This will be the first in what I expect will be a short series of posts dealing with "trick" encounters - monsters, treasures, and other things. The ones that have something up their sleeve that makes them a bit different than a normal monster encounter. Usually, because there is some clever unknown that preys on the expectations of the players and forces them into different decisions to deal with the monster.
There is an old trope of the movies - kill the boss, his fort falls. Why? Seems silly, and sometimes it clearly is the product of "it's in the script" but with no explanation. But it doesn't have to be silly. You can use this - with some different trappings - for a real treat in your own games.
Careful, That's A Load-Bearing Monster
The basic idea is, the health of the monsters holds up the dungeon. Dead monster, and the dungeon (or dungeon level, or sub-level, or section) collapses. The collapse can be gradual - like in the movies - or sudden and complete.
A dirty, rotten and pretty unfair trick is to do this with no warning. It's also not so productive - it's more gotcha than clever trick -"You acted like I've rewarded you for acting in this game, and now I'm punishing you for acting that way!" On the potentially lethal scale of "drop the world down around you" that's a bit much of a surprise.
Better, and more entertaining, is to let the PCs know that killing the monster will drop the dungeon down around them. The signal can be a shake every time the monster is injured in any way (or one of them is killed, if it's a group of monsters.) You could provide the information in the form of rumors, or Hidden Lore knowledge, of Area Knowledge. It might be written on the nearby dungeon walls. Or perhaps the monster itself will tell them ("Bwahaha! You cannot slay me or the tunnels will collapse and seal your dooooooooom!") It's a great time for a monologue, and they might even listen a little bit if they hear "Let me finish talking or you'll kill your own PCs with your lack of knowledge." Sometimes they won't care, but at least the information was out there.
You could use this concept to create monsters better foiled or avoided than destroyed, in order to get at their loot. If killing the monsters starts a countdown clock, it's better to loot first or you might have no chance to loot later. Putting a tempting bit of loot, protected by a load-bearing monster, presents a choice - take the risk for the loot, or the safer option of just killing it?
While you could do this with very tough monsters, it could provide a violent way out - beat it up, even really unload on it, as long as it doesn't die. A twist on it is a very fragile monster - one that's dangerous to the PCs but which is also extremely vulnerable to the PCs attacks. That makes any aggressive action against the monster(s) risky.
Why does it collapse? - Good question. Magic is the key here - something magical is keeping the level intact. This can be magic-magic ("a mad wizard did it!") or holy magic (the monster is a divine being, tasked with guarding something).
It can occur due to a specific Wish (when I drop, drop my freaking castle on the bastards that killed me!) or because the boss has built a who castle from magic held together with Wishes that won't last after you're gone - or that are sustained due to its personal magical power. These make great sense for mad wizards, mystic wish-granting creatures like djinni, or the like.
This can work very well with clearly magical levels - glowing hallways of pure force with a great treasure at the center, say, or magical dreamscapes inside the very mind of the monster (careful, damage the scenery too much trying to escape/find the loot and the monster dies, and you collapse with the dream), or shadow castles inhabited by shadow beings.
Variations:
There are a few ways to play this.
Speed of Collapse: The speed is important. A gradual drop means the PCs can flee, movie hero style, after defeating the bad guy. A quick drop means they're just crushed or trapped or killed if they push the monster too far and kill it.
Single Vs. Groups: Is it one monster you need to kill to drop it, or a group that must all be killed? Does each monster in the group drop a different section of the area in question?
Higher Stakes: One of the tidbits I like about the ancient Egyptians, besides signing the insides of the pyramids, is the concept/god of Ma'at - a sort of universal stability. Pharoah needs to be protected or this stability will be damaged - guarding the tomb is important because the stability of the universe is at stake. It's hard to imagine Valhalla holding up well if you whacked the gods, either. It doesn't need to be the question of a single level, it can be the question of an entire dungeon, entire region, or entire world.
It's rough to make a monster hold up the world and expect the PCs to deal with it without violence. But it can be the basis of an interesting reversal:
Save the Load-Bearing Monster! This is just a classic video game mission - protect the hapless NPC/captured enemy spaceship/base from waves of monsters. This just turns turns the MacGuffin into either a Local Load-Bearing Monster (dungeon falls on you!) or a Universal Load-Bearer (reality falls on you!) and the Universe is where the PCs keep all of their stuff.
Have you ever used a load-bearing monster? I haven't, yet, although I've placed a LBM in my dungeon. Either way, I see all sorts of possibilities . . .
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query trick monster. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query trick monster. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Tricks: The Look Alike Monster
This is another in my series of posts looking at Trick Monsters - the ones that use some kind of interesting or surprising change that makes them a bit different than a straightforward monster encounter.
Some monsters look like other monsters.
The look-alike monster has the superficial appearance of another monster, either more dangerous or less dangerous. The goal here is to confuse the players into either underestimating a monster (and thus being taken by surprise by the threat) or overestimating the monster (and wasting resources or falling into some trap).
Usually the look-alike is paired with some other awful trait punish you for trying a tried-and-true tactic against a different monster. Sure, mummies are vulnerable to fire, but these mummies are fireproof (or worse, burn like torches for hours while they grapple you.) This looks like a normal skeleton, but it's a lich. Or even, it looks like a chest, floor, or ceiling, until you get a bit too close . . .
This is a bit different from a merely upgraded monster - a leader-type orc or a more powerful ghost or the troll king. Those usually have some defining trait to make them clearly a different monster. What I'm talking here is ones that are functionally identical; where what you see isn't what you get, and clues are an after-the-fact thing.
Some classics:
Gas Spore - looks like a Beholder, actually a flying bomb. This is a trick in two ways - if you engage it as if it was a beholder, you're probably wasting resources blasting it with everything you've got right the get-go. If you don't, you risk it getting close in and doing bad things to you. And either way, if it's too close when you successfully engage it, it will explode and possibly kill you.
Nilbog - Totally unfair monsters from the awesome-filled AD&D Fiend Folio. They look like goblins, but you can't kill them by hitting them. Oh, and you could end up losing your treasure from encountering them, too.
Shapeshifters - pretty much any shapeshifter monster falls under this, either because it's acting like it's not a monster (the Choke Brothers, Throttlers from my own game), or because it's taken the appearance of something weaker with a weakness the shapeshifter lacks (a werewolf in wolf form, say, unkillable without silver).
Reeks - from Yrth, these all look the same, but their powers range wildly from mildly caustic up to spell-casting (or possibly psionic.)
Variations
I'm not aware of any variations per se - once it doesn't look like the original monster it's not a look-alike. You do get a wide variation in what is different, though.
It's a Trap! - The exploding monsters, sticky versions of monsters, etc - the ones that make it bad to kill them.
I love silver! - some have different vulnerabilities. Looks like a werewolf, but it's not, so silver doesn't affect it - you need something else to bother it. Looks like a demon, but it isn't, so all that holy symbol waving gets you no where.
I come in peace! - friendly versions of monsters are there to show the cost to shoot-first policies. You know, the whole "we look like trolls, but we're peaceful gift-bearing travelers from the dimension of ----aaagh! Not fire! Aaaaa----what we could have taught you . . . " bit.
I'm a big fan of trick monsters, but I confess I use relatively few of these. Generally I prefer to give a clue - even a weak clue - that the monster is different. Or just use a different monster. But hey, gas spores. And I'm not saying my reeks can't be spellcasters or telepathic death slimes, just because they all look alike . . .
Some monsters look like other monsters.
The look-alike monster has the superficial appearance of another monster, either more dangerous or less dangerous. The goal here is to confuse the players into either underestimating a monster (and thus being taken by surprise by the threat) or overestimating the monster (and wasting resources or falling into some trap).
Usually the look-alike is paired with some other awful trait punish you for trying a tried-and-true tactic against a different monster. Sure, mummies are vulnerable to fire, but these mummies are fireproof (or worse, burn like torches for hours while they grapple you.) This looks like a normal skeleton, but it's a lich. Or even, it looks like a chest, floor, or ceiling, until you get a bit too close . . .
This is a bit different from a merely upgraded monster - a leader-type orc or a more powerful ghost or the troll king. Those usually have some defining trait to make them clearly a different monster. What I'm talking here is ones that are functionally identical; where what you see isn't what you get, and clues are an after-the-fact thing.
Some classics:
Gas Spore - looks like a Beholder, actually a flying bomb. This is a trick in two ways - if you engage it as if it was a beholder, you're probably wasting resources blasting it with everything you've got right the get-go. If you don't, you risk it getting close in and doing bad things to you. And either way, if it's too close when you successfully engage it, it will explode and possibly kill you.
Nilbog - Totally unfair monsters from the awesome-filled AD&D Fiend Folio. They look like goblins, but you can't kill them by hitting them. Oh, and you could end up losing your treasure from encountering them, too.
Shapeshifters - pretty much any shapeshifter monster falls under this, either because it's acting like it's not a monster (the Choke Brothers, Throttlers from my own game), or because it's taken the appearance of something weaker with a weakness the shapeshifter lacks (a werewolf in wolf form, say, unkillable without silver).
Reeks - from Yrth, these all look the same, but their powers range wildly from mildly caustic up to spell-casting (or possibly psionic.)
Variations
I'm not aware of any variations per se - once it doesn't look like the original monster it's not a look-alike. You do get a wide variation in what is different, though.
It's a Trap! - The exploding monsters, sticky versions of monsters, etc - the ones that make it bad to kill them.
I love silver! - some have different vulnerabilities. Looks like a werewolf, but it's not, so silver doesn't affect it - you need something else to bother it. Looks like a demon, but it isn't, so all that holy symbol waving gets you no where.
I come in peace! - friendly versions of monsters are there to show the cost to shoot-first policies. You know, the whole "we look like trolls, but we're peaceful gift-bearing travelers from the dimension of ----aaagh! Not fire! Aaaaa----what we could have taught you . . . " bit.
I'm a big fan of trick monsters, but I confess I use relatively few of these. Generally I prefer to give a clue - even a weak clue - that the monster is different. Or just use a different monster. But hey, gas spores. And I'm not saying my reeks can't be spellcasters or telepathic death slimes, just because they all look alike . . .
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Trick Monsters: the limited-shot foe
Time for another installment in the occasional "Trick Monster" series of monsters.
Some monsters have a limited-shot attack that is substantially better than normal. Their baseline attack might be strong enough, but their limited-shot attack will be much more powerful. Generally such an attack will have 1-5 uses. More than that and it's just an attack to be parsed out over a fight as needed. The lower the number of those attacks, the more like "trick" it will feel.
AD&D Dragons are a classic example of this "trick monster" - they have a 3-shot high-damage breath weapon (at least the evil ones do.) From my own Felltower campaign the Lord of Spite falls into this category (along with others) - he has a shout attack that he can't deploy that often, seemingly once per combat, but it's especially devastating.
Monsters which generally have a single ranged attack - a thrown weapon, say, or a crossbow they don't tend to reload - don't quite fit the bill. Nor do ones that have an attack with a cooldown or a pool of energy that can be deployed for other things. It's more like a low-maximum-use attack that does something out of the ordinary for the creature.
The fun of deploying these, to me, is that there is a short window in which you can kill or incapacitate them before they launch their best attack. After that, they're reduced threats. Do you let them get off the "nuke" and then leave them aside? Do you try to get them to run out their attacks in a wasteful manner, such as goading a dragon into breathing onto a well-protected isolated target to spare the rest of the group the damage? It makes for an interesting tactical choice once the PCs recognize these creatures for what they are.
I personally need to put a few more of these in to my campaign . . .
Some monsters have a limited-shot attack that is substantially better than normal. Their baseline attack might be strong enough, but their limited-shot attack will be much more powerful. Generally such an attack will have 1-5 uses. More than that and it's just an attack to be parsed out over a fight as needed. The lower the number of those attacks, the more like "trick" it will feel.
AD&D Dragons are a classic example of this "trick monster" - they have a 3-shot high-damage breath weapon (at least the evil ones do.) From my own Felltower campaign the Lord of Spite falls into this category (along with others) - he has a shout attack that he can't deploy that often, seemingly once per combat, but it's especially devastating.
Monsters which generally have a single ranged attack - a thrown weapon, say, or a crossbow they don't tend to reload - don't quite fit the bill. Nor do ones that have an attack with a cooldown or a pool of energy that can be deployed for other things. It's more like a low-maximum-use attack that does something out of the ordinary for the creature.
The fun of deploying these, to me, is that there is a short window in which you can kill or incapacitate them before they launch their best attack. After that, they're reduced threats. Do you let them get off the "nuke" and then leave them aside? Do you try to get them to run out their attacks in a wasteful manner, such as goading a dragon into breathing onto a well-protected isolated target to spare the rest of the group the damage? It makes for an interesting tactical choice once the PCs recognize these creatures for what they are.
I personally need to put a few more of these in to my campaign . . .
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Tricks: Unkillable Monster
Another in my series on trick monsters - today, it's the ones you just can't kill off. At least, not easily.
Some monsters are tough beyond toughness. They just can't be stopped through the traditional methods of the dungeon delver and monster hunter - straight-up damage. Fire and the sword might slow these monsters down, but it won't keep them down.
Unkillable Monsters
These monsters just won't die easily. Lay in some linament, because your sword arm is going to be sore before you're through.
But unkillable doesn't necessarily mean invulnerable, although it can - some of the magic creations in Glen Cook's Dread Empire series were literally invulnerable, and could only be carried off so the weren't a proximate threat.
Literally Unkillable
These monsters can't be killed. Ever. Period. Nothing will drop them, or if it does, they instantly and immediately get better, like some monstrous version of Madcap. A good example of this is Cthulhu. Nuke Cthulhu, ram a ship into his head, whatever - you're just buying some time. They come back Phoenix-like to avenge themselves.
They may not even be able to be harmed. This might be sheer strength - a Rolemaster Black Reaver, for example - that makes damaging it difficult to the point of futility. Or simple immunity to damage.
Using these is tricky - they need be limited in some way, or at least foil-able, or they're simply not fun as well as not fair.
Limited Vulnerability
Some monsters can be killed, but only through a specific Achilles' heel.
The Sword-Spirit in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 is one of these - it is both tough and only killable with a specific type of weapon. Or a specific weapon. They're cursed and thus are only vulnerable to breaking the curse.
Trolls can only be killed with fire or acid, although I know some read D&D's rules as saying if you kill them before they start regenerating they are dead, dead, dead. Where is the fun in that? Require the fire, I say.
Vampires can survive almost anything but sunlight and holy water.
And where do you even start on Demi-Liches?
The trick with these monsters is finding out what can kill them, and then using that to finish them off. It can be as simple as "magic weapons" or "fire" or as complex and fiddly as "a sword of silver, thrust into its heart under the light of a blue moon." Pretty much any monster that is unstoppable until you find its weakness is a Limited Vulnerability Unkillable Monster.
Repeat Performance
Some monsters can be killed, often with anything that would kill a normal creature, but get well afterward.
Typically the threat isn't that the monster is unkillable so much as requires multiple killings.
Some might have Extra Life and just get back up. Liches might have spare bodies to move to, gods might only have material forms you can mess with - but you're merely pushing the problem to another day.
Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 also introduces the "Psycho Killer" prefix, which pretty much makes killing the monster an exile in deja vue. The Golem-Armor Swordsman from DF is the same - you have to kill them more than once to keep them from killing you.
The Lord of the Maze in my own version of the Caves of Chaos is an Unkillable Monster. You can put him down, and the PCs have done so, but he keeps coming back. They have theorized his magic spear and armor are cursed and keep bringing him back. Whatever the truth, simply applying damage to him until he stops coming isn't the answer.
Death Transformation
One nasty version of this kind of monster isn't a monster that refuses to die or just returns, but rather turns into something else. These monsters essentially use death as a morphing trigger to come back, usually in a stronger form.
This can be return as undead, physical transformation, or ascension into some higher form. While monsters can die and come back weaker, that risks them being irrelevant - if you could kill their "tough" form, who cares about the weak form? Having them come back stronger means that there is a resource-crunch. You need to kill them, but have enough in the tank to kill them again once they're tougher.
If they transform unless killed, you have a time-crunch instead.
I had some of these in my last campaign. Inspired by a the GURPS Knack Tattoo rules, I had a group of nasty orc assassin who were inscribed with a zombie ritual - so they'd come back from the dead, immediately, as a form of super-zombie. If the zombie was slain, well, they had a Skull Spirit tattoo, as well - and a ghostly assassin would come to avenge them on their slayer 24 hours later. Killing them ultimately was the solution, but their original form was perhaps their weakest one.
Unkillable monsters can be fun, although they can equally be frustrating. Some players won't spend a lot of time trying to find their vulnerability or seeing is a second crack will finish them off. They'll simply try to find some clever non-death solution (Entombment, say, or walling them into a room). Keep that in mind when you use them - they invite an indirect solution. This in and of itself can be pretty cool!
Okay folks, what Unkillable nuances and tricks did I miss? Many, I'm sure!
Some monsters are tough beyond toughness. They just can't be stopped through the traditional methods of the dungeon delver and monster hunter - straight-up damage. Fire and the sword might slow these monsters down, but it won't keep them down.
Unkillable Monsters
These monsters just won't die easily. Lay in some linament, because your sword arm is going to be sore before you're through.
But unkillable doesn't necessarily mean invulnerable, although it can - some of the magic creations in Glen Cook's Dread Empire series were literally invulnerable, and could only be carried off so the weren't a proximate threat.
