The Crew Flies Again!

The Iron Dawn

The crew of the Iron Dawn is once again ready to take to the stars.

I found a few members of the crew on Facebook, and set up a group, asking them if they were interested in playing once again, online, since we’re in all different parts of the US (I’m serious. One in Portland, OR, one in Indianapolis, IN, one in Minneapolis, MN, one in Spokane, WA, and me, in Norfolk, VA).

We’ve considered that in December, when we’re back in Spokane, we’ll all get together for a game in person, and perhaps once a month, we’ll play by voice chat. Other than that, we’ll be playing by post.

Everyone’s really gotten into it, choosing how the ship should look (we can’t remember the make and model of what the ship used to be), planning characters, and talking about our old adventures. Right now, we’re in the process of making everyone’s characters from scratch, as 10 years later, not everyone has their character sheet.

As we begin the game, I’ll keep everyone updated.

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Gaming With Significant Others: An Addendum or My Response to Having the Lightning Train Swallowed By An Elemental

So far, so good has been my motto.  My husband and I have been gaming partners for going on 3 years with no incidents.  He’s often the DM or GM and I never feel singled out, either for positive rewards or harsh punishments.  I have always felt like one of the group and our groups have always said there wasn’t any interference with our being a couple.  That is, until our last session!

With that being said, our last gaming session brought our first bout of discourse once everyone had left.  You see, we picked back up the campaign we have been playing for a good portion of the year.  Our characters have been traipsing all around Eberron.  It’s been a blast.  Up to level 9 I played a Genesai Sorcerer who, at our temporary hiatus before the holidays, helped to save a Hellforged.

I decided as a nice thematic element that I would let my Genesai wander and begin to play Pillar, my redeemed Warforged.  We have played 2 sessions now after our holiday break, and Pillar has a known soft spot for Elementals thanks to the character who ’saved’ him.

My husband and I spend a lot of time discussing the game, plot ideas, etc. outside of actual game time.  Therefore, when I mentioned to my husband that Pillar seemed like his character should feel sorry for the Elemental running the train, my husband agreed this was rational.  I then suggested, “What if at the end of the encoutner, Pillar frees the Elemental?”

“GREAT IDEA,” my husband tells me.  So, at the end of our session last week, we had fought all the Goblins and other foes who were riding with us and ended up in the carriage that housed the trapped Elemental.  I was so excited to play out my part of the story.  It was going to be epic and it was… just not the way I expected it to be.  I worked my magic, speaking in Primordial, to let the trapped being know we meant it no harm and only wished to save it.

I slashed away it’s prison.  It burst out and devoured the train in fire!?!

What?  I was so stunned I couldn’t speak.  Then to top it off, the rest of the players do the, “Perhaps that was a bit impetuous?” and “Weren’t there some innocent people left on the train?”

After everyone left I did what any redeemed Hellforged/Warforged would do…. I cried.  Ok, silly I know, but I was upset.  I felt betrayed by my GM husband who had never thrown me under the bus much less a flaming train.

Moral of the story:

Just when you think you’re safe with your spouse running the game… think twice and remember there is always a story to be told and the story comes first… Oh, and don’t cry… it’s stupid to cry over a game… but I am a girl and that’s what we do.

Now I need to spend the next week trying to figure out what my fiesty if not fiery character will do next

Enjoy couple’s gaming. It’s a guaranteed conversation starter!  hahaha

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An Example of How Shorter Games are Cinematic Games: A New Hope

So, previously I mentioned how only having a couple hours a week to game makes things more cinematic (aka, like a movie). For proof, I offer up A New Hope. We’ll cover the first couple sessions, then fill out the rest of the campaign in a later post. We’ll take a look at it from the perspective of a group playing only 2-hour sessions. The PCs are: Luke, Obi-Wan, Han, Chewie and Leia.

Session 1: Look Sir, Droids!

