Year in Gaming 2021

Here we are at the end of 2021. How was it for gaming for me?


Running Dungeon Fantasy

We had only 18 sessions of DF this past year, from session 145 - session 162. That's down from 20 the previous year. We weren't as dilligent about getting sessions in, clearly.

Session 145, Felltower 111 - Yeth Hounds
Session 146, Felltower 112 - Yeth Hounds & Moonbeams
Session 147, Felltower 113 - Orichalcum and Moon Doors
Session 148, Felltower 114, Lost City 13 - Ampitheatre
Session 149, Felltower 115 - Staring at Doors
Session 150, Cold Fens 9
Session 151, Cold Fens 10
Session 152, Cold Fens 11 - Deadfalls & Defeat
Session 153, Cold Fens 12 - Scouting Sakatha's Island
Session 154, Cold Fens 13 - Hexcrawling the Cold Fens (Part I)
Session 155, Cold Fens 13 - Hexcrawling the Cold Fens (Part II)
Session 156, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part I)
Session 157, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part II)
Session 158, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part III)
Session 159, Cold Fens 14 - Sakatha's Lair Do-or-Die (Part IV)
Session 160, Felltower 116 - Level 7? (Part I)
Session 161, Felltower 116 - Level 7? (Part II)
Session 162, Felltower 117 - Level 6?

I think we had 10 different players this year. Playing virtually kept us consistent but oddly didn't help some of the occasionals stay in the game.

In game, it was largely the Cold Fens this year, with 10 delves there, plus 1 in the Lost City, and thus only 7 in Felltower. They made a few delves down deeper but, once again, avoided some of the big things they discovered along the way - the beholder, the draugr, the dragons, the gates. It was a year of Cold Fens delves and lots and lots of nibbling on the margins of things. That's part of why I bit the bullet and went with the firmer requirements for loot for XP. I had enough of nearly 400 point guys picking up XP for loot by cashing in a few dropped weapons and some scrap bits found here and there.

Roll20 hasn't been a lot of fun to deal with, though, so we're moving to Foundry VTT as soon as reasonably possible.

Playing Dungeon Fantasy

I was able to play in a one-shot with evil characters, GMed by Marshall, who runs Aldwyn (and Varmus) and previously ran Gwenneth the Dirt Mage.

DF Suicide Squad 1: Cave of the Dark Elves

I enjoyed getting to play, as much as I complained about how overpriced Terror was for what I'd gotten.

Playing Gamma Terra

Zero sessions of Gamma Terra this year. I'm officially putting this one in the "dormant" campaign category. Our GM still plays DF when he can, so it's possible we'll get back to this, but he's a bit too busy to GM right now. Too bad.

AD&D

We went the whole year without playing AD&D. I'm bummmed. We were ready to go but had to cancel last-minute, and then the next time it came along everyone wanted to play DF Felltower. I still intend to run more.

Other Games & Gaming

I played some video games:

- a bit more of Darkest Dungeon, but stalled when one guy I need was killed off and I can't seem to find a replacement to level up to where I need him. Tiresome. Enjoyable while I've got a good party going but it's annoying to finish a quest and the next week the coach still hasn't brought the one class I need. Feh.

- I finished X-Com: Apocalypse, despite not being able to finish all of the tech trees.

- I played a lot of Battletech, finishing the core missions and getting deep into the Flashpoints before stalling out due to a mission I'm not enjoying.

- I stalled out on Ultima V, but I'm not really far from victory if I'm right about my progress. I just need to get my notes out and get to work.

- I played a bit of other games but nothing really worth mentioning. Well, maybe Borderlands 2, which I'm still playing. I finished it with another guy.

I didn't get in any board games that I can recall. Maybe Fire in the Lake will arrive in 2022 and I'll be able to play that.

Painting

I got in some mini painting right under the wire this year, finishing a few figures and speed-painting a pair.

I'm still going to sell my Bones V collection, I just need to get up and list it on eBay.

Writing

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 22: Gates came out in 2021. I'm quite pleased with it.

The Crypt of Krysuvik came out, as well. It was a hard thing to write, as it was my first adventure, Marshall LaPira's first writing for hire in the gaming field, and our first collaboration with each other and for Doug. I've written with Doug before, but not for Doug. I'm done with adventure writing as of the moment, but Marshall has more on tap I believe.

