How I DM: Next Ed.

Friday night I ran my second play test of D&D Next. Since May of last year I have been batting around the idea of it in my head though. With very little D&D history to fall back on, I'm beholden to what I know about fourth edition (4E). It was the first system I learned, loved and made my own. It was and is a great system. It was marked by slow combat and weighed down by complexity  for complexities sake post the heroic tier though (levels 11-30).

My Dark Sun campaign probably suffered from a self imposed rapid progression. I adopted a level per game night rule instead of doling out XP. It was a mess of modifiers and option paralysis by the time they got to level 14. Pace of progression was something I could have managed better. The result at the table would be the same either way. Hour long encounters when we only had five hours a month to play.

Next

What I want out of Next is a simplified 4E rule set, something that Essentials barely scratched the surface of. What Next offers, right now, is pretty close to hitting that on the nose. It feels a lot like the former system, but without the stat inflation and less to tack on to the character sheet at every tier. There are of course balance issues. Friday night some at the table questioned the moderate difficulty check being set at 15 for all characters. Or level 1 spells that had no chance of hitting level 1 monsters (see: Sleep). Issues like these are just math problems though. It is after all a play test, you can just add and subtract your way to balance through trial and error. Right?

There are annoyances that I would like to see permanently dealt. For instance speed and range being communicated in feet. It is easy enough to do the math of 5 feet = 1 square on the grid, but it is annoying as well. When this reaches into to pre-made modules though it is down right frustrating. Over the summer I looked at a map that came with the play test, where 1 grid square = 10 feet. Which meant each square was a 2 x 2 matrix of 5 foot squares. It was a pain in the ass to transcribe to my actual grid. I'd think the reverse, communicating in grid squares, would be easy enough for "map of the mind" folks. While making the grid loving DM (me) a lot happier.

Finally the known unknowns are still unknown, in practice. By that confusing sentence, I mean the modular approach they are taking to satisfy "everyone". There will be a core rule set that seems to be represented by the current play test. Then there will be all kinds of additional rules to allow DMs to play the way they want. They have done a good job of communicating examples of those rule sets, but we have not seen them in the play test yet. Some will be easy enough to add and maintain balance and others will be add at your own risk. You could turn your game ass over teakettle if mixed without forethought. How these will play out as "official" options versus what a DM might have just home brewed any way is still unclear.

Next of Next
If they get the rules right. I am hoping and assuming they will. What I want next for Next is the modernization of the supporting resources. My players and I relied heavily on the web based character builder and compendium in 4E. The monster and encounter builder, where less than good though. What was missing from all the tools was proper mobile support. I want it all available on my iPad. Interactive character sheets, encounter tools and even the books. If they have to sell a physical book and pair it with an interactive digital download, for a few bucks more, than so be it. On Friday night every player that sat down at the table owned a smart phone, tablet or both. There were workarounds and third party tools last time, but nothing that add up to a great experience. I want it better this time.

Weekend Review: Feb 23rd & 24th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

The Cabin In The Woods
Horror movies are not my jam. Part of the draw for Cabin in the Woods though, was the buzz created around the film at it's release. Not the normal horror crowd. There were lots of people talking about how good the film was and why it was worth not spoiling he premise/reveal for yourself. Almost two years later I was still in he dark oddly enough. The film plays in the realm of classic horror tropes and then turns them on their head. Saying any more might ruin it. Seek it out and enjoy.

Crysis 2
Far Cry 3 was the last game I really bit my teeth into and that was back in early January. Some how I got it in my head that the folks that spawned the Far Cry series were worth revisiting. Crytek made the first Far Cry game, a technical marvel at the time and then moved on to make Crysis. Crysis at the time was too much game for any PC of it's era to run it at max settings. If you could run it at any level though it was beautiful.The story had very little substance though and the mechanics where akin to turning on a cheat mode. Crysis 2 took that boring ball and ran with it.

D&D Next
Friday night I played DM for 6 of my friends. After not sitting behind the screen since July of last year I felt rusty the whole night. I prepped too much again and by the time I was through the whole thing felt a bit too on the rails. Letting go and not over preparing has been the bane of my DM experience. I think I will eventually get there, but taking off what was pretty much a whole year didn't help. All that said and I still had fun. We rolled dice, drank beer and made dick jokes till midnight. Expect a bonus post later this week.

Weekend Review: July 21st & 22nd

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

Tour de France
I returned to the tour this year not expecting much after three years away. I ended up getting hooked. It motivated my desire to recover and return to my bike and there were some really exciting stages. It ended on Sunday and I am bummed about that, but am hoping for good coverage of the Olympic cycling events in a little more than a week.

Strava
During the tour coverage there seemed to be a Strava ad every 10 minutes. Enough so that I downloaded the running and cycling apps. I had been laid up with a bum knee for most of the event though. When I finally got out to run last weekend I used Strava instead of Nike+. Strava did not have the audio pace/time updates I like so much with Nike and the screen went dark on my arm band. Preventing me from seeing the pace/time as well. I don't have a bike computer installed however. So with nothing to compare too, I booted Strava on Sunday for a morning ride in the country. I heart data and there was plenty of it. It only consumed 25% battery in 2 hours and it seemed pretty accurate when compared to the other riders I was with. Two thumbs up for the cycling app. A get Nike+ if you're considering the running app.

