Save vs. Geek

In high school, I played and ran AD&D, 1st and 2nd Edition. I never used miniatures or any other counters to track position in combat. As time went on, I became a GURPS guy, which had an extensive hex-based combat system.

When d20/3E came out, I was so far away from Fantasy role-play, and set enough in my ways, that I wasn’t impressed with the changes (a gamer not likeing a new edition of D&D, never!). I didn’t really dig into the system till 3.5 came out. I was in the group that was mad that miniatures were listed as required, I mean this is D&D isn’t it? All you should need is dice, paper, and your books…

And I moved on. The funny thing is, sometime between when I stopped playing 2E, and now, traditional RPG’s became a thing that required minis to work. I know this isn’t really true, because I remember playing and having a blast without battlemaps and whatnot.

Just recently, I pulled out my old 1e core books from storage, and went through it. Best I can figure is I either ignored or winged tracking who was and wasn’t in melee, how tough it would be for someone to engage/disengage, and flanking/terrain advantages.

I mostly play 4E these days, and I’ve always so far used counters & maps/tiles to track combat location. What I wonder is, how tough would it be do hold all that stuff in your head, and would it make things more fun?

Are miniatures no different from initiative trackers, power cards, and hit point tracks? Just tools that take some of the cognitive load off the players? And does the clear representation of the battlefield that they provide impair the narrative of an encounter?

Comments welcome.

dan DnD, gaming, rpg

We started in the middle of combat, outside the Kobold lair. The players easily slipped back into the encounter. I took some time to talk tactics, especially combat advantage and flanking. Knowing the big fight coming I wanted to give them every bit of help in playing the game in order to keep me from having to deal with a TPK. We had a new player tonight, a dwarf ranger, Vita du Eldebjarg.

He leapt out of the woods, killing two minions immediately. The players made short work of the kobolds, and they knew it. A slinger began to move to the lair to alert his cohorts. Calon Lan (the dragonborn warlord) ran to the kobold and grabbed the kobold. (I like the grab rules, I know that Wotc made a big deal of simplifying them, I don’t know how bad they were before, but it was easier than I feared it’d be.)

Vita then runs of into the woods, as the other characters dispatch the remain kobolds. The encounter ends, the characters grabbed the dwarf, and began asking questions. “Who are you?” “Why are you following us?”

At first Vita refused to answer the group. As the group took a more friendly approach, he reveals that there is someone in the lair that he must kill.

They send their rouge, Felix to gather intelligence, before launching their attack. With a fair amount of luck, she was able to get enough information to formulate a plan. The ranger and rouge will wait by the waterfall entrance, while the main force makes an assault on the west entrance.

Shortly after the fight begins, we start running out of time. The wizard dropped his flaming sphere, and used it to great effect to scour some minions. The skirmishers are harrassing the rouge and ranger, who entered the lair as the guards ran to attack the main force.

We ran out of time as the second eve of kobolds became ready, so we took pictures of the map, and called it a night.

My thoughts.

This session went great. Liam, who is playing Vita, had me nervous, as him playing his concept could easily become a fun-spoiler for the rest of the group. It seems that that’s not the direction that Vita is going in, and it should be awesome. (I’d love to share it, but I need to have a discussion with the players regarding PC vs. Player knowlege). In fact, many of the players have begun to develop some interesting backstories. The setting is startig to write itself, thanks to the players.

I’m having trouble with the session format. In a 2 hour slot, there seems to be enough time for a combat, and a small amount of roleplay, I think thy there needs to be a bit more time to have the narrative not feel disjointed.

School’s going on spring break, and we’re not sure yet if we want to have a Skype session, or just miss the session.

I’ll keep you posted.

dan DnD, gaming

Here’s a much delayed session report for the second Shadowfell session at Kent.

Before we start, let me talk about the characters a little bit.

We have,

• Calon Lan – Dragonborn Warlord
• Tern – a half-mad Eladrin Wizard
• Felix – a Halfling Rouge
• Kiera – a Half-Elf Warrior
• Urist – a Dwarf Warrior

They all shared a mentor, Douven Staul, at different times in their life, and are traveling to Winterhaven to ascertain why he has gone missing. The details of the characters histories and if they know each other have been left open ended. (If you’ve played with me, you’ve probably know how I like the character to emerge from play over being plotted out before hitting the game table.)

Being new to gaming, and short on time, I’m not pressuring the players to fill out detailed character backgrounds. I intend on trying out my Action Point for flashback rule, to provide an incentive, but realize that my players don’t even know yet what parts of gaming they like. (It’s very strange, to instead of making sure that everyone’s ‘type’ is engaged, to try and do things to encourage the trying of different play styles.)

Now on to session #2.

