Just a little note in regard to Acavel's comments about hitting a skeleton with a mace:
I don't think there's any bonus for hitting the skeleton with a blunt weapon, just that there's a penalty for hitting them with anything else (swords and arrows, e.g.)
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
I want the upcoming campaign to be as easy to use as possible. I think I can set up the website so that you log in, and then can see your character sheet online. That way, when you check out the website from your vacation in Maui, you'll know what spells you've got, what's in your backpack, etc.
Does that sound like a feature you'd want? Is it something you'd use regularly enough that I should look into it further?
Does that sound like a feature you'd want? Is it something you'd use regularly enough that I should look into it further?
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Jacob/Linnam asks about starting up his character, and while it'll be after Christmas before I'm able to offer sweet campaignin' action, any and all comers are welcome to start putting together characters now. If there's more you want to know about the campaign background, or you want some seed ideas, just let me know.
(If, contrary to expectations, I get more than a dozen responses from people that want to play, I'll have to cut down the size and/or restructure things.)
In keeping with Principle 1, all that is required for a new character is to send me a paragraph (or a few) describing who they are. Keep in mind that characters are essentially normal people with some exceptional aptitudes and vast potential. So if you say "Bjorn is a superhuman who is great at everything" what you'll get is a character who is above average in everything, but in practical terms not very much above average. If you want to be quick as a cat, say so. Insofar as I can from your description, I'll make sure my description (and internal rule details) are true to your character concept.
And I will take just about any character you want, with the following conditions: if you want to be someone that wouldn't be in a fantasy medieval-European style town, I leave it to you to come up with the backstory of why your alien cowboy (or whatever) is there and how they've managed to fit in, insofar as they have. Second, if you want to be the evil villain, or the king, or whatever, that's fine too -- but you'll probably have to accept that that character may not have daily interactions with everyone else. Furthermore, in the case of the king, you might have some very atypical to D&D situations to cope with. While in the case of the evil villain, you should come to terms with the fact that your character is not going to win in the long term, and is much likelier to come to a bad end than the "regular" player characters.
If you do want to try these funky character choices out, I further encourage you to take on several roles, from grunts to town guard captains, so that you'll have more interactions with the other players. I am more than happy to offer such "temporary roles" to people interested in a change of pace.
(If, contrary to expectations, I get more than a dozen responses from people that want to play, I'll have to cut down the size and/or restructure things.)
In keeping with Principle 1, all that is required for a new character is to send me a paragraph (or a few) describing who they are. Keep in mind that characters are essentially normal people with some exceptional aptitudes and vast potential. So if you say "Bjorn is a superhuman who is great at everything" what you'll get is a character who is above average in everything, but in practical terms not very much above average. If you want to be quick as a cat, say so. Insofar as I can from your description, I'll make sure my description (and internal rule details) are true to your character concept.
And I will take just about any character you want, with the following conditions: if you want to be someone that wouldn't be in a fantasy medieval-European style town, I leave it to you to come up with the backstory of why your alien cowboy (or whatever) is there and how they've managed to fit in, insofar as they have. Second, if you want to be the evil villain, or the king, or whatever, that's fine too -- but you'll probably have to accept that that character may not have daily interactions with everyone else. Furthermore, in the case of the king, you might have some very atypical to D&D situations to cope with. While in the case of the evil villain, you should come to terms with the fact that your character is not going to win in the long term, and is much likelier to come to a bad end than the "regular" player characters.
If you do want to try these funky character choices out, I further encourage you to take on several roles, from grunts to town guard captains, so that you'll have more interactions with the other players. I am more than happy to offer such "temporary roles" to people interested in a change of pace.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Two scouts or one: the effect of skill check rules (reference to dndblog.powerblogs.com)
So, the following issue has come up: the party has one rogue, Acavel, who's the best hider and silent mover (understandably). Barik, a ranger, could pour his skill points into hiding and moving silently, and together with a cloak of elvenkind or armor of shadows, could be as good at hiding, and a few ranks lower at moving silently. On the other hand, the one rogue could use the armor instead, and be _really_ good at hiding. So do we want one character to sneak around, recon, etc., or two?
Tactically, there's a lot to be said for having a team of two instead of one. If they find something, one can report back while the other keeps an eye on the situation; if they run into trouble, one can hold off the hordes while the other gets help, or at least the two can support each other in an organized retreat. Or, they could go off into different directions, surrounding an opponent or covering more area faster.
Here's the problem: suppose the two of them are headed down the corridor, and something might hear them. How's that get resolved? The way I interpret the rules (at least at first), they each roll their Move Silently checks, and the something rolls its Listen check, and if it gets a higher score than one of them, they're rumbled.
Probability-wise, this is quite a bit worse than one of them going alone, even if they have the same skill. In that case, it's the same probability as if the one going alone rolled his Move Silently, and Evil DM (tm), after seeing that roll was too good, said "naw, don't like that...roll again, see if you fail this time." To put it even more mathematically, if either scout had an M in N chance of being undetected (i.e., 1 in 2=50%), the two together have an M squared in N squared chance (25%, in the previous parenthetical).
That's a pretty vicious penalty. So PCs adopting the two-scout strategy should reconsider -- although a two-watchman strategy when you're camped out makes a whole lot of sense.
Unless you're a diehard fan of D&D rules trivia, stop reading now. The last paragraph was the most useful comment you're going to get out of this.
Group skill checks are one of the times when the situation for a group of NPCs need not be symmetrical to that of a group of PCs, although it's quite unclear. The DMG's section on Skill Checks (3.5e, p.30) indicates that for "influencing one person, creature, or group" or to "perceive one sound or sight", the "DM decides if NPCs are acting as individuals or as a group." How or if this applies in opposed checks is not at all clear; I go into detail about some possible schemes at the bottom of this post, below the line of asterisks. Don't read that unless even the other diehard D&D trivia fans think you're a freak. In the meantime, let's assume that this grouping thing doesn't apply; in opposed checks, every PC rolls and every NPC rolls, and each Spotter/Listener detects all the Hiders/Movers who scored less than they did. This makes it awfully hard for anyone to sneak past a group, and can generate boatloads of die rolls, but at least it's "fair".
How hard is "awfully hard"? Consider a "commando team" of rangers, sneaking up on a camp of orcs all gathered by the campfire singing "Kum-bay-ya". Let's say there's 5 rangers, around 9th level. Counting their +4 from dexterity and +2 for circumstances and the max +12 skill ranks, they're +18 on both Hide and Move Silently checks. These are just a score of grunt orcs, and let's give them a -2 for circumstances, so they're +0 on both the Spot and Listen checks. Unless a ranger rolls a 1 and an orc rolls a 20, the rangers won't get discovered.
The odds of one orc rolling a 20 and one ranger rolling a 1 are 1/400 (0.25%). But the chance of at least one of the 20 orcs rolling a 20 and one of the rangers rolling a 1 are 14.47%. And that's just the chance of the rangers being spotted. The chances of them being spotted _or_ heard are 26.9%, just over 1 in 4.
Here's a more typical example. Suppose a single rogue has a +10 to their Move Silently roll, and he or she rolls a 10 while trying to sneak pass a room. If it's got one guard in it, with a +6 Listen check, the rogue has a 70% chance the guard won't roll the 15 or more he needs. Change the number of guards to 4, and that chance drops to 24%. That seems low to me -- although if the "opposed check" were a tug-of-war, maybe that'd be about right. One way to try to fix this would be to give the guards all a -2 circumstance penalty (because they're distracting to each other) -- then the chance of the rogue's success improves some, up to 40%.
Or we could pretend three of the guards are really doing "aid another" attempts for the first one's listen check -- I don't even know how that would change the probabilities, but it could make things worse, not better. Or maybe after the second guard, the other two don't really help any, and can't make checks. And if that isn't complicated enough, how do we treat the inverse problem of a group trying not to be detected? Do we not have people after the first two make checks, because they don't contribute to the silence?
The simplest alternative system would be that in any opposed check, each side only makes one roll: the best Spotter/Listener rolls vs. the worst Hider/Mover, for example. But that ignores the contribution (or lack thereof) of the rest of the people entirely. Why is it always Hawkeye that catches the goblins? And does he see all the goblins, or just Klompy? What if some of the quieter goblins were coming from the other side? Do we treat them as a separate group? Oh geez, I thought this was the problem we were trying to simplify away...
********************************************************************************
[This is the consideration of "asymmetrical" opposed checks, where a group of NPCs is treated differently from a group of PCs. If you haven't been riveted by the post so far, you're really going to despise the time you'd be wasting if you read this. You've been warned.]