I did a little more writing. Truth be told, I've slacked off because I want to write for royalties, not flat payments. The royalties, over time, make more sense for me. SJG isn't currently doing Royalties. I threw in for another SJG project, and we'll see where that goes.

Overall, not a bad year in gaming - but not a great one, either. I'd like to get in some additional games - running AD&D, playing GT or something else - and some additional "other" gaming - writing, painting, video games . . .

Foundry VTT GURPS Test

Spent a few hours with Vic today trying this out:

I ended up spending my holiday money on the Foundry VTT and a year's subscription to Forge hosting. It might be a rough go being ready for Foundry for Sunday's game, but it'll be the way to go for the games following.

So expect a lot of Foundry goofiness as I try to figure out how to play properly using it.

DF Felltower will run Sunday, either way . . . but not for long without Foundry I hope!

Game Prep Day

We're playing tomorrow.

I'm uploading maps to Roll20, since we're still stuck on that until the end of this Cold Fens kick my PCs are on. It's a completely non-enjoyable process. I expect to need a couple of them for tactical fights as I can't see a way to "theatre of the mind" some of the fights. Honestly, with a smaller group, back a few years ago, we played mapless for lots of fights. I know, though, that's ultimately unsatisfying for my players. They're willing to do mapless, as long as it's mapless tactical combat (with steps, Retreat, facing, flanking, etc. etc. etc.). It's a key benefit of GURPS, but it's not a strictly necessary one, but becomes so if everyone insists on ekeing out the benefits of it as a basis of all combat.

So, I'm here on a Saturday afternoon uploading maps.

I don't expect to use more than one, because tactical combat is also slow. There is almost no way I can believe the PCs will swiftly and easily penetrate into Sakatha's lair, pass the obstacles on the way, defeat at least one group of foes in a tactical fight, and then learn (and resolve) whatever is behind that. It's not going to happen. But I don't want to deal with Roll20 map-making any more than I have to, so I'll deal with it all today.

I believe I already have lizard men tokens, I just need to find them. I hope I can - they'll be buried on some map or another.

I just took a few minutes to write this out before I go back to uploading and being frustrated.

Planning a Roll20 Replacement

Roll20 has been very frustrating sometimes. Odd command issues, weird macro problems (mostly for the players who insist on using macros*), and so on.

Add on the stupidity of icons needs to have vision activated, the confusing mess of Dynamic Fog of War vs. Fog of War, layer issues . . . ugh.

Sunday was the last straw for me.

My players mentioned Swampsedge but then chose it last-minute. So I had to find my map, scan it, trim it, upload it, and then place Fog of War on it.

That took some time, but I did it.

But as we used it, we had issues.

It took a lot of fiddling before anyone could see anything except black.

I ended up having to delete the entire page and re-enter it and re-do it from scratch.

That worked.

Once I figured that out, I started to reveal map sections. So far, so good.

Except.

Except.

Except.

Except for the fact that as I revealed, only some of what I revealed actually displayed. Other things were concealed behind blackness. Not on my screen, but on the PC's screen. I could reveal all I wanted, but some sections stayed opaque. The players saw black, I saw nothing. When I turned Fog of War off, they could see everything.

I tried to fix things, and sort-of did, but then my "Reveal Area" commands revealed different areas, in different shapes, than I had highlighted.

I deleted that one and tried again.

Finally, I put up the map, put an icon on it, give it vision, gave it control to everyone . . . and then it worked. Sort-of. But we have other pages with no icon everyone can see. Why do I need a token to have Fog of War? I clearly don't, except I needed it to have it work sort-of correctly.

That's it. I've had it up to my limit with Roll20 and it cost me actual game time due to actually very stupid issues that should have been simple.

I'm sure someone can explain how this is all user error, but I have new and different frustrations with Roll20 on top of old ones. I've had enough, and it doesn't do what I need it to do well enough to justify putting up with all of the stupid things it does.

We'll stick it out until I'm done with my two books, and then I'll spend time learning a new VTT. This one isn't worth the effort.

