Everybody Else VI: Perils of the Sunken City

Perils of the Sunken City, by Jon Marr, is the first third-party product I managed to get my hands on for the Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game.  One of the first things I noticed with the module was that it set a different, but complementary, tone from the approach taken in the modules by Goodman Games.   

The tone was definitely lighter, but it held an undercurrent of menace that I found appealing.  It also offered up an entirely new setting – the Sunken City – that offered many potential adventures beyond Perils.  

And that lighter tone?  It in no way should be taken to mean that the adventure is any less deadly. 

Appendix N includes a lot of potential sources, and the tones of these sources vary considerably.   It follows, therefore, that adventures in the Appendix N vein will also vary considerably in tone, depending upon who is doing the writing and what they are trying to achieve.

Spoilers, of course, will follow.  And, I know.  We get a little blasé about spoiler warnings in the Age of the InterWebs, but, really, if you are going to be playing this instead of running it, reading ahead is going to spoil your enjoyment.  This is true for any DCC module, where the primary joy is not just facing down opponents using a carefully constructed character, but figuring out the twists in the adventure itself.  DCC adventures share an appreciation of difficulty – stretching the player’s limits as well as the characters’ limits.

I really appreciate your reading this blog.  I really appreciate your interest.  And I really, really appreciate what comments and feedback I get.  I try to limit spoilers to a minimum needed to get my point across, but I am really, really serious as well in urging you not to read these adventure reviews if you are a player.  Like the early Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventures, the joy of discovery through play is seriously harmed by foreknowledge.  Don’t diminish your fun!

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Okay.  If you are still here, I am going to assume that you are a judge.

In my own campaign world, I placed the Sunken City as a future version of New Orleans.  Why?  Because that is entirely in keeping with Appendix N authors like Michael Moorcock’s future/alternate Great Britain and Sterling Lanier’s future/alternate Canada.  Plus, with creatures like crocodillos, opossum men, and a giant catfish, I couldn’t help but imagine the Bayou!

Perils of the Sunken City describes Mustertown, on the outskirts of the Great City (in my campaign world, New Orleans sprawled as far as Shrieveport, which eventually became the Great City of Nawleans), as a place where 0-level funnel characters can muster themselves into a company, role-play a little, and (later) be evaluated in terms of how well they did and sell what treasures they may have found.  The Sending Stone and the associated demon named “Sender” are a clever means of starting a number of 0-level funnels in the same location, making a good portion of Perils of the Sunken City reusable throughout the life of a campaign.

The “perils” in the module are several, and they are well thought out and fun.  My players were able to avoid the crocodillos, but they did encounter the opossum men.  In fact, we had enough deaths in the upper works of the module and the area immediately below that some of the players ended up playing the opossum men funnel characters so kindly provided on the Purple Sorcerer website.  Opossum men are sort of amusing, and sort of disgusting….rather like one would expect.  When they fumble, they “play dead”!

(Let me note here that the Purple Sorcerer website also includes paper minis and printable battlemats as free bonus material….Along with its die roller and character generator, Purple Sorcerer is all about supporting your game, and I feel it is only fair to support them with my purchases!  I hope you do, too!)

Interestingly, the ruins being explored were an ancient arena, brought low because of the jealousy one patron had when a wizard took a second.  The first patron is not fully described in the module (sadly) but there is enough information in the module to make the judge wish that a patron write-up had been included.  Some of the PCs, after all, may end up tied to the patron to some degree.

My favourite encounter in the complex occurs in the latrines (!) but my players, unfortunately, bypassed it.  If you have read the module, you will know that it is not how the encounter plays out, but how it is written, that is so darn good.  Even so, it is an encounter that I will eventually echo in my home game, preferably at some point where comprehend languages can be cast!

Overall, Jon Marr is to be congratulated on such a strong adventure right out of the gate.  I found myself craving more, and was very glad when I could get my hands on Purple Sorcerer’s next offering.   Although I get ahead of myself on the “Everyone Else” series, The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk is enhanced by the Mustertown section of Perils of the Sunken City, so this module is really the “anchor” for exploring the Sunken City.  To say that I feel I got my money’s worth is an understatement – although I had bought it in pdf format, I also bought the print version when it became available.