The examples in the DMG indicate that a PC would get one check to spot a group of NPCs at a distance [Note: it's not clear if this is an opposed check, but it seems not], but that a PC Moving Silently would face the Listen checks of every NPC in a group. But what about a group of PCs Moving Silently? Do the NPCs get one number to beat, or the worst of two? There isn't a clear example I can find in the DMG of opposed checks where the NPCs are treated as a group -- would that mean they make one roll, or that they only have to oppose one roll, or that NPCs each make their own roll in opposed checks, and are never treated as a group? The third case makes the most sense, that I talked about above, although the first one isn't completely crazy. The second one is in fact completely crazy, and I'm worried about my own mental health just as a result of thinking about it.
The first case isn't symmetric, but it's not entirely unbalanced: if a group of NPCs rolls once for the whole group, that means they'd be harder for an individual to spot that a group of PCs (since they'd only have to succeed once, while each PC in a group would have to succeed), but they'd be worse at spotting an individual (since they've only got one chance to succeed, while the PCs would have a chance each.) If a group of NPCs and a group of PCs try to sneak past one another, there's still a good chance they'll run into each other, since the PCs have a lot of chances for high Spot/Listens, but just as many chances for low Hide/Moves. The chance would be considerably reduced from the "everyone rolls against everyone" scheme, however. The PCs would be wise to have multiple people on watch, but only send one out for scouting reports, so they're not fighting the probabilities.
The other asymmetric case is that the group of NPCs only opposes one roll (that is, all the NPCs make a check against one roll for the PCs.) This seems pretty antithetical to the idea of D&D, since the NPCs are being treated more individually than the actual characters with individual free wills, but let's put that aside for a moment just to consider this silly case for academic purposes. Then the roles are reversed, and the only interesting twist is how to decide what the bonus on the PC roll is: is it the bonus of the most skilled PC, the least skilled, an average, or is it different for different skills? (A group of generic NPCs are pretty close to the same skill level, so I didn't mention this for the previous case.) No matter the bonus selection mechanism, the PCs don't gain anything by having more than one night watchman; in fact, if the PC bonus is anything but "same as most skilled PC", it actually hurts them to have more than one! On the other hand, it doesn't hurt them to send out several scouts -- if several PCs have the same skill bonus, there's no penalty for numbers. Again, opposing groups (PCs vs. NPCs) are likely to spot each other, this time because the NPCs have lots of chances to get high and low rolls, but not as likely as in the "everyone rolls" scenario.
So, the following issue has come up: the party has one rogue, Acavel, who's the best hider and silent mover (understandably). Barik, a ranger, could pour his skill points into hiding and moving silently, and together with a cloak of elvenkind or armor of shadows, could be as good at hiding, and a few ranks lower at moving silently. On the other hand, the one rogue could use the armor instead, and be _really_ good at hiding. So do we want one character to sneak around, recon, etc., or two?
Tactically, there's a lot to be said for having a team of two instead of one. If they find something, one can report back while the other keeps an eye on the situation; if they run into trouble, one can hold off the hordes while the other gets help, or at least the two can support each other in an organized retreat. Or, they could go off into different directions, surrounding an opponent or covering more area faster.
Here's the problem: suppose the two of them are headed down the corridor, and something might hear them. How's that get resolved? The way I interpret the rules (at least at first), they each roll their Move Silently checks, and the something rolls its Listen check, and if it gets a higher score than one of them, they're rumbled.
Probability-wise, this is quite a bit worse than one of them going alone, even if they have the same skill. In that case, it's the same probability as if the one going alone rolled his Move Silently, and Evil DM (tm), after seeing that roll was too good, said "naw, don't like that...roll again, see if you fail this time." To put it even more mathematically, if either scout had an M in N chance of being undetected (i.e., 1 in 2=50%), the two together have an M squared in N squared chance (25%, in the previous parenthetical).
That's a pretty vicious penalty. So PCs adopting the two-scout strategy should reconsider -- although a two-watchman strategy when you're camped out makes a whole lot of sense.
Unless you're a diehard fan of D&D rules trivia, stop reading now. The last paragraph was the most useful comment you're going to get out of this.
Group skill checks are one of the times when the situation for a group of NPCs need not be symmetrical to that of a group of PCs, although it's quite unclear. The DMG's section on Skill Checks (3.5e, p.30) indicates that for "influencing one person, creature, or group" or to "perceive one sound or sight", the "DM decides if NPCs are acting as individuals or as a group." How or if this applies in opposed checks is not at all clear; I go into detail about some possible schemes at the bottom of this post, below the line of asterisks. Don't read that unless even the other diehard D&D trivia fans think you're a freak. In the meantime, let's assume that this grouping thing doesn't apply; in opposed checks, every PC rolls and every NPC rolls, and each Spotter/Listener detects all the Hiders/Movers who scored less than they did. This makes it awfully hard for anyone to sneak past a group, and can generate boatloads of die rolls, but at least it's "fair".
How hard is "awfully hard"? Consider a "commando team" of rangers, sneaking up on a camp of orcs all gathered by the campfire singing "Kum-bay-ya". Let's say there's 5 rangers, around 9th level. Counting their +4 from dexterity and +2 for circumstances and the max +12 skill ranks, they're +18 on both Hide and Move Silently checks. These are just a score of grunt orcs, and let's give them a -2 for circumstances, so they're +0 on both the Spot and Listen checks. Unless a ranger rolls a 1 and an orc rolls a 20, the rangers won't get discovered.
The odds of one orc rolling a 20 and one ranger rolling a 1 are 1/400 (0.25%). But the chance of at least one of the 20 orcs rolling a 20 and one of the rangers rolling a 1 are 14.47%. And that's just the chance of the rangers being spotted. The chances of them being spotted _or_ heard are 26.9%, just over 1 in 4.
Here's a more typical example. Suppose a single rogue has a +10 to their Move Silently roll, and he or she rolls a 10 while trying to sneak pass a room. If it's got one guard in it, with a +6 Listen check, the rogue has a 70% chance the guard won't roll the 15 or more he needs. Change the number of guards to 4, and that chance drops to 24%. That seems low to me -- although if the "opposed check" were a tug-of-war, maybe that'd be about right. One way to try to fix this would be to give the guards all a -2 circumstance penalty (because they're distracting to each other) -- then the chance of the rogue's success improves some, up to 40%.
Or we could pretend three of the guards are really doing "aid another" attempts for the first one's listen check -- I don't even know how that would change the probabilities, but it could make things worse, not better. Or maybe after the second guard, the other two don't really help any, and can't make checks. And if that isn't complicated enough, how do we treat the inverse problem of a group trying not to be detected? Do we not have people after the first two make checks, because they don't contribute to the silence?
The simplest alternative system would be that in any opposed check, each side only makes one roll: the best Spotter/Listener rolls vs. the worst Hider/Mover, for example. But that ignores the contribution (or lack thereof) of the rest of the people entirely. Why is it always Hawkeye that catches the goblins? And does he see all the goblins, or just Klompy? What if some of the quieter goblins were coming from the other side? Do we treat them as a separate group? Oh geez, I thought this was the problem we were trying to simplify away...
********************************************************************************
[This is the consideration of "asymmetrical" opposed checks, where a group of NPCs is treated differently from a group of PCs. If you haven't been riveted by the post so far, you're really going to despise the time you'd be wasting if you read this. You've been warned.]
The examples in the DMG indicate that a PC would get one check to spot a group of NPCs at a distance [Note: it's not clear if this is an opposed check, but it seems not], but that a PC Moving Silently would face the Listen checks of every NPC in a group. But what about a group of PCs Moving Silently? Do the NPCs get one number to beat, or the worst of two? There isn't a clear example I can find in the DMG of opposed checks where the NPCs are treated as a group -- would that mean they make one roll, or that they only have to oppose one roll, or that NPCs each make their own roll in opposed checks, and are never treated as a group? The third case makes the most sense, that I talked about above, although the first one isn't completely crazy. The second one is in fact completely crazy, and I'm worried about my own mental health just as a result of thinking about it.
The first case isn't symmetric, but it's not entirely unbalanced: if a group of NPCs rolls once for the whole group, that means they'd be harder for an individual to spot that a group of PCs (since they'd only have to succeed once, while each PC in a group would have to succeed), but they'd be worse at spotting an individual (since they've only got one chance to succeed, while the PCs would have a chance each.) If a group of NPCs and a group of PCs try to sneak past one another, there's still a good chance they'll run into each other, since the PCs have a lot of chances for high Spot/Listens, but just as many chances for low Hide/Moves. The chance would be considerably reduced from the "everyone rolls against everyone" scheme, however. The PCs would be wise to have multiple people on watch, but only send one out for scouting reports, so they're not fighting the probabilities.
