The image that says "D&D" to me

I came to D&D late in my gaming career, only acquiring a copy of the AD&D Players Handbook last year, at the ripe age of 27. Thus this image, while dazzling to my adult self, didn't have near the impact that it would have had on my 12-year-old self had I seen it back then.

Anyway, this is the image that says "D&D" to me. Part of me wants to yell "Don't look at that freakin' mouth, there's some glowing eyes at the end of the hallway! Get your shields up!"

Anytime I want to get juiced up for fantasy gaming, I take a look at this image. And whenever I need to get in the right mindset for D&D in particular (what with its adventuring parties, hirelings, 10-foot poles, secret doors and the like) I take a look at the following image.

ICONS and the Adult Gamer: Actual Play/Review

A couple days ago, four of us got together to play ICONS - the new superhero rpg by Steven Kenson et al. The game is a cross between a cleaned up, old school TSR Marvel supers game and the more narrative and modern Spirit of the Century. The game includes information about several powers, but it's not crunchy - ICONS is heavily tilted toward random character generation and being able to sit down and play quick-like. While I love Mutants and Masterminds (Kenson's other, much ballyhooed supers game), ICONS is a different beast. It's not for the munchkins. Really, it's not for the gritty old schoolers or vampire narrativists either. It's for some goofy, quick fun with a splash of dynamic play and modern cool.

And that's how it actually played. Which was perfect for this particular night. Here's the origin story of said night:

My friends and I are late-20s/early 30s gamers with wives, long term relationships, careers, and in my case, a kid. We're not as grizzled as Old Guy Mike (glad you're back on the blogging scene!), but time is still scarce, and it has empirically proven near-impossible to have a steady campaign going. So, we've decided to make a set, biweekly game. Whoever shows, shows. At our first meeting, we had about 8 people (WOW!!!). Our second was sadly cancelled because of attendance issues. At our third meeting, Pat was supposed to continue his long-running old school, fantasy, sandbox, gritty, savage worlds campaign. But he bailed at the last minute because he had professional responsibilities (you know, like editing fantasy flight rpg books for real money).

I had ICONS sitting on my desktop, and it looked quick and fun. I downloaded the first adventure the night before our game, quickly skimmed the ICONS rules, read the adventure, and showed up with some makers mark for the game the next day.

The game was great. We randomly generated characters in 45 minutes. We played through about 3/4 of the adventure in a few hours. This was quite fast indeed. Much of this speed is due to the simplicity of the system: The GM doesn't roll dice, and only compares PC rolls against NPC stats. (A couple times, muscle memory kicked in and I caught myself reaching for dice when it was the NPCs' turns to attack, and rolling is FUN, but it worked well regardless.) The system was simple enough that I didn't really explain it to the players. I just translated the results of their die rolls for them. In the end, we had a few pretty cinematic combats, some cool between combat scenes, and ended up with what turned out to be some morally ambiguous superheroes (e.g. they wouldn't help a dying CEO/inventor live without a promise that he would sell his entire company - that he grew from his garage in the 80s- to a rival CEO... who was also player in the game.) Good stuff was generated in a limited period of time.

So here's the verdict: ICONS is goofy as hell, but it's also cool and surprisingly dynamic. It's a really nice blend of old school mechanics and new school narrativist ones. If you want a supers game built for long campaigns, you probably want to look elsewhere (like at Mutants and Masterminds). But if you're looking for a fun pick-up-and-play game with little prep needed, this is a great game for you. With our schedules these days, it was the perfect game for the perfect time.

Miniatures review: 6d6 Fireball's Quorakons

Recently I painted up three Quorakons kindly provided to me by Chris over at 6d6 Fireball, a publisher of old-school-themed miniatures and adventures. Quorakons are a race of four-armed simians that use primitive weapons and enjoy a tribal lifestyle. Adrian Wood (also part of the 6d6 Fireball team) actually put together a free 10-page PDF detailing their entire culture, including its social composition and battle capabilities. The stat block is a bit dense for me, but it's easy to jettison the extra baggage to get down to the old-school essence of these humanoids.. It's definitely worth checking out if these miniatures pique your interest.

The PDF is packed with story ideas, some of which occurred to me while I was assembling and painting these figures. The Quorakons use stone weapons, right? So how would they react if the PCs arrive and are willing to trade their steel and iron hardware for access to the Quorakons' tribal mystics?

The figures themselves were a ton of fun to assemble. They arrived with empty hands and two extra sprues full of primitive weapons (clubs, spears, javelins and stone axes). I started putting weapons in hands, and before I knew it, each of these Quorakons were holding three weapons. Overkill, you say? Well, if you've got four arms, why not use 'em?

