Party Dynamics

In any given RPG, there is some idea of how a functional party should be built. There seem to be are some stereotypical roles that classes get lumped into, regardless of system. Keeping with the general theme of D&D, we have a few classes that fill particular roles, and I'm going to look at some in 2e and 3.X, namely the roles of tank (the meat shield), damage (the cannon), support (the fix-it guy), and healing (the resurrection guy). With a lot of parties I have played in or DMed, there is a very solid mix. Take, for instance, the current 2e group:

Al the Rogue: Support
Caelrath the Ranger: Damage
Elirail the Ranger: Damage/Tank
Erikr the Paladin: Tank/Damage/Healing
Florio the Rogue: Support
Skurn the Cleric: Support/Healing/Damage
Theophilis the Wizard: Support

In this seven-person party, there is a good mix of characters who can take a hit and are usually up front, characters that can dish out a good amount of damage, characters who can heal in a pinch, and characters that are utilitarian enough to take care of other tasks (setting up camp, tracking people, pissing off NPCs being diplomatic, etc.). This party usually works well enough to handle the situation at hand, no doubt because the party is multifaceted enough to adapt readily. In situations where the expertise of one character is needed but the other characters would be useless, the party finds ways to compensate. In last session's game, the party was setting up an ambush and had the guys in bulky heavy armor and big weapons hide while the others drew the ambushees in. Could this have worked the other way around? Probably. But it played out well and after some initial confusion the party was successful.

In many other systems we have played, the dynamics of the party are more malleable. When we had our little forays into All Flesh Must Be Eaten, there was ultimately no impact on the group makeup. In one campaign, we had almost entirely norms and we played it out until we got tired of the campaign. In another, we had a mix of survivors and norms, and again the game was successful. It wasn't until the historical and amazing campaign James ran that the party truly had a lot of problems, being nearly all survivors (and James being a moron not knowing what he had gotten himself into) we ended up going the route of "we are all badasses and can handle this, Duke Nukem style". This obviously got us killed by the Director giving up and using a stupid vault door thing giving us no way to go once we reached a certain point.

I think it will be a lot of fun to play around with a few more systems and to see what can happen when a group of people tries to play a new system without any class coordination.

Hmmm.....

Stuck in Ravenloft. Cue spooky music.

This place rules. Or does it? I dunno. It is proving to be a challenge for me as a DM because everything is so cut and dry as is. As with many other prepublished materials, it is somewhat difficult to adapt my style of DMing to the material and vice versa. I guess we'll have to stick it out and see where it leads.

Follow the rules, kid

So, here we are in Ravenloft. Wait, what?

I get turned into a lizard and die, find out I have a mansion, have said mansion broken into (not a proud moment) witness a brutal mass-murder at the hands of a peaceable country bumpkin, and find myself swimming in some bizarre, trans-planar doppelganger bullshit, all within the first few weeks of knowing these assholes? And now this? If I hadn't seen that Rugmoth guy summon giant horde-slaying statues, I'd be cursing his name right now, for lack of the name of another god.

Granted, I find that running around with these guys is sharpening my skills; you know, trying to steal shit from under the nose of a fledgling paladin and a thief-hating magical midget has its challenges, but still, is it really worth it? I don't have a choice in anything I do, much less did I have a choice to charge headlong into mists what make everyone crazy, or the trees what make everyone crazy, or the asshat crazy shopkeeps what try to kill you. Gods, screw this place.

Straightaway out of the mists we found ourselves getting poisoned by the locals. Some crazy fucking lady in a farmhouse, don't ask me. I put on my best manners, though. Ericker made sure of that. Even when I was puking all over the table and myself, he was all "Don't steal anything, you filthy little kid." or some other such paladin nonsense. Were it up to me, we'd have gotten the information that we needed at the point of a blade. But then, the last time I didn't listen to them, I got turned into a fucking lizard.

After trying to talk to the mute crazies in town, we got a map and get the fuck out... and immediately walked into a crazy man killing forest that only half of us could see. Oh yeah, and there where giant cats that tried to kill all of us. Great. Good thing we have a psychopathic statue-wielding half elf in our party to literally break their faces off.