Literally Unkillable
These monsters can't be killed. Ever. Period. Nothing will drop them, or if it does, they instantly and immediately get better, like some monstrous version of Madcap. A good example of this is Cthulhu. Nuke Cthulhu, ram a ship into his head, whatever - you're just buying some time. They come back Phoenix-like to avenge themselves.
They may not even be able to be harmed. This might be sheer strength - a Rolemaster Black Reaver, for example - that makes damaging it difficult to the point of futility. Or simple immunity to damage.
Using these is tricky - they need be limited in some way, or at least foil-able, or they're simply not fun as well as not fair.
Limited Vulnerability
Some monsters can be killed, but only through a specific Achilles' heel.
The Sword-Spirit in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 is one of these - it is both tough and only killable with a specific type of weapon. Or a specific weapon. They're cursed and thus are only vulnerable to breaking the curse.
Trolls can only be killed with fire or acid, although I know some read D&D's rules as saying if you kill them before they start regenerating they are dead, dead, dead. Where is the fun in that? Require the fire, I say.
Vampires can survive almost anything but sunlight and holy water.
And where do you even start on Demi-Liches?
The trick with these monsters is finding out what can kill them, and then using that to finish them off. It can be as simple as "magic weapons" or "fire" or as complex and fiddly as "a sword of silver, thrust into its heart under the light of a blue moon." Pretty much any monster that is unstoppable until you find its weakness is a Limited Vulnerability Unkillable Monster.
Repeat Performance
Some monsters can be killed, often with anything that would kill a normal creature, but get well afterward.
Typically the threat isn't that the monster is unkillable so much as requires multiple killings.
Some might have Extra Life and just get back up. Liches might have spare bodies to move to, gods might only have material forms you can mess with - but you're merely pushing the problem to another day.
Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 also introduces the "Psycho Killer" prefix, which pretty much makes killing the monster an exile in deja vue. The Golem-Armor Swordsman from DF is the same - you have to kill them more than once to keep them from killing you.
The Lord of the Maze in my own version of the Caves of Chaos is an Unkillable Monster. You can put him down, and the PCs have done so, but he keeps coming back. They have theorized his magic spear and armor are cursed and keep bringing him back. Whatever the truth, simply applying damage to him until he stops coming isn't the answer.
Death Transformation
One nasty version of this kind of monster isn't a monster that refuses to die or just returns, but rather turns into something else. These monsters essentially use death as a morphing trigger to come back, usually in a stronger form.
This can be return as undead, physical transformation, or ascension into some higher form. While monsters can die and come back weaker, that risks them being irrelevant - if you could kill their "tough" form, who cares about the weak form? Having them come back stronger means that there is a resource-crunch. You need to kill them, but have enough in the tank to kill them again once they're tougher.
If they transform unless killed, you have a time-crunch instead.
I had some of these in my last campaign. Inspired by a the GURPS Knack Tattoo rules, I had a group of nasty orc assassin who were inscribed with a zombie ritual - so they'd come back from the dead, immediately, as a form of super-zombie. If the zombie was slain, well, they had a Skull Spirit tattoo, as well - and a ghostly assassin would come to avenge them on their slayer 24 hours later. Killing them ultimately was the solution, but their original form was perhaps their weakest one.
Unkillable monsters can be fun, although they can equally be frustrating. Some players won't spend a lot of time trying to find their vulnerability or seeing is a second crack will finish them off. They'll simply try to find some clever non-death solution (Entombment, say, or walling them into a room). Keep that in mind when you use them - they invite an indirect solution. This in and of itself can be pretty cool!
Okay folks, what Unkillable nuances and tricks did I miss? Many, I'm sure!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Players reading monster manuals II: My take
So yesterday I asked about allowing players to read monster manuals.
First, let me thank the folks that have voted in the poll, and who vote after I post this. And to everyone who commented on yesterday's post. And check out Tim Short's discussion of the same subject and that of Robert Conley as well. I should have linked to them in my original post, thus creating recursive links that would ultimately destroy the internet. At least that's how Captain Kirk and Doctors two through five seemed to do it. Too late now.
My take:
Yes, No, or Other?
My answer: Yes.
Or more like, maybe. They are allowed to read the monster books. I don't discourage my players from reading the monster manuals. I don't encourage it, either. It's purely up to them. I neither make it easy for them (I don't hand out monster books, monster stats they didn't discover in play, or monster descriptions) nor difficult for them (I don't hide anything or say they can't read it).
I don't let them use the books during play, but I don't let them use any books except the magic book during play.
I certainly don't stop them, and as was noted in the comments yesterday, you really can't. People buy books and read them. They GM the game themselves or just read the books as a matter of interest or as a game fun bucket list maker ("Holy crap, we have to fight these guys! And them, too!")
So yeah, I know some of them will read the books and I'm fine with that.
Can they use this knowledge in play?
Ah, trickier. I gather the very, very old school method is "Of course you can, player skill is important." If the GM foolishly uses a monster from a pulp adventure you read and you know its weakness, hahah, you've got the edge. If the GM makes something up to specifically counter your knowledge, well, you should have been more careful. Or at least that's how I read that approach. I could be wrong, and it's been decades since I played close that way.
My method is a bit of a mix.
Yes, you can use that knowledge in play. But it can be risky.
If you know something out of game about a monster, you are welcome to try and use it.
But I make up lots of monsters, I convert monsters by feel and by personal taste when I do convert them, and sometimes I use names of monsters for something very different than you've run into before. I pull critters from types of D&D (which are common knowledge amongst my players, generally), Rolemaster (pretty much only I know them), from my own head (only I know them), and from GURPS sources (somewhere in between - since some of them my players have fought before in my other games).
And if I put a mini on the table that you recognize, or use a monster that you know that I know that you know, understand that I know this, too, and have expectations about it. I don't use Poul Anderson trolls and pretend you won't know what they are. If I plunder from games we all played, I expect you to recognize the monster. I'm not so foolish to think wildly available information is secret, or ask players to firewall that knowledge completely from their characters.
So, you can just risk using what you know. But there is no assurance that it is accurate. I might just be trying to trick you - in that same way "use the player's knowledge against them" way that, say, gas spores are designed to do. But I might change them so it's a very, very bad idea to use fire against them - maybe they're explosive, or burn eternally, or the fumes are poisonous.
And there is another risk, too - maybe I have no idea what that mini is supposed to be, or I have a different rule than the game you recognize the monster from, or whatever. Maybe I just bought the mini/used the name/used the picture because it was cool and made up something crazy to use it for. You never know.
However, your character might know.
Since I run GURPS, and GURPS has nice skills like Hidden Lore, I run it this way:
You can roll against the appropriate skill to a) find out what your character knows [great for monsters the players have never heard of] and/or b) find out if what you (the player and character) knows is actually true. AD&D wights drain levels and you need silver or magic to hit them. Is that true in GURPS? Roll and find out. If you fail the roll . . . sorry, you'll have to try your luck. If you succeed, you can falsify inaccurate information ("Total balderdash about silver, it doesn't do jack to them.") You get one piece of information or one "fact" confirmed/disproved for a success, plus one for each point you succeeded by. This nicely encourages high skill over and above the minimum needed to insure success, and it gives extra benefits for taking time/spending money to do research.
So my players know that wights wait for them in the Caves of Chaos. I allowed the cleric to roll his Hidden Lore (Undead) skill. I think he made the roll by 3 points, so I told him four pieces of information that, as far as he knew, were accurate about wights. It wasn't always very deep information ("Their very touch is deadly, and so is touching them.") but sometimes it was specifically helpful ("They are vulnerable to holy water.") A critical success would have been extremely complete information, with a great degree of accuracy.
Sages are a good idea here, too - you can consult sages and get their roll on the subject, which will augment yours (or replace it entirely, if you don't have the appropriate skill). They can do the same thing - tell you new stuff or tell you if the stuff you already know is accurate. Higher ups in the priesthood are great for info on the undead (or at least in the fighting orders), barbarian shamans or druids for info on crazy animals, demonologists for various demons, etc.
So can that legendary one-armed man in the tavern, if he's around. He's got experience. Speaking of experience, in the same campaign, I think it's fair to pretend the next characters heard all about what happened to the last characters, and what worked for them (and what didn't.) So that way player knowledge is preserved and valued - you don't need to pretend this guy doesn't know about the hill troll's vulnerability to frost attacks or roll to see if Volos II knows the things that Volos found out with his rolls. You do - you heard it from the tales of the last group.
In short, it's a mix - player skill matters, and it can help . . . but character skills are critical to finding out ahead of time if the GM mucked with the monster you think it to be. Fits my "worst of old school and new school" approach, I think.
Feel free to keep voting in the poll - I'll talk about the final numbers when it closes in about a week.
First, let me thank the folks that have voted in the poll, and who vote after I post this. And to everyone who commented on yesterday's post. And check out Tim Short's discussion of the same subject and that of Robert Conley as well. I should have linked to them in my original post, thus creating recursive links that would ultimately destroy the internet. At least that's how Captain Kirk and Doctors two through five seemed to do it. Too late now.
My take:
Yes, No, or Other?
My answer: Yes.
Or more like, maybe. They are allowed to read the monster books. I don't discourage my players from reading the monster manuals. I don't encourage it, either. It's purely up to them. I neither make it easy for them (I don't hand out monster books, monster stats they didn't discover in play, or monster descriptions) nor difficult for them (I don't hide anything or say they can't read it).
I don't let them use the books during play, but I don't let them use any books except the magic book during play.
I certainly don't stop them, and as was noted in the comments yesterday, you really can't. People buy books and read them. They GM the game themselves or just read the books as a matter of interest or as a game fun bucket list maker ("Holy crap, we have to fight these guys! And them, too!")
So yeah, I know some of them will read the books and I'm fine with that.
Can they use this knowledge in play?
Ah, trickier. I gather the very, very old school method is "Of course you can, player skill is important." If the GM foolishly uses a monster from a pulp adventure you read and you know its weakness, hahah, you've got the edge. If the GM makes something up to specifically counter your knowledge, well, you should have been more careful. Or at least that's how I read that approach. I could be wrong, and it's been decades since I played close that way.
My method is a bit of a mix.
Yes, you can use that knowledge in play. But it can be risky.
If you know something out of game about a monster, you are welcome to try and use it.
But I make up lots of monsters, I convert monsters by feel and by personal taste when I do convert them, and sometimes I use names of monsters for something very different than you've run into before. I pull critters from types of D&D (which are common knowledge amongst my players, generally), Rolemaster (pretty much only I know them), from my own head (only I know them), and from GURPS sources (somewhere in between - since some of them my players have fought before in my other games).
And if I put a mini on the table that you recognize, or use a monster that you know that I know that you know, understand that I know this, too, and have expectations about it. I don't use Poul Anderson trolls and pretend you won't know what they are. If I plunder from games we all played, I expect you to recognize the monster. I'm not so foolish to think wildly available information is secret, or ask players to firewall that knowledge completely from their characters.
So, you can just risk using what you know. But there is no assurance that it is accurate. I might just be trying to trick you - in that same way "use the player's knowledge against them" way that, say, gas spores are designed to do. But I might change them so it's a very, very bad idea to use fire against them - maybe they're explosive, or burn eternally, or the fumes are poisonous.
And there is another risk, too - maybe I have no idea what that mini is supposed to be, or I have a different rule than the game you recognize the monster from, or whatever. Maybe I just bought the mini/used the name/used the picture because it was cool and made up something crazy to use it for. You never know.
However, your character might know.
Since I run GURPS, and GURPS has nice skills like Hidden Lore, I run it this way:
You can roll against the appropriate skill to a) find out what your character knows [great for monsters the players have never heard of] and/or b) find out if what you (the player and character) knows is actually true. AD&D wights drain levels and you need silver or magic to hit them. Is that true in GURPS? Roll and find out. If you fail the roll . . . sorry, you'll have to try your luck. If you succeed, you can falsify inaccurate information ("Total balderdash about silver, it doesn't do jack to them.") You get one piece of information or one "fact" confirmed/disproved for a success, plus one for each point you succeeded by. This nicely encourages high skill over and above the minimum needed to insure success, and it gives extra benefits for taking time/spending money to do research.
So my players know that wights wait for them in the Caves of Chaos. I allowed the cleric to roll his Hidden Lore (Undead) skill. I think he made the roll by 3 points, so I told him four pieces of information that, as far as he knew, were accurate about wights. It wasn't always very deep information ("Their very touch is deadly, and so is touching them.") but sometimes it was specifically helpful ("They are vulnerable to holy water.") A critical success would have been extremely complete information, with a great degree of accuracy.
Sages are a good idea here, too - you can consult sages and get their roll on the subject, which will augment yours (or replace it entirely, if you don't have the appropriate skill). They can do the same thing - tell you new stuff or tell you if the stuff you already know is accurate. Higher ups in the priesthood are great for info on the undead (or at least in the fighting orders), barbarian shamans or druids for info on crazy animals, demonologists for various demons, etc.
So can that legendary one-armed man in the tavern, if he's around. He's got experience. Speaking of experience, in the same campaign, I think it's fair to pretend the next characters heard all about what happened to the last characters, and what worked for them (and what didn't.) So that way player knowledge is preserved and valued - you don't need to pretend this guy doesn't know about the hill troll's vulnerability to frost attacks or roll to see if Volos II knows the things that Volos found out with his rolls. You do - you heard it from the tales of the last group.
In short, it's a mix - player skill matters, and it can help . . . but character skills are critical to finding out ahead of time if the GM mucked with the monster you think it to be. Fits my "worst of old school and new school" approach, I think.
Feel free to keep voting in the poll - I'll talk about the final numbers when it closes in about a week.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Stocking the Megadungeon
I have decided to pick a random generation method for my megadungeon. I'm doing this for a few reasons, mainly:
1) I feel I'm a bit predictable and randomly rolling eliminates that.
2) I don't want to spend hours agonizing over monsters and treasure placement.
3) Rolling up room contents is fun.
4) I will need to re-stock sometimes, and I don't want to repeat the agonizing.
I decided I'd snag a stocking method from the old school games I love and from their OSR clones.
But which one to use?
Here are the ones I've got, in chronological order. All I really need is to know what is in the room, not its treasure or to roll on a monster table or on a treasure table. I might do that, I might not, but I'm examining these in the simple light of "room contents" and not as a complete system.
1) Book 3, white box D&D
The method on page 6 boils down to:
1) Place special encounters - monsters and/or treasures - as desired.
2) For the remaining rooms:
1-2 on d6 = Monster
If there's a monster, 1-3 on d6 = Treasure.
If there is no monster, 1 on d6 = Treasure.
Pros: Simple enough.
Cons: Lots of rolling (2 dice per room) and specials must be placed specifically. Same with traps or tricks. Most rooms will be empty (4 in 6 will lack monsters, and 5 in 6 of those will lack treasure).
2) AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, pg 170
This one is from random dungeon generation; no specific placement advice exists elsewhere, although lots of Gary Gygax lecturing you about your game does exist. But no "roll XdY" system exists until the one on pg 170 that I can see.
This one is a one-step process - roll a d20 and see what's in there.
Die Contents
1-12 Empty
13-14 Monster only
15-17 Monster and Treasure
18 Special (or stairs)
19 Trick or Trap
20 Treasure
Pros: Again, simple. Includes lots of detail - I can roll for every room.
Cons: 60% of my rooms will be empty, statistically, and 25% will have monsters, and 20% will have treasure. For a 100 room level, this is 40 rooms with stuff in it and only 20 with any treasure. I'd need lots of treasure in them to ensure a profit potential, and it means I'll need lots more levels and lots more rooms.
3) Moldvay Basic (B52) and Expert (X53)
This is a two step process:
1-2 Monster
3 Trap
4 Special
5-6 Empty
and then roll for treasure on a matrix:
Roll Monster Trap Empty
1 Yes Yes Yes
2 Yes Yes No
3 Yes No No
4-6 No No No
Pros: Covers all the varieties of rooms I'd like, and uses d6s.
Cons: Still assumes I'm stocking the important rooms, and now 2/3 of rooms will have something in them (and if you count treasure, 1 in 6 of that final 1/3 will have something in it).
4) Labyrinth Lord, pg 124
Roll d00 Contents Treasure
01-30 Empty 15%
31-60 Monster 50%
61-75 Trap 30%
76-00 Unique Variable
Another one-step one - you don't need to place special encounters.
Pros: Very simple, and you can roll up anything from empty rooms to treasure only to traps to monsters and combos of the above.
Cons: 25% of my rooms will be unique - that's 25 rooms on a 100-room level. That's a lot, and if I'm pre-placing specials too, it's a lot of work. Also, percentile dice, so I can't just drop pairs of d6s and jot down the results (I have lots of d6s, I play GURPS).
Any others I should know about, or consider? I mean from game systems, I know a lot of people have their own variations of these. But for my purposes it'll be more interesting if I use an existing system from a game . . . if I end up with a home grown one I'd rather grow it myself.
1) I feel I'm a bit predictable and randomly rolling eliminates that.
2) I don't want to spend hours agonizing over monsters and treasure placement.
3) Rolling up room contents is fun.
4) I will need to re-stock sometimes, and I don't want to repeat the agonizing.
I decided I'd snag a stocking method from the old school games I love and from their OSR clones.
But which one to use?
Here are the ones I've got, in chronological order. All I really need is to know what is in the room, not its treasure or to roll on a monster table or on a treasure table. I might do that, I might not, but I'm examining these in the simple light of "room contents" and not as a complete system.
