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.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
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.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
D&D Strategy idea: suppose a party (just for example, the one on the blog) is in a fairly high risk but linear situation: like, say, we're heading toward the entrance to the citadel of light, but there's probably some ghoulies gonna jump out at us along the way.
Does it seem to be a good/bad idea to send one guy forward to "beat the bushes"? Points for this seem to be:
Does it seem to be a good/bad idea to send one guy forward to "beat the bushes"? Points for this seem to be:
- Party gets to choose the likely target, instead of having the magic users get smacked
- Party's good ranged attacks can potentially be used along with good melee attacks
- Attacks and traps that could affect several party members only get one
In addition, if the front guy can be sneaky, there's the chance of detecting ambushes, traps, et cetera before setting them off.
In the negative category is really only one big one that I can see, with its various corollaries:
- Increases chance of the party getting separated.
Now, getting separated can work out very badly. And this scheme definitely opens the possibility that the point man could fall down a pit, or get surrounded, or otherwise spirited away from the party.
But realistically, how often is that going to happen when it wasn't going to happen already? If a wall falls down between the party and the lead, it might have been to cut off a retreat -- in which case it's not such a bad idea to have people on the other side who can maybe rescue you -- or it was to cut the party in half, maybe with someone under the wall.
So, now that the blog party is walkin' the halls of the Citadel of Light, howzabout Barik (or someone) tries to tiptoe ahead and play scout (not when we're up against doorways, but for those long halls)?
Thursday, November 11, 2004
If there were any regular readers of this website, I'd apologize to them for not putting anything up in so long. Oops, there's Scott, so somebody's watching... :)
Anyhow, I was just looking through the Standard Reference Document when I should've been working, and came up with the following fun facts that make me feel more impressed about Barik:
Barik has a 50/50 chance to know any basic (but not common knowledge) fact about: aberrations, caverns, oozes, spelunking; lands, terrain, climate, people; animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, seasons and cycles, weather, or vermin.
He's got a 50/50 chance to track (checking each mile) a lone orc walking through a stream. On a moonless night. If the orc's walking on normal firm ground, Barik would have the same 50/50 chance to follow the trail on the same overcast night even if it was 2 days old, and it had been raining for three hours.
I also note that Barik can take a Survival check to get a Fortitude save bonus to avoid suffering the ill effects of inclement weather (not the slowing down, but colds and stuff.) His fortitude save is pretty good, so this wouldn't be significant except that for every point he exceeds the check by, he can give the bonus to another member of the party. Something to remember the next time we're slogging through the rain. (If we're standing still, like when we're in camp, the bonus is +4 instead of +2.)
Anyhow, I was just looking through the Standard Reference Document when I should've been working, and came up with the following fun facts that make me feel more impressed about Barik:
Barik has a 50/50 chance to know any basic (but not common knowledge) fact about: aberrations, caverns, oozes, spelunking; lands, terrain, climate, people; animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, seasons and cycles, weather, or vermin.
He's got a 50/50 chance to track (checking each mile) a lone orc walking through a stream. On a moonless night. If the orc's walking on normal firm ground, Barik would have the same 50/50 chance to follow the trail on the same overcast night even if it was 2 days old, and it had been raining for three hours.
I also note that Barik can take a Survival check to get a Fortitude save bonus to avoid suffering the ill effects of inclement weather (not the slowing down, but colds and stuff.) His fortitude save is pretty good, so this wouldn't be significant except that for every point he exceeds the check by, he can give the bonus to another member of the party. Something to remember the next time we're slogging through the rain. (If we're standing still, like when we're in camp, the bonus is +4 instead of +2.)
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
From the d-n-dblog: (The 3.5 PH at least just says you get a critical hit on a coup de gras, but you have to roll the damage.)
I wonder if there's a "hole" in the rules here. A rogue gets sneak attack damage on a coup de gras, which is an "optional extra damage" option. By the same token, it sorta seems like you should be allowed to use Power Attack for a coup de gras. Of course, since you're guaranteed a hit, it seems like a good munchkin would say "I take -20 from the attack bonus to add +20 to damage" (or more, if you're using two hands). That'd sure make those coups against sleeping dragons a lot more effective.
