D&D 5th edition and "The Chet Factor"

Using the new 5th edition D&D Starter Set (actually the ninth version of the game by my count) with a little modest support from free downloads strictly to help with character generation, I've now been playing this version of the game 2-4 times a week since September.  That's a pretty fair sample size with which to develop impressions.

• It has fairly fast-paced resolution and the flexibility to make rulings on the fly.

• Lethality is pretty high at low levels -- we've had several total party kills in basic encounters when the players weren't on their toes tactically.  This is comparable to older editions.

• Character creation is a bit sluggish for my tastes, mostly due to powers and advantages that are a legacy of prior editions (e.g. wood elves have "fey ancestry, darkvision, keen senses, trance ... ").

• I love tool of advantage/disadvantage (roll 2d20, take the highest/lowest).  It speeds resolution and seems to create a greater sense of both agency and excitement among my players than a mere bonus or penalty would.  Smart people say that it works out to roughly the equivalent of +4/-4 on a d20 roll

• The plethora of combat modifiers slows things down, without adding much.  Example: Greatsword +4 2d6+2 slashing.  Though it is written right on their character sheets, at least half of the time my players end up asking me, "What do I add again?"  The other half of the time they just forget altogether [Austin, I'm looking at you]. 

• Death checks for characters at zero hit points are a sweet GM tool!  They create increased drama, reduce player frustration from missing a single roll, and (perhaps most importantly) creating a simple mechanic whereby characters can be captured by vile enemies!  This last point is something that has really been missing from the game since 1974 -- how often do Conan, Fafhrd, The Gray Mouser, John Carter and other characters in Appendix N swords and sorcery lit end up captured by gloating villains?  This simple rule allows the players to recreate that type of action with ease.  

Finally, and perhaps inevitably, D&D continues to have what I've come to think of as "The Chet Factor".  Chet, as I'm sure you will remember from junior high, was the name of your friend's cool high-school-aged older brother ... the one who was into heavy metal, swore freely (at least when parents weren't around), and who had cigarettes (even if he didn't actually smoke them).


You'll recognize Chet in his role as "Michael" on the right there.

Chet always seemed annoyed by his younger brother's "stupid little friends", but in some ways that just made it twice as cool when, with many sighs, he finally deigned to teach you D&D.  And that's how you learned to role-play in 1980-something.  You didn't learn from a book (that would come later in dizzying wave after wave of Gygaxian prose); you learned by playing.

"Roll a save versus Death Ray, you little @#%."

I still remember vividly the afternoon when Kierst (that was my "Chet's" name) tossed me a character sheet for Cratz the half-orc henchman fighter and tossed me right into the action, skirmishing against drow in the Valley of the Mage.  It was confusing, exciting, and nerve-wracking all at once -- I was hopelessly in over my head and totally hooked!


So basically, for all that the 5th edition Starter Set sets out to create an (extremely affordable!) entry point to tabletop gaming (and does provide solid advice for new DMs) it simply isn't very accessible.  The average middle schooler (heck, even the above-average middle schooler) just isn't going to commit to the quantity of reading required to get through the 96 pages of the introductory rulebook in any systematic way without first having played the game.

So here's to all the Chet's out there who are keeping tabletop going.  Maybe you can even be a "Chet" for some neophyte players.

Student Maps: Need More Owlbears!

This first student-generated dungeon is interesting because of its complexity.  The student seemed to understand that, beyond just the creatures encountered, mapping and navigating the adventure location can be a challenge itself.  The design is more interesting than a first glance might reveal ...

The layout reminds me a little of the upper level of Quasqueton -- a ramble that opens unexpectedly in some places, and folds back in on itself in others.  Then again, there may be a dash of unintentional M.C. Escher as well.  I see how one gets from room 4 to 6, but how do you get from 6 to 7 or 8?

         

The real fun here is in savagery of the setting is stocked.  Notice that the "canibals" [sic] in area 1 aren't just man-eaters, but possessed man-eaters!  There are two locations listing owlbears, but those pale in comparison to location 8's "poisonous owlbear with wings" and the nearby "possessed halfling king with godly fire powers"!