The one on the far right in the photo above is also holding a dead rabbit—a little treasure I had kicking around in my bits box, waiting for the right miniature to pin it on.

Anyway. As far as the paint job, I wasn't all that pleased with how the fur turned out. I got impatient while painting them and rushed through my typical fur painting process (slowly building up lighter and lighter colors). So that's why the fur might look a little garish.

The best part about these miniatures are the simian faces. Designer Rob Grimly did a superb job capturing the ape-like characteristics of these fellows.

As far as criticisms, the chieftain arrived with a small chunk of metal missing from his ornate feather headdress. Chalk it up to casting issues, I guess. You can see it missing in the second photo. He also had a rather odd hole or gap in his chest, where all four arms would sort of come together in his torso, which I can also only assume is the result of some casting problems.

Really, though, these guys were a lot of fun to paint up. The PDF is icing on the cake, as it really makes the Quorakon culture come alive. Even if you don't use 75% of the stuff that's included in the free supplement, there's still enough added value from 6d6 Fireball to make these guys several steps up from your average Monster Manual denizen.

Check out the packaging on 6d6 Fireball's minis

I'm going to be reviewing some miniatures that were sent to me by Chris at 6d6 Fireball. They arrived last weekend, and while I've not been able to paint them up yet, I did have a chance to admire the cool packaging. Check out the box for the Quorakon War Party.




And how about that one-sentence descriptor: "Four-armed, stone-weapon using apes with a rich culture." That's brevity that even the most old-school of referees couldn't help but admire.

I really dig little boxes and storage units, for some strange reason. So doubtless this box will get put to some shrewd use long after I've painted up the Quorakons and posted the photos here.

That's a seriously ostentatious helmet crest

When I first picked up that box of Grenadier Fighting-Men, I was probably the least excited about painting this guy. His sword looked like a half-cooked noodle, and his helmet crest was... well... uninspired. I mean, I understand that miniatures casting back then wasn't the same as the techniques companies use today. And he's made of pure lead, which is much softer than the pewter and white metal used today for your typical Warhammer 40k dude.

But ... inspiration struck over the weekend. I've got a huge collection of spare bits, helmets, weapons, shields, laser guns, etc., from my years collecting and painting Warhammer armies. And it just so happened that I had the biggest, most ostentatious helmet crest in the world, along with a freakin' spiked mace that would put a 10th-level cleric to shame.

Take a look at the finished product. On top of his helm: that's a unicorn, with a pennant, topped by a fleur-de-lis. It's probably bigger than his actual helmet. And that's totally fine—this guy isn't going to be hiding behind doors or slinking through dim passageways. He's going to announce his presence with a ringing challenge to the agents of chaos lurking in the depths of the dungeon. Good stuff! I have just 3 fighting-men left to paint before I've completed the set.

Office space roleplaying: Swords & Wizardry Quick Start

Last night I gathered a couple coworkers, and a buddy who works down the street, to try out the Swords & Wizardry Quick Start module. Jim, Dustin, Mick and I ended up having a smashing good time rampaging through the Dungeon of Akban, looting the hell out of the place and (so far, at least) living to tell the tale. The photo above shows our den of geekery, converted from a small conference room in our office building. We stayed late, sneaked in some beers and had a grand old time.

The session was my chance to introduce these colleagues of mine to RPGs. After a year of hearing me rave about how cool old-school tabletop RPGs are compared to video games, they would finally have the chance to decide for themselves. We were joined by a friend who's part of my regular gaming group—he added a little veteran perspective to our group of newcomers.

Character generation was quick and simple. Jim had played before, waaaay back in his elementary school years, and even he was surprised at how quickly stuff like Armor Class and Saving Throw came back to him. Mick had played a lot of video game RPGs like Fallout, so he really enjoyed the wide-open nature of the game—if you can imagine it, you can try to do it.

Mick and Jim rolled up straightforward fighters, and Dustin made an Elf fighter. So...three fighters. Veteran roleplayers will no doubt be wondering how the party survived without a magic-user or a cleric. But really, it's a testament to the quality of the Chgowiz's Quick Start adventure that we were able to plump the depths of Akban despite having a rather lopsided group of adventurers.

And so we delved. I introduced them to the concept of mapping, and Dustin took to that job with great aplomb. He gave advice when needed—based on his own D&D experiences playing Chgowiz's Dark Ages game—but he didn't smother the other two players. They all contributed to the evening's successes and failures.