I've done only rudimentary research, but I can't find a resolution of this issue in the Main D&D FAQ or the 3.5 Main FAQ. I suspect the answer is something somewhat lame like "technically, Power Attack can only be used for melee attacks, and a coup de grace doesn't involve a melee attack". That is, the phrase "deliver a coup de grace with a melee weapon" is not equivalent to "make a melee attack". Those clever D&D rules lawyers.
I wonder if there's a "hole" in the rules here. A rogue gets sneak attack damage on a coup de gras, which is an "optional extra damage" option. By the same token, it sorta seems like you should be allowed to use Power Attack for a coup de gras. Of course, since you're guaranteed a hit, it seems like a good munchkin would say "I take -20 from the attack bonus to add +20 to damage" (or more, if you're using two hands). That'd sure make those coups against sleeping dragons a lot more effective.
I've done only rudimentary research, but I can't find a resolution of this issue in the Main D&D FAQ or the 3.5 Main FAQ. I suspect the answer is something somewhat lame like "technically, Power Attack can only be used for melee attacks, and a coup de grace doesn't involve a melee attack". That is, the phrase "deliver a coup de grace with a melee weapon" is not equivalent to "make a melee attack". Those clever D&D rules lawyers.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Replying to Jacob's kibitzing about mounted combat:
Personally, my first instinct was that the whole "directing the warhorse to fight" thing was dirty pool -- I mean, you don't see the horses going at each other in Ivanhoe or whatever. The horses rear up sometimes and windmill their front hooves, but they never hit anything, as far as I can recall.
I can totally imagine some nasty robber baron knocking over some poor peasant with his horse, and maybe the peasant could get whacked with the horse's hooves. I kinda figure the trample feat would cover that, though.
So having horses (that you're riding on) fight just seems weird. With wolves and other possible mounts, it makes more sense, but even then, the idea of a full attack is kinda weird, and surely various feats like Improved Trip or Improved Grapple shouldn't work as well if the mount isn't free to roll around or use both forelegs at the same time. And lions have Pounce, where they can do damage with their hind claws, which seems like the rider should have to make another Ride check for the Leap or something.
I guess that if you were going to go with the "everybody can attack anybody" concept, you can pursue the notion that a round is a very busy 6 seconds, and that's enough time for critters to rear up and fall back down, so a horse can rear up and clock an opposing rider with its hooves, then fall to earth and its rider can poke a sword in the other mount's ribs. This would work a lot easier if the horses are in a T-shape, rather than head-to-head, but horses aren't 5 feet across either, so we can just assume that's part of the simplification of the combat system.
[Hm. I see now that the example DCs given in the 3rd ed. DMG for some skills don't match up with the DCs in the v.3.5 PH. Sigh. Why didn't they just call it version 4 and put me out of my misery? Interesting thought for later: D&D is like Open Source Development.]
Anyhow, the DC to get a combat-ready mount to fight in addition to your attack is 10, the same DC it takes to tie a firm knot or find out the current gossip -- in other words, something any old peasant can do right at least half the time. You can view this in two ways. The more charitable approach is to suppose that "battle-ready" means the mount is like a guard dog, and will practically fight on its own anyway, so directing them to attack one target while you attack the other is a piece of cake (maybe it bites the leg of the rider or something). The more bitchy approach, which I naturally favor on principle, is that the DC for this is obviously too low, unless you put serious restrictions on what the mount's attack can be.
Such restrictions could include:
- the mount can only make a single primary attack, not a full attack
- the mount can attack with its teeth, but not an attack that requires its feet
- the mount can only attack other creatures on the ground, not mounted creatures
- the mount can attack with its feet, but such attacks can only be upon creatures at least one size category smaller than it
- the mount cannot make any special attacks (Improved Trip, Pounce, etc.)
- a mount provides its rider with cover from other mounts
- the mount can't attack in a way that the DM thinks is unfeasible.
The last one always applies, I suppose. I also wouldn't mind distinguishing horses (which essentially never bite in a combat way) from other mounts (I have no idea what a griffon would usually do.)
We are near two issues, one of which D&D developers have always tried to ignore and the other they've started to devote some energy to. The second issue is size: an itty-bitty rider should make little difference to a mount (would a red dragon really be much restricted because someone was on his back?), but a warpony with a fully armored dwarf on its back (for example) can't really be expected to do more than carry him around. Although D&D has all kinds of size modifiers and stuff, when it comes to this kind of thing, I think they're hoping to ignore it -- the little critter in each case isn't going to make that much difference to the battle, so why make an exception in the rules?