The other asymmetric case is that the group of NPCs only opposes one roll (that is, all the NPCs make a check against one roll for the PCs.) This seems pretty antithetical to the idea of D&D, since the NPCs are being treated more individually than the actual characters with individual free wills, but let's put that aside for a moment just to consider this silly case for academic purposes. Then the roles are reversed, and the only interesting twist is how to decide what the bonus on the PC roll is: is it the bonus of the most skilled PC, the least skilled, an average, or is it different for different skills? (A group of generic NPCs are pretty close to the same skill level, so I didn't mention this for the previous case.) No matter the bonus selection mechanism, the PCs don't gain anything by having more than one night watchman; in fact, if the PC bonus is anything but "same as most skilled PC", it actually hurts them to have more than one! On the other hand, it doesn't hurt them to send out several scouts -- if several PCs have the same skill bonus, there's no penalty for numbers. Again, opposing groups (PCs vs. NPCs) are likely to spot each other, this time because the NPCs have lots of chances to get high and low rolls, but not as likely as in the "everyone rolls" scenario.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Here's a little taste of campaign background; I have hopes of including some nice "primary source" material, but I wanted to give you something to gaze at (comment on, argue with) while I work on that.
The geographical setting will just happen to look exactly like Great Britain. The starting point will just happen to be right where Bristol is, and the name of that city will be (somewhat unoriginally) "Bridgstow".
While the setting will have bits and pieces that are distinctly evocative of historical Britain, that's partly an illusion; I've got a Greyhawk gazetteer, and I'm taking a chunk of that land mass, mushing it into a Britain-shape, and associating pieces of it with their approximate historic/legendary equivalents. So whether you think of the theocracy to the north as the Prince-Bishop of County Durham or the Archbishop Hazen's Veluna is up to you; the names and geography are mostly the former, but the social structure and characters are mostly the latter.
Here's some social background that's a little different from what the 3rd edition D&D folks are used to; for everyone else, you can just take it as the way it is for this campaign, or argue about why the campaign world's destined for trouble if it's set up this way.
Halflings are like hobbits. Unlike the current D&D image, they are not short gypsies. Instead, they integrate very well with human society, with many towns going by two names, a halfling (actually, they prefer "hole-builder" or "hill person") name and a human one. Effectively, the hill person town co-exists with the human town, generally managing to share space without fighting over resources. This is because the humans tend to farm the lowlands and the hill people tend to, uh, live in and off the hills, herding animals on land that's not desirable for farming and farming terraced slopes that are too steep for humans to want to fool with.
Gnomes, on the other hand, are (or at least seem to fit stereotypes of) short gypsies. Most gnomes the non-gnomes see are in visiting caravans, usually circuses or musicians, but sometimes merchants with exotic snake oil to cure your every ailment. Gnomes are tolerated, rather than encouraged, by many town authorities. Often the gnomes set up outside the town, and are not welcomed in. "By all means, go to the circus -- it's the best show all year! But leave your money-pouches at home, kids -- if you've got nothing to steal, you've got nothing to worry about." Gnomes have a reputation as flim-flam artists; everyone knows that a gnome can make you see whatever he wants you to see. Fortunately, although they're sometimes out to line their pockets at your expense, they're not particularly malevolent.
There are no kung-fu monks walking the earth and acting aloof. Well, there might be some in Asia, but there aren't any in Bridgstow.
The geographical setting will just happen to look exactly like Great Britain. The starting point will just happen to be right where Bristol is, and the name of that city will be (somewhat unoriginally) "Bridgstow".
While the setting will have bits and pieces that are distinctly evocative of historical Britain, that's partly an illusion; I've got a Greyhawk gazetteer, and I'm taking a chunk of that land mass, mushing it into a Britain-shape, and associating pieces of it with their approximate historic/legendary equivalents. So whether you think of the theocracy to the north as the Prince-Bishop of County Durham or the Archbishop Hazen's Veluna is up to you; the names and geography are mostly the former, but the social structure and characters are mostly the latter.
Here's some social background that's a little different from what the 3rd edition D&D folks are used to; for everyone else, you can just take it as the way it is for this campaign, or argue about why the campaign world's destined for trouble if it's set up this way.
Halflings are like hobbits. Unlike the current D&D image, they are not short gypsies. Instead, they integrate very well with human society, with many towns going by two names, a halfling (actually, they prefer "hole-builder" or "hill person") name and a human one. Effectively, the hill person town co-exists with the human town, generally managing to share space without fighting over resources. This is because the humans tend to farm the lowlands and the hill people tend to, uh, live in and off the hills, herding animals on land that's not desirable for farming and farming terraced slopes that are too steep for humans to want to fool with.
Gnomes, on the other hand, are (or at least seem to fit stereotypes of) short gypsies. Most gnomes the non-gnomes see are in visiting caravans, usually circuses or musicians, but sometimes merchants with exotic snake oil to cure your every ailment. Gnomes are tolerated, rather than encouraged, by many town authorities. Often the gnomes set up outside the town, and are not welcomed in. "By all means, go to the circus -- it's the best show all year! But leave your money-pouches at home, kids -- if you've got nothing to steal, you've got nothing to worry about." Gnomes have a reputation as flim-flam artists; everyone knows that a gnome can make you see whatever he wants you to see. Fortunately, although they're sometimes out to line their pockets at your expense, they're not particularly malevolent.
There are no kung-fu monks walking the earth and acting aloof. Well, there might be some in Asia, but there aren't any in Bridgstow.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Okay, I'm thinking maybe I went a bit overboard, and put too many posts out on the blog at one time, so everyone's thinking "dude, I don't want to work that hard...I'm going over to the KODT website" or something similar.
By this logic, this post is compounding the problem.
Nevertheless, I want to urge everyone who ever reads this to feel free to post (or comment, or email, or whatever) about whatever thoughts pop into your head, even if they are only peripherally related to blogging, D&D, or any combination thereof. Do not feel like you have to read all this stuff. I'm not going to harass you (well, any more than I currently am) if you write the same thing someone else wrote, or the exact opposite opinion of what I wrote, or something both incoherent and wrong. I will read whatever you say, and consider it seriously.
Everyone else who offers you the same is lying. But not here. The Trollkien loves you.
By this logic, this post is compounding the problem.
Nevertheless, I want to urge everyone who ever reads this to feel free to post (or comment, or email, or whatever) about whatever thoughts pop into your head, even if they are only peripherally related to blogging, D&D, or any combination thereof. Do not feel like you have to read all this stuff. I'm not going to harass you (well, any more than I currently am) if you write the same thing someone else wrote, or the exact opposite opinion of what I wrote, or something both incoherent and wrong. I will read whatever you say, and consider it seriously.
Everyone else who offers you the same is lying. But not here. The Trollkien loves you.
Friday, September 30, 2005
The last (?) issues brought up so far: Crowding and Absence. (Let me know if there's something not closely linked to the previous posts that I've missed.)
How many players/how many characters? Parties seem to get unwieldy after about 6 characters. Partly this is just because stereotypical adventuring isn't built for it -- 10 foot corridors are too tight for more people. :) And also, with too many "main" characters, it's hard to build a narrative with everyone getting some attention.
That's not to say it's impossible, particularly if the game works not as one party, but as separate "scenes", with a few people here, a few people there, affecting each other's situation as they go along...
I'd love to be able to run something like that. However, I think the amount of time and energy required for administration (by me) might be far more than I'm willing or able to provide. If the revenue from the game reaches the point when I can do it as a full time job, then we'll try it out. ("Revenue? What revenue?" Stop freaking out -- it's just a joke.)
I am hoping that some players will prefer to be "character actors" - running several characters who aren't "proper" PCs: the mysterious druid, the barkeeper, the prince, the villain. As a result, the main party will be in the more typical 3-7 person range.
I have the theory that then the DM's role will more often be that of referee, rather than referee _and_ source of conflict. If the bad guy figures out what the secret plan is, it's got nothing to do with what the DM knows, just that the bad guy really was clever. Also, the "NPC's" can be more 3-dimensional, with more personal effort being put into them, and on several occasions, players won't know if they're interacting with a DM mouthpiece, or with another player.
In terms of DM's "cpu time", I'd like to think that players running more of the story characters would make for less work for the DM day-to-day, but surely that will be offset by getting information to and from more people. But overall, I'm optimistic that this would give more of the DM's personal attention to your character, and a better story, than if we had one big 12 character party. In addition, some people might find playing occasionally-occurring characters easier on their schedules than striving to send an update every day.
Which brings us to player's absence, or at least nonresponsiveness. I like the idea of "phasing", partly because it reminds me so much of Vaarsuvius's conveniently appearing familiar in Order of the Stick. I recall treating absent people in tabletop games in much the same way.
My concern is that "absence" in a blog game is bound to be more stilted, because of the time dilation. Not being around for a 4 hour game session makes it easier to elide the character away; if someone is out sick for a day right in the midst of their character rescuing the rest of the party from the mind flayer's clutches, it's hard to throw them into hibernation. Perhaps this would work, if every day (or at least every week) of gameplay had some closure. If every fight were concluded in one day, then having someone phase out could work, while having someone phase out mid-battle would be hard to manage.
