Crowns, Kings and Princesses

There was no Yoon-Suin game this week, alas, due to noisms' busy schedule, but all is not lost! Tomorrow my group returns to the Carrion Crown campaign Adventure Path, picking up right after the death of one of our own. I'm not sure how I feel about this campaign Adventure Path, as it seems to have some serious flaws -- I know Paizo's adventures are praised, but they've all seemed a bit choppy to me -- but it's still early days so we'll see how it goes.

I don't know if Ben -- our GM -- is himself dissatisfied with Carrion Crown, if it's a case of gamer ADD springing up, or if it's just because the nights are drawing in and Halloween approaches, but it's been suggested that I run Call of Cthulhu once again. A couple of years ago I ran a short and unsatisfying campaign for the game, an experience that deserves a post mortem on this blog one day, but this time I'm going to try to run Tatters of the King, as it seems to be the only campaign that Stuart and Ben haven't read. It's an interesting piece, with some obvious problems that I suspect won't turn out to be problems at all in play, and a clever structure that should suit our group well. So I'm preparing to run that, although I have no idea when or if I will get the chance; it may come to nothing.

I also bought a boxed role-playing game this week. Not the Pathfinder Beginner Box -- I was tempted, but in the end I didn't see any practical point in owning it -- but instead Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role Playing. I've had the free pdfs for a while and I like James Raggi's version of D&D best of all the retroclones -- the game features ascending armour values, a non-fussy elf class and excellent encumbrance and thief skill mechanics -- so I took advantage of the current LotFP sale and some spare PayPal cash to get the boxed set for about six quid. I suspect I will never be able to get my group to play it -- the irony is that it would suit Carrion Crown very well -- but at least I have it now. Well, I don't have it yet, but it's on its way.

Carrion Crown: first player character death!

WOW!  At the end of tonight's session of Carrion Crown, I finally managed to kill off a pc!  It's taken me a while.... but finally..... pcs at low levels are so much more susceptible to .... death....

The intrepid heroes had been investigating the ruins of Harrowstone prison....  trying to vanquish the haunts and put an end to the lingering evil there.... They had managed to destroy one of the 5 major haunts there.... amongst other minor haunts....but, without them knowing, they had managed to disturb the spirit of Fr Charlatan who had since been following them around the prison..... and whose presence was triggered when a pc is 'downed'.... so when the party decide to take on the executioner's spirit on the prison balcony, the executioner's scythe gets lucky on a natural 20, which was confirmed, causing 8d4 damage, dropping Ric's pc, the alchemist Dr Victor Pruce....when Stuart's cleric of Iomedae channelled positive energy to heal his wounds, Fr Charlatan used his corrupting powers to change his positive energy into negative, thus killing Dr Pruce with a wave of negative energy..... we left the session on that shocker....

Dr Victor Pruce, R.I.P.

In the next session Dr Pruce's shade will rise up and join in with the Father to gang up on the pcs.......can't wait!!

Carrying On Carrion Crown

Well, last night we played our second session of the Carrion Crown campaign adventure path and things seem to be slotting into place. During our time in the village of Ravengro -- and that is the silliest name for a village I've seen in a published scenario for a long time -- we uncovered evidence that an evil force was possessing villagers and making them commit acts of petty vandalism. Realising that we couldn't simply arrest everyone in town, it was decided that we should attempt to discover the source of the eerie occurrences, and hit the books for some Call of Cthulhu style Library Use; this is not what you might call a tale of high adventure.

(That said, Stuart's cleric Veneticus got into an altercation with some village children who were singing a song the staunch moralist considered inappropriate. The little perishers took little notice of the ragged holy man's orders to stop messing about, and he skirted close to alignment change as he became frustrated and started lobbing stones at them. The rest of the party stepped in to calm him down, and all of a sudden my necromancer is no longer the most distrusted member of the party. Result!)

Later, we headed to nearby Arkham Asylum Harrowstone Prison to see if it was, as suspected, the source of all the odd goings-on. We cleared the ground floor with little resistance beyond some spiders and a couple of half-hearted ghosts -- although one spooked our paladin Sir Erudil enough to have him smash right through a heavy oak door in order to escape -- before running into the shade of the former warden's wife -- pictured -- who gave us a fetch quest; in order to defeat the ghosts of The Joker, the Riddler, et al the prison's most dangerous inmates, we would have to make use of items associated with them, items which were -- of course -- hidden throughout the ruined, haunted building.

New player Alex seems to be getting the hang of things a bit better now, but he was very quiet during the game and seems unsure of how role-playing games work; on more than one occasion he asked if it was okay to do simple things like search a room or open a door. I wonder if there's some sort of paralysis going on as Alex sees the somewhat crowded Pathfinder sheet and assumes his options are constrained by and limited to the numbers appearing there?

Carrion (up the) Crown

Finally we have started a campaign that I have wanted to play/ run for some time.  Admittedly it is not the sandbox game we really want to play - although I intend to bring to it as much sandbox as possible.

I love my gothic horror - and with Carrion Crown, we get this in spades.

Kingmaker was great fun at lower levels - and at higher levels, the game had evolved into a different kind of game: tactical - with awesome fights - but sometimes we could play out the session with some big fights and the roleplaying had sometimes gotten pushed to the wings....

Nicodemus?

Or is this a better image of Nicodemus? ;)

Not with Carrion Crown at level 1. 

This image doesn't quite fit the scene El Kel created for us!

I have to say that El Kel's entrance as Nicodemus Eldritch, the playboy & rich Necromancer, in his big fur coat, gold chain/ medallion, and escort of 2 beautiful women, turning up like this at his mentor's (Professor Petros Lorrimor) funeral, was one of the most memorable & insane moments in my relatively long gaming experience!  Fantastic!


After the funeral, at the wake the pcs made each other's acquaintances... and they are a mixed bunch. An interesting dynamic is that between the LG Paladin of Iomedae, (the goddess of valour, justice, and honour) and the LN cleric of Abadar (god of protecting the First Vault, wherein are perfect examples of items).... at the moment they are colllaborating - with the Paladin and Cleric each having one important key, one key to the chest in which are the Prof's dangerous (and evil?) tomes, and the other key to his study and library..... much to Nicodemus' annoyance!

The adventure is following a classic Call of Cthulhu investigation/ murder mystery which of course is about to present them with some classic problems, including do they exhume the body of their dead friend to speak with his spirit?  Investigating the haunted prison on the hill over looking the village of Ravengro of course is a no-brainer.  ;)

Can't wait to the next instalment on Friday.  :)

Once More Unto the Breach

Last week's Pathfinder session was a bit of a disaster, to be honest. We were keen to finish a campaign for once, but this clashed with the arrival of a new player, one who'd had almost no experience with role-playing games; although he gave it an honest try, it was clear that the complexities of a thirteenth-level Pathfinder game were beyond him.