The other part, which D&D mostly abhors, is wound location and direction of attack. A wolf could easily bite at a rider's leg, but getting a horse to do damage with its hooves takes some gymnastics. And should a chain shirt's AC count for an attack on a leg? Dropping a rock on someone's head is a lot more likely to knock them out than throwing it at their chest. A knee-high fence between combatants shouldn't really offer much cover -- it's not like you're aiming at their feet. Should it be as useful (+4 to AC) as a chain shirt? Maybe if you crouch behind it -- but surely that would give a penalty to your attack bonus, no? Clearly, this starts a nightmare of complexity that is better left alone. There's no obvious place to draw the line.
From that perspective, 'twould be better to just accept the somewhat funny looking rules, and hope that the weird cases don't come up much -- either from DM/player choices (the current campaign mostly has mounts fighting each other, and riders fighting each other) or from strategic issues (if a mount can do damage to the mount, but the AC of a rider is generally too much for it, the "smart thing" is also the most "realistic").
Personally, my first instinct was that the whole "directing the warhorse to fight" thing was dirty pool -- I mean, you don't see the horses going at each other in Ivanhoe or whatever. The horses rear up sometimes and windmill their front hooves, but they never hit anything, as far as I can recall.
I can totally imagine some nasty robber baron knocking over some poor peasant with his horse, and maybe the peasant could get whacked with the horse's hooves. I kinda figure the trample feat would cover that, though.
So having horses (that you're riding on) fight just seems weird. With wolves and other possible mounts, it makes more sense, but even then, the idea of a full attack is kinda weird, and surely various feats like Improved Trip or Improved Grapple shouldn't work as well if the mount isn't free to roll around or use both forelegs at the same time. And lions have Pounce, where they can do damage with their hind claws, which seems like the rider should have to make another Ride check for the Leap or something.
I guess that if you were going to go with the "everybody can attack anybody" concept, you can pursue the notion that a round is a very busy 6 seconds, and that's enough time for critters to rear up and fall back down, so a horse can rear up and clock an opposing rider with its hooves, then fall to earth and its rider can poke a sword in the other mount's ribs. This would work a lot easier if the horses are in a T-shape, rather than head-to-head, but horses aren't 5 feet across either, so we can just assume that's part of the simplification of the combat system.
[Hm. I see now that the example DCs given in the 3rd ed. DMG for some skills don't match up with the DCs in the v.3.5 PH. Sigh. Why didn't they just call it version 4 and put me out of my misery? Interesting thought for later: D&D is like Open Source Development.]
Anyhow, the DC to get a combat-ready mount to fight in addition to your attack is 10, the same DC it takes to tie a firm knot or find out the current gossip -- in other words, something any old peasant can do right at least half the time. You can view this in two ways. The more charitable approach is to suppose that "battle-ready" means the mount is like a guard dog, and will practically fight on its own anyway, so directing them to attack one target while you attack the other is a piece of cake (maybe it bites the leg of the rider or something). The more bitchy approach, which I naturally favor on principle, is that the DC for this is obviously too low, unless you put serious restrictions on what the mount's attack can be.
Such restrictions could include:
- the mount can only make a single primary attack, not a full attack
- the mount can attack with its teeth, but not an attack that requires its feet
- the mount can only attack other creatures on the ground, not mounted creatures
- the mount can attack with its feet, but such attacks can only be upon creatures at least one size category smaller than it
- the mount cannot make any special attacks (Improved Trip, Pounce, etc.)
- a mount provides its rider with cover from other mounts
- the mount can't attack in a way that the DM thinks is unfeasible.
The last one always applies, I suppose. I also wouldn't mind distinguishing horses (which essentially never bite in a combat way) from other mounts (I have no idea what a griffon would usually do.)
We are near two issues, one of which D&D developers have always tried to ignore and the other they've started to devote some energy to. The second issue is size: an itty-bitty rider should make little difference to a mount (would a red dragon really be much restricted because someone was on his back?), but a warpony with a fully armored dwarf on its back (for example) can't really be expected to do more than carry him around. Although D&D has all kinds of size modifiers and stuff, when it comes to this kind of thing, I think they're hoping to ignore it -- the little critter in each case isn't going to make that much difference to the battle, so why make an exception in the rules?