It seems to me that this is one of the tradeoffs of the blog (or online, non-live) format. If the players are willing to give up some of the control of their character, the game can move along faster. If you give up some of the granularity of the combat process, then the combat can be resolved in a few days, rather than a few weeks. If alternatively you accept that when you're absent, your character will have an "understudy" representing you, then the game won't be halted waiting for people.
But these aren't tradeoffs for me as much as they're tradeoffs for y'all. What do you think -- what do you want to happen to your character when you're unavailable? How specific do you want to make your combat decisions?
How many players/how many characters? Parties seem to get unwieldy after about 6 characters. Partly this is just because stereotypical adventuring isn't built for it -- 10 foot corridors are too tight for more people. :) And also, with too many "main" characters, it's hard to build a narrative with everyone getting some attention.
That's not to say it's impossible, particularly if the game works not as one party, but as separate "scenes", with a few people here, a few people there, affecting each other's situation as they go along...
I'd love to be able to run something like that. However, I think the amount of time and energy required for administration (by me) might be far more than I'm willing or able to provide. If the revenue from the game reaches the point when I can do it as a full time job, then we'll try it out. ("Revenue? What revenue?" Stop freaking out -- it's just a joke.)
I am hoping that some players will prefer to be "character actors" - running several characters who aren't "proper" PCs: the mysterious druid, the barkeeper, the prince, the villain. As a result, the main party will be in the more typical 3-7 person range.
I have the theory that then the DM's role will more often be that of referee, rather than referee _and_ source of conflict. If the bad guy figures out what the secret plan is, it's got nothing to do with what the DM knows, just that the bad guy really was clever. Also, the "NPC's" can be more 3-dimensional, with more personal effort being put into them, and on several occasions, players won't know if they're interacting with a DM mouthpiece, or with another player.
In terms of DM's "cpu time", I'd like to think that players running more of the story characters would make for less work for the DM day-to-day, but surely that will be offset by getting information to and from more people. But overall, I'm optimistic that this would give more of the DM's personal attention to your character, and a better story, than if we had one big 12 character party. In addition, some people might find playing occasionally-occurring characters easier on their schedules than striving to send an update every day.
Which brings us to player's absence, or at least nonresponsiveness. I like the idea of "phasing", partly because it reminds me so much of Vaarsuvius's conveniently appearing familiar in Order of the Stick. I recall treating absent people in tabletop games in much the same way.
My concern is that "absence" in a blog game is bound to be more stilted, because of the time dilation. Not being around for a 4 hour game session makes it easier to elide the character away; if someone is out sick for a day right in the midst of their character rescuing the rest of the party from the mind flayer's clutches, it's hard to throw them into hibernation. Perhaps this would work, if every day (or at least every week) of gameplay had some closure. If every fight were concluded in one day, then having someone phase out could work, while having someone phase out mid-battle would be hard to manage.
It seems to me that this is one of the tradeoffs of the blog (or online, non-live) format. If the players are willing to give up some of the control of their character, the game can move along faster. If you give up some of the granularity of the combat process, then the combat can be resolved in a few days, rather than a few weeks. If alternatively you accept that when you're absent, your character will have an "understudy" representing you, then the game won't be halted waiting for people.
But these aren't tradeoffs for me as much as they're tradeoffs for y'all. What do you think -- what do you want to happen to your character when you're unavailable? How specific do you want to make your combat decisions?
Next hot topic: dialogue.
It is my impression (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) that many of the prospective players here are fans of dialogue, character interaction, and the game as a vehicle for producing an interesting story.
On the other hand, part of the history and nature of D&D is rolling dice to determine winners and losers in combat -- noble barbarians fighting an evil dragon, and you get to BE a barbarian! And you could argue that by making the combat sequences the most important part of the game, as well as the most character-choice driven, the action becomes more engaging than in any movie, even Rocky. (Although a good soundtrack counts for a LOT.)
However, I think that the detailed combat in D&D doesn't suit the blog format very well (because the time slowdown becomes acute, because you lose the fun of rolling dice, because for all that player control, most rounds boil down to either "I hit him again" or "I run away",...) Also, it's virtually impossible to stick to the round-by-round system and give players the freedom of choice they deserve without them all having a copy of the Players Handbook, which is way outside my "you don't have to know the rules" policy.
So there are really several issues. First, what should the balance be between dialogue/story, puzzles and other "nonthreatening" challenges, and combat? Like I said, my impression is that lots of people would like to have their characters make interesting decisions and interact with each other and the world around them, and spending months resolving a fight with a bunch of orcs would be a drag.
Second, how will dialogue work in an online format? Can we make it work better than serial monologues?
Third, how will combat work in an online format? Can we streamline it so it doesn't take forever, while still keeping it player-driven?
Note that I said "online format" and not "blog". I don't think we need to limit ourselves to blogs, and if it's feasible to use something like openrpg, or less exotically, an IRC or other chat method for dialogue, then I'm all for trying it out. Live-action dialogue faces the issue of different time zones, but I think it might work some of the time.
Alternatively, a sort of retroactive editing is possible: one person sends what they guess will be their side of the conversation, the second person intersperses comments where they would, and the first person then revises their side so it looks nice. (I'm completely borrowing this idea from Dr. Strangelove). That could give satisfactory results.
A point worth mentioning is that, although a lot of dialogue will be with NPCs, the DM as adjudicator is unnecessary for dialogue. Two or more players can chat in character any way they like, whether I'm aware of it or not. (That two or more players can chat out of character any way they like should be obvious.)
For streamlining combat, I'm all for people describing their combat plan in exciting detail, and then offering some idea of when they'll want to re-evaluate. For example:
For a high enough level character, that's one D&D combat round, but to a first level character, the exact same description is good for about 3 or 4 rounds, and it makes clear that if the character gets hit even once, they'll withdraw out of harm's way. It's also possible to have a "standing order" that for any combat, your character is by default willing to stand and fight until they get, for example, three likely hits away from death.
If I get posts like that regularly, many a combat could be resolved in one day.
It is my impression (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) that many of the prospective players here are fans of dialogue, character interaction, and the game as a vehicle for producing an interesting story.
On the other hand, part of the history and nature of D&D is rolling dice to determine winners and losers in combat -- noble barbarians fighting an evil dragon, and you get to BE a barbarian! And you could argue that by making the combat sequences the most important part of the game, as well as the most character-choice driven, the action becomes more engaging than in any movie, even Rocky. (Although a good soundtrack counts for a LOT.)
However, I think that the detailed combat in D&D doesn't suit the blog format very well (because the time slowdown becomes acute, because you lose the fun of rolling dice, because for all that player control, most rounds boil down to either "I hit him again" or "I run away",...) Also, it's virtually impossible to stick to the round-by-round system and give players the freedom of choice they deserve without them all having a copy of the Players Handbook, which is way outside my "you don't have to know the rules" policy.
So there are really several issues. First, what should the balance be between dialogue/story, puzzles and other "nonthreatening" challenges, and combat? Like I said, my impression is that lots of people would like to have their characters make interesting decisions and interact with each other and the world around them, and spending months resolving a fight with a bunch of orcs would be a drag.
Second, how will dialogue work in an online format? Can we make it work better than serial monologues?
Third, how will combat work in an online format? Can we streamline it so it doesn't take forever, while still keeping it player-driven?
Note that I said "online format" and not "blog". I don't think we need to limit ourselves to blogs, and if it's feasible to use something like openrpg, or less exotically, an IRC or other chat method for dialogue, then I'm all for trying it out. Live-action dialogue faces the issue of different time zones, but I think it might work some of the time.
Alternatively, a sort of retroactive editing is possible: one person sends what they guess will be their side of the conversation, the second person intersperses comments where they would, and the first person then revises their side so it looks nice. (I'm completely borrowing this idea from Dr. Strangelove). That could give satisfactory results.
A point worth mentioning is that, although a lot of dialogue will be with NPCs, the DM as adjudicator is unnecessary for dialogue. Two or more players can chat in character any way they like, whether I'm aware of it or not. (That two or more players can chat out of character any way they like should be obvious.)
For streamlining combat, I'm all for people describing their combat plan in exciting detail, and then offering some idea of when they'll want to re-evaluate. For example:
Trinffi, Slayer of Vampires: I slide under the table and kick the filthy Uruk in the groin. Then I jump over him, split-kicking his two buddies. A couple of deft chops later to clean up, and I expect to be surrounded by unconscious grunts.
If any of them manage to lay a hand on me, I'll be faced with the sickening thought that these guys may be more dangerous than they look, and I'll backflip out of there, kicking one of them in the chops as I go.
