I repeat the same things over and over in Felltower.
"Okay, you head out of Stericksburg through the North Gate, across the dwarf-made Stone Bridge over the polluted Silver River, to Sterick's Landing. You pass the broken remains of a statue of a horse with Sterick on it, only his headless and armless torso remains. You pass through the slums on the north side of the river and up the winding track to the top of the mountain."
Every time.
Then it's picking an entrance, and making your way through the same tunnels, time after time after time.
You want to get to the "apartment level?" You have to walk there, and talk me through getting there. You have to tell me how you open doors, and who makes the roll and who is holding a crowbar or just shouldering it. You have to tell me who touches the doors with the six-fingered hand print to get by.
Every time.
You have to describe it all. No skipping ahead. If a passage is blocked and needs squeezing through, or a Will roll, or whatever, you have to make them.
Every time.
Why?
Players sit up and take notice when they change.
If I only ever mentioned the new things, and glossed over the repetition, they wouldn't have the same impact. You can argue this, but I used to do the "gloss over" thing. I pretty much told you what to pay attention to, because I only told you what was new and different.
But since they are always hearing the same things . . . and then hear different things, it piques their interest. It makes the dungeon feel more alive rather than just a series of connected encounters you can fast-forward to once you've dealt with what's beyond.
They don't always notice. There were signs, for example, that some people took residence in the dungeon for a while. The players didn't really pay too close attention to the differences in descriptions of noises and sights in the upper levels of the dungeon. A few months on, the NPCs finished what they wanted to finish, and left. The PCs did eventually find their camping grounds, but never when they were there or what they did. I said a few things, no one thought they were important ("Stay on target!"), and they missed something. But equally, they've noticed very small differences in the dungeon and made real progress out of them.
Your choices matter.
Did you smash up the portcullis near the main entrance to block some monsters from using it? Now you can't use it, either. You killed off some monsters to get rid of a problem that slowed you down? You get the benefit of having smoothed out your travel path.
This has forced the players to spend time re-opening entrances. It gets people checking little mysterious oddities every time, hoping they'll provide a distraction, a reward, or a shortcut. It gets people trying to solve problems that annoy them on the regular. Yeah, the orcs were a problem for a long time. The PCs smashed them repeatedly. Why? Because they annoyed the shit out of the players every session they had to pay a toll, or deal with orc patrols, or blockede. If getting deeper in the dungeon was just a quick, "We pay our toll and now we're on level five!" or whatever, they wouldn't have done it. They cleared the well to make their path deeper easier. They make lots of decisions based on the repetitions.
I know for a fact this has cost me players. Not everyone has stuck my game out because of this. But it's okay. I like the two benefits I get. And if it costs me some players, it's okay. My style of game isn't for everyone. I don't try to make it so. I think it's how megadungeons function well. And it's how Felltower has evolved to be, and I like it.
Showing posts with label Hurting Wrong Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hurting Wrong Fun. Show all posts
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Monday, March 2, 2026
What color is paut? Sigh.
I think when you've played with a group long enough, and they've asked every question imaginable, they imagine up new ones to torment you.
Actual question from game on Sunday:
What color is paut?
My answer? I don't know. And I don't want to rule on it because, somehow, this will come back to haunt me. It'll be a specific color and then people will ask if it's paut because of the color, is this paut colored, if it's paut colored is it magical, can I get poison that is paut colored, can I get food coloring for my paut so it's a different color . . . aargh.
Look, it's probably blue because of Diablo. But honestly, I don't care. It won't matter. If people really need to know the color - in this case, so they can tell the casters what color the paut is in their bag in case they're unconcious and the casters need to sort the paut from the other potions - they can just tie ribbons of a specific color on the bottles or label the freaking bottles PAUT in large, friendly letters.
But geez, what color is paut.
Oh brother.
Actual question from game on Sunday:
What color is paut?
My answer? I don't know. And I don't want to rule on it because, somehow, this will come back to haunt me. It'll be a specific color and then people will ask if it's paut because of the color, is this paut colored, if it's paut colored is it magical, can I get poison that is paut colored, can I get food coloring for my paut so it's a different color . . . aargh.
Look, it's probably blue because of Diablo. But honestly, I don't care. It won't matter. If people really need to know the color - in this case, so they can tell the casters what color the paut is in their bag in case they're unconcious and the casters need to sort the paut from the other potions - they can just tie ribbons of a specific color on the bottles or label the freaking bottles PAUT in large, friendly letters.
But geez, what color is paut.
Oh brother.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Felltower - Loot, Exploration, and Combat, in that order?
What is Felltower about?
"Felltower is all about safety." - Ulf
Well, that, and loot, exploration, and combat, in that order. The XP system rewards loot heavily, exploration second, and combat not at all. Combat is inherently set up in the game as an obstacle to gaining loot and exploration.
PC builds, though, are about combat, almost purely. Some of that is inherent in the game - Sean Punch made these templates combat machines for the most part. In a game where combat can end your paper man, players are incentivized to put their points into combat. That can leave a party a little less able to deal with anything that isn't combat.
Evaluating loot? Can't do that without surviving combat, so that's often set aside.
Finding hidden loot? 1-5 total points in this, if that. If See Secrets and Search rolls with a couple points in the skill don't do it, too bad, that's what we've got. Seek Earth is standard.
Exploration? Cartography gets an investment, sometimes, but not always. Otherwise, exploration is treated purely as a player-facing exercise.
Other ways of interacting with the world are all tertiary to this. If a spell doesn't kill, heal, or help you move in combat . . . it's basically considered a wasted point in a prereq.
I think because the game system gives you so many ways to deal with combat, it's also the way you most want to deal with the environment. Negotiation won't always work but combat always results in combat, so again, combat power gets emphasized.
I am not sure where I am going with this, just thinking that, even if the rewards system heavily prioritizes the results of an expedition over the how, a completely non-rewarded and costly method can dominate how you get there. Phase 1: Maximize combat power. Phase 3: Profit! It's not clear how you could go about changing the desire for combat (and the explantions, both totally correct and heavily rationalized, that drive it.) Putting XP on it sure didn't help D&D become about loot and exploration, and taking XP away for it would likely be counterproductive and unfair, at best. So how to make sure the game spends more time on exploration to find loot instead of combat to find loot?
I still don't know the answer to that.
"Felltower is all about safety." - Ulf
Well, that, and loot, exploration, and combat, in that order. The XP system rewards loot heavily, exploration second, and combat not at all. Combat is inherently set up in the game as an obstacle to gaining loot and exploration.
PC builds, though, are about combat, almost purely. Some of that is inherent in the game - Sean Punch made these templates combat machines for the most part. In a game where combat can end your paper man, players are incentivized to put their points into combat. That can leave a party a little less able to deal with anything that isn't combat.
Evaluating loot? Can't do that without surviving combat, so that's often set aside.
Finding hidden loot? 1-5 total points in this, if that. If See Secrets and Search rolls with a couple points in the skill don't do it, too bad, that's what we've got. Seek Earth is standard.
Exploration? Cartography gets an investment, sometimes, but not always. Otherwise, exploration is treated purely as a player-facing exercise.