On the plus side, we do have that stupid wrinkle bag, Theophitits in our party, so I'm not the most useless pile of shit in this gaggle of retards, and at the end of the day in this insane place, at least I have that.

A character for every system I: Mouse Guard

I decided to do Mouse Guard because.....it kicks ass. I rolled up a Patrol Leader named Faolan, I would really like to run this game at some point. Here you go.

War Is Upon Us

Thursday night we continued our D&D 2E campaign. In preparation for the session, Max and I wrote two parts to a story of Skurn praying (which you'll get to read later). Also, it's been decided that Ackerman's druid, Uskilian, was pretty much a weak and extremely useless character, so Ackerman rerolled a wizard named Dr. Marshal Theophillis. But we'll get to that later as well.

We started the session picking up right where we left off. Abidan and Aremar, having just arrived to the Trigatha grove, get to work locating and talking to the High Druids while the party takes time to regale each other with what's been going on the past few days. The two high power NPCs return to inform the group that it's time to prepare for war, so they go off and begin building siege weapons while the group trains the druids in basic combat. At the same time, Skurn wanders off to go pray and returns very late that night after receiving a response. The next few days are spent traveling to Treeshade, allowing the group time to train up some proficiencies.

After reaching a safe place to rest and prepare for battle, the party is called to action by Abidan. He informs the group that he has learned of prisoners being held by the elves of Treeshade. He wants to rescue them before they are accidentally smashed by the siege weapons in the morning, or just the DM using an excuse to give us more stuff to do. Either way, Abidan sneaks off that night towards Treeshade with Erikr, Caelrath, Althor, Elirail, and a few red shirted elves. Before they leave, Abidan gives Skurn a ring to wear and asks him to stay up and keep watch.

At the 20 foot wall surrounding Treeshade, it is decided that only three will go over in order avoid too much noise. Caelrath, Althor, and Elirail are chosen. After spending some time trying to decide how to get up, Caelrath decides to just climb up with which he has no problem doing. Althor and Elirail follow after a few more moments are wasted discussing how Althor could have just climbed up and lowered a rope to his less agile companions. Once on top of the wall the trio find that the prison they are looking for is conveniently located right in front of them. So they climb down and Althor attempts to unlock the door. After several failures, Althor successfully breaks one of his lockpicks in the keyhole, thus preventing any further chances of a stealthy entry. Elirail, being the strongest, is volunteered to kick down the door which he does with ease. Althor and Elirail enter the dark prison while Caelrath remains at the doorway, facing out, to keep an eye out for any trouble. Althor spots a guard on the other side of the room who failed to hear the splintering of the wooden door while he continued to walk in sleep land. Althor, still a little frustrated from his failure with the locked door, decides to employ some stealth. He sneaks up on the guards and frees him of his binds to his now lifeless body. Althor plucks the keys from the dead elf and hands them to Elirail, who happily frees the four prisoners: a useless elf, a strong looking half-elf, a badly injured elf, and a frail looking human carrying a book.

Having completed this side-quest, the trio plus their quartet of jailbirds climb back over the wall. Delicate care is given to the injured elf who is handed down to Althor who amazingly balances on a on 10 foot pole and carries the elf down, using the notches in the pole. After everyone reaches the base of the wall safely, noise is heard over the wall as Erikr says its time for them to go. As the party flees bravely runs away, they are chased by some of the residents of Treeshade who follow them all the way back to the camp site. Fortunately, help is waiting as Skurn was warned by Abidan through the magical ring. The injured elf and other prisoners are led to safety as Erikr, Caelrath, and Althor turn around and take shots at their pursuers. Skurn blesses his companions as Althor manages to kill one elf while Erikr is able to shoot down two more. Caelrath, proving his worth, takes down four elves and ensures none return back to Treeshade. With the immediate threat solved, the escaped prisoners become the next issue. Skurn attends the injured elf while the frail, book-carrying human introduces himself. He claims to be a doctor (whatever that is) and says his name is Marshal Theophillis. He says that he was captured and stripped of all his possessions except for his "medical" book. Knowing another PC when they see it, the party welcomes Dr. Theophillis to the party. Dr. Theophillis quickly proves his worth by informing the group that the arrows being used by the elves of Treeshade are necrotic magic and bewizarded to cause continuous bleeding. With all this done, the party goes to sleep in hope of gaining some rest before the big battle.