So we decided to pause the Kingmaker campaign, sorry "Adventure Path", and start afresh from first level; this is annoying given our tendency to abandon campaigns, sorry "Adventure Paths", but we were in danger of losing our new player by overwhelming him with a high-level game. We chose the not-at-all-like-Ravenloft-honest Carrion Crown and it seemed to go quite well. Our new player, Alex, had a much easier time playing a half-elven ranger than the halfling thief of last time, while Stuart chose a cleric with a fondness for censorship, Manoj played a paladin and I chose a necromancer with the swaggering attitude of a rock star. We were all old friends of Rudolph van Richten Professor Petros Lorrimor and were attending his funeral in Ravenloft Ustalav when mysterious events came to light; a quick reading of the Professor's will and his private journal gave us some hints as to the source of the unusual occurrences, although we only had enough time to follow up the first of many leads. Next week, we're off to the ruins of Arkham Asylum Harrowstone Prison to investigate the suspicious deaths of Batman's rogues gallery a number of notorious and colourful inmates.

I haven't played a D&D wizard since a single session of the 1983 Red Box about fifteen years ago, and I was a bit apprehensive of the class given the complexity of everything else in Pathfinder, but it seems like wizards themselves are quite simple in terms of mechanics, with most of the fiddly bits coming from the spells. I will have to be aware that he is quite fragile -- even if wizard hit dice have increased from d4 to d6 over the years -- as a couple of bites from a centipede almost ended his career at the outset, and I'll also have to think of strategies for spell selection, as I found myself prepared for undead but not for murderous arthropods. It's almost like a whole new game!

Triskaidekaphobia

After a bit of a summer hiatus, my gaming group has been meeting again, and we've decided to return to Pathfinder and the KIngmaker campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path"; we've only been playing together a few years and already we've scattered many an abandoned campaign behind us, so we all agreed to try and finish at least one of them off. It's been a while since we last played Pathfinder so it's taken a while to get used to all the fiddly bits again after the blissful simplicity of WFRP. We've also welcomed a new player into the group, someone who's never played a role-playing game before, and we've started him off with a thirteenth-level character.

Oh dear.

I'd like to say that his lack of experience didn't matter, that Paizo's rules are elegant and intuitive enough that even a novice can pick them up, but if I did I'd be lying. In all fairness to the new chap, he didn't give up or switch off and he'll be back next time, but perhaps we should have given up on Kingmaker after all and started off with a new campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path". We shall see.

Musings on Ian & the use of pre-written materials.

Kelvin's neat little article on Ian Livingstone on his soapbox got me thinking this morning.... and being on my summer holidays, with a brief window of TIME, I put fingers to the keyboard and got typing!  Here are some follow up thoughts from a busy GM!

The question was - do prewritten adventures aide in the roleplaying experience or hold people back?

Me at work ;)

As someone who is normally up to their eyeballs in work/ doing stuff....... my general view has always been to laugh at the 'snobbery' of the 'purist'..... but I have never been a diceless rpg-man/ LARPer or desired to be on stage as an actor...... and whereas in the past I loved intricate plots, red/dead herrings and spending hours on a backstory etc (running Masks of Nyarlathotep every week for over 2 years).... that was WAY BACK THEN when I was obviously insane, had tons of energy.... now I am knackered most of the time and need a decent bit of killing in a session to stay conscious! But I digress.  ;)

Prewritten modules, if well chosen (afterall there are plenty of duffers out there - so I am careful), and appropriately adapted in advance (thank you paizo message boards for kingmaker!!), IMHO, can help a busy GM!!! Without using such things, I sometimes would have run nothing...for ages!  Pathfinder is a stat heavy game and thus it has been great to have that side of things handled in the Adventure Paths Paizo churn out.  Moreover their stories, NPCs, flavour etc in the APs are top-notch.

Eg: The Carrion Crown Adventure Path.


I have been slowly amassing resources to run this at some point in in the not too distant future. Each scenario has advice on music - which I have gone and bought various cds.... as well as the appropriate map tiles....minis.... The message boards, like for Kingmaker, are chock-full of advice on problems in enounter design, or on motivational issues etc...  I really liked the ideas of the path - and having read the whole thing and have a solid overview of where this thing is going helps you, as a ref, set up the game from the beginning with pc and party design... There is still tons of work to do to bring the games to life - to breathe life into npcs, to make sure there are options for pcs so they can achieve/ fail at things and there are consequences for that.... and in the case of Carrion Crown, to reflect on, with the players, the horror mechanics and sanity loss in the game and other 'touches'..... especially since Carrion Crown will be a big change from the current sandbox style of play we are liking in my current WFRP Marienburg game El Kel has flagged up on this blog, in his Tales of the Jolly Butchers.  ;)

But I am prepared to admit that pre-written adventures can get in the way of a good game.

I played in a brief game of a game that will not be mentioned by name or genre....but some of you may have fond memories! It quickly became apparent that the GM not only had no understanding of the rules system (only one player did since it was new), but that they had not read the massive 100 + page adventure!! The gang quickly got bored, started sand boxing  away from the attempts to show horn us into a fixed path, and eventually destroyed the 'set', ending the game. Classic!!  I don't to say any more since I don't want to bruise any egos :S

Having believed for ages that I didn't have the mental space to create my own stuff, with work being insane, I realise now that I have used published materials as a prop... And that I have let this prop at times ' wag the dog', do to speak.... In that by relying on them, I was limiting my roleplaying possibilities and experiences.

I have always been aware of this...but the complexity of some systems always put me off writing my own material....

Take Deadlands. Great ideas. First edition Deadlands was a nightmare system...manageable if you were a player - but an act of love and dedication to make work as a GM.... But I loved it still... But the scenarios were utter garbage!!! So we never managed to play more than a mini series of games before time to stat up and create stuff ran out!





Same for Fading Suns: I loved the setting, the writing, the art..... like Deadlands it is a fantastic game - BUT-  for me, their in-house Victory Point system sucked!! & thus was tricky to create material for


All of these games have encouraged me to run pre made stuff.......






HOWEVER....more recently running Pathfinder at 12th level.... Nightmare!!!! So much prep for the poorly designed encounters in Kingmaker (loved the idea of Kingmaker- it falls apart in books 3-5)...... plus...interestingly... we have been having this debate about how Pathfinders Kingmaker was not a real sandbox, my gang got talking about creating our own (which started and then stopped)...although we couldn't agree on a system....in the meantime, I got worn out by the poor design of the high level scenarios in pathfinder's Kingmaker (which were not designed with the powers of pcs of that level in mind!!), as well as the general intensity of rules at that level and stuff you have to know in your head (eg all the spells of witches, mages and clerics to level 7, & what all the short hand terms in the bestiaries mean!!)...involving tons of prep every week..... I thought s#d this....I need a rest!!

& somehow, by chance, I thought let's try my bonkers "GTA meets the Sopranos" game and set it in WFRP (since I love the game, as I realised the others did - and for some reason we hadn't played any together!!) and Marienburg it was....to play a proper sandbox, not Kingmaker's faux sandbox - thus there was to be no over-arching metaplot.... And, without any premade material, other than the Marienburg book from which I have used a rough map and some names.... It has been my own work needing minimal prep because the system is so much easier than pathfinder! Thus the stories and adventures of the Jolly Butchers was born! & born in a busy time for me... despite the madness of life, I found the energy and joy to create and run stuff for it.....


