Boots, hats and treasure

Heading to York this morning to collect multiple pairs of boots.  To be accompanied by super-talented ex-student so that we can discuss poster design.   Hopefully she can also map read as this place is somewhere in the middle of a field if Google Maps is correct.  There is considerable getting lost potential here, I feel.

On my return, I shall hurl myself into hat construction.  Squashy, vaguely renaissance hats are a huge boon to a largely female cast, half of whom are playing men.  Long hair is not awful for the period, but the fringes need to be off the faces.  Hence hats.  Luckily they are not hard to make and are a great way of using up fabric scraps.  Waste not want not.  And here I suddenly turn into my mother, whose favourite saying this was.

In gaming news, it's treasure time for the Lost City crew.  Half of them anyway.  This split party have been battling insects and arachnids for the last six weeks.  The team charged with taking down a huge spider queen and her spawn have succeeded.  Their treasure has been consumed by said spider over the course of her long career.  Apparantly.  I'm not sure any spider, however huge, can reasonably eat weaponry, but so says the module.  I'll roll with it.  If the party want to pick through spider entrails, that's fine by me. 

Stuff to gladden adventuring hearts

The other half of the party are still effecting regime change among the Trignotarbs.  Their task is somewhat harder, but I am confident that they too will be collecting a treasure bundle and some valuable, level-raising XP shortly.  They have an angel on standby to hoist them up and down the walls, so all should be well for them.  If they can avoid the healing sapping larvae.

X is for XP

X

XP stands for experience points.

Experience points are a way of keeping score in an RPG.  Earn enough of those little bunnies and your character gets better, stronger and more awesome.  Win enough XP and you gain a level and get harder to kill.

Easy.

Or not.  As with many niche hobbies, there are a multitude of loudly voiced views on XP and the earning thereof.   The idea of course, is to encourage players to do things they might not otherwise consider doing.  Deadly and dangerous things.

Back in the early days of D&D it was extremely simple.  If you killed a monster, you earned XP.  If you picked up treasure, you earned XP.  Under the rules, only the person who delivered the killing blow earned any XP.  This lead to a lot of very grumpy fighters who had spent ages swatting at a monster to reduce it enough for the killing blow to be delivered by someone else entirely.  It also lead to the kind of larcenous behaviour that gets role players a bad name.  "Ooh, we're at the inn.  I take the candlesticks!  Worth 20XP."

Gaining levels was nigh impossible for classes who didn't kill things or steal things, especially as not all classes gained levels at the same rate.  A fighter only needed 1000XP to go up from level 1 to level 2, but a magic user needed 2,500.  Bit of disparity there as your average magic user was completely useless until level 3 and it took an eternity to get there.

Beware the might of the magic user

The theory here was that high-level magic users were so dangerously powerful that they had to gain their goodies slowly.  Tales abounded of magic-users who could demolish the entire campaign with a well-chosen spell.  Fighters, clerics and thieves became progressively less useful as they went up in level compared to the magic-user.  Those variable XP tables were intended to level the playing field.

Old school gaming has a lot of things going for it, but longevity of characters isn't normally one of them.

Later iterations have taken a wider view of how XP can be earned.  Quick thinking, disabling traps, cunning plans and fast talking are also valid methods of gaining those cherished points.  These are also open to abuse, of course, but it is a fairer system.  It encourages players to build more varied characters good at more than one thing for a start.  It encourages GMs and adventure writers to provide a buffet of challenges beyond killing things and taking their stuff.

Most games now allot XP equally to all players, regardless of the contribution they made to the encounter. The fighter who flubbed her diplomacy check at a crucial moment is not penalised any more than the cleric who failed to land a blow against the dragon.  Equally unfair you may say, but so much depends on the dice - and we all have horrible rolling days.  Or months, in my case.

Personally, I'm tending to bottle out of XP allocation altogether and decide when the players have done enough to gain a level.  In a PbP that works out at an average of five enounters.  In a table game, probably 9-10.  Encounters being any kind of interactive situation.