Opening credits. The game begins with Luke receiving the droids. He sees the message from Leia. Plot hook! He removes the restraining bolt, hoping to get more details on the plot and be told by the GM where to go. R2, the NPC refuses to give him the information, and Luke fails a Perception check to realize R2’s bluffing him. R2 goes missing. Plot hook! All of this could be accomplished in 20 minutes, 30 tops. The next morning, Luke goes after him. Encounter with Tusken Raiders! In a standard game, there’d be a whole bunch of them. Not in this case. We don’t have time! One Tusken takes Luke down in a fight taking about 15 minutes. Obi-Wan arrives, using Bluff and the Force to scare off the Tuskens, avoiding a fight. They go back to Obi-Wan’s hut, where the GM hands Obi-Wan a paper of exposition for him to read to the other player to explain the Force. This takes about 15 minutes. We’re at the hour mark. Look how much we’ve accomplished! Luke heads out to find his parents, and runs across the Jawas. Obi-Wan makes some Perception and Insight checks and realizes this is the work of Imperial Stormtroopers (“Only they could be so precise!”) Luke rushes home to find his aunt and uncle dead. He goes back to Obi-Wan. Really cranking out the angst to earn some extra RP XP, Luke tells Obi-Wan he wants to multiclass to Jedi. All completed in one session of an hour and a half. And we’ve only seen one quick fight!

Session 2: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

The players playing Han and Chewie are finally able to join the group that week. The GM tells them he’ll find a place to introduce them. The session starts with Obi-Wan and Luke overlooking Mos Eisley. The GM describes the city and how horrible it is. Obi-Wan makes a dry comment about scum and villainy. The GM awards a few extra points of XP for clever dialogue. They arrive in the town. There’s a heavy Imperial presence. Stormtroopers attempt to stop them. Whereas Luke’s player says, “hell, let’s fight them!” Obi-Wan’s more experienced player decides to try tricking them. A simple Skill Challenge and Use the Force skills later, and they’re done. It’s been 15 minutes. They arrive at the Cantina, where they do some Gather Information checks to try to find a pilot. Obi-Wan is introduced to another player who is running the Wookiee. An NPC begins pushing around Luke. With the threats they’re making, Luke’s player realizes they’re probably much higher level than him, and tries to avoid a fight. Obi-Wan steps in to calm them down, but to no avail. Using an opposed Strength check, the NPC throws Luke into a table. Roll Initiative! Turns out they’re just 1^st level Thugs, and with Obi-Wan winning initiative, one ends up dead, the other limbless. Ouch. The fight ends in one round. It’s been another 30 minutes or so. Han is introduced to the other players. They have a discussion, and haggle on the price. An opposing Diplomacy vs. Han’s Bluff skill roll, and they’ve got a deal. The GM tells Luke and Obi-Wan’s players to take a break so he can work out a scene with Han. As Han gets up to leave, he ends up in an encounter with an NPC, Greedo. Plot hook! After a quick discussion and a few failed Diplomacy rolls, Han wins initiative and gets a Sneak Attack in, scores a critical, and drops the NPC down to 0 HP. He departs, and arrives in the hangar bay where he runs into Jabba. Jabba makes some demands, forcing a Skill Challenge where Han haggles down the price with a few Diplomacy and Bluff checks. We’re one hour and fifteen minutes into the game. Only fifteen minutes left to go! Obi-Wan and Luke haggle with a merchant and fail, not getting much for the speeder. They arrive in the hangar bay, and have to rush aboard as stormtroopers arrive. Han fires off a few shots, and they’re away, into space! After a quick successful Astrogate to escape the star destroyers, and it’s the end of the session.

Next time: The heroes find the Death Star, a new player is introduced, and we look at how you could cover the entire Death Star escape in a single session!

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The Fearsome Beast from Below the Earth

Click for a larger image

Tonight, this is what the heroes will face. It’s the first paper model I’ve built successfully that actually turned out looking good. That’s entirely made of paper, and normally you could find it on One Monk Miniatures to download, but they’ve been redesigning their site, and I can’t find it at the moment.