We did a bit of exploring and saw three hard-fought combats: one when the group charged into a nest of giant centipedes, and two more running battles against the bands of goblins that infested the dungeon. In the first goblin combat, oil bombs took out 6 goblins in one round, leaving just one horribly wounded survivor who was interrogated and then summarily executed.

The second goblin combat was far more dangerous, and resulted in Spier the Fighter collapsing in a bloody heap (I quickly implemented the -10HP countdown rule to give them time to revive him). You can see Spier's prostrate form in the foreground of the photo above, with his fellows standing guard over him as the goblins move into position down the hallway. Only by killing the pesky goblin shaman—who tried his damnedest to flee the scene—was the group able to steal 3 healing potions off his still-warm corpse and use them to revive Spier.

And right around that point we decided to call it a night. We'd played for maybe 2 hours, with a break in the middle to check the doors and make sure we weren't accidentally locked inside the office. I didn't want to initiate them with a marathon session. But the best part came at the end, as I started gathering up my miniatures and dungeon tiles. Both Jim and Mick said they had a great time, and they asked to play again soon. I said sure, we'll make a note of where we are in the dungeon, and when we sit back down we'll play the same characters and go from there.

I don't care if you're rolling dice in 1980 or 2010: That's how campaigns are born, folks.

My contribution to International Traditional Gaming Week

After a few weeks spent wrangling schedules, it looks like I'm going to run a Swords & Wizardry game for a couple of my coworkers this evening.

It's serendipitous that our game falls within International Traditional Gaming Week, because I made a conscious choice to run S&W for these guys. Specifically, I'm using Mike Shorten's Swords & Wizardry Quick Start, so we'll see how things go after tonight. I've got dice, graph paper, miniatures and dungeon geomorphs stashed away in my cubicle, waiting for the bosses to leave. Then, it's off to the dungeon—er, conference room.

Photos to follow.

Puzzles: The one part of old-school gaming I could do without

Last night's Dark Ages game with Chgowiz featured some problem-solving as we tried to deal with an enchanted wizard's tower that refused to let us go in a straight line and kept buffeting us with wind whenever we tried to walk down the hall toward our destination. We eventually triumphed, but only after a ton of dice rolling and frustration.

The episode highlights a part of old-school gaming (and new-school gaming, I guess, but it's emphasized much more in old-school play) that doesn't appeal to me at all: puzzle solving.

For a style of play that focuses so much on real-life concerns—ration tracking, paying hirelings and taxes, orienteering in the wilderness—there's just nothing real-life about granular puzzle solving. It seems out of place in an otherwise coherent fantasy medieval setting.

Perhaps it was because last night's puzzling situation didn't yield much by way of a payoff. I guess I'd be fine if the puzzle led directly to a treasure room or a magic sword or something. But in last night's case, we "beat" the puzzle by rolling fistfuls of dice, then blundered into another room where two players died and the rest of us got our clothes burned off.

Rookie Gamers Have Old School Intuition

I'm still half a country away at the in-laws' abode, and we played our second game of AD&D 1e today. Having played through a bit of the first module of Against the Giants (The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief), we proceeded to the second module - The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. These modules are classic old school, and I DM'd for my two brother-in-laws, who have very little gaming experience.

It turns out that they have some pretty solid old school intuition. Without any prodding or suggestions, they came up with a few classic old school moves. Needing a light source but not wanting everlasting light, the two debated how best to use the continual light spell. Eventually, they figured that they could cast it on the tip of a sword and put it in its sheath when they didn't want the light to show.

Even better, after taking a couple steps into a dark cavern without light, but not wanting to be seen and afraid of pits in the ice at the same time, they fashioned their own tapping pole from a giant size barrel they found before. Yes - they came up with the idea of a 10 foot pole by themselves. I was impressed.

Still, this intuition didn't stop them from dying. One particularly notable death occurred after being chased onto an icy ledge with 2 frost giants and two wolves in front, a huge boulder blocking an exit behind, a cliff face on the right, and the deep, icy rift on the left. The wizard cast a cone of fire, instantly creating crazy steam and significantly limiting visibility. The other charged through the steam, slipped on the increasingly slippery icy ground in the steam cloud, and careened off the ledge into the rift (for 10d10 damage, on top of the damage already taken). It was good fun.

When it was all said and done, we played on and off for about 6 hours, which is much longer than I usually game for these days. By the time we finished, the two of them had gone through 5 characters (the last two of which died deep in the rift fighting a rare and legendary remorhaz, which is basically a massive, 30ft long snow worm). We then retired to play Puerto Rico with my wife, who was otherwise set to watch Law and Order reruns all night.