That covers a multitude of sins, but allows me to reward creatively minded parties as well as the more mainstream groups.  I currently have two parties traversing the Tomb of Horrors (the 4e version).  One party are currently earning their XP in the traditional way by wiping out the denizens of a dungeon and surviving traps.  The other group are prancing around Freeport with a brass band and a box of slaad eggs.  Both are earning XP.  They're just doing it in their own special ways.

S is for Short

S

Short person speaking here.  At just on 5 foot, I spend a lot of my life looking up.  Living in London made summer a horror.  No tube journey was complete without my ending up with my nose wedged in someone's armpit.  Joyous.

A point I make to drama students is that short is often good.  Better a well thought out scene with a proper beginning, middle and end than an interminable muddle that blurs the point.

Short in games does not mean bad either.  Intense wins out over long-drawn any day, but is notoriously hard to achieve in PbP online.  Long stories, short episodes is what I aim for.

Short is also for this post.  I'm a fan of economical writing (pace Tolkein and the three volume gang).  One day I'll manage it myself.  In the meantime, longwinded phrases, subclauses and conjuctions are my friends.

The halfling and the barmaid

I've complained a goodly amount about technology and the internet, but in a small attempt to redress the balance, here's something I'm deeply grateful for. 

This is a story of an internet friendship. 

When we met four years ago, I was a barmaid with a suit of chainmail under her bed, and he was a halfling druid with a large dog.  It was an online game (what else?).  Some of us felt bold enough to divulge our real names and befriend each other on Facebook.

Halfling druid

Barmaid.  Chainmail under bed and therefore not visible

A conversation started shortly afterwards which has endured ever since.

Pat and I communicate almost every day.  I've watched him turn his life around in more ways than I can sensibly count.  He's watched me clamber through my various artistic traumas and teaching shenanigans.  We've both tended to be there for each other when the going got really rough at some points. 

Our ongoing conversation has taken us through politics, films, philosophy, gaming, more gaming, his work, my work, family, rules minutae, routes out of depression, character building and recipes.

We've met three times in the flesh.  Pat has come to visit the UK twice and has just walked through the door and felt like part of the family.    My son, who doesn't take to new people easily, immediately felt at home with him.  The home gaming group absorbed him instantly as a player.  He sat in our kitchen and broke up chocolate for brownies and peeled potatoes.

Husband, son and I went to Indianapolis for GenCon last year and met up again for a couple of meals.  As always, it felt like he lived next door and had just dropped by.

This good and lovely man met his soulmate last year, and on Tuesday, they eloped.  I'm using this post to say thank you to the internet for our ongoing conversation and to offer him congratulations and the best of good wishes.  Few deserve them more.  And yes, of course I asked his permission before I wrote this.

I am assured the elopement didn't look like this.

Slaadi and artistic rehabilitation

The slaad is much on my mind of late.  Creatures of chaos, lovers of entropy, beings with an unknown (and probably unknowable) agenda, slaadi are enjoyable nutbars.

They come in various flavours, and in the interests of finding a good image for this post, I googled them.  Hilariously, image search came up with the following as its first choice:

According to Google, this is a slaad.

Controlling my hysteria, I now present you with what I had in mind:

Actual slaadi, not actual size

There is something very beguiling about an utterly chaotic creature producing such a very random image. 

They are delightfully dangerous critters.  Part of their charm, of course, is that they look slightly daft.  Indeed, in the early days of DandD, they were regarded as a bit of a joke right up to the point that they infected you with some unspeakable disease.  Later incarnations spent quite a bit of time emphasising their horribleness despite their appearance, with successive artists working on making them menacing.  Largely succeeding as well.

This is a good trick if you can pull it off.  The immortal flumph is still waiting to become truly menacing, despite some good recent efforts.  For those unaware of this dungeon denizen, I present the original incarnation:

Flumph.  It falls on your head.

Not terribly scary.  The main danger has always been that an adventuring party is going to endanger themselves more by falling over laughing.  A more recent incarnation does somewhat better, but even so, the original is hard to shake.

Flumph you might be more worried about.

Returning to the original point of this post, one of my groups has just met a slaad.  We'll see how it goes for them.