The next morning is filled with preparation, as war is upon us. With Erikr and Skurn out front, the siege weapons begin to fire on the great wall of Treeshade. After they successfully crumble a good portion of the wall, the ground begins to shake. To everyone's amazement three 12 foot tall iron dwarves rise from the ground in front of the siege weapons and begin marching forward. Without hesitation, the party and the assumed forces of Trigatha and the other groves follow behind. As everyone races forward, sounds of a dwarf are heard trailing the giant wonders screaming out whoops and praises to Rhugarth. The intimidating dwarven triforce reach the gap in the wall first, since no one in the party wanted to get in their way, and annihilate the first two rows of the opposing army. Caelrath takes shots as he continues running up, dropping a couple more elves. Dr. Theophillis produces pretty lights that causes three other elves to drop unconscious. Then, before anyone else can reach the remaining forces, the three iron giants put away their axes, pull out their shields, then release cones of fire into the now fleeing army of Treeshade. With no one left standing their ground and victory insured, the 12 foot iron dwarves sink into the ground.

Leaving cleanup to the NPCs, the party marches forth to the home of the High Druid of Treeshade. Erikr kicks down the door and stomps around the house searching for the leader of Treeshade. While everyone else checks the rooms, Althor goes thieving and snags a thin, book-sized piece of glass from one of the rooms and places it into his bag with no one noticing. Finding nothing, the group begins to doubt anyone is home when the sound of crackling alerts them to one of the rooms. The group runs in to find a fire forming into a humanoid form heading towards them. Skurn tried to extinguish the flame many times, all with no effect. Fortunately, Caelrath more rationally runs outside to get the help of one of the druids who runs in and tells everyone to leave the room. After closing the door behind them the party is almost immediately hit by a shockwave that knocks them all unconscious. Erikr, who managed to withstand the wave's impact, drags everyone outside, including the unconscious druid in the now fire free room. Skurn and Dr. Theophillis wake up right away. Caelrath takes minutes to wake up, the victim of undisciplined dice, and Althor takes just as long, the victim of unskilled rolling. The druid wakes up as well and informs everyone that he returned the fire elemental to where he came from and suggests that the High Druid is still inside somewhere.

The party proceeds to gather some more druids and they encircle the house. They concentrate and are able to make the High Druid appear. The group reenters the house and confronts him. The tricky druid turns Althor into a gecko for having a smart mouth. After half-assed role-playing the druid is convinced to go outside and talk with the High Druids of the other groves. After turning Althor back, he takes a few steps outside before he sinks into the ground. As he disappears into the dirt, lighting fills the sky and strikes at the party. Skurn, despite being in fullplate, is able to avoid any of the strikes. Caelrath and Erikr avoid any major harm but Althor and Dr. Theophillis are greatly wounded. Althor, now a crispy corpse, is dragged inside as well as the weak body of Dr. Theophillis. As the group tries to figure out what to do, they hear commotion outside. The High Druid is floating in the air attacking a group of about 40 druids, who are losing badly. Erikr and Caelrath step outside and get to work firing at the airwalking druid with arrows and bullets. Skurn, feeling useless, gets an idea and throws his knife at the druid (which misses wildly). He then rushes inside and grabs all the knives off the dead thief and runs back out to throw them pathetically as well. Thankfully, Erikr was able to lodge a few bullets into the druid allowing Skurn to heat them up, finishing off the druid. With the now very dead High Druid taken care of, the party attempts to help some of the injured druids. They in turn help the party by resurrecting Althor who had a 67% chance of surviving the spell.... and rolled a 67!!!! (Keep in mind James has rolled horribly the entire night but the one time that it matters... he succeeds...just barely. It was a very intense moment.)

With the party whole again, the matter of figuring things out begins again. With help of Aremar, the group learns from some of the captured elves that the necrotic arrows came from a hooded female who travels through the forest about once a month and sells to Treeshade. Not wanting to sit around for a month, Erikr asks the druids to keep an eye out and inform him if they see this mysterious lady again. In the meantime, Brother Barik has come to see how things went and learns about what happened. After Brother Barik hears about Rhugarth's mighty hand in the victory, the party learns from Aremar that Althor's parents have a house in Unity. All quite curious, Aremar transports the party to the gates of the house, while returning Brother Barik to the temple.

