All posts in General

Dungeon World – Don’t Mess With the Paladin

By | 3 September 2011 | General | 2 Comments

Recently I had the opportunity to run two sessions of Dungeon World. First, I ran the adventure starter, Goblin Hole for a small group. And then, ran Purple Worm Graveyard for a larger group. Although both these games were run with different players, there was a common occurrence between the two: the paladin killed another player.

In the Goblin Hole adventure the paladin slew the thief. Granted this was an accident since he one shot her. And the decision was not made lightly as it was the result of a considerable amount of griefing (the thief did not like the precepts of the paladin’s order). In the second adventure the effort was more intentional. As the paladin went charging into a room the ranger attempted to trip him. This lead to a rapid series of events that resulted in the paladin beating the ranger to death. The odd thing in the second game was that no one tried to stop the paladin. They either stood their in shock, or healed the ranger between blows. It was a very strange occurrence.

Aside from this oddity things seemed to run pretty well. Character creation was a breeze, and there were no problems with the “no duplicate classes” rule. We had a good round table Q&A to establish bonds.

None of the players were familiar with either Apocalypse World, or Dungeon World, but this was not a limiting factor because of the focus on character activity rather than rules guiding activity. In fact the more rules the players learned the worse it got, because they stopped focusing as much on what their characters were doing, and starting reading moves as menus.

Really the only major issue I ran into was with the larger group. Players felt combats required “rounds” where everyone was afforded an opportunity for action. This felt most natural from them being primarily traditional gamers. The issue that I had with it was that it was forcing disengaged player to participate in scenes they had no interest in. To me, one of the benefits of conversation actions is that it allows players with investment in the current activity to fully engage the system, while allowing those who don’t to get a breather. I would have much rather the group broken up by their focus so we could have flipped spotlights around, but the notion of “don’t split the party” was too ingrained for the one shot.

Generally speaking I am pretty happy with the system, but I think I would like to run and play in some more games before making a final assessment of it.

Extending Action Point Utility

By | 21 August 2011 | General | No comments

4e D&D is a game that is designed for combat as all the mechanics of the game sing within. Outside of combat, play is more loosely defined and most of the game’s mechanics are no longer engaged. In this post I am taking a look at the utility of action points.

Action points are only usable within combat, they serve no other purpose than to give a player a free standard action once per encounter. It seems to me that we can open this up and come up with other uses for these action points. For inspiration, I have pulled from the concept of fate points from FATE.

On the right we have a sample power to replace the standard action point. Basically, we’re looking at an at will power that can be employed for a variety of purposes, many of which do not specifically apply to combat. While the power is listed as no action, it is limited to once per round to prevent excessive use. Let’s take a look at the possible effects we can achieve with this new action point.

Gain a standard action this turn

This effect is the standard action point effect, and is restrained by a special condition that it can only be used once per encounter. Its a solid effect, and there is no reason to change it here.

Gain a +2 bonus to a non-damage roll

This is straight forward, and perhaps the least useful effect for the power. It only grants a +2 bonus, but it can be invoked after die roll, which can be a life saver.

Press an advantage for a +4 bonus to a non-damage roll

This is largely situation. Basically, what we are looking at is allow a player to exploit a logical advantage they have within the fiction that is not regularly supported by the mechanics of the game. For example, a character may be attacking with a height advantage, or bringing up damaging evidence in an argument that sways the crowd in his favor. Situational bonuses are a pretty common DMing practice, this is just applying a specific mechanic for it.

Make a declaration

Basically, this allows a player to assert a minor fact into the fiction. This is not indented to hand wave obstacles or instantly solve problems. For example, a character finds himself in a dark dungeon without any of his possessions. He finds an unlit torch, and spends an action point to make a declaration “they didn’t find my flint and steel” so now he can light the torch. Not a huge deal, but helpful. This could also be used in other situations, for example the characters encounter a soldier. She happens to be in the army one of the characters is/was in. That player makes a declaration “I know her from the war.” While not directly important the declaration introduces some interesting possibilities for the story.

Invoke for Effect

This is similar to the the concept employed by press an advantage. Frequently in play there are events that occur that would naturally result in specific consequences that are not supported by the mechanics of the game. For example, say the characters set a boulder trap, and a monster springs the trap. The boulder strikes the monster, and does its damages, but that is it. So, one of the characters invokes an action point for the effect, “the boulder knocks the monster prone.” Again, nothing game breaking.

 

While these actions open up the action point to other areas of the game, they are still limited to being earned to once per milestone. But, now that we have all these fun new options wouldn’t it be nice to earn more action points? I’ll address that topic in a future post, but essentially my solution is to replace the milestone award with an award mechanism that uses something like the keys concept from the Shadow of Yesterday.