Admittedly I now need to do some more homework on the sandbox and flesh out the next possible npcs, locations of interest, and random tables and stat them. But I am loving it. But also, having said that, I look forward to running Carrion Crown in late 2011, if there are enough players in my gang, and if I can tear them away from the Mean Streets of Marienburg ;)  Especially since I intend to run a seperate sandbox in the same city, with new pcs as detectives.... possibly ones with 'the gift', as in spellcasters, rooting out deviltry, occult, and all things chaos to keep the streets and canals of Marienburg safe (or probably make them less safe after they have accidentally opened up a chaos gate and sucked the city through it!  ;)

Oh dear..... where did Marienburg go? Can I re-roll?

Half-Term Blood Bath

Stuart at The Great Game likes to run a gaming day every so often during the half-term holidays; it's a canny way of keeping his kids entertained without him having to do all the heavy lifting, and he gets to get in some quality gaming at the same time. I tend to miss these days, as although I work in education I don't get the half-term break, but it happened to match up with a day off I already had booked, so the Stars Were Right.

The day began with a scenario from the Warhammer campaign Blood Bath at Orc's Drift, from back in the day when Warhammer had narrative campaigns, although we played it using the more modern The Lord of the Rings rules. I had no experience of these rules, as they were introduced long after I left the Games Workshop Hobby for more inexpensive pursuits, like polonium-210 trading, but the game was very easy to pick up and play and seemed to me to be a more streamlined and elegant version of the Warhammer ruleset, so I'm keen to play another episode of the campaign.

My side won the battle, slaughtering the elven garrison to a man, er, elf, aside from one pointy-eared coward who fled into the forests where my orcs could not follow. In fairness, Stuart's young son handled the opposing forces on his own, while I had both a larger force and a co-general -- although Ben surprised us all with the revelation that he'd never played a tabletop wargame in all his many years of gaming! -- and the scenario was weighted in our favour.

Oh, and we also had a giant.

After a lunch break, Stuart's son ran a bonkers freeform sandbox type of thing which -- despite using the Pathfinder rules -- felt much more old-school. We had a great deal of freedom, and the game seemed heavy on random tables and on-the-spot adjudications, all of which was a great deal of fun and felt very liberating. We did wonder later on whether it was worth using Pathfinder at all if we were going to ignore most of the rules, a subject with which I've struggled before, but the GM didn't seem to have any problem with it and ran a very fine game, so that's probably our answer.

While I enjoyed the Pathfinder game, the highlight for me was the Lord of the Warhammerings battle, which reminded me of how much I enjoyed playing tabletop wargames before I was priced out of the hobby. I'm half-tempted to buy a box of orcs, you know, just for old time's sake.

Sandbox D&D gaming (with Pathfinder): some reflections

I have been running a Pathfinder ‘sandbox’ campaign for about a year now (I think – have lost track of time – I believe we started it late June 2010)….. and until last week I had been running it virtually every week…… Looking back on the game, I threw out some ideas to the guys on the email group we have for our gang…. Having gibbered on and off all day between three of us, I thought maybe our collective musings would be worth sticking on this here blog, if only as a warning to y’all about what not to do if running a sandbox. ;) Here is the transcript (with a few typos/ changes to make sure it makes sense!)

Me (BenTheFerg)
I think running the Kingmaker path has told me a lot about how to run - and not run - a D&D game.... Here are a few reflections.....for the next one we ever do (as in playing a sandbox game in which you clear out an area to create your own kingdom)....

1) You would have no backer/ patron. You'd be on your own, as your own mercenary band/ reclaiming your ancestral lands/ seeking your fortune in the 'wild west'

2) SLOW progression tracker - to make those low levels last a little longer... to keep up the sense of challenge

3) PC death. I wouldn't wish it, but I sure think it should happen. To keep the game with a level of realism, there would be need to be a supply of npcs who were affiliated to the pcs, eg a base camp of folks in your group (as in more npcs in your team - who remained at base camp whilst the pcs investigated. When a pc dies, you take an npc and they are seamlessly involved in the adventure. That's one solution anyway!)

4) a little more attention to rules on manufacturing of magic items...... I guess this would necessitate a discussion of Iron Heroes for the next such sandbox, or Pathfinder, but with class variants of spell casters which boosts them in other respects but tones down magic item creation.... (Kingmaker had massive time spans, allowing for the mage to create customised gear at half price – magic items lost their uniqueness, and the team are buffed to the hilt! Moreover, the rules on magic item creation are overly generous we now realise, and can be game breaking, like the permanent strongjaw gloves the monk uses)

5) more attention to smaller details, eg to your stronghold, npc guards, etc (for small skirmish warfare scenarios, assassination attempts, creating a feeling of threat and the need to counter that threat)

6) likewise more attention to various rival npc groups, local politics, local environments, hazards.........

7) level cap at 5th or at 10th? (when the pc has to retire and their kids take over?) or is that too arbitrary? :)

8) more small dungeons. More pot-holing and under-dark exploration. More difficult terrain situations, more environmentally hazardous battles. Diseases. Midges. Slavers. Traitors. Revenge. Mistrust.

9) disfigurement rules for massive blows/ physical traumas. A discussion on the limits of healing for damage from one blow above a certain value...... to make it more gritty. :) I think there are some in the GRR Martin d20 Game of Thrones rpg I still own. :) (and maybe in Black Company d20 rpg too.)

Just some thoughts……… I am thinking of running it as a homage to all things old school D&D (Keep on the Borderlands, etc etc)......

Kelvin (KelvinGreen), from now on called K:
The only problem with Kingmaker was that it had a very clear plot, and for all the hexmaps in the world, if you have a plot, it's not a proper sandbox.

Me:
Yes. This is something I would want to change – as in having rival groups all with their own agendas, who pursue their agendas, and try and find ways (through diplomacy, war, assassination etc) to get the pcs to do their dirty work (without you guessing of course – not that that would work!!)

Stuart (from the Great Game) – now called Stu.
Greg's old SLA Industries campaign was a bit like that. You could choose from a variety of missions (BPNs), but in addition, the team became increasingly embroiled with a number of competing factions, including Dark Knight and the Mob. At one point we even carried out a hit on another Slop (SLA Operative) for the Mob, believing we were on a legitimate mission!

We were constantly navigating the murky waters between what SLA wanted us to do, and what we could get away with in the interests of lining our own pockets and promoting the interests of our team.

But the key thing was there was not pre-scripted plot: after each session Greg would go away and decide what the various shadowy players would do in response to our own actions. We seemed to be constantly under investigation by internal affairs, always looking over our shoulders, characters took to sleeping with weapons under their pillows...all great stuff!

Thinking back, it WAS a sandbox campaign. Some missions were pushed at us, but we were not obliged to take them, and we had a number of sub plots (for instance the hunt for the serial killer Exsanguinator) running throughout the campaign.