We begin as the players approach Winterhaven, where they scoped out the town, were pretty interested in the tower in town, I think they were at first looking for an oppressive wizard keeping the town under his thumb. The players who’ve had some cRPG experience immediatley started asking around for a questgiver for the Kobold problem. Hope I figure out a way to insert goals that don’t feel like that in the future.

After an evening in town, talking to people, gathering clues about Douven and the Kobold problem, selling the supplies looted from the ambush. I don’t know what I think about vendor trash. With minions, you get bigger battles, which means more non-treasure loot. I’m tempted to do what Gamefiend (from At Will) does, and just gives the value out as loot, but I like the idea of being able to grab the gear and reuse it. Hopefully, it’ll work out, as the dropped gear is so worthless compared to the treasure, and they’ll just start leaving the gear or destroying it.

The following day, they headed out, to assualt the kobold lair (I’ve ommitted the second ambush, and plan on using the encounter later, taking a tip from The Alexandrian). The players took an direct approach, and began the attack.

Players are still having some trouble really working together, as am I with the monsters, in terms of strategy. Concealment & cover are tricky (what does two squares of forest look like for line of sight/fog of war?). The game is flowing smoothly enough that I’m comfortable trying to give better descriptions, and pulling better narration from the players. Everyone’s still trying to find their place, which is okay.

We ran out of time mid encounter, so that’s where we’re going to pick up tonight. Hopefully the party can handle the inside of the Kobold warren.

Next installment, a new ally joins our heroes. Will his dark past come back to haunt him? Can he be trusted? Only time will tell.

dan DnD, gaming

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about D&D 4e, specifically about the
skill system, and the lack of non-adventuring skills. I’ve decided
that I like this.

Here’s why.

Your typical gaming group has a mix of players, from your tactician,
who can’t help making an optimized character, to the actor, with an
involved history, and abilities that make sense for that background.
By eliminating paid backgroud skills, the actor doesn’t have to
sacrifice as much character ability to match the character’s history.

Which brings me to action points. I’m not seeing any reason for
players to save action points, so in my game, I’m going to allow
players to spend an action point, to fill in a bit of convienent
backstory. Flashback scenes are nothig new, but I like the idea of
spending a point, allowing the player to take an author stance, and
declare a thing that happened in the past, that could give a
situational bonus (I keep thinking about all the flashbacks in the
Highlander series).

What are other people using action points for?

dan DnD, gaming

Last Friday I ran my first D&D 4th Edition session. Overall, it went well, with a few bumps that I hope will work out in future sessions.

Here’s how it went.

The group was myself, and five high school students. None of us had played D&D 4, three had never played any version of D&D, two hadn’t seen dice with more or less than 6 sides, so it was a mostly inexperienced group. We planned to run for two hours, and we went over by about thirty minutes.

We’re running through Keep on the Shadowfell, which starts with a combat encounter. We used the Character Builder to print character sheets, this went really well, as it prints power cards, which proved invaluable with all the new players. It let them see what their tactical options were easily. For the next session, I’m going to make up a cheat sheet for the more traditional options (charges, grabs and the like). The fight was the five players against 8 kobolds. Withthe
new group, it took two hours to run, I think it would go much faster once everyone gets a handle on the system.

My DMing style needs a lot of work. I found it difficult for me to frame the encounter in a way that has any atmosphere. I hope that I’ll improve with practice.

We didn’t have much time for the in town interaction, which was probably for the best, it’ll give me time to get to ‘know’ the people in the town.

My biggest concern is that since the session was entirely combat, I’m concerned that there will be an expection that that’s the game. This only builds the pressure on me to balance the next session.

One of the complaints that I’ve heard about 4th edition is that it’s too reliant on miniatures, usually followed by a rant about how they sell them in a sealed box, which I admit is frustrating. We used pogs from the PDF that Firey Dragon released for the Shadowfell adventure, mounted on one inch washers, which I think went well. They worked out to about $0.12 per token.

Overall, I’m liking the game. I think it’s the most accessible version of D&D to date. I like that nobody seemed too overwhelmed by the game (I did make lots of assumptions to keep the game moving, such as not making players worry about minor actions unless they’re doing too
much, and I think that I messed up flanking).

The biggest piece of advice for someone running this version, is that the system doesn’t try to help with the more ’story focused’ aspects of the game. In third edition, there were skills that weren’t particularly useful for adventuring (craft comes to mind), which would give the DM hints for what’s important to the character, and what sort of story the player wants to have (Bangs to you Story Games hippies). This makes character background pretty important if you want a RPG that isn’t heavy on the game and light on the roleplaying. I’m not sure if I like that, but I think that it’s okay once it’s known. I’m wanting something like the old 1e specialty table. The thing I’m really excited about is the apparent focus on making it easy to play, by lowering the learning curve, and making D&D less of a lifestyle choice, I hope that this translates in more time spent playing, which is why we all game.

dan DnD, gaming