Dungeon Rules: Super Simplified S&W

After running 46 sessions of the Montporte Dungeon Campaign with three different rule sets (in succession, not concurrently!), I am thinking of how or what I would differently in terms of rules. Just as an FYI, the three rule sets were: AD&D 1e, Blood & Treasure, and D&D 5e.

Anyway, this is just a little thought experiment on rules and their impact on play, particularly in a dungeon environment. In this post, I want to write out something that I have thought about for a bit: What if the dungeon (in this case, a megadungeon) was a unique feature in an otherwise mundane and non-fantasy medieval world?

Rules
Start with the Sword & Wizardry Core Rules. Allow the players only two character choices: (1) Human Fighters and (2) Human Thieves. In this world--at least on the surface--there is no magic. And there are no elves, giants, or dragons. Just a mundane, medieval world. However, the dungeon and its connection to the mythic Deep Dark fills in the blanks with weird and magical creatures, plus magic items that are not part of the surface world's experience.

Purpose
There are several objectives in running such a narrow, stripped down version of an already rules-light system:

• Focus play on exploration, rather than tactical combat.
• Focus the players to find different and creative solutions to challenges poised by having such limited options.
• Highlight the sense of danger and weirdness with regards to the dungeon.
• Magic items become highly prized.

Challenges
There are lots of challenges to running this sort of stripped down dungeon campaign:

• YIKES! No healing spells! Part of this could be offset by adding some first aid skills, dropping in healing potions, pools, etc, and/or allowing some sort of slow recovery of hit points.
• Not much character class choice. 
• Lack of magic reduces the party's tactical options and abilities.
• It could just really suck and be boring.

Variations and Options
I have thought of some variations and options:

• Just have one class--Fighters. Perhaps players could add one or two thief skills of their choice to their characters.
• Allow all 3 (or 4) character classes from S&W Core: Cleric, Fighter, and Magic-User (and Thief). Just restrict the race to human.
• Bump up the technology so that player characters have access to early gunpowder weapons.

Conclusion
The tendency with RPGs and gamers is to push for more options and choices in character builds, classes, powers, spells, skills, and abilities. What does a game look like, feel like and play like when the rules go in the opposite direction and provide only very limited options? Does it make it less interesting or more interesting in terms of challenges in play?

Response Posts By Others [Later Edit]
Streamlined Gaming (The Clash of Spear on Shield)
Low Magic With Swords and Wizardry (Bat in the Attic)
Minimalistic Gaming (Gothridge Manor)
Weirder Fantasy (Tales of the Rambling Bumblers)
Megadungeons with Streamlined Rules (Circle of Dar Janix)

Systems Matter: Exploration, Encounters and Intent in the Megadungeon

Dungeon Explorer

I am a firm believer that the "3 E's"--Exploration, Encounters, and Extraction--do a pretty good job of capturing the essence of megadungeon play. There are plenty of rule sets that will support 3 E megadungeon play: The various editions of D&D (and its clones), GURPS, Tunnels & Trolls, and Savage Worlds are just a few of the many rule sets that will do more than an adequate job supporting dungeon play.

This being said, rule sets are not interchangeable (this, as my college physics textbook says, "is intuitively obvious to the casual observer"). Some rule sets better support tactical choices in combat while other rule sets support quick play and exploration.

Of the three, extraction seems like the least affected by the rule set used. This leaves exploration and encounters. Of these two, encounters are directly impacted by the rule set used while exploration is indirectly impacted.

Gibson Explorer

Let's assume that a dungeon-based gaming session is going to last 4 hours. Those 4 hours are going to be made up of two primary activities: Exploration and encounters. Exploration is typically a systemless activity. Player characters move through a dungeon and, regardless of system, can cover about the same amount of distance on a map per hour of session time. I am sure that there are some exceptions to this, but, in general, the speed of exploration is more a function of GM and players than it is a function of rule set and system.

This is not the case with encounters. Assuming that most encounters result in combat, then the speed in which a rule set decides an encounter determines how much time is spent on the encounter. Simple, abstract rule sets, like Swords & Wizardry, have short real time encounters. More complex tactical rule sets, like GURPS and Pathfinder, have much longer encounter resolution times. On the positive side, these rule sets offer players and GMs plenty of tactical options (I am true fan of GURPS in this regard). The down side of this tactical richness is the time it takes to resolve the encounter.