* I don't, as I find the player-facing ones take at least as much time as rolling straight-up 3d6, and often need to be checked or double-checked.

Links & Thoughts for Friday 12/18/2020

It's Friday, so here is some random stuff.

- Noble Knight finally has a copy of Fire in the Lake 2nd printing, but price + shipping is ~$75, and the rules are in "Fair" condition. Ugh. New it's $85 . . . I'll keep looking, I think.

- I'll continue the Laws of Felltower posts next week. They're fun and a good way to codify the play style and how the world/game is shaped by it and shapes it in turn.

- Doug's group turned up a big treasure haul by beating up some fodder monsters I created for DFM1 (rock mites and slugbeasts*). It's a big haul even without them having the Bow of Su.

Linked in it is a post of Kromm's talking about treasure. It's a good description of how I generally do it - I place treasure by what belongs where. I do randomly generate a lot of the total treasure value, but what it is must fit the encounter. Or fit some plausible story of how it got there.

That said, sometimes I do get some odd results using my tables from DF21. Like, say, the giant worms down in Felltower who had treasure, but clearly couldn't have carried any. I decided the area they were in had treasure. They had none, but there were gems to be pulled out of the stone in the area they'd been encountered in. It made sense in-game, and it made sense according to what I rolled. Sometimes I get powerful, intelligent creatures with no treasure . . . but some tough-ish monster elsewhere with way too much. Maybe the powerful, intelligent type stores its treasure and guards it with the tough-ish monsters elsehwere. It's plausible and it fits and helps create a story.

I'm also 100% behind Kromm on the "what fits, not placed to fit" approach. I almost never put things in just because someone might be able to use them. Not never, because I do have an eye towards its useability. But I don't custom-place items for one character or another, or because so-and-so needs a new weapon, or whatever. It's why we've got a swashbuckler wearing armor perfect for an SM+1 type, a knight with bracers most valuable for a mage or a martial artist, and a guy who never gets hurt with a multi-use healing potion dispenser. I put the stuff in and they chose where it went. And because so much is randomly rolled or selected by what fits, you're really painting yourself into a corner if you are a dual-weilding katar master, or exclusively use a specific kind of axe, or whatnot.

I use tables to determine presence and amount, unless I have a specific idea on either. The dice don't rule my table. Neither do the needs of my player's characters.

- Mailanka has a good post about a persistent problem for GURPS (and heck, it was a problem in Champions, too, back in the day) - the clash between equipment costs and innate advantage costs. Are Battlesuits Fair? Maybe not. Short Bus has one in Gamma Terra, so he's now better than all of us at everything physical. We don't care, but if we had to pay points for these things, how would you price it?

- This Mook post makes Foundry VTT look good. I have nowhere near the time to set things up on it, but it's $50 and sounds like it more natively supports GURPS than Roll20 does. It might be worth the investment, if I can basically offload a lot of the setup to my players (okay, to V~ and J~). $50 is less than $5 each if we split it up, and except for our youngest player I think all of us have $5. Heh. It's worth discussing as a group, I think.

* Natural allies. Sorry, in-joke.

Game Prep - Roll20, Tokens, and Maps

I pretty much spent today's game prep time doing the following:

- Making tokens with Token Maker 2

- Editing those icons so they have sight, so I can control them as the GM, so they have labels, etc. etc. etc.

- Then trying to take my maps of the dungeon area the PCs will likely go to in order to fight Durak, The Lord of Spite, and trying to make that into a hex combat map. Doing that with Dynamic Lighting and all of that is beyond me. I spent literal hours doing Fog of War on a pre-made map in the past. If I was good at turning images into other kinds of images, and editing them, and making fine adjustments to them, and making sure they're exactly as proportional as the minis are, I'd have gone into visual and graphic design like my sibling did. Instead of spending my time on tactics, reviewing the treasure in the area to make sure I'm on the ball, etc. I spent it scanning and uploading maps and trying to convince Roll20 to cooperate. Honestly, if I could just point a camera at a map and ask people where they wanted to move, I'd do that. This is way more time than it's worth, and there is roughly a 75% chance my players do something else and force the fight to occur elsewhere.

I spent a good hour on this already, and I'm not done yet.