1) Book 3, white box D&D
The method on page 6 boils down to:
1) Place special encounters - monsters and/or treasures - as desired.
2) For the remaining rooms:
1-2 on d6 = Monster
If there's a monster, 1-3 on d6 = Treasure.
If there is no monster, 1 on d6 = Treasure.
Pros: Simple enough.
Cons: Lots of rolling (2 dice per room) and specials must be placed specifically. Same with traps or tricks. Most rooms will be empty (4 in 6 will lack monsters, and 5 in 6 of those will lack treasure).
2) AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, pg 170
This one is from random dungeon generation; no specific placement advice exists elsewhere, although lots of Gary Gygax lecturing you about your game does exist. But no "roll XdY" system exists until the one on pg 170 that I can see.
This one is a one-step process - roll a d20 and see what's in there.
Die Contents
1-12 Empty
13-14 Monster only
15-17 Monster and Treasure
18 Special (or stairs)
19 Trick or Trap
20 Treasure
Pros: Again, simple. Includes lots of detail - I can roll for every room.
Cons: 60% of my rooms will be empty, statistically, and 25% will have monsters, and 20% will have treasure. For a 100 room level, this is 40 rooms with stuff in it and only 20 with any treasure. I'd need lots of treasure in them to ensure a profit potential, and it means I'll need lots more levels and lots more rooms.
3) Moldvay Basic (B52) and Expert (X53)
This is a two step process:
1-2 Monster
3 Trap
4 Special
5-6 Empty
and then roll for treasure on a matrix:
Roll Monster Trap Empty
1 Yes Yes Yes
2 Yes Yes No
3 Yes No No
4-6 No No No
Pros: Covers all the varieties of rooms I'd like, and uses d6s.
Cons: Still assumes I'm stocking the important rooms, and now 2/3 of rooms will have something in them (and if you count treasure, 1 in 6 of that final 1/3 will have something in it).
4) Labyrinth Lord, pg 124
Roll d00 Contents Treasure
01-30 Empty 15%
31-60 Monster 50%
61-75 Trap 30%
76-00 Unique Variable
Another one-step one - you don't need to place special encounters.
Pros: Very simple, and you can roll up anything from empty rooms to treasure only to traps to monsters and combos of the above.
Cons: 25% of my rooms will be unique - that's 25 rooms on a 100-room level. That's a lot, and if I'm pre-placing specials too, it's a lot of work. Also, percentile dice, so I can't just drop pairs of d6s and jot down the results (I have lots of d6s, I play GURPS).
Any others I should know about, or consider? I mean from game systems, I know a lot of people have their own variations of these. But for my purposes it'll be more interesting if I use an existing system from a game . . . if I end up with a home grown one I'd rather grow it myself.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Dungeon of Signs talking Trick Monsters
I'm a big fan of "trick" monsters.
Over at Dungeon of Signs, Gus L did a nice list of special abilities that make a monster more than a straight-up fight:
Towards a Taxonomy of 'Trick' Monsters
Some of the abilities I wouldn't personally cal tricks so much as just special attacks - breath weapons are scary, for example, but don't feel like a sneaky trick to me any more than a bow and arrows is a trick weapon. Same with, say, a bear hug from an owlbear - it's just a jumped up melee follow. But it's a great list of special abilities, whether they are tricks or not.
The list is very D&D-centric, so a lot of the definitions aren't terribly generic (breath weapons as a HP-based attack, say), but even for GURPS it's a solid read and a useful resource.
Over at Dungeon of Signs, Gus L did a nice list of special abilities that make a monster more than a straight-up fight:
Towards a Taxonomy of 'Trick' Monsters
Some of the abilities I wouldn't personally cal tricks so much as just special attacks - breath weapons are scary, for example, but don't feel like a sneaky trick to me any more than a bow and arrows is a trick weapon. Same with, say, a bear hug from an owlbear - it's just a jumped up melee follow. But it's a great list of special abilities, whether they are tricks or not.
The list is very D&D-centric, so a lot of the definitions aren't terribly generic (breath weapons as a HP-based attack, say), but even for GURPS it's a solid read and a useful resource.
Monday, March 8, 2021
More notes on DF Session 149, Felltower 115 - Sages, Draugr, Gyms, and Scrolls
Here are a couple more notes on yesterday's game. Well, actual notes - I had basically none last night, as I had very little time to write a summary - even as brief as that one was.
- I highly encourage my players to take advantage of sages. They're a useful way to get background information you can use to inform your decision, or fill in enough background information blanks that you can figure something out. They're not the answer, they're the staff work that helps you decide on the answer.
Not to pick on any particular player of mine, because a lot of them do it, but this was a perfect example. Yesterday, when discussing next options, someone offhand suggested doing or getting "research on how to avoid the damage-causing floor down the second giant fantastic staircase," I shot it down. I don't want to waste time and money. A sage roll wasn't going to reveal the existance of heretofore unknown equipment that ignores contact-based damage from a floor.
Besides, the players already know the answer. They just don't like it - take the damage, figure out a way to dispel the magic of the floor, find a way to avoid touching the floor (Walk on Air, Levitate, Flight), etc.), or find some other way to avoid the damage.
It's worth asking yourself, what do we expect to learn from the sage? Given that the GM isn't going to give some answer . . . and even apparantly accurate divination and oracles will sometimes give you exactly the answer you already know. How to kill a beholder? Lots of damage will do it. I'm not sure what answer was expected, otherwise. I guess it's a good way to check if a monster isn't a "trick" monster that can only be killed by a specific method.
- We spent a good 30 minutes post-session discussing how to fight the draugr. Basically, it came down to, "We can't defeat them in a slog, so we need another way to defeat them." No progress was made on this. A good chunk of the group agrees that they can't just engage them in a straight fight, and another way has to be found, but can't decide on what that other way is. Brought up and discarded (or at least set aside for now) included:
- lots of archers to "harry" them from the back ranks (usual issues - need for skilled troops to shoot through the front-rank PCs, relatively low damage of bows vs. high DR of targets, and the unwillingness of the PCs to advance against the draugr.)
- lots of hirelings to "lob" alchemist's fire at them (issues here - cost, skill of hirelings, vastly reduced effectiveness of fire against armored targets with "splash" damage versus direct hits, difficulty of follow up if the draugr don't just stand there.)
- rushing in and killing them quickly before they get up (issues here - high DR and HP of the draugr, time consuming to open a sarcophagus and kill one.)
- draw out the draugr, kill a few, and drag off the dead (issues here - no idea how to do this) or get them to abandon their fallen due to area denial magic (issues here - no plan on how to do that.)
- cut off draugr with a Force Wall and kill a few of them; repeat 5-6 times (issues - spell would be from a powered scroll - which will be an extra expensive for a rare spell*, unclear if draugr count as "magical creatures" and can just walk though)
- cast Flaming Missiles on Galen, who apparantly will kill them all thanks to the fire bonus injury (issues - it's not that much damage, Shield Wall Training means it's unlikely even three arrows/second on one target will consistently result in a hit) and/or blind them so they can be dealt with by the melee fighters.
A lot of these have been discussed before.
The same issues apply as always - the draugr are tough, well-armored, skilled, tactically flexible and smart, and their undead vulnerability doesn't force them all to rest at the same time. The PCs don't want to risk a straight-up fight with them, and it's extremely hard to force foes you are not superior to, to fight on your terms. The draugr seem unwilling to throw away a tactical advantage to fight the PCs when the PCs have stacked up a tactical advantage in their favor. The PCs, who really want to fight the draugr, are unwilling to do so except on terms of advantage for them and won't willingly take situational penalties to do so. So it's a standoff, still.
I've said this before, here and to the group: I personally don't think the draugr are a puzzle. I think they're going to be hard battle. They might be too hard of a battle. They're purely physical but what they're most vulnerable (fire) also risks their treasure, and what the PCs are generally best at (physically overmatching foes) the draugr are also very good at. I could be wrong, but no one has found a way to prove me wrong yet by figuring out a vulnerability that reduces the draugr from a hard fight to a puzzle.
- We had less info-fishing than last time, but people did ask over and over and over again about the white triangle - dimensions, type of triangle, what symbols it covers, are those symbols in a special order, how wide are the lines . . . ultimately, meaning behind it or not, the triangle was just painted on with some white, non-water-soluable paint, and not particularly well. It wasn't mathematically precise. I really should have made an image right from the start, but as I said in the comments on my summary, from this side of the screen it didn't seem like that complex of a puzzle.
- On a lighter note, we found out the name of Mild Bruce's Gym - the Iron Church.
* Also, because if you can "special order" any scroll, of any type, at any time, the game devolves down to searching through GURPS Magic to find "the spell" that will solve a problem, and then calculating the cost to solve it. Oh, and sending 3-5 emails to me to ask if it's possible to do so. And by emails, I means questions at the beginning of the game session. I don't really want my game reduced to "flip through GURPS Magic." It was bad enough when it was ordering magic items. And the more "we'll order 2-3 scrolls of (X)" that happen, the more likely I am to eventually change it so I don't have to deal with the old "I flip through my list of 30-odd scrolls I'm carrying at all times to find a spell that might work."
- I highly encourage my players to take advantage of sages. They're a useful way to get background information you can use to inform your decision, or fill in enough background information blanks that you can figure something out. They're not the answer, they're the staff work that helps you decide on the answer.
Not to pick on any particular player of mine, because a lot of them do it, but this was a perfect example. Yesterday, when discussing next options, someone offhand suggested doing or getting "research on how to avoid the damage-causing floor down the second giant fantastic staircase," I shot it down. I don't want to waste time and money. A sage roll wasn't going to reveal the existance of heretofore unknown equipment that ignores contact-based damage from a floor.
Besides, the players already know the answer. They just don't like it - take the damage, figure out a way to dispel the magic of the floor, find a way to avoid touching the floor (Walk on Air, Levitate, Flight), etc.), or find some other way to avoid the damage.
It's worth asking yourself, what do we expect to learn from the sage? Given that the GM isn't going to give some answer . . . and even apparantly accurate divination and oracles will sometimes give you exactly the answer you already know. How to kill a beholder? Lots of damage will do it. I'm not sure what answer was expected, otherwise. I guess it's a good way to check if a monster isn't a "trick" monster that can only be killed by a specific method.
- We spent a good 30 minutes post-session discussing how to fight the draugr. Basically, it came down to, "We can't defeat them in a slog, so we need another way to defeat them." No progress was made on this. A good chunk of the group agrees that they can't just engage them in a straight fight, and another way has to be found, but can't decide on what that other way is. Brought up and discarded (or at least set aside for now) included:
- lots of archers to "harry" them from the back ranks (usual issues - need for skilled troops to shoot through the front-rank PCs, relatively low damage of bows vs. high DR of targets, and the unwillingness of the PCs to advance against the draugr.)
- lots of hirelings to "lob" alchemist's fire at them (issues here - cost, skill of hirelings, vastly reduced effectiveness of fire against armored targets with "splash" damage versus direct hits, difficulty of follow up if the draugr don't just stand there.)
- rushing in and killing them quickly before they get up (issues here - high DR and HP of the draugr, time consuming to open a sarcophagus and kill one.)
- draw out the draugr, kill a few, and drag off the dead (issues here - no idea how to do this) or get them to abandon their fallen due to area denial magic (issues here - no plan on how to do that.)
- cut off draugr with a Force Wall and kill a few of them; repeat 5-6 times (issues - spell would be from a powered scroll - which will be an extra expensive for a rare spell*, unclear if draugr count as "magical creatures" and can just walk though)
- cast Flaming Missiles on Galen, who apparantly will kill them all thanks to the fire bonus injury (issues - it's not that much damage, Shield Wall Training means it's unlikely even three arrows/second on one target will consistently result in a hit) and/or blind them so they can be dealt with by the melee fighters.
A lot of these have been discussed before.
The same issues apply as always - the draugr are tough, well-armored, skilled, tactically flexible and smart, and their undead vulnerability doesn't force them all to rest at the same time. The PCs don't want to risk a straight-up fight with them, and it's extremely hard to force foes you are not superior to, to fight on your terms. The draugr seem unwilling to throw away a tactical advantage to fight the PCs when the PCs have stacked up a tactical advantage in their favor. The PCs, who really want to fight the draugr, are unwilling to do so except on terms of advantage for them and won't willingly take situational penalties to do so. So it's a standoff, still.
I've said this before, here and to the group: I personally don't think the draugr are a puzzle. I think they're going to be hard battle. They might be too hard of a battle. They're purely physical but what they're most vulnerable (fire) also risks their treasure, and what the PCs are generally best at (physically overmatching foes) the draugr are also very good at. I could be wrong, but no one has found a way to prove me wrong yet by figuring out a vulnerability that reduces the draugr from a hard fight to a puzzle.
- We had less info-fishing than last time, but people did ask over and over and over again about the white triangle - dimensions, type of triangle, what symbols it covers, are those symbols in a special order, how wide are the lines . . . ultimately, meaning behind it or not, the triangle was just painted on with some white, non-water-soluable paint, and not particularly well. It wasn't mathematically precise. I really should have made an image right from the start, but as I said in the comments on my summary, from this side of the screen it didn't seem like that complex of a puzzle.
- On a lighter note, we found out the name of Mild Bruce's Gym - the Iron Church.
* Also, because if you can "special order" any scroll, of any type, at any time, the game devolves down to searching through GURPS Magic to find "the spell" that will solve a problem, and then calculating the cost to solve it. Oh, and sending 3-5 emails to me to ask if it's possible to do so. And by emails, I means questions at the beginning of the game session. I don't really want my game reduced to "flip through GURPS Magic." It was bad enough when it was ordering magic items. And the more "we'll order 2-3 scrolls of (X)" that happen, the more likely I am to eventually change it so I don't have to deal with the old "I flip through my list of 30-odd scrolls I'm carrying at all times to find a spell that might work."
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Rope Tricks
A few rope-related thoughts occurred to me recently. Why? Basically, from coming across Rope Trick I reading Daddy Grognard's blog.
Rope Trick (scroll down for the rope/gate situation) - Why do players always seem to think tying a rope around someone will let them pull them back after they go through a gate? Does this usually work? My players do it too, and it worked once with one very specific kind of gate (the "hole in reality between these points" kind of gate), but it hasn't with others (the "the gate teleports you elsewhere" kind). Still they use it every time, even if experimentation showed it wasn't the kind of gate you could stick a hand through and then pull it back out.
Rope Trick II - On that thought, why do PCs always think that tying a rope around someone's waist is a fool-proof way to rescue someone from harm? I've heard "if you fall down a pit, we can pull on the rope and pull you up." "If a monster attacks you, we can pull you back before it hits." "If you are unconscious, we can reel you back in to safety." Usually accompanied by strong denials that they need to tie the rope to anything and feigned surprise that getting yanked backwards on a rope wouldn't be smooth, fast, or easily done.
Rope Trick III - rope is one of those items that seems to take up no space. People decide to rappel down a pit's wall, or tie up some prisoners, or climb up a cliff . . . and inevitably someone says "I have 50' of rope in my bag." Really? 50' of man-supporting climbing rope . . . shouldn't that take up a whole bag? I've got around 40' of heavy cloth rope at the gym, and it's not exactly small. I wonder if modern folks just think of rope as those coils of thin yellow plastic rope, which could easily fit into a bag. It's this kind of thing that makes me want to try some form of visual encumbrance. Players that would blanch at saying "I put a gallon jug of wine in my pack" just figure anything between 10 and 100 yards of rope is pretty small.
Or are all of those mostly just my experience?
Rope Trick (scroll down for the rope/gate situation) - Why do players always seem to think tying a rope around someone will let them pull them back after they go through a gate? Does this usually work? My players do it too, and it worked once with one very specific kind of gate (the "hole in reality between these points" kind of gate), but it hasn't with others (the "the gate teleports you elsewhere" kind). Still they use it every time, even if experimentation showed it wasn't the kind of gate you could stick a hand through and then pull it back out.
Rope Trick II - On that thought, why do PCs always think that tying a rope around someone's waist is a fool-proof way to rescue someone from harm? I've heard "if you fall down a pit, we can pull on the rope and pull you up." "If a monster attacks you, we can pull you back before it hits." "If you are unconscious, we can reel you back in to safety." Usually accompanied by strong denials that they need to tie the rope to anything and feigned surprise that getting yanked backwards on a rope wouldn't be smooth, fast, or easily done.
Rope Trick III - rope is one of those items that seems to take up no space. People decide to rappel down a pit's wall, or tie up some prisoners, or climb up a cliff . . . and inevitably someone says "I have 50' of rope in my bag." Really? 50' of man-supporting climbing rope . . . shouldn't that take up a whole bag? I've got around 40' of heavy cloth rope at the gym, and it's not exactly small. I wonder if modern folks just think of rope as those coils of thin yellow plastic rope, which could easily fit into a bag. It's this kind of thing that makes me want to try some form of visual encumbrance. Players that would blanch at saying "I put a gallon jug of wine in my pack" just figure anything between 10 and 100 yards of rope is pretty small.
Or are all of those mostly just my experience?
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Dungeon Trick Features: Sloping Passages
One running joke in Erik Tenkar's running of the Castle of the Mad Archmage is "Is it a 5% slope?" The dungeon features some sloping passages, the kind that take you down levels of the dungeon. The use seems predicated on the old AD&D/white box D&D assumption that sloping passages are undetectable, and can lead players to accidentally go deeper than they think they are.
We run them as obvious to detect, something I agree with, and we cheerfully use them to go deeper and deeper into the dungeon.