What this means for the 4 hour gaming session is that, with a more complex rule set, more time is spent on encounters. By default, less time is spent on exploration. Reducing the number of encounters is the only clear way to mitigate the impact of a tactically complex rule set.

This is where intent comes in. If the GM and players have a common intent within the dungeon campaign, then it becomes much easier to be select a rule set and, more importantly, be content with the strengths and limitations of that rule set after many sessions of play. If the intent is to maximize tactical choices for players in a dungeon setting, then GURPS is the way to go in my book. If the intent is to maximize the amount of geography covered so that it is feasible to explore a really really big dungeon, then a simpler rule set like Swords & Wizardry Core would be my choice. In each case, GM and players have to be content with what they have and also what they give up. After all, it is entirely possible to revisit the same dungeon with a different intent and rule set.

I have been thinking about rule sets and intentionality from time to time, just because I think about things like this. More recently, I have been thinking about this since we have switched to D&D 5e. It is a slick, well-designed system...I like it a lot. However, it is slower than Blood & Treasure, our previous rule set, when it comes to encounter resolution. In turn, this has taken time away from exploration. And, D&D 5e doesn't have a lot of tactical crunch in combat, thus leaving our tactical crunch guys yearning for more. There is a lot of out-of-combat decisions that the players must make--which was one of the goals of D&D 5e (perhaps the subject of a future post).

As for me, my intent in creating the Montporte Dungeon was to focus on exploration, by creating a huge dungeon that would be too big to completely explore. And this dungeon would also have lots of connections to the Deep Dark...more connections to what lies below than to the surface world.

Things We Hand Wave

Here are some things that our Monday Night Gaming Group tends to hand wave (or ignore altogether):

What's Your Alignment? In most of our campaigns, player characters do not need have an alignment selected. There is still a general sense of good and evil--and also selfish apathy--but no alignment (unless the GM specifically declares we are using alignment rules).

Where Were You? If a player is absent, so is that player's character. If the player returns for the next session, the character returns as if he or she had not been absent. Usually there is some sort of side comment about long bowel movements, but that is just because we are not wholesome people.

Who's the GM? Over the course of any given year, most of the group will have a turn at running some sessions. Right now, we have the Montporte Dungeon campaign going as the long-term game, +Chris C.'s (The Clash of Spear on Shield) Ephemera campaign as the every-once-and-a-while backup, and then +Rob Conley will step in to run some sessions. Eventually this will shift with another GM and campaign being the long-term focus.

How Will It End? While a campaign setting can be used over and over, the long-term campaign will end somehow, with the player characters and GM collaboratively latching onto a final big-ending story arc. Not my particularly strength as a GM.

Do You Like Me? Our group is committed to the time we have carved out for gaming, but we are also friends. We B.S. before and after sessions about gaming, but also about life. We also have plenty of cameo appearances by spouses, children, dogs, cats, and Ivy's middle finger. I think we have managed to pull together a good group of folks who love gaming, but also value the people they game with.

What Should I Say? Nothing. Our group has no safe word.

Can I Go There? No. We tread lightly in areas involving child abuse and sexual violence. For me personally, I would not go there. My wife works in the field of child abuse investigation and I have no desire to include it in my RPGs.

How does your gaming group function? What would be your ideal group?

Five for Friday 31: New-To-Me Games in 2014

I had a groovy gaming year in 2014. With the exception of a rough patch at the end of the summer when work kept me from gaming, it was an outstanding year. The best part were the friends in our Monday Night Über Gaming Group gathering on Monday nights and, as a group, at Con on the Cob. Happily, at least for the purposes of this edition of Five for Friday, I had a chance to play five new games (not counting playtesting for +Tim Shorts and +Rob Conley).

