Saturday, August 20, 2011

Bloodspurt

image by Nathan M. Rosario 
I am working on my character for the Pathfinder game I'm going to be playing with the Boy, who is playing a Goth halfling sorcerer with a tiny dragon familiar.

My character is, well, just check him out -

Name: Bloodspurt

Race: Half-orc
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Good

STR: 15
DEX: 13
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 16
CHR: 19

I am seriously considering making him blond with an appearance identical to Fabio. I don't think I am going to be able to stop laughing throughout the entire campaign.  Dear god I'm going to be annoying.  The other players are going to kill me while I'm sleeping.

- Ark

Friday, August 19, 2011

The Six Million Dollar GM: Faster, Stronger, Now With More Funions

Honestly, I don't remember it being so PINK.
I triple dog dared ckutalik over in one of beedo's post to do what beedo mentioned, which was "something I'd like to see more bloggers discuss is their successful table techniques that translate into good games."  ckutalik is still writing, I guess, so I'll go first. ;)  He did post up some rules for the challenge, which I probably have not followed at all, but here we go . . .

Everything important that I've learned about running a role playing game I discovered in the first few years of playing.  The remaining decades are just filled with me having to relearn these basic tenants because I've read gaming advice that sounds good, but ultimately falls short.

Now when I say YOU in the points below, I mean ME.  I'm talking to myself here, and the games that I play.  What works for other people is different that what works for me.  You probably shouldn't even be reading this because it will screw up your game.

1. Stop fucking planning.

Really dude, just stop it.  Being prepared is one thing, but sitting around, imagining what the players are going to do and coming up with some sort of tree branch decision matrix outcome generation system is futile.  It's not going to be exciting.

Let the players do whatever the hell they want and react to it on the fly.  Build the world each step of the way as the players put their foot down on that particular patch of grass.  Sure, sketch out a map, imagine some dungeon ideas, flesh out an npc - but never expect that the players will go to those lands, explore those dungeons, or meet those characters.  The players can't screw up your plans if you don't have any, and it's kind of rude to expect the very free-thinking players that you want to be playing with to hop aboard your choo-choo train of railroadiness, no matter how grand it might play out in your head.

The best 'planning' for a game is to read lots of adventure fiction, ancient history books, geology texts, and Shakespeare.  Go watch Mythbusters and play with LEGOs.  Devour information and play games.  Feed your mind the building blocks of world making so you can have the tools to build on the fly.

2.  Don't you dare open that rulebook.

Looking up monsters stat, equipment lists, or random tables is okay.  But don't waste anyone's time digging for rules DURING A GAME.  If you can't remember it - it was obviously too complicated anyway.

Recently, one of my newer players had a character in the water, fighting a sewer kraken in 4e.  I told him that he was at a negative two to hit.

"Is that in addition to the underwater combat modifications listed in the rules?"

I chuckled.  "I don't remember what the 4e rules for underwater combat are, and I don't care.  You are at a negative 2.  Go."

He looked like I was speaking Martian to him, but he continued.  Later he joined my Labyrinth Lord game as well, so evidently the way I was running things wasn't too repulsive to him.

3. Leave the damn dice alone.

If you roll the dice, accept the result.  You asked the universe a question.  The universe gave you an answer.  Deal or don't roll the dice in the first place.  The universe typically makes better decisions that you anyway, since, you know, it can't be WRONG, so you might as well go with it.  And it works because I never feel guilty about cheating or short-changing the players from the full 'gaming experience.' :)


So, there you have it, ckutalik, my recipe for LEET G4MERZ SKILLZ   You are now 'it.'

:)

- Ark

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Dungeonspiration: Cenote


A few years ago we took a vacation to Cancún.  I desperately wanted to go inland to visit the ruins of Chichen Itza.  No one wanted to go with me, so I hoofed it inland through the jungle.  Okay, not really.  I took an air-conditioned tour bus and sat next to a cute girl from San Diego while being served mass quantities of cerveza. Ah, the life of an explorer.

On the way, we stopped off at a cenote for an hour to 'take the waters.'  Technically, I knew what a cenote was, but when I finally saw one . . . well . . . wow.

The Ik Kil Cenote is over 80 feet deep.  Roots from the forest above dangled down into the crystal clear water below.  Birds and bats flew all around as multiple streams of water formed a myriad of small waterfalls.