For a high enough level character, that's one D&D combat round, but to a first level character, the exact same description is good for about 3 or 4 rounds, and it makes clear that if the character gets hit even once, they'll withdraw out of harm's way. It's also possible to have a "standing order" that for any combat, your character is by default willing to stand and fight until they get, for example, three likely hits away from death.
If I get posts like that regularly, many a combat could be resolved in one day.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
There's been a fair bit of discussion about starting at 1st level, so I'd like to address some of the concerns.
Starting at 1st level appeals to me for a lot of reasons. The list of spell choices is more quickly digestible, the character's stories are developed together rather than apart, and it fits in with the vision I have of a more Renaissance/beginning of history feel for the campaign.
The biggest issue with starting at 1st level, as Scott said, is that the number of hit points you have is perilously close to the amount of damage a typical weapon does. (This is a "feature" of D&D, and I believe it's a holdover from its wargaming roots.) Here's how I plan to mitigate this. First, as Fabio mentions, some challenges the players face will be intellectual, rather than combative. I know there's at least a few players that would prefer more puzzles and dialogue and less combat, especially if it slows down the game. More on this later. Second, as Fabio has also mentioned, the "critical hit" rule is the bane of PCs. I will introduce a rule along the lines that anything with less than 4 HD (or under 4th level) can't make a critical hit. Thirdly, I encourage the players to play their characters, particularly at the beginning, recognizing that getting a knife in the ribs could easily kill anyone, so they should try to avoid being within arm's reach of anyone ornery with a weapon.
As part of the incentive, I'm going to award experience based on obstacles overcome. So, if there was a band of goblins in the road, and you sneak around them or bribe them, you get the same experience as if you defeated them in combat. (There's a catch: if you run into the goblins again later, you don't get experience for them again, even if you do fight them the second time.)
Lastly, this ties into Dr. Strangelove's question about the lethality of the game. While I have some absolutely surreal ideas that I would _love_ to try out for ensuing adventures if the whole party dies, I don't really expect that to happen. I don't want to dismiss the possibility of character death entirely, but I have a hard time setting up a situation where a character is likely to die unless I know they'll have access to being brought back. If the characters don't put themselves in deadly situations, they won't die. (In order to preserve dramatic tension, I won't specify where I consider the line to be between "easy fight" and "deadly situation".)
Starting at 1st level appeals to me for a lot of reasons. The list of spell choices is more quickly digestible, the character's stories are developed together rather than apart, and it fits in with the vision I have of a more Renaissance/beginning of history feel for the campaign.
The biggest issue with starting at 1st level, as Scott said, is that the number of hit points you have is perilously close to the amount of damage a typical weapon does. (This is a "feature" of D&D, and I believe it's a holdover from its wargaming roots.) Here's how I plan to mitigate this. First, as Fabio mentions, some challenges the players face will be intellectual, rather than combative. I know there's at least a few players that would prefer more puzzles and dialogue and less combat, especially if it slows down the game. More on this later. Second, as Fabio has also mentioned, the "critical hit" rule is the bane of PCs. I will introduce a rule along the lines that anything with less than 4 HD (or under 4th level) can't make a critical hit. Thirdly, I encourage the players to play their characters, particularly at the beginning, recognizing that getting a knife in the ribs could easily kill anyone, so they should try to avoid being within arm's reach of anyone ornery with a weapon.
As part of the incentive, I'm going to award experience based on obstacles overcome. So, if there was a band of goblins in the road, and you sneak around them or bribe them, you get the same experience as if you defeated them in combat. (There's a catch: if you run into the goblins again later, you don't get experience for them again, even if you do fight them the second time.)
Lastly, this ties into Dr. Strangelove's question about the lethality of the game. While I have some absolutely surreal ideas that I would _love_ to try out for ensuing adventures if the whole party dies, I don't really expect that to happen. I don't want to dismiss the possibility of character death entirely, but I have a hard time setting up a situation where a character is likely to die unless I know they'll have access to being brought back. If the characters don't put themselves in deadly situations, they won't die. (In order to preserve dramatic tension, I won't specify where I consider the line to be between "easy fight" and "deadly situation".)
In order to include it in the conversation, here's my sister's email in response to my original "I'm starting a bloggy D&D" post:
The conventional wisdom is that it's better to have a properly immersive gameworld, where characters aren't named after pop stars and a dragon's last words are not "I shoulda had a V8." But I don't want to be a culture Nazi and correct people's Shakespearean -- I cannot come up with a more effective way to make players run away from a game. And although the original idea might be a joke, I think an elf named Trinffi whose purpose in life is to slay undead, particularly vampires, and can do crazy spin kicks, is the beginnings of a fine character.
My preference is for people to take on board the idea that their characters are really in the game world, and not talking out through the fourth wall at the audience. However, I can't imagine prohibiting players from commenting on the game in their own voice, if they want to -- on dndblog.powerblogs.com, character's speech is generally in quotes, while player's comments (and occasionally player or character "thoughtbubbles") are clearly distinct from the characters.
Furthermore, I rather like the wit involved in manipulating one's character into a situation for which the natural thing for them to say is "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
So, how "serious" do we want the tone to be? Is there a line past which the friendly banter starts to detract from the storytelling, and if so where is it? I don't feel the need to set ground rules about what's "permitted" and what's not, but it would be good to have a common understanding of how much we plan to repress our natural tendency toward irony.
What's an NPC?Skipping the first two questions, my answers were yes and yes (although I don't think it'll be necessary), and then it got a bit hazy. (Regarding the last one, I'd _love_ to have that, but I don't want to promise more than I can deliver on. Let's say it's on the planning list.) Perhaps the best question for discussion is the "Can I make anachronistic references to television shows and movies?" Or, to put it another way, what's the tone for the game?
What's a PC?
If I don't know what an NPC or PC are can I still play?
If my character dies on the first day, can I get a new character?
Can I be Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Or Trinity? Or a combination of both
(Buffinity? Trinffy?) Can I have a baby panda sidekick?
Can I make anachronistic references to television shows and movies?
As we go through the dungeon, can the map of where we've been be revealed?
Preferably with 3-D topography and interactive hot links to particular
events?
The conventional wisdom is that it's better to have a properly immersive gameworld, where characters aren't named after pop stars and a dragon's last words are not "I shoulda had a V8." But I don't want to be a culture Nazi and correct people's Shakespearean -- I cannot come up with a more effective way to make players run away from a game. And although the original idea might be a joke, I think an elf named Trinffi whose purpose in life is to slay undead, particularly vampires, and can do crazy spin kicks, is the beginnings of a fine character.
My preference is for people to take on board the idea that their characters are really in the game world, and not talking out through the fourth wall at the audience. However, I can't imagine prohibiting players from commenting on the game in their own voice, if they want to -- on dndblog.powerblogs.com, character's speech is generally in quotes, while player's comments (and occasionally player or character "thoughtbubbles") are clearly distinct from the characters.
Furthermore, I rather like the wit involved in manipulating one's character into a situation for which the natural thing for them to say is "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
So, how "serious" do we want the tone to be? Is there a line past which the friendly banter starts to detract from the storytelling, and if so where is it? I don't feel the need to set ground rules about what's "permitted" and what's not, but it would be good to have a common understanding of how much we plan to repress our natural tendency toward irony.
First of all -- Woo hoo! Getting this much interest is more than I hoped for. Apparently there's more web-based leisure time available than I expected. :)
The posts have brought up several points, and I'm gonna try to describe further the things I've thought about, so we all have the same expectations, and I'll ask for more opinions about some of the issues that need some consensus or at least acceptance.
And since the conversation will therefore be wide-ranging, I'll try to split it up over several posts, so that comments to each post will be more specific to the same topic. Of course, I read it all, so don't worry about waiting to comment about character background because I haven't started a post about it.
Okay, first regarding campaign setting. (This hasn't been the source of the most discussion, but it does deserve to get fleshed out.) For starters, the world will be very stereotypically D&D like, in the sense that the technology will look remarkably medieval, magic items and spellcasters will be relatively commonplace, elves and dwarves live a long time and tend to hang out in forests and mountains respectively, etc. I'm happy with the fictional polytheism of 3rd edition D&D, if you're interested in the clergy, but I can adapt to someone's favorite pantheon if they've got one. I won't, however, have Warriors of Odin adventuring with a Follower of Ra to recover St. Cuthbert's Mace from the foul minions of Cthulhu. One (or, if you're willing to help with the backstory for it, two) major religion at a time, please.
I lean towards the "from the inside out" school of setting design, in the sense that I'd like to establish the locale the characters live in first, and worry about bigger stuff (world geography, etc.) later as necessary. That said, my plan is to have a wide range of player-driven choice of where you want to go fairly early in -- you could go northeast to the borderlands, or just a little ways south to a neighboring village, or decide you're interested in something else altogether, for example. (And there won't be any particularly "right" or "wrong" choice.) So my idea of "starting small" is still rather largish.