• Cryptworld: I had a chance to play this at Con on the Cob, with +Tim Snider as our Crypt Master. I fell in love with the system (and hope to use it with our in-house gaming group in 2015). The session itself was a blast and I hope to see some of the same men and women at Con on the Cob next year.
• Dungeons & Dragons 5e: +Rob Conley ran our Monday Night group through The Lost Mine of Phandelver, with Rob being his excellent DM self. We are just starting to use D&D 5e in the Montporte Dungeon campaign, which I am running.
• Dungeon Crawl Classics: Another Con on the Cob session, completely taken over by the Monday Night boys. +Roy Snyder gave us all a good time. I could see use DCC to run a wild and woolly mini-campaign in the Montporte Dungeon.
• The Esoterrorists: +Tim Shorts ran this as a side session for the Monday Night boys at Con on the Cob. I really enjoyed the Gumshoe system...I had a set of really elaborate color-coded notes by the end of our session. I am hoping that Tim will finish on some Monday nights what we started at the Con (hint hint).
• Labyrinth Lord: Okay. I have played Holmes D&D, AD&D 1e, and Swords & Wizardry, so I have come close. But the B/X version of D&D came out when I was in college and my time and money spent on gaming was waning (so no B/X and, much later, no LL). At Con on the Cob, I finally had a chance to play LL, in a well-run session by +Jim Yoder.

Sadly, there was no GURPS for me in 2014, so I haven't a chance to stretch my GURPS newbie wings. There are some other games where my hopes to play never came to fruition (Dead Inside, Don't Rest Your Head, and Trail of Cthulu, to name a few).

Five for Friday 29: Things I Like About D&D 5e

I decided that when I restarted my Rusty Battle Axe blog, I was not going to do reviews. I will, however, occasionally highlight a product that I like. It turns out that the newest iteration of Dungeons & Dragons has made it to that list. Here are five things that I like about it:

• Excellent Player's Handbook: The latest edition of the Player's Handbook is at the top of the list, in terms of the rules themselves, organization, clarity of content, etc. The D&D team managed to create a product that serves newbies and RPG veterans equally well. While it is more complicated that AD&D 1e, the rules are more cohesive. And it is far less clunky than D&D 3.x/Pathfinder.
• Advantages/Disadvantages: What a simple and elegant system! By adding a second die to a die role, the game gains more texture and variability at the cost of a tiny bit of complexity. 
• Death Rolls: This adds a clear rule for how to handle that often vague zero hit point thing. At the same time, it adds high drama to that otherwise passive act of lying in a pool of one's own blood. 
• Groovy Character Classes: I like what WotC has done with the character classes in 5e. Lots of player choices without a lot of overlap. And the choices matter, each class has strengths and weaknesses. There are a lot of strategic and tactical options for players and DMs alike without creating a creaky clunky Byzantine ruleset.
• The Monster Manual: The monsters actually get the biggest overhaul. I have only started reading the MM, but it is very well thought out and every monster has a twist that will matter a great deal in play. 

D&D 5e is definitely in the D&D family, moreso than 4e, for sure. That being said, it is its own version. It is clear that, beyond the character class system and d20 foundation, the designers held nothing sacred. The ruleset is elegant and well-designed. While I will almost always go for the simplicity of Swords & Wizardry Core or Delving Deeper, I am really enjoying playing D&D 5e.

All My Characters

No Frilly Elven Characters on this List

Not much of a post. Just a list of characters that I have played in the last five years or so. You'll notice that there are no elves on this list. I have been an elf-free zone going all the way back to 1977. I have played humans, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes, but I cannot bring myself to play an elf:

• Syrivald: Human Magic User (Mage of Thoth) in +Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands setting, using Swords & Wizardry Core (retired).
• Chael: Human Fighter in a short-lived Castles & Crusades campaign (retired).
• Corum: Human Cleric in a campaign run by +Tim Shorts, using AD&D 1e (retired).
• Delvin: Dwarf Warrior in +Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands setting, using GURPS (retired).
• Belafore: A Human Viking Priest in a GURPS one shot (retired).
• Ampersand: Human Burglar in a playtest of +Rob Conley's Fudge-based rules for the Majestic Wilderlands (in limbo).
• Hyroth: Human Battle-Mage in +Tim Shorts' homebrew game and setting (active, but currently creeped out).
• Darius: Human Magic-User in +Chris C.'s Ephemera setting, using Swords & Wizardry Core (active). 

This list doesn't include a few characters that I have created but never played, including one for Dresden RPG* and one for Supernatural RPG.

*It is a shame that the Dresden RPG campaign was never played as my wife had coolest character ever--a teenage Amish mage. Not many spellcasters sport a head covering and a cape dress.