So, sloping passages are a staple of dungeons going to back to the earliest days.
"Passage south "D" is a slanting corridor which will take them at least one level deeper, and if the slope is gentle enough even dwarves won't recognize it." - The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 5.
Detection
Is it hard to detect them?
AD&D and white-box D&D say yes - you need a dwarf, with their special sense for underground direction and depth, to detect them.
"Detect grade or slope in passage, upwards or downwards 75% probability (d4, score 1-3)" - Players Handbook, p. 16
I'd personally say no, it's pretty easy to notice a significant slope.
A wheelchair ramp maximum slope is 1:12, so it drops 1 foot vertically every 12 feet horizontally. A more slight 1 foot drop every 20 feet (1:20, or 5%) is still pretty significant. Less steep than an ADA-compliant wheelchair ramp, but not terribly so.
But if you've ever walked down a slightly sloped street or sidewalk, or stepped from a flat grade to a sloping grade, it's pretty easy to notice. Setting a treadmill to a 5% grade is really noticeble (more so down, than up, although it's a rare treadmill that'll let you do that.) You have to not be paying attention to really miss a sloping passage dropping down or going up. And if you're not sure, any liquid or a marble will prove it to you. One joke in my Dungeon Fantasy game is Gort, the dwarf, demonstrating the secrets of AD&D-ish dwarven special abilities. Sloping passage detector? He always has a clay marble and/or a plumb line. It's even easier to detect them if you're pushing or dragging something - it'll suddenly feel heavier.
So the old "so slight you don't notice" thing is tough, because you need a downslope so slight that the passage goes on for a very, very long distance. Take a very slight drop, say a 1 foot drop every 100 feet. To drop from a series of 10' tall rooms to a series 15' below it (giving a 5' thick ceiling) takes 1500 feet of tunnel.
Usage
If they're detectable, how do you use them?
You can use them like any stairs, really.
Pretty much, you need to give people a reason to go deeper. Harder challenges, more loot, or whatever. A lure is better than a trick, here.
You can also get cute and give out enough treasure that the PCs need wagons or sledges or wheelbarrows to move it. Valuable statues are a good choice. Carrying is a lot rougher than, say, taking a sloped passage. If that statue on level 1 actually fits on the pedestal on level 3, you'll get players eager to find and take sloping passages.
Using sloping passages makes it possible for rolling juggernauts, boulder traps, daleks, and slithering snakes to get around the dungeon. It's wheelchair accessible, so wheeled or rolling critters will get around better.
You can also get cute and make them chute-like: slick, low-friction, etc. This makes them more of an obstacle or decision point, since going down safely might be difficult, and getting back up is no longer a trivial act of turning around and going back.
Effect
Mostly, they act in practice as just a different way to change levels.
They do make for some mapping issues, of course, because it's not always clear when the "level change" occurs. That alone can make them a bit of fun - you know what to put down on paper, but it makes it a bit of a worry if you get all meta with "which level are we on, and what does that mean for monster level?"
Overall
I think sloping passages make a terrible trick, but they make perfect sense within a dungeon. They allow for some different monsters and gives an alternative to stairs, pits, and ladders for getting around.
We run them as obvious to detect, something I agree with, and we cheerfully use them to go deeper and deeper into the dungeon.
So, sloping passages are a staple of dungeons going to back to the earliest days.
"Passage south "D" is a slanting corridor which will take them at least one level deeper, and if the slope is gentle enough even dwarves won't recognize it." - The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 5.
Detection
Is it hard to detect them?
AD&D and white-box D&D say yes - you need a dwarf, with their special sense for underground direction and depth, to detect them.
"Detect grade or slope in passage, upwards or downwards 75% probability (d4, score 1-3)" - Players Handbook, p. 16
I'd personally say no, it's pretty easy to notice a significant slope.
A wheelchair ramp maximum slope is 1:12, so it drops 1 foot vertically every 12 feet horizontally. A more slight 1 foot drop every 20 feet (1:20, or 5%) is still pretty significant. Less steep than an ADA-compliant wheelchair ramp, but not terribly so.
But if you've ever walked down a slightly sloped street or sidewalk, or stepped from a flat grade to a sloping grade, it's pretty easy to notice. Setting a treadmill to a 5% grade is really noticeble (more so down, than up, although it's a rare treadmill that'll let you do that.) You have to not be paying attention to really miss a sloping passage dropping down or going up. And if you're not sure, any liquid or a marble will prove it to you. One joke in my Dungeon Fantasy game is Gort, the dwarf, demonstrating the secrets of AD&D-ish dwarven special abilities. Sloping passage detector? He always has a clay marble and/or a plumb line. It's even easier to detect them if you're pushing or dragging something - it'll suddenly feel heavier.
So the old "so slight you don't notice" thing is tough, because you need a downslope so slight that the passage goes on for a very, very long distance. Take a very slight drop, say a 1 foot drop every 100 feet. To drop from a series of 10' tall rooms to a series 15' below it (giving a 5' thick ceiling) takes 1500 feet of tunnel.
Usage
If they're detectable, how do you use them?
You can use them like any stairs, really.
Pretty much, you need to give people a reason to go deeper. Harder challenges, more loot, or whatever. A lure is better than a trick, here.
You can also get cute and give out enough treasure that the PCs need wagons or sledges or wheelbarrows to move it. Valuable statues are a good choice. Carrying is a lot rougher than, say, taking a sloped passage. If that statue on level 1 actually fits on the pedestal on level 3, you'll get players eager to find and take sloping passages.
Using sloping passages makes it possible for rolling juggernauts, boulder traps, daleks, and slithering snakes to get around the dungeon. It's wheelchair accessible, so wheeled or rolling critters will get around better.
You can also get cute and make them chute-like: slick, low-friction, etc. This makes them more of an obstacle or decision point, since going down safely might be difficult, and getting back up is no longer a trivial act of turning around and going back.
Effect
Mostly, they act in practice as just a different way to change levels.
They do make for some mapping issues, of course, because it's not always clear when the "level change" occurs. That alone can make them a bit of fun - you know what to put down on paper, but it makes it a bit of a worry if you get all meta with "which level are we on, and what does that mean for monster level?"
Overall
I think sloping passages make a terrible trick, but they make perfect sense within a dungeon. They allow for some different monsters and gives an alternative to stairs, pits, and ladders for getting around.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Video Game Terms I Like/Dislike on the Tabletop
I try to keep this blog positive. I write about what I like, and why I like it. I write about games that I enjoy playing. This has a lot of negativity in it. I try to rebound off of that, though, and explain what I like about this subject, too.
That is, video game terms that have migrated to the tabletop games I've played.
Terms I dislike that migrated from video games
I don't necessarily hate these terms in video games. I don't like how they migrate to and influence tabletop gaming. I think they give a mistaken vision of the game in front of you, and thus limit you and can subtract from the fun.
"Farming." - I hate the whole "fight the monster, let it respawn, come back and fight it again" cycle. It was awful when my friend would spend hours and hours killing Murphy's Ghost in Wizardry to safely level up (I did it too, I'll admit, but preferred to take the elevator to level 9 and fight one fight and go home and heal up.) It's not even a good term in games where killing monsters doesn't cause character improvement.
My players hopefully jokingly brought this up about the orcs in Felltower. Kill the orcs, take their weapons and saleable armor, cash it in for a profit, get lots of XP for profit. It's actually not that likely to work, but even if it does work occasionally, it's a fun-bankrupt concept. People farm monsters in games because you can get good loot with a good risk:reward ratio, or because it's totally safe (see: South Park WoW episode.) That sounds like the second-worst way to spend a face-to-face gaming session behind "sit around arguing about what we should do." Maybe third behind, "sit around arguing about the rules," but I don't bother to play in those games.
I suppose you could argue dungeon delving is just "farming monsters," but that's only if monsters are repetitive, in the same places, and the environment doesn't change significantly. A good dungeon game should feel like how we view hunting and gathering - go out, find what's there, deal with it and try to come back with the goodies. Hit the same area too often and you've worn it out and need to move on.
"Respawn." - And it's cousin, "Re-pop." Okay, sometimes it's funny when my players talk about checking the chimera room to see if the chimera respawned. But since I'm not actually respawning the vast majority of monsters, it's inappropriate. The few that do "respawn" really lose their luster when reduce to, "Oh, this is a respawning ghost" or "this dragon respawns." An unkillable ghost or a dragon that returns again and again after you slay it should be terrifying. It's a disservice to play to make it "a re-popping monster." I once ran an adventure that "re-popped" to the point of taking back the looted treasure. It was a unique challenge and lots of fun.
"Tanking." - This one isn't terrible, making a character hard to kill or hard to injure and drawing opponents to you so your friends can kill it. This can work in GURPS, tactically, if you can force foes to face an armored foe or a strongly resisting foe. But it takes tactics. You can't just roll out there and have the AI glom monsters onto you. You can't hit the "Aggravate Monsters" or "Taunt" button over and over and have the enemy surround you and swing uselessly. You need to actually trick, channel, or otherwise force monsters through actions to do this. Understanding how to control and channel foes to force them to fight your strongest, most survivable guy is quite different from "get out there and tank." The term gives you just enough of a wrong idea of how the fights will work that it can get you and your teammates killed. Better to ditch the term and start at first principles.
"DPS" - Damage Per Second, right? I think this has little place in most tabletop gaming and in GURPS especially. A good "DPS" tells you nice things about your choice of skill and damage, but what else? You have to hit, then your opponent needs to fail to defend, then you need to roll damage, then you subtract DR, then injury happens. That's if you can even attack a given opponent because of enemy action. DPS makes sense when I think of Diablo/Diablo II, where I'd wade into combat and hold down the buttons cutting through enemies until I won or lost. Well, won, mostly.
In GURPS? I've seen whole fights turn on a die roll. Your average damage per second over time is all well and good until you roll an 18 or a foe rolls a 3 and everything changes. It just hasn't been calculated number worth anything. You may do x.x damage per second in theory, but we're not fighting on a featureless plain. Your average over time doesn't get reflected on my tabletop. If you must use this, use it to compare some choices so you can make an informed decision about your choices. Don't trust it'll tell you the results of your adventuring.
"Character Build." - In video games you generally know what's out there, what your options are, and what you can plan around. So you design a pathway to long-term maximization of your options. Build a guy who'll be very good with spears because there is a unique spear down the line. Ditch him when the new patch nerfs spears. Build a guy who uses a specific combo of spells and powers to get things done. Etc. The whole "optimized path" approach bothers me.
In video games it makes sense. In tabletop RPGs, less so (but not none - see below). You can't predict everything. You don't really know all of your options, or how long you'll play. Not only that, by focusing on a "path" you ignore the fact that you're playing in a wide-open sandbox limited only by the imaginations of the players and GM. You're self-limiting.
Not only that, but the concept is of mechanical perfection. Not, I'm making a very interesting character but rather I'm making a very efficient playing piece. It's bad parts of both the "game" approach (characters aren't special snowflakes, they're playing pieces) and the "role-playing" approach (characters are designed around a preconceived plan, not derived from play.) What's worse is when it's a throwaway mechanical approach ("This is a dual-wielding knife barbarian") instead of a potentially interesting character ("He's a happy-go-lucky axeman dreaming of a farm he'll never save up a cent for.") The first says, "Hey GM, let's beta test the mechanics of these choices in an inter-collected series of battles!" and the second says, "Let's play a role-playing game."
Terms I like that migrated from video games
All that said, there are terms I like from play.
"Hardcore." - Yeah, my games are on hardcore mode for the most part. You can come back from the dead, if you have enough resources salted away and you recover the body. Even so, you might lose everything in the process.
"Healbot." - This I like as a pejorative. It's harder to make a "healing-only cleric" as a PC when the GM or other players says, oh, you're a healbot. Nothing like being reduced to a walking healing potion to make you think about diversifying out to other areas of skill, eh?
"Character Build." - Used differently than above, this isn't a bad idea. I'd prefer it spoken of as a "long-term plan." Have a plan. I emphasize this in life all the time, so why not in game? Have a vision of where your character is going. The concept of a "character build" is a useful one coupled with an eye towards the wide-open options of tabletop play. Know what you want to do and work toward it, but keep open to the possibilities that come along. Know what to sacrifice short-term for long term goals (the upside of a "build"). Have a plan of what you can get as you go so it all makes sense and makes a playable and enjoyable character. Know what stones to step on to get to the next stone, to the next, until you've crossed the stream. Don't bolt yourself to mechanical rails to get to munchkin maximization to get to the end.
"Boss Monster." - It's a good way to explain the "Saturday Night Special" encounters. Stuff worth the time, effort, and focus from both sides of the screen. It alerts you, the player, that big stuff is out there and sometimes monsters aren't just a bag of HP waiting to be whittled down so you can can take their GP. It alerts you, the GM, that you have to put some thought into big encounters so the game is punctuated by real challenges that can shift the game depending on how they go. The idea that some monsters are just flat-out special is a good one. It existed in tabletop RPGs from its earliest days (Acererak) but the term boss monster really speaks to it well and expands it.
That is, video game terms that have migrated to the tabletop games I've played.
Terms I dislike that migrated from video games
I don't necessarily hate these terms in video games. I don't like how they migrate to and influence tabletop gaming. I think they give a mistaken vision of the game in front of you, and thus limit you and can subtract from the fun.
"Farming." - I hate the whole "fight the monster, let it respawn, come back and fight it again" cycle. It was awful when my friend would spend hours and hours killing Murphy's Ghost in Wizardry to safely level up (I did it too, I'll admit, but preferred to take the elevator to level 9 and fight one fight and go home and heal up.) It's not even a good term in games where killing monsters doesn't cause character improvement.
My players hopefully jokingly brought this up about the orcs in Felltower. Kill the orcs, take their weapons and saleable armor, cash it in for a profit, get lots of XP for profit. It's actually not that likely to work, but even if it does work occasionally, it's a fun-bankrupt concept. People farm monsters in games because you can get good loot with a good risk:reward ratio, or because it's totally safe (see: South Park WoW episode.) That sounds like the second-worst way to spend a face-to-face gaming session behind "sit around arguing about what we should do." Maybe third behind, "sit around arguing about the rules," but I don't bother to play in those games.
I suppose you could argue dungeon delving is just "farming monsters," but that's only if monsters are repetitive, in the same places, and the environment doesn't change significantly. A good dungeon game should feel like how we view hunting and gathering - go out, find what's there, deal with it and try to come back with the goodies. Hit the same area too often and you've worn it out and need to move on.
"Respawn." - And it's cousin, "Re-pop." Okay, sometimes it's funny when my players talk about checking the chimera room to see if the chimera respawned. But since I'm not actually respawning the vast majority of monsters, it's inappropriate. The few that do "respawn" really lose their luster when reduce to, "Oh, this is a respawning ghost" or "this dragon respawns." An unkillable ghost or a dragon that returns again and again after you slay it should be terrifying. It's a disservice to play to make it "a re-popping monster." I once ran an adventure that "re-popped" to the point of taking back the looted treasure. It was a unique challenge and lots of fun.
"Tanking." - This one isn't terrible, making a character hard to kill or hard to injure and drawing opponents to you so your friends can kill it. This can work in GURPS, tactically, if you can force foes to face an armored foe or a strongly resisting foe. But it takes tactics. You can't just roll out there and have the AI glom monsters onto you. You can't hit the "Aggravate Monsters" or "Taunt" button over and over and have the enemy surround you and swing uselessly. You need to actually trick, channel, or otherwise force monsters through actions to do this. Understanding how to control and channel foes to force them to fight your strongest, most survivable guy is quite different from "get out there and tank." The term gives you just enough of a wrong idea of how the fights will work that it can get you and your teammates killed. Better to ditch the term and start at first principles.
"DPS" - Damage Per Second, right? I think this has little place in most tabletop gaming and in GURPS especially. A good "DPS" tells you nice things about your choice of skill and damage, but what else? You have to hit, then your opponent needs to fail to defend, then you need to roll damage, then you subtract DR, then injury happens. That's if you can even attack a given opponent because of enemy action. DPS makes sense when I think of Diablo/Diablo II, where I'd wade into combat and hold down the buttons cutting through enemies until I won or lost. Well, won, mostly.
In GURPS? I've seen whole fights turn on a die roll. Your average damage per second over time is all well and good until you roll an 18 or a foe rolls a 3 and everything changes. It just hasn't been calculated number worth anything. You may do x.x damage per second in theory, but we're not fighting on a featureless plain. Your average over time doesn't get reflected on my tabletop. If you must use this, use it to compare some choices so you can make an informed decision about your choices. Don't trust it'll tell you the results of your adventuring.
"Character Build." - In video games you generally know what's out there, what your options are, and what you can plan around. So you design a pathway to long-term maximization of your options. Build a guy who'll be very good with spears because there is a unique spear down the line. Ditch him when the new patch nerfs spears. Build a guy who uses a specific combo of spells and powers to get things done. Etc. The whole "optimized path" approach bothers me.
In video games it makes sense. In tabletop RPGs, less so (but not none - see below). You can't predict everything. You don't really know all of your options, or how long you'll play. Not only that, by focusing on a "path" you ignore the fact that you're playing in a wide-open sandbox limited only by the imaginations of the players and GM. You're self-limiting.