UFC 149
Boring! Crowd booing is not always the best indicator of how a fight is going, but is this case it was for me. I'm not a fan of Dominic Cruz, but it looked like he could beat Faber and Barao when the belts are unified. The only saving grace was Matt Riddle's standing arm triangle to trip submission. Pretty rad!

Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II Retribution
Not to make you think the weekend was a total sport-o-fest, I picked up Dawn of War 2: Retribution during the Summer Steam sale. I had already played through the original game and the first expansion and loved them. Retribution adds new factions and more single player story lines. So far so good. The 40k video games have everything I thing I want out of actually playing tabletop 40k except for the painting. Now if there was just a turn based mod, I'd be in gamer heaven.

DnD Next
It had been forever since we last played DnD 4e . When the DnD Next play test was released in the end of May I desperately wanted to try it out. June was a wash and then we finally got a group together Saturday night. As DM I had to build all of the story hooks and background and WotC provided the dungeon and all the bits to fill it. It was a fun time regardless of the game system, but specifically the new rule set was fun too. Combat rounds were quick and the encounters felt deadly. Two my my major complaints of 4e. There is still plenty to tweak and balance, but it feels like a good start for now.

Dark is the Sun - August Ed.

It has been many a moon since my game group visited the desolate waste of Athas. We rolled our dice against the old Gods in June and took off the month of July. So a return to our Dark Sun game was in order this past weekend. Not having played in so long I sent a quick refresher to the group the week before and tried to give my best summary before we got started.

Back in May the group was seeking out the fragments of ancient artifact (Crown of Dust), but had the two pieces they had acquired so far stolen from them. The Templar that pick pocked the artifacts serves a powerful sorcerer king who means to get even more powerful once he controls the crown. Now it is up to the group to stop him. They sought allies in that fight in May and thought they were going to be on the hunt for more on Saturday.

They thought wrong. I added a sixth player (Wayne) to the table for Cthulhu in June with the intention of him staying at the table once I took the DM reigns back. Enter Alek, rogue, explorer and grave robber treasure hunter. I knew it would not be a natural fit to shoehorn him into the faction politics from the last game. So I sought a more natural introduction.

An article by Robert Schwalb that was a supplement to the world of Dark Sun seemed like a perfect fit. Elaadrich, a city referenced on the map of Athas, but never mentioned in the book. Schwalb did a fantastic job of describing a mad king who shuttered his city 800 years ago and only recently opened it's doors. I loved the concept, but for my re-purposing it didn't need to be alive. So I added a plague to the timeline that killed or mutated most of the citizens. Those that were left alive were either docile, but intelligent creatures or feral beast.

After reading various articles on 3D terrain at Roving Band of Misfits last month, I tried my hand at it for Saturday night. The first being a cliff side ambush encounter on the way to the lost city (see the pic above). The second was a confrontation with the mad sorcerer king. Who took the party to be his thieving templars, come back for more of his power. The terrain was a hit and the encounters that took place on them were pretty fun too.

Hits: Getting back to 4E, adding a 6th player, 3D terrain, peach crumble bars

Misses: Forgetting creature powers, encounters that were too safe

The rest is in the pictures...

Dark is the Sun - May Ed.

Long stretches between games can mean ample time to plan and prepare. That or time to procrastinate and rush through planning in the week before game night. I thought I was doing the former this month and it turned out to be the latter.

The story so far has been a hunt around Athas for an artifact of great power "the Crown of Dust". Why the party was looking for it originally was not super clear. Unpaid debts and missing family members tied to the ancient item was all that was driving them. So I added some context. Now a Sorcerer King wants it to destroy their home city with the Crown. So it is either gather the fragments before him or kill him before he finds and assembles it. The group has been set on the path to kill him and now need allies to do so.

Last Minute Changes
I had this game planned since the last time we played. Not on paper mind you, but it was kicking around in my noodle for nearly two months. When I finally got it on paper last week I wasn't happy with it though. So I went into edit mode to try and take it off the rails. By Wednesday I still wasn't happy. So I decided two days before we played, that I would blow out the ending from one possible outcome to three.

All with their own map, monsters and plot points. I got it done, but after the last dice was rolled Friday night I didn't feel like I had done it well. The answer could be not procrastinating, but it could also be spending more time on my encounters. Thankfully the two encounters on deck are already done. Now I can take the next month to sharpen them to a fine point.

Motivation
Being heroes who want to do heroic things isn't always enough. Maybe it should be. Sometimes I can't get a read on what motivates the party though. It could be me doing a poor job of setting up plot hooks for them. This isn't specific to one player or one event, but it is something I need to do a better job of in general. Part of me wants to just say the hell with it and wait for the next campaign to get the hooks right, but I know I can salvage this one. Overall things are going well, it just needs some tweaking.