Other ways of interacting with the world are all tertiary to this. If a spell doesn't kill, heal, or help you move in combat . . . it's basically considered a wasted point in a prereq.
I think because the game system gives you so many ways to deal with combat, it's also the way you most want to deal with the environment. Negotiation won't always work but combat always results in combat, so again, combat power gets emphasized.
I am not sure where I am going with this, just thinking that, even if the rewards system heavily prioritizes the results of an expedition over the how, a completely non-rewarded and costly method can dominate how you get there. Phase 1: Maximize combat power. Phase 3: Profit! It's not clear how you could go about changing the desire for combat (and the explantions, both totally correct and heavily rationalized, that drive it.) Putting XP on it sure didn't help D&D become about loot and exploration, and taking XP away for it would likely be counterproductive and unfair, at best. So how to make sure the game spends more time on exploration to find loot instead of combat to find loot?
I still don't know the answer to that.
Sunday, April 6, 2025
The Telephone Game & Felltower
Last game session, we got to enjoy the telephone game - I mentioned this Friday, but it's worth repeating here.
"The telephone game is alive and well. One of my players suggested getting some arrows of dragon slaying, because Puissance +3 is cheap on arrows and any weapon with Puissance +3 is Slaying. So, almost none of that is actually true. But half-remembered rules and events get passed along and become, to paraphrase Phillip J. Fry, widely-believed facts.
You have to wonder how many things in Felltower are regarded differently than they actually are thanks to similar half-remembered details passed along, morphed, and then re-remembered. I'm half curious but mostly I deliberately tune out the player discussions to avoid giving away what I actually think."
It got me thinking about Felltower and the "played out" nature of it. It's been voiced repeatedly by my players, old and new, that Felltower really has no more easy areas and only near-certain death areas. You need to be X points to survive what's ahead, no one is X points, and getting those points requires new exploration or loot and that's all played out in the survivable areas. How true is that?
There are a good number of "unsolvable" encounters, auto-death locations, places that need special abilities to usefully interact with, and so on. But are they always what they seem?
There are a few places that newer players - and some vets alike - would like to go and deal with. But they're shot down when suggested because they are rejected by a sufficient number of players (a plurality, in general, of nos vs. a minority each of yesses and agnostic.) I think some of them are a variation of the telephone game. You get player memories of events their previous PC enountered, accounts written down by me after the game session, and what people remember being told second hand. It creates a stew of uncertainty.* My players are, to a degree, willing to risk their PCs in a fight, but only if they know it is winnable and has a reward. But what gets defined as "winnable" is colored heavily by the telephone game.
More than once I've heard people bring up an idea, and have it shot down for reasons I know are, at best, oversold. This can be a big downside to a megadungeon or any other repeat-play area. Because you can find out things now to make tasks easier later, there is a reluctance to take a jump into the unknown, and a strong reluctance to try where group memory says something is hard.
I am not really sure what a solution is for this problem. It remains one of the big issues of Felltower right now - people have combed over the "easy" stuff again and again and again, and take a shot at the risky stuff only when there is no choice. Or not even then. Sometimes they're right to do so . . . but other times, it's just a case of misinformation becoming common sense. How to resolve this? I don't actually know.
* I need to stat up Stew of Uncertainty at some point. Maybe next April 1st.
"The telephone game is alive and well. One of my players suggested getting some arrows of dragon slaying, because Puissance +3 is cheap on arrows and any weapon with Puissance +3 is Slaying. So, almost none of that is actually true. But half-remembered rules and events get passed along and become, to paraphrase Phillip J. Fry, widely-believed facts.
You have to wonder how many things in Felltower are regarded differently than they actually are thanks to similar half-remembered details passed along, morphed, and then re-remembered. I'm half curious but mostly I deliberately tune out the player discussions to avoid giving away what I actually think."
It got me thinking about Felltower and the "played out" nature of it. It's been voiced repeatedly by my players, old and new, that Felltower really has no more easy areas and only near-certain death areas. You need to be X points to survive what's ahead, no one is X points, and getting those points requires new exploration or loot and that's all played out in the survivable areas. How true is that?
There are a good number of "unsolvable" encounters, auto-death locations, places that need special abilities to usefully interact with, and so on. But are they always what they seem?
There are a few places that newer players - and some vets alike - would like to go and deal with. But they're shot down when suggested because they are rejected by a sufficient number of players (a plurality, in general, of nos vs. a minority each of yesses and agnostic.) I think some of them are a variation of the telephone game. You get player memories of events their previous PC enountered, accounts written down by me after the game session, and what people remember being told second hand. It creates a stew of uncertainty.* My players are, to a degree, willing to risk their PCs in a fight, but only if they know it is winnable and has a reward. But what gets defined as "winnable" is colored heavily by the telephone game.
More than once I've heard people bring up an idea, and have it shot down for reasons I know are, at best, oversold. This can be a big downside to a megadungeon or any other repeat-play area. Because you can find out things now to make tasks easier later, there is a reluctance to take a jump into the unknown, and a strong reluctance to try where group memory says something is hard.
I am not really sure what a solution is for this problem. It remains one of the big issues of Felltower right now - people have combed over the "easy" stuff again and again and again, and take a shot at the risky stuff only when there is no choice. Or not even then. Sometimes they're right to do so . . . but other times, it's just a case of misinformation becoming common sense. How to resolve this? I don't actually know.
* I need to stat up Stew of Uncertainty at some point. Maybe next April 1st.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Do DF Felltower foes play by the rules?
This is expanding on Rules & Rulings for Session 203.
Do DF Felltower foes play by the rules?
Yes.
Why not cheat?
I'm the GM. I define the parameters of the world.
I literally have unlimited bad guys.
I have unlimited points in my budget.
I have unlimited access to equipment in the game world.
I can impose any limitations I want on the PCs up to what the players will tolerate and still come back to the next game session.
So why would I need to cheat?
All Felltower NPCs aren't built with a point budget. Basically, only PCs are hirelings are, although occasionally I'll build an NPC and see what the total is. That's really just so I don't have an idea of a Worthy rough peer to the PCs only to hand out so much extra stuff that they're now a near-Boss. I do it sometimes as an exercise to see if what I'm doing matches what I thought it would cost up as. But I almost never set a budget and build unless it's a bunch of mooks, and then only once for a repeat-use type foe that is meant to hit a very specific power niche.
Why do I play by the rules?
I find I benefit a lot from playing things as straight as I can.
The players can judge their abilities and limitations based on what they know of the rules, and what they observe. They benefit from in-game knowledge and knowledge about the game. If I, in a word, cheat, the players can depend on what's on their sheet for their own characters and nothing else at all. Even there, there will be doubt. Will my spell work? Who knows. If the enemy displays an ability that I also have, does it work like mine? Will my resistances work? I've played in a game like that. The GM was a hoot to play with, but honestly, it was hard to do anything but concentrate on story because your paper man sure as hell wasn't playing on a level playing field.
It means I can largely rely on my players to help the game run smoothly* without needing a second set of rules for the foes. I can let them Charm foes and order them around and have their powers work as expected. I can look the answers up in the rules instead of just making stuff up as I go. And there can be a consistent set of rules instead of a hodge-podge of exceptions and individual rules for each and every power and bad guy. Petrifaction works the same way for everyone. Paralysis works the same way. Death checks work the same. The works.
