies, but the deep secrets of the various crafts and classes represented in the rules. They add out-of-combat functionality to the characters dedicated enough to take the Ritual Caster feat and devote some coin to acquiring, mastering, and performing these rituals.

So why haven’t I created a bunch of rituals to prove my point, and maybe sell them to Goodman Games? Well, two reasons. One is that I’m pretty lazy, and haven’t got around to doing it. The other is that, as far as posting such things on my site, I’m not sure how much it would involve the GSL and the Wizards of the Coast intellectual property.

But I’ve got a couple of ideas simmering in my brain, so maybe you’ll see something in a little while.

 

 

*Which is something else I’m gonna want to talk about at a later date.

**I’m sure there are exceptions, but I think they’re pretty rare.

***That is to say, they either deal with combat, or with something that impinges directly on combat. I don’t want to get into a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon scenario.

Encounters vs. Scenes – RPG Terminology and Philosophy

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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I really started to notice it starting in 3E D&D, and it’s become even more prevalent in 4E. Adventures for D&D are breaking down to a collection of encounters. That’s the way the DMG addresses adventure creation, that’s the way the majority of the published adventures are written, and that’s the way I’ve been thinking about creating adventures.

What’s wrong with that? Nothing, really. But it does encourage a specific type of thinking about adventure construction, and that in turn shapes the type of game play you get in that adventure.

Let’s start with some definitions of terms. According to the DMG:

An encounter is a single scene in an ongoing drama, when the player characters come up against something that impedes their progress.

p. 34

Also according to the DMG:

An adventure is just a series of encounters. How and why these encounters fit together – from the simplest to the most complex – is the framework for any adventure.

p. 94

For contrast, I’m going to be talking about White Wolf‘s SAS adventure structure. Here’s what they say about scenes in their SAS Guide pdf:

Each scene is built as a discrete game encounter (or a closely-tied collection of game encounters) for the troupe to play through.

p. 2

And here’s what they say about their adventures:

Think of a Storytelling Adventure System product (SAS) as a story kit…

The basic parts that make up most SAS stories are simple: Storyteller characters, scenes and some advice on how you can put them together.

p. 2

So much for contrast, huh? They both seem to say pretty much the same thing.

Except they don’t, really.

D&D focuses on encounters, challenges for the characters to face, things that cause them to struggle. Whether it’s a combat or non-combat encounter, it is a point of conflict.

White Wolf adventures focus on scenes, which may or may not contain conflict, but that are focused on moving the story ahead.

What difference does this make?

Well, after my last D&D game, the discussion of the high points were things like how tough a monster was, or what a cool combat that one encounter was.

After my last Hunter: The Vigil game, the discussion was about what a cool NPC the Rag Man was.

It’s a subtle but profound difference. By thinking about the basic building blocks of the game – encounters/scenes – differently, a different mindset is created during both adventure creation and play. In D&D, the focus is on challenges overcome. In World of Darkness games, the focus is on story progression.

Let me put it another way.

In most D&D games*, the idea of spending an entire session attending a party with minimal dice rolling and no combat would be seen as a very unconventional session. Not necessarily bad, but different from the normal adventure. Especially if they didn’t have a mechanically-governed objective in mind**.

In most World of Darkness games, the idea of spending an entire session prowling through the sewers killing monsters and looting their corpses would be seen as a very unconventional session. Again, it wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but it would almost certainly be a departure from the norm. Especially if success (whatever that means in context) was based on the number of monsters killed.

Now, there are a number of reasons why this is. We can talk about genre conventions, the differences in appropriateness of tropes between fantasy and horror, modern versus medieval setting, and target market for the games. But all these things are focused through the lens of adventure creation, and the way the designers have chosen to address the universal RPG question of, “What do I do with my character?”

D&D is a game about heroic pseudo-medieval fantasy adventure. World of Darkness games are about dark modern horror stories***. The designers have chosen the tools, including the philosophy behind the adventure creation, to focus on the ideas that they feel work best given their respective games. And in many ways, I feel, the difference between the two is encapsulated in the simple choice of encounter or scene to represent the basic building block of the adventure.

So why am I going on about this?****

Because I was running into a brick wall designing the next adventure for my Post Tenebras Lux campaign.

Part of the goal was moving away from what my players called the Fight Club design of adventures, giving them more options and more freedom to respond to different situations. So, I’ve got a fairly loose, open-ended kind of adventure set up, with a small adventure site and a fair bit of exploration and interaction surrounding it. I sat down and created the combat encounters, and the traps and skill challenge portions, for the adventure in an hour or so, then sat looking blankly at the connecting portions, trying to think how to make the adventure more than just a bunch of strung-together encounters.

So, what to do?

Well, I’m stealing from the SAS school of adventure design, along with my years of experience running other games*****. I’m putting together a bunch of NPC notes, notes on the locales, little roleplaying scenes that provide story information without conflict, and other things. I’m using a very loose flowchart of the the adventure to show how one thing may lead to another, and how different parts interrelate.

And then, I’m gonna play it by ear, and let the characters set the pace and direction.

I think this will give me what I’m looking for.

See, I needed to make the mental transition from encounter-based design to scene-based design to make this adventure what I wanted it to be. Once I did that, I was able to look at the whole setup in a very different way, and see what needed doing to produce the result I wanted.

I want to be very clear about something, though. I don’t think that scene-based design is intrinsically superior to encounter-based design. I don’t think that D&D is wrong about how they design their games and adventures. I don’t think White Wolf games are inherently superior, or that all games should follow their model of adventure design.

What I do think is that we, as GMs and players, need to be aware of the underlying assumptions and design philosophy inherent in the games we play if we want to be able to make them be the games we want. The design and the system is just the toolkit. What matters is that, when you sit down to game, you and your friends have fun.

That’s all.

 

 

*Yes, I am generalizing here and, therefor, lying to some degree. I know that some people have different play styles. And don’t worry; I’m going to generalize about White Wolf games in the next paragraph.

** This is one of the blessings and curses of the skill challenge rules in D&D. Now, you can have a whole skill challenge centered around making a good impression at a party, and everyone can roll their dice to do it.

***Another example of the impact of language: adventure vs. stories.

****Dude, I’m at about 750 words, and you’re just asking this now?

*****In trying to gain some mastery of the 4E rules, I’ve been cleaving very close to the party line with adventure creation, doing things by the book. This has meant ignoring some of the skills at improvising in the middle of a game, or building a very loose structure, that I’ve picked up in running things like Unknown Armies, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Amber Diceless RPG.