Friday Games
Ugh, the bane of our group so far has been Friday night games. We learned a while ago not to do them. Everyone has worked a full week and comes in tired and edgy. With families, friends and careers it can be tough to be free on a Saturday though. It can't be helped sometimes. The answer could be postponing to the next free Saturday or planning lighter for these off months. Neither option sounds great.

The rest is in the pictures...

Relics of the Dawn - April Ed.

As a follow up to our epic game night in February, we gathered around the table again in April to throw dice once again. It  ended up being the first full table we have ever had in a year plus of playing together. Five plus a DM had us shoulder to shoulder, but having loads of fun. The beer, soda, wings and munchies flowed like wine and we got out of the night without a single death. R.I.P. Alin.

Having crossed the astral sea last game, we picked up our story on the coast of an unknown continent. We were hoping to find the nearest kingdom full of  armed allies, but were met by peaceful nomads and an implacable 3,000 year winter instead. The assumption being we would need to pass it to get to the allies we sought. Sounds easy enough right? Throw in a 75 year wendigo mating season and it's a walk in the park.

The first encounter of the night was a wendigo ambush. If they were hungry or seeking potential mates we will never know. We made fairly quick work of them and left for fear of running across more. Afterward our trackers (Kevin and Jason) went snow crazy and then got lost with some skillful dice rolls (1s). Thankfully the rest of the party was willing to bail them out.

Our journey landed us outside of a tower in the middle of the unending snow storm. Seeking a relic that might give us the power to stop the Corpse God and hoping to end the winter we ventured inside. The tower turned out to be that of the elf God of Torture. A pleasant fellow I'm sure. He kept an undead beholder well feed until we chopped it from stalk to stalk. We perused his various torture devices, wondered aloud what a cinnamon stick was (don't look that up) and made our way to his main chamber.

After passing through the doorway we found ourselves trapped with a lich who wanted to chit-chat. We were not willing to trade him his freedom for the end of the winter, so negotiations ended with arrows and steel. Mid-battle we became aware of three figures trapped in a ring of fire in the room. The lich had asked us for a drop of Krumm's (Mike) blood to put in the ring during our conversation. As we were not budging on that his rat assassin (or ratsassin) started to trying to take our blood from us. Jump cut to us crushing the lich and his minions and pushing the ratsassin into the fire.

Lich vanquished, Krumm willingly gave his blood to the fire and was transported into a battle between gods that had been going on for 5,000 years. He killed a god (Tarhan Atan) and ended the winter in one blow. We wrapped up the evening at 3am and I drove home half asleep, but with a grin from ear to ear. It was for sure a top 5 game night and shared with good friends.

Mirado went through another transformation before Saturday. He is now a hybrid ranger cleric. It worked really well and was fun to boot, but I'll cover it in more detail later this week.

The rest is in the pictures...

PAX East 2011: Day One

Bright and early Friday morning we awoke to make what is now an annualized trip to PAX. The flight out of Richmond was uneventful, save a bit of delayed landing due to a storm front moving into Boston. It was that very same storm that pushed our day one plans indoors. Friday was supposed to be our bean town tour, but because of the rain we ended up at PAX a day early.

Before we made it to nerd Mecca though, we grabbed a bite at Caffe Nuovo for breakfast. I had the seafood omelette (yum) and Crystal had waffles with fresh fruit (burnt). Stomachs full we trudged through the rain to our hotel. It was nice, but it was not Mandarin Oriental nice. It was about a fourth of the cost though, so it all worked out. We dropped off our bags, were back down stairs and on the T to the Boston Convention Center in no time. A venue that felt double or even triple the size of last years spot.

The expo floor reflected that increased size. I immediately felt lost in a sea of blinking lights and nerd stink. There was so much to see and do that we ended up taking a break after seeing half of it to play some board games. We picked up Gloom and it only took us about hour to learn and play it. It's a card game that is one part strategy and two parts dark humor story telling. It is something I'd definitely consider buying in the near future.

Back in the expo hall it was on to touring the rest of the games on offer. We still want a Geek Chic table in our dinning room, but will have to wait till we get a new house. Those things are massive and wicked cool. The lines to play Portal 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic were epically long, but I wish I could have tried them. Red Faction looks like it will capture everything I loved about the last game in the series minus a sledge hammer. Machine Gun Jetpack made me want an iPad more than the game itself, but it seems cool in it's own right too.

What can best be described as life sized D&D was a highlight of the show floor for us. A party of six, picked characters in the form of laminated simplified character sheets on lanyards. Crystal was a Warlock and took the Cleric. Each party member had two powers to give you an idea of how simple we are talking. We faced off against 6ft tall cardboard cut out monsters (Strahd). Rolling basketball sized rubber dice to see if we would hit. I think every group conquered the encounter, but ours did so with style. I got the killing blow from a flank.

Board game and expo hall'ed out we grabbed some dinner. Pizza and mountain dew for +5 nerd points and then went to sit in line for the Joystiq Podcast. Last year Crystal had never heard the boys from Joystiq, but walked away really enjoying the mix of humor and game talk. This year was more of the same with Bob Ball cruising the crowd in a dinosaur costume the whole evening before revealing himself (giggle) to read an email.