Dread: Beneath the Mask

By | 31 July 2011 | General | 1 Comment

A couple months ago I had the privilege of running a Dread session for my gaming group. We were taking a break from our normal Star Wars game, so it seemed like a great opportunity to try something outside the box. The adventure I ran was called “Beneath the Mask,” and is one of the included adventures that come with the book. The hook is as follows:

“It was supposed to be a relaxing weekend at your friend’s cabin. Then the power went out, and some psycho in a hockey mask attacked. Now two people are dead, and your host is a gibbering wreck. Can you make it through to morning?”

All things considered, it went much better than I expected it would. We began with a reading of the overview, and an explanation of the character questionnaire. The questionnaires where a little confusing for some of the players, but it worked out while. After they finished up everyone gave a brief introduction for their characters, and we then began the story.

The use of the Jenga tower in place of dice was genius, it really added an effective layer of tension to the game. I’ve played in horror games that attempted to be serious, and tense by they always end up deflating and turn into a kind of twisted comedy. There is a clear difference between rolling some dice and comparing against a target number, and pulling one or more blocks from a Jenga tower, the tension is built right in.

We did run into some road blocks though. We were playing on a particularly hot day, so we had the ceiling fan above the table going full blast. The fact that it kept the tower constantly swaying back and forth added a certain something to the game. Unfortunately, the tower fell twice due to interference from the fan which ultimately screwed up the pacing of the game since we determined that no one was removed from play when the fan knocked the tower down. This was not the only twist that set things a little off however.

The group never discovered who the actual killer was. When the player that was the killer was about to make his move that would reveal his identity, he knocked the tower over. So by some cruel twist of fate he was mauled by rabid racoons that were established to be in the area earlier in the game.

As a result all the character will still freaked out, and we had to go above and beyond the original adventure design to reach an alternative conclusion. The result was a dramatic escape sequence with heavy handed draw demands. It all worked out in the end, but it felt a little forced.

All things considered, I would easily recommend the game. On the undecim scale, I’d give it a 5.

Lady Blackbird: Tale of Abstraction

By | 17 July 2011 | General | No comments

Yesterday I ran my first game of Lady Blackbird. The experience went better than I expected, but not as well as I would have hoped. I’m afraid that I am large to blame for the later. Originally I was expecting a problem with the shift from task resolution to conflict resolution since the group has almost exclusively played traditional games. Thus, the tone was set early at a level of abstraction that I was not really looking for.

This level of abstraction not only got us our of the back and forth grind of encounters, but ended up pulling us out of the role playing as well. Basically the way the game played out what the group spending type describing what exactly they were going to do, and rolling. If they succeeded, we moved on, if they failed a complication was added. In that respect things worked fairly well.

The area that really came up lacking was doing things that did not require a roll. We tended to summarize activities, conversations, etc… all these efforts did allow things to proceed at a good pace, but I think we lost something in the process. Luckily, the group did seem to enjoy it in principle so we may revisit the game as some point in the future.

Effects of Magic on the Real World

By | 12 July 2011 | General | 2 Comments

One of the major issues I have associated with fantasy settings is that a world filled with magic is essentially medieval plus wizards. It seems even more silly in the context that many settings purport to be thousands of years old. So, what I want to do is make a basic game that could help model the effects magic on an otherwise realistic world.

Originally, I was thinking about setting this up in the ancient / dark ages since my interest is primary on the fantasy realm. Player knowledge would become a significant hindrance though. Effectively players would have unfair knowledge about technological development that could be leveraged with magic. In order to deal with the problem, the game should likely be set in modern day.

I am thinking of setting up a small self contained scenario for this, kind of like Lady Blackbird, with pregens. I want to keep the characters disassociated from the players in order to avoid weirdness. The scenario would kick off when the group uncovered a set of “items of power.” That essentially give those in possession of the items the ability to wield magic. Magic should not be limited in functionality, other than the final result of the effects cannot create paradoxes.

The question becomes, how to model the interaction of magic within the world. I’m thinking a basic die mechanism that can be used to measure the degree of success when attempting to use magic for something. And, while the player always succeeds, their margin of success determines the level of complication created by the act. Complications would scale relative to the effect desired.

As far as complications are concerned, I am thinking about creating some tables that could be rolled against in order to generate some ideas. But, complications that are directly relevant would be preferred. The trick of the matter is trying to figure out how something like, an unlimited supply of free gasoline would affect the world.

What would be the best way to model such a thing?

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