Cramulus's D&D Game

[Kai]

random: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20

To be fair, the katana and wakizashi were not meant to pierce armor. The katana was not used so much for killing on the battlefield as it was for cutting the strings of armor. The wakizashi, with it's shorter blade, was then used to deliver the killing blow. This is of course the traditional way; when Musashi Miyamoto made dual wielding became popular, all of this went out the window.

I've had quite a bit of experience with both weapons, since my father collects pre-WWII Japanese swords. The blades are nothing like European blades, they cut with a downward pulling motion rather than a swinging motion. In that sense, they do much less damage against an armored opponent than a European blade; their weight and the way they are used just isn't heavy enough to damage metal armor. Once the armor is off, however, the Japanese blades are far superior. Any damage rulings have to take that into effect. Or something. Or maybe I'm full of it.

Just no.

As the entirety of RPG combat is an abstraction to add "more realism" would bog the system down in minutia.

Nevermind that when armed with a sword, and only a sword, a man-at-arms, or knight, or dude in armor, when fighting the against the same, would not be attacking his foe with the edge, unless it were in friendly sport, or he was untutored in the art. He would instead grasp his sword with one hand upon the hilt and the other midway on the blade and seek to the thrust into the gaps in the plate harness, the face/eye slits, the armpits, or the palms of the hands. This of course assumes a one on one scenario in the 15th to 16th centuries. A man-at-arms would not be using a sword as his sole weapon when in an open battlefield but either a spear or some manner of polearm, such as the pollaxe.

A nihonto of similar length to a European sword would weigh more as they are thicker in cross-section.
Sharp is sharp when encountering unarmored flesh. Japanese or European.

Furthermore to state that a wakizashi was used only to deliver killing blows after a bushi had cut the strings of the armor with his katana disregards the wide variety of ryu that dealt with fighting in armor during the feudal age in Japan.

1. Agreed.

2. Agreed.

3. I'm not familiar with that weapon.

4. It wasn't ONLY used for killing blows. I was emphasizing the exaggerated importance of the katana when fighting armored foes. The wakizashi was pretty much the ideal close quarters sword; IIRC, the katana was surrendered at the gate of a lord's mansion, but the wakizashi was kept at hand at all times. Again, usage changed when Musashi popularized nitoichi. Or, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

[Kai]

Also, your campaign sounds awesome, Cram.

I think the reason I got out of playing tabletop rpgs is because I got tired of the incessant commentary on /everything/. The old tired jokes, the munchin players that know every single thing about the game, the distracting side talk. But it looks like you run your campaigns really well and keep all that to a minimum. I loved it when it was serious.

I used to enjoy running really detail-oriented extremely long epic campaign arcs.

I was into a really serious D&D experience.

Then I chilled out.

These days I'm running a very casual game. We drink a case of beer while we play. There's a lot of story, puzzles, combat, character development (for characters that want it)... but I'm aiming for a game first and foremost FUN and easy to get involved in. I don't punish people for not remembering setting details, I'm cool with "cameo spots" where a friend checks out the game with us for 1 session, and a number of my NPCs are goofy or are based on running jokes.

I'm finding that I like the casual/hilarious style of play a lot better than the totally straightfaced We Are In A Tragic Drama style I used to run. We still have really intense white-knuckled story moments--it's just that the focus of the game is on exciting encounters and hanging out with your friends.



I have a friend who I'd really love to game with us, but she's hung up on 2nd edition. She is really only interested in the D&D experience she had when she was like 13-18... she was so excited to hear we were playing D&D --until she found out it was 4th edition.

I tried to reason it out with her -- "You know, regardless of the rulebook we're using, we have a lot of fun. D&D's mainly about doing something creative while hanging out with your friends. And we rock at that. Everything else is minutiae" but she wouldn't have it--- she admitted that she was just really stubborn about it and wasn't interested in finding out if 4th ed it was fun or not. Really a shame!

If she actually SAW us play -- if she saw the fighter sitting at the campfire frying up Hill Giant Dick and sharing it with an imp -- if she saw the fight against the Net-Wielding Trolls' Interns (yes, the Intern Net Trolls) -- if she saw the intense cold-sweat inducing encounter I posted above, she'd probably love to game with us.

But meh! Grognards! C'est la vie.

Oh, I agree. I don't care what edition it is (as long as it's playable). I don't mind the relevant in game humor, either. The Hill Giant Dick and Net Trolls incidents sound hilarious.