After Joystiq let out we rushed over to the line for the Giant Bombcast. Crystal enjoyed this panel less and ended up playing Sudoku for most of it. I explained after the fact that Giant Bomb is my go to voice for video game opinions. That their podcast is usually funny too, but it can go long and get really into game talk. After the Bombcast panel we hitched a taxi ride back to the hotel. Hitting the bed hard for some much needed sleep.

Up Next: Boston/PAX Day 2, Sam Adams and the trip we didn't take the the Boston Aquarium

Dark is the Sun - March Ed.

The third evening of our Dark Sun campaign kicked off this past Saturday night. We ate subs as a substitute to "crappy" pizza. We had four iPhones at the table and not one of them snapped a picture. The story of Fire Watch plodded forward.

Motivation
Back in October of 2010 I wrote, in the wrap up of my first D&D campaign, that I wanted to "Establish my villain sooner". I thought I was on the road to doing that with this game, but after Saturday I don't know that I am. I have an NPC the players hate, which I as a DM love. I have a few other evil NPCs that are plotting and scheming, but have not made their presence felt enough yet. Without an imminent threat I find my players lacking the get up and go I want from them. This is something I plan to rectify in the coming game nights.

Four Encounters Too Many
Our game nights usually consist of 4-5 hours of actual play. It can seem long, but considering we only play once a month it is warranted. Knowing this and knowing that encounters, no matter how you shorten them, take a hour or more, it is silly to plan more than three. Apparently I needed that lesson repeated for me as I planned to run four on Saturday. We never got to the fourth encounter, I glossed over it and spent the rest of the evening wrapping up the story elements I wanted to convey. Lesson learned...maybe.

Fatigue
My players and I all seemed to be yawning and glass eyed by the end of Saturday night. Blame too much beer, sickness, lack of sleep or any number of reasons. The result was a general feeling that the game was dragging. Something that really bugged me as I headed to bed post midnight. I awoke feeling sick and even more bummed by the prior nights game. Emails from my players with a positive outlook on the night and my own chance to reflect have since changed that bummed feeling. Now I just want to make the next night even better.

Relics of the Dawn - February Ed.

We have been trying to string together a night to relaunch Chuck's 4e campaign for far too long. The last time we played was December and the last time we played 4e was this summer. For the second act of his campaign we all agreed that we wanted the whole group to play. That didn't turn out to be the case at the last minute, but we still had a good time at the table.

The passage of time saw us jump from level 9 where we left off this summer to level 11. Picking paragon paths is a great way to kick off the return of a campaign. For my cleric (Mirado) I went with "miracle worker", a path aptly named for the miracles we would need to make it though the night. When you show up and your DM is wearing a "TPK All The Way" shirt, you know you are in for a world of hurt.

Our story picked back up with the party braving the astral sea to seek aid for our home continent's immanent demise. The first encounter we faced featured a seemingly abandoned boat full of Githyanki. They sprung their trap, but we quickly dispatched most of them before their captain surrendered. Finding him to be untrustworthy and at the urging of a prisoner he had taken we kicked him off of his boat and set sail again.

The big set piece of the night was when a ship full of demons caught and attacked our ship. With a seemingly unending supply of flying nasties we determined pretty quickly that our only chance of surviving was to escape. That was made very difficult when said demon ship launched a chained claw that attached itself to our mast. Locked to our enemy we did our best to fend of waves of demons as Alin (Wayne) boarded their ship to break us free.

The result was the loss of our entire crew (all minions), Alin succeeding in breaking us free and breaking the demon ship in half at the same time. Unfortunately for all his heroic efforts Alin didn't make it back to our ship before the other went down. It was not a TPK, but losing a member of our party was sad all the same. As Wayne mentioned shortly after though, "If losing a character at Chuck's table meant I had to leave, I would been playing with another group long ago".  Fun times all around and we are looking forward to the next one for sure.

The rest is in the pictures...

Dark is the Sun - February Ed.

Round two of our Dark Sun campaign went off without a hitch earlier this month. Unfortunately it did so with one chair empty. Mike could not make it and for the first time since I started running a game for family and friends I played without a player. Outside of figuring out the logistics of a missing Spitfire though the game went great though.

Quiting WoW really allowed me to pour a ton of time into this one. It was mostly a dungeon crawl, but I managed to introduce enough real choice and role playing to not make the whole night feel like one big dice role. I had fun running it and seeing my players wonder aloud if they were breaking my planning. I planned enough to account for most of their actions and even threw out whole encounters if need be.

Players as NPCs
I made the mistake of letting my players dictate the actions of an absent character in this past game. I was not prepared for it in that I did not have crunch for him and did not want to make choices that might effect his story. In the future when I have an empty chair that character is either out of the picture completely or I will let another player run them. I want no hand in it.

Off the Rails
Playing off the rail either requires more planning or the ability to improvise like a pro. As I am still wet behind the ears I am doing it through planning. Not getting attached to my encounters or a completely fixed story is tough, but ultimately makes for a better game. You can't plan for everything though, so I am flexing my improve muscles more and more often. I like where this is all going.