Not only that, but the concept is of mechanical perfection. Not, I'm making a very interesting character but rather I'm making a very efficient playing piece. It's bad parts of both the "game" approach (characters aren't special snowflakes, they're playing pieces) and the "role-playing" approach (characters are designed around a preconceived plan, not derived from play.) What's worse is when it's a throwaway mechanical approach ("This is a dual-wielding knife barbarian") instead of a potentially interesting character ("He's a happy-go-lucky axeman dreaming of a farm he'll never save up a cent for.") The first says, "Hey GM, let's beta test the mechanics of these choices in an inter-collected series of battles!" and the second says, "Let's play a role-playing game."
Terms I like that migrated from video games
All that said, there are terms I like from play.
"Hardcore." - Yeah, my games are on hardcore mode for the most part. You can come back from the dead, if you have enough resources salted away and you recover the body. Even so, you might lose everything in the process.
"Healbot." - This I like as a pejorative. It's harder to make a "healing-only cleric" as a PC when the GM or other players says, oh, you're a healbot. Nothing like being reduced to a walking healing potion to make you think about diversifying out to other areas of skill, eh?
"Character Build." - Used differently than above, this isn't a bad idea. I'd prefer it spoken of as a "long-term plan." Have a plan. I emphasize this in life all the time, so why not in game? Have a vision of where your character is going. The concept of a "character build" is a useful one coupled with an eye towards the wide-open options of tabletop play. Know what you want to do and work toward it, but keep open to the possibilities that come along. Know what to sacrifice short-term for long term goals (the upside of a "build"). Have a plan of what you can get as you go so it all makes sense and makes a playable and enjoyable character. Know what stones to step on to get to the next stone, to the next, until you've crossed the stream. Don't bolt yourself to mechanical rails to get to munchkin maximization to get to the end.
"Boss Monster." - It's a good way to explain the "Saturday Night Special" encounters. Stuff worth the time, effort, and focus from both sides of the screen. It alerts you, the player, that big stuff is out there and sometimes monsters aren't just a bag of HP waiting to be whittled down so you can can take their GP. It alerts you, the GM, that you have to put some thought into big encounters so the game is punctuated by real challenges that can shift the game depending on how they go. The idea that some monsters are just flat-out special is a good one. It existed in tabletop RPGs from its earliest days (Acererak) but the term boss monster really speaks to it well and expands it.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Major Map Features & Cliches of Felltower
Just thinking of things I've put into my megadungeon.
Major Mapping Features I've used in Felltower include:
- sections of levels only accessible from below.
- dead-end levels (you can get to them, but not usefully anywhere else from them)
- semi dead-end levels (you can get into an otherwise isolated group of levels)
- sub-levels
- partial level changes. (That is, level changes that aren't so deep that I change sheets of mapping paper.)
- caverns
- underground river
- caverns verging on worked dungeon space.
- hidden rooms and hidden areas only accessible with special gear, items, or at specific times.
Megadungeon Cliches I've used in Felltower include:
- Flooded level.
- evil temple area (in fact, the evil temple)
- feuding factions.
- Overpowered monster nodes. (As in, monsters well about the difficulty of the surrounding area.)
- entrance from underwater.
- giant staircase (rumored, not yet seen)
- entrance from a hole in the ground.
- teleporters.
- trick statues.
- 5 degree slopes. (Okay, not 5 degrees.)
- unopenable doors.
- anti-magic zones
- room of pools
- levers with unknown function.
- ridiculous monsters. Lots and lots of ridiculous monsters.
I think although I haven't tossed in a Ye Olde Magic Shoppe, a monster arena, or a gambling den run by kobolds, I've hit some of the key notes I've admired in the published adventures and published tales of adventures from old school gaming. And not a little bit of new-school video gaming, too. Not bad. Now I just need a (secret) list of stuff I need to ensure I put in.
Major Mapping Features I've used in Felltower include:
- sections of levels only accessible from below.
- dead-end levels (you can get to them, but not usefully anywhere else from them)
- semi dead-end levels (you can get into an otherwise isolated group of levels)
- sub-levels
- partial level changes. (That is, level changes that aren't so deep that I change sheets of mapping paper.)
- caverns
- underground river
- caverns verging on worked dungeon space.
- hidden rooms and hidden areas only accessible with special gear, items, or at specific times.
Megadungeon Cliches I've used in Felltower include:
- Flooded level.
- evil temple area (in fact, the evil temple)
- feuding factions.
- Overpowered monster nodes. (As in, monsters well about the difficulty of the surrounding area.)
- entrance from underwater.
- giant staircase (rumored, not yet seen)
- entrance from a hole in the ground.
- teleporters.
- trick statues.
- 5 degree slopes. (Okay, not 5 degrees.)
- unopenable doors.
- anti-magic zones
- room of pools
- levers with unknown function.
- ridiculous monsters. Lots and lots of ridiculous monsters.
I think although I haven't tossed in a Ye Olde Magic Shoppe, a monster arena, or a gambling den run by kobolds, I've hit some of the key notes I've admired in the published adventures and published tales of adventures from old school gaming. And not a little bit of new-school video gaming, too. Not bad. Now I just need a (secret) list of stuff I need to ensure I put in.
Monday, September 9, 2013
What is a Ninja Tool (DF 12 question)
Sir Pudding (not actually knighted or pudding, sadly) asked about what the Ninja Tools advantage (DF12) covers.
Sir Pudding put together a good list, and I commented on which ones I think belong on it. I'm stealing it for here:
Arrow; $2 0.1 lbs. B276
Blowgun Dart; $0.1 .05 lbs ea. B276
Blowpipe Mount; $10 1 lb DF12 p. 15
Bow Drill; $8 1lb DF8 p. 25
Caltrops; $5 0.5 lbs DF1 p. 27
Door Needle; $4, neg. DF8 p. 25
Fukimi-bari; $5 .1 lbs DF12 14
Nageteppo, Flash; $40 .2 lbs DF1 p. 27
Nageteppo, Smoke; $40 .2 lbs DF1 p. 27
Shuriken, Star; $3 .1 lbs DF12 p. 14
Shuriken, Spike; $3 .1 lbs DF12 p. 14
Torch, Waterproof; $12 1b DF12 p. 15
Personally I'd have no issues having it include concoctions such as Bane poisons or Monster Drool. Why not? They aren't hideously lethal, they're certainly appropriate to the ninja's idiom, and they're within the realm of what seems like a gizmo. Here is that list, also courtesy of Sir Pudding:
Acid; $10 1lb DF1 p. 28
Anti-Toxin; $20 0.5 lbs DF 1 p. 28
Bane; $50 .5 lbs DF8 p. 37
Black Dust; $50 1 lbs DF8 p. 36
Foul Pepper; $50 1 lbs DF8 p. 36
Luminous Dust; $20 0.5 lbs DF8 p. 37
Monster Drool; $20 .5 lbs DF1 p. 29
Otherwise, I'd go with GM rulings on individual items. After all, if the GM and player both think a given item really fits the term "Ninja Tool" and otherwise is covered by the gizmo rules, it should be covered. And certainly a GM is within his or her rights to veto anything from the list above! But it's a good starting point at the very list.
(Oh and don't forget, Ninja Tools lets you trick out your weapons permanently. It's a powerful tradeoff for not having that one little piece of gear you really need . . .
Sir Pudding put together a good list, and I commented on which ones I think belong on it. I'm stealing it for here:
Arrow; $2 0.1 lbs. B276
Blowgun Dart; $0.1 .05 lbs ea. B276
Blowpipe Mount; $10 1 lb DF12 p. 15
Bow Drill; $8 1lb DF8 p. 25
Caltrops; $5 0.5 lbs DF1 p. 27
Door Needle; $4, neg. DF8 p. 25
Fukimi-bari; $5 .1 lbs DF12 14
Nageteppo, Flash; $40 .2 lbs DF1 p. 27
Nageteppo, Smoke; $40 .2 lbs DF1 p. 27
Shuriken, Star; $3 .1 lbs DF12 p. 14
Shuriken, Spike; $3 .1 lbs DF12 p. 14
Torch, Waterproof; $12 1b DF12 p. 15
Personally I'd have no issues having it include concoctions such as Bane poisons or Monster Drool. Why not? They aren't hideously lethal, they're certainly appropriate to the ninja's idiom, and they're within the realm of what seems like a gizmo. Here is that list, also courtesy of Sir Pudding:
Acid; $10 1lb DF1 p. 28
Anti-Toxin; $20 0.5 lbs DF 1 p. 28
Bane; $50 .5 lbs DF8 p. 37
Black Dust; $50 1 lbs DF8 p. 36
Foul Pepper; $50 1 lbs DF8 p. 36
Luminous Dust; $20 0.5 lbs DF8 p. 37
Monster Drool; $20 .5 lbs DF1 p. 29
Otherwise, I'd go with GM rulings on individual items. After all, if the GM and player both think a given item really fits the term "Ninja Tool" and otherwise is covered by the gizmo rules, it should be covered. And certainly a GM is within his or her rights to veto anything from the list above! But it's a good starting point at the very list.
(Oh and don't forget, Ninja Tools lets you trick out your weapons permanently. It's a powerful tradeoff for not having that one little piece of gear you really need . . .
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
PC Tips from Darkest Dungeon
Darkest Dungeon has some lessons to teach a player for a tabletop old-school game. Chronologically it's the reverse - Darkest Dungeon rewards you for playing like you memorized Gary Gygax's advice in the back of the AD&D Players Handbook.
Here is are some "Darkest Dungeon" tips and how they apply to the tabletop.
Have a Plan
You can't just go willy-nilly after an adventure. Unless circumstances force you to just go and see, have a plan for what you want to do. Even if you have to just go and scout around and hope . . . make that the plan and go with reconnaissance in mind. Know what "success" looks like for the plan, what is a sign of failure, and have a secondary objective in case the primary one is out of reach. And if things aren't going well . . . see "Managing Risk" and "One More Room," below.
"Go in and find enough loot" is a hope, not a plan. It's a definition of success not a plan of action.
Bring the right people.
You need a mission that suits your party and a party that suits your mission.
In DD this means choosing the right four and the taking them against the foes and into the areas that best suit them. On the tabletop, this means only going to places you can handle with the group you have. If you need to purge a temple of evil, have your cleric. If you need to fight a large force of fodder types, bring your multiple-attacking fighters. If you need to fight one big monster, make sure you've got at least one guy who does high damage. Etc.
Bring the Right Stuff
You don't have unlimited money and encumbrance (item slots in DD, weight in most tabletop games), so you can't bring enough of everything. You need to decide what you absolutely need to succeed and bring that, and some "this would be nice" stuff if you can afford it with money and space. But it also means don't bring more than you need - the "everyone has a 10' pole" line from Gygax in the PHB is apt, here. Extras are nice, but overages are still overages. Don't over-pack and don't under-pack.
Food and light sources, though - you probably can't overdo those in most cases. Aim to end with extras, just in case things take longer than you thought.
Don't Get Distracted
DD is full of curios. Most of them are a bad idea to touch, at least some of the time. Best bet? Don't touch them. Ignore them and move on unless they're part of the mission or clearly, unmistakeably treasure. Even then, have a care. Tabletop . . . the same. If you have a plan of action that doesn't involve some distraction, avoid the distraction. Get in, get your plan executed, and get out safely.
Manage Risk
You need to be bold and take risks to get anywhere in games of these sorts. But don't be bold when there isn't a reward, and don't take risks you don't need. But caution won't get you anywhere. If you're being totally cautious and careful you won't get anywhere. You'll need to risk injury or death, put resources on the line, or flat-out just expend permanently resources you can't replace in the service of getting to your goal.
Risk has to be managed - when the risk comes with a certain reward, you may need to take it. If you're always being very careful, eventually, you'll be unable to complete your missions and run out of resources. That goes for DD and on the tabletop.
Don't go "one more room."
If the mission is successful, unless you have absolute certainty you have easy profit and no or minimal loss, just end it there. Get out. Don't go another room, another fight, another hallway. Just leave. Anything less than certainty is risk, and risk isn't your friend. Sometimes "one more room" pays off. But in general, it's not going to.
This is especially true if you're either just being a completist. And for those moments when you're saying, "Well, that door probably leads to an empty room, which would be great, so let's just open it and make sure it does." You know, those moment when you don't want it to be a monster, a trick, a trap, a puzzle, or mystery. So just leave it alone. Make it part of the next plan, for next time, and come prepared. But don't risk victory trying to make it a more complete victory. Or risk a near-TPK becoming an actual TPK because you decided just to check out that one thing on the way home.
Actually if this whole post has one takeaway for you, let it be this one. Don't go "one more room." It's far more often a mistake than a good decision.
Here is are some "Darkest Dungeon" tips and how they apply to the tabletop.
Have a Plan
You can't just go willy-nilly after an adventure. Unless circumstances force you to just go and see, have a plan for what you want to do. Even if you have to just go and scout around and hope . . . make that the plan and go with reconnaissance in mind. Know what "success" looks like for the plan, what is a sign of failure, and have a secondary objective in case the primary one is out of reach. And if things aren't going well . . . see "Managing Risk" and "One More Room," below.
"Go in and find enough loot" is a hope, not a plan. It's a definition of success not a plan of action.
Bring the right people.
You need a mission that suits your party and a party that suits your mission.
In DD this means choosing the right four and the taking them against the foes and into the areas that best suit them. On the tabletop, this means only going to places you can handle with the group you have. If you need to purge a temple of evil, have your cleric. If you need to fight a large force of fodder types, bring your multiple-attacking fighters. If you need to fight one big monster, make sure you've got at least one guy who does high damage. Etc.
Bring the Right Stuff
You don't have unlimited money and encumbrance (item slots in DD, weight in most tabletop games), so you can't bring enough of everything. You need to decide what you absolutely need to succeed and bring that, and some "this would be nice" stuff if you can afford it with money and space. But it also means don't bring more than you need - the "everyone has a 10' pole" line from Gygax in the PHB is apt, here. Extras are nice, but overages are still overages. Don't over-pack and don't under-pack.
Food and light sources, though - you probably can't overdo those in most cases. Aim to end with extras, just in case things take longer than you thought.
Don't Get Distracted
DD is full of curios. Most of them are a bad idea to touch, at least some of the time. Best bet? Don't touch them. Ignore them and move on unless they're part of the mission or clearly, unmistakeably treasure. Even then, have a care. Tabletop . . . the same. If you have a plan of action that doesn't involve some distraction, avoid the distraction. Get in, get your plan executed, and get out safely.
Manage Risk
You need to be bold and take risks to get anywhere in games of these sorts. But don't be bold when there isn't a reward, and don't take risks you don't need. But caution won't get you anywhere. If you're being totally cautious and careful you won't get anywhere. You'll need to risk injury or death, put resources on the line, or flat-out just expend permanently resources you can't replace in the service of getting to your goal.
Risk has to be managed - when the risk comes with a certain reward, you may need to take it. If you're always being very careful, eventually, you'll be unable to complete your missions and run out of resources. That goes for DD and on the tabletop.
Don't go "one more room."
If the mission is successful, unless you have absolute certainty you have easy profit and no or minimal loss, just end it there. Get out. Don't go another room, another fight, another hallway. Just leave. Anything less than certainty is risk, and risk isn't your friend. Sometimes "one more room" pays off. But in general, it's not going to.
This is especially true if you're either just being a completist. And for those moments when you're saying, "Well, that door probably leads to an empty room, which would be great, so let's just open it and make sure it does." You know, those moment when you don't want it to be a monster, a trick, a trap, a puzzle, or mystery. So just leave it alone. Make it part of the next plan, for next time, and come prepared. But don't risk victory trying to make it a more complete victory. Or risk a near-TPK becoming an actual TPK because you decided just to check out that one thing on the way home.
Actually if this whole post has one takeaway for you, let it be this one. Don't go "one more room." It's far more often a mistake than a good decision.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Melee Academy: Typical Combat Mistakes
I thought I'd get down a couple of points about common combat mistakes I see in GURPS, and it grew into this.
These are errors I see in character generation, character development, and play. I'm not immune to these, myself, but generally I see them more than suffer from them because I'm the GM.
Betting on Airtight Defenses - I also call this the "perfect defense fallacy."
You see this in character design - maximum defenses, maximum possible HP, maximum DR. Buy the maximum protective perks, advantages, and skills you can before you do anything else. Whenever you have a choice between a game-changer advantage, an offensive advantage, or more defense - choose more defense.
This is a fallacy because you don't always get to defend - some attacks are by surprise, or ignore your chosen defense (and you don't know it does until too late), come from behind, or just affect everyone in an area. Further, some attacks ignore your DR, or just don't let your HP matter much (very high damage attacks, non-damaging afflictions, etc.) Grappling makes some of your defenses harder or negates them, once your foe is in close, and takes away more defenses once a grip is secure.
In GURPS, even a ST 25 barbarian with Mountain of Meat and dwarven plate armor with Fortify +5 on it can be one-shotted and killed outright. Avoiding utility and offensive power and game-changing abilities until your defenses are perfect means you're likely to need perfect defenses. And it won't be enough.
Betting on favorable circumstances.
This is an odd cousin to the perfect defenses fallacy. This is, "my defense bonuses will carry me through if I get all of them. Which I will, almost always."
It's an odd cousin because the perfect defense fallacy attempts to cover all of these bases - get a 16+ on defense rolls even when everything is going wrong. This fallacy assumes you won't have to make do. They overlap where the "won't have to make do" approach means you are buying up all sorts of conditional bonuses (shields, Shield spells, limited DR, specific defenses, etc.) in order to have perfect defenses . . . and then suffer because you need those defenses even when circumstances are not perfect.
