#RPGaDay2021 - 7 - Small

 

Day 7 - Small

Today's word is 'small'. 

I'm increasingly attracted by smaller format games, especially self-contained ones. I love the 6x9 / digest format, especially in hardcover. It's portable and convenient, and also works brilliantly when transferred to PDF for an e-Reader. I find that full-size books tend to get read more slowly, as they're less convenient. They're also much more space-efficient; I have too many RPG books and adding smaller ones causes less shelf stress. And certainly less stress with the better-half about the shelves.

A significant turn-off for me is when a publisher makes a big thing about how huge their book is. I'm more interested in the quality of the writing, the hooks and how well it's laid out. Size doesn't reflect useability. 

When City of Mist arrived in its original format, it was a massive turn off for me. I had a glorious looking volume the size of the old Yellow Pages and Phone Directories combined, too heavy to read easily and with aspects of the layout that were out of scale with the book. I'd been expecting 6x9 from the mock-up. They've subsequently fixed this with the new edition, but the hugeness meant it took me more than a year to get the game to the table properly.

I have the trilogy of core books for D&D5e, but two of them are rarely used. The Player's Handbook is referenced most often, with the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide only coming out occasionally. Perhaps part of that is because I'm running a pre-made campaign using a VTT with the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual integrated into it, so I don't need to reference books. The focus on having most of what you need in the Player's Handbook makes sense; this is the heart of the game. It may not be 6x9, and it could do with some taughtening, but it's clear, well presented and focused.

Size matters, but perhaps not in the way tradition suggests.

'Small'. Concise, clear, focused. These are winners for me. 

7 August 2021 (belatedly)

#RPGaDay2021 - 6 - Flavour

 

Day 6 - Flavor. I'm predisposed to dislike the flavour of today's entry due to the use of the American-English spelling of the word in the graphic.

There are certain flavours of roleplaying games that draw me in. Science-fiction (of the harder variety), conspiracy, espionage, noir and modern-day horror tend to attract me. Fantasy less so, although I can't seem to resist reading OSR campaigns and scenarios and even some of the D&D5e ones. However, I suspect that Curse of Strahd and Ghosts of Saltmarsh are somewhat atypical for D&D. I do so want to get into Eberron as the idea of noir D&D floats my boat.

When I talk about hard-SF, I'm not always meaning that it's mostly technology that we could envisage, more that it is internally consistent and doesn't stretch credulity too much. Some degree of magitech is fine, as it follows Clarke's law. 

I don't like horror games for shock and gore; I prefer the revealing of secrets, dark plans and fear. I don't mind the odds being stacked against the characters, but I do mind some of the tropes from Call of Cthulhu, especially convention Call of Cthulhu. There should always be a way - at some level - to solve the mystery or at least have some choices that seem meaningful. I do enjoy aspects where reality is no longer solid; the Yellow King, the Esoterrorists and Delta Green all lean into this. I quite like the idea of fairy tales, and dream-reality but I've never found a game that nails that genre for me.

I'm still searching for that perfect espionage game; Cold Shadows is close, but the system sucks and the rulebook suffered from needed a proper edit to make it tight. I keep on meaning to hack it with Wordplay/Tripod, although I have a sneaky feeling that there could be a deeply satisfying campaign game out there if you used the Forged in the Dark engine.

Then again, I loved running Old-School Essentials recently, so there's always space for a decent vanilla flavour too.

6 August 2021 (Belatedly)

#RPGaDay2021 - 5 - Throne

 

Throne?

I can't believe I'm already playing catch-up on #RPGaDay this year. 

Throne is intriguing. Do you know who the rulers are in your game, or is it something that you plan to explore? If I think back to my earliest gaming days using B2 - The Keep on the Borderlands with Basic D&D, it didn't really matter who was the monarch for the setting. The reality was the local power brokers were much more important to you and your characters. The rest of the setting felt distant. 

It's a similar thing for Traveller. You lived in the Third Imperium, but it was distant and day-to-day life was rarely affected by Imperial forces or the machinations of the Emperor. It was a backdrop and the local realities of the tension with the Zhodani and the fight to make a profit on your starship to keep it running were the dominant aspects of your character’s lives. This perfectly mirrored the source fiction like Azimov's Foundation and Andre Norton's Solar Queen books.

If you fast forward to today, who rules is more important and much more in your face. The frontier feel has gone, and there are less spaces to explore as a GM and player. The D&D Starter and Essentials books are set in a very defined setting. The published Traveller material has long since abandoned points of light and adopted splatbooks for sectors that leave very little space to explore truly. The Throne has come closer and - in doing so - the feeling has changed.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. I loved the chance to influence King Dain with my dwarf character in The One Ring. The Duchess of Daggerford just gave me a chance to link the characters together before they entered Barovia and the Curse of Strahd. The opportunity to meet the Emperor Strephon in the MegaTraveller campaign Arrival Vengeance was an emotional experience. It's just a change of focus. In the early days of gaming - and I'm thinking RuneQuest, Traveller and D&D here - you often started as inexperienced and developed to become heroes. These days, most games see your character further down that development curve. There is clear water between the B/X D&D presented in Old-School Essentials and the meta since third edition D&D. The difference can be delicious.