Skill Challenge Free
After stewing over skill challenges in my mind and on the web for a week I decided to bench them for the February game night. I made good use of skills in role play and in combat, but I think I am over official skill challenges. Even skill use without story or combat implication is out. My game and players will be better for it.

How I DM: Skill Challenged

How I DM, is a series of articles that reflect back on my time as a dungeon master over the past year plus. I am currently DMing a Dark Sun 4e campaign for a group of friends and family. Today's article will focus on my use and experience with skill challenges.

I mentioned in the recap of my first Dark Sun game night that I was frustrated with the way skill challenges are presented by WotC. As a DM, who is still learning the ropes, I shied away from using them at first. I wasn't quiet clear on how they would fit into the story. My first attempt at using them was four or five game nights into the Bloodlines of Fate campaign I ran this past summer and fall.

Assuming that the company that puts out the game I run for my players knows what is fun. I ran it word for word like they write it. The group needed to get behind a tavern to stop a weapons deal a cult was brokering. So I presented them with a pass/fail criteria like every module I have seen come out of Dungeon magazine. Something to the effect of "you need to make six success rolls before three failures and here are the skills you can use to do that: 2x Stealth, 2x Bluff, etc...". My players were confused. I ended up explaining it two more times before they ever rolled a dice.

It didn't add to the story and felt shoe horned into the evenings other events. Afterward I determined that I must have been doing something wrong. So for the game this past Saturday I took the the approach of wrapping it in story. I started by letting my players know they had 3 days of rations each and that traveling to their destination would take 3 days. Each day I presented a scenario that was coupled with a skill check.

On the first day of your journey you all come across a fork in the path. One way leads into a valley and the other over a craggy slat flat. Go ahead and roll a nature check to determine what you might know about these two terrain types.

If they passed, they add no time to their trip. If they failed they would add a day to the trip and increase the chances of sickness or death by travelling without supplies. I allowed both trained and untrained rolls, but noted that any untrained failures would cancel out successes. It worked fine I guess, but still felt like it was not a part of the game or story. After that night I think I have finally determined where they fit and don't fit at my table.

During Combat
Using multiple skill checks or challenges during combat can build drama, risk and role play into an otherwise boring encounter. The best experience I have had with it are traps that round after round will damage the players until disabled. An arcane based trap that requires 3-4 successful skill checks before it is disabled forces a player to choose between killing creatures or deactivating a constant source of damage.  Better yet a trap that works like an alarm system. Allow it to go off long enough and it will bring more enemies to the fray.

During Role Play
This is how I always have understood skill checks. Want to lie to a town guard, skill check. Want information from the town drunk who isn't cooperating, skill check. It plays out naturally on it's on and usually falls to me to be reactive to player decisions. On occasion I have a few planned out ahead of time. E.g. A NPC will lie to the players and not reveal his/her true intentions unless they call him on it. If it takes away from the story or leaves out a crucial piece of information I might lead them to it. They usually are quick enough to ask on their own. "Can I roll insight to see if he is telling the truth".

Crammed Between
The formality of either announcing "this is a skill challenge" or putting book ends on the mechanic by changing tone is what makes them feel out of place. To my mind all of the fun that a formal skill challenge should offer is already covered by skill checks in combat and role play. So why have them at all? The more I think about their inclusion into 4e, the more I think they were added as a way to make sure skills got used. Not to justify the inclusions of skills, but as an easier way to present skill use to first time dungeon masters. It's a poor substitute for just integrating it into regular play.

Dark is the Sun - January Ed.

So way back in August I decided that I would sunset my 4e home brew game and start up a Dark Sun one. Planning complete, we rolled the first dice of the campaign Saturday (1/8/11) evening. I started my players off with almost an hours worth of role playing before they ever stepped into combat. Which I delegated mostly to the Marauders of the Dune Sea module. In total they got through bunches of role playing and two bigger encounters for the night. All in it was a success.

Story vs. Combat
I have limited time to prepare as a DM and I usually prefer to spend that time building cool encounters and creatures. After a gajillion hours worth of video games I have a good idea of what makes an encounter or mechanic fun and challenging. I have a lot less experience as a storyteller. Using the canned module gave me way more time to focus on my plot and it panned out. I spent at least two weeks before Saturday helping my players work on their back stories and design hooks that would hopefully be meaningful to them. Sure I tweaked the encounters to make them more interesting, but most of my time was spent telling a tale.

Committing to a First Person Voice
I have been building the courage to commit to only using first person voices for the NPCs in my games since I started. I have dabbled to some success with it in the past, but never committed for all of them. I did just that for our first Dark Sun game. I slipped once or twice, but got back on course as soon as I relazed I had. I liked it. It still feels silly, but I think it makes the game better.

Halved Hit Points
Big high level monsters create challenge and put the fear of failure into the players. They also come attached with loads of hit points that can drag an encounter out for hours. Reading about on Robert Schwalb's blog months ago and then seeing it in practice when Ethan DMed sold me on the practice. Beyond bugging my players to keep their turns snappy, this is the biggest improvement to overly long encounters in 4e I have seen so far. Highly recommend it.

