Playing with Each Other

I wanted to test the U13/L7 system in play, but I wanted to experience as a player. I also wanted to see how the system worked with more than one player, so I invited Frank to play with me. Frank and I live hundreds of miles apart, so we were playing by e-mail.

Seeing that no one else knows the system yet, my idea was that we would play a GM-less game. Two grown adults should be able to explore a randomly generated wilderness without needing a GM. Any questions that would need a GM would be answered by the dice.

The basic idea was that we would be exploring an unknown wilderness. We’d use the tables in Wilderness Hexplore (Revised) to generate the map as we explored. If an encounter was indicated, we would use the encounter tables in 1991’s Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia.

The Dice as GM

The process is pretty simple, and can be compared to a game with a GM. In a normal game, any given scene can be described like this:

1. The GM describes a situation
2. The players ask any questions to clarify their understanding of the situation
3. The GM answers those questions
4. The players states their actions
5. The GM de termines what happens next (sometimes based on a die roll)

In a wilderness based GM-less adventure the process is almost the same. Once the players enter a hex:

1. The players roll dice and consult tables to determine the situation
2. The players ask any questions to clarify their understanding of the situation
3. The players roll dice to answer those questions
4. The players say how they react
5. The players roll dice to determine what happens next

An example:

1. The dice indicate that there’s a river in the hex.
2. The players ask if the river is flowing slow enough for them to ford. (Note: when the dice are the DM the questions should always be a “yes or no” type question. It should be phrased in such a way that the player’s desired answer is “yes.”)
3. The players make a standard roll, but it’s not based on any skill. On a “success” the answer is “yes.” The roll could be either a bonus or penalty roll if the player feels that the “yes” answer is particularly likely or unlikely.
4. The players say that they’ll ford the river.
5. The players make a wilderness survival roll to determine if they’re successful.

That’s all there is to it!

How it went

As you can see from the map, we only explored 5 hexes before something happened. We’ll get there in a minute.

Frank’s character was a cleric named Desmond, whilst I played Galeas the fighter.

Hex 10,10 is where we started. The “henge” icon represents the magical portal that we could use to travel between the wilderness we were exploring and our home city.

Day 1

Time	Hex	Notes
7 AM	10,10	Terrain: Light forest with road Encounters: None We arrived through the portal. We found ourselves in a spare forest, and saw an ancient roadway running east-to-west. Desmond suggested going west and Galeas agreed.
9 AM	09,09	Terrain: Heavy forest with road & river Encounters: 3 bears The forest became more dense, and the road was bisected by a river. A collapsing stone bridge spanned the water. Upstream we spotted a group of large bears in the river, presumably looking for fish. We kept our distance, and so did the bears. We continued to follow the road.
11 AM	08,09	Terrain: Heavy forest with road & river Encounters: 1 human magic-user The forest was still dense, and the road once again was bisected by another river. We encountered a human female. We chatted for a bit (see below), and invited her to join us. She declined. The area seemed peaceful and safe so we took a break for lunch. Desmond wanted to fish for lunch, but I was opposed to the idea (see below). We left at noon. Because the day was half over, I suggested we start heading back. In order to explore new territory we decided to follow the river south, then we’d head east back to the portal.
2:30 PM	08,10	Terrain: Lake Encounters: Giant fish Because we’re no longer on a road, it takes 2 ½ hours to traverse a hex instead of two. We found ourselves on the shore of a large lake. In the lake were fish the size of orca. “You’re going to need a bigger pole,” Galeas said to Desmond. We followed the shoreline until we could head to the east.
5 PM	09,10	Terrain: Heavy Forest Encounters: None There wasn’t anything of interest here. Just as well, as the day was getting late, and we still had 2–3 hours ahead of us.
7:30 PM	10,10	Terrain: Light forest with road Encounters: None We arrived back at the portal, and passed through it back to our home city.

Talking to an NPC

Something strange happened when we met the magic-user in hex 08,09. We rolled standard reaction roll and it came back “favorable.”