What I got sick of was the constant incessant jabbering about completely unrelated things, stupid jokes from monty python, people who aren't paying attention, people who are talking out of turn, and the players that know absolutely everything about the game book and won't shut the fuck up and let the other players have fun figuring it out. I'd leave a session exhausted, unhappy, and searching for a quiet place to hole up for several hours.

Or maybe it was just people who didn't know when to SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR FUCKING CHRISTSAKE. That could be it too, that it's entirely possible the people I was playing with were annoying twits.

[Don Coyote]

random: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20

To be fair, the katana and wakizashi were not meant to pierce armor. The katana was not used so much for killing on the battlefield as it was for cutting the strings of armor. The wakizashi, with it's shorter blade, was then used to deliver the killing blow. This is of course the traditional way; when Musashi Miyamoto made dual wielding became popular, all of this went out the window.

I've had quite a bit of experience with both weapons, since my father collects pre-WWII Japanese swords. The blades are nothing like European blades, they cut with a downward pulling motion rather than a swinging motion. In that sense, they do much less damage against an armored opponent than a European blade; their weight and the way they are used just isn't heavy enough to damage metal armor. Once the armor is off, however, the Japanese blades are far superior. Any damage rulings have to take that into effect. Or something. Or maybe I'm full of it.

Just no.

As the entirety of RPG combat is an abstraction to add "more realism" would bog the system down in minutia.

Nevermind that when armed with a sword, and only a sword, a man-at-arms, or knight, or dude in armor, when fighting the against the same, would not be attacking his foe with the edge, unless it were in friendly sport, or he was untutored in the art. He would instead grasp his sword with one hand upon the hilt and the other midway on the blade and seek to the thrust into the gaps in the plate harness, the face/eye slits, the armpits, or the palms of the hands. This of course assumes a one on one scenario in the 15th to 16th centuries. A man-at-arms would not be using a sword as his sole weapon when in an open battlefield but either a spear or some manner of polearm, such as the pollaxe.

A nihonto of similar length to a European sword would weigh more as they are thicker in cross-section.
Sharp is sharp when encountering unarmored flesh. Japanese or European.

Furthermore to state that a wakizashi was used only to deliver killing blows after a bushi had cut the strings of the armor with his katana disregards the wide variety of ryu that dealt with fighting in armor during the feudal age in Japan.

1. Agreed.

2. Agreed.

3. I'm not familiar with that weapon.

4. It wasn't ONLY used for killing blows. I was emphasizing the exaggerated importance of the katana when fighting armored foes. The wakizashi was pretty much the ideal close quarters sword; IIRC, the katana was surrendered at the gate of a lord's mansion, but the wakizashi was kept at hand at all times. Again, usage changed when Musashi popularized nitoichi. Or, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Nihonto?
The Japanese word for Japanese swords.

[Kai]

random: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20

To be fair, the katana and wakizashi were not meant to pierce armor. The katana was not used so much for killing on the battlefield as it was for cutting the strings of armor. The wakizashi, with it's shorter blade, was then used to deliver the killing blow. This is of course the traditional way; when Musashi Miyamoto made dual wielding became popular, all of this went out the window.

I've had quite a bit of experience with both weapons, since my father collects pre-WWII Japanese swords. The blades are nothing like European blades, they cut with a downward pulling motion rather than a swinging motion. In that sense, they do much less damage against an armored opponent than a European blade; their weight and the way they are used just isn't heavy enough to damage metal armor. Once the armor is off, however, the Japanese blades are far superior. Any damage rulings have to take that into effect. Or something. Or maybe I'm full of it.

Just no.

As the entirety of RPG combat is an abstraction to add "more realism" would bog the system down in minutia.

Nevermind that when armed with a sword, and only a sword, a man-at-arms, or knight, or dude in armor, when fighting the against the same, would not be attacking his foe with the edge, unless it were in friendly sport, or he was untutored in the art. He would instead grasp his sword with one hand upon the hilt and the other midway on the blade and seek to the thrust into the gaps in the plate harness, the face/eye slits, the armpits, or the palms of the hands. This of course assumes a one on one scenario in the 15th to 16th centuries. A man-at-arms would not be using a sword as his sole weapon when in an open battlefield but either a spear or some manner of polearm, such as the pollaxe.

