Adventurers settling down

One of the things I struggle with as a DM is getting my players interested in my game world. To accomplish this I try to make the game world seem as alive as possible; if they ignore a quest too long someone else might well come along and do it, or something bad might happen due to the absence of heroes. I try to get my players to see their characters as real people not just collections of stats and maybe a personality. Real people tend to think about the future at least somewhat; they want to have a nice home, a family, go on a fun vacation, buy something extravagant, etc. When PCs manage to get some sweet treasure the goals are immediately to get better gear so that they can get more treasure, and then they spend every last penny on gear before setting out again.

To me the above situation just reeks of meta-game thinking. Of course there will be more loot the next time you go out, and it will likely be a bigger haul than the first this is an adventure game after all and we just leveled. From my experiences PCs rarely if ever try to buy a farm or settle down for a while. I know that doesn’t make for thrilling action, but it does make a lot of senses and could help put some logical downtime into the game.

When I was a kid I used to love watching Conan the Destroyer. My dad had this beat up VHS and we watched it at least once a month for several years until the tape finally just gave out from use. At the end of the movie the princess asks Conan to rule at her side, but he declines because he must become king by his own hand.

King by his own hand. That is a pretty good motivation for a character to have. The desire to someday be king of your own lands and people that you yourself conquered and tamed can drive someone to go on very dangerous adventures and tackle seemingly insurmountable foes. This is the kind of goals I try to get my players to think about, but I have had little success. They seem content to just adventure, loot, repeat rather than really building a place for their characters in the world.

I stumbled across this post about the loss of D&D’s Endgame over at Grognarida and thought that this lost endgame is what I am after. Unfortunately I don’t want to deal with the complexities of a retro clone. I’m just too used to having feats and skills and not having class/race restrictions.

So long Dungeons and Dragons

A while back I talked about Brand Identity inspired by a similar post at Random Generation and I just finished up my D&D campaign last Saturday. Over the years I have had a great time with Dungeons & Dragons, but its time to move on. Pathfinder RPG picks up where 3.5 left off; it makes logical improvements to the core of the system while not throwing out what makes it great or adding in anything that is downright silly.

So I say so long Dungeons and Dragons. Its been a great run, and your spot on the shelf is well earned. I will always remember our time fondly, but now other games shall see their place at my table.

It is finished

Last night marked the end of my E6 campaign. The heroes gathered a powerful army and defeated the Demon Prince and his gnoll horde. During the battle the elf ranger/scout Urdaan was struck down by the demon’s hellfire.

Everyone seemed to have had a great time in this campaign and I was quite happy to actually finish a campaign before it fell apart on its own. I was able to see how far the characters came in regards to power as they plowed through 3 “Remror the Deathbringers” a previous mid game miniboss that almost killed the entire party as well as 15-20 standard SRD gnolls and one demon prince of gnolls. Story-wise I feel like I rushed things at points and I can see places where I will strive to improve the next time I run a game.

I’ll be passing the torch to another DM for a while and play in his Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords game. I’m looking forward to playing though I have no idea what kind of character I want to play. I’m quite partial to fighter and rogue though I have never played an arcane caster and the celestial bloodline for sorcerer looks interesting as does fighter or fighter/rogue going towards the duelist prestige class.

I have lost interest in running the d20 apocalypse game. It was heavily inspired by Borderlands which I have long since completed. I’ve also found an interest in the True20 system which is quite capable of handling an apocalypse game itself, but that’s not a direction I want to go right now. The current game idea bouncing around in my head right now is a Fusion Age scifi game that takes place in an asteroid belt that is being harvested for minerals. If all goes well with the Runelords, Arkenfall, and Eastern Spire Pathfinder games I’m playing in it may be a long time before I have a chance to run another game.

Leadership: Feat or Roleplaying Consideration

As I mentioned in a previous post using E6 rules the leadership feat is essentially worthless, and in Pathfinder it turns out that PCs cannot take leadership until 7th level. I have always wondered if the leadership feat was really worth the investment of character resources and whether or not it makes a whole lot of sense from an in-world perspective. Essentially the feat gives you a sidekick who is at least one level lower than you plus a handfull of low level mooks. How then does the king command the loyalty of his army; is he simply level 99 with charisma oozing out his ears or is it just a result of being king?

I am a firm believer in rules parity across the board. That is options and abilities available to NPCs should generally be available to PCs, otherwise the world’s internal consistency breaks down and immersion is lost. Of course this is not to say that all PCs must be kings, but they should have the potential to become kings should they so choose. So if NPCs are able to gather large forces solely through behind the scenes “roleplaying” rather than by spending a feat on leadership then players should be able to gather a force by roleplaying as well.

Here is how I will likely be handing Leadership from now on: If you want some mooks to help you out, talk to some NPCs give them a compelling reason to follow. Now they won’t be unwaveringly loyal; you’ll have to maintain that relationship by treating them fairly, keeping them generally “safe,” paying attention to them from time to time and not just using them as cannon…er ballista fodder. The better you treat your mooks the better your reputation might well become and you may even gain additional followers. Happy mooks may even provide other benefits such as an improve starting dispositions in towns where they may have family, additional gear that they manage to find while sifting through some ruins, the possibilities are endless. In conclusion leadership is in my opinion much better handled through actual roleplaying than it is by a simple game mechanic.