None of this means I'm constrained from what I can do, but I am constrained in how I do it. Constraints lead to creativity, in my opinion. I'm able to make exceptions that make sense, and have unique powers and unique foes that do things that - by the book - might not work. But I don't let them casually violate the rules and basic operations of the system in a way that doesn't let the players figure out what they're up against.
In the end, that makes the game run more smoothly for me, more enjoyably for the players, and more understandable for people reading along at home. And I find it easy enough.
* Except for Vic. No helping, Vic!
Do DF Felltower foes play by the rules?
Yes.
Why not cheat?
I'm the GM. I define the parameters of the world.
I literally have unlimited bad guys.
I have unlimited points in my budget.
I have unlimited access to equipment in the game world.
I can impose any limitations I want on the PCs up to what the players will tolerate and still come back to the next game session.
So why would I need to cheat?
All Felltower NPCs aren't built with a point budget. Basically, only PCs are hirelings are, although occasionally I'll build an NPC and see what the total is. That's really just so I don't have an idea of a Worthy rough peer to the PCs only to hand out so much extra stuff that they're now a near-Boss. I do it sometimes as an exercise to see if what I'm doing matches what I thought it would cost up as. But I almost never set a budget and build unless it's a bunch of mooks, and then only once for a repeat-use type foe that is meant to hit a very specific power niche.
Why do I play by the rules?
I find I benefit a lot from playing things as straight as I can.
The players can judge their abilities and limitations based on what they know of the rules, and what they observe. They benefit from in-game knowledge and knowledge about the game. If I, in a word, cheat, the players can depend on what's on their sheet for their own characters and nothing else at all. Even there, there will be doubt. Will my spell work? Who knows. If the enemy displays an ability that I also have, does it work like mine? Will my resistances work? I've played in a game like that. The GM was a hoot to play with, but honestly, it was hard to do anything but concentrate on story because your paper man sure as hell wasn't playing on a level playing field.
It means I can largely rely on my players to help the game run smoothly* without needing a second set of rules for the foes. I can let them Charm foes and order them around and have their powers work as expected. I can look the answers up in the rules instead of just making stuff up as I go. And there can be a consistent set of rules instead of a hodge-podge of exceptions and individual rules for each and every power and bad guy. Petrifaction works the same way for everyone. Paralysis works the same way. Death checks work the same. The works.
None of this means I'm constrained from what I can do, but I am constrained in how I do it. Constraints lead to creativity, in my opinion. I'm able to make exceptions that make sense, and have unique powers and unique foes that do things that - by the book - might not work. But I don't let them casually violate the rules and basic operations of the system in a way that doesn't let the players figure out what they're up against.
In the end, that makes the game run more smoothly for me, more enjoyably for the players, and more understandable for people reading along at home. And I find it easy enough.
* Except for Vic. No helping, Vic!
Sunday, September 29, 2024
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:
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.
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.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
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.
"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.
Monday, August 26, 2024
Why so stingy for selling monster bits?
Last session, my players had their characters drag home a dead young chimera/stone bull hybrid to try to sell it in town as a curio. It did not sell, and they were forced to dump it.
In generally, monster bits are a tertiary form of loot in DF, behind actual found money and cashing in empties - selling weapons and armor.
Why is that?
First off, it's in the books that way.
The DF books highlight the valuable monster bits that can be sold. There are not a lot of them, and they rarely sell for much. A few monsters have very valuable bits - dragons, for example - but most have nothing especially valuable and a few have some moderate value.
So suddenly turning every monster into a pile of bits requires either a generic ruling about value, or assigning specific values to each and every monster. Then, logically, I'd have to apply a percentage off of that based on type and amount of damage. If you reduced the Baby Mira to -8xHP (for example), with -5xHP being auto-death and -10xHP being total destruction, that's going to reduce the value. But what about it dying right away at -1xHP due to a failed HT roll, but, say, you killed it with fire? I could just wave that away, sure, or apply broad-strokes rulings, but again, I'd need to generate a value system for monster corpses.
The next bit is that it would change the game. It would go from "Finding the monsters and kill them, and hopefully find loot!" to "Harvest the latest crop of monsters." The goal goes from exploring a huge dungeon at great risk for wealth and to fight evil, to find any monster and kill it in the most corpse-preserving fashion possible and probably leave enough to repop for next time because they're valuable. I know the arguments about how people used all the bits of whatever animal, and animal tails and furs are useful commodities, and so on . . . but this doesn't sound fun.
Additionally, it would result in a lot of mechanical logistical annoyance. Kill the monster, have a specific weight for it, figure out how to carry it out, and repeat. On top of that, people who wanted to maximize the value might just take the valuable bits - surely the meat of an owlbear is not as valuable as its pelt, and does anyone really want the beak? If not, now we're looking at a system for that, too - how much does the skin weigh, how much time to get it off, which bits are worth which amount, etc.
I talk not from some abstract theory of what would happen, but what has happened repeately in my games even in the face of failure. Even knowing - being flat-out told - it's unlikely anyone would want anything that isn't already highlighted in the books as especially valuable, players tend to try to eke out just a bit more loot with dragged home monster bits not known to be valuable.
So, in my experience, allowing monster bits to be sold as a matter of course would add headache to my end as the GM, and change the nature of the game from "Get rich and fight evil!" to "Farm monsters." And I don't want to play the latter, so I skew the rules to the former even if that annoys players who know real-world people buy bits of dead animals all the time.
So for now, and for all time, 95 to 99 times out of 100, dragging whole monsters home isn't going to pan out. The 1-5%? Live ones, intact, and the special bits called out. If the rules - mine or published - don't say it's valauble, it's not, and no Merchant rolls, Charisma levels, or whatever will change that. Leave the dead lie and keep looking for gold.
In generally, monster bits are a tertiary form of loot in DF, behind actual found money and cashing in empties - selling weapons and armor.
Why is that?
First off, it's in the books that way.
The DF books highlight the valuable monster bits that can be sold. There are not a lot of them, and they rarely sell for much. A few monsters have very valuable bits - dragons, for example - but most have nothing especially valuable and a few have some moderate value.
So suddenly turning every monster into a pile of bits requires either a generic ruling about value, or assigning specific values to each and every monster. Then, logically, I'd have to apply a percentage off of that based on type and amount of damage. If you reduced the Baby Mira to -8xHP (for example), with -5xHP being auto-death and -10xHP being total destruction, that's going to reduce the value. But what about it dying right away at -1xHP due to a failed HT roll, but, say, you killed it with fire? I could just wave that away, sure, or apply broad-strokes rulings, but again, I'd need to generate a value system for monster corpses.
The next bit is that it would change the game. It would go from "Finding the monsters and kill them, and hopefully find loot!" to "Harvest the latest crop of monsters." The goal goes from exploring a huge dungeon at great risk for wealth and to fight evil, to find any monster and kill it in the most corpse-preserving fashion possible and probably leave enough to repop for next time because they're valuable. I know the arguments about how people used all the bits of whatever animal, and animal tails and furs are useful commodities, and so on . . . but this doesn't sound fun.