K
Yes, it's one thing to have a plot develop through play, but what Paizo did was release something with all the trappings of a sandbox -- the hexmap, the wandering monsters, etc -- but then overlaid a standard adventure path plot on it, as I feared they would. There's nothing wrong with a plot, of course, but it's not a sandbox.

Stu
The question is, how does the sandbox evolve to keep pace with the increasing power of the PCs, particularly in Pathfinder, where the leap in power from 1st to 4th is pretty substantial. You want to avoid the "Oh yes, well, there is indeed a dragon in your basement, only he's been keeping very quiet up until now....because...er..."

Kingmaker does this by adding new territory to the campaign, with bigger challenges, like the more serious encounters to the south of the main map, and the undead cyclops empire on the second map. BUT, if the PCs by-pass something - like the derro lair - with the intention of returning to it later, the GM will need to do some buffing of the original encounter while keeping it credible.

(me: sadly every front cover had an image of what the Big Bad would be - as in the lich-cyclops opposite)

A sandbox dungeon is probably easier to manage in this respect, with some areas hidden, or only accessible once a boss is defeated, etc.

K
Well, the simple answer is that the players know from the start that the dragon is there, but they avoid it until later. If they leave it until they're much more powerful, then they'll probably squash it, but one could argue that this is just sensible -- if a bit dull -- play.

I don't know if we can make a proper judgement on the power levels of Pathfinder at this point. Our current characters are rather overpowered, as we know, but that may not be the case for the game as a whole. Similarly, Kingmaker was a pretty poor sandbox setup, so I don't think we've had enough useful sample data, as it were, to decide if a Pathfinder sandbox can work.

Me
Thing is, I want there to be various plots (npc goals which they try to achieve) and for pcs to find ways around these…. And Kingmaker has done a great job I think in trying to do these. I have enjoyed running the game, where you have a good idea of possible threats and have used your resources wisely to circumnavigate the threats. As a player, this is what I prefer as well. It is not much fun to be stumbling around in the dark for long. Yes – pc strategies may fail (may have poor intel) but pcs can have a go.

I think there is a balance to be struck between narrative (which gives plot dynamic, motives, time pressures, cinematic material, great locations) and sandbox…..

I let us down by not understanding the delicate nature of Pathfinder, and thus the point buy has skewed the game (FYI I allowed a dice pool mechanic at pc generation which led to pcs having, by pure chance, awesome attribute scores, which made them tougher, I’d say potentially – by 2 levels) – and add that to a lack of prudence on the magic item creation front (mentioned earlier the issue of allowing for unique one-shot items to be made, which really made the pcs buffed up nicely, esp when the kitted out their cohorts gained from the leadership feat) (all newbie Pathfinder DM errors) and it made the sandbox too easy and not threatening enough. I have learned from my errors (I hope).

Paizo in publishing the setting have managed to create a scaled level of threat to higher level pcs, with the expanding map, and with events happening to trigger the exploration of those areas….. given space constraints, this was the best way forward given the market demand for a certain kind of look to a module.

Having teleportation, pegasi, and a Roc have made the hex map irrelevant in so many respects. Higher level play makes sandbox in such a limited setting pointless. Wilderness exploration is fine for lower levels. At your levels it should be more pc driven – we want to explore X, travel to the plane of Y to speak to Z to find where B is. Etc Planar adventuring is well suited to high level sandbox play.

Hopefully we have all learned a lot more about how to make Pathfinder work – and whenever we finally run Carrion Crown (or something else), I think we will all be keen from the outset to avoid errors we made with Kingmaker. Kingmaker is not over yet though- you have the tournament, and shadowfell left. I will abandon most of the sandbox from here on it- the tournament will be the last sanboxy part – in that who knows what you will do!! - let’s enjoy the ride of the story I think and hit that cinematic ending.

For your homebrew sandbox, one wants to use the approach of Vornheim – but for Wilderness exploration – to generate settings/ ideas on the fly, to complement other stuff.

Other things Kingmaker could have done better:
- rivalry between npc adventurers and yours
- more persistent npc foes
- foes who become allies against a bigger bad…
- more locations in a smaller area.
- A more claustrophobic feel

Will work on a setting starting this half term. Don’t know what sandbox wilderness ideas appeal….
1. Mythic wood (sentient) – emphasising the fey
2. a northern wilderness adventure (giants, northmen, dragons, and other mythic Viking/ norse creatures), with viking boat exploration, castle building etc – or of adventurers carving out a kingdom in the wilds in the north…..(beyond the wall/ somesuch)
3. an Al Qadim style game, of jungles, deserts, island hopping…

The smaller the setting the easier the task – so for 2) the idea of playing a bunch of pcs questing into the wilderness from a fort on the edge of civilisation (ala Keep on the Borderlands), to tame it, take it, would be easiest. BUT this is similar in premise initially to Kingmaker…..

Stu
Old school sandbox was a simple explore and purge mission, particularly in the first 10 levels or so. After that, the class descriptions seemed to assume players would start using the conquered lands as the basis for their domain - e.g. building castles, temples and thieves' guilds. But AD&D tended to skip over much of this - it could tell you how much an iron grill over a window would cost you, but not how to work out the tax base for a rural hex with eight farms and a human population of 150.

Plus, how did you run a dwarf domain? An elf one? The D&D Companion rules did address some of this, and the launch of Battlesystem did provide scope for bringing miniatures gaming into AD&D.

But once PCs get past 10th level, the scope for a sandbox wilderness and/or dungeon adventure becomes somewhat reduced, particularly if people start taking the Leadership feat. Then they begin plotting the downfall of other kingdoms, empire building or possibly planar adventuring. Is it still D&D in the classic sense of the word?

Much of the daily work of running a domain can be outsourced to NPC allies, of course, and the PCs can still expose themselves to danger in the form of high level adventures to meet threats to their own realms - e.g. a barbarian invasion like the one we had in Kingmaker.

"A pox upon the business of kinging it! It drained every last drop of a man's tissues, leaving him a querulous old hairsplitter without enough red blood in his veins to swing a broadsword. Surely, after twenty weary years of wearing the crown, a man was entitled to throw over honours and titles and set out toward dim horizons for one last gore-splattered adventure before Time's all-felling, implacable scythe cut him down..."

CONAN OF THE ISLES, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, Sphere Books, 1974

K
Ah, the wisdom of King Conan!

Well that's another case of plot developing through play, which is absolutely in keeping with the sandbox ideal. The key is to have lots of this going on at once, so there's a meaningful player choice; where Kingmaker went wrong was in a lack of alternatives, so our choice was a binary one of choosing between following the plot or not following the plot, when it should have been between following Plot A, following Plot B, following Plot C, and so on.

The other issue it had was that its plots were more interesting than the alternative, so the campaign presented us with a barbarian invasion, but then said "or you can go and explore some hexes instead", and of course that's not really a choice at all.

As such, it became a scripted campaign with a hexmap, which is not the same thing as a sandbox.