True20 Companion

The copy of True20 companion that I ordered off of Amazon came in yesterday and I’ve had a bit of time to look it over and must say that I am very happy with my purchase. The companion book is a very good addition to the True20 Adventure Roleplaying core book featuring numerous variant rules ranging from character creation to using currency rather than the wealth mechanic, plenty of information on running campaigns in various settings from fantasy to future-tech, more items for every genre, and interesting rules for creating items of your own.

Now normally I am against books that add more stuff because most new stuff doesn’t really add anything to the game other than another book to lug with you to game night, but the True20 companion actually has useful information in it and provides plenty of it. Being an OGL product I can see where the D&D 3.5 and d20 Modern influences lie, but over all the rules seem a lot more thought out than d20 modern and the system feels suitably dungeony while still allowing for a modern game that doesn’t feel like D&D with guns.

Short and Sweet

The other day I finally saw The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, a great movie about a group of gamers playing through their DM’s homebrew campaign. Action switches between the players at the table and the characters actually in the game with frequent DM voice overs and some comical interruptions. The movie is full of RPG tropes and pretty much sums up why I dislike the monk and paladin classes as well as showing how utterly pointless bards are. If you’re a gamer, which since you are reading this post I assume you are, go watch The Gamers: Dorkness Rising.

One thing I noticed while watching the movie was just how short this “campaign” actually was. They only play for two sessions and have only a hand full of encounters before reaching the final villain. Most of the short campaigns I have played in were just abandoned in the middle and didn’t have much in the way of resolution. I have only sort of finished the story arc in two campaigns. Both campaigns were using Star Wars Saga Edition and one of them was ended after a logical stopping point in the arc where there had been some resolution although they were far from the real “end.”

This brings me to my question how long does it take your group to get through one complete story arc? At this point is the game over or do you tend to begin another arc or expand upon material hinted at earlier in the adventure?

Now thats a good Idea

In order to succeed in their adventure characters are going to have to work together. Players know this and usually will have their characters help each other out in order to accomplish a task, but assistance often arises from a conversation between players and not characters. Greywulf has a great idea here that will help get players to stay in character while determining who is best at diplomacy and who is second best and equipped to aid another.

The idea is this: each player should have in addition to their own character sheet a sheet that has some basic information about the other characters in the party. For my group this might look something like this:

Kyras Human Barbarian, Strong, Bastard Sword, Trained: Climb, Jump, Perception, Survival
Alessia Human Cleric, Wise, Morningstar, Trained: Heal, Knowledge Religion, Knowledge Arcana, Profession Clergy
Arandiel Human Paladin, Dexterous, Scimitar, Trained: Deception, Craft Tailoring, Intimidate, Stealth, Etiquette

This should eliminate or at least minimize instances of “hey whats your guy’s name again” and “who’s got craft: basket weaving again,” allowing your players to spent more time in character and increase immersion in the game world.

Eating a dragon, is that okay?

Just finished up a great session of Pathfinder. We got some sweet gear and were able to unload cumbersome treasure and consolidate our wealth into more portable forms. The final encounter of the session was a Young White Dragon, and that is where our debate begins.

After the dragon was defeated it was determined that its hide might be useful for crafting winter cloaks, and one character requested that my character who was busy skinning the dragon cut him off a big steak. This caused another player to get rather upset as he felt that eating a [sentient] creature was akin to cannibalism and would cause his character to leave the group. A rather heated discussion ensued during which the other players left the room until things cooled down.

So is it okay to eat a dragon given that it is an intelligent creature capable of advanced thought and reasoning? Dragon hide is a listed material for constructing armor and presumably other metal or leather-like goods; is it then not acceptable to use the hide of such a creature for creating goods?

We will be getting together to play a different campaign later today and will likely continue this argument so I would like to get some comments so that I can present a consensus of other gamers.

Shield and Spear style, what gives?

First let me preface this by saying that this post is a bit of a rant about a weapon and shield combination that is suboptimal in every tabletop RPG that I have played. This frustrates and annoys me because it makes playing certain historically based character concepts difficult.

Historically many cultures around the world used shield and spear as their primary or at least quite common armament: the Greeks, the Persians, the Zulu, the Chinese, the Vikings, the Maasai, and others. So there has to be a few reasons why this occurred. Spears require less metal than swords and are cheaper and easier to manufacture; stone age man had spears not swords. Spears also provide greater reach than other types of weapons.

In 3.5/Pathfinder there are four types of spears: short spear/half spear, spear, long spear, and javelin. The short spear and javelin are the only ones that are one handed weapons, spear and long spear are both two handed affairs. The short spear and javelin both only deal 1d6 damage while the spear and long spear get d8 treatment. Now its not like there aren’t one handed weapons that deal 1d8 of damage; the trident, long sword, warhammer, battleaxe, mace, and morningstar all deal 1d8.

I guess I’ll just have to spend a feat on exotic proficiency “bastard spear.”

Sigh, more 4e nonsense

I stumbled across this little gem the other day and all I could do was emit an audible sigh and smack my face with my palm. Eighteen new at-will powers that have an effect even if they miss. Am I reading this right, an ability that you can use all the time as much as you want and it does something even if you MISS? Granted this is a 3rd party item, but part of what I dislike about 4e is the utter nonsense that it inspires: fixing a boat with backflips, abstracting combat with a skill challenge just to have combat at the end of the skill challenge, and now unlimited use powers that always do something even if you miss.

Part of 4e’s design philosophy is all about maximizing “fun” by ensuring that everyone has something to do. When you miss in combat you didn’t get to do anything to help win, and that is no fun so this product is right in line with those design goals. Why even roll dice and have random chance at all, just say that you always hit so that no one has to feel left out.