At the gates of Althor's home, Aremar suggests Althor opens the doors first and invite everyone in. The house is found to be in perfect condition. Three floors of a beautiful home with expensive and rare plants surrounding it. Inside is found multiple rooms, a nearly floorwide master bedroom, and a combination lab and library on the third floor. While everyone takes time to eat and relax in the kitchen, Althor, Dr. Theophillis, and Aremar head to the lab and examine the glass object Althor took from the High Druid's house. Aremar informs the thief and the "doctor" that the glass allows one to remove magical text from scrolls, runes from books and other objects, and leaves the source material blank. Althor is awed by the object as a fireball is used to demonstrate the glass sheet's power. Having learned what the object can do the three return downstairs where the rest of the party waits for the next session to find out what happens next.

So what did we learn in this session?

1. Training large groups of elves doesn't provide training experience.
2. Side quests are useful tools to introduce PCs, even on the eve of battle.
3. Sometimes the DM is too lazy to move a jail away from the easy access wall.
4. Coup de grâce is okay as long as no other party member sees you do it.
5. We get it, the pole has notches in it. Whoop di do.
6. Necrotic arrows are heavy because they are evil.
7. Sometimes prayers are answered with giant metal dwarves that do all the hard work, ending a battle in a few rounds.
8. Paladins aren't easily knocked unconscious by banishing fire elementals.
9. Never trust a druid, even if he just wants to go outside.
10. If you have to make a roll, rolling the exact number you need to survive your resurrection is a good one.
11. Make sure no one in your party is a vampire before you invite them into your spell protected house.

PLEASE NOTE: I'll post links to the story written to Skurn's prayer later. Right now, it's late.

One of those late-night discussions

I've just gotten back from Ackerman's place, where I was hanging out with Ackerman and James. We had a long discussion about our respective histories with RPGs and our views on several different aspects of gaming.

While I may be a young guy, I've had a pretty good range of experience playing and DMing games over the last 11 years or so. I know that isn't long compared to some of the guys I have spoken with, but I can't really help my age. I've developed a lot of ideas about roleplay over the years, and I've noticed that I lean towards what is considered "old school" gaming. I love good RP, and I'm a big fan of groups RPing out a situation instead of simply rolling dice to bypass whatever is going on.

An example I like involves D&D 2e, 3.x, and 4e.

In 2e, you walk nto a tavern and smoke clouds your vision momentarily. The bartender glares at you as he methodically cleans the same mug with the same dingy rag over and over again. Your contact sits in the back of the establishment, cloaked and shadowed, puffing on a pipe. His broken and battered armor shows through his torn clothes, and his rusted, well-worn blade peeks out from his belt. He is gruff and scarred, but smiles at you and gestures for you to approach. His only contribution to your quest is just a whisper of a rumor.

In 3.x, you walk into a bar. You can immediately locate the guy you need to find. He is obviously powerful - why else would he have stuff floating around his head like that? His armor glows faintly and is worn openly. His large bag o magical trinkets sits on the floor next to him, and his weapon is easily 6 feet tall, glowing all sorts of weird colors and made out of a rare and powerful metal. He doles out heaps of magic items to help you on your quest.

In 4e, you don't walk into a tavern or pub or bar unless you want to fight something. Who cares about the RP?

Of course, this is very exaggerated, and it does largely depend on the style of the guy running the game. I'll probably post more on this later, when I'm not about to pass out on my keyboard.

Group updates for the new year...

So, due to some work schedules and all that, we're not entirely sure when we can get the whole group together to play our 2e campaign. I've been going through a lot of my old gaming materials, and the nostalgia for some good old superhero roleplay. I've decided to run a Mutants & Masterminds game for the group, which has gotten a pretty good reception. We decided to run M&M on days where one or more people can't make it to a game. So far, Dan has created a large-sized guy with super-strength, crazy melee abilities, and limited teleportation. John's character will be an insane inventor who has a helmet that transforms him into a superhero. No word on the other guys' characters.

Anyway, Dan and I are about to head out to a concert, bt I'm going to give you an item from my Tobor campaign.