Heads up for any of my players

Any players in any of my games checking in here - I am not abandoning you, I just can't get into the site.

Otyughs - unsung heroes of garbage disposal

I've always had a soft spot for otyughs.

As you can see from the picture above, they are a kind of ambulant octopus/Venus flytrap hybrid.  Ecologically speaking, they're very useful.  There is nothing an otyugh can't eat.  These supreme scavengers can survive almost anywhere and are suprisingly common in urban environments. 

I have this mental image of tiny otyughs being given as gifts and then flushed away when they get too big.  The fantasy equivalent of alligators in the sewers, but more useful.  Maybe somewhere there is a society that works to rehome outgrown otyughs.  Or, as is the case in my version of Freeport (City of Adventure!  City of Thieves!  City of 1001 Surprises!  City of Pirates! - yes, Ankh-Morpok in a parallel universe) - in Freeport, the humble otyugh holds an honoured place.

If ever a city needed municipal otyughs, it's this one.  So Freeport has GarbageBeGone.  This is a highly respectable firm which makes a decent living hiring out otyughs as mobile garbage disposal units.  Each otyugh is accompanied by a team of handlers.  The creatures are trained to an extent (they are not completely unintelligent) and with patience can be taught to devour specific types of matter.

While GarbageBeGone prefer to get their otyughs young and train them up, they do have a capture and rehabilitation programme for feral otyughs.  Given sufficient time and patience, the otyughs will bond with their handling team - helpful when one considers some of the places a garbage disposal team might end up. 

Back to the games and other trivia

Ah Crivelli.  One of my favourite artists.  His fruit obsession is a source of joy.  Anyway, an image of a Mother for the day.  One who bears precisely no resemblence to me.

Shush.

I should be at the theatre and will be in about half an hour.  Overslept.

However, it is Mother's Day.  I am a Mother.  Therefore it is decreed that as a  Mother I can have on this day an hour to do what I want.  Which is update games.  So I did.  So there.

And where are they now, those brave gamers of mine?

Well, it's all fairly exciting.

Tombs I are embarking on the epic fight against their fully-equipped, fully-rested evil selves.  From experience, this is a very tough one.  See here for why. 

Tombs II are busy concocting an elaborate and wondrous plan to raid a Gith pirate ship.  This involves incompetent mercenaries, a small band and a missing otyugh.

Lost City are dealing with Trignotarb succession issues on the one hand and a gigantic spider with nasty young on the other.  In both cases, the tool of choice is violence.  Team Spider are also getting to know the oklu - as strange servitor race with interesting powers.

Den of the Slave Takers have met the Slave Takers and are trying to get far enough into the nasty temple of Torog to rescue the prisoners. 

All normal stuff in fact, but I am happy to be back to more regular updating.

In other news, my Twelfth Night costume does not make me look like a light-fitting.  It is made of upholstery fabric and feels suitably heavy and good although I'm dimly aware that I may resemble a short, fat armchair from the back.

Today I learn to climb stairs in a long, full skirt, up a vertical ladder and down again.   This will be entertaining.  Or not.

Awardage went hilariously awry.  Many of my nominees were also nominated by other nominees leading to a sort of knock out effect.  It doesn't help that Google has taken it upon itself to prune my reading list.  Apologies to all concerned.

Splitting the party - everybody's doing it

Suddenly I'm not running four games.  Now I'm running seven.

Since the Lost City party decided to split up, the Tombs II team have followed suit.

There are valid reasons for those choices, but I now find myself attempting to run consecutive combats for Lost City.  This morning I made a crucial error when I thought one party member was dealing with Trignotarb royalty when in fact he was supposed to be several miles away fighting a spider invasion.

So far I haven't stuffed up the Tombs II  group who are mercifully  not in combat right now.  They however, have upped the ante yet again by splitting themselves into three groups.  Again, they have valid reasons.

At this rate, multiple personality disorder may be beckoning.

If the Den of the Slave Takers party decide to follow the trend I'll really worry. Luckily Tombs I have no good reason to split that I can see, but I may be underestimating them.

On PbPs - another basic primer

Over at Paizo, threads pop up fairly regularly asking how to run a PbP and I'm jotting down some thoughts about that here.

