Felltower is All About Consensus

"Felltower is all about Safety" - Ulf, who died in Felltower

Riffing off of that, I'll say that Felltower is all about consensus.

One benefit of a pick-up, large-player-pool bounded sandbox game can be individually set goals. You see this in the West Marches:

Players send emails to the list saying when they want to play and what they want to do. A normal scheduling email would be something like “I’d like to play Tuesday. I want to go back and look for that ruined monastery we heard out about past the Golden Hills. I know Mike wants to play, but we could use one or two more. Who’s interested?” Interested players chime in and negotiation ensues. Players may suggest alternate dates, different places to explore (“I’ve been to the monastery and it’s too dangerous. Let’s track down the witch in Pike Hollow instead!”), whatever — it’s a chaotic process, and the details sort themselves out accordingly. In theory this mirrors what’s going on in the tavern in the game world: adventurers are talking about their plans, finding comrades to join them, sharing info, etc.

This is not how Felltower works.

For Felltower, it works this way:

1) GM and players decide on the next game date. This used to mean the next time at least a few people and I could play, but now means the next time almost everyone can make the game.

2) Sometimes by email, but usually on the game day itself, the players discuss what to do.

3) Verify with the GM that this is ready to go.

4) If 3 is satisfied, play. If not, go back to step 2.

We almost never have individual-led expeditions as described in the West Marches game. We don't get a lot of, "I want to sack the Black Library on 8/4. Who's coming?" and lot more "We're playing 8/4 and everyone except (these two PCs) can play. Where should we go?"

That was not how it was designed, though.

Originally, it went like this:

1) GM decides on the next day game can be run, with input from the players (since one of them hosted game.)

2) Anyone who can come, does come.

3) Players decide what to do.

4) Play.

It's a difference that has led to a much more traditionally style of game. We play when everyone's around, game frequency has dropped off as real-life concerns are compounded by the perceived need / desire to have almost everyone there, play is purely cooperative (no one is trying to raid location X without cutting everyone else in), and the game has grown more tolerant of multi-session delves.

Some of that is Felltower itself at this point - there are less hanging tag ends to pull on. Or at least, less that the players see and perceive as a potential way to get loot without dying. But it's been a consistent theme since early on. It's decision by consensus, not individually led sessions. PCs don't start as somewhat trepidatious weaker delvers and, as they grow stronger, branch out into individual goals and individual delves. Instead, they start out as somewhat trepidatious weaker delvers and grow into stronger, more and more group-oriented delvers. Regardless of how powerful they become, they continue to work together as a group and make decisions about delving as a group.

There are pros and cons, of course.

The pros are largely convivial play amongst the players. We don't have a lot of in-party conflict because we have players who either started as friends, or became so because of the game. It's almost always fun, no matter the result of the game, because everyone gets along. This pro doesn't take long to write out, but make no mistake - this is huge. Anyone who has played with That Guy knows that not having That Guy makes for a better experience. It's why I recruit friends, not gamers, into the game. At least gaming group has spun off from my group, with players who met playing Felltower (or the previous game I ran.)

But it does have downsides.

The main downside to consensus is that everyone in my group generally has to agree on a task. Or at least, not be opposed to it. So preferred play style / play tolerance dictates actions. We have at least one player who vociferously objects to purely exploratory or preperatory sessions. No filling in the map or just checking out some side areas or making sure of some half-checked areas. Bold delve or no delve. So when that player is around, those things can't happen . . . so they generally don't. We have some risk-averse players, who'd rather a sure thing than a long shot, and so that cuts out some high-risk high-reward options. There are others, too - some players are just either not interesed in mid-week email-based planning (or Discord based, assuming they're still using their Discord channel), or don't have time for it. So delves that require some planning don't get planned, and the "no pure planning sessions" guy won't spend Sunday on that, and the "no risk" guys won't go without planning because it's too risky, and no one seems to plan by email because they need full consensus to go.