The other part, which D&D mostly abhors, is wound location and direction of attack. A wolf could easily bite at a rider's leg, but getting a horse to do damage with its hooves takes some gymnastics. And should a chain shirt's AC count for an attack on a leg? Dropping a rock on someone's head is a lot more likely to knock them out than throwing it at their chest. A knee-high fence between combatants shouldn't really offer much cover -- it's not like you're aiming at their feet. Should it be as useful (+4 to AC) as a chain shirt? Maybe if you crouch behind it -- but surely that would give a penalty to your attack bonus, no? Clearly, this starts a nightmare of complexity that is better left alone. There's no obvious place to draw the line.
From that perspective, 'twould be better to just accept the somewhat funny looking rules, and hope that the weird cases don't come up much -- either from DM/player choices (the current campaign mostly has mounts fighting each other, and riders fighting each other) or from strategic issues (if a mount can do damage to the mount, but the AC of a rider is generally too much for it, the "smart thing" is also the most "realistic").
D&D 3rd ed. movement rates, post #1:
-------------------------------------------
First of all, I want to say that I think the folks behind the 3rd (and 3.5) edition did a very good job at including enough detail about moving around for it to be tactically important, without bogging down. The simplicity of the system is brilliant.
My interest in this started when (over on the d-n-d blog) we had some people running behind some people on horses. Actually, my interest started before that, because my character's a dwarf, for whom movement rates are an important consideration. Dwarves have the racial disadvantage of having the base movement of a small character (20'), without the advantages (or other disadvantages) of being small (+1 to hit and AC, +4 to hide, less weight capacity and smaller weapons). [Parenthetically, a dwarf's speed doesn't go down if he carries more or wears heavy armor, so with some weight on him, he essentially reverts to what other normal-sized characters are like with the same encumbrance.]
So, let's talk about human speeds first, and compare horses later. Rules summary: the normal character base move is 30', meaning a move action in combat moves you up to 30'. Small characters (and dwarves) have a base move of 20'. A character can take up to two move actions in a six-second round, or if the character is all-out running, they can go 4 times as fast (for a human, that's 120' in a round.) The time scaling of movement is ridiculously simple: if your base move is 30' in a round, in a minute you're going 300', and for longer periods you're traveling at 3 mph. (That's multiply by 10 for distance in a minute, and divide by ten and change units to mph for longer distances.) For the larger scales, you can hustle, which means you go twice as fast, for an hour before you start suffering ill effects, and you can run (four times as fast) for a minute (or a little more if you have a high Constitution, but more than 3 minutes is nigh impossible.) Note that normal combat is hustling, since you can make two moves in a round. One last wrinkle: if you have the Run feat, your run is 5x your base move, instead of just 4x.
Note that this conversion cheats just a little: it would be exact if there were 6000 feet in a mile. Since there are only 5,280 feet/mile, this means that the long-term rate of speed (even walking) is a little bit slower over an hour than over a few minutes. A convenient simplification, and I can't really argue it's not realistic: I certainly don't walk as fast when I'm going for hours. It does mean that if you're traveling for half an hour, a good munchkin should try to convince the DM to use the ft/min and multiply by 30, rather than the mph divided by 2. :)
So, how fast are D&D speeds relative to the real world? Well, 3 mph is a brisk walk, and the average person can walk that fast all day with no trouble (assuming good conditions). 6 mph (hustling) is a ten-minute mile; from personal experience I can say that an average/healthy person can do this for an hour, and an athletic person can keep up that pace for longer.
Modern marathon winners run 26.21 miles in a little over 2 hours, or about 12.4 mph; in 1900, the record was around 3 hours, or 8.7 mph. Lest you think your D&D character isn't up to snuff, note that all these running rates are with virtually no weight, while a D&D character can run this fast in (light) armor and carrying considerable weapons and equipment. In addition, barbarians have a 10' increase in base speed, so they can hustle at 8 mph; the Longstrider spell has the same effect, and other magic effects (haste, Boots of Striding and Springing) can double the base speed, so characters can run (in armor) nearly as fast as a marathon champion, with a little help. In addition, a D&D character can go for hours at this speed, although this requires taking nonlethal damage. (I think it's fair to argue that marathon runners take nonlethal damage too). For example, any human 1st level fighter can run for 4 hours at 6 mph; this amounts to finishing a marathon in a little over 4 hours, which most of us can only dream of.