There are many more potential players than potential GMs.
GM dropout or burnout is responsible for the vast majority of PbP deaths.

So, how do you start one, how to you keep it running and how do you keep your own interest going?

Planning

However much you want to run a whole adventure path bringing the players from novice wet-behind-the-ears adventurers to super-charged world changers, accept right now that you can't.

Plan one adventure at a time. You can build from one adventure to the next and create a campaign that way, but if you set out to run all six modules of The Curse of the Crimson Throne you are setting yourself up for a world of heartbreak.

PbP is slow. In a three-hour live gaming session you can reasonably expect to get through at least one combat encounter and a certain amount of plot, negotiation and rambling around. In a PbP you may well be looking at 3 months.

Look at your material right now and prune it. Be ruthless. Read the adventure with a critical eye and ask yourself which encounters further the plot. Look at the maps and ask yourself which ones are necessary. On average, you will need to trim out at least one third of a pre-written module. If it doesn't progress the story, ditch it.

If you are running a homebrew, it's easier to make those cuts. However, it's your heart that breaks when all your carefully crafted subplots have to vanish. Trust me. They do have to vanish. You may be able to work some of them back in, but don't count on it. Running a homebrew requires a bigger investment from players and unless you live online, you can't possibly hope to answer all the questions that would take 10 seconds at the table and may eat a week of PbP time.

While this may seem like brutal railroading, be aware that the timescale of PbP means that a lot of plot points will be missed. If something is important, you need to say it loud and clear. And then say it again. Your players aren't stupid, but something mentioned in passing five pages ago can easily be missed. You will do yourself and your players a huge favour if you condense and telescope down to the essentials. If it matters, tell them.

16 archers may seem like a very cool encounter.  Just be aware before you run it that updating those 16 archers is going to take a lot of your time.  Maybe a couple of hours of it until the players start killing them.  Consider reducing it to 6 rather more awesome archers.

Brutal pruning makes room for your players to build their own bits of plot. More on that below.

You will get player attrition. The chance of the same party existing in 6 months time is negligible. Keep that in mind and have ways of getting new players into the game without breaking the flow. Easy in urban settings, not so straightforward in the middle of a dungeon.

Run something you like or can turn into something you like. You will be looking at this baby for a very, very long time. Starting a game you're only half-invested in is doom before you even ask for players.


Advertising

You've got your adventure. Now get your players.

At risk of stating the obvious, be clear from the outset. Include the following information as a minimum.

System - is it OSR, 4e, 3.5, Pathfinder, whacky thing you knocked up on the fly one drunken evening.

Starting level and character creation rules - self-evident, but important.

Setting - delving through the pygmy infested jungles of Rythortan is not going to require the same players as your high level diplomacy game negotiating with Grazz't. Players keen to build cavalier types will be justifiably unhappy if you don't warn them that they'll be spending a lot of time on boats. In an ideal world, any PC should be able to operate in any setting, but the reality tends to be that PbP PCs may only get the one adventure to show their chops. Don't let someone build a character they can't have fun with in your game.

Your own expectations - this is important. You need to state clearly what you want from your players. Posting once a day, 24 hour deadline or you get GMPCed in combat, notice of absence if possible. Whatever it is, get it out there. Corollary to this: stick to it. If you say you expect people to post within 24 hours of their combat turn coming up, make sure you do act on their behalf. (This is one of my rules and the one I try hardest to stick to).

If your game is something with obscure rules, can the potential players get easy access to them? If there's an online resource, post a link. Make it easy for people to find out about your game.


Tips to make your life easier

Ask your players to keep track of their own hp and conditions and to make sure that they have a complete character sheet available and up to date where you can see it. If you need to run that character, you need that information.

Consider asking your players if they will let you roll init on their behalf. Time zones being what they are, it can take two days to get into combat if you have to wait for everyone to check in and post. Nearly every player I've ever met would rather post a set of cool things they've done than an init roll.

If you provide maps, keep them updated. Players need to know where they are in a battle. I use Flickr which occasionally refuses to update properly. It's my biggest bugbear.