One reason the last session's delve into the Brotherhood Complex had all of two hirelings - I don't think they even tried to hire Darkspire - was because I didn't have any more set up in the VTT. I didn't make any because no one affirmatively declared they'd go and hire them, and I don't do prep work for PC-centric actions like that on a maybe. Why didn't anyone declare affirmatively they'd hire them, even with a caveat of "when we go, which isn't decided yet*"? I do not know, but I think it's connected to this idea of consensus. Everyone didn't agree this was a thing to be done, so no one did it.

It even has some direct "off limits" results for Felltower. Black library? Not with a cleric, because they'll burn the books, but not without a cleric, because you need healing and curse mitigation. No dragons, because not everyone is on board for risking a grounded fight against a flying monster. I'm partly sure we lost one player because the whole "yes you have to roll for every door" style of play of Felltower annoyed him, and no one wanted to spend the time - least of all him - to knock down doors or fix broken entrances and such to make that a non-issue.

The game has changed as a result. It's still supportable, but it has had consequences. Less gaming sessions overall - a month with two game sessions is a good month. It used to be standard. It's not uncommon to miss a whole month. Players used to complain about how long it took to special order items and get enchantments done, but now they complain about lack of funds more - time between sessions is longer so the first is less of an issue but it takes big hauls each of the delves to net the same cash over time. More concern about TPKs and dead PCs, because losses are a more significant given less actual time to play and way a fallen PC falls out of a niche. Groups come together more as "What do we need?" and less as "I have a character idea." It resembles a lot more Session 0 in a traditional game than a pure pickup game would.

So concensus isn't all a bad thing - it does mean more player enjoyment and better cohesion as a group. But it does affect how Felltower is played.


* I'm still not doing the prep just in case, so it better be damn firm before I spend my non-session time loading up a bunch of NPCs and tokens and so on on a maybe. It's annoying work at best and wasted time consumption at worst. I'll do it when I have to.

Thoughts & Links for 9/27/2024

Thoughts and links for Friday.

- Revolt on Antares arrived. It's nice to have the whole countermix together again.

- Bleh, Felltower has gone monthly-ish. Next game is a few weeks from now.

- I'm starting to go through my old comics collection, to see what I want to keep and what I want to sell off. I have some issues of the Forgotten Realms comics. No idea how many yet, but I'll post here once I know what I have in case someone has interest in them. If I get rid of them, probably a bunch of Conan Saga magazine-sized might go on the goodbye pile.

- Not sure how I missed this - piling on monsters. I play this way.

- I think my player andi would have a shot at this Art Contest.

Revolt on Antares - repurchased

I had to do it. I finally got a new copy of Revolt on Antares, one of my favorite TSR minigames.

I have the rulebook, probably have the map . . . somewhere . . . and have some of the counters. I potentially could have kit-bashed a playable version. But I figured, what the heck, Noble Knight had a complete copy.

I can't wait to play it again, and this time, keep all of the pieces together. I'm not as prone to sloppy counter keeping as I was as a pre-teen.

Felltower & Brotherhood Complex Notes 9/22/24

Back in August, I wrote the following to my players:

"Going to the Brotherhood Complex is fine, but:

1) If it's not in current use, it'll be a lot of exploration to see what you can find.

2) If it is in current use, it'll be a straight-up fight against organized, intelligent foes . . . so you can't get away with what got you mauled the first time (blundering into a large fight without being ready for it) or killed the second time (boxing yourself in.) It's an assault on an enemy complex, not a room-by-room exploration of a megadungeon with small areas controlled by small groups you can pick off as you please.

As long as you're okay with the possibility of #1, and ready for #2, I'm game for it."

A little discussion after that resulted in the following:

- My suggestion that the PCs get hirelings in actual numbers. Vic put it as a "10 good men" kind of thing. Probably a few more, but yes.

- There was a suggestion of finding folks who hate the Black Brotherhood to come along.

- I pointed out that there would be loot, for sure, with intelligent foes, but getting reinforcements would be costly.

At the moment, the PCs are in a large fight I'm not 100% sure they're ready for, and not quite boxed in but cut off from the exit. The enemy is between them and the exit, and the probable path of additional enemy reinforcements is also into that same area.