I can't find it though, so nevermind.

New Year's Madness.....nah.

2010. A new decade or something.

I'm going through some of my old gaming notebooks right now (cleaning out the gaming bookshelf) and I've found a few funny things from games past. Since there's nothing else for me to really write about, I'll share a little bit.

Rodin: Rodin was a human cleric from a D&D 3.0 game ages ago. He managed to live until level 8 (quite a feat in that particular campaign). Rodin's claim to fame was that he was terrible with any weapon he wielded (a gross understatement) and he could never manage to stop himself from getting impaled. He met his end at the hands of a modified troll creature that hurled a spiked chain THROUGH a layer of plate, the cleric's body, and another layer of plate. The troll then proceeded to swing Rodin around and slam him into every painful surface around.

Renkjar: Another D&D 3.0 character, Renkjar was a half-orc barbarian who was terribly afraid of heights. He could only use greataxes effectively, but often found himself using whatever he could find easily. His claim to fame was massacring a small kobold army, dual-wielding a chair leg and an empty tankard. Renkjar was also a clumsy fellow, and once took out his entire party while they were trying out an experimental zeppelin-like airship. The ship was boarded by some guys riding bats or some such, and Renkjar grabbed a sword and charged at them, trippng and sending the greatsword straight into the weak air bag. The attackers broke off, the ship fell into a forest, and the party never made it out of the wreckage. Renkjar, however, survived. He finally met his end trying to scale the wall of an evil noble's keep, only to fumble horribly and hang himself in his own climbing gear.

Titanium Nuke: A Champions character, Titanium Nuke was a power-armored brick, with horribly customized mechanical powers including the Megaton Punch. With his hands emanating a controlled field of radiation, armored enhancements, and natural strength, the Nukester could hit enemies with enough force to implode their entire family tree. The rest of his abilities were fairly useless. His movement was slow, his flight sucked, and he was only really good at punching things. Titanium Nuke was responsible for destroying his entire team as well as their headquarters when he was experimenting with his armor and clapped his hands in frustration.

Slash'n'Burn: A Mutants & Masterminds character often called "SB", this guy was a combination of the worst superhero archetypes. He was an experimental warrior with weapons contained in his skin that he could use Wolverine-style. These included elbow blades, fingernails, wrist blades, knee blades, etc. While he could only have one set of blades out at a time, his combat style evolved to allow him better control over which part of his body would be used in his next attack. He could flow from elbow jabs to kicks, withdrawing one set of blades and projecting the next in the time it took for the attack to connect. Secondly, he had impeccable control over fire. He eventually learned to create fire, and then to utilize his creation ability in small bursts, wrapping the blades with flame. This guy actually lasted a long time and I really liked him, but he was accidentally killed by his teammate Cryon (a guy in a power suit that had several different ways to freeze people, such as liquid nitrogen sprayguns) during a fight against our team's arch-nemesis, Deathshade.

Testicles: It's pronounced testicleez, much in the way Heraclese and Peraclese are. This was a D&D 3.5 character, a paladin/fighter multiclass who wore no armor and fought unarmed. I made this guy because it seemed like something the guy DMing would hate. Testicles had a large selection of mobility-related feats, allowing him to leap forward 30+ feet and land huge attacks at the end. He spent most of combat leaping around, crushing enemies from above into smoldering craters. I eventually got fed up with the gaming group and we parted ways, so Testicles only lived for about 3 sessions.

Havelock Dakka: A Hive-World assassin in one of the first real games of Dark Heresy I'd ever played. We didn't have time to do much, since it was only a session or 2. His claim to fame was shooting a party member less than a yard from a PC arbitrator. The arbitrator failed every skill test to notice the lasgun shot, but saw the body of said party member virtually explode. Havelock smoothly explained that the other guy shot him in the leg, then mysteriously exploded. The arbitrator again failed every skill test and somehow believed the story. Keep in mind that this whole event happened in the confines of a room of a ship's barracks, just slightly larger than a hallway. Havelock and the rest of the team met their ends when the party began arguing in a dropship en route to a planet's surface. They began firing at each other from their strapped-in positions, and someone shot open the airlock. It was not a pretty way to go.

That's all for now, but there's a good amount of character sheets left. I'll post more at a later date.