Same Bat Time

Session 2's end found the rookie adventurers taking an extended rest in a formerly ghost-filled hallway. Normally I try to end sessions on at least a minor cliffhanger, either some surprising revelation or the start of a combat--it gets the players excited for the next session and leaves them with at least some idea of what they'll be doing. I managed to do this in session 1, ending with a tease of the encounter with the mud lord, mostly by accident, but I couldn't get one for session 2.

This is more due to scheduling than anything else--unlike my previous campaign, which played a set day every week for a set time, and thus I planned every session to last that time and could plan the end appropriately, we play this summer campaign on a much more ad-hoc basis, essentially getting together when we can and playing until people need to leave. Without a good idea of how long any particular session is going to last, cliffhangers become much more difficult to pull off (although I did manage to half-way establish one at the end of session 4).

Trap, Crackle, Pop

Session 3 began after the player's first extended rest. I used the opportunity to try to recover a little bit of the sense that this hallway was not just a corridor where some ghosts once hung out by describing the characters experiencing disturbing dreams of ghosts--my personal explanation, though the players didn't get this and thus it was rather useless, was that after surviving the intial trap they were immune to further illusionary attacks, but their minds were more vulnerable in their dreams. I also started my work on connecting the players into the ongoing story, by having the party's deva (a reincarnating embodied angel) dream instead of what he quickly figured out was the Keep's past, implying that in some past reincarnation he had been at the Keep. The players also seized on the memory--of soldiers fleeing back down the hall towards where the players had entered--as foreshadowing of something particularly dangerous ahead of them.

First, however, they had to make it through the remaining traps. I had originally planned for the first level to have multiple paths through multiple traps, simply because I am trying to create more open-ended encounters and nonlinear paths (though honestly your players will always create their own paths as long as you give them the leeway to), but in the end the t-junction the characters found at the end of the hall became something of a false choice (at least as the players experienced it).

The players went right first and found a classic fantasy dungeon staple: an open room filled with fire crossed by a narrow beam. The fire was illusionary, of course, but once again I failed to have come up with a way of sufficiently hinting at this (and once again it didn't really matter). The skill challenge to cross the beam went quite well and produced an interesting and surprising narrative despite the failure of the trap's intention. The two acrobatic characters, a ranger and a rogue, crossed with little difficulty, leaving behind the less agile wizard and cleric. They found on the other side of the beam a passage of magical darkness that they could physically enter but could not find any way of seeing in. Cleverly, they came up a plan to stab a javelin recovered from the bullywugs into the mortar between the stone bricks of the walls and tie a rope to the end of the javelin, ensuring that they could make their way back. I had not considered this possibility (though it obvious in retrospect, of course), and so I quickly improvised a way to trap the players despite the rope.

Originally the dark room was supposed to lead quickly to the next and ultimate trap, the disassociation of the darkness necessary for the next trap to work well. With the rope, however, the players could reasonably find their way back to the fire room; thus I came up with an illusionary wall that only appeared to those who had passed far enough along the passage, trapping them there but allowing others, such as the eladrin wizard who realized he could fey step across and promptly came after the others, to follow the rope through to the other side--and become trapped as well.

The cleric, meanwhile, decided to explore the left option, which led to what I called in my notes the "crushing room", inspired, as my players quickly identified once the trap was sprung, by the trap from The Temple of Doom. I tried to introduce another hint to the illusions by describing to the cleric how the room was empty, but as he entered he tripped and found skeletons at his feet that had not previously been there (they had been hidden by the illusion until he made physical contact). Fortunately (or not), after activating the trap and realizing that the walls were closing in, the player rolled phenomenally and managed to shove open the door far enough to escape. (If the character hadn't escaped, he would have after taking some damage ended up in the next trap with the others--though I never quite came up with an explanation why, given that the previous trespassers had simply died in the room.)