Improvisation

I have the feeling that when most people hear the word "improvise," they think of something that is the opposite of planning, as in "I didn't plan for it, I just improvised." In other words, improvising is the same as winging it. Following this logic, improvisation doesn't require work or planning; in many ways it is the opposite.

I think of improvising differently, perhaps because I have been playing music since I was a young child. As a musician, improvisation is an activity that takes skill and practice. To be good at improvisation requires an understanding of music theory (intuitive and cognitive), a good ear, and enough chops (skill on the instrument) to create the appropriate musical sounds on the fly. Each musician develops improvisation skills a bit differently. For me, it comes from time spent mastering various kinds of scales, rhythms and chord progressions (building on the blocks of melody, harmony and rhythm)--that it what I call "practice." It is very similar to drills performed by athletes. And it is different than learning and playing songs--I consider that "rehearsal." Important and necessary, but it doesn't develop me as a musician in the same way that practice does.

Disciplined Practice & Preparation: A Key to Improvisation

I am able to improvise as a musician because I prepare and practice. The musicality of my improvisation is a result of my understanding of music, a trained ear, and enough skill/muscle memory with my chosen instruments to create something interesting in the moment. When I do not put time and effort into practice, I quickly lose my creative edge and I have a harder time playing something interesting when I improvise.

I find the same thing is true when I am running a gaming session. I am able to improvise best when I am well-prepared and I have put in the necessary time to plan. I am able to draw upon the complexities of the world I am creating and the vast resources of gaming community to respond creatively to player activities during a session. That to me is improvising. I am not smart enough to run a good session by winging it any more than I can create an interesting guitar solo without practice.

I relearn this every time I run a session without preparation, as I have done the last few weeks in our Montporte Campaign. I have been run ragged by work and have nothing left in the tank to devote to preparation and planning. The less I prepare and plan and am forced to improvise, the less I am able to improvise effectively. I just end up drawing blank after blank. I notice myself struggling; it is probably not apparent to the players in any given session. However, there is a cumulative impact on not preparing that makes the sessions less interesting and challenging for players.

Like any analogy, there is a point where the analogy between playing an RPG and playing music breaks down. However, because both music and RPGs have elements of performance art to them and they are also typically group activities, there are a number of analogies that can be drawn. Improvisation is one such analogy.

The Funnel--Sandbox to Conclusion

Everyone in our Monday Night Gaming Group enjoys being involved as a player and as a GM. This means that when you are a player, you are also waiting your turn to be the GM. And, if you are the GM, you have four other people patiently waiting for you to get off the stage so they get their turn.

What has developed in our group is an unspoken practice of GMing for about 18 months and wrapping up with a clear climactic conclusion. No one has told me to do it as GM, but it is clear that this how the guys who have been in the group the longest do it (intentional or not, I don't know). Our Monday Night Gaming Group campaigns have all tended to look like this:

This is a descriptive diagram, not prescriptive. There is no rule, agreement or statement that says a campaign has to follow this pattern in our Monday Night Gaming Group. They just do, after about 18 months or so (40-50 sessions).

Design It To Run: How I Am Designing & Running the Montporte Dungeon

We are closing in on Session 30 of the Montporte Dungeon Campaign and I feel like I can now speak with a bit of experience about designing and running a megadungeon. Back in the 1970s, I started with a dungeon-only campaign as my Holmes D&D set came with dungeon geomorphs, rather than a module. None of my fellow gamers owned modules, just lots of graph paper. So running a dungeon was our default. But that was a long time ago and I hadn't really attempted to run a megadungeon since.

What follows is descriptive, not prescriptive. I am attempting to describe how I am designing and running a dungeon, not how you should do it. Most weeks, I am scrambling to get ready for game night in between family, work, and my music obligations. So with those caveats, here is my approach:

Campaign Mindset: From the start, my mindset has been to run it as a campaign setting and not an adventure module on steroids (which is how most published megadungeons appear to me). Rather than focus on rooms, I focus on areas, peoples, etc and then fill in the details as needed (or as I have time), just as if I were running a typical non-dungeon campaign.