Skill Challenges
Maybe it was my own fault, but trying to run skill challenges the way WotC prescribes them is both confusing and boring for players. Achieve 6 successes before 3 failures using the following skill checks: Endurance, Nature...blah blah...BLAH! It doesn't make sense in the context of the story and it destroys any immersion already established. Marauders third encounter called for one. It's intent was to play out the players trip across the desert (Athas), but did so in the manner described above. So I changed it. I tried to wrap it in story and things they came across on their journey. It was not as bad as what I have attempted in the past, but was still the weakest point of the night. I think I am done with them all together.

Gamma World

Saturday night Crystal and I got to be a players in a Gamma World game run by Ethan for his wife, friend (Chris) and us. While I do adore the role of dungeon master, it is always a welcome break to come to the table with nothing but a character sheet, pencil and dice. The random dice roll character generation in Gamma World is fun. As with all character creation though, it takes longer than you would think. Filling in the stats, doing the math and checking/rechecking the book for four people of varying pen and paper experience takes time.

Once the game got rolling though being familiar with D&D 4e was a huge bonus. It meant Ethan only had to walk two people, instead of four, through the mechanics. I sometimes take for granted the complexity of move, minor, standard to the uninitiated. After a few rounds in the first encounter everyone was buzzing through their turns though.

The first encounter reminded me that I see the table from two very different perspectives. As a dungeon master I like to keep my monsters alive as long as possible, seeing them as an challenge to overcome. As a player I get bored if an encounter drags out. This was evident on Saturday night. When we got to the point were the monsters were no longer a threat to us I wanted to move on. Instead we had to slog through an additional three to four rounds necessary to end it.

Ethan recognized the same thing, because he followed that encounter up by halving the hit points of the monsters for the rest of the night. A great adjustment and a technique I will be adopting with some modification in the future. Long encounters mean less variety and role playing for the hours alloted for a gaming. It also means more work, but I am learning to live with that.

My character was a Plant Felinoid named Scratch Furrington. While it was a cool concept to work around nothing about his two origins really manifested themselves in the actual game. My basic melee and range attacks were my go to all night. Something a I'd consider a short coming of the game's mechanics. My origin standard and encounter powers had less plus attack and damage than my basic attacks. The effects they offered (slow and knock prone) were never worth the trade off. This seemed to be true for everyone. Which meant we all could have just as easily been humans with odd weapons (speed limit signs and cans of green beans).

Where the origins felt under powered the Alpha and Omega cards were cool in that offered varying levels of usefulness. Their ever changing nature add a much need variety to the table where the origins dropped the ball. While I only used one of my alpha cards (clutch blind) and none of my omega our group did get a rifle that dropped monsters like the hammer of God (7d8 ftw).

The pick up and play nature of Gamma World was a welcome addition to what is becoming a monthly gaming habit. No matter who I play with, what table it is at or what game system it is, I end up playing once a month. It is nice to know that is always there and I hope Gamma World makes it back into the rotation in the future.

P.S. Best house rule ever, a silly/cheesy catchphrase before your attack grants +1 to said attack. Offered up the best humor of the night. More on that in Ethan's write up of our game night. Who by the way did a fantastic job.

DC Adventures

Trying out new game systems or even modifications of older D&D systems is something I really enjoy. Getting on board this pen and paper train so late has left me with a blunted sense of the past. I don't know the pain and joy that many suffered and relished in for generations. D&D 4e is packaged for the video game era, I understand it's mechanics because I've been chewing on World of Warcraft for going on six years and Diablo before it.

Time machining back to Cthulhu previously and to DC Adventures two weeks ago takes some more mental flexing. I can pick up on the mechanics, it just takes some time as it is less intuitive. D&D 4e still needs some tuning for sure, but I appreciate the refinement that comes from generations of tweaking after exploring old systems.

DC Adventures is a relic from the past. The wording can be confusing and the book is not set up for the uninitiated. It can feel a bit like reading a choose your own adventure book when building a character. Even with all the hang ups of character creation and rules comprehension though, the game is still fun. Granted we haven't actually played yet, but our player vs player experiments from the first night left a good taste. Apparently, like most things, all of the leg work comes in the beginning. Once we actually jumped into the combat the pieces started to fall into place.

Next on the DC Adventures docket. Sharing my character (Kilowatt) and his background here and recapping our first actual adventure/game night once we have it.

P.S. I'm guessing this quick start guide would have been handy to have around two weeks ago.

Dark is the Sun: Planning

Following my first and mostly successful local D&D 4e adventure, I've decided to try out Dark Sun. It is a campaign setting that was created in the early 90's for AD&D 2e and that was recently rebuilt for 4e this summer. Not that I don't enjoy a homebrewed campaign setting. It's just a ton of work. Planning for a night of BLoF takes about 20 hours. Writing, encounter building, map drawing, token making, etc. Factor in the time spent thinking about how it could all work in greater context of the world and it is a part time job. Hard work, but rewarding.

So I look to Dark Sun to alleviate my DM work load for a patch. It is not just laziness that drew me to a canned campaign setting though. Professional writers who are paid to make magic work on these things. What I have read of Dark Sun so far drips of that effort. The world of Athas is a harsh polar opposite of the standard high fantasy tropes. Up is down, down is up, halflings are cannibals. I'm really looking forward to exploring it with my players.