In my world, owlbears were already pretty gonzo, but I remember the class discussion wandering over into strange terrain -- "What bird other than an owl could you mix with a bear?"

"How about a duckbear -- they can swim!"
"Or a goosebear -- geese are really mean!"

I think the dungeon just got a little wilder.

From the Mouths of Babes (Homeguard Update)

Classic Larry Elmore image, right?  How many folks began their love of tabletop role-playing with this in front of them?

My kids though?

R: "Dad, don't you think this guy is really unsmart?  He's fighting a red dragon all by himself with no armor!"

L: "I know, right?"

No, no prompting here ... they've just learned that fire-breathing winged reptiles = bad news!

In our Homeguard Basic D&D campaign I've been surprised by just how much adventure we've managed to milk from the merely adequate Horror on the Hill ... though at its core, its just a basic four-level dungeon, we are going on ten months of play in that setting!

Short sessions have contributed to that because the week-long breaks between play give me plenty of time to allow the dungeon creeps to adjust their plans and placement based on the latest incursion into their subterranean domain.  I will also say that trolls make sweet recurring villains ... especially for a level 1-2 party!

Here's what the gang has been up to over Christmas Break:

• The dragon dead, but Gideon's Fort partially burned, a group of characters had to go all the way to the town of Threshold to buy the supplies that they needed to recover the dragon hoard.  While making this trek, first level fighter Blade was bitten when the party crossed paths with a pack of werewolves!  Possessing neither silver, nor magic items (I'm a jerk like that), the party fled, sacrificing their beloved pack animals to the wolves.  As his fellows set about recovering dragon gold and fighting off a rival adventuring party, Blade had to instead go to the Bishop of Threshold to seek relief from his curse of lycanthropy.  Placed in the charge of PC cleric Sister Elizabeth, in exchange for his cure, Blade was loaned the magical, silver mace Moonhammer and sent to find and exterminate the growing pack of werewolves.  A couple tense sessions featuring a farmhouse siege, an ambush, and a showdown in a windmill followed before the monsters were destroyed, some treasure was recovered and donated to grieving peasant families, and Moonhammer was returned to the vaults of the church.

•   Newly promoted to the rank of Swordmaster (level three) after being scorched and scarred by dragonfire, doughty fighter Sarah chose to take a break from the wandering life of adventuring to accept an appointment to the duties of acting commandant of Gideon's Fort.  This is the group's first little glimpse at the complex domain-management options offered by classic D&D.  While Sarah hasn't been granted a barony, she is in charge of a small garrison and must try to use an (inadequate) budget to repair the wooden stronghold, replace slain men-at-arms, and provide all the necessary food and equipment.

• Star the elf and Jonathan the Hero (level 4 fighter) led a small expedition back to The Hill and ventured down into the goblin halls (level two) where the self-styled"Hobgoblin King" had held his court until being slain by Huey the elf in the recent Battle of Gideon's Fort.  Over their many expeditions and clashes, close to two hundred of the wicked goblinfolk have been destroyed, so the halls below the ruined monastery were largely empty.  Traps were discovered and bypassed, chests looted, a secret door found, and still more traps bypassed, with the end result being that the party finally got to loot the goblin treasury after months of raids, ambushes, and counter raids.  They delivered the treasure into Sarah's keeping, helping her fund the reconstruction of the fort.