5 August 2021 (belatedly)

Running the Hole in the Oak (OSE)

All that prep...

I ran The Hole in the Oak for Old-School Essentials tonight, with a group of players from the Gaming Tavern (Forum and Discord) using the Role VTT. I had fun. I don't know if we will do a second session but whatever happens, it was fun. It's been a long time since I ran BX D&D.

OSE is really well put together, but I did have some flicking around as the DM, and a couple of times I struggled to find a reference. However, the players were very forgiving. 

I'd forgotten how ineffective characters can be - thieves with a 15% chance to pick a lock, characters missing a mid-range target 75% of the time and more. All things that D&D3e and onwards addressed through increased competency, raised hit points and mechanical developments like feats. However, there's a certain charm to the desperation.

The players successfully bypassed three traps (two of which they either triggered or identified and the third they just walked away from). They managed to pick a path through the dungeon that avoided most of the creature encounters. They discovered one of the boss monsters but escaped by locking it in its own room. The ingenious use of a light spell saved them from a shadow monster.

It was going really well, right up to the point they found the wight. Two retainers had their life force drained (including poor Bob, who everyone liked) completely. One of the PCs and another retainer are now Level 0 and fighting for life. They managed to lock the wight back in its chamber, but will stay there now they've defiled its rest and stolen its magic sword?

25% of the party are dead, and another 25% are reduced to normal human level. One magic-user has cast his spell. One of the two lanterns is in the chamber with the wight. But they have gold, and treasure and are mostly healthy.

Role worked flawlessly for AV, and the only mapping issues came from me (forgetting to add tokens for the retainers, fortunately, resolved for by First Age loading them from his account). It would have been nicer to have had fog of war effects as well.

I used the standing desk and the honest truth was that it gave me a much better experience of GMing than sitting at a computer desk. I forgot how much I like to stand when running.

This does make me want to set up the drop-in game I've been considering for Castle Xyntillan using OSE. I think it would be fun for the occasional raid. I've been building it with dynamic lighting using Roll20, but part of me wonders about use Role if the fog of war is implemented.

The Tally

16 locations visited.

2 dead retainers

1 drained retainer

1 drained PC

1 Shadow killed - 35xp - via a devious use of the light spell

1 Wight defeated - 25xp

1 angry Ogre

2 traps disabled

1 secret door discovered

45gp

42sp

15gp brass skull necklace

50gp silver box with dust

20 strange black tomato-like fruits

A magic sword

They've not made a huge haul yet, but they've more than covered their expenses.

It's not something I'd want to do regularly, but it was fun and I'd happily do the occasional drop-in session. I wonder how the players feel!

4 August 2021

#RPGaDay2021 - 4 - Weapon

 

Day 4 - what's your weapon?

I used to get all excited about weapons in games, pouring over stats and trying to get the best load out. However, as the combat elements become less and less important to me as a player and a GM, I've lost interest in this side of the gaming experience. An assault rifle is an assault rifle to me; I'm not bothered about the nuances. Sure, cover adding a scope or a grenade launcher, but I don't have interest in more granularity than that. It was really interesting to watch the contact between the very old school simulationist Twilight 2000 gamers with the much more modern and narrative broad brush approach of Fria Ligan in the new fourth edition of the game. There was a huge cultural gulf.

However, if you're talking about an interesting weapon, like a sentient sword, or the guns and equipment with AI recordings of former brothers-in-arms like those that Rogue Trooper is carrying, then I'm definitely up for that.

Sitting in my PDF files I've a copy of Artefact, which is a zine based solo RPG where the focus is a magical weapon or artefact and whose hands it has passed through. I'll probably explore this once the print copy arrives as it looks like an interesting way to generate a backstory. The author has also produced Bucket of Bolts, which does similar things for a starship. 

4 August 2021 (retrospectively)

#RPGaDay2021 - 3 - Tactic

 

Day 3 in the #RPGaDay2021 House

TACTIC. Something that can be very important in some games, less so in overs. Generally, the more rolls that you need to resolve it, the more important your tactic or approach is. With a narrative engine, you'll build an overall approach, and usually resolve it in one (or at least a few rolls). The minutiae of the approach matters more when you've more crunch in the game (or at least when that crunch gives you options beyond grinding out a result). 