A nihonto of similar length to a European sword would weigh more as they are thicker in cross-section.
Sharp is sharp when encountering unarmored flesh. Japanese or European.

Furthermore to state that a wakizashi was used only to deliver killing blows after a bushi had cut the strings of the armor with his katana disregards the wide variety of ryu that dealt with fighting in armor during the feudal age in Japan.

1. Agreed.

2. Agreed.

3. I'm not familiar with that weapon.

4. It wasn't ONLY used for killing blows. I was emphasizing the exaggerated importance of the katana when fighting armored foes. The wakizashi was pretty much the ideal close quarters sword; IIRC, the katana was surrendered at the gate of a lord's mansion, but the wakizashi was kept at hand at all times. Again, usage changed when Musashi popularized nitoichi. Or, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

Nihonto?
The Japanese word for Japanese swords.

Or, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

I should just stick to science.

[Cainad (dec.)]

  It's ok Kai, you're not alone.

[Cramulus]

Last game was a very weird one. It was a "story" event, mostly investigation & plot development and very few encounters. And at this event I decided to break a number of my own rules.

I was nervous about this game. I'm throwing a big twist in the story and I wasn't sure how well it'd be received. The characters were captured by bad guys and banished to Fantasy Australia. They were bound by a Geas (a ritually enforced contract) to serve these nefarious nobles from another kingdom. For their characters, it was a bad day. For the players, I hope it was fun.


This was challenging a DM because this part of the story involves the players taking a loss. They walked directly into an ambush by higher level characters and had no chance of making it out. And in the story they SOMEHOW, have to end up in this region. I hate railroads, but at this point I've built up enough trust with the players that I could take them down this little story railroad without pissing them off too much. I assured them - they will have ample opportunity to handle this situation once their feet are on the ground.

So when they walked into the capture scene, I asked that they permit me to narrate it, rather than rolling it out using the table and dice. I told them that the fight would probably be very frustrating if we actually rolled it out --  and if we had rolled it out, it would have seemed like they might have been able to escape. But this is the scene where Lando sells out Han Solo to Vader... I don't want to set up an impossible challenge and then make them think they can actually do it, that's even more frustrating than the DM telling you, "in the next chapter of this story, you're a slave to some assholes".

I explained it like this ---- this is the scene in the movie where the chips are down. The good guys get their asses kicked, they lose their gear, and they are in danger of losing hope entirely. My goal is that this sucks for your character while still being a fun experience for you as a player. This is where character motivations are brewed. Now they're all fired up on escape and revenge - which, as a DM, I love.

And I do think they dug it, though it took a little while for it to sink in that this is plot development, not me "screwing" them for bad choices or something.

[Cramulus]

The last few weeks have been a really fantastic series of games. It's the situation every DM wants - the players are hooked, they're chattering about the game all the time, everybody's really excited to play. I come downstairs into the living room and everybody's theorizing about what's going on and what to do next.

So here's what's going on.........

Aedremere

The party was in the city of Aedremere, which is mostly dragonborn. They successfully defeated the witch queen Silona (a mummy/medusa) and her thrall Captain Daven (a dragonborn Death Knight). City is safe, right? Well, not quite. As the adventurers returned to the city, they saw the Flame of Sehanine (the city's artifact, a twin to the artifactual Flame of Erathis that the party carries) disappear from Aedremere's palatial tower. Somebody stole it!

The players spent a lot of time in the council hall, where they were asked a lot of rude questions by hopeless and cynical old men. The magistrate apologized profusely to the adventurers - seems the council's been shaken up by the recent undead attacks. They're humans with short lifespans, they don't see that we always triumph in the end.

Walking around the city, the adventurers can tell something's up. After spending a few days in the city recovering from mummy rot (the rogue rotted so bad, he came one die roll away from death!) the party had picked up on a song that people in the city are humming or whistling. They heard a lot of people humming it, but upon questioning them, the people didn't know what it was or where they'd heard it. Something weird was happening, but nobody could figure out exactly what.


The Geas

After that, long story short - the players got captured by two Kaladari (read: conquestadors) of the Dromen Commonwealth, this expansionist empire across the sea. They were forced into a geas -- a ritual contract -- in which they agreed to serve the two Kaladari as vassals. The contract ends when they've completed three tasks: they have to cleanse areas called Tanaret, Sataviseen, and Torobrask. Until that time, they can only rest in this one city. Sleeping outside of that city will not help them recover hit points or powers.