Stu
Keep on the Borderlands was great for levels 1-3, and Isle of Dread for 4-6, but the key is what happens when you have a 12th level party....? I'm really enjoying higher level play to be honest. It's been fun taking characters from lowly 1st level novices and ramping them up into Schwarzenegger-like uber-heroes. The key is devising a sandbox that can challenge at 1st and at 12th, when people may indeed have flying mounts, the ability to teleport, etc. This is less an issue of points buy, and more what players are able to acquire through innovative thinking, class features, etc.

PCs will still be able to manufacture magic items; it may take them longer, but they'll still be able to come up with a magic carpet or find some way of winning the loyalty of a flying monster like a pegasus. Plus, you can't really ban spells like Invisibility, Haste, Fly, Enlarge, Summon Monster, Entangle, etc. all of which play a key role in our strategy.

I guess the solution may be a bigger sandbox, something the size of North Africa rather than East Anglia.

K
Well, as Ben suggested, you can also expand beyond the mortal realms into the other planes. You're still running around in a sandbox, but it's not about clearing forests any more.

Stu
That is definitely one way forward, because ultimately the planes can really be whatever the referee wants them to me. The PCs can do a bit of library research on them, but at the end of the day, it is another great unknown for the level 15+ character.
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There you have it. I have really enjoyed Kingmaker. I would concur with K’s gripe: not enough positive options. Not enough dynamic forces jostling for the same area – with possibly different reasons to be there…… Moreover as a ref I found the Kingmaker Path badly designed in combat terms for the team. Yes the pcs were more powerful than most – but generally speaking the fights were not designed well – this meant I had to work very hard to try and make them more challenging. The fight with the trolls in the troll lair was the most challenging, and only because I gave them all 2x their hps, and had them all converge on the pcs after they were discovered in the troll lair – so they were taking on quite a few at once…. The barbarian was nearly downed during that combat.

‘Owlzilla’ (a giant owlbear) was another dangerous one (I gave her 4x the hps) – she managed to pick up the rogue and use him as a club. Fun. 4e (which I know the boys don’t like) has a better encounter design philosophy. In future I will stick more to the 4e design philosophy, and make sure I have a buffer and controller type, as well as brute and artillery for every major encounter. Without a spell caster, my critters were doomed from the outset! However, these gripes are of another nature –not sandbox issues in themselves – although the very nature of wilderness encounters means that one encounter in the wilderness will often not stretch the party’s resources like 4 encounters in a dungeon will – making designing wilderness encounters that bit more challenging.

TTFN

Ben

Token Effort

My gaming group has been playing a lot of Pathfinder of late and it's become quite a miniature-heavy game, as we have lots of followers and summoned creatures stomping about, and there's only so much one can keep track of without some kind of visual aid. Generic pawns are okay up to a point, and there's always something a little demoralising about pointing at a miniature and saying "I know it looks like a squirrel, but this is an otyugh".

As such, I've been producing some cardboard tokens for use during these more confusing moments, and as soon as I have enough of a single theme, I'll be putting them out as pdfs. First up are some bog-standard elementals in a variety of sizes; these should cover medium to huge elementals in D&D3/Pathfinder, but I'm sure they can be of use in any fantasy-type game. Click on the link below to get the file:

Elementals (3.5mb pdf)

I'll be producing these for use in our weekly game, so the monsters included will reflect that. That said, I'm open to requests or any other bright ideas to improve them.

Straying From the Path

I have been surprised with how much I've been enjoying Pathfinder. As I may have mentioned before, I've never really been a D&D player -- because, you know, Call of Cthulhu is better -- and I'd parted ways with the gaming hobby during D&D3's lifespan, so all I had to go on was stories of how popular the third edition was, how annoyed people were by the seemingly-opportunistic move from D&D3 to D&D3.5, and how the whole thing got a bit unwieldy under the increasing pile of rules supplements.

So when our group made the decision to move from D&D4 -- hereafter referred to as The Unmentionable -- to Pathfinder, I was wary, but I thought it was only fair to give it a try and see what it was like for myself.

The Pathfinder core book is a massive thing -- bigger than Rogue Trader, which was intimidating enough -- and the rules have a lot of working parts, and yet it remains quite fun to play. I suspect that this is because I've been playing as a monk, a relatively simple class; the two players who chose spellcasters are often wrangling with specialist rules and long periods of spell list preparation, all of which would be beyond my feeble mind. It's also perhaps significant that we've been playing for a while now -- we must be coming up for a year -- and we're still getting rules wrong, so it's fair to say we haven't mastered the game. Even so it has been fun, and I have no complaints, whereas by now I was ready to mutiny in our The Unmentionable game.

Paizo have just begun publishing a new Pathfinder campaign -- sorry "Adventure Path" -- called Carrion Crown -- I feel there should be a definite article there -- which owes more than a little to the old TSR Ravenloft setting, and as a horror fan, it did pique my interest just a tad. It was suggested that once we finish the Kingmaker cam... Adventure Path, we move on to this new one, and furthermore that I run it. This seemed like a fair idea.

Then I ran Carrion Hill.

What I discovered was that while I enjoy playing the game, I do not like running it in the slightest, as there's far too much stuff in there. Now, one might say that you don't have to know or use all that stuff, and that's true to an extent, but there is an undeniable feeling of obligation when you know that the rules are there, just waiting; what you get as a result is a tendency -- despite the best of intentions -- to pore through the massive four-billion-page Pathfinder rulebook to discover the correct procedure for applying fire damage to pickled gherkins, and then the game falls over dead. In other words, you could concentrate on getting the core mechanics of fighting, skills and magic right and just handwave the rest, but you'd know you were doing something wrong.

As such, while I would like to run (The) Carrion Crown, I would rather run it with something simpler like Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord -- the difference between them and D&D3/Pathfinder is more one of detail than mechanics -- but alas I know my group would never go for it, not in a month of Sundays. Not that I would use S&W -- for example -- as is; I'm quite fond of the options Pathfinder characters have, so my ideal situation would be to use the simpler game as a frame for all the major mechanics -- gherkins burn on a d6 roll of 5+ -- but front-load the complexity into the characters, perhaps even use the Pathfinder classes as they are, with minor tweaks for compatibility. I've even entertained the possibility of completely bespoke characters, so while there's no dhampir race or rogue class in S&W, I could build a one-off dhampir rogue for the player who wants one.

This would be the best of both worlds for me: lots of options for the players to mess around with, but the minimum of fiddly bits for me to wrestle with as a GM, so I can get on with the plotting and the silly voices. At the end of the day though, it's all theory and wishful thinking, as I don't think it'll fly with my lot. On the plus side, it means I get to play in (The) Carrion Crown; I'm considering a wererat barbarian or -- if I can get away with it -- some sort of zombie.

Back to the Stolen Lands

After a few weeks of one-shots and even a couple of weeks without any gaming at all -- gasp! -- we returned to our regular Pathfinder campaign this week, with games on Sunday and Friday. After a bit of wandering about our lands dealing with what would be called sidequests in another medium, the plot has us exploring further afield, and despite some allusions to Roanoke that are about as subtle as a volcano, it's been a pleasure to return to a more sandboxy type of play. This week's sessions featured a lot of rulebook page-flipping, but I'm not sure if that's due to the increasing complexity of the game as we get to eighth level, or a lack of familiarity with the rules after weeks away.