Frank had Desmond try to start a conversation with her. In a GM-run game there’s nothing weird about that, but how do you have dialog with dice? I started to wonder if Frank understood what we were doing.

Frank then asked her if there was a city nearby. This is 100% reasonable, but I didn’t know how to handle it. Because the map isn’t generated yet we can’t look at the map to see if there is. Do we roll to see if she says “yes” or “no”? But who’s to say that she’s telling the truth? So do we roll again to see if she’s lying? What if the dice do say there’s a city? Do we just place one on the map somewhere? I still don’t have a good handle how to deal with that situation. Frank was gracious enough to let that drop.

I suggested asked her to join us. I’m a fan of henchmen and hirelings. So Frank started to try to ease her into the idea. “I don’t want to seem too eager” he told me. I tried to reiterate that the dice don’t care.

When we rolled her response to joining us we got a 1–not just a “no” but a “hell, no!”

Disagreeing about Fishing

In the same hex Frank wanted Desmond to fish. Mechanically this would be easy to do—just make a Wilderness Survival roll.

Logically it made no sense to me. First of all, we hand no need. We were already carrying 7 days of food on us. My second objection was that we had no fishing gear. Desmond’s idea was to stand on the river bank and try to clobber passing fish with his staff. My third objection was the time involved: I figured a fishing would take at least an hour, more if he caught some then had clean it and to start a fire to cook it. I wanted to make sure we got back to the portal before nightfall.

I was thankful when he dropped it, though dismayed when he suggested it again at the lake. I had to convince him that you can’t net an orca in a large sack.

Day 2

The second day was just bookkeeping. Mainly Desmond went to the shop to buy a hammock, a tinderbox, and a bear trap.

Day 3

Day 3 started a lot like Day 1. Then everything feel apart.

Time	Hex	Notes
7 AM	10,10	Terrain: Light forest with road Encounters: None We went through the portal and decided that today’s plan would be to go to 09,09 seo that Desmond could set his bear trap. After that we would follow the river north to explore 09,08, then southeast to explore 10,09. From there we would head due south back to the portal.
9 AM	09,09	Terrain: Heavy forest with road & river Encounters: 4 bears (2 cubs & 2 adults) We hoped that the bears wouldn’t be around. The dice disagreed. Not only did the dice say the bears were present, they said that the bears were hostile and only 30 yards away. Oh, and we were surprised!

Against the Bears: The Plan

Before we even discussed a plan, Desmond set the trap. He shouted out a warning to me: “Live trap! Watch out!” He also prepared his mace and shield.

We decided that the cubs would flee and we’d only be facing two adults.

I suggested that I would cover Desmond with my bow why he dig up rations in his pack. We would then drop the rations to distract them and run like hell.

Against the Bears: The Action

I guess Desmond didn’t like the plan. But instead of suggesting a counter-plan, he just cast a Darkness spell on me.

Let me say that again. I suggested a plan for us to work together. Desmond acted on his own plan without asking my input. Furthermore, his action was to surround me in a bubble of supernatural darkness that was 120 yards across. I was effectively blind, in rough terrain and with a deadly bear trap somewhere near me.

Thanks, Desmond. With friends like you, who needs monsters?

Aftermath

I decided, though I never told Frank, that the only thing I could do was to wait in place (moving as little as possible) for the duration of the spell–about two hours. Once he could see, Galeas would deal with the bears if he had to (though hopefully they’d be gone by then). Then he would return to the portal and go home. He would never speak to Desmond again.

Frank kept asking question, but they were the wrong questions. He asked things like “Do the bears enter the darkness?” We wouldn’t know that—all we would know was if it sounded like they were entering. He did ask the right question at some point, but the email chain was full of unrelated chatter and the question got lost without being answered. At one point he said he was walking out of the darkness, but I don’t see where we ever rolled to see if he made it out and if the bears were there when he got out.

At some point Frank just sent me an e-mail saying “you and the bears are dead.”

“Okay,” was my reply.

Playing with Myself

For the most part, I enjoyed the adventure. Clearly, though, Frank and I don’t play well together. So I’m going to try this again, but without Frank. I’ll make it a small series of posts here.