My Dungeon: The Montporte Megadungeon is designed by me for me to run. And I run it with people I know. I am not creating something for publication or something to even post on my blog for others. It is very specific to me and our Monday Night Gaming Group. I don't feel like I have an audience of gamers/consumers to please, just a group of friends to entertain.

As Needed: I only create the dungeon a little in advance of where the players might go. At the beginning, this meant a fair amount of mapping. But now, not so much. There are several reasons I do this: (1) I don't have the time or energy to create a 20 level dungeon all at once; (2) I don't always know what will catch the players' interest and I would rather have things be more open-ended and flexible; and (3) Inspiration comes to me slowly and if I try to do too much at once, the dungeon turns out bland. I need to give myself time to let ideas germinate.

Mapping Part 1: Fortunately, I love to draw dungeon maps. Unfortunately, we are playing online with a VTT (our group uses either Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, depending on the GM...I opted to use Roll20). This means that I could either draw maps by hand, scan them, and upload them...or create maps digitally. I opted to create them digital in AutoREALM, which is a slower process for me, but it cuts out the conversion process.

Mapping Part 2: I usually start my mapping process of a level by creating a 5x5 grid in Publisher. Each square in the grid is 10", which means I use the custom setting to create a 52" x 52" page (allowing for 1" margins). I then place a text box in each grid, describing in as little detail as I can, what is in each square. In dungeon terms, each square represents 300" x 300", the same sized used in Stonehell. I then, as I need to, create the detailed 300' x 300' maps in AutoREALM, with a 5'/square scale. I convert it a JPEG and--Presto!--I have my map for Roll20. I can also drop the JPEG file into my Publisher grid and create level map, which can also easily be converted to JPEGs. By using blackened rectangles to cover unexplored areas, I can create overview maps for the players like the one below (it takes about 15 minutes):

Level 1, From the Players' Perspective

Seeds: I try to drop adventure or plot seeds into the campaign as we play (from this blog post by Michael Curtis {The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope}). It is up to the players to decide what to do with them. This only works for me if I do not plan details too far ahead. I have had to let go of my inner-world builder's conceit of "this place exists whether or not a PC ever sees it." It should feel that way to the players, but that is not how I am operating behind the scenes.

Tropes Part 1 ("the lack thereof"): For the most part, I have avoided the OSR cliches and tropes--random tables, lots of slash and grab sessions, and traps for the purposes of having traps. It is not that I have a philosophical or ideological reason to avoid them. My reasoning is more pragmatic: It takes a surprising amount of time to create a random encounter table that might only be used 1 or 2 times. It is easier to just create the encounter than to create the table to generate it.

Tropes Part 2 (my trope): My one conceptual trope has been the computer game, Myst. I am not trying to recreate Myst as we play, but I like the idea of using interlocking clues and details so that the players gradually piece together the multiple back stories of the dungeon. There are a few chatty NPCs in the dungeon, plus lots of scrolls and documents. In fact, every encounter is a clue to the dungeon. Not all clues are earth shattering, but they all pile on one another to paint a picture and tell the story of the dungeon.

Improvisation and Planning: I only occasionally use set-piece encounters that are tied to specific physical locations within the dungeon. They are there, but there are not a lot of them. I do, however, improvise a lot. For a lot of people, improvisation implies a lack of planning or forethought, kind of like "winging it." As a musician, improvisation means something different to me. Improvisation means creating responding to others as you play, but it still requires as much planning, forethought, etc. I spend a considerable about of time planning for each session, but I look at options the players have in front of them and how they might respond, rather than planning specific encounters ahead of time. I am not sure if this makes sense to you, the reader, but I have found it to be my style of GMing...at least most of the time.

Rationalization and Logic: The Montporte Dungeon has a series of backstories that provide an inner logic for myself and the players. However, it only works when we (our group) let go of (1) the question of why a big multi-layer hole in the ground would be there in the first place; and (2) previous preconceptions about megadungeon play (this has been a bit of a struggle as the cliches of dungeon play haunted us when we started).

Inspiration: I read a lot--close to a book a week--and while I do not plan my reading around gaming, I often read things that end up in the dungeon. A recent example are the small bottles of impossibly cold water (why did it not turn to ice?) found in Session 22. These were inspired by So Cold the River, a novel by Michael Koryta. My days with the Appendix N types of literature are mostly in the past, but I am finding inspiration in unlikely sources. This has proven to be a benefit as some of the guys in our gaming group have way more gaming stuff than me. I have thus far avoided the dreaded "You pulled this from B1, didn't you?" or "Hey, this sounds like Dragon #135."