However, details of the start I'm deliberately still vague about, because I want character stories to come from the players, and then we can figure out the sort of place that these folks would meet. I want people to have as complete freedom as possible in choosing their character, and then adopting the world to a sensible one for those characters.
As most of you know, I'm one of those people that thinks too much about, for example, how politics and technology might develop in a world with magic, or various humanoid species, or any of the many things that'll make this a fantasy role playing game. But I don't want to jump the gun and build a beautiful internally consistent world that doesn't accommodate the kind of character you want to play. But as we develop characters, you can be sure that the world will get more specific around them.
Which brings me to a question we should resolve before the adventure starts, so I'll put that in the next post.
The posts have brought up several points, and I'm gonna try to describe further the things I've thought about, so we all have the same expectations, and I'll ask for more opinions about some of the issues that need some consensus or at least acceptance.
And since the conversation will therefore be wide-ranging, I'll try to split it up over several posts, so that comments to each post will be more specific to the same topic. Of course, I read it all, so don't worry about waiting to comment about character background because I haven't started a post about it.
Okay, first regarding campaign setting. (This hasn't been the source of the most discussion, but it does deserve to get fleshed out.) For starters, the world will be very stereotypically D&D like, in the sense that the technology will look remarkably medieval, magic items and spellcasters will be relatively commonplace, elves and dwarves live a long time and tend to hang out in forests and mountains respectively, etc. I'm happy with the fictional polytheism of 3rd edition D&D, if you're interested in the clergy, but I can adapt to someone's favorite pantheon if they've got one. I won't, however, have Warriors of Odin adventuring with a Follower of Ra to recover St. Cuthbert's Mace from the foul minions of Cthulhu. One (or, if you're willing to help with the backstory for it, two) major religion at a time, please.
I lean towards the "from the inside out" school of setting design, in the sense that I'd like to establish the locale the characters live in first, and worry about bigger stuff (world geography, etc.) later as necessary. That said, my plan is to have a wide range of player-driven choice of where you want to go fairly early in -- you could go northeast to the borderlands, or just a little ways south to a neighboring village, or decide you're interested in something else altogether, for example. (And there won't be any particularly "right" or "wrong" choice.) So my idea of "starting small" is still rather largish.
However, details of the start I'm deliberately still vague about, because I want character stories to come from the players, and then we can figure out the sort of place that these folks would meet. I want people to have as complete freedom as possible in choosing their character, and then adopting the world to a sensible one for those characters.
As most of you know, I'm one of those people that thinks too much about, for example, how politics and technology might develop in a world with magic, or various humanoid species, or any of the many things that'll make this a fantasy role playing game. But I don't want to jump the gun and build a beautiful internally consistent world that doesn't accommodate the kind of character you want to play. But as we develop characters, you can be sure that the world will get more specific around them.
Which brings me to a question we should resolve before the adventure starts, so I'll put that in the next post.
Monday, September 26, 2005
I am planning to run a D&D campaign through a blog. Yes, like the one at dndblog. My plan is to mimic that blog, while adopting some policies that I hope will make the new blog exciting and accessible to more people, who might not be as diehard as the dndblog folks. This will be an experiment, and if some ideas really don't work as well as I'd hoped, I'll fall back on the way Scott does things in the dndblog.
And while I was thinking about all the cool stuff I hoped to do, and thought about how I should arrange it, it occurred to me that if I don't get people on board to play it, it won't much matter whether I think it's cool or not.
So, before my creative attempts spiral out of control, I'd like to hear from you what you'd like in a D&D campaign run over the web.
I'm assuming that players will want a game that delivers a lot of entertainment and only a small time commitment on their part. I'm also trying to offer a game with a different experience than, say, playing Everquest, since players could do that instead if they wanted to. I'd like to use the advantages of the online blog format, and minimize the effect of the disadvantages.
Here are the key ideas of the blog I was thinking about:
These are ideas about the structure of the game, and they're designed to make the "burden" of playing the game as light as possible. If you just want to be involved for a week or two, that's fine: you can take over whatever NPCs the party is running into. If you don't want to dig through the books and figure out what the right feat is for you, don't worry about it, and when you describe yourself as hacking and slashing left and right, the DM will make sure you get feats that make you hack and slash most effectively. And regardless, the action of playing the game is simple: every day you check the blog, post what your character does for the next little while, and then you don't have to check the blog again until tomorrow. And if you miss a day or two, no big deal -- your character won't stand there like a dummy.
Of course, people will also have opinions about the story and background of the campaign -- is this in some particular setting that they already know about, is it significantly different from the setting described in the D&D books, does the DM hate paladins, etc. I don't want to give the impression that the above ideas are written in stone, but in terms of setting, I'm even more flexible. If some idea here seems stupid or not something you'd be happy with, please let me know, because D&D is in some sense collaborative storytelling, and players won't play their parts if they think the background and descriptions of the world they're in is lame. And who can blame them?
I would like to run a D&D 3.5e campaign, with as few changes to the general background as possible, so all the usual classes, races, spells, etc. are there, and if you see something in the books, you can be pretty sure it's in this campaign. (There may be weird and wonderful stuff later on, but I'm in favor of starting basic first.) I probably can't help tweaking a few things, but it'll be things like making monks less common, not completely eliminating them. That's not to say they'll be insignificant changes (if you're a monk, it'll be harder to find someone to train you to get a new level), but they won't be flat-out "no you can't do that" changes. Unless you're trying to game the system. :)
I'd like to borrow liberally from many sources. If you've played D&D for a long time, you'll find some of the locations eerily familiar ("Here we are, in this Keep, which is on the Borderlands..."), but hopefully not so familiar that you'll know where the traps are. Some of the places and people might remind you of historical figures. Hopefully not hokey "and it turns out that Lisa, the princess you rescued, is posing for a portrait by the royal painter, Leonardo" vignettes. Instead, I hope that sometimes it'll become evident that the moody noble youngster just might be as clever and doomed as Hamlet, or that the Thieves' Guild is operating very much like Al Capone's mob did.
I'd like to be "realistic" (a dangerous word in D&D). By that I mean, if someone asks "what are the dwarves eating, if they live in the mountains?" I want to have an answer. If the characters don't know the answer, they should be able to go find out, and the answer shouldn't be a lame one like "dwarves come from the rock, and get their sustenance magically from being in touch with the stones, except for the dwarf characters, who have to eat like regular people."
I have some more specific ideas, like decentralizing the role of elves and making "halflings" more like hobbits and less like Gypsies. I think I'd like to set everything in Greyhawk, except make the different regions have accents and cultures more closely mimicking the real world. Another background idea I have is that while many settings are set at a sort of "twilight" or "dark ages" period of history (the White Wolf RPGs are particularly end-of-the-world type settings), I'd like to maybe be in more of a "dawn of time" or "renaissance" period, where there's lots to explore, the cultural institutions are still in development, and there's generally a more optimistic feeling.
Also, I'd like to start PCs off at 1st level. I know a lot of experienced players don't like that, but it seems to me that it's easier to come up with PC background if there isn't that much background to come up with, and low-level characters aren't limited to fighting orcs and goblins and giant rats again and again if you're clever about it. But if you're convinced it wouldn't be fun, tell me why you think so.
Lastly, in between game structure and story setting, is the "dressing": how the webpage looks, what kind of pictures/sounds/etc are part of the story; in other words, what cool stuff do I hope to do to "enhance the experience?"
I'd like to make as much use of multimedia as I can: I've got lots of digital pictures I'd like to edit into game scenes and characters. I'd like to gain enough computer audio stuff to include cool sound effects like a bustling marketplace or the buzz of conversations in a tavern. But I plan to develop as I go -- it doesn't seem practical to me to develop a myriad of sights and sounds until there's actually proof that enough people want to play to make it a workable project.
So, tell me what you think. Am I way off base? Would you and all your friends come play on my proposed blog, if it weren't for the one-turn-a-day rule? Is a cobbled-together mishmash of a setting too clumsy, or would it be quirky and fun? What ideas are unworkable? Where I've been vague, what specific ideas do you crave? Are there ideas that spun off better ideas in your head?
Enough questions for you? Please give me some feedback, as I really do want to make a D&D blog that you'd love to play on, that you would get your non-D&D friends to look at. And maybe even try out.
And while I was thinking about all the cool stuff I hoped to do, and thought about how I should arrange it, it occurred to me that if I don't get people on board to play it, it won't much matter whether I think it's cool or not.
So, before my creative attempts spiral out of control, I'd like to hear from you what you'd like in a D&D campaign run over the web.
I'm assuming that players will want a game that delivers a lot of entertainment and only a small time commitment on their part. I'm also trying to offer a game with a different experience than, say, playing Everquest, since players could do that instead if they wanted to. I'd like to use the advantages of the online blog format, and minimize the effect of the disadvantages.