We'll see how it goes . . . but I just wanted it on the record that I made it clear what the Brotherhood Complex would entail and we discussed what it would benefit from.


This, though, is also the current problem in Felltower. 12 years now of exploration of - largely - 4-5 levels, often over and over again - has cleared out most of the things that can be picked off without any complications. Most of that picking off was done in the first 3 years. So much so that I needed to launch a new side dungeon in March 2015 and another in September 2015 to allow for weaker delvers to have places to go. So much so that I had to do a pause and restock twice, including recently while the PCs dealt first with one side area and then another.

Much of the problem with Felltower, now, is that you can't just go and wipe out some hapless foes with no friends and lots of treasure.

The dragon in the caves below the gate level is next to a beholder, so it's not clear how to deal with one without having to deal with the other in some way. The six-fingered vampires - the Gith, as the players have named them - guard their areas with magical defenses the PCs can't just avoid and will respond to incursions in force. The gates lead to places with similar issues - raiding the apes might work but they're not going to go down house by house without responding in numbers. No one wants to go to the "Hell Gate" and the Air Gate is still being pushed back because, athough people can now fly, they don't have tactical flight so they can't fight airborne* and don't seem willing to risk what happens against flyers.

Even the unguarded areas - like the ruined city on the bottom of the second GFS - are just going to be exceedingly dangerous. It's a fine place to explore but they're scaled for PCs who can handle the stuff above.

All of the remaining areas present more of a thought challenge than a power challenge - they'll take some clever and thoughful play, I think, to defeat them. You'll need power, too, but the usual delving rhythm of "door, lure the foe into a bad spot, kill it, loot it, rest and recover, repeat" isn't going to be valid anymore. It hasn't been in a while, but against orcs and puddings and gargoyles and the like, the lopsided power of the delvers vs. the foes made up for it.

I suspect this is why a lot of megadungeon plan can peter out. Not from boredom, but from challenges that are different from what people are ready to solve and a limit on what you can do to advance your cause. The way of playing might need to change, or I need to basically toss the levels below the ones explored already, and just keep filling in monsters unable to coordiante in order to keep it going. I'm a little too stubborn and lazy for that, though. I constructed some challenges to require more than just brute force and killing foes in isolation. I'm wondering if those being the blockers to other areas have effectively put Felltower and its related areas into an adapt-or-end-the-campaign situation.

Hopefully this will be useful for my players as a glimpse at the forest and not just the trees. If it's of general interest, too, and help to GMs with their own long-running megadungeon games, that's good, too.

* If people are waiting to accumulate enough magic to have cheap, effective, reliable, tactical combat flight . . . better take Breath Control. Letting a party become a group of routine free flyers changes the game substantially, and turns all fights with non-flyers into a bit of a joke. So don't expect to see that handed out.

Random Bits for 9/20/2024

- you know if it's Star Frontiers I'm interested. Volturnus race stats.

I like it, although I stand by my criticism of Volturnus. I feel like it would be such a good later adventure, for a group already used to civilization and now plunged into wilderness survival. Oh well.

- I'm intrigued by the rules for Victory in Europe. It's a three-sided game, with the Soviets, Western Allies, and Germany as the three sides. But to prevent the Germans from just hunkering down arounnd Berlin and riding the game out, there are permanent penalties to your combat and reinforcement abilities if you let go of different areas. Abandoning Norway or southern Germany or what have you may seem good on paper, but they come with costs that make holding the rest harder. It's a pretty cool mechanical idea - military tactics may call for tightening up your lines but political necessity may require you to hold on to everything you can . . . and this helps reinforce that.

- Octopus Carnival talks playing around with GURPS combat flow.

- And I'm busy playing around with the VTT a bit to see how I can upload my Felltower maps . . . but still no luck. My levels are too big for 1-yard hexes and the limits of Foundry.