• Aareck (level 4 fighter) led a small expedition south in an effort to track down members of the Cult of the Dragon.  Joining some pilgrims along the way, his group was ambushed by the cult and felled by Sleep Spells only to awake stripped of gear and shackled in a dungeon!  I was cautious to give the false pilgrims a few "tells" (volunteering to take watch at night, being vague about the purpose of their travels, knowing that ranking dragon cult members wear purple robes when it came up, leading the characters to an established campsite off the beaten path, and sending a pair of their own out of the camp on some pretense shortly before nightfall) but the players never voiced their suspicions and were caught flat-footed.  In the couple hours that followed we played The Great Escape chapter of module B9 Castle Caldwell and Beyond.  Brute strength got the escape going along with a little bit of luck in finding some enemy gear.  Rosie the 1st level fighter, despite a Charisma score of 6, succeeded in bluffing cult guards no less than three times.  At one point the characters prepared a simple "trap" by wringing out saturated cloths in a dimly lit passage so their pursuers would slip and fall.  By mid session the players developed a pretty good feel for the  complicated layout of the place --I didn't allow any paper mapping since the characters didn't have any gear; they had to rely strictly on memory instead.  As the cleric Kaylyn paused to smash a Dragon Queen idol (and was cursed by being struck dumb for her trouble) the party surprised me by intentionally fleeing deeper into the complex rather than escape when they had the chance!  It turns out that they were unwilling to leave until they recovered Aareck's magic sword "Acris" (taken from the Keep on Shadowfell).  Magic sword in hand (the only magic sword in this campaign so far) and informed of the cult's next target, the party finally fled into the hills with barely any equipment.

• Elsewhere, elves Lilybell and Soren along with a pair of halflings and Charlotte the second level magic-user began what they expected to be a long, eastward journey toward Elvenhome and the Grey Mountain in hopes of finding a way to bring their friend Sayana the elf back to life following her destruction by dragonfire.  They knew that the connection between Elvenhome and their world to be tenuous and the path shifting and uncertain.  What they didn't expect was to be met on the road by Thendara, a powerful immortal guardian from another realm.  Thendara offered to help the adventurers reach Elvenhome if they would first rescue Princess Argenta from the cursed valley of Haven.  They agreed (it really was an option) and they were off to explore B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (a scenario my younger player has been expressing an interest in playing  for a while now).

So yeah ... we've been pretty busy over Christmas Break :)

On Adventure Hooks

One of my favorite sections in my beloved Moldvay 1981 D&D set was the brief, but rock-solid section on adventure design.  If you have any interest in running role-playing games and you don't yet own a copy, $5 will get you a legal download through Drive Thru RPG.  Even seen through the warm glow of decades of nostalgia, pages B51-52 are some of the most clear, unadorned, and functional guidance on adventure design I've read in 30+ years of tabletop gaming.  Along with the simple d6 chart for random dungeon stocking (which I continued to use well after I'd moved on to other game systems), the entry under Step A. "CHOOSE A SCENARIO" continued to be an excellent springboard for ideas:

"A scenario is a background theme or idea which ties the dungeon together.  A scenario will help keep a dungeon from becoming a boring repetition of 'open the door, kill the monster, take the treasure'. A good scenario always gives the players a reason for adventuring.  The DM should also design a dungeon for the levels of characters who will be playing in it.  A good scenario will also give the DM a reason for choosing specific monsters and treasures to put in the dungeon.  A scenario may be anything the DM can imagine.  To help new DMs, some common scenarios are listed below and explained.  The DM can fill in the details."

He lists ten scenarios (numbered so you could roll your d10!) including "Exploring the Unknown," "Escaping from Enemies," and "Finding a Lost Race."  Did you notice that he said a good scenario is one that gives the players a reason for adventuring?  That wasn't a misstep -- Tom isn't talking about in-character motivation or plot railroads, but is speaking as one magician to another as if to say, "Show them a new trick; something they've never seen before.  Make it something that will surprise and wow them!"

Each of the ten entries gets a short (2-4 sentence) open-ended treatment and three TSR modules from the B-series are listed as examples (though it would be decades before I ever saw two of them in print).

I just started this one with my Home Guard Campaign players yesterday.

When writing instructions for the scenario design activity in my Adventure Games Class I went straight to Moldvay for inspiration:

HOW TO CREATE A LOCATION­-BASED ADVENTURE SETTING

Step 1. CHOOSE A SCENARIO / PLOT HOOK

● Exploration: hired to explore and map unknown territory

● Enemy Stronghold: find it, enter it, discover & possibly neutralize the enemy plans

● Establish Basecamp: clear an area of danger, making it safe for rest and resupply

● Destroy Ancient Evil: find it and defeat it before it can complete its plans

● Lost Shrine: to remove curse or recover sacred item, follow clues to locate the shrine

● Escape: characters begin as captives and must escape

● Rescue: recover the captives for honor or reward

● The Cure: characters have been cursed/diseased; follow clues to find the cure or perish.