Further Reading: John Arendt (Dreams in the Lich House) recently published two posts on megadungeons that present an interesting point and counterpoint: You Will Never Finish That Dungeon and From an Alternate Universe. I found them interesting and helpful. For me, Michael Curtis' (The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope) post, With New Old Eyes, is my "go to" reading for running a megadungeon. Peter D (Dungeon Fantastic) wrote an excellent post, Megadungeon Play Reflections-The Immediate and the Cumulative, that lives up to "Fantastic" moniker. I have previously tried to capture a bit of my own thinking on designing and running megadungeons: Five Paths For Dungeon Design and Creating Meaningful Choices in a Dungeon-Centered Campaign.

Heisenberg's Dungeon

"Intuitively obvious to
the casual observer"
as my college physics
text book would note
(after a page of calculus)

James Mal (Grognardia) published a post back in October 2009, entitled Schrödinger's Dungeon. James' contention was that it is nearly impossible to publish a true megadungeon. Leaving aside the slightly sad irony of this statement in light of the Dwimmermount Kickstarter (unless he has used the Dwimmermount Kickstarter to prove his point, in which case supporters were really funding a research grant to prove his hypothesis...but I digress)...anyway, leaving aside the irony, I actually believe his point has some merit. But I prefer Heisenberg to Schrödinger.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is simple to state (so long as one is not interested in the why, then you have to do math stuff...not so simple): When it comes to subatomic particles, we can either precisely know the location of the particle or its momentum, but not both. The more we know about one, the less we can know about the other.

In my mind, there is a certain analogy with megadungeons, the more we define it by maps, keys, descriptions and tables, the less mega it becomes. Mega implies something that is almost infinite in scope: Endless caverns, layers, an underworld of tunnels and rooms. Defining it with a map limits its size.

I have purchased a number of published megadungeons, including Stonehell, Barrowmaze, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, and Rappan Athuk. I love them (and shamelessly borrow from them) but they all seem like there is something not quite mega about them. Maybe it is just the experience of being able to see a whole dungeon level, just by opening the book and looking at a map, that makes them smaller. But I suspect it is something more. Putting a megadungeon in print is much like adding a butterfly to an insect collection. You have to kill it to keep it. You have to kill the megadungeon, destroying its growth and dynamic qualities in the process, in order to publish it. More than anything, the mystery and the sense of the vast unknown seems to get snuffed by the act of printing.

Maybe it is just me. I am not certain.

Catching Up...

Blogging was on the back burner for the month of November. The last big tasks of our merger were on my plate, which included me moving into my new position (COO of a larger organization) while still doing bits and pieces of my old job (CEO of a smaller organization). While the scope of my new position is narrower than my old, I went from leading 65 staff to leading 400 staff. I finally completed the physical move of my office this week and am taking the ton of Paid Time Off that I have accumulated. My body needs it, as I am in the middle of an auto-immune flareup (another reason why I have not been blogging). I am sure the flare-up is due to stress and lack of sleep, so I am mostly sleeping and reading during my time off.

I did get in a bit of gaming in November. I ran one session of the Montporte Dungeon and +Rob Conley (The Bat in the Attic) ran two playtest sessions of his revamped Majestic Wilderlands (combining elements of Fate, Fudge, GURPS, and Swords & Wizardry).

I have some catching up to do with the blog. I have three Montporte Sessions to write about and a few other items that I want to post this month.

And Then There Are My Other Lives...

I have busy this summer, way too busy. Work has been really hectic, which is not good (except in the sense that I have a job, for which I am thankful). Lots of gaming and music, both good, have been on the docket.

Here is me at work, being quoted in the local paper: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/886575_S--June-Smith-Center--Excentia-merge-organizations.html

Here is me, at work on the bass, funkifizing on Saturday night (the sound quality is not good, but you get the idea): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YQ5L63AHVs (by the way, what you can't see in the video are the four Amish guys that walked into the bar in the middle of the song...such is life in my part of Pennsylvania).

And it is almost Monday...time to grab the virtual dice and game.