[according to the logic of my world] Geases must have a "back door", a way for the contract to be voided early, usually something very abstract in nature. The creator of the Geas usually phrases this as some impossible task. So this geas can also end "When a serpent swallows the sun". This got the players scratching their heads. What does it mean?

And they're strangers in a strange land. The game's been moved to the continent of Suldain, which is basically "Fantasy Australia". This equates to Australia during an early phase of English colonization. The only cities are basically Sydney and Perth, on the east and west coasts. Between that, there's a big open outback with lots of different terrain types (desert, mountains, tundra, jungle) and horrible australian monsters. (BTW, the monsters of Australian mythology are weird!)

The Dromen Kaladari inform the players that this is the Dreamlands, it may be the place where you go when you sleep. So things might not work like you expect, this is a supernatural place. It's also at the edge of the world -- this is the southernmost island that anybody's ever discovered. Go much further south than this, the currents take you, and you'll fall off the edge of the world. (surprise! My game setting is FLAT. "Round earth" is a foolish theory that wizards have repeatedly proven false.)

First Adventure in Suldain

The aboriginal locals call themselves Kalashtar. The players had a few run-ins with them, and found them to be suspicious and reserved, but not opposed to diplomacy.

In the salt flats to the south of Maedar (the Dromen city on the west coast), the players encountered the Tuddo tribe, a group of Kalashtar that have been displaced from their homeland by a Dromen outpost. Underneath the outpost, there is a sleeping Aeon called Bequmuni.

A Sleeping Aeon?

"People from your realm have the world upside down," said the Kalashtar shaman, Father Tuddo, "You are not in the dreamlands. You are in the real world. The world you live in is a dream."

Underneath the surface of Suldain, there are huge silver sleeping buddha statues, sometimes a hundred feet tall. They are dreaming, and their dream is the world.

The players investigated the garrison at Bequmuni, and were allowed to see the aeon. There was a small Dromen base, about 10 soldiers and 8 bards inside. In the central chamber, where the Aeon sleeps, a string quartet was camped. They were perched next to the Aeon's ear, and were playing a song, the Dromen national anthem.

"That's it," somebody said, "that's the song we heard in Aedremere..."

That's when it clicked. The Dromen aren't trying to end the world or anything like that. They're trying to take over as many city-states as possible by manipulating the beings which dream the world. It seems like playing this song next to an Aeon's ear puts the people of that city into a kind of trance. It makes them much more open to Dromen rule. The Dromen destabilize an area, then offer aid. The aid gives them seats on local councils and cabinets. Slowly, they gain control of those cities without exercising military force.

This puts the adventurers in quite a dilemma. They're ritually tasked to clear these three Aeons, and set up linked portals so that the Dromen can access them. If they fail to do this, the geas can actually kill them.

What Dreams May Come

Sleeping in Suldain, you don't have dreams. You have out of body experiences. Each player got a dream, a series of images which indicate that something from their past is here in Suldain. For example, the rogue wants revenge on this guy, and he now sees that the man has an estate here in Suldain somewhere. How is it that some noble from the mainland has a mansion in the fantasy outback -- the middle of bumfuck Australia?

As the shaman explained -- there is something here in Suldain which caused that nightmare to happen to you in your world. It's like you are having a dream of somebody breaking through your front door, and when you awake, you hear a woodpecker banging on it. The troubles you have faced in your life are the result of something happening here, a point of corruption which has bled into the dream.

Underneath the Surface

A bit later, the players met up with the Tarrinah tribe, a horse people who live in the south western peninsula of Suldain. In order to speak to the shaman, they had to go through an initiation process. They had to hunt down a beast called a Quillian and put a handprint on it. If they are real warriors, they will slay it.

So the players tracked down this beast's layer. As they go down beneath the surface, they start encountering this bewildering freudian imagery. There are statues of the players fathers, their faces scowling and judgmental. There are statues of beautiful women - when you take the cloth veil off the statue's face, you see your character's mother. We are beneath the surface now. Any time you go underground in Suldain, you encounter, in effect, your id. Players that can pass through the feywild see that this is the location of a violent and chaotic party. Satyrs and Nymphs are fighting and fucking and drinking self-destructive amounts of liquor.

They kill the Quillian (barely!) and head back to the horse tribe.