While the Yucatán is a jungle, technically, it doesn't really rain a whole heck of a lot.  Its hot and dry.  There are no rivers or lakes to speak of.  This is due to the extreme karst topography of the region.  The limestone creates this porous land, but what seals the deal is that 65 million years ago, a big ass rock fell out of the sky and shattered  the hell out of the subsurface strata.  Oh, and that rock probably killed all of the dinosaurs off too, but that is another story.



So when it does rain, the water goes down, down, down into the ground, ground, ground.  There vast networks of underground rivers in the region.  Sometimes, the rivers find soft enough limestone to erode holes to the surface - and those holes to the surface are the cenote.

Without palatable surface water, the Mayan people built their villages and cities around cenote.  Some of the sink holes had water closer to the surface, but some were much harder to get to.  The Mayans would use ropes or build stairs for access.



Think about that for a second.   A whole group of people having to cluster around holes in the ground for water, and having to descend into those holes to get the water.  On a daily basis.  And who knows where the holes led to?  And who knows what dangers lurked down there.

I'll tell you.  Kobolds.  Orcs.  Dragons.  Gelatanous Cubes and Green Slimes.

I think you'd be hard pressed for a better place to run a cavern based mega-dungeon than in the cenote-filled Yucatán peninsula - or a fantasy facsimile thereof.  

So go Google cenote, get your graph paper out, and start planning some mischief. :)



- Ark




Blogger Makes You Stupid

Yesterday I wrote a post entitled '4e Makes You Stupid.'  Rather than try to address all of the comments one at a time, I'll do it here.

I have no interest in insulting people or making them feel bad.  That last post did just that.  It's a half-baked rant that belongs in the car when driving to Taco Bell for 2am burritos.  I didn't think of how it could be interpreted by a wider audience.  It is a raw emotional response to real life events and needed some editorial review.

The core of the arguement - that RPGs can cause players and GMs to stick with problems and solutions that are easily presentable within the rules structure of the system is, I think, quite valid.  Thinking outside of systems is something I'm very interested in.  However, it's wrapped in a rant that makes some people feel as if I am attacking them.

If you are some psychopath running around killing or hurting people, then yes, I do want you to feel bad.  But if you are playing an RPG?  Sheesh.  No - that's cool.  Really cool.  Play and enjoy.

I will continue to rant about whatever gaming system has pissed me off at the moment.  But note - I'm bitching about words on paper.  My intention is not to belittle the actual players themselves.  Or the game designers.  Both my son and I play 4e.  There is a lot I like about it.  There is a lot that frustrates me.  I have handed WOTC more money that I can comfortably admit.

Some have suggested changing the title of that last post to something less incendiary, or just deleting the post.  I'm not convinced.  I'm thinking it should stay to remind me not to do that again.

And no, I didn't come up with the title to get hits.  It's just the first thing that came to mind.  I have a wonderful base of readers already, and I would much prefer people coming to this blog for positive, life affirming reasons than to jump into a fist fight.  I'll try harder next time.

Thanks for reading.

- Ark

PS - I don't really think that Blogger makes you stupid either.  It just helps to expose it.  An that 'you' right there in the title is 'me,' not you.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

4e Makes You Stupid

There is something intrinsic to the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons that makes the people that play it as dumb as friggin rocks.  It's not the players fault.  It's not really the DMs fault either (aside from choosing to run the system.)  It's the philosophy behind the core game design.

Case in point: last night's Vayniris game where I am running 4e.  Vayniris is based on Vornheim, which pulls more from earlier D&D, even though Zak has provided monster stats in a 4e format as well.  But the monsters still behave like early edition monsters.

The players are going up against a medusa.  They know they are going up against a medusa.  They are in the medusa's house.  The Boy has read all of the Percy Jackson books.  The Boy has watched Clash of the Titans.  The Boy has read books on Greek mythology.  He says 'Shouldn't we go get a mirror?'

The rest of the party just ignores him.  They find the medusa.  They run at the medusa and begin whacking at it.  One character, upon finding out the medusa is so bad ass that he can't even hit it, wanders away from combat and begins looking for something that will help.

He finds . . . what?  Can you guess what he finds?

Yeah.  So he takes the mirror, shows it to the medusa, and POOF.  Game over for the medusa.

It's not that the players are stupid, it's that 4e enforces the GRIND.  You have to wear a monster's hit points down all the way from high to low.  In standard 4e, that's what you expect, because that's really all there is. There are no shortcuts - short of tossing someone off a 500 foot tall cliff.  And even then, the monster might survive.

The Boy kept on telling me "I don't look at it.  I attack, and then I look away so when she looks, I can't see her!"  There is no mechanic for this in 4e.  The entry for the AD&D medusa, however, states that if you go around and not look at the medusa, it will tick her off and she'll come at you with her knife.  So not looking WORKS.  Showing her a mirror WORKS.