Not only the world is a change of pace though. Since I get a fresh start as a DM, I am taking the opportunity to apply some knowledge gained through my first adventure and to try out some new things...

Signature Item
Dealing out magic items has been a pain for me in my first campaign. They have no meaning to the characters except stats and the way they obtained them wasn't heroic. So to start out Dark Sun I am asking all of the players to come to the table with an item they already know. The gythka passed down through generations of clutches. The ancient shield pried from the sarcophagus of a dead hero. Give it a name, all the flavor you want and it will grow with you as you level like a heirloom item. See Ethan's blog for more.

Class/Role Changes
Since we are planning to return to their first characters eventually. I'd like my players to pick new classes and roles. It is fun to see how the other half lives and explore new mechanics in the game. So far it's...

• Crystal: Striker to Leader
• Ethan: Leader to Defender
• Mike: Defender to Striker
• Chuck: Striker to Controller
• Gabriel: Striker to Striker

Party Background
Bringing the adventurers together as a rag tag group of strangers made it easier for the beginner players. Less background and story to remember so they could focus on learning to play the game. Now they all have a dragon kill under their belt and I'd like them to flesh out why their group works together for Dark Sun. I'll shape the game around that and whatever individual story hooks they come up with.

Free Expertise

Signature items will give them some of the stats they need to keep being effective at higher levels and item expertises should give the rest. Making them free means they aren't bogged down by mandatory feats and instead can pick fun ones. Which is what the game is all about.

No Inherent Bonuses
Many DMs are looking to IB for their low magic Dark Sun campaigns as a way to make up for lost attack and damage stats. As my players will be getting signature items and free expertise I don't see the need for them. My campaign won't be low magic, but I will try to do a better job of passing out items that are meaningful.

Meatspace D&D - October Ed.

Pictures from October D&D Night

Saturday night was the fifth and final act of Bloodlines of Fate. A goal of a midnight stop brought our group together earlier than normal. Pizza was ordered, cold fermented beverages were poured and dice were warmed. When everyone finally sat down at the table we kicked off with a recap from the last game and then dove back into our story.

When I decided back in April that I would run a local game of D&D, I planned out my first adventure in five acts:

• Act 1: Brought the party together and introduce them to a group of bandits known as the Hand of Black.
• Act 2: The party investigated the Hand of Black further, took their first trip to a dungeon and found ties between the bandits and a cult.
• Act 3: They were summoned by a wealthy patron who accompanied them to kill a meddlesome shaman. The patron was actually a cult member and turned on the party. They killed the cultist and the shaman told them of the cults plan to summon a dead God.
• Act 4: Returning to the city they were ambushed by the cult, found the contact the shaman asked them to speak to murdered and arrested a crooked blacksmith who is dealing arms to the bandits.
• Act 5: They traveled into the caverns below the city to stop the cult from summoning the dead God. They found a subterranean temple full of traps and killed their first dragon, stopping the cult in the process.

Most of my time and attention has been spent on this adventure arc, but I have three more loosely planned out. Those stories will not see the light of day for a while though. The metaphor of television seasons has been tossed around by my players and rightly so. This was the season finale, but the show has already been picked up for season two. In the mean time they will get a healthy portion of Dark Sun until BLoF returns.

Saturday included my first player death, like death death, not just a quick encounter nap. Thankfully Ethan was a good sport about it. His comrades even fished up his broken body from the bottom of the chasm he was pushed in to. In what I assume will be some attempt to raise him from death at a future date. I'm sure that will end well.

Things to work on:

1. Establish my villain sooner.
2. Less railroading, more choices.
3. Using player fluff in the story more.

The rest is in the pictures!

“The Dungeon Master”

“The Dungeon Master” is a short story by Sam Lipsyte, that is very much evocative of an era I didn't live through. The arc is about a generation just ten to twenty years older than mine. Their pop culture made familiar to me by TV and movies.  Their experiences are the same though. For every generation being a teenager can be tough business.  The story tells the tale of a high school D&D group and the troubles they face at and away from their table.  It is done with a bit of dark humor and left me wanting way more.  That is all I have in the tank to try and get you to read.  It is only seven pages and well worth your time. Go!

Update: Ethan brought this short story full circle.

Rebuilding Mirado

Mirado Descal (pics) is a time traveling, astral plane walking, cleric of the highest order of Sirin.  He is also the level 9 cleric I've been playing off and on again for more than a year now.  I love when I get to play him and wish I could dust him off with greater frequency. What is really special about him is that he is the only 4e character I've ever had.  So keeping him fun to play is something I am constantly revisiting.

Last fall when he was a lowly level 3 I rebuilt him to make up for rookie mistakes. A cleric can either focus on strength. Getting up close and punching zombies and the like in the mouth.  Or on wisdom. Hanging back behind the damage sponges, lobbing the lords prayer made tangible. I was going in both directions. Something that can work from a character background, but leaves you vulnerable to crunch woes and boredom.

