Cramulus's D&D Game

[Cramulus]

Yesterday, I ran my first D&D game in probably six or eight months. It was really nice to get back to rolling 20s and breaking hearts.

I'm putting together this campaign called Ave Sestina. It takes place in a fictional version of medieval Venice.

I'm experimenting with Obsidian Portal, a website you can use to plan and document your D&D campaign. So far, I've found it incredibly useful to help organize and index the campaign setting -- you can have a wiki, a page for each character, and a map of your game set up like google maps (with location markers and wiki links!). Here's what I've built so far: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/ave-sestina/

I'm jazzed because the players really ate up the idea of an intrigue based campaign. Lots of spying, politics, and not knowing if you're actually working for the good guys. Venice is a great setting for it too, because of the carnivale masks. I love the idea of a city where everybody owns these elaborate masks, and there are actually state-designated times when you're required to wear them (carnivale, voting, stuff like that).

So far, everybody's just built characters they wanted to play, rather than designing for what the party needs. So we haven't worried too hard about not having a leader-class (read: healer). We'll see how it goes though!

I am most eager for a particular friend of mine to come play. He's formed an opinion of D&D 4th edition as being like an MMO, and being bereft of roleplay. (BTW: this is coming from a guy who plays a D&D 3.5 campaign set in the world of warcraft) But I find this silly, the amount of RP is determined by your group, not by the rules. So I'm excited to show him that yes, this is still D&D, and in fact, there are certain things about 4th edition which are big improvements on previous editions.

[Jasper]

Sounds like a ton of fun!  I hope I get to be in a 4th ed game that reverses my feelings about it from the first time (the guy ran a tedious little module and wasn't very fun about it, so I'm hoping to try it again with a better dm). 

Also I am totally going to steal that concept for a story now.

[Cramulus]

Character creation day went MUCH smoother than any other time I've run one. I owe this to the online character generator. Normally, I'd have the player sit down with a pile of books and walk him through character gen step by step. But if you make your character on a laptop, it goes wayyyyy faster. It shows you all the relevant choices from multiple books. It automatically calculates your to-hit and damage numbers. And then it generates a PDF of your character sheet and power cards.

One of my friends loves the game but hates the math. Every time it's her turn, she's always recalculating her numbers.. "Intelligence modifier plus orb bonus... is 5..." but with the character generator, it'll give you a PDF which has a playing card for each of your powers, including all the numbers you need. No need to even crack a book open. She now has a card which reminds her that when she throws a thunder wave, she's rolling 1d20 + 5 to hit and rolling 1d8+3 (lightning) damage. So much more efficient than looking up the fucking Confusion table every time a spell references it!

I also got a reminder of my favorite addition to 4th edition: minions!

Minions are creatures designed to be encountered in crowds. They're really easy to run because they take 0 effort to track. When you're building an encounter, four minions are worth the XP of one normal creature. All minions have one hit point, so you don't have to keep a hit point list for each monster. And they do static amounts of damage, so the minion's turn goes really quickly even though you might be moving like 12 different pieces.

We had a great zombie fight yesterday. There were 12 zombie rotters (minions), two zombies, and a ghoul. The rotters would grab you and hold you in place, thereby setting up the ghoul to skitter out the shadows and tag you with a paralyzing bite. Things looked really dark for the party, but then the dragonborn wizard dropped a daily spell which cleared 6 minions off the board in one attack. Suddenly everybody was breathing a bit easier.

This is another keystone of 4th edition fights - the monsters often have strong complimentary abilities that make them work really well as a team. The PCs, if they don't do their jobs, can get overwhelmed really quickly. But things like Daily Powers and Action Points can swing a fight back in the other direction. The PCs experience an "oh shit!" moment, and then somebody drops a daily, changes the tide, and feels like a hero.

[Jasper]

I love the idea of minions.  Sometimes you just want to leave a ridiculous heap of dead in your wake.

The way you describe it the game sounds a lot more...game-ish than other systems I've used.  You know? 

Most combat systems I've seen don't really worry about dramatic tension-creating dynamics. 