It turns out that my one brother-in-law is hooked on the old school but now has no one to game with. If you game in the temecula/murrieta/wildomar/lake elsinore region and are looking for an enthusiastic rookie addition, let me know...

Against the In-laws (uh, I mean, Giants)

So, I'm hanging out at the in-laws place for the holidays, across the country from home, and my brother-in-law (let's call him Pear Bear) asks me if we can play D&D. Wow. I've taken crap from my in-laws for so long for my geek habits, and now, after some bonding over a skiing trip, he's ready to get down. He had never played before. We gather my other brother-in-law, who's played with my geek buddies once before in Chicago (let's call him Fartin Martin), and my 78 year old Dad (who's also in town, never played before, but has seen my play since I was wee).

I had just DM'd Against the Giants the night before I left town, and I had sufficient equipment with me to rock the game again. And rock it we did.

After using some pregenerated characters and a *very* brief explanation of their stats and items, we started the scenario. Against the Giants is a classic D&D module that kicks off a series of modules, and it's very "old school." Pear Bear, Fartin Martin, and Dad started at a cave entrance overlooking the Steading of the Hill Giants. They were basically supposed to check it out. After I described the scene, they automatically slipped into classic D&D mode without any prodding: Bickering over plan of attack. This lasted for at least 25 minutes. Persuaded by some of Dad's military tactics (he was in the army back in the day), they decided to let Pear Bear (the thief) skulk around to gather intelligence. He successfully did so, and upon returning, the group decided to have Pear Bear set a diversion with a fire to let the group sneak in. And somehow work in a pincer movement to trap the giants. Shit quickly hit the fan as Pear Bear climbed a wall, terribly missed a pack of dire wolves 4 times with flasks of flaming oil, and was then spotted. Pear Bear eventually used some dust of disappearance on himself, snuck around the other side, and opened the back door.

By the time we quit for dinner, giants and dire wolves were swarming everywhere. Pear Bear was still invisible but retreating. Dad was getting his butt handed to him by a horde of hill giants (especially after I rolled a couple crits), and Fartin Martin was levitating 25 feet up in the air and blasting down spells but pretty trapped.

The final reaction: Dad was completely engaged by the planning but bored by combat (and fell asleep in front of the tv shortly thereafter). Fartin Martin had fun, but longed for the fast insanity and character-based decisions that he experienced before with my buddies (we played a fast indie game called Cold City, which is about monster hunting in creepy post-war Berlin). And Pear Bear was hooked. I mean completely hooked. He couldn't stop talking about it. He desperately wants to finish the scenario, and he told me to bring my dice to our football fest tomorrow (which isn't happening, because the Eagles are playing a big game across the Broncos. Go Birds!!!!). So, he's now trying to schedule some time for Friday. And he even started talking about the possibilities of gaming in, say, a 30 story building with aliens.

Wow. I mean, Pear Bear is one of the most grounded people I know. It was pretty cool to be part of such a quick conversion. If we get a second game in, I'll keep you updated.

And I'll definitely post a picture that Pear Bear's wife took of gaming. Good times.

Player Skill vs. Character Skill and the Case of Social Encounters

All around the rpg blogosphere, I see the debate focusing on player skill vs. character skill. Games focused on player skill are often associated with old school games - players are encouraged to make the decisions that really matter, and what's on the character sheet is de-emphasized (except for traditional mechanics like spells and combat prowess). Games focused on character skill are associated with newer games - players can have their characters do wonky things, and the stats on the characters' sheet may allow for a pretty good chance of success. We've played both kinds of games recently, such as AD&D 1e (arguably player skill focused) and Spirit of the Century (arguably character skill focused). I tend to find games that focus on character skill more fun because they encourage the insanity, and I just love my insanity in rpgs. But I understand the allure of games focused more heavily on player skill as well.

Having just traveled to California for the holidays with the inlaws (in particular a place called Temecula that is in the desert sorta between San Diego and LA, and centered around a gargantuan mall), I've heard a lot of "Yo, dude!" in the past few days. This got me thinking, strangely enough, about the player vs. character skill debate as it specifically applies to social situations in rpgs. Because there are few mechanics for social interaction in old school games, player persuasiveness usually drives what happens in these games (use Charisma, never!). In newer games, there may be a variety of stats that address social situation, and these may carry the day with a couple die rolls.

Given this distinction, it strikes me that social encounters in rpgs exacerbate the problems that I have with games focused on player skill.