Play Report: The Tale of Teena and Zyier

I know a couple that have been interested in playing D&D for a while, but never have. They told me that they didn’t know how to play, so I offered to run a one-shot for them.

The Platform

I live in western New York. They live in Indiana, so I suggested we play via Roll20. They made accounts and joined one of the games I have setup there.

The Rules

Ostensibly, the rules were White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game which a freely available re-presentation of the Swords & Wizardry White Box rules, which (in turn) is a retro-clone of the original 3 books of the 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

In reality, the only thing the book was opened for was the equipment/price list and spell descriptions. The rest of the game was played off the cuff. That’s the glory of OSR games. “Rulings, not rules.”

House Rules

I did use a few house rules. For magic, I used the Crowfield Magic System; it worked well.

I also used a different character creation system. A player would roll 3d6 and pick the stat to put it in. Once a stat was picked it couldn’t be unpicked, so the second roll only had 5 possible stats. After all 6 stats were rolled, an additional 3d6 was rolled, and the player could replace the lowest roll with the new one. This allows players to wait for a good roll in their class’s important stats yet prevents every character’s highest stat automatically being in the perfect slot. Though, both players did end up with the highest roll in the prime attribute for their class. Still, it was fun and it worked. I worry about how it would have felt if the dice were being more stingy, however.

The last house rule was about hit points. I stole a suggestion from 1989’s D&D module B11: King’s Festival. The players still rolled, but if they got less than a minimum for their class then that minimum was used. Any adjustment for Constitution was added after the minimum roll adjustment.

Class	Minimum HP
Cleric	5
Fighter	6
Magic-User	3
Thief	3

The Setting

After blathering on about it for a year and a half, you’d think I’d set the game in Crowfield, but I didn’t. Because this was a tutorial type game, I wanted the setting to be more “generic D&D” (if that makes any sense), so I used my Bloodport setting.

The Characters

The dice were rolling hot, and both players ended up with high scores:

	Teena	Zyier	Notes
Class	Magic-User	Thief	Thief shouldn’t have been a valid class, but I forgot and we just ran with it.
str	9	15	+1 bonus for Zyier
int	14	10	+1 bonus for Teena
wis	12	12
dex	11	15	+1 bonus for Zyier
con	14	10	+1 bonus for Teena
chr	11	9
hit points	4	4
Armor Class	10	11	Zyier forgot to buy armor.

The Adventure

The adventure started in the city of Bloodport. I told the players that their characters already knew each other and had been friends for years.

Scene 1: The Tavern

The story opened in Argyle’s, a local pub named after its owner. Argyle (the owner) was a pirate until he contracted an illness that he never quite recovered from.

The characters wanted to order food, but Argyle looked sad and said he couldn’t help them. Only he used a lot more words. “No, lass. I can’t help ya today. We be all out of land fish. Haven’t gotten a delivery in o'er a week now. Tell ya what, though. If ya and ya frien' there be doin' me a favor, I’ll feed ye both for a week!”

I even did a “pirate accent.”

In the end, the characters agreed to take Argyle’s mule and cart to Bomo’s ranch outside of the city gates and return with a supply of land fish.

Act 2: The Ranch

The characters left the safety of the city walls and ventured to Bomo’s ranch. Outside of the safety of the city walls, Bloodport Isle is a wild and dangerous place. Still, it wasn’t that far of a journey, as the ranch is only only a couple miles down the road. The characters made it there with no encounters.

Because of the dangerous nature of the island, Bomo’s ranch is surrounded by a 15-foot tall stockade wall. The fence is 220 yards per side, and the only gate is on the road to the city. The characters met Bomo, a halfling land fish rancher, and gave him a note from Argyle that explained the situation.

Bomo explained in a squeaky voice that he couldn’t spare any land fish at the moment. All his stock were being eaten by foxes. Until the fox problem was solved, he couldn’t help the characters.