More recently, I was thinking in minimalist terms and wondering if the very core of a scenario could be reduced to a single verb.  Here's what I came up with:

1. Rescue / Recover

2. Destroy

3. Explore / Examine

4. Locate

5. Protect

6. Transport

7. Escape / Avoid

8. ____________

9. ____________

10.____________

I'd love to have a full set of ten (so I could toss a die of course).  

What am I missing?  Help me out!

From there, a second quick roll can give us the rest of the scenario's skeleton:

1. Wizard / Expert

2. Treasure / Wealth

3. Book / Information

4. Tower / Fortress / Lair

5. Monster

6. Enemy 

7. Spell / Special Power

8. Dimension

9. Friend / Ally

10. Home

Let's try a couple ... 

7, 3 = Escape, Book.  Okay, this is something I can work with!  The characters' enemy, Lord Volde-snake, is back from the dead and has written a memoir revealing the weaknesses and secrets of the characters, making them appear to be black-hearted, puppy-eating villains of the worst sort.  Along with some "evidence" planted by the villain's old lackey, Brown Jenkin, the characters are presumed guilty and must flee their former friends and the Anti-Quotidian Quartet (ideally without killing anyone), find the real culprit, and clear their names!

How about 4, 5?         Locate, Monster.           Yeah, that'll work too.  With a strange transmogrifying plague beginning to strike down the great and meek alike, turning them into vile marrow-eaters, an ancient source of lore suggests that only the venom of the Greater Frumiated Bandersnatch can be used to concoct a cure!  And whence the Bandersnatch?  All but extinct, the last specimens are rumored to lurk in the heavily warded pleasure gardens of the Mad Sultan Gul'ltaan, Lord of the Nine Sword Golems of Tuur!

The Big List of RPG Plots by the inestimable S. John Ross is another excellent source of low-input / high-yield triggers for developing scenarios on the go and is well worth a look, whether creating role-playing, comics, or short stories are your particular thing. 

Adventures in The Cavern Endless Told by Middle Schoolers

In my Adventure Games Class, after a few false starts, I ran a group of students who had never really experienced tabletop role-playing before through four sessions exploring Sheberoth, my Peter Mullen artwork-inspired mega-dungeon, pulp, underworld.

 

 

 

Given that this is not an extracurricular activity, but an actual class in the school day it was important to focus on student growth and skills.  In this case I had four of my players collaborate via Google docs to write an account of their adventures to help them work on written composition.  As you can imagine, the writing came fast and easy compared to having them struggle with a more traditional writing prompt!

Here's what they wrote:

Who came on our expedition:

Three Bhatvian Rogues (Alyona, Yuri, and Jasim), a Markland Fighter in plate mail named Isabell, and a Craggie Ranger.  Later on a Walvian Wizard joined up with us.

What we did:

 

We climbed down the long underground staircase below the Ziggurat. The ranger almost died by falling because he didn’t remember that he was carrying a rope the whole time!  We came to the Great Library at the bottom of the stairs and even though we were traveling to the Daughter of Yig, we decided to try and explore the Great Library to find some magic scrolls and stuff that we could use or sell.

Yuri found a secret door leading into the library, but it wouldn’t open all the way.  We broke the bottom hinge, twisted it, and the rogues slid under the door and pulled down on it while the other guys pulled from the outside until the other hinge finally broke and the door fell down.  There was a magical glowing symbol above the door that flashed red but we just kept going.  

We went to the right from the entrance and found a room with a dried out pool in it.  There was a curtain and a spider-thing was hiding behind the curtain.  Alyona decided to set the curtain on fire with some oil and a torch, then ran through the curtain and attacked the spider with his sword, killing it.