Try to post all the information the players need in some easy to read format. If 16 archers all attack, you are going to have to make sure that each of those attacks is posted clearly. If any of those attacks have fancy effects, you need to say so. Let the players know if they're injured or blinded, or drowning in toxic mud without making them wade through an incomprehensible paragraph.   Like this one.


Running the game and troubleshooting

Assume everyone is an adult and wants to have fun.

Your primary job as the GM of a PbP is to be available and to keep nudging. Let the players know if you're too tired to post. Tell them you're going to be without internet for three days. Post regularly. You have to. If you keep checking in to see what the players are doing, they will keep checking in to see what's happened to their characters. It also means that if your internet does fry for some inexplicable reason and you can't get a message to them, they tend to know something is wrong and you haven't just abandoned them.

If you are burning out, losing interest or don't have time to run the game properly, let people know.  If it's a temporary issue, ask the players if they're happy to accept a change of pace for a while - even putting the game on hiatus if you need to.  However terrible it feels to make those posts, it is far, far better to do so than to jump ship without warning.

Be prepared to be ruthless. If you have a group of four or five great players and everyone is constantly waiting on a single laggard, you may well have to boot the offending player. You don't have to be rude about it, but you need to deal with the issue. Some players just need a different pace or a different game. You are not going to be the ideal match up for every player every time. Accept it and don't berate yourself.

You will make mistakes, so be up front about them. In general unless the mistake is completely game-breaking, don't try to revise it. Just suck it up and move on, implementing whatever it was you got wrong from now on. Similarly, if players make mistakes, sort out the issue as quickly as you can and move on.

One of the wonderful things about PbP is that you and the players can develop characters much more organically and improvisationally than at the gaming table. Suspension of belief is easier when you can't see the large bearded gent playing the tiny girly halfling. This works both ways. Players give you a lot of clues about their PCs through their posts. Read them. Use them. It's game material on a plate. It is free plot. Pick up on their randomly expressed thoughts, file them away and use them. Make it personal.

Enjoy what your players bring to the table and let your own imagination roll.  You have time to look up the rules and world-build, so use it.

Party time

A quick canter through the ongoing adventures of my various PbP games - as much for my own benefit as any dubious interest it may have for the casual reader.

The Tombs teams are both at a crossroads.  In the case of Group II, they have plunged through a portal and ended up in an alleyway stinking of fish.  Amazingly (and indeed for the first time ever), nobody is attacking them.


Group I are about to embark on the dispatching the architect of the Tomb of Horrors.  They have to get there first, which is an endeavour in itself.  Or should be.  I've already run this scenario with Group II and it was pretty tough for them. 

Group II comprise a well-bred tiefling warlord (almost certainly educated at Roedean), a lecherous wizard, a kickass halfling monk, a half-elf assassin and a rather insecure paladin. 

Group I have a serious masked avenger, a lunatic half-elf invoker, a deva attempting to atone for a lifetime as a rakshasa, a half-orc rogue raised by dwarves and a hobgoblin battlemind who moves like a tiger on vaseline.  With a flail. 

One of the joys of running the same adventure for two separate parties is watching the way they approach the same challenges entirely differently.

The Lost City gang have done something I would normally frown upon as it's generally reckoned insane.  They have split their eight strong party into two.  One bunch are dabbling in insect politics, while the other lot have discovered a bizarre race living in the ruins.  Both groups have a lot of information to take in and some interesting stuff to do.  I'm thoroughly intrigued to know how this will work out.

With four per group, it's probably not as crazy as it might sound to split up.  Plus, they're all good players and know the risks.  From my GMing perspective, it makes a lot of sense as between them they can pick up twice as much plot and information and it allows the individual characters a little more shine time - hard to manage with eight.

The 4e taster game (Den of the Slave Takers) is rattling along.  They sluiced through the first encounter with considerable ease and are about to enter the mushroomy depths of a crazed halfling priestess's hideout. 

Frankly, I'm agog with all of it. 