Here are the key ideas of the blog I was thinking about:
Gameplay Structure
- Every day in real life, a D&D turn goes by. So everybody has a day to post what their character does, and they can be confident that when they check the website the next day, they'll be able to see the results of their last post and post again. (Obviously, there will be hiatuses, when the DM [me] is on vacation or something like that. But this is the normal scheme of things.)
- If a player doesn't post during that day, the DM will assume their character behaves typically for that turn, and will role-play that character as appropriately as he can.
- A player doesn't need to know the D&D rules at all. If you want to give me a description of what you want your character to be like, I'll generate stats for such a character. If you describe the feats of derring-do your character takes each turn, I'll interpret them in game terms in order to decide the result. (This option requires faith that the DM is interpreting the rules fairly and consistently.)
- I would like to provide the opportunity for less-active players (or players that don't want to be tied down to one character) to play "bit parts" and other characters that would otherwise be NPCs. The adventuring party doesn't know, when they run into a goblin king, if the DM or someone else is running him. (In these situations, the DM can step out of the action, and simply referee the interaction between characters.)
These are ideas about the structure of the game, and they're designed to make the "burden" of playing the game as light as possible. If you just want to be involved for a week or two, that's fine: you can take over whatever NPCs the party is running into. If you don't want to dig through the books and figure out what the right feat is for you, don't worry about it, and when you describe yourself as hacking and slashing left and right, the DM will make sure you get feats that make you hack and slash most effectively. And regardless, the action of playing the game is simple: every day you check the blog, post what your character does for the next little while, and then you don't have to check the blog again until tomorrow. And if you miss a day or two, no big deal -- your character won't stand there like a dummy.
Campaign Setting
Of course, people will also have opinions about the story and background of the campaign -- is this in some particular setting that they already know about, is it significantly different from the setting described in the D&D books, does the DM hate paladins, etc. I don't want to give the impression that the above ideas are written in stone, but in terms of setting, I'm even more flexible. If some idea here seems stupid or not something you'd be happy with, please let me know, because D&D is in some sense collaborative storytelling, and players won't play their parts if they think the background and descriptions of the world they're in is lame. And who can blame them?
I would like to run a D&D 3.5e campaign, with as few changes to the general background as possible, so all the usual classes, races, spells, etc. are there, and if you see something in the books, you can be pretty sure it's in this campaign. (There may be weird and wonderful stuff later on, but I'm in favor of starting basic first.) I probably can't help tweaking a few things, but it'll be things like making monks less common, not completely eliminating them. That's not to say they'll be insignificant changes (if you're a monk, it'll be harder to find someone to train you to get a new level), but they won't be flat-out "no you can't do that" changes. Unless you're trying to game the system. :)
I'd like to borrow liberally from many sources. If you've played D&D for a long time, you'll find some of the locations eerily familiar ("Here we are, in this Keep, which is on the Borderlands..."), but hopefully not so familiar that you'll know where the traps are. Some of the places and people might remind you of historical figures. Hopefully not hokey "and it turns out that Lisa, the princess you rescued, is posing for a portrait by the royal painter, Leonardo" vignettes. Instead, I hope that sometimes it'll become evident that the moody noble youngster just might be as clever and doomed as Hamlet, or that the Thieves' Guild is operating very much like Al Capone's mob did.
I'd like to be "realistic" (a dangerous word in D&D). By that I mean, if someone asks "what are the dwarves eating, if they live in the mountains?" I want to have an answer. If the characters don't know the answer, they should be able to go find out, and the answer shouldn't be a lame one like "dwarves come from the rock, and get their sustenance magically from being in touch with the stones, except for the dwarf characters, who have to eat like regular people."
I have some more specific ideas, like decentralizing the role of elves and making "halflings" more like hobbits and less like Gypsies. I think I'd like to set everything in Greyhawk, except make the different regions have accents and cultures more closely mimicking the real world. Another background idea I have is that while many settings are set at a sort of "twilight" or "dark ages" period of history (the White Wolf RPGs are particularly end-of-the-world type settings), I'd like to maybe be in more of a "dawn of time" or "renaissance" period, where there's lots to explore, the cultural institutions are still in development, and there's generally a more optimistic feeling.
Also, I'd like to start PCs off at 1st level. I know a lot of experienced players don't like that, but it seems to me that it's easier to come up with PC background if there isn't that much background to come up with, and low-level characters aren't limited to fighting orcs and goblins and giant rats again and again if you're clever about it. But if you're convinced it wouldn't be fun, tell me why you think so.
Look and Feel
Lastly, in between game structure and story setting, is the "dressing": how the webpage looks, what kind of pictures/sounds/etc are part of the story; in other words, what cool stuff do I hope to do to "enhance the experience?"
I'd like to make as much use of multimedia as I can: I've got lots of digital pictures I'd like to edit into game scenes and characters. I'd like to gain enough computer audio stuff to include cool sound effects like a bustling marketplace or the buzz of conversations in a tavern. But I plan to develop as I go -- it doesn't seem practical to me to develop a myriad of sights and sounds until there's actually proof that enough people want to play to make it a workable project.
Here's Where You Come In
So, tell me what you think. Am I way off base? Would you and all your friends come play on my proposed blog, if it weren't for the one-turn-a-day rule? Is a cobbled-together mishmash of a setting too clumsy, or would it be quirky and fun? What ideas are unworkable? Where I've been vague, what specific ideas do you crave? Are there ideas that spun off better ideas in your head?
Enough questions for you? Please give me some feedback, as I really do want to make a D&D blog that you'd love to play on, that you would get your non-D&D friends to look at. And maybe even try out.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Maybe this is just too infantile to you, but I ran into a website called Medieval Zone and I nearly wept for joy. If only they needed a mathematics consultant...as it is, I'm going to have to wait until I win the lottery to buy all their stuff.
But maybe you just want to look at pictures of castles, or need links to medieval studies, or heraldry, or any of a number of subjects that someone who's reading a site named "Trollkien" might be interested. Then you should look at Castles on the Web, which offers a panoply of links that offers me more trollish delight than I can probably fit into a lifetime.
But maybe you just want to look at pictures of castles, or need links to medieval studies, or heraldry, or any of a number of subjects that someone who's reading a site named "Trollkien" might be interested. Then you should look at Castles on the Web, which offers a panoply of links that offers me more trollish delight than I can probably fit into a lifetime.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Longer post coming. Right now I'm just trying to remind myself that once Barik stops and thinks about it, he's going to be confused and a bit curious about how Bishop and Drusilla can be related. (I have a lot more downtime than he does, so I figure things that occur to me should occur to him slower. Perhaps this is a conceit of mine that I have higher than a 10 Intelligence.)
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Well, as soon as I start worrying, the mummy fight resolves better than my wildest expectations.
However, now we've got a gas trap triggered by our golem -- currently the plan is to have everyone but Barik (me) and Linnam (Jacob) get out of the room and see if the two of us (with the golem) can get the goodies before we croak.
_If_ the gas takes a few rounds to spread through the room, then potentially we have a chance to get the golem to do it for us, and then get out without being exposed.
However, (a) ordering the golem around can be slow and clumsy, and (b) if the gas gets to us fast, we'll have to make saving throws anyway. A quicker strategy, with some guaranteed risk, is if Barik rushes in, grabs the stuff, and runs out again, holding his breath. Barik's saving throw against poison is pretty darn good (+12), so he's got a good chance, and no one else would be in immediate danger (ie, if Barik made his save, Linnam wouldn't have to save). Heck, the DM might even give him a circumstance bonus for holding his breath.
Thoughts?
However, now we've got a gas trap triggered by our golem -- currently the plan is to have everyone but Barik (me) and Linnam (Jacob) get out of the room and see if the two of us (with the golem) can get the goodies before we croak.
_If_ the gas takes a few rounds to spread through the room, then potentially we have a chance to get the golem to do it for us, and then get out without being exposed.
However, (a) ordering the golem around can be slow and clumsy, and (b) if the gas gets to us fast, we'll have to make saving throws anyway. A quicker strategy, with some guaranteed risk, is if Barik rushes in, grabs the stuff, and runs out again, holding his breath. Barik's saving throw against poison is pretty darn good (+12), so he's got a good chance, and no one else would be in immediate danger (ie, if Barik made his save, Linnam wouldn't have to save). Heck, the DM might even give him a circumstance bonus for holding his breath.
Thoughts?
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
How well the current fight with mummies over on the blog goes depends on a wide variety of factors. One of them, as I mentioned there, is how what the DM reports as damage translates to actual damage. Another, somewhat related, is which mummies we're dealing with; the 3.0 edition mummies are considerably different from the 3.5 edition mummies, as far as I can tell. (I'm assuming the description in the 3.5 System Reference Document is standard for 3.5, and I've got a 3.0 ed Monster Manual). One of them has "resistance to blows", in addition to damage reduction of 5. The newer edition only has damage reduction of 5, but has heaps more hp and strength to make up for it. Also, the 3.5 version of "vulnerability to fire" is less of a weakness than the 3.0 edition.