We went back to the entrance and went straight this time.  Alyona found a big statue.  It said “Only initiates of the Jade Panther may pass,” but we didn’t know what that meant so we attacked it.  It delivered a mighty blow to Jasim and killed him with one punch from its humungous fist, but then we ran out of the room.  We came back a little while later and showed it a jade beetle that we had found earlier and then it took a step to the right and let us through.  The ranger took Jasim’s body and turned back at that point.

Behind the statue was a door and another hallway.  We found a set of shelves that had a weird hinge on them leading to a secret room.  Yuri opened it up and a dart shot out and nearly hit us.  Another room had a strange door with a set of tiles but we just took some scrolls from the shelves there and left that room.  A wizard from our basecamp joined up with us and we went down a set of stairs to the basement.

There was a huge green, glowing EGG thing on a stand and a bunch of arches.  Alyona and Isabell pushed the egg off the stand and broke it.  The shattered egg turned into a pile of green dust and we saw a ruby mixed in.  The dust formed into a Jade Panther with tentacles growing out of its sides.  Isabell snatched the ruby and almost died when the panther clawed him. Yuri saw that the cat was missing one of its eyes and so he went up to it and put the ruby in its empty eye socket and it gave him a Dexterity boost.
 

Through an arch, we found a ladder that led down into another room.  The only thing in the room was a glowing silver door.  When we touched it, we disappeared and it teleported us into a different underground room containing an altar.  Behind the altar and dias there was a door but when we went through this winged shadow-demon thing attacked us.  The wizard kept trying to shoot it with his Ray of Frost but kept missing!  It hit Alyona and permanently drained a point of Strength (he cried).  There were also these three big clay jars there.  One had bones in it, but the others were sealed shut.  Alyona broke one of the jars and ANOTHER shadow came out!  The wizard finally blew the shadows back with his Thunder Wave.  Isabell grabbed a weird blue cube that fell out of one of the broken jars and we ran down a ramp to a lower level.


 

We found an adventurer chained up to a wall, but we left him there (a pair of lizard-things had chained him up).  They sprayed us with their nasty gill-goo and it made us really sick before we killed them and found their nest.  They had some eggs in this pool of water and Alyona smashed them. Yuri stuck his face in the water to wash the gill slime out of his eyes so he had lizard egg goo on his face!

After fighting a snake demon and discovering a copper throne we found this underground river and a secret passage.  Something big was coming up the stream toward our light so we ducked down the passage where we met more lizard things and Alyona and Isabell stayed behind and fought seven of them while the wizard cowarded out.  Yuri stayed at the door and got grabbed by the tongue of a giant lizard frog.  It swallowed him and he went unconscious, but the wizard jumped on it and cut its throat open with his dagger before Yuri got digested.

We found a ledge on the edge of the underground river and jumped over to it, but Isabell kept leaving Yuri to die!  We rested up and then started to explore the big cave behind the ledge looking for a way out from under the Great Library.  We met this giant sphinx-thing with a cobra head, lion legs, and woman body!  It told us this riddle that we had to solve: “True Silver, God of Wolves, Night Dancer, Changing Mother.  Who am I?”  The wizard said it was the “Jade Panther”, but the sphinx roared and knocked him out.  Alyona said “werewolf”, but that wasn’t the right answer so he got blasted with a roar too.  
 

We left the sphinx behind and tried to cross the river and go back upstream, but we kept falling in and getting carried downstream by the current.  Isabell had to cut her armor off so she wouldn’t drown so now her armor class is terrible.  Isabell pushed the wizard into the river so that he could go first and see if it was safe, then we all jumped in.


 

The river carried us over a waterfall and we washed down into the Sunless Sea.  From there we climbed back up to the Great Library and back up the long stairs to the Ziggurat and our basecamp.
 

[JP: To make the waterfall ride dangerous but not utterly lethal I had each player roll a d6 minus his Dexterity modifier -- this is how many attacks his character would suffer as a result of his tumble.  Each successful attack would hit for d6 damage and any hit on an unconscious character would count as a failed death check.  The players got absurdly lucky and only one character took significant injury.  Since we were at the end of our fourth session and it was our last class before Christmas break, I ruled that the four survivors were able to make it back to camp safely.]