Sigil - Doughnut shaped City of Doors

SPOILERS FOR TOMBS I and II BELOW (only minor)

I've been wanting to take an adventuring party to Sigil for ages.  It's a treat I've been saving up for myself because the place is so very bizarre.  Anything and everything can happen there.

For those not in the know, Sigil is an extraplanar crossing point between all the known and unknown worlds.  It is a kind of urban Wood between the Worlds with fewer guinea pigs and a lot less restful.  The Lady of Pain is no Aslan.

Despite my longing to go there, I've held off.  For one thing the place is dangerous and for another, it's so crammed with potential adventure that it just feels overwhelming for GM and players alike unless there is an actual purpose.  Nothing worse than setting up something awesome and then to be boggled by choice. Paralysis results.

Now, however, I have the perfect party.  The Tombs I group need information.  The person they need that information from is in Sigil. 

They still need to get there of course, which will an adventure in itself.  While it's true that one can reach Sigil accidentally through a broom cupboard, that doens't feel quite heroic enough.  Plus, they need another level under their belts before they can sensibly track down their contact without being obliterated.

The unexpected 4E Primer Project

I've mentioned I'm running a PbP for some 4e newbies.  Also that it's been a truly interesting experience.  The group are all experienced gamers, but at least three have not really played using 4e rules before.  They have, however, played a lot of Pathfinder and 3.5.

As their first combat unwinds, it's become clearer to me just how many differences there really are.  Nothing huge, nothing game breaking, just very different.  In order for this to make sense, you have to know that I only ever played 3.5 for about 6 months just before 4e came out, so 4e really is my edition and the one I know much the best.

Writing and playing a game with for people who don't know the way it works is very, very instructive.  One result is that I've tried to make their lives easier by putting together a kind of mini-Primer for easy reference.  Unlike the Player's Handbook, it can assume a lot about basic terminology and it concentrates on the differences.

Issues I've dealt with so far fall into two basic categories:

• Conditions - covering Blinded, Dazed, Dominated, Grabs and escaping them and so on; and
• Terms - which has turned into a much longer section and covers things like Bloodied, surges, OA (not exactly the same thing in 4e), movement and the infamous shift which isn't a 5 foot step, saves ends effects, how to die, temporary hit points, action points and so on.

Naively, I've always assumed that shifting from one to the other would be easy.  It certainly is for a GM, but from the player perspective I never really thought about it - I hadn't played 3.5 long enough to really absorb it.  Our home group pretty much just picked up 4e and played with never a backward glance.

I wonder how many assumptions we make about game systems.  Until I sat down and seriously thought about it, I really had not appreciated the small things that changed in subtle ways.


As a corollary to this, is 4e a system for GMs rather than players?

Balancing Act

Half term has crept up with alarming speed.  January seems to have happened without my really noticing and taa-daa, suddenly it's nearly the middle of February.

The One Act Festival is a kind of starting post for the YT show season.  From here to the middle of July, we're in constant preparation mode as one show after another reaches the top of the heap.  In my case, it's Antigone first (12-13) March, followed a month later by Malfi.  Then I get a six week lull before Faustus crashes in.  In between those there are three other shows for which I have no direct responsibility other than being part of the YT team.  Which is, believe me, quite enough.

In the meantime, I'm honing my own acting muscles in Twelfth Night immediately after Antigone.  I've also somewhat foolishly agreed to stage manage Oklahoma! for the local operatic society.  Yay for good decision making.

Somewhere along the way, I also need to concoct a play for the Bowes Drama Club.

Oh - and I'm starting a long-awaited PTTLS course in ten days.  To make me eligble to teach adults.  Assuming that it doesn't get cancelled again.  Since I've been trying to do this blasted course since September, this is rapidly turning into a joke.  But I will keep trying.

Now, all this is either fun or paid or both so I'm not at all complaining, but it does mean I need to spend this non-teaching half term week with some care.

Where does the gaming fit into all this?  Where and when it can is the answer.  The PbPs will roll along quite happily as bar making maps they are not a huge time sump.  Those that have seen my completely inept mapping skills might well think not a lot of time gets given there either.