Of course, it's just as likely that Scott's using some mutant blend, or his own version of mummies. The last skeletons were home-grown, I'm pretty sure -- I don't think they could have taken or dished out as much damage otherwise, damage reduction vs. slashing weapons or not.
For what it's worth, I think these mummies are doing too much damage to be 3.0 version mummies.
Also, just for anyone who's wondering, Barik's next desperate tactic is to fall back, piling on the oil and keeping the golem beating on them until they burn out.
Of course, it's just as likely that Scott's using some mutant blend, or his own version of mummies. The last skeletons were home-grown, I'm pretty sure -- I don't think they could have taken or dished out as much damage otherwise, damage reduction vs. slashing weapons or not.
For what it's worth, I think these mummies are doing too much damage to be 3.0 version mummies.
Also, just for anyone who's wondering, Barik's next desperate tactic is to fall back, piling on the oil and keeping the golem beating on them until they burn out.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
3.5 (and presumably, 3rd) edition armor rules:
The "maximum dexterity bonus" restrictions on armor, and the armor check penalties, make for some unexpected results in the armor class of various armors. If anyone has a comment or further observation about this, please let me know.
For example, taking dexterity and armor bonuses together, the best (non-shield) armor class improvement is +9, either available from the lightest armor (and a _very_ dexterous person), or from the heaviest (and most expensive). But a +8 dex bonus is unlikely; let's take some more typical values:
For Barik, a dwarven ranger with 14 Dex (+2 bonus), he can get a +6 bonus from a chain shirt (and keep all his ranger skills, and suffer a -2 armor check penalty), or he can squeeze out a whopping +7 bonus from several (but not all) of the heavier armors, until he can get a +9 from the full plate, if he ever found any. So, the first ac bonus comes at the price of (at least) a -4 armor check penalty and his ranger skills that require light armor. The bonus up to +9 costs a -6 armor check penalty.
Or, you know, he could get _any_ old shield, and get the +1 ac bonus for another -1 on the armor check (or +2 for -2 on the armor check). Cost of a shield: slows down archery, and prevents two-handed fighting. Unless you use the shield as the off-hand weapon...
Summary: shields seem to be completely worth it for the bonus they provide at minimum cost.
For a +3 dex bonus player, the calculus is very similar: they get a +7 with a chain shirt, and the only possible improvements are +8 with a breastplate or +9 with full plate, both with the same armor check penalties as Barik. For +4 dex, only the full plate provides better ac than the chain shirt, and for +5 dex and above, the lighter armors get as good as a chain shirt, but their best possible armor class doesn't get any better with higher dexterity until a dex bonus of +8, when the padded armor is as good as full plate, with nowhere near the drawbacks.
Compare with increasing one's strength bonus, which always increases attack and damage bonuses. (Okay, there's a limit to the bonus for archery with composite bows.)
In the Players Handbook, fighters are mentioned as typically wearing heavy armor: is this because they are expected to have low dexterity? That's counterintuitive for me, but most of the medium armors only make sense if your dexterity bonus is +1 or less.
The "maximum dexterity bonus" restrictions on armor, and the armor check penalties, make for some unexpected results in the armor class of various armors. If anyone has a comment or further observation about this, please let me know.
For example, taking dexterity and armor bonuses together, the best (non-shield) armor class improvement is +9, either available from the lightest armor (and a _very_ dexterous person), or from the heaviest (and most expensive). But a +8 dex bonus is unlikely; let's take some more typical values:
For Barik, a dwarven ranger with 14 Dex (+2 bonus), he can get a +6 bonus from a chain shirt (and keep all his ranger skills, and suffer a -2 armor check penalty), or he can squeeze out a whopping +7 bonus from several (but not all) of the heavier armors, until he can get a +9 from the full plate, if he ever found any. So, the first ac bonus comes at the price of (at least) a -4 armor check penalty and his ranger skills that require light armor. The bonus up to +9 costs a -6 armor check penalty.
Or, you know, he could get _any_ old shield, and get the +1 ac bonus for another -1 on the armor check (or +2 for -2 on the armor check). Cost of a shield: slows down archery, and prevents two-handed fighting. Unless you use the shield as the off-hand weapon...
Summary: shields seem to be completely worth it for the bonus they provide at minimum cost.
For a +3 dex bonus player, the calculus is very similar: they get a +7 with a chain shirt, and the only possible improvements are +8 with a breastplate or +9 with full plate, both with the same armor check penalties as Barik. For +4 dex, only the full plate provides better ac than the chain shirt, and for +5 dex and above, the lighter armors get as good as a chain shirt, but their best possible armor class doesn't get any better with higher dexterity until a dex bonus of +8, when the padded armor is as good as full plate, with nowhere near the drawbacks.
Compare with increasing one's strength bonus, which always increases attack and damage bonuses. (Okay, there's a limit to the bonus for archery with composite bows.)
In the Players Handbook, fighters are mentioned as typically wearing heavy armor: is this because they are expected to have low dexterity? That's counterintuitive for me, but most of the medium armors only make sense if your dexterity bonus is +1 or less.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Hey, sorry for neglecting this for so long.
In case it isn't obvious, I would definitely counsel Slthm (I mean, your spellcaster who's low on ammo) to preserve the ammo and not kill off a retreating enemy. Unless the enemy is carrying some ridiculously useful thing, the only tangible benefit to killing them off is experience points (if the DM doesn't give full xp except for defeated monsters). Since there's a real risk of dying before having the chance to use those experience points, my priority would be to save resources for survival, and not worry about the XP that get away.
(Incidentally, I was thinking that a DM could adopt the following XP reward scheme: the party gets XP for surviving their first encounter with _any_ foe. You ran away? Kudos for not sticking around like dummies. You sneaked passed it? Excellent use of stealth.
Where's the rub? You only get XP for your _first_ encounter. If you run into that critter again, then no more XP. And while you probably won't run into the minotaur guarding a treasure at the bottom of the labyrinth too often (maybe once coming in, and once coming out), you probably _will_ run into a certain hobgoblin raider, or an orc wizard with a skull-mask...and won't those recurrent characters feel even more exasperating when you _know_ they won't boost your character's stats, no matter what you do to them?)
So, from the points you've made regarding "beating the bushes", it sounds like _now_, in a dungeon situation with a somewhat noisy party, sending a reasonably tough guy out ahead (and I was of course thinking Barik here, although right now the golem might be a useful if cloddish substitute) seems sensible. (I think we executed this idea in the crypts at the front door, to good effect.) I agree that the front person could be ambushed, but that's sort of the point: ambushing _part_ of a party doesn't put _all_ the party in a disadvantaged position, which is the goal of an ambush. If the ambushers are being shot with arrows by a pursuing party, they're going to have a harder time of it than if they immediately jumped into melee with everyone.
Perhaps more later.
In case it isn't obvious, I would definitely counsel Slthm (I mean, your spellcaster who's low on ammo) to preserve the ammo and not kill off a retreating enemy. Unless the enemy is carrying some ridiculously useful thing, the only tangible benefit to killing them off is experience points (if the DM doesn't give full xp except for defeated monsters). Since there's a real risk of dying before having the chance to use those experience points, my priority would be to save resources for survival, and not worry about the XP that get away.
(Incidentally, I was thinking that a DM could adopt the following XP reward scheme: the party gets XP for surviving their first encounter with _any_ foe. You ran away? Kudos for not sticking around like dummies. You sneaked passed it? Excellent use of stealth.
Where's the rub? You only get XP for your _first_ encounter. If you run into that critter again, then no more XP. And while you probably won't run into the minotaur guarding a treasure at the bottom of the labyrinth too often (maybe once coming in, and once coming out), you probably _will_ run into a certain hobgoblin raider, or an orc wizard with a skull-mask...and won't those recurrent characters feel even more exasperating when you _know_ they won't boost your character's stats, no matter what you do to them?)
So, from the points you've made regarding "beating the bushes", it sounds like _now_, in a dungeon situation with a somewhat noisy party, sending a reasonably tough guy out ahead (and I was of course thinking Barik here, although right now the golem might be a useful if cloddish substitute) seems sensible. (I think we executed this idea in the crypts at the front door, to good effect.) I agree that the front person could be ambushed, but that's sort of the point: ambushing _part_ of a party doesn't put _all_ the party in a disadvantaged position, which is the goal of an ambush. If the ambushers are being shot with arrows by a pursuing party, they're going to have a harder time of it than if they immediately jumped into melee with everyone.
Perhaps more later.
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