Mirror's Edge

After a short interlude in the darkness whereupon I separated the players by describing how as they proceeded further their other senses dulled as well, eventually reaching the point where they could no longer tell if they were still touching each other, the players arrived at the final trap, a situation I had immediately thought of when I began contemplating an illusionary dungeon but feared would be easily spotted and extremely difficult to pull off well. Luckily, unlike everything else in the dungeon, this trap came off far better than anything I had considered possible.

I explained that the players awoke in two separate groups, both in small lit rooms and both surrounded by a number of monsters. I then asked the players if I could separate them--playing the two encounters out in two separate physical rooms as well--to enhance the feeling of separation. Trusting their DM, the players accepted with little second thought. I did explain as we went that this was something some DMs did, and explained my nervous and more frequent than normal pauses and considerations and combat note-taking as my having never split a party before in this manner--all of which was true, if missing the real point.

I alternated between groups each round; some of my players suggested it would be faster to just do multiple rounds with each group and then switch, but I brushed this off by saying I didn't want to make the others wait too long. Once again, I think the newness of the players and their trust in me as the DM and knowledge base of D&D traditions helped a lot; experienced players would recognize immediately that this was a very odd situation and probably would have caught on much more quickly.

As was, the players completed the encounter without recognizing the trap. The contigencies I had planned for, such as the players attempting to speak to the monsters (the monsters' responses would just be unintelligible angry growls), never came into play: the players simply attacked until they killed the monsters, or, in one group's case, was felled by the monsters. Then I described to the wizard's group how he finally got a grip on the strange magical aura that seemed to be permeating the entire level--and saw through the illusions that were the monsters, now revealed as their own party members.

It was a fascinating fight to run just for the strange dynamics of it as DM: I didn't do any normal tactical thinking for the fight as I made no decisions except for the one real monster in the room ( a fell taint drawn by the illusions), and so my energy was instead occupied with keeping track of who was attacking whom, who moved where, how much damage they did, and figuring out how to translate all that into the other group's map. It also gave me a chance to play with describing monsters I don't normally use--the stand-ins for the party consisted of a dark creeper (the rogue), a koa-tua whip (the wizard), a troglodyte crossbowman (the ranger), a foulspawn seer (the cleric), and a basilisk (the ranger's beast companion).

The players' reactions--both during the fight and after--were also immensely gratifying. During the fight they grew frustrated with me over the monsters' unusual healing abilities (especially when after "killing" the dark creeper it stood back up on its next turn) and high damage (all players used their daily attacks during the fight) and eagerly claimed the loot they were sure to get once the encounter was finished: "I want his staff!" After the fight, the players worked their way through the descriptions of their respective encounters, figuring out what monster action corresponded to their own, and generally reveling in how fooled they had been. They were so generally pleased and surprised by the encounter, in fact, that we decided to simply break and go to dinner rather than attempt to immediately continue the game.

Session 1 ended on a small cliffhanger as my new players approached the ruins of the Keep, the object of their quest, and a mob of bullywugs emerged and surrounded them, led by a giant half-dead staff-wielder (a Mud Lord with the Deathhunger template from Open Grave applied and a few custom changes). When the time came for session 2, the players were eager to blast some zombie frog.

Plan of Attack

Between sessions 1 and 2 I finally decided most of the details of the inner Keep: an underground dungeon with two levels. The second level, which I planned first before I was even certain there would be a first level, would be the laboratory of the ancient gnome artificer whose work would be the focus of this first quest. One of my players was surprised upon reviewing the Monster Manual that there were "robots in D&D": I was already strongly considering including warforged and that comment just cemented it. The lower level thus evolved fairly quickly as a facility for the production of warforged, albeit it with some more sinister details (which I will not discuss as the players have yet to discover them).

The first level proved much more difficult. My thoughts returned frequently to an illusion-based security system: the first level would in essence be a giant booby-trap designed to discourage and ultimately eliminate trespassers. Gnomes, of course, are known for illusions, and I liked the idea of players gradually recognizing that their experiences were not real (it appeals to my postmodern/self-referential sense, I suppose). Actually coming up with mechanics to produce that experience, though, proved quite difficult, and in the end mostly failed, with the exception of the final trap, which succeeded far beyond my wildest dreams.