Retreat - This warrants a special mention. Depending on Retreat to survive is a common error. Betting on your ability to retreat is a featureless plain fallacy. A substantial minority of the time, you will be unable to Retreat at all. A majority of the time when you're fighting alongside friends, you are better off as a group if no one Retreats. But plenty of players will depend on Retreat, especially in the face of non-striking attacks (slams, grapples, grabs, etc.)
Depending on retrograde movement to make your combat strategy work means "room to move" isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. The Retreat-based strategy also means you depend on your friends to give you space, not support - it's an every-man-for-himself strategy. If your friends are close enough to support you, they are close enough to impede your retreat. Or close enough that if you retreat and they don't, enemies will pour into the gaps.
Defensive fighting is smart, but these three mistakes result from putting defense now (or defense numbers) ahead of all other concerns. It's overdoing a good thing.
This approach can also be frustrating for the player, too - you bank on your top-notch defenses and then along come attacks that make them irrelevant. There is little grumpier than the player of a grappled PC with 1 point in Wrestling, or who is attacked from behind despite 8 front-facing DB and a base Parry of 12, or someone who can't fight without his shield once his shield gets broken. You go from "I can Parry anything 98.1% of the time, and I have luck for the 1.9%" to "this game sucks!" or "We've lost this one" in one move.
The Wunderwaffen Fallacy - Basically, "and then a miracle happens, and we win the fight!"
Summoned monsters, one-shot monster summoning items, potions, alchemist's fire, poison, spells, etc. all fall into this category. Instead of being used as an assistance to the main effort of the group's offense or defense, they often make up the main effort.
Either they get deployed as a first-strike wunderwaffen ("I'll throw this poison gas bomb and sit back and reap the rewards!") or as a last-ditch attempt to save the day ("They're tearing us apart! This statuette that summons a 40-point imp will save us!"), or both. In both cases, they're often deployed with unreasonable expectations of success and thus without support - you send the summoned monster in alone, you throw the grenade in, you change nothing about your approach but down a potion to do it a little better.
In my own games, I have given items that will save the day, and which have done so. But they're vastly outnumbered by the ones that just are helpful to a good strategy but which won't bail you out of a bad one. It's rare to have a one-shot win button magic item or spell or piece of gear, but very often people treat any one-shot item or summoned creature as one.
Not enough offense.
It's one thing to get a solid offensive ability and then diversify. It's another to have, basically, a weak offense.
That generally springs from a few issues.
Not enough offensive variety. Because putting all your eggs in one basket is point-efficient, it's very common for GURPS characters to be one-trick ponies in combat. They end up really bad at everything except their chosen skill, and thus prefer to use that in all cases. It's also monetarily efficient to has one great weapon instead of two not-as-great ones. So resource management pushes for one skill, one weapon.
This is why you see people swinging flails, two-handed swords, shields, and axes while grappled instead of using knives, grappling back, head butting, etc. Even with the penalties for doing so, the other options are often so neglected they won't work in the circumstances they're made for.
A lack of damage variety is another - only cut, only crushing, only impaling, only piercing, etc. - often means you are exceptionally good against opponents vulnerable to that kind of attack. If you are an expert against eye shots, you better hope your opponents have eyes and didn't take Injury Tolerance (No Brain) or its equivalent. If you only have cutting attacks and your foe is vulnerable to crushing, you're giving up an advantage by sticking to one damage type. And so on.
No distance variety. - A subset of this is a lack of ranged attacks. You get the occasional thrown weapon, which are bad against foes with shields or a solid parry skill. But generally guys are "melee" or "ranged" but rarely both. After all, 4 points "wasted" in Bow is a +1 to your melee skill you didn't take, or vice-versa. Even with a thrown weapon, it's often too valuable to throw away and the range doesn't stack up - it becomes more of a special case for melee than truly ranged.
No offense, period - Support-type characters tend to have this - no way to usefully contribute to a fight. They bring a pistol to a rifle fight, a knife to a gunfight, and an emergency backup weapon to a swirling melee. Since they can't do much, they end up doing nothing - foes can ignore them (or try to victimize them, to draw a reaction). This is often a side effect of the one-dimensional no-range-or-no-melee character design. "I'll just stand here."
Time is wasting!
This came up in my discussions of suicide by Great Haste. There is a pull towards maximizing what you do this turn.
It's possible to waste opportunities. It's possible to do too little and not contribute to victory. But the fallacy springs from thinking that you must do as much as possible each turn to create opportunities. This can lead to forcing ones that don't exist, or taking risks that aren't warranted to try to create a payoff. Just realizing that if there is nothing good to do, Waiting or some non-attacking move (taunting, inspiring friends with Leadership, getting into a better position, etc.) can be the best option available. Pushing too little is bad, but so is pushing too hard. It's this mistake that drives lots of running around the battlefield trying to attack the best target every time, breaking up formations, or doing costly attacks with little benefit to yourself or your friends.
Those are some of the combat mistakes I see pretty often in my games, and from reading other people's game reports.
These are errors I see in character generation, character development, and play. I'm not immune to these, myself, but generally I see them more than suffer from them because I'm the GM.
Betting on Airtight Defenses - I also call this the "perfect defense fallacy."
You see this in character design - maximum defenses, maximum possible HP, maximum DR. Buy the maximum protective perks, advantages, and skills you can before you do anything else. Whenever you have a choice between a game-changer advantage, an offensive advantage, or more defense - choose more defense.
This is a fallacy because you don't always get to defend - some attacks are by surprise, or ignore your chosen defense (and you don't know it does until too late), come from behind, or just affect everyone in an area. Further, some attacks ignore your DR, or just don't let your HP matter much (very high damage attacks, non-damaging afflictions, etc.) Grappling makes some of your defenses harder or negates them, once your foe is in close, and takes away more defenses once a grip is secure.
In GURPS, even a ST 25 barbarian with Mountain of Meat and dwarven plate armor with Fortify +5 on it can be one-shotted and killed outright. Avoiding utility and offensive power and game-changing abilities until your defenses are perfect means you're likely to need perfect defenses. And it won't be enough.
Betting on favorable circumstances.
This is an odd cousin to the perfect defenses fallacy. This is, "my defense bonuses will carry me through if I get all of them. Which I will, almost always."
It's an odd cousin because the perfect defense fallacy attempts to cover all of these bases - get a 16+ on defense rolls even when everything is going wrong. This fallacy assumes you won't have to make do. They overlap where the "won't have to make do" approach means you are buying up all sorts of conditional bonuses (shields, Shield spells, limited DR, specific defenses, etc.) in order to have perfect defenses . . . and then suffer because you need those defenses even when circumstances are not perfect.
Retreat - This warrants a special mention. Depending on Retreat to survive is a common error. Betting on your ability to retreat is a featureless plain fallacy. A substantial minority of the time, you will be unable to Retreat at all. A majority of the time when you're fighting alongside friends, you are better off as a group if no one Retreats. But plenty of players will depend on Retreat, especially in the face of non-striking attacks (slams, grapples, grabs, etc.)
Depending on retrograde movement to make your combat strategy work means "room to move" isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. The Retreat-based strategy also means you depend on your friends to give you space, not support - it's an every-man-for-himself strategy. If your friends are close enough to support you, they are close enough to impede your retreat. Or close enough that if you retreat and they don't, enemies will pour into the gaps.
Defensive fighting is smart, but these three mistakes result from putting defense now (or defense numbers) ahead of all other concerns. It's overdoing a good thing.
This approach can also be frustrating for the player, too - you bank on your top-notch defenses and then along come attacks that make them irrelevant. There is little grumpier than the player of a grappled PC with 1 point in Wrestling, or who is attacked from behind despite 8 front-facing DB and a base Parry of 12, or someone who can't fight without his shield once his shield gets broken. You go from "I can Parry anything 98.1% of the time, and I have luck for the 1.9%" to "this game sucks!" or "We've lost this one" in one move.
The Wunderwaffen Fallacy - Basically, "and then a miracle happens, and we win the fight!"
Summoned monsters, one-shot monster summoning items, potions, alchemist's fire, poison, spells, etc. all fall into this category. Instead of being used as an assistance to the main effort of the group's offense or defense, they often make up the main effort.
Either they get deployed as a first-strike wunderwaffen ("I'll throw this poison gas bomb and sit back and reap the rewards!") or as a last-ditch attempt to save the day ("They're tearing us apart! This statuette that summons a 40-point imp will save us!"), or both. In both cases, they're often deployed with unreasonable expectations of success and thus without support - you send the summoned monster in alone, you throw the grenade in, you change nothing about your approach but down a potion to do it a little better.
In my own games, I have given items that will save the day, and which have done so. But they're vastly outnumbered by the ones that just are helpful to a good strategy but which won't bail you out of a bad one. It's rare to have a one-shot win button magic item or spell or piece of gear, but very often people treat any one-shot item or summoned creature as one.
Not enough offense.
It's one thing to get a solid offensive ability and then diversify. It's another to have, basically, a weak offense.
That generally springs from a few issues.
Not enough offensive variety. Because putting all your eggs in one basket is point-efficient, it's very common for GURPS characters to be one-trick ponies in combat. They end up really bad at everything except their chosen skill, and thus prefer to use that in all cases. It's also monetarily efficient to has one great weapon instead of two not-as-great ones. So resource management pushes for one skill, one weapon.
This is why you see people swinging flails, two-handed swords, shields, and axes while grappled instead of using knives, grappling back, head butting, etc. Even with the penalties for doing so, the other options are often so neglected they won't work in the circumstances they're made for.
A lack of damage variety is another - only cut, only crushing, only impaling, only piercing, etc. - often means you are exceptionally good against opponents vulnerable to that kind of attack. If you are an expert against eye shots, you better hope your opponents have eyes and didn't take Injury Tolerance (No Brain) or its equivalent. If you only have cutting attacks and your foe is vulnerable to crushing, you're giving up an advantage by sticking to one damage type. And so on.
No distance variety. - A subset of this is a lack of ranged attacks. You get the occasional thrown weapon, which are bad against foes with shields or a solid parry skill. But generally guys are "melee" or "ranged" but rarely both. After all, 4 points "wasted" in Bow is a +1 to your melee skill you didn't take, or vice-versa. Even with a thrown weapon, it's often too valuable to throw away and the range doesn't stack up - it becomes more of a special case for melee than truly ranged.
No offense, period - Support-type characters tend to have this - no way to usefully contribute to a fight. They bring a pistol to a rifle fight, a knife to a gunfight, and an emergency backup weapon to a swirling melee. Since they can't do much, they end up doing nothing - foes can ignore them (or try to victimize them, to draw a reaction). This is often a side effect of the one-dimensional no-range-or-no-melee character design. "I'll just stand here."
Time is wasting!
This came up in my discussions of suicide by Great Haste. There is a pull towards maximizing what you do this turn.
It's possible to waste opportunities. It's possible to do too little and not contribute to victory. But the fallacy springs from thinking that you must do as much as possible each turn to create opportunities. This can lead to forcing ones that don't exist, or taking risks that aren't warranted to try to create a payoff. Just realizing that if there is nothing good to do, Waiting or some non-attacking move (taunting, inspiring friends with Leadership, getting into a better position, etc.) can be the best option available. Pushing too little is bad, but so is pushing too hard. It's this mistake that drives lots of running around the battlefield trying to attack the best target every time, breaking up formations, or doing costly attacks with little benefit to yourself or your friends.
Those are some of the combat mistakes I see pretty often in my games, and from reading other people's game reports.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Poisoning the Monsters
If you're going into a hole in the ground full of monsters to kill them, why aren't you using poison?
Those paragons of us-against-the-world ruthlessness did it:
That's just one example from those books - poisoned dart-shooters show up in Shadows Linger, too, and arrow poison in the Books of the South.
But what about in games?
I've heard a lot of arguments against it, some of which Jim Ward discusses here, while endorsing its use:
My players seems to agree with him. One of the two scouts has every single one of his arrows poisoned. Venom has come up in discussions of tactics. The real death-dealers skip it, only because they mostly don't need it to kill the monsters they most often fight, making it less cost effective.
But old-school AD&D pretty much stomped on poison use, and presented those objections raised in Mr. Ward's piece.
Still more can be found in the 1st edition PHB, 1st edition DMG, and even later D&D books like the 3.0 DMG. While the 1st edition DMG is a bit more generous than the others - it says assassins use poison "just as any other character classes" - but it still limits it a lot. It's got a lot of the same limitations on poison.
These are notably absent in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1, which makes poison a straight-up option on the equipment list, and the only benefit from being skilled in Poisons skill is the ability to use poison more effectively. Otherwise, it's assumed it is ready (and fairly straightforward) to use. Rolemaster had plenty of nasty, nasty things you could use on weapons, although mostly people were too busy lopping off limbs to pay money for poisons in my games.
But what about the objections in the AD&D books?
Some I don't buy, or buy only partly:
The poison will dry up and/or lose its effectiveness. Sure, maybe it will. So why not store it in breakable containers? If you say there aren't easy to transport but also easy to break containers, well, flaming oil is right out, too, potentially. So are pots of green slime and other sneaky tactics. Or just put it on before you enter the dungeon and stab something pretty quickly.
You can also take a leaf from The Wild Geese, and put breakable containers of venom (cyanide, in the movie) behind arrowheads. There is some suggestion that's how venom-using hunters do it. Maybe Gary Gygax was right and it'll dry out and won't stick to blades . . . but mixing up a sticky version might help, or alternate delivery methods can be used.
People will attack you. Seriously? The whole "hue and cry for the watch and then attack" bit is pretty funny. Joe the Blacksmith will attack the hulking barbarian because he was a poisoned sword? Yeah . . . that seems pretty smart. Your hirelings will jump you in the dungeon? Why?
The assassins guild will attack you? Why again? Competition? They want people to know if you die from poisoned wounds, they did it? Again, I can see them limiting sales to members, assuming there is even an assassin's guild, but what about the alchemist's guild? They might have something you can use as poison. Even merely biological agents - things that will putrefy wounds - or agents that will poison food - are useful against monsters. Does anyone mind if you put out poison food to kill basilisks or wipe out giant rats?
People will besmirch your honor. You have me here. They will, and they should, if you're using it in fair fights. I bet people don't describe "exterminating orcs" as a fair fight issue, or killing umber hulks as an issue of honor. But maybe they do, and you're sensitive to that. Well, honor has costs as well as benefits. Being a murder hobo does sometimes have advantages. Even more so, I bet they'd have an issue with the way you surprise attacked the orcs with a rank of hirelings behind you, the way you call those hirelings "meatshields," or the way you throw flaming oil and fireballs into rooms full of bandits because it's better than facing them one-on-one, or slit throats of Sleep spell victims, or use magical chemical agents (cloudkill in D&D, stench in GURPS). Look, most adventurers don't fight fair in the first place, so poison isn't a fairness issue. It's a social acceptance issue. You might be limited in appropriate targets, but I bet no one will complain if you use poison on predatory monsters.
You might cut yourself with your own weapon. Does this happen a lot? I mean, are you normally assumed to be slicing yourself with your blade on a regular basis? I'm pretty clumsy and I slice myself with my kitchen knife about, oh, once or twice a year. But my Broadsword-18 warrior might poison himself? My 9th level lord is has a 5% chance of poisoning himself (that's the 3.0 rule)? I just have trouble with this. Sure, blow a roll badly enough and hit yourself and you have a poison weapon? Sucks to be you. But it shouldn't be more dangerous to use than, say, a flaming sword or a vorpal blade.
It's a dangerous substance, but so are a lot of substances. Plus an insinuative poison - one that needs an open wound - isn't likely to also be a contact agent, so it's not necessarily automatically unsafe to get a little on you (assuming you wipe it off). Contact venom is more dangerous, but also less likely for use - against furry or scaled monsters, or armored men, contact venom isn't so helpful. Gas or blood agents are more easily delivered, and while gas is tricky (too easy to expose yourself to it) blood agents should be a little safer to handle with the usual adventurer gear of heavy gloves and suits of armor.
You need to know how to use it. I buy this, partially. You do need to know how to use it effectively. If you're just putting it on yourself with no expertise, you're likely to either use too much (and waste it), too little (and waste it), or put it on incorrectly (minimizing the effectiveness of the dose). The more readily available pre-measured doses and simple delivery systems are, the less of an issue this needs to be. And if magical elixirs come in perfectly pre-measured doses, it's not unreasonable venoms wouldn't come that way, too.
It's not fun/it makes the game too easy/it takes away from assassins. Basically the meta-game issues. The not fun part I sort-of get. Shoot it, it's going to die from the ounces of cobra venom you just delivered, so close the door and slink off for an hour and come back. Not the most fun.
The others, no so much. Too easy? Sure, if you have a ready supply of cheap save-or-die venom. So don't do that. The best venom in the book in Dungeon Fantasy 1 that is close to "save-or-die," Bladeblack, costs $1000 a dose - that's the entire starting funds for a PC for one dose. You might get some and use it, but not without some thought. The weakest is $20 a dose, and it's not a bad deal except it does very little damage and it's easy to resist. Worth adding but it's no game breaker. The "it takes away from assassins" bit is a bit more fair - but DF deals with this by making assassins more effective with venom. They can use their Poisons skill to put multiple doses on a single weapon so they take effect all at once. That alone makes it worth more - $80 worth of "Monster Drool" can hurt even a tough monster with strong resistance - and gives the assassin an edge. Not only that, but a lack of instant save-or-die venoms plus stronger monsters (in other words the important targets) means that the ones you most want to poison (dragons, et al) are the hardest to dispatch with poison.