I mean, I could leave this all for game time, but it'll ruin tomorrow instead of just messing up today. Roll20 makes me tired all over.*



* Second best line in The Usual Suspects.

Friday Links & Thoughts 11/20/2020

Here is another post on the "Gary Gygax Hated Magic" idea.

Was Gary Gygax Afraid of Magic?

Me, I still see this as realizing you handed out too much power without enough limitations and just adjusted accordingly . . . not hate or fear. Just recognition that hey, maybe powerful, fast, easy, reliable magic wasn't the best design decision for long-term play balance?

James Mal thinks we need large groups. Yeah, I got that covered. We might only get nine people this Sunday. I'm kind of bemused by the people saying it's hard to play online with more than 4-5 people. We've had less than 6 only once, and man, that was a rarity. Zoom holds up well and Roll20 is a pain even with 2-3 people, so 8-9 doesn't make it any worse.

I keep losing the locations for stuff like this, so here it is again: The Magician's Ring story, starring Mike Mornard's wizard Lessnard.

The Magician's Ring

It's really very much a Jack Vance homage, with how arrogant the PC is and how conniving the NPCs are. "Such treasures are not for the likes of mere Mediums" indeed.

Sunday is a game day for us, so I've put what little time I have for prep into it. I'm basically spending a lot of time trying to make Roll20 do things so I don't have to do them on Sunday. It would be nice to game in person for a change so I could just draw a map freehand in 5 minutes and put down the minis . . . instead I needed to make pictures, now I need to make icons, next I need to make the map and hope the players go to the spot I think they're going to. It's annoying prep yet critical for this fight. I may enlist one of my players in it if I'm not able to get it all done by tonight.

By the way, big Foundry sale! I wish I could do nothing but buy their minis and sit and paint them. I don't have that kind of time and money. Well, not money to spend on minis, anyway. And I've had some painting issues. So mostly I look at these bigs sales and think, why, yes, I do need gun-armed Zulus and Swiss pikemen and Hundred Years War archers and Victorian adventurers, plus obviously those Greek heroes. And then I mostly move on, because, I probably really don't. But if you do, get them. I've never regretted a single purchase from Wargames Foundry or Casting Room Minis.

Roll20 Headaches

We wrapped up our online game on Sunday around 10:30 pm. We'd been aiming to wrap up at 8 pm. But our combat extended and accounted for a good 2 hours of that overage.

Usually I'll gripe about players taking a long time. But generally folks were pretty prompt. Roll20 provided us a lot of slowdowns.

- grabbing the "tail" of a token to turn it isn't always easy; sometimes it gets covered by the other display buttons.

- it's not well-suited to GURPS in its choice of status icons, inability to lay people down across two hexes (I may need to find some "dead" tokens), and so on.

- Sometimes rolling took a long time. We'd click . . . and wait . . . and wait. Actually, as much as I like the character sheets, often people had to click around a few times to get to the right "roll" and then make it, taking more time than just a basic macro'd 3d6.

- The behavior of the interface drives me nuts. I can't ever tell if I'm on pointer, reveal area, cover area, the Map Layer vs. the Token Layer vs. the GM layer, etc. So I'm eternally cursing and clicking and clicking and clicking to move things or modify things. I'll have an icon on the GM layer because the NPC is not visible, then click to move it to the Token Layer, then I need to go back to the Token Layer, then re-grab the token and do things.

- As the GM I have control of all of the tokens (and need it), but that means in close combat (or just close combats) I constantly need to pick up every token and move it aside to get to the one I need or use the interface to swap who is on "top." It's clunky and slow.

- Moving figures is slower because people need to click, drag, drop, turn, etc. to get around while demonstrating their path of movement.

- And not for nothing, but why do I have to give a token sight? Why is unsighted the base standard?

- Finally, if there is a Help command to spit out the command list, I can't find it. ? and Help don't work. So I suffer from a skills deficit on Roll20 and it's tough to find the time to practice so I can whisper, emote, speak to, etc. Or even just do very basic things besides talk and roll.

We also had some Zoom problems (and we're using Zoom because Roll20 just didn't work well when we tried it the first time.)