If I don't have to be good with a battle axe in real life to be a mega-damage destructo Dwarf fighter, why should I need to have good social skills in order to be a charismatic Paladin who can convert all forms of life and sway them to my cause? Why the asymmetry? Is it because we perceive physical skills to be harder to pick up than verbal ones? Given the population of folks I've gamed with and worked with over my life, I feel confident that this isn't the case. The ones with heavy verbal acuity are often heavily trained and versed in their subject area. And the gaming crowd doesn't have a tendency to be easy on the social ears.

So, is there a solution for this problem? A way to save the player skill focused game during social encounters? Here's my off the cuff solution:

Encourage players to explicitly use tactics in social situations and not just combat situations. There are several rhetorical moves and ways to structure persuasive arguments, and some are more or less effective given the social situation. If the player plays this tactical game well even though the player may stumble and mumble and show lots of butt crack, the GM in the player skill game should be more lenient. Though, we now face the problem of figuring out what strong tactics are and how we could be explicit about them.

Some games, like Burning Wheel (and allegedly A Song of Ice and Fire) address this problem - they list a variety of rhetorical moves, and they have explicit mechanics for social combat that play these tactics against each other. This seems better to may than simply saying, "Yeah, smart guy, whatever you say. Now make a diplomacy check." But as I've found, these mechanics can sometimes be unwieldy. They're almost too clever and involved for their own good.

This all makes me wonder if there's a mechanic out there floating out there in Platonic rpg space that can synthesize the old school and new school approach around the use of social tactics. Any suggestions?

Dying a Cold Death with Death Frost Doom and the Old School Plus

Four of us played Death Frost Doom (DFD) a couple hours ago on a snowy night in Chicago. It was either that, or continue a long dormant Planescape campaign. But I downloaded DFD today, and it seemed fitting, so we went with it as a one shot.

As with some others who have discussed DFD, I won't review it in whole (though I will include some SPOILER details), because others such as Grognardia have done this well. But I will give some overall impressions and some broader thoughts about Old School Gaming (or whatever).

Bottom line: DFD was fine. But the hanging out with friends was the best part, and I think we should've resurrected our Planescape campaign instead.

DFD is very atmospheric - it's a creepy, location based scenario at a shrine with no active monsters and a bunch of ways for PCs to hurt themselves if they do the wrong things at places like water basins. There are a lot of old, creepy rooms with things like dried blood, torture instruments, and endless crypts. There are a lot of weird magical things, like a cuckoo clock that warps time. Again, there are lots and lots of crypts. And there's a way to make all the corpses in the crypts wake up. This is an endless horde of undead that pc's will likely run from or get killed by eventually.

One character (out of 6, because the 3 players had 2 characters each) escaped after waking up the horde of the dead. This was only because all the 5 surviving characters that ran from a zombie horde locked a door to a creepy chapel and snorted trippy purple dust that they found way earlier. One of the characters went deaf. Another went blind. The one that was best off rolled a 70 on a huge percentile table and was "Safe from Harm!"

In the end, there was a lot of wandering around empty, weird, creepy rooms. And frantic running at the end from a zombie horde and then through a horde of ghouls. There was little for the PCs to figure out, and the scenario naturally ran toward what strongly seems is this intended conclusion. The one where the undead horde spreads out over the fantasy globe causing DOOM! Except to the tripped out magic user who was Safe from Harm!

I think we all felt disappointed. I rate my GMing as average at best, but conjuring up a creepy atmosphere certainly doesn't play to my strengths (for example, I tend to laugh with my players a lot about stupid RPG stuff, like when the Halfling found a ring that turned her invisible). We especially laughed about how the randomly generated characters were all female except for the Dwarf. Because we're all guys and haven't gamed with females for a while. Probably like most of you reading this.

The players were frustrated that there wasn't much for them to do (I found myself saying a lot of things like "ok, you bash the cuckoo clock"). And then they died because of an event that didn't absolutely need to happen if the players didn't trigger it. But c'mon, the scenario seriously pushed the characters in that direction.

So, is this Old School Gaming, as many seem to perceive it to be? My first impression is NO: It has many trapping of the old school. There's a sandboxy dungeon, and players aren't forced to do anything. But there is a one big story trigger looming over the whole thing. I generally like "story" in my games, but I like it when character decisions are much more meaningful - when the odds aren't so heavily stacked to trigger one event, and where there isn't such an emphasis on DMing as just atmosphere for a couple hours - I really like the unpredictability of character decisions that have impact in a more wide open area.

Maybe DFD is Old School Plus. Old School on steroids, where the decision to explore a dungeon for an evening is stupid in itself. Because you're probably going to die in one of the fairly limited ways the writer intends, and perhaps exactly the way the writer sets up as by falling on, by far, the most impressive and overwhelming chopping block. I don't know. But I'm kind of disappointed. I read so much about this scenario on the blogosphere and there is some legitimate excitement. Maybe I just couldn't bring the scenario to life. There's definitely truth to this, and it is a well written book with lots of creepy content.