Additionally, it would result in a lot of mechanical logistical annoyance. Kill the monster, have a specific weight for it, figure out how to carry it out, and repeat. On top of that, people who wanted to maximize the value might just take the valuable bits - surely the meat of an owlbear is not as valuable as its pelt, and does anyone really want the beak? If not, now we're looking at a system for that, too - how much does the skin weigh, how much time to get it off, which bits are worth which amount, etc.
I talk not from some abstract theory of what would happen, but what has happened repeately in my games even in the face of failure. Even knowing - being flat-out told - it's unlikely anyone would want anything that isn't already highlighted in the books as especially valuable, players tend to try to eke out just a bit more loot with dragged home monster bits not known to be valuable.
So, in my experience, allowing monster bits to be sold as a matter of course would add headache to my end as the GM, and change the nature of the game from "Get rich and fight evil!" to "Farm monsters." And I don't want to play the latter, so I skew the rules to the former even if that annoys players who know real-world people buy bits of dead animals all the time.
So for now, and for all time, 95 to 99 times out of 100, dragging whole monsters home isn't going to pan out. The 1-5%? Live ones, intact, and the special bits called out. If the rules - mine or published - don't say it's valauble, it's not, and no Merchant rolls, Charisma levels, or whatever will change that. Leave the dead lie and keep looking for gold.
Monday, April 22, 2024
DF Felltower: What if all critical hits did max damage?
In Felltower, we use a little rule buried in the back of Basic Set: Characters (p. B326) that makes critical hits just bypass defenses, no table roll, and a "3" is max damage.
One way I thought of speeding combat - thanks to additional lethality - is to make all critical hits maximum damage. Roll a 3-4, or a 5 or a 6 with sufficient skill (or a 7 for some templates) and bang, max damage and bypass defenses.
This would add a lot of lethality to combat when the big boys roll a 3-6. Less so when others do . . . but make wizards really happy when they nail a crit on an Explosive spell thrown at an actual person.*
It wouldn't help fodder much, but at least sometimes they'd manage to hurt someone.
It would make boss monsters really, really scary. You can't get critically hit and luck out with a low damage roll against you. A giant doing 6d+12 or something would just flat out do 48 damage and that's that.
I don't think my players would go for this but part of me wants to try it. I think it would increase the bloodbath of combats and certainly erase a few foes here and there much more quickly.
* I joke. They all take the +4 for targeting the floor that I find totally bogus, but accept as a rule.
One way I thought of speeding combat - thanks to additional lethality - is to make all critical hits maximum damage. Roll a 3-4, or a 5 or a 6 with sufficient skill (or a 7 for some templates) and bang, max damage and bypass defenses.
This would add a lot of lethality to combat when the big boys roll a 3-6. Less so when others do . . . but make wizards really happy when they nail a crit on an Explosive spell thrown at an actual person.*
It wouldn't help fodder much, but at least sometimes they'd manage to hurt someone.
It would make boss monsters really, really scary. You can't get critically hit and luck out with a low damage roll against you. A giant doing 6d+12 or something would just flat out do 48 damage and that's that.
I don't think my players would go for this but part of me wants to try it. I think it would increase the bloodbath of combats and certainly erase a few foes here and there much more quickly.
* I joke. They all take the +4 for targeting the floor that I find totally bogus, but accept as a rule.
Monday, April 1, 2024
New Felltower Magic Items
Here are a couple of new magic items for Felltower!
Al-Jaffee's Book of Quips and Comebacks
This convenient pocket-sized book is made with a soft cover, and weighs only 0.5 lbs. Using it requires holding it open with one hand (a Ready maneuver.) Using the Book allows for multiple uses of Rapier Wit on the same foe as long as the user succeeds. If the victim successfully resists, they are no longer vulnerable to Rapier Wit for 24 hours.
Attempts to use Rapier Wit against the holder of this book are risky, too. When held ready, if an opponent tries Rapier Wit on the holder, roll a quick contest of Will - and the loser suffers stunning normally.
Price: $1000
Dwarven Hammer, Loyal Thrower
Power Item: 4 FP
The Dwarven Hammer, Loyal Thrower can be thrown with these stats: Acc 1, ST x 2 / x3, sw+3/crushing. One second after impact, it summons the bearer to wherever the hammer hits, pulling the thrower along at Move 12 as if under Flight spell. The bearer travels by the most direct route possible for the hammer to pass; be careful throwing it through narrow gaps! If the thrower's path intersects a barrier, foe, or ally, treat like a slam at the thrower's ST and Move 12 (so, +5 per die.) The bearer will keep being pulled to the hammer until they meet. When the bearer arrives at the hammer, the thrower immediately falls down and takes damage as if from a fall from the height the hammer hit or 2 yards, whichever is higher.
This can be used to travel. Simply throw it to whereever you'd like to go and brace yourself for impact! The pull of the hammer is equal to the ST of the thrower, if that becomes relevant.
In melee the hammer is sw+3/crushing, Parry 0, Reach 1.
Price: $25000, 5 lbs.
Al-Jaffee's Book of Quips and Comebacks
This convenient pocket-sized book is made with a soft cover, and weighs only 0.5 lbs. Using it requires holding it open with one hand (a Ready maneuver.) Using the Book allows for multiple uses of Rapier Wit on the same foe as long as the user succeeds. If the victim successfully resists, they are no longer vulnerable to Rapier Wit for 24 hours.
Attempts to use Rapier Wit against the holder of this book are risky, too. When held ready, if an opponent tries Rapier Wit on the holder, roll a quick contest of Will - and the loser suffers stunning normally.
Price: $1000
Dwarven Hammer, Loyal Thrower
Power Item: 4 FP
The Dwarven Hammer, Loyal Thrower can be thrown with these stats: Acc 1, ST x 2 / x3, sw+3/crushing. One second after impact, it summons the bearer to wherever the hammer hits, pulling the thrower along at Move 12 as if under Flight spell. The bearer travels by the most direct route possible for the hammer to pass; be careful throwing it through narrow gaps! If the thrower's path intersects a barrier, foe, or ally, treat like a slam at the thrower's ST and Move 12 (so, +5 per die.) The bearer will keep being pulled to the hammer until they meet. When the bearer arrives at the hammer, the thrower immediately falls down and takes damage as if from a fall from the height the hammer hit or 2 yards, whichever is higher.
This can be used to travel. Simply throw it to whereever you'd like to go and brace yourself for impact! The pull of the hammer is equal to the ST of the thrower, if that becomes relevant.
In melee the hammer is sw+3/crushing, Parry 0, Reach 1.
Price: $25000, 5 lbs.
Monday, March 11, 2024
Felltower: Fun Should Drive the Game
I mentioned yesterday that Felltower is just a dumb game designed to give the players a chance to have fun.
But the XP system doesn't reward meta-fun, but in-game loot. Treasure, followed by exploration (which largely is intended to lead to treasure) drive XP. XP drives PC improvement. But PC improvement is not intended to drive the game.
PC improvement is just there to provide an in-game reward for in-game actions. It's meant to drive what decisions people generally make in game. The players know they need loot to gain XP, so they tend to aim for loot. But if we have a session where people laughed, and chatted about stupid non-game things during break, and made silly jokes and had fun comments . . . I'm sure I don't care if their was a lot of looting and experience.