[Cramulus]

Venice is a great location for an intrigue-based D&D game. Here's why:

• Nobody's really in charge. There are numerous factions which control different aspects of the city. It's partially democratic - people vote by neighborhood (in masks!) to elect 41 council members. The 41 council members select the members of the secretive "council of 10". Then the council of 10 selects the Doge, the leader of Venice. For my game I've paired it down to a council of 6 (much easier to keep track of, and the number 6 is a recurring theme in this campaign) But what it comes down to is that the government isn't all on the same team.
• This creates a lot of potential drama in the city. Some of the city's problems should get resolved by politician and bureaucrats... but they have more invested in making their rivals look bad. So the players may think they're on an altruistic hero mission, but it turns out they're screwing some noble who worked very hard to make things this fucked up
• Masks - I mentioned this upthread, but I think there's something very romantic and mysterious about a place called the City of Masks. In my version of Venice, Carnivale is called Festival, and last a month. And it turns out that some of the people walking around the city in those elegant masks aren't even people - some are fae, or shadows. All masks are made by a secretive guilt called the masquerati. It was a group you had to be born into. In my game, masks will be special magic items you can improve over time. Each character will develop a unique mask which compliments his or her personality.
• Lots of excuses for combat in the city. The waterways are an avenue for monsters and pirates. There will be a lovecraftian element which involves creatures from the Far Planes which have been crawling into the city via the canals.
• Venice has a lot of history, much of it has been forgotten. In particular, I want to focus on the bridges of Ave Sestina.. There will be six major bridges which each have their own history. When each bridge was built, somebody made a pact with a powerful being who agreed to protect the city in some particular way. These pacts have to be renewed every few hundred years or some biblical plague shit happens. But there was a major fire over a century ago, which destroyed many of the records at the Lyceum Ars. The players will have to learn about each pact, then visit the lord of each bridge. Some of the lords live in the shadowfell or feywild versions of Ave Sestina, and may require the PCs to go find something obscure to sacrifice for them.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

Sounds like lots of fun Cram!

I'm really enjoying the Dark Sun chronicle my friend Mark is running atm on 4th ed. But seeing as i never played D&D before 4th ed, it doesnt make much difference to me.

Athas is a brilliant world to play on.

Its more fun than my Vampire larp game atm, of which I am taking some time off due to some of the other players gettting on my tits.

[Cramulus]

I love the idea of minions.  Sometimes you just want to leave a ridiculous heap of dead in your wake.

The way you describe it the game sounds a lot more...game-ish than other systems I've used.  You know? 

Most combat systems I've seen don't really worry about dramatic tension-creating dynamics. 

Yeah, the 4th ed rules have very gamey combat... They've done a good job of giving each player a lot of good tactical options. Gone are the days that the fighter's only move is to attack - now every character has at least

-two different "at will" moves they can do any time they want
-a few slightly more powerful moves that they can use "once per encounter"
-a few really nasty powers they can use "once per day"

And a lot of those powers reinforce your "party role".. For example, the Warlord class (probably my favorite 4th ed class) is a martial leader. His job is to fight, but also to keep the team up and positioned in the right place. When a warlord heals you, it's not a surge of divine magic which knits your wounds, it's a guy that you trust telling you "You can do it" - and that gives you the confidence you need to keep fighting.

One of the warlord's "at will" abilities is called Wolf Pack Tactics. The warlord makes an attack, and if he hits, one ally standing next to him or his target gets to take a free 5-foot step (called a shift in 4th ed). This means that when you're playing a warlord, your ally's position becomes a factor in which target to pick. A warlord working with a rogue can be devastating, because the warlord is able to help the rogue be in the perfect position. Furthermore, a warlord can give up his standard action to give another ally a standard attack. So if the rogue is teamed up with the warlord, the rogue is going to be landing sick backstabs twice per round.

Some of my favorite 4th ed fights are ones that we use teamwork in a way to achieve results you'd never get as an individual character. Like there's a wizard spell called Acid Mire which creates a 20 x 20 puddle of acid on the ground. Anybody who falls prone in that zone takes acid damage. So when the wizard casts this spell, everybody has a job: keep the monsters inside the mire, and trip them as much as possible. I had a barbarian character who learned a rage that would knock monsters prone specifically to compliment this spell. So before the fight, I'd talk to the wizard and see what spells he had prepared to get an idea of what kind of rage I should use. If we were able to capitalize on the "trip on acid" gambit, we could make short work of the monster party.