Fun Bits from Last Session

A few fun bits from last session:

- I have the Brotherhood Complex fully mapped out in the VTT. So people can just click and drag themselves around willy-nilly. And they did. PCs got seperated, NPCs lagged here and there, and so on. It was fun.

Especially fun is that, just like Belmak Battlebeard in their last group to hit this area, Thor became Thor Doorsbane, and ran around opening every door he could. Even when other PCs weren't quite down with opening a door, too late, he was there and rolling Forced Entry. There is a lot more impulsive stuff going on when everyone can just move and do on their own.

- We have dragons at home. The players talked about going after a dragon last session, including the one they spotted at the lake in the Lost City of D'Abo. Chop shot that down, saying, basically, we have a dragon in Felltower, we don't have to go all the way to the Lost City to fight a dragon.

- In a less fun bit, flaming swords suck to GM. I have to and manually add 2 injury, burning, as a followup, to every foe hit. There must be a better way . . . and that +2 injury is nice but, geez, it's often on top of 30-40 injury and barely relevant.

GURPS DF Session 198, Brotherhood Complex 6 - Gnolls & Doors

Real Date: 9/15/2024
Game Date: 9/18/2024

Weather: Sunny, warm.

Characters Chop, human cleric (301 points)
     Harold, human guard
     Samual, human guard
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (300 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf martial artist (266 points)

The PCs gathered in Stericksburg, lacking, sadly, even concepts of a plan. After gathering rumors they decided their best bet was to take on the dragon near the beholder's lair in Felltower. That quickly became "let's send Invisible Flying Vlad down to steal a scoop of treasure and get out" and then back to "but fight the dragon." Thor pointed out that dragons fly, they don't have tactical combat flight, and then they'll all die fighting the dragon. So they decided to head to the Brotherhood Complex and raid it, sure they could at least score some loot from the guards.

There had been some recent discussion about going to the complex, and it was agreed that fighting intelligent, active foes in what would be an assault, not a normal dungeon crawl, would take some specialized gear (like Magebane grenades) and fighting support (as in, a large number of combat-capable hirelings.) All of that went out the window for an imediately delve.* Instead they just bought 10 days of rations and set out.

Around midday on day 3 they reached the valley where the cave to the Brotherhood Complex is. They watched it while chowing down on rations, saw nothing going on, and headed in. The cave concealed a long, meandering and narrow hall that eventually ended up in a large room with a pair of giant metal doors. They spoke the passphrase and went through. Relying on the notes of previous delvers, they avoided the obvious exit and found an illusionary wall with stairs beyond. They dumped all of their spare rations in a corner in the room and sent Vlad ahead, with Dark Vision and Invisibility. He headed down the stairs, quietly, and heard some suppressed breathing and a low rumbling growl. He moved around the corner and saw a half-dozen gnolls, with a mix of longbows and morningstars, all clearly waiting for action. A triger padded out of a crack in the wall and started howling. Vlad backed off and shot the triger, and whistled for help.

The PCs rushed down and formed a rough line. The triger had run off, but the gnolls advanced. Vlad kept shooting the gnolls, trying to wound as many as he could to limit their ability to run for help. The gnolls yelled and barked and the triger roared a triple-throated roar from the crack in the wall.

The PCs moved up and attacked. Chop used Command on one of the gnolls, Thor started cutting them up, and Vlad kept shooting them. The triger rushed out and clawed up Samual and hurt Harold before going down until a lot of sword swings, arrows, stabs, and axes from Hannari. Duncan hit the triger and one of the gnolls with Stone Missile, but otherwise it was mostly Thor and Vlad killing them with Hannari crippling a couple on top of that. In about 15 seconds or so of fighting, they'd managed to kill them all. This was before any could run for help, but the gnolls and triger had put up a loud racket before going down.

They made sure the gnolls were dead, healed up their hirelings, and started to search around. They wanted to move quickly. They did, going from door to door to door in the area east of the entrance stairs (which are in the NW.) Amongst the oddities they found was an acidic water pit. They stayed clear - good choice, as it burbled and bubbled and exploded like a geyser after a few minutes. They put Resist Fire for the heat and Resist Acid for the acid and sent Vlad in to investigate. He fished around in the acid a bit but there wasn't anything in it they could see. They took a path around it and went on, exploring further and opening more doors.