Session 2

But first the players had to face the bullywugs. The initial description of the mud lord's escort, a pair of bullywug twitchers wielding javelins that seemed much better made than the previous twitchers' rough wooden spears and actually had metal tips, prompted the first great meme of the summer campaign: one of my players asked seriously if the bullywugs made the spears themselves or stole them, as "they don't appear to have metalsmithing capabilities". This comment prompted uncontrollable laughter from one of the other players, apparently amazed that anyone would consider such a question. To reward the first player for his thoughts, I told him what I had actually planned to inform them after the fight was over: the javelins bore Dwarven runes that suggested they were in fact stolen.

When we finally started combat, the players already demonstrated a firmer grasp of both combat mechanics and tactics. The players recognized the bullywug croakers for what they were: minions with a close blast attack that made them extremely dangerous while the party was grouped together and thus important initial targets. After those had been dispatched, the players focused primarily on the mud lord, reasoning that although it was obviously tougher than the other enemies, its death might cause the others to flee (a suspicion that was in fact in my combat notes). The combat took some time due to the mud lord using his template's abilities to heal himself: I tweaked the death hunger's abilities to allow it to intentionally sacrifice one of its own (in fact, a twitcher at full health) to use its Consume ability, describing it grisly grabbing the adjacent bullywug and biting off its head, which successfully incensed the players at both the brutality of the description and the mechanical effect of the healing.

After a brief interlude in the surface ruins of the Keep, the players proceeded to the first underground level, where I made my first major mistake of the session. I had continually returned to the idea that the gnome had not only set up illusionary traps but also attracted the bullywugs or other creatures in the past as savage guardians by posing as a Wizard of Oz-esque god. The first room, containing a crude, blood-soaked altar, was to have this illusionary figure appear when the players entered, but I forgot to put it in my notes, having never decided exactly how I wanted the effect to work, and thus did not implement it. This didn't impact the players much, luckily: the relationship between the bullywugs and the Keep's lower inhabitants was in no way an important part of the (meager) plot I had planned.

The first illusionary trap, an artificially lengthened hallway in which apparations appeared to attack trespassers, also failed to work as planned, due once again to my conceiving of an idea but not figuring out the details necessary to make it work. Thus it appeared to the players that they were simply being attacked by ghosts, a misunderstanding which, as before, did not really negatively impact the players. After the encounter with the ghosts, the party's third fight of the day, many of the players were almost entirely out of healing surges and thus they requested an extended rest as we ended the session. I considered it over the time inbetween and agreed, recognizing that the number of upcoming combats and/or possible damage would require a rest at some point.

I was quite surprised when an old high school friend texted me a few weeks into the summer asking for help with a tabletop game of Hunter: the Reckoning. What followed was a few hours hanging out with friends I had hardly talked to in two years (good--the hanging out part, not the two years part) and reading through the Hunter manual the following day (not so much bad as ugly). Since none of the others had ever so much as played a tabletop RPG and I had just finished DMing a game of D&D 4E, they trusted my judgment when I said the Hunter manual was a mess and D&D would actually be easier for everyone. (They figured Hunter was something like "D&D lite", and it certainly has less rules, but that also means less structure, which is generally a bad thing for new players.)

Session 0

Our first session was simply character creation; since I didn't even know what game we were playing until a few hours before, I had no real preparation at all and simply brought four blank character sheets and a laptop with the official Character Builder on it (an extremely useful tool, though not without its quirks). After character creation, though, the players asked me to start the game . . . so I put it back on the players: how do you meet? Beginners, of course, need a bit more guidance than that and had no real ideas (my own fault for not coming with some kind of hook/basic intro prepared, but understandable given the circumstances I hope), but luckily one of my players had a bit more knowledge and suggested we go with the cliche and start in a tavern. After each player spun a bit of backstory for their characters--two, to my surprise and delight, connecting themselves prior to the official start--we were off, slowly, awkwardly, painfully, through a brief bar fight and theft. Then we adjourned for the night and my players decided on our next playing time--the following evening.