The real heartbreaker is Mikelmerck, which hasn't had anything like the attention it deserves for ages.  I'm missing it badly now, particularly as parts of the taster 4e adventure have been set there.  If I can find any time at all, I really want to write a starter adventure for it.  Hmm.  Maybe run a Google+ playtest? 

Flying blue demons

My one-shot 4e adventure has reached its first combat.  The group spent the first week wandering around a sheep market chatting to the locals and getting to grips with Yorkshire dialect.

Contrary to a certain strand of belief, 4e does not quench role-playing any more than any other gaming system.  All you've ever needed for that is pro-active players and an environment that encourages them to talk to each other and the NPCs around them.  The actual mechanics are meaningless.

On the whole, I don't make players roll dice unless there is some reason  for it.  You want to go and talk to the auctioneer?  Fine.  Unless you grotesquely insult him and his family, there's no reason to start rolling skill checks.  Behave like a pinhead and charge up with your battleaxe threatening him in a public square - well, I might ask you to roll a check of some kind, but frankly, I'm more likely to turn the guards out and let you suffer.

In this case, I've had the chance to create some interesting hooks for future adventures if the group lasts that long and wants to play more.  Now they are about to invade the isolated tower containing some kidnapped halflings and the brother of one of the PCs.

I'm enjoying it very much, although I have to keep reminding myself to state the rules clearly.  Not because any of the players are stupid (far from it, they're all experienced and very capable), but because the combat system is new to them.  The kind of new that is familiar in a lot of ways, and different enough to mean that they're asking a lot of questions.

It's been a while since I ran a low-level game and it is a lot of fun.  All my other games at the moment are Paragon level with hyper-powerful characters.  They can all do a myriad different things in virtually any situation, so it's rather nice going back to basics. 

The flying blue demons?  There were reported sightings at the kidnap site.  Quite rightly, at least two of the characters think this is a load of tosh and don't believe in such things.

Where are they now?

Time for a brief update on what has happened to my hapless adventuring groups.

NOTE THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE FOR ANY TOMBS II READERS

Tombs I are possibly forging an unlikely alliance.  Talking weaponry is chancy stuff.  I haven't played an artifact in a while and given the circumstances of how they found the thing, and its treatment of its previous owner, the party are probably right to be cautious.  All I will say is that wrapping it up in a dwarf's blanket is a definite affront to its dignity.

Tombs II are splashing through the shallows and confronting a slightly deranged eladrin water mage.  She isn't pleased to see them and is doing her utmost to drive them all into the enticing but mind-devouring mist.  So far she hasn't succeeded, but this combat is in its early stages yet.

The Lost City crew have been rejoined  by their rogue chum.  He arrived just in time to miss the bust-up with the tunnel-visioned glass golems.  Since then they've been wandering the (mercifully dry) sewer system and have passed up a chance to visit a market in favour of invading some inverted gardens.  Whether this is a good idea or not remains to be seen, but that's sandbox adventures for you.  The insectoid life forms have introduced themselves by showering hungry larvae in their general direction.  Communication may yet be possible, but getting their cleric out of the grip of the outsize flying wasp/spider thing is the current priority.  Otherwise there is a good chance that their healer will be eaten alive from the inside.

A curiosity

I mentioned I'm starting a one-shot play by post for a GM-less group.

That got underway today and to my amusement and without any really thinking about it, it's turning into a Mikelmerck adventure.  The reality is simply that it's been lying there unloved for a few weeks and I could not resist the temptation to see how the setting works.

All that has happened is that the setting is now a small Mikelmerckian town inhabited by accent-ridden Dalesmen worried about their sheep.  The adventure to follow will proceed along more recognisable lines, because this is supposed to be a taster for new 4e players, after all.  But even so, the setting feels easy to write and fun to play with.

Some of their wandering monsters may not be what they suspect.  Time to test-drive the bestiary perhaps.

Shenanigans

I have spent most of this week engulfed in curtain liner.  The result is many pairs of vaguely functional trousers.  The tops come next, but late last night, bludgeoned by an unexpected fever and reeling from my fifteenth pair of cotton trousers, I went online and looked at the recruitment forum.