In one, they saw a flickering light at the end of a hallway - from a crack in the floor. It was hot, too, so they all backed off and sent in Vlad with Resist Fire. As he headed down the hallway, the entire floor crumbled, revealing a bed of superheated coals. He fell, getting badly injured but not crippled. With help from Duncan - who also put Resist Fire on himself - he was brought out with Walk on Air. First, he spent some time searching the coals for loot before giving up. They headed out.

From there, they circled around and eventually found a hallway that led to a locked door. They tried to force it, but it was barred. Apportation couldn't shift the bar - it was locked down - and forcing the door failed. Hannari unlocked it, but that didn't help with the bar. So they decided to hack the door down, with Thor using Hannari's axe.

After bashing it a bit, Vlad - on lookout - saw a gnoll and shot it. He called to them.

The PCs stopped what they were doing and ran to Vlad. He saw more gnolls, and some humans in armor and a number of robe-wearing figures.

Vlad kept sending arrows down the hallway, wounding gnolls and trying - and missing - against the robed guys. Thor and Samuel and Harold rushed forward, and Hannari moved forward with him. Two of the robed guys throw spells - an Explosive Fireball and an Explosive Acid Ball, both 6d. They did a solid amount of damage - 24 for the fireball, 27 for the acid. In the narrow hallway there wasn't really anywhere to jump aside. Thor was fine, although his armor was corroded a bit on the back and he's got some burning gear. Samual is engulfed in flames, Harold burning and badly hurt. Hannari was hurt as well, and is also burned.

The PCs have the gnolls, robed cultists, and guards moving to engage them and also north . . . and are effectively between the PCs and the exit, now with two hirelings badly hurt and unable to outrun anyone (if they can stay up.)

And that's where we called it, for time.


* Because hiring NPCs means I need to generate them, make tokens for them, and put the in the VTT, which is time consuming . . . and that time would come out of our playing time.

Notes:

- I like having the whole map open so people can manually move around. Much easier on me.

- The plan was a hit-and-run raid - I think - but in the end a lot of time was spent clearing empty rooms and doubling over areas. They didn't map, because that would take far too long (and would have meant a response much earlier). But they also spent a good amount of time trying to hack down a door in a dead end. We'll see how it goes from here.

- So far, the loot is a triger pelt and some weapons from the gnolls they'll loot on the way out. Unless they can defeat the enemies they face now and hold the field, of course. The pelt is damaged - I'll roll to see how much, but since they took the Triger to -91 HP from 19, aka between -4x and -5xHP, it's going to be less valuable. Sorry . . . best way to get a triger pelt isn't to hack the triger to death.

MVP was Vlad for valuable and effective missile fire. My vote, which doesn't count, was for Hannari's player, who suggested a monster that I'll write up the next time I need a post with a silly monster.

Felltower pre-summary

We played Felltowe today.

The PCs . . .

- set out to slay one of the dragons of Felltower!

- immediately changed their mind when someone pointed out this was hard

- headed to the Brotherhood Complex

- successfully alarmed the occupants and killed some gnolls

- opened many doors

- and got caught against a locked door by approaching gnolls, cultist guards, and cultists wizards

- and fun ensued.

Details tomorrow!

Random Bits for 9/13/2024

Not much of a week for gaming - lot of non-gaming things to do.

- This is pretty funny - Conan vs. Barbarianism.

- 2000 posts is a lot of posts. Omedetou, Monsters & Manuals.

- Felltower is Sunday. The fabled Tavern Level probably has this. I doubt the PCs will find the Tavern Level, though. But as Principal Skinner says, "Prove me wrong, kids!"

- I think I might play this, next: Victory in Europe: The Collapse of Nazi Germany 1944-1945. I think the other games I got from Omega Games, War to the Death and Napoleon's Leipzig Campaign, might be a bit too much. We'll see. I'm reading the rules now before I decide. I bought these games so long ago my address on the package is from the house I grew up in. And one of them I'll probably never play.