Theme Theory

My first recognition was that this campaign would be very, very different from the one I had run previously. My last (and first) campaign was built on around a world and narrative arc I had been contemplating and slowly evolving for almost a year before the campaign itself started (far before I had any idea of who my players would be or what characters they might play); thus I had a good idea of where I was going from the beginning but left little room for nonlinear exploration or character development. My players were also all as experienced as myself with the game; perhaps not always as encyclopedically knowledgeable about the system, but they understood the rules and all of their own characters' abilities (and indeed all of them had DMed a game of their own at one point or another). The campaign had a strong rooting in my personal thematic concerns toward D&D: it was in many ways an intentional deconstruction of many traditional D&D trends, notably the entire basic conceit of the players as powerful characters who nobly decide the fate of the world. (As one of my players said after its conclusion: "We didn't actually accomplish anything . . .")

This summer campaign had to be different, obviously. While I had toyed with ideas for another campaign towards the end of my first, they were all founded on 4E's paragon tier and meant to continue my deconstructive tendencies--not a framework that would work well with all new players, who clearly were best started at first level in a more traditional D&D adventure (as I had myself started). And so I essentially began from scratch--but with only one day to plan before the first true session, I didn't make everything anew. Instead I looked to the official D&D adventures--the first time I ever really considered substantially borrowing from others' material. I took the village from the (now free) first 4E adventure module (Keep on the Shadowfell), Winterhaven, and began plotting a short first adventure involving an ancient ruined Keep--which also became the basis of my first genuine dungeon crawl (excluding a short cave run in my first campaign which had only one actual combat encounter).

While I couldn't use many of the themes or plots I had considered for a second campaign and I was borrowing liberally from official D&D adventures, I did set out to follow another aspect of my thoughts for a follow-up campaign: increased player agency. My primary dissatisfaction with my first campaign was its linearity and the lack of influence my players had on its outcome--while some of this was the point (they weren't the ones to save the world), I wanted them to be able to influence their personal stakes, which also necessitated their personal stakes be a much bigger part of the campaign. I haven't quite gotten to this yet in the summer campaign's actual play, but it is a major consideration of my plans for the future.

I also want to cater to my players' desires more, and this I have been able to do more quickly: during character creation one of my players looked through the Monster Manual and found the "frog monsters" (bullywugs) hilarious; I noted this and made the first true enemy the party faced on the way to the Keep a tribe of savage bullywugs. (The player on figuring out what was attacking him: "Are these those frog things?!") My players seemed particularly amused by the idea of monstrous gnomes as well, which led to my deciding that the ancient wizard whose laboratory they would find in the ruins of the Keep would be a gnome.

Session 1

Due to my limited time I didn't get the power cards (an almost necessary tool for 4E, in my experience) finished before the session; therefore I simply brought index cards, made a few examples, and gave them to my players to do themselves. This I think was actually helpful (despite my replacing them next session with better printed ones) because it forced my players to actually read each of their powers all the way through, and although they still didn't have a complete grasp on the rules and terminology and thus what each power actually did mechanically, they did get a better idea of their capabilities. (One of my players picked up on his chosen encounter power being an immediate reaction and asked if he could use it in our first combat when he was attacked; I hadn't even remembered he had it.)