The argument for poisons is pretty simple:
Hunting monsters is dangerous, you need every edge you can get. Yes, it is, and you do. If it's possible to get poison, why not use it? If you can get an effective venom that will hurt monsters you fight and aid your chances of success, and your character doesn't have some limitation that prevents it (Code of Honor, a Vow, or say, being a Paladin), think about putting some money into poisons. Heck, Jim Ward did it. He's pretty old school, isn't he?
Those paragons of us-against-the-world ruthlessness did it:
"Elmo, pick some good halbardier and crossbowmen. Quarrels to be poisoned."
- The Captain, in Glen Cook's The Black Company
That's just one example from those books - poisoned dart-shooters show up in Shadows Linger, too, and arrow poison in the Books of the South.
But what about in games?
I've heard a lot of arguments against it, some of which Jim Ward discusses here, while endorsing its use:
"Then there is the poison on the dagger trick, which every judge is always trying
to stop. I have been told that poisons evaporate, poisons exposed to the air lose
their effectiveness, or the most used of all, in your area there is no poison strong
enough to kill the things you want. I suggest to all you players and especially the
magic users that can use only daggers, that any amount of money and effort
spent in the procuring of a really effective poison is worth it. I spent over 90,000
gold and haven't regretted a copper piece of it."
- James M. Ward, "NOTES FROM A SEMI-SUCCESSFUL D&D PLAYER," The Dragon #13
My players seems to agree with him. One of the two scouts has every single one of his arrows poisoned. Venom has come up in discussions of tactics. The real death-dealers skip it, only because they mostly don't need it to kill the monsters they most often fight, making it less cost effective.
But old-school AD&D pretty much stomped on poison use, and presented those objections raised in Mr. Ward's piece.
Still more can be found in the 1st edition PHB, 1st edition DMG, and even later D&D books like the 3.0 DMG. While the 1st edition DMG is a bit more generous than the others - it says assassins use poison "just as any other character classes" - but it still limits it a lot. It's got a lot of the same limitations on poison.
These are notably absent in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1, which makes poison a straight-up option on the equipment list, and the only benefit from being skilled in Poisons skill is the ability to use poison more effectively. Otherwise, it's assumed it is ready (and fairly straightforward) to use. Rolemaster had plenty of nasty, nasty things you could use on weapons, although mostly people were too busy lopping off limbs to pay money for poisons in my games.
But what about the objections in the AD&D books?
Some I don't buy, or buy only partly:
The poison will dry up and/or lose its effectiveness. Sure, maybe it will. So why not store it in breakable containers? If you say there aren't easy to transport but also easy to break containers, well, flaming oil is right out, too, potentially. So are pots of green slime and other sneaky tactics. Or just put it on before you enter the dungeon and stab something pretty quickly.
You can also take a leaf from The Wild Geese, and put breakable containers of venom (cyanide, in the movie) behind arrowheads. There is some suggestion that's how venom-using hunters do it. Maybe Gary Gygax was right and it'll dry out and won't stick to blades . . . but mixing up a sticky version might help, or alternate delivery methods can be used.
People will attack you. Seriously? The whole "hue and cry for the watch and then attack" bit is pretty funny. Joe the Blacksmith will attack the hulking barbarian because he was a poisoned sword? Yeah . . . that seems pretty smart. Your hirelings will jump you in the dungeon? Why?
The assassins guild will attack you? Why again? Competition? They want people to know if you die from poisoned wounds, they did it? Again, I can see them limiting sales to members, assuming there is even an assassin's guild, but what about the alchemist's guild? They might have something you can use as poison. Even merely biological agents - things that will putrefy wounds - or agents that will poison food - are useful against monsters. Does anyone mind if you put out poison food to kill basilisks or wipe out giant rats?
People will besmirch your honor. You have me here. They will, and they should, if you're using it in fair fights. I bet people don't describe "exterminating orcs" as a fair fight issue, or killing umber hulks as an issue of honor. But maybe they do, and you're sensitive to that. Well, honor has costs as well as benefits. Being a murder hobo does sometimes have advantages. Even more so, I bet they'd have an issue with the way you surprise attacked the orcs with a rank of hirelings behind you, the way you call those hirelings "meatshields," or the way you throw flaming oil and fireballs into rooms full of bandits because it's better than facing them one-on-one, or slit throats of Sleep spell victims, or use magical chemical agents (cloudkill in D&D, stench in GURPS). Look, most adventurers don't fight fair in the first place, so poison isn't a fairness issue. It's a social acceptance issue. You might be limited in appropriate targets, but I bet no one will complain if you use poison on predatory monsters.
You might cut yourself with your own weapon. Does this happen a lot? I mean, are you normally assumed to be slicing yourself with your blade on a regular basis? I'm pretty clumsy and I slice myself with my kitchen knife about, oh, once or twice a year. But my Broadsword-18 warrior might poison himself? My 9th level lord is has a 5% chance of poisoning himself (that's the 3.0 rule)? I just have trouble with this. Sure, blow a roll badly enough and hit yourself and you have a poison weapon? Sucks to be you. But it shouldn't be more dangerous to use than, say, a flaming sword or a vorpal blade.
It's a dangerous substance, but so are a lot of substances. Plus an insinuative poison - one that needs an open wound - isn't likely to also be a contact agent, so it's not necessarily automatically unsafe to get a little on you (assuming you wipe it off). Contact venom is more dangerous, but also less likely for use - against furry or scaled monsters, or armored men, contact venom isn't so helpful. Gas or blood agents are more easily delivered, and while gas is tricky (too easy to expose yourself to it) blood agents should be a little safer to handle with the usual adventurer gear of heavy gloves and suits of armor.
You need to know how to use it. I buy this, partially. You do need to know how to use it effectively. If you're just putting it on yourself with no expertise, you're likely to either use too much (and waste it), too little (and waste it), or put it on incorrectly (minimizing the effectiveness of the dose). The more readily available pre-measured doses and simple delivery systems are, the less of an issue this needs to be. And if magical elixirs come in perfectly pre-measured doses, it's not unreasonable venoms wouldn't come that way, too.
It's not fun/it makes the game too easy/it takes away from assassins. Basically the meta-game issues. The not fun part I sort-of get. Shoot it, it's going to die from the ounces of cobra venom you just delivered, so close the door and slink off for an hour and come back. Not the most fun.
The others, no so much. Too easy? Sure, if you have a ready supply of cheap save-or-die venom. So don't do that. The best venom in the book in Dungeon Fantasy 1 that is close to "save-or-die," Bladeblack, costs $1000 a dose - that's the entire starting funds for a PC for one dose. You might get some and use it, but not without some thought. The weakest is $20 a dose, and it's not a bad deal except it does very little damage and it's easy to resist. Worth adding but it's no game breaker. The "it takes away from assassins" bit is a bit more fair - but DF deals with this by making assassins more effective with venom. They can use their Poisons skill to put multiple doses on a single weapon so they take effect all at once. That alone makes it worth more - $80 worth of "Monster Drool" can hurt even a tough monster with strong resistance - and gives the assassin an edge. Not only that, but a lack of instant save-or-die venoms plus stronger monsters (in other words the important targets) means that the ones you most want to poison (dragons, et al) are the hardest to dispatch with poison.
The argument for poisons is pretty simple:
Hunting monsters is dangerous, you need every edge you can get. Yes, it is, and you do. If it's possible to get poison, why not use it? If you can get an effective venom that will hurt monsters you fight and aid your chances of success, and your character doesn't have some limitation that prevents it (Code of Honor, a Vow, or say, being a Paladin), think about putting some money into poisons. Heck, Jim Ward did it. He's pretty old school, isn't he?
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
A Black Reaver in Felltower
In Sunday's game, the PCs encountered a very tough monster. I didn't name it, but I did describe using some exact wording. And I've been dropping blatant hints that there was one in my dungeon. After all, I knew it would be there - I'd planned on this one being in the place since I'd first started mapping it.
It was a Black Reaver, straight out of Rolemaster Companion, one of my favorite RPG supplements.
I don't think any of the players at the table recognized it.
But at least one who missed the session did - he'd encountered one before in a game I'd run.
At least in Rolemaster, and possibly in my DF game, there are two kinds of black reaver - the black reaver, and the lesser black reaver. The first one's description includes the line "There is nothing short of a deity more dangerous than a Black Reaver."
The lesser ones?
The "Lesser Black Reavers are not so over-whelming in their power, though certainly more dangerous than an average large Dragon!"
I'll let the PCs draw their own conclusions about this one. But it's certainly tough. I mentioned them before as trick monsters and when I talked about using your favorite monsters right away. And they came up on the rumor table.
The PCs will be researching them, and I'll share here all that they learn. If you want to know the inspirational material, check out the Rolemaster Companion or Creatures & Monsters.
It was a Black Reaver, straight out of Rolemaster Companion, one of my favorite RPG supplements.
I don't think any of the players at the table recognized it.
But at least one who missed the session did - he'd encountered one before in a game I'd run.
At least in Rolemaster, and possibly in my DF game, there are two kinds of black reaver - the black reaver, and the lesser black reaver. The first one's description includes the line "There is nothing short of a deity more dangerous than a Black Reaver."
The lesser ones?
The "Lesser Black Reavers are not so over-whelming in their power, though certainly more dangerous than an average large Dragon!"
I'll let the PCs draw their own conclusions about this one. But it's certainly tough. I mentioned them before as trick monsters and when I talked about using your favorite monsters right away. And they came up on the rumor table.
The PCs will be researching them, and I'll share here all that they learn. If you want to know the inspirational material, check out the Rolemaster Companion or Creatures & Monsters.
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Tools in the Felltower PC toolbox - GM perspective
Here, broadly, are some ruminations on the tools in the PC's toolbox, for dealing with Felltower. How did I build them into Felltower, and how valuable are they?
After all, if I don't account or allow for something, it's unlikely to work. And if I rank something as important and it's not used, the players are potentially missing on an expect aspect of the game and the benefits of it.
Combat
Some things in Felltower need to be fought. They're beatable, and you really need to beat them to get the things done that delvers want to do - explore and (more importantly) plunder.
You don't want to fight everything in Felltower, though. That's a sure route to a slow, miserable slog of sessions with lots of casualties, seemingly endless rest times, and coin flowing in rivers to the alchemists who crank out healing potions as fast as they are able to concoct them. You definitely need to pick and choose your battles, even if eventually you want most of the things you meet dead. Some picking and choosing is just going be "for now" - who do you want to or need to fight at them moment?
It's not a universal tool. There is at least one "thing" in Felltower that literally can never be beaten in the traditional sense. Frustrated, avoided, put out of action for a while, or dealt with, but not engaged in a straight-up fight and beaten. Plenty of "things" aren't worth the fight for the reward, or fighting them will cost potential value attainable by not fighting them.
This puts combat as a very useful tool - lots of stuff that needs beating and which can be beat. It's probably the most useful tool, for in-game and out-of-game reasons. In game, because a dead monster is less threatening than a live one. Out of game, because combat is fun when it's going well or turning out to be tight and eventful. The game is designed to ensure combat is an important tool. While Sun Tzu is right, the acme of skill is winning without fighting, part of the game fun are the fights that happen. Some of those fights will come with costs that must be paid. Part of the challenge is dealing with those when they occur, or when the dice tell you the price.
Negotiation
There are plenty of things to negotiate with - or just flat-out distract with bribes - in Felltower. Many "things" are eminently worth talking to and some are even so worth talking to you'll lose out if you avoid them or fight them.
But again, you can't negotiate with them all. Some things just won't negotiate. Some things can't even conceive of what negotiating entails. Some are so hate-filled or evil or just tricky that negotiating is a route to disaster no matter how well you think it's going.
This makes negotiation a useful tool. Lots of stuff is better spoken to than killed. But it's a secondary tool to combat, overall. Given the goals of delvers - loot and reward - it's hard to only negotiate to get them. Still, negotiations are fun and interesting, so they are built in to the game as a valid tool. It can even elevate to more important than combat if you negotiate with just the right parties.
Puzzle Solving
There are some player-facing puzzles in Felltower. Trick doors, revolving statues, odd mazes, teleporter arrays, actual explicit "solve this riddle" or "solve this puzzle" type situations, and so on.
Unlike the previous tools, they always work in the situations where they work, and don't really work outside of them.
You can't treat everything as a puzzle. Some situations are set up as hard fights or tough negotiations, and aren't puzzles per se. Good tactical choices or clever negotiations might make them easier or even easy, but in general, they are what they are: hard fights, tough negotiations. The explicit puzzles, though, generally resist brute-force solutions well enough that they don't work. Or the brute-force solution takes vastly more resources than the puzzle solution would. Puzzles are rarely disguised, too - they're pretty up-front about being an odd thing to deal with and solve, even if the solution (or the reward) is far from clear.
Puzzles are there because they're a fairly common occurrence in the materials I drew on for the game. Puzzle solving skills are critical to confront them, but puzzle solving skills are of less value outside of them. This probably ranks puzzle-solving skills near the bottom of the value spectrum. It's rare for such puzzles to block your advance (although at least one does), but more common for them to shield special rewards, special areas, and special opportunities. Most of them are solvable primarily - or solely - through player reasoning or player trial and error. The puzzles are player-facing, and it's not a question of trying and trying again until you roll a 3 or flipping though GURPS Magic until you find the Solve This Puzzle spell.
Magic in General
Magic is a critical tool in the Felltower toolbox.
One problem with magic is that you need to rely on it, and it's very binary (works/doesn't work), yet it's not reliable. You can't depend on always having it. You can't even depend on it always working even when the spell succeeds. You can be led astray by false divinations, or tricked by your own assumptions about what success or failure means. It can distract you from a clear non-magical solution because there are so many choices of magical ones.
Plus, it's costly. It costs energy and eventually time. It's a nearly-universal tool but most problems solvable with magic are solvable without it, given different resources and time. Recovery from spells takes time, so using too much magic can slow you down and add more problems (wandering monsters, local monsters making adjustments, draining of resources) than it solves.
Magic is right up there with negotiation in terms of importance. You need it, you won't get far if you don't use it, and some problems aren't solvable as puzzles or with negotiation or combat. But it's a tool that acts like a hammer and nail situation - given sufficient magic, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking there is a spell that solves every specific situation you encounter.
Preparation
Preparing for the delve is a key tool in the Felltower PC toolbox.
Rumor-gathering (and reviewing), sage-hiring, equipment-buying, and pre-planning are all aspects of this. PCs who prepare are PCs who can solve problems that ones who don't can't.
Felltower is built on the assumption that it is repeatedly visited, and that PCs will prepare with the right gear, pour money into the hands of sages and old-timer former adventurers, and so on in order to learn what they can.
Equally, though, the main elements are designed to be things the PCs find out through hard-won experience, clever action, and specific attempts at actions. The players, more than their PCs, determine success or failure with preparation.
This is a somewhat tricky tool, given the way GURPS works. The PCs have knowledge skills, and it can be tempting to set everything to a roll and ask the GM, "What does my guy know?" and then try to follow up with more rolls against the skill when that doesn't seem enough. I try to solve this by giving a general, "here is what you know" roll, then leaving the rest n the PC's hands. It's tempting as a player to use knowledge skills as a chance to pump the GM for a hint about what to do. I attempt to cut that off after an initial wash of information to set the scene.
As such, this is a middle-grade tool. It's important, but as long as you've done the basics and play cleverly, it's possible to succeed without pouring money into knowledge and preparation. That said, there is a minimum you must do - buy rations, lay in healing potions, recharge power items, etc. - to succeed at all. Having done that, the extra is extra - useful but not an impediment to success if you forgo finding things out before you go instead of in play. It's not that Felltower is forgiving, just that players tend to resolve more through play than through preparing for success.
Risk-taking
Risk-taking is an important tool in the Felltower toolbox.
You cannot get rich in a megadungeon, especially mine, without taking risks.
That's worth repeating with emphasis:
You cannot get rich in a megadungeon, especially mine, without taking risks.
Sometimes you need to take a flyer on negotiations and trust the potentially untrustworthy. Sometimes you need to engage in a risky fight. Sometimes you need to pull something, push something, touch something, or stick your hand into something. But equally you need to resort to this when intuition and experience and trial and error tells you to do so. You can neither touch everything or slink through the dungeon touching nothing and get what you want out of it.
Risk-taking is the most critical tool in the player toolbox. Even more so than combat, in a game designed to have lots of combat. Even more so than magic, in a game explicitly about a magical world. Even more so than negotiation, in a game where that's threaded into play to ensure it's worth doing and expected behavior. If you take too many risks, you'll pay. If you don't take enough, you'll lose out. Balance is critical here, but it's the fundamental basis for the other tools discussed above.
After all, if I don't account or allow for something, it's unlikely to work. And if I rank something as important and it's not used, the players are potentially missing on an expect aspect of the game and the benefits of it.
Combat
Some things in Felltower need to be fought. They're beatable, and you really need to beat them to get the things done that delvers want to do - explore and (more importantly) plunder.
You don't want to fight everything in Felltower, though. That's a sure route to a slow, miserable slog of sessions with lots of casualties, seemingly endless rest times, and coin flowing in rivers to the alchemists who crank out healing potions as fast as they are able to concoct them. You definitely need to pick and choose your battles, even if eventually you want most of the things you meet dead. Some picking and choosing is just going be "for now" - who do you want to or need to fight at them moment?