The actual doing of the thing is the fun part. The rules just drive what thing we generally do. I don't care if success or failure in the game occurs so long as we enjoy ourselves. Generally it's more fun to succeed, but not always. And we've had sessions where PCs got lots of loot but it wasn't an especially fun session. Still good, but not, "THIS is why I game!" fun.
It's all subjective, which is fine with me. I only want objective measures for in-game objective rewards. But they're not why I game.
But the XP system doesn't reward meta-fun, but in-game loot. Treasure, followed by exploration (which largely is intended to lead to treasure) drive XP. XP drives PC improvement. But PC improvement is not intended to drive the game.
PC improvement is just there to provide an in-game reward for in-game actions. It's meant to drive what decisions people generally make in game. The players know they need loot to gain XP, so they tend to aim for loot. But if we have a session where people laughed, and chatted about stupid non-game things during break, and made silly jokes and had fun comments . . . I'm sure I don't care if their was a lot of looting and experience.
The actual doing of the thing is the fun part. The rules just drive what thing we generally do. I don't care if success or failure in the game occurs so long as we enjoy ourselves. Generally it's more fun to succeed, but not always. And we've had sessions where PCs got lots of loot but it wasn't an especially fun session. Still good, but not, "THIS is why I game!" fun.
It's all subjective, which is fine with me. I only want objective measures for in-game objective rewards. But they're not why I game.
Monday, February 12, 2024
Pathfinder: Kingmaker video game silliness
I spent a little time yesterday and today goofing off with Pathfinder: Kingmaker, with my LG Paladin (Holgar Carlson, of course.)
It's a fun game, but it has a few really amusing things that come along with being a video game.
- One NPC gives you a quest to help track down some poachers. You see, he needs evidence that someone is poaching . . . and proof to give to the guards. So you know, I, the BARON, go find the proof for him to give to the guards. Okay, I'm Lawful Good, so it vaguely makes sense . . . although I'm empowered as Baron to pass judgment without "the guards" helping. It was even funnier when Molly, my LE Monk, was my PC. Why would a Lawful Evil Baron not just exercise her right to believe this guy and execute the criminal if I wanted to?
- We stumbled across a few bandits while travelling. I wanted to try using a Fireball scroll with a character who needed a skill check to use it. We stood in plain sight of them, a short distance away, as she read the scroll over and over until finally it worked. We somehow achieved surprise and got a surprise round on them.
No, I'm not kidding.
- there are all sorts of cool magic items with cool powers. I have to look them up in an online guide, because in-game I can't find out what they do. So I Alt-Tab to my browser and look them up. It's just annoying. And it means you can't just stay fully immersed in the game.
- We fought a really nasty group of organized foes, and one of my characters got mauled. We needed to rest up before the final fight. So I left, rested, did a side quest, and then came back . . . and the organized foes ignored the fact that someone had massacred their gate guards and half their garrison and just waited for us to come back days later to finish them off.
They clearly hadn't read How to Defend Your Lair.
Still fun. But video games aren't TTRPGs.
It's a fun game, but it has a few really amusing things that come along with being a video game.
- One NPC gives you a quest to help track down some poachers. You see, he needs evidence that someone is poaching . . . and proof to give to the guards. So you know, I, the BARON, go find the proof for him to give to the guards. Okay, I'm Lawful Good, so it vaguely makes sense . . . although I'm empowered as Baron to pass judgment without "the guards" helping. It was even funnier when Molly, my LE Monk, was my PC. Why would a Lawful Evil Baron not just exercise her right to believe this guy and execute the criminal if I wanted to?
- We stumbled across a few bandits while travelling. I wanted to try using a Fireball scroll with a character who needed a skill check to use it. We stood in plain sight of them, a short distance away, as she read the scroll over and over until finally it worked. We somehow achieved surprise and got a surprise round on them.
No, I'm not kidding.
- there are all sorts of cool magic items with cool powers. I have to look them up in an online guide, because in-game I can't find out what they do. So I Alt-Tab to my browser and look them up. It's just annoying. And it means you can't just stay fully immersed in the game.
- We fought a really nasty group of organized foes, and one of my characters got mauled. We needed to rest up before the final fight. So I left, rested, did a side quest, and then came back . . . and the organized foes ignored the fact that someone had massacred their gate guards and half their garrison and just waited for us to come back days later to finish them off.
They clearly hadn't read How to Defend Your Lair.
Still fun. But video games aren't TTRPGs.
Saturday, February 3, 2024
Saturday Long Read: Lich Van Winkle on Story
If you've got a chunk of time (like, ACOUP blog post chunk of time), this is a worthy read:
Yes, you ARE telling a story.
But you aren't composing a novel or reading a script. (Not during an RPG session, anyway.)
As someone who lived through a lot of this - with "hack and slash" becoming pejorative, then back to "story" becoming pejorative, and numerous ricochets between, I was interested. It's a long read but worth the time.
These days I play loosely plotted, hack-and-slash games, but I'm okay with it being a story. Most of the dumb and fun setting details we have - Cornwood, the Iron Church, Dwarven as a dead language, etc. - emerged in play but provide the details to the story of the sack of Felltower that helps make it interesting. I don't go for backstory beyond a sentence, maybe two, but front story? Sure, it's not great literature or a prize-winning novel, but it's a story nonetheless. And my "war stories" posts tend to get a lot of hits and comments. Go figure. People want to follow along with the story of my minimally-plotted game. So this resonated with me.
Yes, you ARE telling a story.
But you aren't composing a novel or reading a script. (Not during an RPG session, anyway.)
As someone who lived through a lot of this - with "hack and slash" becoming pejorative, then back to "story" becoming pejorative, and numerous ricochets between, I was interested. It's a long read but worth the time.
These days I play loosely plotted, hack-and-slash games, but I'm okay with it being a story. Most of the dumb and fun setting details we have - Cornwood, the Iron Church, Dwarven as a dead language, etc. - emerged in play but provide the details to the story of the sack of Felltower that helps make it interesting. I don't go for backstory beyond a sentence, maybe two, but front story? Sure, it's not great literature or a prize-winning novel, but it's a story nonetheless. And my "war stories" posts tend to get a lot of hits and comments. Go figure. People want to follow along with the story of my minimally-plotted game. So this resonated with me.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
More notes on Session 190 - and Felltower in General
More notes on Session 190.
- I'm not saying this very old rumor is true, but I'm not saying it's not true, either. I'm just saying that, it's been said that "If you kill a troll with fire, it’ll come back as a ghost troll. You need to kill them with acid."
- The PCs pretty much mauled, probably killed, a pudding thorugh a lot of melee damage and some fire damage. The tough bit with oozes, slimes, puddings, and jellies in my experience is that in D&D there are special ways to kill them . . . and in GURPS, most of those ways suck against oozes, slimes, puddings, and jellies. Also, they tend to have other resistances on top of that. I don't blame the players for trying, but Sean Punch didn't program in a lot of easy ways to deal with his monsters.
Ultimately, they're a mix of predators and scavengers, and Felltower has plenty of places for both.
- The PCs had to deal with several entrances that have suffered from prior play.