Why I Blog

First off, I am really not sure why I blog. So feel free to stop reading at this point. However, lack of content has never held back before and it shall not do so now.

I mainly blog for the social aspect of it. My initial connection with our Monday Night Gaming Group came to me via blogging; in the person of +Tim Shorts (Gothridge Manor). Yet, despite the social focus, I am content with blogging to a small audience (this usually includes my wife, one or more of our cats, and my Mom...she is so proud to see where my two graduate degrees have led me).

I don't have products to sell, a soapbox from which to preach, nor an axe to grind. For me, it is mostly about  the joy of gaming, the social connections, the laughing with friends while at the gametable, the creativity, and the stress relief. Blogging is merely an extension of those things.

More recently, I have found it useful to use my blog to post campaign information as I GM. Our Monday Night Gaming Group connects via Skype and some sort of virtual gametable (either Fantasy Grounds II or Roll20). It can be difficult to keep track of campaign information, so the blog comes in handy as I can send them links during gaming sessions rather than files.

This is my second go around with RPG blogging. I don't know that this second attempt is a whole lot different than the first, except that I am taking it less seriously. At heart, I am a casual gamer. I don't lose sleep over D&D Next, ascending versus descending armor classes, Kickstarters, a cinematic versus realistic approach to GURPS, or whose posted what on the various RPG boards. I just like to roll dice on occasion, laugh with friends, and blog about it.

Montporte To Do List

I have been running the Montporte Dungeon Campaign more often than I expected, not that I am complaining as it has been a groovy time. However, it started off as a one-shot and I am realizing that I need to do some catch-up work on both the setting and the house rules. I need to get some stuff written up for myself and for the players. I'll be doing it via my blog, not because anyone in the blogosphere would find it interesting, but because it is easy for me to write it and then send out links to the group.

As far as the setting goes, I will need to:

• Flesh out the town of Montporte: Merchants, religious organizations, wizarding-types, and so on. The usual town-next-to-the-dungeon stuff.
• Flesh out the area right around the dungeon: Maps, encounters, etc.
• Write up the Planes: The Planes come into play in this world and there are four "nearby" planes--The home of the Fey; The home of the dragons; The home of demons; and The home of madness.
• Write up the "physics" of the place: The four elements (they are not separate planes in Montporte); the three energies, etc.

As far as house rules, I want to stick to the Blood & Treasure rules as much as possible. I have studiously avoided my usual path of rewriting rules, classes, etc. Mostly I just need to clarify and codify rulings that I have already made in game:

• Flaming oil: The boys are using a lot of it and I need to provide more clarity on this.
• 0-Level Spells: I am allowing spell casters to use there 0-level spells at will, but there are certain spells in Blood & Treasure where this doesn't work. The spells that do healing or damage are the main examples.
• Character Creation: I just need to spruce up the rules we started with.

I want to keep the house rules simple enough so that, if we switch to a different ruleset (e.g. Swords & Wizardry or maybe GURPS DF), I won't have to do a lot of extra to convert the campaign.

I am also mindful of the fact that there are some things that I need to do a better job with...mainly tracking time and resources. It gets tricky when we players are not always available every session or we put Montporte on hold for a few weeks while adventuring in Rob's (Bat in the Attic) Majestic Wilderlands campaign.

Five for Friday 24: Summer Vacation

"The first day on my vacation, what I did on my summer vacation, the first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then, I went downtown to look for job. I did not find one. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The second day on my summer vacation, I woke up, then I went downtown to look for a job. I did not find one. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The third day on my summer vacation, I woke up..."--Cheech & Chong

This week I enjoyed a staycation. It has been hot and humid, plus some nice convection thunderstorms almost every afternoon, but I have enjoyed the time off nonetheless. Here is what I have been doing:

• Gaming: We had a GURPS session on Monday night in Rob's (Bat in the Attic) Majestic Wilderlands campaign. It was an awesome session. I have also been working on maps for my Montporte Dungeon campaign.
• Grilling: My goal has been to grill everyday (charcoal and wood...no gas). I have had to dodge thunderstorms, but so far I have grilled: Piri Piri chicken kabobs; Beef fajitas with grilled onions and peppers; Sage/thyme/juniper pork tenderloin with grilled fennel & grilled tomato salad, plus grilled pineapple for dessert; Orange sesame tofu and grilled sesame asparagus. Still to come: Pizza; Salmon; Mexican tofu and grilled pineapple salsa.
• Gigging: I played music last Saturday and am playing out again this Friday night.
• Reading: I finished up Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne by Pierre Riche and also read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. Next up is the second half of The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelanzy, which contains books 6-10 of the Chronicles of Amber.
• Sleep: Work has been running me ragged so it is nice to sleep. I have made it a priority and my body is thanking me for it.