What about the shorter distances and time frames? At this point, I think it's safe to say that all the record holders and star running athletes are the equivalent of "having the Run feat." With that in mind, until recently (1954, when Roger Bannister proved it could be done), running a mile in under 4 minutes was thought impossible. A 4 minute mile is 15 mph, or 440 yards/minute. A running D&D human travels at 400 yards/minute, and can only do it for a few minutes; not quite a 4 minute mile. With the run feat, however, a D&D human travels at 500 yards/minute; it would take a lot of Constitution and even more luck, but if they could keep up the pace, such a character could run a mile in just over 3 and a half minutes, which would crush the current world record of 3 min 44.39sec. The chances of that are miniscule; however, a character with a high Constitution could easily run for 2 minutes (1000 yards), walk for a minute (100 yards), then run again and reach a mile in just under 4 minutes 20 seconds. Not too shabby. A barbarian can run even faster, and a barbarian with the run feat is scary to think about: such a character could conceivably run for 2 minutes, walk for one, and then run again and complete a mile in 3 min 26.4 sec, and with a decent Constitution, this could be done with regularity.
The aforementioned "barbarian with the run feat" is outrageously fast: in the other cases D&D characters are seen to be "larger than life" but still in the ballpark of today's athletes, a character who can run 200' per round is a cut above that. This character runs at just over 11 yd/s=22.7 mph, and can keep it up for at least a minute. In comparison, Michael Vick has run 40 yards in 4.25 seconds: that's 9.41 yd/s = 19.25 mph. Ben Johnson holds the world record for 50m at 5.55 seconds, which is 9.91 yd/s = 20.27 mph. As far as running for a whole minute goes, the world record for 500m (indoor) is very close to 1 minute; 500 m in 1 minute would be 9.12 yd/s = 18.65 mph. Conveniently, this would be 164' in a round: compare this with 150' (a human with the Run feat) or 160' (a barbarian without the Run feat). Pretty close, I think.
Considering the simplicity of the move system in D&D, they have done a marvelous job at making characters comparable to Olympians -- the peak of human ability, without overdoing it too much. As far as the 20' movement rate for Small characters and dwarves, I don't think there's anything in reality to compare it to -- it seems sensible that short-legged characters would move slower, and beyond that, comparing speeds with track and field records of people suffering from dwarfism seems just wrong.
Next post, I'll put up a little bit of background on horse speeds, and compare the D&D horse to the real world a little bit.
-------------------------------------------
First of all, I want to say that I think the folks behind the 3rd (and 3.5) edition did a very good job at including enough detail about moving around for it to be tactically important, without bogging down. The simplicity of the system is brilliant.
My interest in this started when (over on the d-n-d blog) we had some people running behind some people on horses. Actually, my interest started before that, because my character's a dwarf, for whom movement rates are an important consideration. Dwarves have the racial disadvantage of having the base movement of a small character (20'), without the advantages (or other disadvantages) of being small (+1 to hit and AC, +4 to hide, less weight capacity and smaller weapons). [Parenthetically, a dwarf's speed doesn't go down if he carries more or wears heavy armor, so with some weight on him, he essentially reverts to what other normal-sized characters are like with the same encumbrance.]
So, let's talk about human speeds first, and compare horses later. Rules summary: the normal character base move is 30', meaning a move action in combat moves you up to 30'. Small characters (and dwarves) have a base move of 20'. A character can take up to two move actions in a six-second round, or if the character is all-out running, they can go 4 times as fast (for a human, that's 120' in a round.) The time scaling of movement is ridiculously simple: if your base move is 30' in a round, in a minute you're going 300', and for longer periods you're traveling at 3 mph. (That's multiply by 10 for distance in a minute, and divide by ten and change units to mph for longer distances.) For the larger scales, you can hustle, which means you go twice as fast, for an hour before you start suffering ill effects, and you can run (four times as fast) for a minute (or a little more if you have a high Constitution, but more than 3 minutes is nigh impossible.) Note that normal combat is hustling, since you can make two moves in a round. One last wrinkle: if you have the Run feat, your run is 5x your base move, instead of just 4x.