The bugbear caves? My notes say Dryst collapsed that.
The well? The PCs used it to raid the orcs and helped damage it, and the orcs took care to block it off from there.
The main entrance? A mix of PCs, hobgoblins, orcs, PCs, other monsters, and PCs have mauled, mangled, and damaged the entrance until it's like it is. They narrowly voted against breaking the locks on the remaining intact door to make it easier to get in. That might be true, or it might not. Time will tell.
The spiral stairs down? It was locked by no fault of the PCs, honestly, although careful reading of the rumors, the game logs, and checking the dungeon might explain what happened. I'll admit I know the answer and the clues are quite weak - they weren't meant to be such. Anyway, there is a clue in an earlier delve how this ended up all rusted up and destroyed.
The cave mouth? The PCs don't want to go for the chimera and stone bull without a couple specific additional characters.
The river entrance? Rarely spoken of, probably because it goes so deep into Felltower that no one is sure what "level" that is.
Tough go, getting into Felltower these days. I've said that I should have made it more accessible but the PCs closed half of the entrances through their own intentions of making it easier to get in. Ironic.
- Nothing like a pointless fight to discourage exploration. In a way, that's what Wandering Monsters are for. I'm sure some of my players see them as a Fun Tax. They're mostly intended as a Don't Mess Around and Don't Brute Force Through Doors and Walls Tax. And a dose of logical consequence. The game is on Hard Mode after all. Still . . . I get the frustration of fruitless encounters. But I'm not sure from my side of the screen how to deal with frustration causing the PCs to derail their plans. Fruitless fights cost game time, and naturally the goal should be to avoid them rather than engage in them. Not always possible - the trolls came after the PCs, not the other way around - but it can be. Even if I took wandering monsters out, well, the PCs literally walked into the pudding and crushroom "lairs." It's tough to make fights appropriately difficult but always enjoyable to engage in and yet not all just be loot pinatas that reward fighting everything and anything.
I tried just giving extra XP for deeper exploration but the PCs speed-ran all the levels they can easily access to get them all in one session. I don't think there is another good way to encourage exploration of deeper levels or genuinely new areas beyond just giving XP for doing so.
The start-and-end in town thing also eats up time . . . but we've played that way for years and still had significant exploration of levels deeper than 1-3, and some gate transits that forced extensions.
- More than once, I've been asked, "Are we really going to sit here and ______ or can we fast-forward it?" Usually this is, "and roll to bash this door down" or "calculate how long it takes to dig out this well/through this wall/down to another level/shift earth into the dungeon/shift earth out of the dungeon" or something like that.
The default answer is YES. Yes, 100%. Especially if it's time spent digging, building, shaping, bashing, or otherwise dealing with obstacles with brute force and FP powered by casters using Lend Energy to keep laborers going or laborers getting energy siphoned off to keep casters going. I'm not fast forwarding things meant to avoid exploring dungeons and fighting monsters. I will always, always, always volunteer to speed things up that need to be sped up, or which will have no interruptions or consequences for failure. I'll just do it. No need to ask - the answer will be no, we're not speeding it up.
- All in all, this seemed like a fun session to me, but then it ended with an unhappy group after blundering into the pudding.
- I'm not saying this very old rumor is true, but I'm not saying it's not true, either. I'm just saying that, it's been said that "If you kill a troll with fire, it’ll come back as a ghost troll. You need to kill them with acid."
- The PCs pretty much mauled, probably killed, a pudding thorugh a lot of melee damage and some fire damage. The tough bit with oozes, slimes, puddings, and jellies in my experience is that in D&D there are special ways to kill them . . . and in GURPS, most of those ways suck against oozes, slimes, puddings, and jellies. Also, they tend to have other resistances on top of that. I don't blame the players for trying, but Sean Punch didn't program in a lot of easy ways to deal with his monsters.
Ultimately, they're a mix of predators and scavengers, and Felltower has plenty of places for both.
- The PCs had to deal with several entrances that have suffered from prior play.
The bugbear caves? My notes say Dryst collapsed that.
The well? The PCs used it to raid the orcs and helped damage it, and the orcs took care to block it off from there.
The main entrance? A mix of PCs, hobgoblins, orcs, PCs, other monsters, and PCs have mauled, mangled, and damaged the entrance until it's like it is. They narrowly voted against breaking the locks on the remaining intact door to make it easier to get in. That might be true, or it might not. Time will tell.
The spiral stairs down? It was locked by no fault of the PCs, honestly, although careful reading of the rumors, the game logs, and checking the dungeon might explain what happened. I'll admit I know the answer and the clues are quite weak - they weren't meant to be such. Anyway, there is a clue in an earlier delve how this ended up all rusted up and destroyed.
The cave mouth? The PCs don't want to go for the chimera and stone bull without a couple specific additional characters.
The river entrance? Rarely spoken of, probably because it goes so deep into Felltower that no one is sure what "level" that is.
Tough go, getting into Felltower these days. I've said that I should have made it more accessible but the PCs closed half of the entrances through their own intentions of making it easier to get in. Ironic.
- Nothing like a pointless fight to discourage exploration. In a way, that's what Wandering Monsters are for. I'm sure some of my players see them as a Fun Tax. They're mostly intended as a Don't Mess Around and Don't Brute Force Through Doors and Walls Tax. And a dose of logical consequence. The game is on Hard Mode after all. Still . . . I get the frustration of fruitless encounters. But I'm not sure from my side of the screen how to deal with frustration causing the PCs to derail their plans. Fruitless fights cost game time, and naturally the goal should be to avoid them rather than engage in them. Not always possible - the trolls came after the PCs, not the other way around - but it can be. Even if I took wandering monsters out, well, the PCs literally walked into the pudding and crushroom "lairs." It's tough to make fights appropriately difficult but always enjoyable to engage in and yet not all just be loot pinatas that reward fighting everything and anything.
I tried just giving extra XP for deeper exploration but the PCs speed-ran all the levels they can easily access to get them all in one session. I don't think there is another good way to encourage exploration of deeper levels or genuinely new areas beyond just giving XP for doing so.
The start-and-end in town thing also eats up time . . . but we've played that way for years and still had significant exploration of levels deeper than 1-3, and some gate transits that forced extensions.
- More than once, I've been asked, "Are we really going to sit here and ______ or can we fast-forward it?" Usually this is, "and roll to bash this door down" or "calculate how long it takes to dig out this well/through this wall/down to another level/shift earth into the dungeon/shift earth out of the dungeon" or something like that.
The default answer is YES. Yes, 100%. Especially if it's time spent digging, building, shaping, bashing, or otherwise dealing with obstacles with brute force and FP powered by casters using Lend Energy to keep laborers going or laborers getting energy siphoned off to keep casters going. I'm not fast forwarding things meant to avoid exploring dungeons and fighting monsters. I will always, always, always volunteer to speed things up that need to be sped up, or which will have no interruptions or consequences for failure. I'll just do it. No need to ask - the answer will be no, we're not speeding it up.
- All in all, this seemed like a fun session to me, but then it ended with an unhappy group after blundering into the pudding.