What are you doing for your summer vacation?

The Group

I am frequently struck by the similarities between playing music and playing games. You need the right stuff--so there is a lot shopping and buying of cool things. And there is always one more thing that you just have to have (unfortunately, music involves more big ticket items...although my recent Frog God Games purchase felt like a music equipment purchase). Like gaming, genre certainly matters in music--you want to play stuff you like and not play stuff you can't stand.

What often gets left out of the conversation is the power of a good group. While the group isn't the only thing that matters, I am finding that the chemistry of the group is more important to me than anything else. I play music and role-playing games for enjoyment. When the enjoyment ends, so does my interest. The picture above captures the chemistry of my music group during our very first gig. And the chemistry gets better as we go along. Every rehearsal includes at least one total meltdown due to laughs. The more fun we have, the better we sound.

Our Monday Night Gaming Group is much the same way. As time goes on, the system and settings matter less to me than the laughing, the shared adventure stories, and the support we occasionally give each other when one of us faces a real life challenge. We are a gaming group, not a support group, but the friendship and the chemistry matter a great deal to me. That is the groovy thing about tabletop RPGs to me--the people matter and the group is the thing.

RPG Campaigns: Why They Fly, Why They Flop

Flight or flop?

I make no claims to expert knowledge on any subject, save procrastination (someday I will get around to writing a post about that topic). However, I have been involved in my share of successful campaigns as a player or GM. I have also been there to witness a few flops firsthand. So I thought I would post a few observations on why some campaigns seem to take off while others flop.

I suppose "successful campaign" needs a bit of definition. My Dr. Handwave definition of success is anything that the participants enjoyed and would do again. My Dr. Handwave definition of campaign is an multi-session game that involves the same setting and a continuity of players and adventure arcs.

In general, I would have to say that the successful campaigns I have been involved with were based on three factors: (1) Players getting along with each other; (2) Commitment of players and GM to meet on a schedule for more than a few sessions; and (3) Shared participation and enjoyment in the creative process that is a part of tabletop RPG gaming.

I am sure there are lots of other reasons that I could identify, but those are my big three. I think you have to have #1 and #2, to get to #3, but #3 is not an automatic outcome. I also think the challenge is that #1 and #2 are about the individuals, not about the setting or system. Get the wrong people together? It won't work. Get the right people together but through in too many scheduling complications? It won't work either.

I have experienced several flops, both as GM and as a player. It is easier to identify a specific reason for failure than a specific reason for success. Here are two flops and one fizzle:

Flop #1: My worst flop as a GM was the result of using a series of adventure paths. "Series" is a misnomber because we never made it through the first. It was a bad match with my GM style and an even worse match for the players. Having a GM who is "meh" on the whole thing doesn't get the players very enthusiastic.

Flop #2: I tried to get my old gaming group from high school back together via Skype. It was really fun for two sessions and then the reality of schedules started working against us. No one could commit to more than one night a month and the odds were against us finding a common night every month. We maybe had two more sessions over five months. One of the guys was in community theater, another guy did shift work, and I was in another gaming group plus was out and about playing music.

Fizzle #1: My in-house face-to-face Castles & Crusades campaign was a great success until half the group (the kids) all went off to college, leaving the rest of us (the parents) staring at empty chairs. I don't view this as a flop, but I do wish I would have had some sort of big ending to wrap things up. Instead, it fizzled with a lot of loose ends.

What has been your experience with campaigns? Why have your successes been successful? What were the reasons for your flops?

[Note: Whatever thinking that is behind this post was triggered by Peter D's post, What Would You Change if You Could Reboot Your Campaign?]

And the Answer is "Hit Points"

Take one of the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons (or your favorite retroclone), strip away everything except the one most fundamental and essential element. What do you have left?