Tanaret

Finally, they make their way towards Tanaret, the Silver Aeon who sleeps beneath the plateau. The adventurers clear the monsters and pass the three wards. (but not without making some shady deals with an immortal creature called a Berbelang.) They get access to Tanaret, and see a vision of a city they recognize - the quiet town of Arnetta.

The adventurers passed through Arnetta right after they left Ave Sestina. It was a really pleasant place that was being threatened by hill giants. The giants worshiped these primordial elemental beings, and the adventurers slayed all 18 of them. This was a few months ago.

They see that the Berbelang spends his time whispering in the aeon's ear, telling the story of how no matter what people do, the giants always return to Arnetta. The adventurers had promised to allow the Berbelang to do his task in secret in trade for passage through the third ward. So they were kind of stuck allowing this thing to happen. The fighter, thinking on his feet, found a moment to go over to the aeon and whisper a quick story into its ear.

In the story, the lord of the city, who is descended from giant slayers, conceives a son. And this son will grow up to be the greatest giant slayer that Arnetta has ever known. The Aeon smiled in his sleep.

At this point, the players lost their shit. They realized that they too could influence the world by manipulating the dreams of the Aeons.



The eladrin warlord started paging through notes. Something clicked. He recognized that the names of the Aeons they'd been sent to cleanse were anagrams of the cities they've visited. The Aeon Tanaret dreams of Arnetta. That must mean that the Aeon named Sataviseen dreams of Ave Sestina, and the Aeon named Torobrask dreams of Starbrook!


So what should we do?

Suddenly, the party was a torrent of ideas.

Maybe we can kick the Dromen out of the region by using the aeons?

Wait, what if we find the Aeon that's dreaming of the Dromen capital, Glasdazk?

We could wake up that Aeon, and them Glasdazk would cease to exist!

Ooh, or maybe we could tell it a better story, and make Glasdazk into the center of a better empire, a place that would make Erathis proud!

But first we have to find it.

And we also have to get out of this Geas.

As the Geas compelled them, the characters created a Linked Portal back to the city of Maedar, where the Dromen greeted them. This was the end of the first of their three geas-tasks.  This leveled them up to 13.

They have found out that there's a shaman in the desert who knows all about geases -- maybe they can track her down and get some answers from her?

Also, they have to find out where the rest of the Aeons are sleeping, and what their names are.

Also, they have to find out where the Flame of Erathis has been taken, and get it back.

Also, one of the party members, a Githzerai Fighter, knows that his son is here in Suldain, and he's considering joining the enemy Githyanki. The symbol of these Githyanki is a black snake biting its tail. (the character wonders, in private, if this is "the serpent swallowing the son"... is he willing to trade his son's life for escape from the Geas?)

Also, one of the party members, a rogue, knows his old nemesis is here.

Also, the eladrin warlord senses that the aeon that dreams of his home city, Starbrook, is restless in his sleep, and that's why the city phases between the middle world and the feywild every morning and evening.

Also, an aborigine has joined the party. He came of age on the same day that the party killed the Quillian, so his fate is linked to the Gatecrashers and has chosen to join the party. (new player, first time playing D&D, now he's hooked!)

Also, the Raven Queen has sent one of her ravens to assist the party. (a friend of ours is playing a new character, a kenku sorcerer/bard)



And I'll cut it off here because this post is already way too tl;dr 

But seriously, this has been a BLAST. The players are really hooked right now, they have so many choices about what to do, how to shape the world, and I'm super curious about how they're going to handle it.

[Triple Zero]

Whoa really awesome Cram!

And still very cool that you named those people the "Dromen", really cool name in English

[Cramulus]

Game has been AWESOME.

My current thing is that I try to mix up every event with at least one fight where the objective is something other than "kill all the monsters". Here's a few of the encounters/scenes that I've run:



This encounter took place at Uluru, also known as Ayer's Rock. It's a real-world location that also exists in my fantasy-australia campaign.



I ran a fight the other week where there were cactii all over the board. If you got pushed, pulled, or slided through a square adjacent to a cactus, you'd take damage. The cactii also had these little flowers growing on them, and each PC had to get 4 of them.

The challenge is that this area is the site for a gender-based ritual that the local kalashtar perform. There are certain holy places that only women are allowed to walk. And there are certain places that only men are allowed to walk. For this encounter, I put down two big zones, one for MEN ONLY, another for WOMEN ONLY. If you stepped in the wrong zone, you'd get hit with a short curse (that would weaken you).