Imagine if you will, my astonishment at seeing some hopeful players hunting for a DM to guide them through a short 4e adventure.  On the Paizo boards, that's a bit like finding hen's teeth.  As the publishers of Pathfinder, the bulk of the PbP games use that system. 

You can see where this is leading, of course.  I volunteered.  A couple of old lags chimed in.  Suddenly there is a six strong party wanting thrills and noble deeds.  They'll get them.  One of the players had an outstandingly cack-handed first experience so I feel honour bound to try and put that right.

The tops are on the way too.  Dye buckets may get a look in tomorrow if I can keep the sewing machine from crashing.  That part will be fun, but I'm not counting my chickens just yet.  I had to take the whole thing apart earlier today to extract some rogue lint.  Adventurers are easy meat in comparison.

23 answers for Zak

More from Zak S.  Bunch of questions.  Answered below.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

A ritual combat in which the important thing was not to kill your opponents, but to push them out of the square.  That was great fun to create and run.

 

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Today, on the internetz.  Last face to face game was in November 2011.

 

3. When was the last time you played?

Today, on the internetz.  Last live session was on January 1 2012.

 

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

Demon-infested mall opens for business. 

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Make trousers, at the moment (online games).  Live games, I just plot tactics and remind them about anything they've forgotten.  "Yup, that's a lava pool."

 

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Online games, I restrict myself to coffee and cigarettes.  Can't break any more keyboards.  Live games, we usually host and there is food.  Players tend to bring snacks for communal grazing.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Exhilarating. 

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

This is stupidly hard to answer.   None of my PCs do particularly spectacular things.   Possibly Akahale the dragonborn warlock intimidating a bad guy with his in depth knowledge of by-laws.

 

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Not so much in online games where the immersion is better.  Virtually impossible to retain atmosphere in a face to face game, but sometimes the magic happens and it's wonderful.

10. What do you do with goblins?

I prefer kobolds.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

Mikelmerck - my fantasy version of Yorkshire that's being evolved here.  Very slowly.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

 An encounter requiring a party with zero Charisma or diplomatic skills to talk their way into a farmhouse without upsetting an old lady.  The results were both hilarious and pathetic as we frantically scraped through our skill lists thinking of ways to get in.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Mythic Russia.  It's a beautiful book and I'd like to run a game sometime.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Di Terlizzi.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

Oh yes.  I've scared them a few times.  I like swingy, dramatic battles and try quite hard to build encounters around that notion.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

Last time I GMed live.  It was a one shot delve for some level 15 PCs and came incredibly close to killing them all.  It really all came down to one round of the dice.  Not because of the near TPK, but because the battle itself was so cinematic and engaging.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

A room devoid of mobile or other phones with plenty of food around.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Possibly Houses of the Blooded and 4e's Heroes of the Feywild.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Renaissance art history and the Civil Service Legal Department.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

People who are pro-active and bring interesting PCs who push plot along just by doing stuff I didn't think of.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

A University.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

 I'd love a book of maps ranging from cities to countries to all points between.   In my head, this book provides maps in many different styles and is stupidily heavy as it will be A3 size.  It may exist for all I know.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Not really.  A lot of conversations I have about drama could just as easily be about RPGs though.

Tis done

I've closed the doors on Rune Stones.  I'm very proud of it, but the time has come.  It was harder to do than I'd imagined  - the game has been a major part of my life for three and a half years and 15 levels.  It taught me pretty much everything I know about online DMing, spawned some astonishing characters and events, and made me some very good friends.  I'll always remember it fondly.

The characters went from novice adventurers to world-changing heroes.  They fought off duergar, disease, gnolls, university staff, a demented libary, assorted insects, a sorceress who spouted Jacobean verse, the land, ghostly shaman, the entire nation of Kargzant, a Roach Demon, the moonlit court and a lot of vicious formorians among others.  They had love affairs, got married, had expected and unexpected children, made friends and enemies, acquired treasure, lost things and people they loved and suffered an unexpected 12 year gap during a visit to the Feywild.  Not bad going.

When one door shuts, of course, another one opens. 

I can start planning a new campaign!  Slightly tearfully though.