In other news, production has begun on Savage Eberron III: The Riddle of the Forgotten Hoard. Samuel L Jackson is expected to reprise his role as diminutive dinosaur rider Galaxy Jones, and an open casting call has been put out for short, bearded actors.

What a Carrion

Last night, we wrapped up the Pathfinder one-off we started last week, with the player-characters successful in rooting out the cult activities in Carrion Hill and defeating the eldritch abomination the cult had summoned.

As I mentioned before, I found the Pathfinder ruleset to be far less intimidating to run than I had anticipated, but even so I think it's too bitty -- in the sense that it has a lot of working parts -- for my liking, and if I were to run a D&D variant again in the future, I think it is likely to be something a bit more loose and interpretative like Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. The move in D&D3 -- and thus Pathfinder -- to codify everything has I think led to a situation where exploitation of the rules has become more possible, rather than less; a good example of this is the idea of an optimum character build, something which is almost unknown in earlier editions. I don't begrudge the playing of the system in this way -- indeed my monk in Ben's game is an example, with his five attacks a round and his inability to be hit -- but I do wonder if the game as a whole is unbalanced in loading all this on the players' side. Much as I hate to admit it, but the Unmentionable Edition is perhaps more robust in this regard.

I'm sure it is possible to head off the exploits and level the playing field, but I suspect it takes a familiarity with the game that I am never likely to have, and that it would be easier to achieve in a simpler system. We shall see, as I have already been asked to run something under Swords & Wizardry.

I also wonder if these issues would have been as prevalent if the adventure had been better. I was quite impressed by Carrion Hill as I read through it, as it has a clever time-sensitive element as well as a neat modular structure reminiscent -- perhaps deliberately -- of the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep. The players are thrown into a situation, but can tackle the next sections in any order they please, which in turn can affect the climax of the scenario. The problems arose in the details, and these only became apparent in play.

The adventure suffers from a lot of glaring bottlenecks in the plotting. For example, the vital clue which lets the players know what to do next and unlocks that modular structure is written in Aklo, a language most characters are unlikely to have, and which is not even represented among the included pre-generated characters; the party got around this by having the cleric spam Comprehend Languages for a whole day, but that led to them falling afoul -- if only a little -- of the time limit. On a similar note, there are far too many sections where high skill values in Knowledge (Arcana) and Disable Device are required to progress, which can end the scenario right there and then unless the GM fudges things. The scenario more or less demands that a wizard and a rogue are in the party, but nowhere is this mentioned, and again the pre-generated characters don't measure up and are unlikely to hit the numbers required.

Furthermore, nonsensical situations abound and only exacerbate the bottlenecks. A building with an epic-level lock on the front door is bad enough, but for the same building to be made of thick stone, to have no windows and for the doors to be made of the same thick stone stretches credibility. Is this a fortress, perhaps? Or a gold depository? No, it's a brick factory. The whole adventure seems to be designed in this negative, passive-aggressive fashion, where everything is there to hinder the players, as if this were not a game, as the whole point of it was not for people to have fun. That said, some faults lean in the players' favour, such as the villain who occupies a room too small for the whole party to enter, which would be fine if he were a close-quarters fighter rather than a magician. Or the big final monster of the scenario, which is so big that by the rules as written it should not be able to get out of the first location, let alone get close enough to the player-characters to menace them at the climax.

I have bought two of Paizo's adventures. One was so awful that I knew it from a read through, but Carrion Hill surprised me. If I am to use their scenario materials again, it will be as a source of ideas rather than something to be run as is, as the convenience of a pre-written adventure is outweighed by the poor writing.

Found

With our regular Pathfinder campaign paused in order to give GM Ben a bit of time to recharge, we've been taking the opportunity to try some new games. Last week Stuart blessed us with another excellent Cold City scenario -- it remains a brilliant game -- and last night I picked up the baton and ran a one-off Pathfinder scenario, as Ben had mentioned that he was keen on seeing what it was like to play the game from the other side of the GM screen. I picked Paizo's Carrion Hill, as all my games seem to turn into Call of Cthulhu at some point, and this gave me an excuse.

I think I ended up running the thing by default, as no one else was in a position to volunteer, and I have to admit I was a bit concerned. My tastes in game design are for more simple rulesets, not the five hundred page monster that is the Pathfinder rpg, but I think it turned out okay. While the game does seem to have a rule for everything, in most cases you can get away with picking a target number, and getting the players to roll a d20 and add the result to whatever ability you just decided on a fraction of a second before.

One might think that having a prepared scenario helped, but I've discovered that Carrion Hill, which seemed so strong on a read through, has some real problems. I won't go into them now, as we're only half way through and I don't want to spoil anything for next week, but suffice to say that it has some serious design flaws, some of which a half decent editor should have spotted.

All that said, my first attempt at running the game didn't seem to be as huge a disaster as I'd imagined it would be, but I'm still not sure it gave Ben the experience he wanted! He has been nudging me into running Swords and Wizardry or Runequest though, both of which are much more my kind of thing, so we'll see what, if anything, happens on that front.

Musings & thinking ahead to the next campaign!

Setting search
I am wondering what setting I’d at some point like to run some non-generic fantasy in. As much as I am enjoying Kingmaker, it is a generic-quasi-Greyhawk setting (magical Europe)…. And in that respect it feels limited/ limiting… and even non-magical…. (no worries to those playing it - it is still a blast - I am just aware that I need to also slowly plan ahead - it is How I Am ;)
But what next (as in in 2+ years time)…. Various settings interest me:

• Shattered world concept – SW have a setting for it ‘sundered skies’ – but it is not quite what I am after (don’t like linear paths to start with)
  
  
• Swords and Sorcery concept – ala Conan/ Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, with low magic (Iron Heroes perhaps?)

Post-apocalyptic world – taking some of the ideas from Dark Sun – but in a different political setup.

• 
  
• Steampunk – early age – ala Defoe (the comic) meets New Crobuzon from Mieville’s work (but I am aware an rpg is apparently been made for this). Iron Kingdoms d20 has some classes and gear which could be nicked for this purpose.
  
  

1600s Europe – ala Solomon Kane (but not a replica of that) – Gothic – black powder weapons, clockwork, think Sleepy Hollow.

Party concept
I also have another conundrum –what kind of adventuring party concept? I like to set up a game, in liaison with the Team, as to what kind of party angle they would like a stab at, as well as what kind of game….. Having made the guys I game with play good pcs, and with Stuart chomping at the bit to play more of a ‘grey’ moral pc, (ala the anti-heroes of old, as well as Conan/ Fafhrd being heroes who were also pursuing self interest)… I am keen to have a party set up which captures those possibilities…..