The characters heroically offered to help. They kept watch overnight, and sure enough they heard the sounds of a fox digging a hole under the stockade fence. When the fox emerged, I describe it to them.

“You know how foxes look like cuter, longer versions of Pomeranians? With shiny red fur with little tufts of white on the tail and ears?”

“Yes,” replied Teena’s player.

“This one doesn’t look like that. It looks like maybe it used to look like that, but it lost a fight to a bear. Its fur is matted and missing in splotches. In fact, its flesh is missing in places, and one eyeball is dangling out of its socket.”

“It’s a zombie fox!” Teena’s player rightly exclaimed!

“Looks like it could be!” I said.

After the sounds of page flipping the player said “Wait! Those aren’t in the book!”

“I know,” said I in my best DM voice.

The players (well, the characters) were infected with “analysis paralysis.” They stood around talking about what they should do, and not reaching any conclusions. The zombie fox, on the other hand, had no such issue. It just headed for the nearest pen of land fish and started trying to get in.

“I think you should kill it,” said Teena to Zyier.

“Me? Why don’t you kill it?” he asked in reply.

“Because I’m trying to find a spell to use.”

Zyier drew his sword and attacked. It took two rounds to dispatch the beast, and never got a hit in on him. The thief scored his first kill.

The players then fell back into their analysis paralysis. They knew that the needed to figure out where the zombie fox came from, but didn’t know how to do it.

I tried to help them out by having another fox tunnel into the ranch, but this one was a skeleton fox. In my mind they could have let the beast take a land fish and follow it to where it took it, but they couldn’t figure out a way to get to the other side of the stockade wall quick enough.

Teena decided she wanted to capture the animated fox skeleton to be a pet, and started reading spells again. Zyier just killed it.

I sensed that they were stuck. In a normal game that was part of an ongoing campaign, I would have let another night go by and see if they had a different plan. But this was a tutorial one-shot game, so I gave them a hint. I fast forwarded to morning and had Bomo suggest that they try to follow the foxes' tracks.

Act 3: The Knoll of the Dead

The tracks led to a huge mass of dead, twisted, thorny vines. The knoll was easily a hundred yards across in a rough circle. It was easily a couple of stories tall.

The characters walked around the vines and discovered that there were four 10-foot opening/tunnels. The openings aligned perfectly with the cardinal compass directions.

The selected the western entrance. They lit their torches and entered. They avoided any of the side passages and came out of the northern entrance, though they thought it was the southern one. They repeatedly asked which entrance they were at and I repeatedly asked them how they were going to figure it out. Finally Teena said she was looking at the position of the sun. Success!

I had been making random encounter rolls the whole time, but it never happened.

Teena (correctly) assumed that they needed to get to the center of the knoll to solve the mystery, and Zyier agreed. The walked around the knoll to the eastern entrance and re-entered. They came to a “T” intersection and rather than turning left or right, Teena decided that the wall ahead was an illusion (it wasn’t) and tried to get through it. The she had an idea.

“Let’s burn it!”

Zyier looked at her in disbelief. “No,” he said. “That’s a bad idea.”

They discussed it awhile and Zyier finally gave in. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he said.

He was right.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m lighting it on fire,” said Zyier’s player.

“Okay,” I replied, “but how?” I was waiting for them to say they were leaving the knoll and lighting it from outside.

Teena dashed my hope. “Put the torch right in that wall we were trying to get through.”

One skill a DM needs is the ability to say “Are you sure?” without using those words. The words I used were something like “So right in the middle of the corridor, inside all the dried vines you’re sticking your torch in the wall right next to you?” You can’t say I didn’t try.

“Yes.”

I had actually predicted that players would use fire. In my notes I wrote “Burning the vine produces toxic smoke. 1 hp/round. CON negates.” In the heat of the moment (pun), I misremembered the note as “1d6 hp damage/turn, CON for half.” This is actually better for the player’s mathematically.

Anyway, the knoll starts to burn. “I told you this was a bad idea,” shouted Zyier as they ran out.