When last we saw our heroes, they were battling their way through the Lightning Rail, fighting Hobgoblin pirates. Tonight, when Aldan, Pillar and Alaeyah move into the cargo cabin, they’re going to be beset by this beast. I still need to go through the Monster Manuals and see what monster I’m going to re-skin to make this thing.

I’ll post pictures of tonight’s game later.

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Shorter Games are Cinematic Games

The Game Knights get together once a week (Friday or Saturday) for gaming from 8 pm to about 10-10:30 pm. Of course, it usually takes a little time for everyone to look over character sheets, grab some snacks and drinks, and finally settle down around the middle of the living room floor to play. So, we’ll say 8:30-10:00. Not much time at all, right? How can anything get done?

I’ve found that to compensate for shorter game times, we cut the fat from the game and move on to what’s important.

In your standard 8 hour session, you might run 4-5 combats, many of them plowing through a dungeon towards the solo monster at the end. With our group, that’s not really an option. We’d have to spend 3-4 sessions to get through that same dungeon. This is why it took us so long to run Keep on the Shadowfell.

A while back, in our Lords of Dust campaign, the heroes were travelling down an underground river in boats. Instead of having them attacked at every opportunity, they had exactly one encounter along the way, against a fearsome and very tough winged draconian whose whole goal was to tip their boats and drown them. They dispatched him after some creative fighting, and moved on. Later on down the river, they encountered a lone goblin guarding a doorway built in the side of the cavern. They attacked him, killing him in a few shots, before exploring the room and finding some magical items. I could have had the heroes mow through a veritable plethora of goblins defending the horde, but we don’t have time. Instead, the goblins had dispatched a single guard to keep tabs and make sure no local underground wildlife was going to move in on their territory. They certainly weren’t expecting a group of armed adventures.

Think about it: In what movie do you ever see the heroes grinding through encounter after encounter just to get to the important part of the story? 300 sure, but if you were running that as a game of D&D, that would really be the point of your whole campaign (and with the number of encounters in that movie, you could really run it in a single 12-hour session.)

My point is this: It doesn’t take 8 hours a week to make an awesome game. All it takes is 2 really good ones. Give it a try.

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Stealing Ideas: Percy Jackson & The Olympians

I just finished reading the Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan.  I didn’t even know these books existed until I saw a preview for the first movie.  I greatly enjoy “children’s” series; especially fantasy/magically based ones.  Therefore, I decided to give Percy Jackson a shot.

At first glance it feels like you’re reading a take-off of a Harry Potter like story; however, once you get into them you find they are pretty cleaver, witty and ripe for the harvesting of game ideas!

Click on the image for the link to the official Percy Jackson website

As you can guess by the title, the books are based around Greek Mythology.  In fact as you quickly discover in the books, the gods of Olympus are real.  And in the books those real gods have real demi-god children who battle real monsters.  If you ask me this is real cool

Greek mythology, in its own right, is full of possible adventures.  In the book there is much discussion over the children of the Big Three: Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.  Their children are thought to be more powerful than the children of the other Olympians i.e. Aphrodite, the goddess of love and Apollo, the god of the sun, poetry and prophecy.  Monsters are also plentiful in the Greek mythos.  There are Cyclopes, Minotaurs, mazes and dungeons including the Great Labyrinth.

After spending some time looking through our gaming shelf, I think that the Scion system would be perfect for playing a game of demi-god adventurers.  The system is light on rules and is heavily influenced by story-telling.  The first level of the Scion system is Hero, which would be a great  place for young inexperienced demi-gods to start their adventures.  As the players progress in the adventure they could easily expand their character’s development by incorporating the Scion: Demi-God and Scion: God books as well.

And I wouldn’t be a good fan of D&D 4e if I didn’t at least try to figure out a way to create a demi-god game here too!  Given that their are so many powers and characters are so powerful from even 1st level you could easily have all the characters be the children of one of the gods from the Players Handbook.  You would then give your character traits of their parent god.