Conan or Aragorn

A simple quiz. 

Which statement refers to Conan, which to Aragorn, which to both, and which to neither?

Original author sources only.

1. One of the greatest travellers of his era.

2. Became King of the greatest nation of his era.

3. That he was the rightful king was revealed by a broken sword.

4. Is stealthy in the wild.

5. Travelled under different names.

6. Was born on a battlefield.

7. Served in armies ruled by others.

8. Has dark hair.

9. Comes from the north.

10. Is descended from a smith.

11. Is descended from people who one dwelt in a lost civilization, and who escaped its sinking.

12. Is one of the greatest warriors of his time.

13. Has dealings with rangers.

14. Fights in a battle that includes oliphaunts.

15. Is aided by a wizard who was trapped by a rival wizard.

16. Gazes into a stone to uncover hidden knowledge.

17. Fought against hill men.

18. Is moved by music.

19. Is opposed by someone whose power is linked to possession of a singular Ring.

20. Is an able captain, both on land and on sea.

21. Speaks many languages.

22. Has moments of melancholy or fey moods.

DCC Crowdfunding

If you have been reading Tenkar’s Tavern, you will have noticed his interesting posts related to Kickstarter projects.  If you are not reading Tenkar’s Tavern, shame on you!  You should be!

I am currently involved in two Indiegogo projects:  Angels, Daemons, and Beings Between:  A Patron Sourcebook for DCC RPG, http://www.indiegogo.com/Unusualsuspects?a=699890 (which is funded, has its main product written, and is currently going through editing and layout) and In the Prison of the Squid Sorcerer http://www.indiegogo.com/squidsorcerer?a=699890 (which is currently pretty far short of its funding goal, but which has some kick-ass writing and art done for it already, and which I urge you to support). 

It is disheartening to note how many crowd funded RPG projects are behind schedule, and I am pretty sure that this affects the willingness of future crowd-funding efforts.

As far as I can tell, both projects I am involved with are on schedule.  In the case of the patron project, waiting for writing wasn't as much of a problem as determining what the best parts were, to fit into a book that is bulging at its seams.  Layout is taking a while simply because of (1) the large number of charts in a patron-based project, and (2) fitting all of this goodness into a single book of reasonable size.  

While I wrote a number of these patrons, I am more amazed by the creativity of the ones I did not write.  So, if you liked the previews on this blog, you should like the final product.  And, if you didn’t join in the crowd-funding, you should still seriously consider picking it up when it becomes available.

In the case of Squid Sorcerer, writing is proceeding extremely well, and the artwork is fantastic in my opinion.  Funding will determine more how this product comes about than if it does – and I urge you to consider funding so that the product will be in print (rather than pdf) right out of the door.  

Either way, the product is on track to be released in a timely manner, although no funding could push that timeline back a little.  Remember that Indiegogo products are tied to meeting goals; there is no risk of funding a project that doesn’t meet its primary goal, you’ve lost nothing.

My own contributions include (but are not limited to!) Tomb of the Squonk, Mermaids From Yuggoth, and one of the stretch goal module, a 0-level funnel where cavemen investigate a crashed spaceship.  I have had the opportunity to read through several other contributions, from more than one author, and I can say unequivocally that this book is going to be cool.  Because these are adventures, rather than a supplement like the patron book, I am hesitant to post serious spoilers here….doing so might damage your enjoyment of the final product.

Jumping into the fray of publishing is a huge undertaking.  I am currently engaged by several publishers, and I take all of these projects seriously.  The people I am working with also take these projects seriously.  Dungeon Crawl Classics is a great game, and I am seriously lucky to have be able to be contribute to it.

We have no intention of letting you down.

Difficulty in RPG Scenarios

If you need each post of this blog to have “IMHO” and “YMMV” written into it, this is probably not the blog post for you.  I recommend that you just move along to the next blog.  Today I’d like to talk about something that relates to the sandbox series of posts, fudging, and the Dungeon Crawl Classics role playing game.  The topic is difficulty in role-playing game scenarios.