But I also think the scenario just wasn't right for our group. Which is ironic, given that we've been playing through the Planescape module Dead Gods (a wacky and heavily scripted adventure that I've really had to alter significantly on the fly due to player decisions). DFD is supposed to be wide open. But even compared to scripted modules, it feels surprisingly narrow.

So, Death Frost Doom is good fun for an evening. It got us together around the table on a snowy night that 4 people couldn't get to. But DFD is just not set up to enable player choice or impact in a way that I think was very meaningful to any of us.

A Narrativist Sandbox?

Thought experiment: Imagine a sandbox type game with some serious narrativist elements thrown in. What would such a game look like? Would it work? Is Castle Greyhawk still Castle Greyhawk when utterly personal and non-tactical decisions repeatedly come into play?

I've been thinking about this lately because my group has been dabbling in two sorts of games - a savage worlds fantasy sandbox campaign in the old school vein (GM'd by co-blogger Pat), and a more narrativist streak of games like Burning Wheel and a more recently started Spirit of the Century game in Fading Suns space that I've been running. It's also worth mentioning that I've shown up at a couple of Chgowiz's old school fantasy games.

Upon the deepest of reflections, it turns out that I like elements from these various games, and I have problems with these types of games as well. I find "old school" games a little restrictive because the pc's are fairly powerless and every little thing takes so much effort. And while I love true sandboxes as the basic framework for games, I find that these games lack real connections between the characters and the world. Which makes all decisions a player based thing rather than a character based thing.

I find many narrativist games too foofy, for lack of a better word. In my current Spirit of the Century game, the world is so wide open that I'm forced to be a little too heavy handed (for my taste) with plot hooks. But I love how games like Spirit of the Century and Burning Wheel have mechanical repercussions for personal characteristics. For example, in SoTC, a character can have the aspect "disdainful to non-nobles." Pulling this aspect into a roll can give a character a mechanical bonus to do things where this applies (which could be a range of situations). The environment or reaction of the NPCs change accordingly, and voila - a plot starts to appear that's grounded in character sheets.

So, the question is now: Could a fantasy megadungeon fruitfully work with a system like Spirit of the Century? Would the balance of the old school and new school be just right? Or are we really talking about oil and water?

Go ahead and roll

How many times has this happened: You're GMing and a player says "OK, we're at the burned village. I want to see if I can find tracks from the raiders." And before you can say "Yep, there's a set of huge footprints leading into the hills" the player has thrown his dice, read the result and glumly reported back to you: "Nope, I didn't find 'em."

A variation of that scenario happened last weekend during my Savage Worlds fantasy campaign (featuring special guest player Chgowiz, in his first-ever Savage Worlds outing!). It illustrated that "think, don't roll" can still be applied even to new-school game systems like Savage Worlds.

Had the player asked me what he was able to find, I would absolutely have delivered the details. But once those dice fall, it's tough to backtrack and be like "Weeeell, you officially failed, but it's tough to miss orc footprints in soft soil."

It also points to a general weakness in games where there's a known target number or difficulty class. If you want to roll and tell me you fail, that's fine and dandy—yep, you failed. But if you want to tell me what your character does, you might just get a surprise when I tell you, "OK, you do it."

I'm thinking of putting a little edict in place for my campaign: Unless you're in combat, you don't have to roll for anything unless the GM says you do.

Chgowiz, for his part, took the exact opposite approach. He described his character's actions in detail and tried to set up situations where he wouldn't have to roll—because that added the chance of failure. He had some observations of his own from the game, which I hope he's able to post over at his blog.

Regardless, it made for a very interesting game that truly spanned the divide between old school and new school.

Dynamic dungeons and the lessons learned therein

Earlier this week was the 20th session of Chgowiz's Dark Ages OSRIC campaign. I've only played in maybe 12 of those sessions, but that's alright—Mike's running a drop-in/drop-out campaign along the lines of Ben Robbins' West Marches concept.

But last Tuesday's session was a real meatgrinder, almost from the get-go. We ventured into the abandoned dwarven mines, an area that we've mapped extensively and thoroughly cleared out over the previous 19 adventures. The thing is, the unfolding story of the Dark Ages meant that a tribe of goblins, bent on delivering genocide unto a nearby kobold tribe, moved in to occupy the mines.

We hadn't counted on this.