It's not a universal tool. There is at least one "thing" in Felltower that literally can never be beaten in the traditional sense. Frustrated, avoided, put out of action for a while, or dealt with, but not engaged in a straight-up fight and beaten. Plenty of "things" aren't worth the fight for the reward, or fighting them will cost potential value attainable by not fighting them.
This puts combat as a very useful tool - lots of stuff that needs beating and which can be beat. It's probably the most useful tool, for in-game and out-of-game reasons. In game, because a dead monster is less threatening than a live one. Out of game, because combat is fun when it's going well or turning out to be tight and eventful. The game is designed to ensure combat is an important tool. While Sun Tzu is right, the acme of skill is winning without fighting, part of the game fun are the fights that happen. Some of those fights will come with costs that must be paid. Part of the challenge is dealing with those when they occur, or when the dice tell you the price.
Negotiation
There are plenty of things to negotiate with - or just flat-out distract with bribes - in Felltower. Many "things" are eminently worth talking to and some are even so worth talking to you'll lose out if you avoid them or fight them.
But again, you can't negotiate with them all. Some things just won't negotiate. Some things can't even conceive of what negotiating entails. Some are so hate-filled or evil or just tricky that negotiating is a route to disaster no matter how well you think it's going.
This makes negotiation a useful tool. Lots of stuff is better spoken to than killed. But it's a secondary tool to combat, overall. Given the goals of delvers - loot and reward - it's hard to only negotiate to get them. Still, negotiations are fun and interesting, so they are built in to the game as a valid tool. It can even elevate to more important than combat if you negotiate with just the right parties.
Puzzle Solving
There are some player-facing puzzles in Felltower. Trick doors, revolving statues, odd mazes, teleporter arrays, actual explicit "solve this riddle" or "solve this puzzle" type situations, and so on.
Unlike the previous tools, they always work in the situations where they work, and don't really work outside of them.
You can't treat everything as a puzzle. Some situations are set up as hard fights or tough negotiations, and aren't puzzles per se. Good tactical choices or clever negotiations might make them easier or even easy, but in general, they are what they are: hard fights, tough negotiations. The explicit puzzles, though, generally resist brute-force solutions well enough that they don't work. Or the brute-force solution takes vastly more resources than the puzzle solution would. Puzzles are rarely disguised, too - they're pretty up-front about being an odd thing to deal with and solve, even if the solution (or the reward) is far from clear.
Puzzles are there because they're a fairly common occurrence in the materials I drew on for the game. Puzzle solving skills are critical to confront them, but puzzle solving skills are of less value outside of them. This probably ranks puzzle-solving skills near the bottom of the value spectrum. It's rare for such puzzles to block your advance (although at least one does), but more common for them to shield special rewards, special areas, and special opportunities. Most of them are solvable primarily - or solely - through player reasoning or player trial and error. The puzzles are player-facing, and it's not a question of trying and trying again until you roll a 3 or flipping though GURPS Magic until you find the Solve This Puzzle spell.
Magic in General
Magic is a critical tool in the Felltower toolbox.
One problem with magic is that you need to rely on it, and it's very binary (works/doesn't work), yet it's not reliable. You can't depend on always having it. You can't even depend on it always working even when the spell succeeds. You can be led astray by false divinations, or tricked by your own assumptions about what success or failure means. It can distract you from a clear non-magical solution because there are so many choices of magical ones.
Plus, it's costly. It costs energy and eventually time. It's a nearly-universal tool but most problems solvable with magic are solvable without it, given different resources and time. Recovery from spells takes time, so using too much magic can slow you down and add more problems (wandering monsters, local monsters making adjustments, draining of resources) than it solves.
Magic is right up there with negotiation in terms of importance. You need it, you won't get far if you don't use it, and some problems aren't solvable as puzzles or with negotiation or combat. But it's a tool that acts like a hammer and nail situation - given sufficient magic, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking there is a spell that solves every specific situation you encounter.
Preparation
Preparing for the delve is a key tool in the Felltower PC toolbox.
Rumor-gathering (and reviewing), sage-hiring, equipment-buying, and pre-planning are all aspects of this. PCs who prepare are PCs who can solve problems that ones who don't can't.
Felltower is built on the assumption that it is repeatedly visited, and that PCs will prepare with the right gear, pour money into the hands of sages and old-timer former adventurers, and so on in order to learn what they can.
Equally, though, the main elements are designed to be things the PCs find out through hard-won experience, clever action, and specific attempts at actions. The players, more than their PCs, determine success or failure with preparation.
This is a somewhat tricky tool, given the way GURPS works. The PCs have knowledge skills, and it can be tempting to set everything to a roll and ask the GM, "What does my guy know?" and then try to follow up with more rolls against the skill when that doesn't seem enough. I try to solve this by giving a general, "here is what you know" roll, then leaving the rest n the PC's hands. It's tempting as a player to use knowledge skills as a chance to pump the GM for a hint about what to do. I attempt to cut that off after an initial wash of information to set the scene.
As such, this is a middle-grade tool. It's important, but as long as you've done the basics and play cleverly, it's possible to succeed without pouring money into knowledge and preparation. That said, there is a minimum you must do - buy rations, lay in healing potions, recharge power items, etc. - to succeed at all. Having done that, the extra is extra - useful but not an impediment to success if you forgo finding things out before you go instead of in play. It's not that Felltower is forgiving, just that players tend to resolve more through play than through preparing for success.
Risk-taking
Risk-taking is an important tool in the Felltower toolbox.
You cannot get rich in a megadungeon, especially mine, without taking risks.
That's worth repeating with emphasis:
You cannot get rich in a megadungeon, especially mine, without taking risks.
Sometimes you need to take a flyer on negotiations and trust the potentially untrustworthy. Sometimes you need to engage in a risky fight. Sometimes you need to pull something, push something, touch something, or stick your hand into something. But equally you need to resort to this when intuition and experience and trial and error tells you to do so. You can neither touch everything or slink through the dungeon touching nothing and get what you want out of it.
Risk-taking is the most critical tool in the player toolbox. Even more so than combat, in a game designed to have lots of combat. Even more so than magic, in a game explicitly about a magical world. Even more so than negotiation, in a game where that's threaded into play to ensure it's worth doing and expected behavior. If you take too many risks, you'll pay. If you don't take enough, you'll lose out. Balance is critical here, but it's the fundamental basis for the other tools discussed above.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Review: Pyramid 3/60: Dungeon Fantasy III
This is a brief review of Pyramid Magazine #3/60: Dungeon Fantasy III.
There are two previous issues covering Dungeon Fantasy cover-to-cover.
I figured it's helpful and interesting to have a brief look at all of the articles. This issue is interesting to me because I know all the guys who wrote for it. They're my friends, co-authors, fellow gamers, or my editor. I may be biased in their favor but I do tell my friends when the stuff they right isn't useful to me.
Wizardry Redefined - by Sean Punch
One problem with GURPS Magic and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is that mages have spell restrictions, but the complex prerequisite system can play hell with them. Read strictly, mages could bypass a lot of spell restrictions. Plus, it wasn't always clear what was forbidden and what wasn't in certain edge cases. This would have been covered if GURPS Dungeon Fantasy had been a 240-page hardback, but it wasn't. So Sean covers it here. It's a complete list of the spells you can get as a mage, and can't get, and new prereq chains that avoid the spells you can't have. It's long, but it's useful if you run DF and use GURPS Magic instead of the trendy RPM all the kids are raving about these days.
Eidetic Memory: High-Tech Dungeon Crawl - by David L. Pulver
David Pulver reminisces about having just stocked a dungeon when his players got burned on their game. So he did what anyone would do in his situation when playing GURPS - let them make up guys with guns and then clear the dungeon. This article is part campaign retrospective and part campaign seed.
This could easily have just been "guys with guns in dungeons could be fun, try it!" and it's not. David carefully goes into some of the advantages the group had (guns vs. orcs, for one), pitfalls the group ran into (hospitalization for monster-inflicted wounds), the complications oddly-sourced wealth has in the modern world, and so on. He even looks at it from the perspective of different Tech Levels. Too low, and it's just an edge vs. monsters unfamiliar with it. Too high, and it's easy to toast the monsters but nothing they have except magic is worth going after (The problem of taking $700,000 off that dragon but losing a $2.5 million battlesuit to do it . . . )
If you're going to send gun-armed guys into dungeons, this is worth reading. It's fun too even if you don't want to. Plus, he back-references "Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery."
It's a Trap - by Christopher R. Rice.
Let me just say I have my own traps generation system. It's rough, and it requires a lot of GM work providing details, but it's fast and effective. So I wasn't even sure I needed this one - but in the end, a preview of it by Christopher sold me on it (and the rest of the issue).
My system is just a series of dice rolls that tell me all I need to know about the lethality, ease of disarming, and avoidability of a trap. Christopher's system will tell you everything about the trap you need to know. You can start with a blank slate and end with a trap with all questions answered, even the ones I just handwave. It's a system that takes you from what the trap is, to how much damage it does, to how hard to disarm, etc. It'll answer all of the questions and spit out a trap or trick that fits into the format in DF2, p. 20. It does so very well - everything is rules-compliant, rules-standard, fully explained, and explained in a range of power levels so you can scale them. It even makes use of the N/whatever concept from DFA1 in an appropriate way.
Maybe the real downside to me is that there are, in fact, a lot of tables to roll on. Like DF 8: Treasure Tables you need to roll different dice (a 4, 1, 2 on three dice is different than 2, 1, 4 or 4, 2, 1, for example) and look up a table entry. Then roll on sub-tables the same way. This prevents you from just dumping a pile of dice and seeing what you get. Also like TT, it cries out for automation
I was inspired by one part of it to have, say, a place with a trap that kept-resetting to a new trap effect, using just a pointer to the tables. I experimented and found it would stop my game for a couple of minutes and a lot of rolls before I would even know if they'd trigger it. So I gave up on that.
Like some of the tables in The Dungeon Dozen or The Dungeon Alphabet, they aren't for rolling on when you need something right now but when you've got prep time and want to get it all correct. It does that very well indeed, and I've used it to stock part of my megadungeon with traps. A good tool to have.
Mystic Power-Ups - Antoni Ten Monrós
Basically, if you aren't satisfied with all the cool stuff the Mystic Knight can do, its original creator provides more. Including mystically-created weapons and armor. Neither of which you can use with Imbuements on top, which kind of gets rid of a cool character concept but prevents a metric assload of abuse.
I don't play either with imbuements (too Diablo II for my game) or Mystic Knights (see prior comment), so I can't see me doing which with this. But if you do you will want this.
In All Series-Ness - by Sean Punch
Long story short on this one - it's the history of the DF line, including reasons why it's been released in the order it has and not some precision order, what it might have been (including a hardback), and so on. It's a Designer's Notes in the form of a Line Editor's Notes on the line, basically. Or vice-versa.
It also ends with a new template, the Beastmaster!
Random Thought Table: The Decagoblin Dungeon - by Steven Marsh
Steven Marsh takes a single concept - a room with 10 goblins in it - and turns it into a multi-room dungeon each with a room with 10 goblins in it. But in each room, both the room and the goblins aren't what you'd expect. It's more interesting to read than the play, I'd expect, but it's a good exercise in changing things up and being creative with what otherwise be a dull encounter. It's not thinking outside the box so much as saying, you didn't specify what the box was like, so it could be any sort of box. Which is what fun dungeons are all about.
Odds and Ends
This consists of:
- a bonus trap from Christopher Rice.
- a Mystic Knight wildcard skill from Antoni Ten Monrós.
- a 125-point Eldritch Initiate template from Antoni Ten Monrós that'll turn any 125-point delver from DF15 into a 250-point Imbuement user. Nice!
Overall, I'm glad I got this issue. The traps or Sean's spell listings alone would have been plenty useful enough for me, even at this late stage when I've worked so much of that out myself. But the other bits were really nice to have. I especially liked the Beastmaster, and reading David's take on letting his modern-day gun toting Americans put paid to a bunch of orcs and rescue an elf. Good issue.
Again, you can find it here.
There are two previous issues covering Dungeon Fantasy cover-to-cover.
I figured it's helpful and interesting to have a brief look at all of the articles. This issue is interesting to me because I know all the guys who wrote for it. They're my friends, co-authors, fellow gamers, or my editor. I may be biased in their favor but I do tell my friends when the stuff they right isn't useful to me.
Wizardry Redefined - by Sean Punch
One problem with GURPS Magic and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is that mages have spell restrictions, but the complex prerequisite system can play hell with them. Read strictly, mages could bypass a lot of spell restrictions. Plus, it wasn't always clear what was forbidden and what wasn't in certain edge cases. This would have been covered if GURPS Dungeon Fantasy had been a 240-page hardback, but it wasn't. So Sean covers it here. It's a complete list of the spells you can get as a mage, and can't get, and new prereq chains that avoid the spells you can't have. It's long, but it's useful if you run DF and use GURPS Magic instead of the trendy RPM all the kids are raving about these days.
Eidetic Memory: High-Tech Dungeon Crawl - by David L. Pulver
David Pulver reminisces about having just stocked a dungeon when his players got burned on their game. So he did what anyone would do in his situation when playing GURPS - let them make up guys with guns and then clear the dungeon. This article is part campaign retrospective and part campaign seed.
This could easily have just been "guys with guns in dungeons could be fun, try it!" and it's not. David carefully goes into some of the advantages the group had (guns vs. orcs, for one), pitfalls the group ran into (hospitalization for monster-inflicted wounds), the complications oddly-sourced wealth has in the modern world, and so on. He even looks at it from the perspective of different Tech Levels. Too low, and it's just an edge vs. monsters unfamiliar with it. Too high, and it's easy to toast the monsters but nothing they have except magic is worth going after (The problem of taking $700,000 off that dragon but losing a $2.5 million battlesuit to do it . . . )
If you're going to send gun-armed guys into dungeons, this is worth reading. It's fun too even if you don't want to. Plus, he back-references "Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery."
It's a Trap - by Christopher R. Rice.
Let me just say I have my own traps generation system. It's rough, and it requires a lot of GM work providing details, but it's fast and effective. So I wasn't even sure I needed this one - but in the end, a preview of it by Christopher sold me on it (and the rest of the issue).
My system is just a series of dice rolls that tell me all I need to know about the lethality, ease of disarming, and avoidability of a trap. Christopher's system will tell you everything about the trap you need to know. You can start with a blank slate and end with a trap with all questions answered, even the ones I just handwave. It's a system that takes you from what the trap is, to how much damage it does, to how hard to disarm, etc. It'll answer all of the questions and spit out a trap or trick that fits into the format in DF2, p. 20. It does so very well - everything is rules-compliant, rules-standard, fully explained, and explained in a range of power levels so you can scale them. It even makes use of the N/whatever concept from DFA1 in an appropriate way.
Maybe the real downside to me is that there are, in fact, a lot of tables to roll on. Like DF 8: Treasure Tables you need to roll different dice (a 4, 1, 2 on three dice is different than 2, 1, 4 or 4, 2, 1, for example) and look up a table entry. Then roll on sub-tables the same way. This prevents you from just dumping a pile of dice and seeing what you get. Also like TT, it cries out for automation
I was inspired by one part of it to have, say, a place with a trap that kept-resetting to a new trap effect, using just a pointer to the tables. I experimented and found it would stop my game for a couple of minutes and a lot of rolls before I would even know if they'd trigger it. So I gave up on that.
Like some of the tables in The Dungeon Dozen or The Dungeon Alphabet, they aren't for rolling on when you need something right now but when you've got prep time and want to get it all correct. It does that very well indeed, and I've used it to stock part of my megadungeon with traps. A good tool to have.
Mystic Power-Ups - Antoni Ten Monrós
Basically, if you aren't satisfied with all the cool stuff the Mystic Knight can do, its original creator provides more. Including mystically-created weapons and armor. Neither of which you can use with Imbuements on top, which kind of gets rid of a cool character concept but prevents a metric assload of abuse.
I don't play either with imbuements (too Diablo II for my game) or Mystic Knights (see prior comment), so I can't see me doing which with this. But if you do you will want this.
In All Series-Ness - by Sean Punch
Long story short on this one - it's the history of the DF line, including reasons why it's been released in the order it has and not some precision order, what it might have been (including a hardback), and so on. It's a Designer's Notes in the form of a Line Editor's Notes on the line, basically. Or vice-versa.
It also ends with a new template, the Beastmaster!
Random Thought Table: The Decagoblin Dungeon - by Steven Marsh
Steven Marsh takes a single concept - a room with 10 goblins in it - and turns it into a multi-room dungeon each with a room with 10 goblins in it. But in each room, both the room and the goblins aren't what you'd expect. It's more interesting to read than the play, I'd expect, but it's a good exercise in changing things up and being creative with what otherwise be a dull encounter. It's not thinking outside the box so much as saying, you didn't specify what the box was like, so it could be any sort of box. Which is what fun dungeons are all about.
Odds and Ends
This consists of:
- a bonus trap from Christopher Rice.
- a Mystic Knight wildcard skill from Antoni Ten Monrós.
- a 125-point Eldritch Initiate template from Antoni Ten Monrós that'll turn any 125-point delver from DF15 into a 250-point Imbuement user. Nice!
Overall, I'm glad I got this issue. The traps or Sean's spell listings alone would have been plenty useful enough for me, even at this late stage when I've worked so much of that out myself. But the other bits were really nice to have. I especially liked the Beastmaster, and reading David's take on letting his modern-day gun toting Americans put paid to a bunch of orcs and rescue an elf. Good issue.
Again, you can find it here.
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