Not so successful a mistake was my lack of planning for player eventualities; for some reason I have a tendency to come up with a plot or way for things to play out (itself not a very good habit as a DM) and then not develop the necessary justification for it to players. (I just tell myself that's a small thing I'll get to in time--and then rarely do.) This is the realm, of course, of hooks; how to get players to bite on the adventure you've prepared. Coming off an extremely linear campaign in which there was rarely alternative courses of action (in a way that mattered to the general plot of the campaign, at least), I'm still rather inept at making hooks work well, especially in the more open world I'm trying to present. Nonetheless, players generally make up for such DMing ineptitude by recognizing a plot hook when they see it (even if they haven't gotten enough justification for their characters to pursue it) and eventually biting just because they realize there's nothing else for them to do (which is helpful for the DM but obviously quite damaging for player immersion).

Once on the quest, however, the path became linear and things proceeded more smoothly. I tried to gradually introduce the aspects of 4E combat through the first encounter (with a bloodthorn vine and a group of bullywugs), and while the party rouge would wait until next session to figure out how sneak attack worked, everyone seemed to get a decent handle on how combat worked. I even managed to introduce some of the various types of terrain and obstruction (a favorite toy of mine).

Tools

This is my first time using miniatures; I bought some near the end of the school year simply because they were cool and cheap, and I only use them for player characters (or otherwise important characters that I don't have a token prepared for, such as the wizard's summoned fire warrior in the second session). I'm still somewhat split on the idea of minis: obviously they're cool-looking, but since there's intrinsically less choice than with custom tokens (especially when you have as few as I do) I worry that their image will overcome the internal image of the characters in a way that custom tokens don't. So far, however, this doesn't seem to be a problem, even with my players having barely experienced role-playing before.

I've continued to use custom tokens for enemies and NPCs. These are simply 1" wide washers (at their outside; washers are measured by the diameter of their interior hole, however, so buy accordingly) with images formatted with RPtools's Token Tool pasted on top. This time I've also added a second image on the bottom with a red ring to represent bloodied, which is both a nice visual reminder and a reward for players who enjoy flipping over the token when they bloody a monster. The images are also glued using liquid Elmer's Glue instead of a glue stick this time, which is much stronger (no more problems with images always falling off as we did with my first campaign) but also can cause warping and/or strange discolorations (my set of tokens for the second session all somehow ended up color-shifted green after gluing).

My combat maps are drawn on vellum graph paper left over from an old school project; the sheets are 11" by 17", marked off in one-inch squares, which is generally sizable enough for any normal arena and when folded in half fits neatly into a standard file folder. I generally create a general layout of a map on the computer with a tool such as Ye Olde Map Maker (an online flash program) and then transfer it to the paper pap and draw in details with pencil. For this campaign I've also begun retracing the pencil in pen and then erasing the pencil to make a cleaner look and maps that I can if necessary draw notes on in combat and not worry about erasing the underlying terrain.

Pardon for the lack of updates.

"Everyone's a Hero" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

It may not feel too classy
Begging just to eat
But you know who does that? Lassie--
And she always gets a treat.

So you wonder what your part is
Because you’re homeless and depressed,
But home is where the heart is,
So your real home’s in your chest!

Everyone’s a hero in their own way.
Everyone’s got villains they must face.
They’re not as cool as mine,
But folks you know it’s fine to know your place.

Everyone’s a hero in their own way--
In their own not-that-heroic way.

So I thank my girlfriend Penny--
Yeah, we totally had sex--
She showed me there’s so many
Different muscles I can flex:

There’s the deltoids of compassion,
There’s the abs of being kind.
It’s not enough to bash in heads;
You’ve got to bash in minds!

Everyone’s a hero in their own way.
Everyone’s got something they can do.
Get up, go out, and fly--
Especially that guy, he smells like poo!

Everyone’s a hero in their own way,
you and you and mostly me and you.

I’m poverty’s new sheriff
And I’m bashing in the slums.
A hero doesn’t care if you’re a bunch of scary
alcoholic bums!

Everybody!

Everyone’s a hero in their own way.
Everyone can blaze a hero’s trail.
Don’t worry if it’s hard,
if you’re not a friggin' ‘tard you will prevail!

Everyone’s a hero in their own way,
Everyone a hero in their--