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The Awakening…

A few weeks back, I had (once again) attempted to start up a play-by-email campaign with some guys I know. I had just read through Underdark, and was really looking forward to running a game in the setting. Trying to get them motivated, I presented them with this introductory email post.

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Beneath the earth, something stirred.

“Kas?” a deep voice rumbled. “KAS?!”

“Yes, my lord?” the hooded creature said, bowing deeply over the dark pit. From below, the voice bellowed up. “The time has come, Kas…”

“Already, my lord?” Kas asked, pulling his hood further over his face. “But my lord, we have only begun our subtle manipulations of the surface-dwellers.”

“I grow tired of waiting, Kas,” the voice said. Kas could hear the agony in the voice. One of immense suffering and pain. “The gods must pay for their transgressions against me. Their children will bear the brunt of my fury.”

Kas slowly backed away from the pit. He could feel the dark energy building up out of the deep hole. The figure within the pit began his ascent.

“I will remake the world as I see fit, a place of pain and sorrow for the children of the gods.”

For the first time, Kas saw the face of his dark master. He was driven to madness in an instant. He let out an inhuman shriek. “Look upon my work, ye mighty… And despair…”

The King that Crawls emerged from his pit, prepared to bring forth the world’s destruction.

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Three-Dragon Ante for 4e

For those who don’t know, Three-Dragon Ante is supposed to be a card game used in actual D&D worlds, including Eberron, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance.

I know that they’re coming out with an expansion to Three-Dragon Ante, Emperor’s Gambit, and there will probably be rules for playing the games in 4e, but I found 4e rules to them from Drew Spencer at BoardGameGeek.com. You can see the original post here.

“With the release of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the rules presented for using skills as special abilities when playing Three-Dragon Ante in character are now out of date. I present the following modifications:

Withhold Funds
“One, two… hey, barkeep, more drinks over here… four, five.”
Bluff vs. Passive Insight
When paying 2 or more gold to another player, pay 1 fewer gold.

Under Pressure
“When things get tense, I’m at my best.”
Streetwise vs. DC 15
Whenever you ante, unless another player’s hoard has less gold than yours, pay 1 fewer gold to the stakes.

Grant Favor
“This could work out for everyone.”
Diplomacy vs. Will Defense
Before your turn this round, if you are the leader, you may choose another player to be the leader this round instead.

Intimidate
“Don’t even think about it.”
Intimidate vs. Will Defense
As long as you and any other player tie for the strongest flight, you can’t be chosen as the opponent with the strongest flight.

Sleight of Hand
“I’m just lucky sometimes.”
Stealth vs. Passive Perception*
After you discard the top card of the deck while buying cards, you may discard a second card from the top of the deck. If you do, pay the second card’s strength in gold to the stakes instead of the first card’s strength, even if it’s higher.

Read Face
“You can hide your cards but not your face”
Perception vs. Reflex Defense
When an opponent plays his or her second card, if both cards are the same color dragon, you may look at his or her hand before any powers trigger.

Snatch Gold
“If no one sees it, it’s not cheating”
Thievery vs. Passive Perception*
After you steal gold from the stakes with a card’s power or a strength flight, if the stakes have 2 or more gold, you may steal 1 more gold from the stakes.

Wild Card
“Trust me, I know exactly what I’m talking about.”
This special ability does not use a skill check. You may use it only if you are a dragonborn, half-dragon, or full dragon.
Once each game, if you played a mortal this turn, you may count the mortal as the third dragon of any color only to complete a color flight.

These are all just modifications of the abilities mentioned in the Three-Dragon Ante rulebook, only which skills are used and what they roll against are modified.

* Roll vs. the highest passive skill of all opponents, excluding any opponents who would not obstruct whatever shenanigans you’re trying.”

End of repost from boardgamegeek.com

Now, of course, if you were to fail your roll on, say, Snatch Gold or Withold Funds, whichever NPCs your playing against would probably notice, and won’t take kindly to your attempting to cheat them. It would be a great opportunity for a fight to break out, for example. If you use these rules, let me know!