Trick is, the party only has one female! And the NPCs defending the cactii also only had one female, and she was the boss of the group. It was an interesting fight because the party couldn't move freely, they had to figure out how to manage NPCs standing in an area they couldn't enter without making themselves less effective. It was also really exciting for the (female) wizard, who had to square off with the boss one-on-one.





The players are trying to get through this section of dungeon. The demon Qadaar is after them, he's a powerful monster that they know they CAN NOT TAKE.

I used a pre-printed map, a large poster-sized dungeon with lots of rooms, corridors, irregularly shaped hallways, lots of stuff. I added a lot of doors, furniture, and a few hidden treasure chests. Every room on the map had 2-3 exits. There were two exits from the level. There were 5 monsters that started off on the exits, in addition to Qadaar.

Now here's the fun part: I gave the party 5 scrolls of Arcane Lock. These are special ones that can be cast by anybody, using a move action. So basically, you can shut a door REALLY HARD.

For the players, the goal was to get through the dungeon and not get blasted by Qadaar. One way to do this was to lock him (or his allies) into a room. If the party runs through a room and locks the door behind them, it forces the demons to take the long way around, giving the party a precious round or two to race for the stairs.






The Muldjewangk is a creature from real Australian mythology. In my game, it's a basically purple worm. The players were crossing through a jungle when they encountered it.

Now here's the thing about the purple worm's stats in 4th edition. It's a solo creature, meaning it's statted to be a tough match for FOUR people. Most solo creatures have lots of attacks, ways to resolve stun and daze effects, a few nasty tricks up their sleeve, and a few actions they can take when it's not their turn (like if you flank an adult dragon, they get an immediate tail swipe to knock you back).

The 4e purple worm has very few of those things. It is tough because it has a shitload of hit points. Compared with other solo creatures, its attack isn't that bad (unless you're below 50% health, in which case it can swallow you whole), but it can take a ridiculous amount of abuse.

But I didn't think that would be a fun straight fight. When a creature has like 700 hit points and only one type of attack, the round is going to be pretty boring. I'm going to end up doing the same thing every turn, and so are the players. If I've got a player in the worm's mouth, the worm can't even move. So it's just a slug fest.

FUCK THAT, I said to myself. The worm is going to be an ongoing threat. So they first encountered the worm during a fight against evil natives. When the worm was down to about 2/3rds of its health, it burrowed underground.

It trailed them for days. The players knew it would attack if they rested, so they didn't sleep, they only took short rests to recharge their healing and encounter powers, and kept moving.

In the second fight of the event, the party battled against Girillons. These are some of my favorite D&D monsters because they're so absurd. I wish I could have been at the meeting when they came up with Girillons. They're just four-armed apes. They're so territorial that they can't even breed, they just beat up their mates.

In this fight, they party took on four girillons, who started to flee when they noticed the markings of the Alpha on nearby trees. The purple worm showed up mid fight and thrashed everybody. Then they teamed up on the worm, started to kick its ass, so it burrowed away.

At this point, the party is torn -- we're kind of beat up, can we take this worm or not? Should we teleport back to the city, take an extended rest, let the worm rest back up to full, and try it again tomorrow? NO! We should keep going like bad asses! (shit, somebody said, its' going to attack at the worst possible time, isn't it?)

So they started making noise. Banging on trees, bashing their shields against each other, making a giant racket, trying to get the worm to burrow up to the surface.

This backfired though. They attracted MORE GIRILLONS!

Three rounds into this third fight of the day, the alpha DID show up. This is a pretty tough fight already. THEN, JUST AS THEY STARTED TO OVERCOME THE GORILLAS, THE MULDJEWANGK BURROWED OUT OF THE GROUND.

They did eventually kill the thing, but it was a really tough fight.

I lost my first PC to a purple worm, so I always want them to be scary. :P

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

How many hobos do I need to murder to have you as a GM?

[Cramulus]

  thanks


The current thing I've had in my head regarding encounter design is advice from Chris Perkins. He says the DM should think of every fight like a 3-act play. Something happens, then something happens to mix it up, then there's a twist.

It might be "the monsters get a surprise round, then when half of them are dead, the boss shows up"

It might be "In round 2, the monsters drag in a chained bear that's frothing at the mouth. The players can use nature checks to befriend down the bear. If they score 3 successes, the bear switches sides and aids them."