So as I said, I rebuilt him. I went laser cleric all the way, offensive wisdom based ranged spells.  Smiting doers of evil and on a rare occasion throwing out a heal to my party. A year of chucking radiant bolts has been fun. So much so that when Player's Handbook 3 came out, I toyed with the idea of re-rolling a Ruinpriest and didn't.  The plan was to have Mirado suffer a crisis of faith and you know just start diggin' on them ruins.  I ultimately scrapped the idea, not from a story perspective, but because I really enjoy playing a cleric.

That is not the rebuild the title of this post refers to though. Just this week I broke out the character builder to grow a brand new Mirado from the ground up. I came at it from two perspectives.  One, was inspiration from Ethan's Bravelord he plays in my game.  For too long my cleric has been a striker in leaders clothing.  I don't want to go full on pacifist, but a leader should lead.  Where Ethan does his leading by offering his party extra hits, I hope to debuff and buff my party to victory.

Two, was focusing more on healing and my characters background and motivation that would drive that. I took feats and spells that could be a bit overkill in a normal game. Chuck likes to throw us into the fire and watch us try to survive. Leaning on as many healing spells as I can, has benefits from a crunch and fluff perspective.  So without further ado, the improved Mirado Descal...

Mirado Descal
Human, Cleric, Level 9
Versatile Expertise: Versatile Expertise (Mace)
Versatile Expertise: Versatile Expertise (Holy Symbol)

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 11, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 8, Wis 22, Cha 16.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 11, Con 10, Dex 10, Int 8, Wis 18, Cha 14.

AC: 21 Fort: 16 Reflex: 16 Will: 24
HP: 62 Surges: 7 Surge Value: 15

TRAINED SKILLS
Insight +15, Religion +8, History +8, Arcana +8, Heal +15

FEATS
Cleric: Ritual Caster
Human: Versatile Expertise
Level 1: Mark of Healing
Level 2: Defensive Healing Word
Level 4: Superior Implement Training (Accurate symbol)
Level 6: Healer's Implement
Level 8: Shielding Word

POWERS
Bonus At-Will Power: Sacred Flame
Channel Divinity: Turn Undead
Cleric at-will 1: Astral Seal
Cleric at-will 1: Gaze of Defiance
Cleric encounter 1: Prophetic Guidance
Cleric daily 1: Beacon of Hope
Cleric utility 2: Shield of Faith
Cleric encounter 3: Hymn of Resurgence
Cleric daily 5: Consecrated Ground
Cleric utility 6: Spirit of Healing
Cleric encounter 7: Searing Light
Cleric daily 9: Dismissal

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Accurate symbol of Hope +2, Belt of Sacrifice (heroic tier), Healer's Brooch +1, Resplendent Gloves (heroic tier), Mace, Healer's Chainmail +1

Meatspace D&D - September Ed.

Less than 30 days from our last game night, my group of adventurers and I got together last Friday for our fourth installment.  As a DM I have a poor habit of thinking about my adventure a lot, but not actually putting pen to paper until the week of the game.  Which meant I was rushing to get all my prep done down to the last minute.  I drew an encounter map at 7:30pm and the players showed up at 8pm.  To give you an idea.

Thankfully my players are great and helped pulled off another successful night of D&D 4e.  No cardboard and hot glue for this session I'm afraid.  Instead I decided to go with three encounters, something I had never done before.  Between my over planning and goal of challenging them we usually only get one big encounter for the night.  D&D 4e's slow combat does not help either, although I'm we are working on addressing that.

I say "we" because getting through three encounters left us at 11:40pm trying to decide if we should start the last combat portion of our night or wrap it up and go home.  We agreed that it would be quick rounds and we'd try to finish in under an hour.  It went twenty minutes over that goal, but everyone agreed that all of our encounters in the future should have the same pace.  Coupled with some pro tips from Mr. Schwalb I think we could easily hit under the hour mark in the future.

Finally note, I forgot the camera again. Damn the ten thousand things going on in my head the night we play.  These post are probably made slightly less boring if I can manage to get some pictures of us to go with them.  Next time.

August Game Night - 4e Finale Edition

The rest of the August Game Night pics

I've been a player in Chuck's D&D campaign for going on a year plus now. In that time we have faced dragons, walked ethereal planes and crushed hordes of zombies and rats. There has also been much discussion of taking a break from D&D 4e to try our groups collective hand at something else. On the heels of our two shot Cthulhu game we decided that we would either play Rogue Trader or Shadowrun. More on that later. To get to said new game we needed to come to a stopping point, not an end mind you, for the current campaign. A season finale if you will.

Back in April we killed our first dragon, a tough task that took us to the edge of a TPK. Picking back up in August we were fleeing the army that the dragon was leading. The game mechanic for the night was a fast moving cart, in hot pursuit was a cavalry of ratkin (see pic above) and falling off meant instant death (R.I.P. the bull rushed Mind Flayer). We had loads of fun and again skirted the TPK by the narrowest of margins. We ended the night in the only safe haven left on Kohut, tasked by the city's leader with finding help across the sea.

A great way to wrap things up and put them on a break. Next up will be the beginnings of a Shadowrun game run by Jason. The rest of the night is in the pictures...