Thus possible party structures:

1. Mercenaries - like Conan was for part of his career - in the sense they are members of a merc group, have a code of honour, are not evil, but neither are they good - but certainly would be united against the hordes of chaos etc. Could be any pc classes & pure sandbox - although they could seek out missions (for money), as well as developing their own ways of making hard cash - works in low magic S&S/gothic/planar settings OR
2. Thieves Guild - they could start off as lowly scum in the city's Thieves' Guild - and the first arc is them rising to mediocrity in the ranks: rogue, fighter, ranger, wizard/ sorcerer - play it out like GTA - with missions, as well as with sandbox - think the Sopranos meets Fafhrd & Grey Mouser here - works in an urban adventure setting - and events could see them having to leave it for a while.....(eg falling out with their bosses).... works in gothic/ S&S/ planar settings OR
3. Witch Hunters – they could be members of a religious order & hangers on: inquisitor, paladin, cleric/cavalier, wizard and rogue/ranger - again like GTA - a mix of sandbox and missions from your bosses. Think Van Helsing & Solomon Kane here - works in the gothic/ planar setting

Obviously some party concepts may work better in a certain campaign. Here's one example:


Witch-hunter setting/ campaign - fleshing it out a little
Reasons for joining the witch hunters: personal gain, joy in hunting, with one party member possibly playing the role of a believer in the cause, but also believing in using whatever tools (eg other pcs despite their greed), and methods they can (since they can rationalise anything in their warped ethical code)

Style of game....thus you have a party moving through the countryside, like in The Witchfinder General, hunting down trouble - for gain (honour, gold, power, women's favour, fear of locals, etc). It could also be part urban - Gothing up Ptolus for example - its backdrop of the Spire, and all the undead in the graveyards is a perfect backdrop for a Gothic witch hunter game for d20.

Development. Of course - as pcs progress, the game could explore how the pcs develop - or otherwise - a broader perspective - eg morality etc - but initially - for 5 levels or so – the game could encourage them to act it out as immoral basterds doing pursuing self interest in the name of their gawd.

Technology levels: I am thinking the backdrop would be airships, guns, etc - but these would add flavour initially - rather than being the centre of attention, eg the party could have either a pc or maybe better npc arcane mechanik in their mercenary band who helps upgrade gear - so long as the pcs get them the resources they need to do the work on their portable workshop inside their steam-wagon. Defoe is of interest here - with the zombie-apocalypse as the backdrop, and the famous scientists of the day pressing fast-forward on the tech levels as they try to create better guns and tech to beat the zombie hordes - applying ideas from Deadlands to 1669 England.

System: either
Pathfinder – with classes such as the new ones from the APG: inquisitor, alchemist, cavalier (?)… as well as old ones: paladin, cleric, rogue – with tech levels – I prefer those of 1600AD-ish for this .. OR

WFRP could be the other setting/ system for this game of course. 3e or 2e this is the question!!

Plenty of loose ends here - assuming I stick with this concept:

• what system? WFRP (2e/3e) or Pathfinder (I know there are others - but these will do for me)
• tech levels: Solomon Kane of 1600 - black powder only; or the more souped up stuff from Defoe, or even New Crobuzon, with trains..... Renaissance/ just pre-industrialisation/ industrialisation - all of these choices have profound consequences!!what world? Do I modify/ modernise an existing one - what would happen to it if.... (advantages - people may be familiar with it, eg WFRP - but in an industrial age, so some things would be strange), or start from stratch? (won't upset people, but involves more work!) This partly depends on 'what system'.
• What world? Do I want to modify/modernise a familiar world - what would it look like with these new technologies/ if a zombie-apocalypse happened etc or create a new one from scratch? Each has stengths and weaknesses.
• Is this the game I want to run? (ie I still need to explore the other ideas as well!

More musings another time. Time to bust a groove now and do some work!

Pathfinder's Kingmaker

Hiya folks, if you have been following Kelvin’s blogs of the Kingmaker story, eg ‘Living in a Box’, and likewise by Stuart on his blog, The Great Game, eg: ‘A Short Cut to Mushroom (soup)’, you may be aware there are a bunch of us playing Paizo’s Kingmaker Campaign using the Pathfinder rules. Having completed books – or as I call them – ‘Acts’ / or Story Arcs 1 and 2, I thought I’d offer up a little commentary and some thoughts on them.

Well – we decided to go ‘retro’ and return to an older edition of D&D having given 4e a go (I ran Paizo’s Rise of the Runelords for Acts 1 and 2, and Ric had run some of Open Designs ‘Wrath of the River King’ slotted into his homebrew setting). We were after a more open, sandbox game – our interest sparked by Kelvin’s Rogue Trader game that was VERY open. ;) & we were also after that retro feel where we had more options than simply killing everything, and only using powers…. A return to skills and a more open game-play. Paizo had produced the sandbox campaign Kingmaker, and with its ruleset Pathfinder, we decided to give it a go, and see where it took us!

Why I’d recommend Kingmaker (using Pathfinder):

It is a sandbox game, in which players can affect the story, and is not driven by a linear plot development. (Yes – players are limited to a certain size of the map – via their charter from Brevoy, their noble sponsors – but what they do, who they kill, who they ally themselves with in the realm is up to them)

The Pathfinder rules – they are better, IMHO, than 3.5 D&D, more like a souped up version of D&D (influence of Iron Heroes here?), and the tweeks from 3.5, although making it a little fiddly for those of us who are familiar with 3.5 and thus have to declutter our brains from 3.5 gobble-di-gook, the tweeks and changes are welcome ones, and make game play better! Stuart has written a few words here about 4e v Pathfinder – in a fair way IMHO. :)

Pathfinder rpg is well supported – with the Pazio prd, as well as a fansite pfsrd.

Paizo’s Adventure Paths are also well supported – via fan postings on the message boards. I was able to mine these posts from folks who were ahead of me in running the game, and learn from their problems, their ideas on bring some parts of the game to life, and reflecting on how to foreshadow future issues and so on and so forth. Ideas about climate, culture, names, working out some tricky points in the game, how to make sure the players have a background that will advantage them/ link them into the setting etc. Really useful to have a community of other GMs to converse with about the materials, rather than do it all on your own. This is a key advantage of any Pathfinder Adventure Path.

We have really enjoyed it. And players have responded. We have 2 bestiaries now – one for the players for their companions and summonsed creatures stats; 3 copies of the Advanced Players Guides, I have pre-ordered Bestiary 2… and we are looking forward to the new Magic book in April 2011….. None of us have played at this level before in D&D (bar me – level 9 was my limit in a game I ran – The Night Below for 2nd ed way back in 1995-1997)

I am looking forward to playing in Kelvin’s ‘Carrion Hill’ scenario for Pathfinder level 5 and our Winter BenCon all day gaming sometime over xmas – where we get together and play games (rpg one shots/ board games) all day! I am also looking forward to recharging my GMing brain, and having time to paint some minis before I get back into the hot seat! Kelvin’s turn first! Carrion Hill - & Rogue Trader?

On the Boil

I can't recall ever having so many gaming projects on the go at once. Back in my wayward youth, I'd concentrate on one game or setting for months, before moving on to the next game and doing the same, all of which often came to naught as the group decided to play something else anyway. I'm sure this is not uncommon within our hobby.