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A Conversation With a New Gamer: Characters Above 1st Level

This conversation is with a different new gamer than last time.

There’s a guy I know at work who’s really into MMO’s. He’s not in my department, but his berthing is right next to mine, and we usually ride the bus in together. One of his co-workers used to be in our group (Dave), so he’s heard me talk a lot about gaming over the last three years we’ve known each other. His wife is also a big MMO player, playing WoW and Star Trek Online. The conversation went something like this.

Him: I was wondering if my wife and I could play with your group sometime?

Me: Absolutely. Let me know when you guys want to join.

Him: You guys are pretty high level right? Wouldn’t we get our asses kicked by any monsters you guys were facing?

Me: Well, we’re not high level, just 11. But what do you mean?

Him: Well, you guys are 11th level, and we’d be making 1st level characters, right?

Me: No, you guys would make 11th level characters like ours.

Him: Isn’t that cheating?

This followed with me explaining to him that if you had to start out at 1st level whenever you made a new character, it would be incredibly difficult to get anything done, as you’d have 11th level characters either having to fight low level monsters so that 1st level characters would be able to take on the monsters, or blocking high level monsters from murdering 1st level heroes.

This is another difference between MMOs and D&D, a comparison I made in the last Conversation with a New Gamer. In an MMO, you can’t simply start out at a higher level. You have to work your way there, struggling to get to the top, earning your magic items. In D&D, you can start at as high a level as you want, with the cash to pick up some pretty powerful items.

Hopefully, these two will be able to join our group soon. And hopefully, we’ll be able to break them of the WoW mentality of fighting and ignoring all RP opportunities.

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The Top 5: The Week of Mar 1

It’s another Monday, and you know what that means? Another fantastic Top 5. These are my top five favorite things this week.

1. Happy Jacks RPG Podcast

Even though RPG Circus recorded a bumper for the beginning of their podcast, and they recorded one for ours a while back, I’ve never actually listened to Happy Jacks until this week. It’s a great roundtable discussion, with a gaming group, talking about different games and topics that pertain to RPGs, such as alignment and player options. It’s been a great listen so far. Give it a listen.

2. One Monk Miniatures

I’ve been downloading free sets from One Monk for a while, and haven’t ever plucked up the courage to actually start putting any together. Then, last week, I started putting together some modern horror figures, and discovered how easy it was to assemble the paper miniatures they make. The Crypt Worm (right) is a different story, but I’m going to try to get it assembled soon and use it in an upcoming game. They’ve got some great figures in the forums created by different people, including some random villagers and monsters of every kind.

3. Getting back in touch with my old group

Three of my players from the Crew of the Iron Dawn are on Facebook, and we’ve been reminiscing about old times. I was reminded of breaking Nate’s foot in a paintball game, causing him to have trouble attending sessions, Kate having no idea why it was I killed off her character in a dream sequence, and discussing the various adventures we all had. These were some great people (still are) and we had a phenomenal time with our group. I’ll be posting up more Never Split the Party posts soon, discussing other games I’ve been a part of.

4. Urban Dead

I’ve mentioned it before, but Urban Dead is a pretty cool game. Playing either a survivor or zombie in a city overrun, you fight throughout the entirely non-graphical city. I’ve maxed out on all my skills at this point, so I’ve been spending my time going around as a zombie making survivor’s lives miserable. If you’re a fan of the idea of zombies killing everything in sight, and you being the only thing standing between them and the world’s complete destruction, here’s your chance.

5. The Lightning Thief

Bridget and I went and saw the movie the other day. She was highly disappointed, as it’s nothing like the books, and it inspired me to start reading them. I’ve just finished The Lightning Thief, and it’s a really good read, if you’re into Greek mythology and the style of Harry Potter. The books are a quick read (Bridget read all 5 within about a week and a half) so it’s not going to take a lot of time out of your Star Wars novel reading (you know you are…)

That’s all for this week’s Top 5. Keep rolling 20’s!

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