Monday, January 8, 2024
Margin of Success vs. Fixed Effects
The more I play DF Felltower, the more I have found myself leaning towards fixed effects instead of Margin of Success effects.
I find fixed effects compelling for a number of reasons:
- it's usually faster. You have a certain effect if you win a contest or succeed in attaching some effect to a foe. You only need to know, binarily, success or failure. You don't need to know by how much; who won is usually obvious and margin isn't terribly important.
- it's consistent. For the most part, GURPS inflicts specific effects. Damage may be random, but penalties for conditions (Stunning, Euphoria, Pain, etc.) are fixed.
- it's easier. You need only know a specific effect, and track if that effect is on or off.
I've largely gone to fixed effects whereever I can. Damage isn't fixed, of course, and I don't like it to be. We've moved to a CP-based system* instead of a fixed Grappled condition, but that's still based on the idea that margin isn't important.
We're still using MoS on Feints, against my preference, but hopefully I can get that gone at some point. Lightning spells inflict a stunning penalty with a minus to recover based on MoS, but I'm considering making that fixed, too. I just find a specific effect, or random damage, or a random table result, preferable to MoS.
Does anyone really love MoS and have an argument in favor of keeping it I should here before I change more in the system?
* which I gather isn't as good as Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, but too bad, I like Dungeon Fantastic Grappling better.
I find fixed effects compelling for a number of reasons:
- it's usually faster. You have a certain effect if you win a contest or succeed in attaching some effect to a foe. You only need to know, binarily, success or failure. You don't need to know by how much; who won is usually obvious and margin isn't terribly important.
- it's consistent. For the most part, GURPS inflicts specific effects. Damage may be random, but penalties for conditions (Stunning, Euphoria, Pain, etc.) are fixed.
- it's easier. You need only know a specific effect, and track if that effect is on or off.
I've largely gone to fixed effects whereever I can. Damage isn't fixed, of course, and I don't like it to be. We've moved to a CP-based system* instead of a fixed Grappled condition, but that's still based on the idea that margin isn't important.
We're still using MoS on Feints, against my preference, but hopefully I can get that gone at some point. Lightning spells inflict a stunning penalty with a minus to recover based on MoS, but I'm considering making that fixed, too. I just find a specific effect, or random damage, or a random table result, preferable to MoS.
Does anyone really love MoS and have an argument in favor of keeping it I should here before I change more in the system?
* which I gather isn't as good as Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, but too bad, I like Dungeon Fantastic Grappling better.
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
1d6 Variant Crushrooms
In the last Felltower session, the PCs wounded a Crushroom . . . and it began shrieking!
In Felltower, I like to mix the great old-school misery of shriekers - giant wailing mushrooms - with the new-school misery of ambulatory aggressive carnivorous mushrooms.
If you like old-fashioned killer fungi, you can add all sorts of "fun" features to Crushrooms. Some ideas? Roll 1d.
1) Shrieking. Monsters with this prefix emit a loud shrieking, whistling, hooting, or wailing sound (pick one!) when disturbed. What counts as "disturbed" varies by monster type but being hit definitely counts. Remove Mute, if present. Add Penetrating Voice. Some also have Compulsive Behavior (Shrieking) (9) and just make lots of noise.
2) Corrupting. Crushrooms that bite a limb or extremity can rot it immediately. The victim must make a HT roll or be affected as the spell Wither Limb, including the 1d toxic damage. Crushrooms will spend the next turn tearing the withered limb off and devouring it, giving the victim a chance to escape with the rest of their limbs or extremities intact. This effect is mundane, not magical - ignore Magic Resistance or mana levels!
3) Jumping. Jumping Crushrooms can leap yards equal to their Move. They love to jump on to foes; treat this as a Pounce.
4) Puffball. When injured, the crushroom blows off a bloom of spores in a 2 yard area. Treat as the spell Pollen Cloud, but the effect is non-magical. Lasts 1 second per point of injury inflicted.
5) Hallucinogenic. Anyone touching or touched by a crushroom - being bitten by one counts! - must roll HT or suffer the Hallucinating condition. Every subsequent touch gives a -1 to this roll . . . and who is to say this isn't addictive?
6) Speedy. Nothing says cheating like making a slow monster fast. Doubles the Speed of the Crushroom (and thus Move) to 8.
Of course, you can always make them intelligent, potion-making types, but that's been done elsewhere.
In Felltower, I like to mix the great old-school misery of shriekers - giant wailing mushrooms - with the new-school misery of ambulatory aggressive carnivorous mushrooms.
If you like old-fashioned killer fungi, you can add all sorts of "fun" features to Crushrooms. Some ideas? Roll 1d.
1) Shrieking. Monsters with this prefix emit a loud shrieking, whistling, hooting, or wailing sound (pick one!) when disturbed. What counts as "disturbed" varies by monster type but being hit definitely counts. Remove Mute, if present. Add Penetrating Voice. Some also have Compulsive Behavior (Shrieking) (9) and just make lots of noise.
2) Corrupting. Crushrooms that bite a limb or extremity can rot it immediately. The victim must make a HT roll or be affected as the spell Wither Limb, including the 1d toxic damage. Crushrooms will spend the next turn tearing the withered limb off and devouring it, giving the victim a chance to escape with the rest of their limbs or extremities intact. This effect is mundane, not magical - ignore Magic Resistance or mana levels!
3) Jumping. Jumping Crushrooms can leap yards equal to their Move. They love to jump on to foes; treat this as a Pounce.
4) Puffball. When injured, the crushroom blows off a bloom of spores in a 2 yard area. Treat as the spell Pollen Cloud, but the effect is non-magical. Lasts 1 second per point of injury inflicted.
5) Hallucinogenic. Anyone touching or touched by a crushroom - being bitten by one counts! - must roll HT or suffer the Hallucinating condition. Every subsequent touch gives a -1 to this roll . . . and who is to say this isn't addictive?
6) Speedy. Nothing says cheating like making a slow monster fast. Doubles the Speed of the Crushroom (and thus Move) to 8.
Of course, you can always make them intelligent, potion-making types, but that's been done elsewhere.
Sunday, December 10, 2023
A Felltower shot clock?
In discussion of my post yesterday, Doug showed us these plug-ins for our VTT-based Felltower game:
https://github.com/MenesesPT/TimerVTT
https://foundryvtt.com/packages/combatready
Literal shot clocks, here - timers for your turn before it skips you.
I think we've all agreed that this wouldn't be fun, especially if the clock didn't allow for extension or pausing as you deal with interface issues and adding modifiers to the roll modifier bucket.
Maybe even then it wouldn't be too fun.
I actually think my players generally make pretty quick decisions, but the mechanics of the game slow things a bit. And yes, all too often (as in >0 times) people change their mind after the roll is calculated. I'd prefer people just commit and take the roll that comes.
I don't want to force everyone to just move along . . . I just it better when "**** it, I take the shot" beats out "Let me choose the maximally best option for this turn based on group consensus and math."
https://github.com/MenesesPT/TimerVTT
https://foundryvtt.com/packages/combatready
Literal shot clocks, here - timers for your turn before it skips you.
I think we've all agreed that this wouldn't be fun, especially if the clock didn't allow for extension or pausing as you deal with interface issues and adding modifiers to the roll modifier bucket.