[Cramulus]

Sounds like lots of fun Cram!

I'm really enjoying the Dark Sun chronicle my friend Mark is running atm on 4th ed. But seeing as i never played D&D before 4th ed, it doesnt make much difference to me.

Athas is a brilliant world to play on.

Its more fun than my Vampire larp game atm, of which I am taking some time off due to some of the other players gettting on my tits.

I love Athas too! It's such a grim, gritty setting, it really makes you feel like you're in some Frank Frazetta artwork.


Sorry to hear about the players at your vampire game.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So I'm excited to show him that yes, this is still D&D, and in fact, there are certain things about 4th edition which are big improvements on previous editions.

Gotta disagree with that.  4th Ed is dumbed down to a ridiculous degree, IMO...The skills alone make me wince.

Oh, and everyone already had loads of options in combat, including fighters.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I like the Venice setting, though.  Not my style, but it's different, and should allow for some hilarity.

You should consider allowing non-evil assassins (non-Good, obviously), if 4th Ed still has such a thing.

[Cramulus]

So I'm excited to show him that yes, this is still D&D, and in fact, there are certain things about 4th edition which are big improvements on previous editions.

Gotta disagree with that.  4th Ed is dumbed down to a ridiculous degree, IMO...The skills alone make me wince.

Oh, and everyone already had loads of options in combat, including fighters.

see - I see it as streamlining, not dumbing down. If it were just a dumbed down version of 3.5, the game would be pretty simple and you wouldn't have very interesting tactical choices. But in my experience, 4th ed manages to have depth without complexity - that is, the rules are much easier to learn and keep track of, but that's not because of a lack of things to do or niches to build towards. I compare it to the old Chinese board game Go - there aren't a lot of rules (the D&D quick start rules fit into a 7 page booklet), but the game's still very tactically challenging.

I loved D&D 3x.. now I love 4th edition. I think they're apples and oranges - both games shine in different ways. My favorite thing about 3rd edition was that you had a lot more character build options, and the ability to come up with totally broken overpowered characters by making good feat and class / prestige class choices. 4th edition also has broken choices, but to find them you generally need to build complimentary teams, not just broken individual characters.

I haven't played 4th edition at higher levels, but I've DM'd 3.5 campaigns from level 1-21. And I do have to say that 3rd edition gets very wonky past level 14ish. The CR system breaks down and requires a skilled DM to construct challenging but sane encounters. As a DM, I'd often find myself in situations where I'd written a long challenging dungeon, and the players figured out that they can just scry the location of the treasure, teleport there, grab the thing, and then teleport out, solving the entire dungeon in a mere 3 rounds. I liked that the game allowed this kind of ingenuity, but it often resulted in this weird narrative arms race where the winner was the one who had the larger portion of the rulebook memorized.  

I like the Venice setting, though.  Not my style, but it's different, and should allow for some hilarity.

You should consider allowing non-evil assassins (non-Good, obviously), if 4th Ed still has such a thing.

most def! Medieval italy is the perfect place for assassins.

[Cain]

Historically, Venice itself conducted much of its foreign diplomacy through assassination.  One particular year, I believe, its ruling council paid for 200 successful assassinations, including one carried out by a priest.

[Jasper]

I hate to ask, but...How many unsuccessful assassinations?

[PopeTom]

I like the Venice setting, though.  Not my style, but it's different, and should allow for some hilarity.

You should consider allowing non-evil assassins (non-Good, obviously), if 4th Ed still has such a thing.

Assassins do exist as a class, though currently you need a subscription to DDI to access it.

At least prior to the Essentials line of products there were no alignment restrictions on any class.

[PopeTom]

From a DM's perspective 4th is awesome.  I've never had an easier time running encounters straight out of the MM when my players take an unexpected turn.

Take into account the Monster Builder utility and building (combat) encounters is also a brilliant cake walk.