Teena made her saves and made it out alive, but there was no sign of Zyier. She heroically ran back in and dragged him out, making her save time and time again. Eventually i just ruled that she was immune to the fumes.

Once she got Zyier clear, she tried to perform first aid but it was too late. Zyier was dead. There was nothing she could do.

Conclusion

The fire killed everything in the knoll, thereby saving Bomo’s Land Fish Ranch.

Teena survived.

Zyier died.

Remember them the next time you have a platter of Land Fish Fingers.

New Group After Action Report

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, last night was the first session of a new group. It went very well. The players didn't know each other before the game, but they quickly established a rapport. The players new to RPGs overcame that initial awkwardness quickly, and got into their characters, and the story.

The session covered a complete story (that is hopefully the springboard to a larger story). The players saw through the NPCs ruse very quickly, and solved the mystery a lot quicker than I expected.

It was a great beginning, and I'm very happy!

Who's the fairest of them all?

Once of the players had a conflict, so the Star Trek campaign was put aside for a couple months.  During that time Pete and I played T&T instead.  Now that Jim's back, though, it was time to get back into the Trek universe.

The first session was horrible.  Two months is a long time, and people's memories and notes were conflicting.  So this week I just popped a mini reset--the characters woke up in the Mirror Universe.  I don't like what the studio did with the DS9-era Mirror universe, so I popped them back to the TOS-era.  It would be too trite to send them to the Enterprise, but still wanting there to be familiar surroundings I placed them aboard the U.S.S. Constellation under Commodore Mathew Decker from the episode "The Doomsday Machine".

The session went well, I think.

Missed Clue

The Trek game's plot is basically a mystery at this point.  The large duranium chest that Captain Sulok asked them to deliver has mysteriously vanished off of their shuttle in DS9's landing bay, and the players are actively searching for it.

In the last session, one of them asked a question that would reveal everything. We're still so close to the beginning of the story, that I really didn't want that much revealed yet, but I always figure that the players should be rewarded for their ingenuity, and not penalized for the sake of the story.  So I answered honestly.

The thing is, I know what's really happening, and they don't.  So what seemed like a completely obvious situation that would give everything away, just sailed over their head with nary a notice.

Whew.

The thing I really like about this, is that later on, when the reveal actually happens, they'll be able to look back at this session and say "Yeah... the clues were there all along!"  I think that kind of story consistency really enhances game play.

A New Campaign Begins

Last night was the first session of a new campaign.  It was played via IRC, and the players were my long time friends Jim and Pete.  Jim was responsible for me discovering the RPG hobby back in the 1970's, and the hobby was responsible for me meeting Pete in the 80's.

The game itself was a homebrew/frankengame thing I'm calling Blurbs.  It's basically using the class system from Risus (called "cliches," but I'm calling them "blurbs"), and the task resolution system of Fudge with proverbial bailing wire and chewing gum to hold the pieces together.

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BEWARE: GAMING STORY

It was set in the Star Trek universe, in 2371 (around Stardate 48300.0, for you Trek geeks).  The characters started out on the USS Thunderchild, but were ordered to deliver a China-class runabout to Deep Space 9.  Just as they were about the leave, Captain Sulok asked them to deliver a large duranium chest covered with Vulcan glyphs to Commander Sisko.

After they left the ship in the runabout, they detect some anomalous readings, and investigated.  Concerned with what they detected, they try to transmit a warning, but were unable to do so for some reason. Shortly thereafter they received a distress signal from the Thunderchild. The characters immediately set course back to the Thunderchild, but while trying to boost the engines for more speed, they accidentally triggered a cascading malfunction in the warp system that took hours to repair.  When they were finally underway, figuring that it was too late to help, they resumed course for DS9.

END GAMING STORY ALERT

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I found myself frustrated with the slow pacing that happens with online games.  Maybe I should consider shifting the game to Skype or something in the future.  The rules seemed to work ok, though the dice were very harsh on the engineer.  I think that might actually be a feature, though, as the engineering character has a low engineering skill.

Still, I left the game with the sense that it's a good beginning, and I'm looking forward to the next session.