But the effect of all of this has been that combats are taking much longer. We judge it to be about 20% longer for a given fight, or maybe a bit more. We can't easily do mapless or semi-mappped fights because it's harder to keep track of where people are with a mix of video and phone-in. So everything is tactical in an interface that goes slowly and slows down tactical combat. It's really making it harder to have set-piece fights that don't drag out for hours. That worries me as I see a few set-piece fights coming up and I don't want to dumb them down, shrink them, or otherwise make them less of the fun that they are just because Roll20 is likely to make it take longer.

So we're struggling a bit here. It's been a game-saver but also is making the game run longer.

Game prep - online vs. in-person

I'm a latecomer to running game online, but here are my anecdotal experiences about game prep between the two.


In-person:

- I have to prep minis - paint them and make sure they're in the minis trays.

- I have to prep all of my paper books and notes to bring with me to game

- I have to pack lunch and snacks


Online:

- I have to scour lots of images to find "minis" or send pictures of the ones I want to one of my gamers to edit into icons.

- prepare battle maps to save time in session

- prepare dungeon maps & deal with FOW

- assign out dynamic lighting, etc. for characters.


Same:

- I have to restock and review the dungeon areas I expect the PCs to travel to.

- write rumors

- deal with last-minute questions about spellstones, scrolls, skills, and point-spending.

It's a change - I have all of these minis, and encounters prepared around specific ones. I have battles that aren't in setpiece locations, so I can't just pre-prep them. It's taking soem getting used to . . . I can't fly by the seat of my pants as much online without having things grind to a halt. It's a learning curve.

Felltower Online

I'll get up a summary tomorrow, but this is how it looked:

Felltower & Pandemics II

After some more experimentation and discussion, it turns out we have access to Zoom instead.

So tomorrow we'll go Zoom for voice/video and Roll20 for the maps and die roller.

I have experience taking online classes in Zoom and I know it's stable.

The real challenge will be GMing in Roll20. I'm looking forward to the chaos.

Pandemics & Felltower

Felltower's next session will proceed as scheduled on Sunday.

In deference to the fact that we've got some members with conditions that are risk factors for COVID-19, and family members vulnerable to it, we're going to play online.

The plan is:

Skype for voice and video - mostly voice - because we have a large-ish group. We expect about 9-10 people and could get as many as 11-12.

Roll20 for maps, chat, and die rolls for people who don't feel like rolling dice.

Since the delve is targeting the Lost City, it's a bit less of an issue for maps.

I may do more mapless combat, or just eat the time multiplier that is combat in Roll20 especially with people new to the software.

Sadly, I've got a lot of minis specially painted for this session. I hope we can get back to face-to-face soon.

If these is an .api for 4e GURPS that we need, let me know - one of my players has Roll20 Pro. We also need to know how to designate someone else the GM, so I don't have a player with total control of the site and me with player-level access.

We'll see how it goes. My improvised combat maps aren't really a feature in a Roll20 campaign, too, so it'll be tough. Or my room mapping for the Lost City (I have mental images of what they're like; I don't have them all pre-mapped to upload or show.) So I'm cautiously hopeful the session will go smoothly.

Even More Roll20

Doug and I messed around on Roll20 this morning, trying things out.

Move To Front - I've gotten a lot better with swapping around characters in the inevitable dogpile. But still, it's hard to see who is there.

Standing, Kneeling, Prone - I need to make some statuses that show the posture of standing folks, and have a way to quickly swap a one-hex standing icon for a two-hex prone icon (which we could mark face up or face down.)

Hex Facing - It's hard to see where folks are facing. One idea Doug said he stole from someone else was color-coded facing. Green for front hexsides, yellow for side (-2 defenses), and red for back (no defenses.)

Copying Monsters - Is there an easy way to copy monsters and then change the token? I can't seem to. I dropped down two identical monsters (same stats) but I wanted to then give them different tokens. How, I don't know yet. Seems like the "easy" way is to put down a new token, and then cut-and-paste details, then add in the various statuses, auras, HP, etc. Which isn't really faster to me.

Turn Order - I'd love it if I could click on someone in the turn order, and then, if it's a piece I control, that I select the figure. I'd also like to right-click on a piece I control in the turn order, than I get the right-click character details. In a messy fight, it would be nice to have a combined turn order and pick list.