Take D&D for example. In my Curse of Strahd game, we had the encounter with the Hags where the players had their characters charge straight in, despite knowing that this was an incredibly dangerous encounter. They nearly got wiped out; no one actually got to death saves but they ended up retreating. The next time, they used tactics, dividing the opposition and being much more clever about their approach.

Sometimes the players get the tactics spot on. I ran a heist game in Traveller one convention and they managed to very cleverly line everything up, and when it came to the dice rolls we ended up with the characters pretty much pulling it off perfectly. An anti-climax for me, but a fun win with one over the referee(*) for the players.

I like it when the players are clever and use tactics, even when it goes wrong. It shows that they're engaging with the game engine as well as the story.

3 August 2021

#RPGaDay2021 - 2 - Map

 

Day 3

The MAP is really important to me in roleplaying games because I find it really hard to grok a setting without it. A decent map has me thinking about how things link and what I can do. 

And yet, I can handle abstractness for a MegaCity. The relative positions don't matter that much in a faceless sprawl. However, when you get out into the Cursed Earth and find a small town with a scenario in it, then the map is important. 

The style is key too. That Mongoose Traveller Judge Dredd town map in the Cursed Earth was drawn like a fantasy map, and it instantly killed the book for me as it felt so out of place. There's part of me that would like every wilderness map to look like an OS Landranger, because I love the clarity of the presentation, but the reality is that it isn't the right style.

Maps are a language to communicate facts swiftly and clearly. Good keying can make the world of difference. Old-School Essentials nails this with maps that show locations and creatures so you have an instant overview. The local area of the map is then repeated next to the descriptions. It's a style I first saw in Maze of the Blue Medusa, but that's one of those books people don't like to talk about because of one of the authors.

Map styles can define a game; blue-lined dungeons are early D&D for me. Hex starmaps are Traveller. 

VTTs have me thinking differently. Do I have the map there for the players and if I do, will it lose some of the feel of discovery? In the OSE game, I'm running this week, I'm letting the players map so they can get the feel of the game as it was. It'll be interesting if it works.

Lack of a map can make a game unusable for me. Cold City had this issue. The map of Berlin was dire and I didn't know enough to do it myself. My mind just couldn't work it. I've subsequently found a decent Allied map of the city from the occupation after the war, which all of a sudden makes the game approachable.

I really love maps. Perhaps it's the Geography A-Level coming out.

2nd August 2021

Games in July 2021

 

The July Update

July saw pretty much the same pattern as the rest of the year; Gumshoe (The Yellow King & Trail of Cthulhu) and D&D5e (Curse of Strahd) are dominant game systems. It's possible that Gumshoe may take the lead by the end of August as the Strahd game is on a month's break. If this happens, it'll be the first time in the last two years that something other than D&D5e will be my most played game.

That said, I've one or two sessions of Old-School Essentials (the B/X retroclone) planned so D&D as a whole will probably hold its position static.

I'm hoping to run a Troika! game in September, and it's also fair to say that my mind is starting to look towards Furnace. I've offered 'Through Sunken Lands' but part of me is wondering if I went too quickly with that as I have a whole bunch of systems I'd like to run. I'm also starting to feel a yearning for some Sci-Fi, so we'll need to see where that gets too.

2 August 2021

#RPGaDay2021 - 1 - Scenario

Here we go again.

So RPGaDay is back and for a moment I considered being curmudgeonly about it, but then discounted it.

Today's word is SCENARIO. It's funny how we aren't consistent in the terms that we use; modules, scenarios, adventures, campaign books, adventure paths. I guess a scenario is meant to be a shorter, perhaps two to four hour session length challenge for your players. My approach to them differs depending on what I'm running and who I'm running it for. For convention games, I usually focus on making sure the characters have hooks to each other and to the plot (if there is one) or alternatively, I'll make sure that there are some beats that drive choices if I'm running a more sandbox based game.

For the Curse of Strahd campaign, I tend to think in terms of sessions or episodes. It's a sandbox, but the way that the plot is constructed, there are usually one or two routes forward. When we complete a section I'll usually ask to miss an evening and also ask for a steer from the players where they may want to go and what they may want to do. It's starting to be a challenge to keep the threads together; for the session last week I ended up re-reading all 28 write-ups that I'd done to try and draw some hooks back and forward and also to make sure I hadn't misremembered something. I'm using the 5e book, with three other takes on the campaign as references and sometimes it means I think that the players have done something when the may not have.

Anyway, scenarios. They're the heart of what a GM presents to the players, but they're only a framework. They rarely survive contact with the players to remain in the state and path that you had expected. And that is a good thing, because it's how the GM gets to explore the setting they present.

1 August 2021

PS - Roll a D8 and halve it? Come on Autocratik, have you never heard of the Caltrop Pyramid of Doom, aka the D4? What kind of heresy is this?