I am working on three unrelated projects at the moment, but on the plus side, much of the work is already done for two of them:

• Our Pathfinder GM has expressed a desire to experience the game as a player for once. In fairness, this situation has arisen because he's always so full of enthusiasm for running his latest idea for a D&D-variant game, so we let him get on with it. Even so, I've volunteered to run a scenario so he can try the game from the other side of the screen; I have chosen Paizo's Carrion Hill, which is rather appropriate, as whenever I run something it seems to end up as Call of Cthulhu, and now I have an excuse.
• In the summer, I finally got a chance to run an Eberron game, albeit using Savage Worlds as the ruleset. At some point in December, I'll be running the sequel to that: Savage Eberron II: The Jewel of Galifar. Most of the work is done, but I've taken Stephen King's advice and have put the scenario away so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes in a few weeks. My plan is to run these once or twice a year, as a series of linked adventures, but not quite a campaign.
• Most recently, I've been brainstorming ideas for a return to my Rogue Trader game. I now have a good outline for the plot of the next chunk of the campaign, which will be a bit more linear before returning to the sandbox of the first "season". Players being the special snowflakes that they are, I expect it to be nowhere as direct a journey as the word "linear" implies.

In other news, we hit seventh level in our ongoing Pathfinder campaign last night, although since I've been blessed by Nurgle I decided to stay away and play via Skype. Which was fine until the camera cut out at their end and the microphone cut out at mine -- so I could only hear them and they could only see me -- and communication consisted of me attempting to figure out what was going on from their discussion and holding up handwritten notes to the camera in response.



From what I could tell things got a bit hairy, with at least two characters into critical condition -- perhaps Stuart can provide a more detailed synopsis -- but the party emerged from the troll caverns victorious and with a sizeable haul of treasure, including a +2 thundering great sword for Stuart's barbarian Artemisia, further nudging her towards the Weapon of Mass Destruction prestige class.

Kingmaker: DING!

Yesterday's Pathfinder game saw the party members getting to sixth level, after a rather cynical -- on our part -- bit of wandering about the map, fishing for experience points. A common criticism of Pathfinder's rival D&D4 is that its mechanics make it feel like a video game, but I think it's fair to say that our tactics last night were more than a little inspired by the grinding of many a computerised rpg. Which is not to say it wasn't fun!

Last week, the party investigated a series of ruined elven towers deep in the woods in the western part of our realm, but we ran out of time before we could tackle the large central tower. Picking up from where we left off, the party entered the building and discovered a rather obvious floor trap, which the changeling rogue Olban disarmed with ease, allowing the group to ascend the stairs to the upper level.

There things started to get strange, as the party entered what seemed to be a wooded glade under a sky lit by alien stars, and yet it was still a room within a tower, with windows looking out onto the courtyard in which the party had fought the quickling not a few minutes before. As if this was not disorienting enough, the room/clearing also contained a beautiful elven woman -- a baobhan sith -- who began a seductive dance as the party approached.

Alas for her, the only target she managed to entrance was the party's faithful warhound Cujo, and while the poor beast panted happily for her attention the rest of the team moved in for the kill. Sensing danger, the maiden unleashed an entangle spell, which was quite successful in slowing down the majority of the party, but only delayed the inevitable. A short scuffle later, and the strange thing was killed, fading away into nothingness as it died, and restoring the room to normal.

Having come out of the experience with fewer bumps and bruises than expected, the party decided to take the opportunity to explore the surrounding area, having been prevented from doing so beforehand by matters of state. Along the way a trio of grizzly bears were discovered, but the elven druid Cassie used her secret knowledge to calm the creatures, and the party managed to pass without a fight. Later, the heroes came across the lair of some kind of huge burrowing animal and were almost caught out as the occupants -- some kind of chthonic variant of the ankylosaurus -- returned home from an afternoon's foraging. These beasts managed to split the party but were unable to take advantage of the situation, and were brought down, albeit not with ease. Despite having rested, the ongoing fighting and exploration was taking its toll on the party.

The group decided to make one last push before heading back home, and ran into a pair of shambling plant things, each a mass of mud, vegetable matter and animated roots. The tengu monk Wu Ya found his effectiveness diminished as the extra little kick -- no pun intended -- gained from his amulet of shocking fists seemed to heal the creatures so he was forced to resort to basic attacks.

(Stuart has commented on Wu Ya's increased damage output of late, but I think it's easy to forget how much of it comes from enhancements. The amulet gives the monk an extra 1d6 damage per hit, but stripped of that, he was only doing 1d8+3 with each attack, and the plant-things weren't vulnerable to his stunning fist ability either.

On a more positive note, this week Stuart's character Artemisia dragged herself out of her low damage slump of the past few sessions. It's a recurring joke that Stuart does better when someone else rolls his dice for him -- his son exemplifies this best, rolling strings of 20's while Stuart himself barely rolls above a 4 when he picks up the dice -- and it proved to be the case this session, as he was absent this week, but his character was more potent in combat than she has been when he's been driving.)

Perhaps sensing weakness, one of the plant creatures grabbed the monk and began crushing him to death -- 42 hit points to 12 in one round! -- but all the while Artemisia the barbarian was hacking away with her greatsword and Olban was darting back and forth, stabbing away with his twin rapiers, and the creature did not live long enough to crush poor Wu Ya. As it was, the barbarian's warhorse dealt the final blow, crushing the thing to so much mulch beneath its mighty hooves. Battered and bleeding, the party decided to head home, but each of them felt stronger and wiser from the experience.

Level six! There was a bit of grumbling about this at the table, to the effect that sixth level holds little of interest for the other classes. The monk, however, seems to have something funky going on at each level -- Rick observed that the reason that Pathfinder monks don't get easy access to the game's prestige classes may be because the monk is already a prestige class -- so I have no complaints. It's a long haul to the next level though, as we've got to earn around 12,000xp. Each!

Ahead of the Game

I find myself in an interesting situation. The Pathfinder campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path", is going well; we're almost to the end of the first book, and the inevitable confrontation with the mysterious Stag Lord. This fellow is the mastermind behind the local bandit problem, and is the main obstacle to the settling of the area by civilised folk.

The thing is, I think I know who he is. This isn't through having seen spoilers, or even worse, cheating, but rather that the authors of the first adventure book have laid a number of, to my eye obvious, clues. Which wouldn't be a problem, except I think I know, based on those same clues, how the entire campaign, sorry, "Adventure Path", will turn out.

So that's the interesting situation. It's almost as if I've played the scenario before, so I'm going to remain quiet about what I think I know, in part to not spoil things for everyone else, and in part because my character, the tengu monk, is unlikely to have figured it out. And yet it's not quite like having read the scenario, because it's very possible that I've misread the signs, and the whole thing will go in a very different direction. There's almost another game going on here, a bit of narrative cat-and-mouse, as I find myself trying to out-think the authors.

We should meet (and very quickly eviscerate, if our barbarian continues to prove as effective as she has done so far) the Stag Lord in this week's game, and his unmasking will tell me a lot about the accuracy of my predictions. I can't wait!