Note that this conversion cheats just a little: it would be exact if there were 6000 feet in a mile. Since there are only 5,280 feet/mile, this means that the long-term rate of speed (even walking) is a little bit slower over an hour than over a few minutes. A convenient simplification, and I can't really argue it's not realistic: I certainly don't walk as fast when I'm going for hours. It does mean that if you're traveling for half an hour, a good munchkin should try to convince the DM to use the ft/min and multiply by 30, rather than the mph divided by 2. :)
So, how fast are D&D speeds relative to the real world? Well, 3 mph is a brisk walk, and the average person can walk that fast all day with no trouble (assuming good conditions). 6 mph (hustling) is a ten-minute mile; from personal experience I can say that an average/healthy person can do this for an hour, and an athletic person can keep up that pace for longer.
Modern marathon winners run 26.21 miles in a little over 2 hours, or about 12.4 mph; in 1900, the record was around 3 hours, or 8.7 mph. Lest you think your D&D character isn't up to snuff, note that all these running rates are with virtually no weight, while a D&D character can run this fast in (light) armor and carrying considerable weapons and equipment. In addition, barbarians have a 10' increase in base speed, so they can hustle at 8 mph; the Longstrider spell has the same effect, and other magic effects (haste, Boots of Striding and Springing) can double the base speed, so characters can run (in armor) nearly as fast as a marathon champion, with a little help. In addition, a D&D character can go for hours at this speed, although this requires taking nonlethal damage. (I think it's fair to argue that marathon runners take nonlethal damage too). For example, any human 1st level fighter can run for 4 hours at 6 mph; this amounts to finishing a marathon in a little over 4 hours, which most of us can only dream of.
What about the shorter distances and time frames? At this point, I think it's safe to say that all the record holders and star running athletes are the equivalent of "having the Run feat." With that in mind, until recently (1954, when Roger Bannister proved it could be done), running a mile in under 4 minutes was thought impossible. A 4 minute mile is 15 mph, or 440 yards/minute. A running D&D human travels at 400 yards/minute, and can only do it for a few minutes; not quite a 4 minute mile. With the run feat, however, a D&D human travels at 500 yards/minute; it would take a lot of Constitution and even more luck, but if they could keep up the pace, such a character could run a mile in just over 3 and a half minutes, which would crush the current world record of 3 min 44.39sec. The chances of that are miniscule; however, a character with a high Constitution could easily run for 2 minutes (1000 yards), walk for a minute (100 yards), then run again and reach a mile in just under 4 minutes 20 seconds. Not too shabby. A barbarian can run even faster, and a barbarian with the run feat is scary to think about: such a character could conceivably run for 2 minutes, walk for one, and then run again and complete a mile in 3 min 26.4 sec, and with a decent Constitution, this could be done with regularity.
The aforementioned "barbarian with the run feat" is outrageously fast: in the other cases D&D characters are seen to be "larger than life" but still in the ballpark of today's athletes, a character who can run 200' per round is a cut above that. This character runs at just over 11 yd/s=22.7 mph, and can keep it up for at least a minute. In comparison, Michael Vick has run 40 yards in 4.25 seconds: that's 9.41 yd/s = 19.25 mph. Ben Johnson holds the world record for 50m at 5.55 seconds, which is 9.91 yd/s = 20.27 mph. As far as running for a whole minute goes, the world record for 500m (indoor) is very close to 1 minute; 500 m in 1 minute would be 9.12 yd/s = 18.65 mph. Conveniently, this would be 164' in a round: compare this with 150' (a human with the Run feat) or 160' (a barbarian without the Run feat). Pretty close, I think.
Considering the simplicity of the move system in D&D, they have done a marvelous job at making characters comparable to Olympians -- the peak of human ability, without overdoing it too much. As far as the 20' movement rate for Small characters and dwarves, I don't think there's anything in reality to compare it to -- it seems sensible that short-legged characters would move slower, and beyond that, comparing speeds with track and field records of people suffering from dwarfism seems just wrong.
Next post, I'll put up a little bit of background on horse speeds, and compare the D&D horse to the real world a little bit.
More attentive than Linnam, you mean? I'm sure Spade would make the best ranger that badgerdom has to offer. (Hmm...maybe the badger picture needs a little Robin Hood hat...)
As he sleeps, Barik dreams happy dreams of Boots of Striding and Springing, and a Giant Eagle for a mount, or sometimes a hippogriff...and a +5 chain shirt. :)
As he sleeps, Barik dreams happy dreams of Boots of Striding and Springing, and a Giant Eagle for a mount, or sometimes a hippogriff...and a +5 chain shirt. :)
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