What started as a simple "OK, let's get back to those stairs leading down to level 2" turned into a 2-hour running battle with untold dozens of goblin warriors. There were five of us in the party—4 PCs and a hireling—and we absolutely exhausted all of our resources in a desperate attempt to keep those goblins at bay. We threw oil flasks down hallways, hurled javelins, tossed spells, smashed our way through cordons of goblins and finally escaped into the wilderness. It was daytime, so the goblins opted not to pursue.

But I think this session really illustrates how we have all become "better" players over the course of this campaign. Early on, we had a pretty horrific hireling casualty rate. But this most recent adventure saw everyone emerge alive—the cleric even used one of his precious healing spells to treat our wounded hireling!

We relied heavily on our map to navigate our way into (and out of) the goblin deathtrap. Out of all the oil flasks we threw, I don't think we killed a single goblin—but by setting doorways and corridors on fire, we made those pesky goblins think twice about pursuing us.

The party included a 3rd level cleric, a 2nd level ranger, a 1st level cleric and a 1st level elf fighter-mage, plus our hireling. During the ensuing combat, the two higher-level characters used their double-digit hit points with great aplomb, soaking up tremendous amounts of damage and barking terse orders at the other two characters. Mostly those orders were "Light a torch! Throw the oil!" I'm not really a big fan of having higher-level characters order around the lower level characters—but dammit, our survival was in the balance! My 3rd level cleric wasn't going to screw around when it came to saving the party!

One aspect of last night's campaign that really stood out to me was Chgowiz's pacing. During the frenzied escape, it would have been easy to gloss over some of OSRIC's rather tedious timekeeping requirements. Mike didn't, which meant that our combat rounds were very regimented and by-the-book. Everything took the time it took, no questions asked. Digging a flask of oil out of your bag meant that you couldn't benefit from your shield that round. Casting a spell meant you couldn't move—so do you want to run or cast? Several times our very survival came down to an initiative roll.

In the end, as Chgowiz notes on his blog, our deliverance came in the form of a single botched die roll that paradoxically saved our collective asses. We fled, lacking treasure and a measure of our dignity—but we were alive, and 13 goblins were dead. In this campaign, that's the greatest reward.

Follow-up to Gygax memorial story

Last week I had the opportunity to write a follow-up story for the Chicago Tribune about the Gygax memorial planned for Lake Geneva. It was a deadline-intensive piece, and I wasn't able to interview Gail Gygax in time to turn the story in to the editors. I was pleased with the placement, though—page 3 of the Sunday edition.

There are no big revelations in the story, but it does describe Lake Geneva's general attitude toward projects on its lakefront. Plus I got to interview Jim Ward (though just a single quote made it through the final, edited article. Them's the breaks when writing for a specific page shape.)

Memorial of 'Dungeons and Dragons' creator proposed for Lake Geneva lakefront

It's a tiny piece, but it looks good on the page.

Here's the best quote from Ward that I never got to use:

I was picking books out [at the local bookstore], and I went through the rows and picked out my seven books. There was this gentlemen standing beside me who had picked out the exact same seven books. He looked at my stack, which included a Conan book by [Robert] Howard. He said, 'I've got this new game that actually lets you play as Conan!'"

That's Jim Ward, describing his first time meeting Gary Gygax in 1974. The rest, as they say, is history.

Character Levels and the Sweet Spot

It seems that most role playing games have a sweet spot - that magical range of levels (or points in point buy games) where the game plays best. In D&D, I always considered the sweet spot to be around levels 4-9. Before this range, characters can be cut down by goblins, and every little thing is simply a struggle. Past this range, players just seem to get more powerful rather than more cool. As a GM, it's tough as hell to run a challenging, interesting, and fair game for characters that can cast wish, teleport anywhere, and shoot instant death rays from their pinky fingers.

But somewhere in this range, something wonderful seems to happen. The power levels of the magic users and fighters seem to cross. Everybody gets equal screen time. Characters get a variety of new abilities that are simply cool - I was playing Osric today, an old school D&D clone, and I noted that my druid character would get shapeshift 3/day at level 7. Imagine a party in need of recon. The druid turns into a small bird and flies. Wow, look at all that shiny stuff down below the trees! Wait, what's that coming through the clouds. Wyverns. Crap. A chase ensues, straight back through the trees and to the party. Magically powered chaos. Now, that's cool.

So, let's say that you buy my argument that games do have sweet spots. Once we've identified the sweet spot, what are we to do about it?

Should we work our way up to it, bit by bit, so we get that (ahem, plodding) thrill of character advancement through blood, sweat, and tears? Should the GM just fudge XP so that characters get to that sweet spot faster?