It might be that the terrain or environment changes and everybody has to rethink their movement.

It might be that the PCs complete a ritual and trigger something.

It might be that the PCs finally pop the lock on a chest and get the trump item that allows them to kick the elite creature's ass.

I ran a fight two weeks ago where the PCs were caught in a sand storm. At the top of every round, I'd roll a d4. If I rolled a 4, the winds blow. Wind would push and injure anybody who wasn't lying prone or standing on the east side of blocking terrain. It meant that "the best spot to stand" changed every round. If you didn't take cover from the storm, you'd end up spending your move actions trying to get back to the party.


The important thing is that during the encounter, the fight switches directions , objectives, or somehow nullifies people's initial assumptions. That's how I design exciting fights that everybody's talking about for weeks afterwards.

[Cramulus]

current campaign map: http://www.scribd.com/doc/79012955

edit: wow, that looks awful on scribd. here's a png. Problem is, when I exported to png, the patterns came out wrong. That should be a texture in the desert and salt flats, not just a dumb looking grid.

[Cramulus]

Ran a really cool puzzle yesterday---

The players are in the Feywild, the faerie land hidden behind our world. They have to get to a certain spot in the Feywild. They know that the geography of the feywild changes and shifts all the time, so a map may not be that useful. You just have to travel and try to find the path.

I gave them four maps. Each map was drawn with magic marker on transparency paper, so you can see through it. If you put all the maps on top of each other, they all roughly line up. Each map has a few mountains, rivers, a forest, and a handful of black Xs.

Throughout the land, there are these X's on the map. Each X is a crossing point. At a crossing point, there's a little pedestal with a device into which you can insert TWO maps. When you activate the device (which requires a different kind of skill check at each pedestal, three failures would result in a fight), the world shifts to match the two maps you just inserted.

So the party says, This is easy! We just put in the map of where we are now, and the map that has the place we're trying to go!

But if we do that, there's mountains in the way... So we have to try to navigate to another crossing point...

It was a pretty involved puzzle. Took about an hour to figure out, and involved maybe six steps from start to finish.

If people want, I can scan the transparency pages so you guys can run it at your games.

[Telarus]

Badass encounter design cram. Oooh, nice map too. I'd be down for seeing the Feywild ones too.

[Cramulus]

The back story to THIS encounter is that the players are in this place --- essentially Ayers Rock in Australia, also known as Uluru. Worth a google image search, it's a cool place.

The aeon that's sleeping there, Torobrask, is dreaming of the city of Starbrook. (remember, in my world, the world is just a dream that these buddhas are having. the players are on the island of sleeping buddhas).

One of the party members is from Starbrook, and he knew he had a task to perform here. Starbrook is half in the real world, half in the feywild. Every night, it appears in the real world. And at sunrise, it fades away and returns to Faerie.

The REASON this happens (as the players discovered) is because the aeon who dreams up Starbrook is sleeping in the sun. There's a stained glass window at the top of this cave, and light streams in, hitting his face, disturbing his meditation. That's why when the sun goes down, he is able to focus, and Starbrook is fully part of the world again.

The stained glass window depicts this sea scene from Starbrook mythology. It's a famous story about a captain facing two krakens at sea. The players magically entered this stained glass, and found themselves in these boats, beset by Krakens.

Movement is tricky here! I gave the players two boats - a 4 x 2 tile, and a 2 x 1 tile (a little dinghy). They can spend a move action to move the boats 6 squares. If they fall out of the boat, the water is rough and choppy.

When they arrived in the naval scene, they could see the aeon sleeping 100 feet beneath them, the boat cast a shadow on the sea floor. They figured that if they steer the boat in a way that the shadow lands over the aeon's face, it will change the glass, and the aeon will sleep better. So the challenge was to move the boat over the aeon's face, then get back through the portal on the far side of the board.

But you know what? Killing krakens is too much fun to let them live. So the players decided to take on these two solo beasts. It was a really epic fight. My friend John has been reading Moby Dick, and he just learned his character's destiny is to become King of Starbrook one day, so he was really charged up about killing these things. He asked me if he could bend the rules and leap onto the Kraken's back like Ahab instead of attacking it from an adjacent square. Fuck yeah man!

It was MADNESS! Every time the Kraken threw him, he swam back towards it and climbed on top.

It was such a fun fight that a week later, I'm still getting RELEASE THE KRAKEN text messages from my players.