Such outside the box tactics are not part of the 4e mentality.  The medusa 4e stat block doesn't say a medusa CAN'T turn herself to stone, but it doesn't imply that she CAN either.  The designers don't build the monsters that way.  The rules are not arranged around that type of problem solving.  And what's worse, as a DM, your brain gets stuck into this mentality as well.

It can get bad.  For example, in the RPGA, I've seen people out-think skill challenges and NOT receive the experience points for them, because they went around the skill die rolls needed to properly complete that activity.  BLECH.

Remember, back when you were a kid watching monster movies, that each monster had a weakness to be exploited?  One silver bullet - one stake through the heart, and the monster was dead.  That kind of tradition goes back at least as far as ancient Greece.  The ancient Greeks would HATE the hell out of 4e.

But I'll DM 4e for The Boy as long as he wants.  I'm just going to continue to try to shake things up and force everyone as far out of the box as possible.

However . . . Pathfinder has gotten it's grip on The Boy - and he's super pumped to play a halfling sorcerer with a black cape, a staff that looks like a scythe, and a little dragon for a familiar.  Great.  The Boy is going GOTH.  If it turns out he likes it, we may never get back to 4e.

- Ark

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Halfling Battering Ram

When I was 10, I build Grond out of LEGOs.
A lot of things happened in our last Labyrinth Lord session,  but I would be remiss if I neglected to mention this odd little incident.

In the Invisible Mountain dungeon, The Boy found a little bone Cube of Force.  This was completely random.  I read the item description and thought 'Oh crap, I've just ruined the game with stupid randomity.'  The original AD&D Cube of Force had some drawbacks - which the LL Cube nullifies.   It basically creates a movable 10' foot cube of nigh-invulnerability for 60 minutes each day.

I shrugged and let it be.  The Percentile Oracle had spoken.

So, they left the dungeon, conquered a dragon (completely forgetting they had any magic items at all,) and made their way to the town of Barton Hill.  They were hoping that Barton Hill had not pledged allegiance to the growing army of dragons infesting the Wild Lands.

"Halt, in the name of the Great Dragon King Abaraxis.  State your names and your business!" was the guards' answer to their unspoken question as they stood outside the town gate.

"I am Imbroglio, and we have just slain a dragon.  We are your liberators.  Let us in!" the little elf with the high charisma said.  Regretfully, Imbroglio was well known throughout the Wild Lands as being the worshipper of a god that doesn't actually exists, and being one of the most prolific and unabashed liars on the entire continent.

"We have heard of you, Imbroglio.  Archers . . . kill them," the captain said.  Twenty-nine archers appeared on the town wall.

"Dammit!  Run!" yelled Imbroglio.

"Wait!  Get close to me!" said The Boy's halfing thief, Ferrit.  He took out the cube of force and activated it.

Arrows rained down on them, bouncing off the invisible cube of force.  The party cheered.

"We just came out of the woods.  Can we make a battering ram?" Imbroglio player asked.

"Well . . ." I chewed my lip.  "I think that armies make battering rams before they lay siege to a city.  You can start chopping down a tree, I guess."

"Wait," Imbroglio's player said, "I have a better idea.  Let's all go up to the gate.  The force walls center on the cube in Ferrit's hand, right?"

I nodded.

"Okay, so when we get up to the gate, we pick Ferrit up and use him as a battering ram and smash down the door."

"No!" The Boy howled.  "You'll crush my head and kill me!"

I tried not to laugh as I looked at my son.  "Ferrit will be alright.  The cube of force will act like a shield."

"Oh.  I still don't like it," the boy huffed.

So, my friends used my son as a battering ram.

The guards on the wall were having none of this, and began throwing whatever they had down on the party.  Dirt, rocks, and hot tar created a layer of floating asphalt above the PCs heads.  But finally, they smashed the door down.

"What a minute," the cleric said.  "Why are we invading this town?"

This began a heated argument about burning down the town, or just a part of it.  In the end, the party ran the guards off the battlements and set fire to the town hall.  They booked it out of the place just before the charges ran out on the cube.

There was still the asphalt roof to deal with.  The party helped Ferrit chunk the cube, and it's strange roof, as far away as they could.  With a smash, the asphalt collapsed onto the little bone cube.

I picked up a die and rolled a saving throw.

"Oops," I smiled. "The asphalt shatters the cube."

"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

The dice giveth, and the dice taketh away.

- Ark