Neither, I say. The reality is that most of us don't play in a single campaign for longer than 10 sessions, and that's really pushing it. My buddies and I just counted how many different games we've played over the last 3 years, and the answer was somewhere around 12. A 4-5 session arc is the norm (at least, for us), and then we're off to a new game. I know most gamers out there don't have solid enough of a group to even play this much.

So, I say start the game in the sweet spot. Play the game where it's at its coolest.

(For what it's worth, these thoughts are in response to some of the games - both very high powered and low powered - that I've been playing lately. And the grief that Pat's been giving me about always wanting my characters to succeed. It's not that I always want them to succeed - I just want them to have the opportunity to do something cool. Playing in a game that's set at the sweet spot seems to be a key to this).

Old School, New School, and Middle School

If you're bothering to read this blog, you're probably already well aware of the "old school" revolution in rpgs. There have seemingly been so many arguments about what "old school" is, so I'm not going to bother defining it beyond the idea that it uses ancient systems, relies on player skill (vs. character stats), and involves deadly monster/trap/gm madness. I played in an old school session recently at a con, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I'm not sure what "new school" is, but it's probably either D&D 4e, indie games, or something else that's been coming out recently. For what it's worth, I find some indie games fun and groundbreaking, and I don't really like 4e.

For some reason, old school games and new school games seem to be getting all the press lately. I'd like to shift the discussion to "middle school" games:

I recently had the opportunity to GM an arc of D&D 2e for a bunch of my friends. It included some aspects of the old school - wandering monsters, rolling randomly for treasure, etc. And it included some aspects of the new school - it was a very character guided game. But it was definitely a 2e experience - THAC0 and just the organic chaos of it all. Lots of laughter, some genuinely tactical play that wasn't confined by the rigidities of a battle map, and wacky interactions of magical effects with pretty robust descriptions that I had to judge on the fly.

There's just something about 2e. I started with the red box, but 2e is the game that has bored into the recesses of my consciousness. Maybe it's the cover of the DM's guide, with that robed DM opening the doors. Maybe it's the random magic item charts that I completely absorbed in ... middle school. Maybe it's the way that, after all this time, I could still open the PHB or DMG and find what I needed way too fast.

Like other games built around the time, the system is far from perfect - it's really an organically grown mess. But the energy and the way the game bubbles with ideas is irreplaceable. While I look for many things in rpgs, one of the primary things I still look for is whether a game can bring out that sheer middle school fun. Perhaps more than any other game I've ever played, 2e still informs my gaming sensibilities today.

The time for the middle school revolution is here.

Overheard last weekend at my FLGS

Last weekend I spent a good chunk of time sitting on a stool at Games Plus playing in Chgowiz's Dark Ages campaign. When my thief character wasn't fighting goblins and pillaging ancient libraries, I listened in on another D&D campaign taking place one table away. Here's a random sampling of the quips I overheard:

"A month passes and the rains finally stop."

"All your hair falls out, so that means your Charisma decreases by 2."

"Alright, it's just you guys and the one-armed shapeshifter left in the room. What do you do?"

Heady stuff, eh?

I asked them what they were playing and got a pretty gratifying answer: "Well, it's D&D—but we're using little bits from all the editions, and it's worked for us for a long time."

The thing was, they couldn't have been older than high-school age, all of 'em. So for them to be talking about playing for a long time, even a few years, well that suggests that these enthusiastic chaps have been playing D&D—specifically a mishmash homebrew arrangement—from a pretty young age.

And that's pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Safety behind walls...for a price

I spotted a pretty nifty little mechanic in a recent session of Chgowiz's OSRIC/1e game last weekend. I'm playing a thief, and I mentioned to the DM that I'd like to run a few errands around town between sessions. No need roleplay it all out, especially since we're trying to run a wilderness sandbox setup that focuses on getting the players out the door and into the wilds.

So we just talked over what I wanted to buy (a new sling for starters; my old one had gone sailing off into the forest when I rolled a critical failure vs. some goblins). Then he rolled randomly to see how many days elapsed between sessions (3 days). He ruled that each member of the party would spend X gold in those three days, either on supplies or food or lodging or what-have-you.

The idea of charging players hard money for every day they tarry in town struck me as a really neat, concise way of keeping up the pressure to explore in a sandbox setting. Sure, towns are extremely safe and a good source of supplies, but characters in a sandbox game shouldn't get too comfortable. It's a cinch to charge 'em a few gold for the material comforts of a town. The key is to make sure the gold isn't spent idly; GMs should offer up new rumors, improved reactions from NPCs, or even interesting material goods. Then the players don't feel like they're getting cheated out of their gold -- but they do feel the pressure to get out and explore to find more.