TWW: Persian Gulf - Finished

I finished out my standard-length (8 war turns) game of Persian Gulf tonight.

In the end, it was a NATO Substantial Victory. That seems odd, give that, at the end of the game:

- the Turks had been crushed almost entirely
- Iraq was half overrun and over 50% of its military forces were destroyed
- the Jordanian forces had been totally destroyed
- All of central Iran was controlled by the Soviets (albeit narrowly)

What bailed out NATO was aggressive counterattacking and the limited time that the Soviets had thanks to very late mobilization of the Southern Military Districts. That and the fact that only oil fields and forcing surrenders really helps, and the Soviets couldn't force anyone to surrender. They couldn't get to the gulf, either, thanks to the USMC seizing all of the ports. In the end, the Soviets were in a solid position but ran out of time.

I'll post pictures tomorrow if I can, edited back into this post. I have a lot of cleanup to do, since I don't want to just pour everything back into the box. Overall, it was a very satisfying game. If I play another in the series, it'll likely be Southern Front (which might be my favorite) or Artic Front (which is my least favorite, so I think I need to give it another chance.) More likely, I'll work up a game of Fire in the Lake, instead, or dust off Victory in Europe and finally give that a go. But that's for another time.

Random Thoughts & Links for 9/6/2024

- Next Felltower is the Sunday after this coming Sunday.

- CRPG Addict finally got to Betrayal At Krondor, which I really enjoyed.

- Wealth in GURPS, in a long and detailed look, and a specific campaign's set of rules.

- B/X Procedural Flowcharts. Neat!

- Getting rid of Weapon Master? I won't for Felltower, but I'd run a game without it.

- This kind of thing reminds me of Felltower - more than once my players have realized that, well, maybe they're the bad guys. But like these players, they got over it when they found loot and rationalizations for murder.

"Losses: moral/ethical high ground?" - I love it.

Sometimes I get a little nostalgic for the days when I ran a game and no one killed anyone - deliberately, not just because they didn't find someone to kill.

- My TWW: Persian Gulf game has taken an interesting turn. Nuclear escalation allowed the US to leverage its superior airpower to smash several key Soviet divisions with nuclear weapons, but the Soviet's 3rd wave reservists have flooded the map. A US counterattack has started to push into central Iran, but a massive wave of Soviet divisions - like 15-16 of them - is pushing back the last of the Turks and is moving on Iraq. It should be a tough two turns to finish the game out - the Soviets have to hold on to central Iran or lose a lot of VPs, but they can make up for the loss by crushing Iraq. But is there time? We'll see.

Felltower Monsters Bits Law

I blame martinl for this, which just goes to show how I roll my campaign.


Whereas, the dungeons of Felltower and their environs are full of dangerous monsters and fell beasts of untrustwothy and evil origin;
and whereas, the dumping of the corpses of such monsters in Stericksburg's public facilities are potentially dangerous to the morals, bodies, and souls of the inhabitants of the city aforementioned;
and whereas, the discouragement of bringing said fell creatures into the safe environs of the town is to be encouraged and the encouragement of bring them henceforce and into the environs is to be discouraged;
it is hereby decreed that it shall be illegal, against the law, and against the moral standing of the city, county, and kingdom of New Kingdom to bring such fell beings or their remains into town for the venal profit of profiteers. Any and all monters, human-like or human-unlike, shall be prohibited from sales within the confines of town, as shall be their possession. Various and sundry special exemptions are made for those parts previously allowed to be sold under the Wizard's Exemption* unless the sale of such should cause especially problems for the officials especially charged with the discharge of the taxing and allowance of said special parts.


In other words, sale of anything not listed in the Notes sections of monsters is banned in New Kingdom, aka the Kingdom the Game is Set In. In other words, if a skill roll or prior knowledge doesn't say it's valuable, don't take your chances, there will be legal issues. Leave the monsters, take the coinage.