I'd throw Roll20 some money if it was more natively GURPS supportive, but I can't justify spending money to then spend time making it more GURPS supportive. My gaming budget - in money and time - simply isn't that big. Heh.

And not really Roll20 related, but worth saying:

Stupid Ideas Are Worth Investigating - Doug and I are trying a rules variation out that we sort of like and are trying to turn into publishable material. One thing that happened with it, though, was an odd breakpoint issue. I put out what seemed like a bad idea - rescaling everything to make that breakpoint go away. Basically, what if we did this whole thing differently? Turns out that it might not be a bad way to go, and in fact smooth out other issues with this idea we're having.

Which just goes to show that, there are no truly stupid questions if they're on-topic. It's worth investigating even what seems at first blush to be a bad way to go in a game. Try it, look into it, and if it's truly bad, it will turn out badly. But it might emerge as a better choice, or at least reinforce the knowledge that the way you took was really a better choice.

Live Playtest Beats All - Doug and I would never, never, never have caught so many errors, odd behaviors, issues, places for improvement, and places to add cool stuff without trying this all out "face to face" in actual play. A couple hours on Skype or Google Hangouts with an open combat map in front of us vastly improved our "product" in less time than a hundred emails would have taken.

Roll20 Re-Take

So Douglas Cole and +Nathan Joy and I played around on Roll20, all as co-GMs, to try out some GURPS combat on it (some new rules, lots of old rules, and a new-to-some interface.) Last time we did it, Doug I just banged our heads against Roll20 for a while, This time, we could apply what we knew and what we learned from the various tutorials we watched.

Doug also did his homework and made up a battlefield, a (albeit enclosed) featureless plain this time, but next time I think we can add poor terrain at least in spots.

Still there are things we need to work on.

Some annoyances/to-do things

- it's annoying that the edit box brings up stats in a different order than they appear on the tokens themselves.

- it would be nice if you could change how tokens move, In GURPS, figurs automatically face the hex

- we have to figure out how to make a prone guy occupy more than one hex. People go prone in GURPS, and they

- multiple figures in a hex sucks right now. You just get a literal pile-up, and have to cycle through characters to find out who is there. It would be nice to get a partial overlap in some way so you can get through characters more easily. In a grappling fight, or in a very close melee, you end up worse off than you would with minis or just imagination or notes on paper. Annoying.

- we need to figure out statuses better. They could be very useful for "grappled" or "stunned" or "used AOA."

- I need to start uploading maps, filling out NPC stats, etc. for my own practice if I'm ever going to run my game online.

We took forever on each turn, either because of interface issues or working out rules questions. But that was the whole point - it was practice for Roll20 and checking if possibly-wonky ideas we have for rules approaches actually work according to the stuff we wrote down.

It was a lot of fun, but the lack of native assumptions for GURPS (shared use of a hex, facing changes, all rolls are d6 based so it's weird to put "6" after die roll requests) makes it a little less than optimal. More work to do! Not a bad way to celebrate the release of D&D 40 years ago.

Roll20 Headaches

I want to like Roll20. But every time I try to do something with it, it's a bit more obstacle than it is a help. Case in point, Doug Cole and I have been working on something. Because we're both solidly in the "test it in actual play" camp, we wanted to give it a try yesterday.

We had about an hour to play. We spend 50+ minutes puttering around before we managed to get a map with a couple of tokens on it, and some terrain. And then not enough time to actually play out even a single roll.

Because so much is restricted to the GM, which in this case was Doug, I couldn't even help out. The lack of a "sandbox" mode where everyone has control is kind of annoying.

I really need to sit down and watch the various how to videos on Roll20. But it's frustrating to need to dedicate time to learning the tool instead of actually using it for play.

I was so hoping to get in a good test session and all we did was learn enough of Roll20 that - crossing our fingers here - that setup next time will be short and leave us time to play.

Anyone have specific suggestions for "How To" videos or posts for Roll20?


Editing Later:

These helped a lot:

Roll20 GM Overview (Updated) (video)

Roll20 Player Overview (Updated) (video)

Roll20 for GURPS (wiki)