Maybe even then it wouldn't be too fun.
I actually think my players generally make pretty quick decisions, but the mechanics of the game slow things a bit. And yes, all too often (as in >0 times) people change their mind after the roll is calculated. I'd prefer people just commit and take the roll that comes.
I don't want to force everyone to just move along . . . I just it better when "**** it, I take the shot" beats out "Let me choose the maximally best option for this turn based on group consensus and math."
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Never tell me the odds! Calculation Rule.
One thing that bugs me about games is this sequence:
- player proposes action
- player calculates the roll for the action
- player rejects option or changes it, often with help or suggestions from Statler and Waldorf*
- player find the mathematically best option and selects that OR starts over with a new action because "My guy wouldn't do that."
- roll occurs.
That's not very Han Solo, is it?
My preferred way to play is this:
- player proposes action, which may have included some between-turns calculation
- everyone else STFU and sits there
- player calculates the roll
- player rolls, regardless of the results
To be honest, this is how I play. I'd really like it if I could make this a rule. You could turn the caps off of Deceptive Attack and similiar things and let anything work, so you could potentially knock your skill down to below 10 or even below 3 (and thus no possible success) by choosing poorly.
I have tried to implement this but my players essentially resist through inertia and eventually revert to the top-listed approach.
Personally, I find it a bit less fun than the second option.
If only I could enforce this rule, I think game would be a bit more fun in the long run . . .
*
- player proposes action
- player calculates the roll for the action
- player rejects option or changes it, often with help or suggestions from Statler and Waldorf*
- player find the mathematically best option and selects that OR starts over with a new action because "My guy wouldn't do that."
- roll occurs.
That's not very Han Solo, is it?
My preferred way to play is this:
- player proposes action, which may have included some between-turns calculation
- everyone else STFU and sits there
- player calculates the roll
- player rolls, regardless of the results
To be honest, this is how I play. I'd really like it if I could make this a rule. You could turn the caps off of Deceptive Attack and similiar things and let anything work, so you could potentially knock your skill down to below 10 or even below 3 (and thus no possible success) by choosing poorly.
I have tried to implement this but my players essentially resist through inertia and eventually revert to the top-listed approach.
Personally, I find it a bit less fun than the second option.
If only I could enforce this rule, I think game would be a bit more fun in the long run . . .
*
Monday, December 4, 2023
When Orcus isn't enough, add friends?
This post over on Old School FRP Tumblr caught my eye:
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
They're actually the four horsemen of Orcus.
Just eyeballing them vs. AD&D 1st edition's Orcus . . . I'm pretty sure they're a very serious threat to him. He's got 85% magic resistance and excellent combat abilities . . . but a 23rd level magic-user and everyone with weapons that can hurt him, even the summoned minotaurs . . .
Good thing they're Chaotic Evil, like him, so cooperation isn't likely to go very far.
It's interesting when you beef up a powerful unique monster with a coterie of allies who are also seriously powerful. I think in a way it diminishes the main monster, though. Instead of Orcus being a boss fight you can just have, there is this other layer of guys you have to get through first. So now it's a bit of an extended encounter. It can be another excuse to push off a fight like that later and later in a campaign. Put it off long enough, and you won't ever get to the big demon. And if it goes from "very tough encounter" to "campaign culimation" than they can't have 85 HP and go down in a 10 round melee. You need them to have hundreds of HP, piles of allies, more powers than can be handled . . . and the PCs need to escalate to match.
I've been trying to front load the scary stuff and even then it's tough to get people to engage. So while I like the idea here, I worry that it's just another way for the PCs and the GM to back off from using the cool unique monster that is Orcus.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
They're actually the four horsemen of Orcus.
Just eyeballing them vs. AD&D 1st edition's Orcus . . . I'm pretty sure they're a very serious threat to him. He's got 85% magic resistance and excellent combat abilities . . . but a 23rd level magic-user and everyone with weapons that can hurt him, even the summoned minotaurs . . .
Good thing they're Chaotic Evil, like him, so cooperation isn't likely to go very far.
It's interesting when you beef up a powerful unique monster with a coterie of allies who are also seriously powerful. I think in a way it diminishes the main monster, though. Instead of Orcus being a boss fight you can just have, there is this other layer of guys you have to get through first. So now it's a bit of an extended encounter. It can be another excuse to push off a fight like that later and later in a campaign. Put it off long enough, and you won't ever get to the big demon. And if it goes from "very tough encounter" to "campaign culimation" than they can't have 85 HP and go down in a 10 round melee. You need them to have hundreds of HP, piles of allies, more powers than can be handled . . . and the PCs need to escalate to match.
I've been trying to front load the scary stuff and even then it's tough to get people to engage. So while I like the idea here, I worry that it's just another way for the PCs and the GM to back off from using the cool unique monster that is Orcus.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
More VTT notes
The /mook generator in Foundry is pretty nice. It's also completely maddening.
I struggle to define some of the odder attacks my monsters use. Often, simple english is easy, say, "Flame touch. Does 1d-3 burning damage to everything it touches or which touches it." Fine. But /mook wants to know the skill level, doesn't recognize the syntax, etc. So I end up basically fumble around for a while trying to word and re-word every attack until something works. Or I just pull everything that isn't a basic attack out of the attacks, stick them in notes, and hope I remember to check the notes in play.
I have a similar issue with pictures and tokens. Token Stamp 2 is fine, but I do need to find a picture for everything, edit it, stamp it, download it, upload it, ensure the token actually shows up, etc. It's a lot of programming work, essentially, and grunt work, to get a monster in.
Meanwhile I get my players sending me their paper men, updated, now with a new piece of equipment, now revised with a new token to reflect their new armor, etc. etc. Those are easier to put in, but still takes work.
If I have time after all of that, I can do some actually maps to play on. I can't do as many as I'd like, so I have to find some more time.
It's the technical stuff - instead of drag-and-drop monsters, even a slightly odd power and a lack of a good image to upload turns it to 15-20 minutes per monster.
Fun, fun, fun. Not the good kind of fun, though.
I struggle to define some of the odder attacks my monsters use. Often, simple english is easy, say, "Flame touch. Does 1d-3 burning damage to everything it touches or which touches it." Fine. But /mook wants to know the skill level, doesn't recognize the syntax, etc. So I end up basically fumble around for a while trying to word and re-word every attack until something works. Or I just pull everything that isn't a basic attack out of the attacks, stick them in notes, and hope I remember to check the notes in play.
I have a similar issue with pictures and tokens. Token Stamp 2 is fine, but I do need to find a picture for everything, edit it, stamp it, download it, upload it, ensure the token actually shows up, etc. It's a lot of programming work, essentially, and grunt work, to get a monster in.
Meanwhile I get my players sending me their paper men, updated, now with a new piece of equipment, now revised with a new token to reflect their new armor, etc. etc. Those are easier to put in, but still takes work.
If I have time after all of that, I can do some actually maps to play on. I can't do as many as I'd like, so I have to find some more time.
It's the technical stuff - instead of drag-and-drop monsters, even a slightly odd power and a lack of a good image to upload turns it to 15-20 minutes per monster.
Fun, fun, fun. Not the good kind of fun, though.
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