What is difficulty?  In this context, I am talking about when the players need to strive in order to succeed.  Note that I am not talking about their characters needing to strive – “The swamp is infested with leeches” has little bearing on the players, unless the players have reason to believe that the characters will be affected mechanically.  Nor am I talking about “pretend difficulties”, which miraculously clear themselves up regardless of what the players do (through fudging, for example, or the “timely” intervention of NPCs, or whathaveyou).

Contrary to what years of WotC-D&D have told you, a “difficult fight” is not simply one where the characters’ resources are stretched or used up, it is one where the players cannot rely on their usual tactics and still win, regardless of how their characters end the scenario.  In other words, even if the characters are beaten, bruised, and bloody at the end of the scenario, if they win without the players having to stretch their imaginations to figure out some new tactic beyond what they conventionally use, the scenario is not really difficult.

Because the game is about the players’ experience; the characters’ act as a conduit to that experience.

I recently ran a modified version of the haunted house from The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh as a 0-level character funnel.  It resulted in a TPK, as the players did not decide upon a stealthy approach, and eventually ran into almost all of the potential opposition in a single go.  Having allowed intelligent opponents to know that they were there, they ended up facing those opponents acting intelligently.  When things began to go south, they failed to change their tactics to match the situation.  And they died.  Which is as it should be – changing the outcome, fudging, or those other “GM tricks” to ameliorate outcomes train players not to change tactics when things go south.  Why should they, if they are consistently rewarded with “almost failing”?

One of the most exciting things about the Dungeon Crawl Classics game is the decision to make monsters monstrous.  Not only in the core rulebook, but in the modules.  Especially as the modules contain encounters that encourage players to think laterally…or die.  Even game mechanics like the warrior’s Mighty Deed of Arms require players to think about what is happening in the game situation, and strive for outcomes that will actually affect that situation.

The entire “Quest For It” section is a breath a fresh air in a role-playing environment where PC options have become a menu to select from.  Want a caveman character?  Here is a funnel adventure; hope you survive.  Want to learn a specific spell?  Your research indicates it might be learned from the un-dead lips of a colossal sphinx.  Good luck.

This sort of difficulty does not result in characters who are “cool” just because you thought up a neat way to use the rules – these characters are “cool” because you, as a player, overcame difficulty and made them cool.  And what they have gained is cool because no one else can get the same simply by picking up a splatbook or a character generator.  It is not bought.  It is earned.

The original Dungeons & Dragons modules were the same way; if you played them without fudging, players would have to overcome difficulty or characters would die.  A lot.  And that was glorious, because when you won, you had actually accomplished something.  You had to become a cannier player, one who could read a situation, decide what response was called for, and then – should events prove your decision wrong – adapt your strategy on the fly.

I know that there are players who prefer fudging.  I know that there are players who do not want to have to adapt, and who do not wish to face difficulty.  I know that there are players who want to feel the thrill of vicariously overcoming the illusion of difficulty without ever actually having even their characters in danger.  And, obviously, if you are one of these players, you may play whatever you wish.  But the farther down this road you go, and the less difficulty included in your games, the more that game becomes one where “there is no strategy involved – players are never required to make choices, just follow directions.”

To my mind, how utterly boring.

Thankfully, I have been blessed with excellent players over the years, including those who play in my regular weekly games and in my play-by-posts.  Thank you all, current players and past!  And thank you, Joseph Goodman & crew, for making a game that encourages the sort of play where players face difficulty on a regular basis!

Everyone Else V: DCC Free RPG Day module 2012

Free RPG Day in 2012 was a cool day altogether, with some impressive goodies like a cool poster-sized map of Hârn, but the coolest of the many bennies rpg companies had to pass onto their fans and potential fans was the Free RPG Day module from Goodman Games.  Why?  Because it contained two seriously kick-ass adventures, and because it contained a contest that will net someone out there $1,000 and the chance to see their adventure in print.

Now, the contest entry date is almost upon us as I write this, so that isn’t going to be the reason most folks pick up this module (in pdf format) going forward, so let’s look at the adventures!  The two adventures in the module are The Jeweller Who Dealt in Stardust, by Harley Stroh, and The Undulating Corruption, by Michael Curtis. 

Need I say that spoilers will follow?  They will.  Don’t read on if you don’t want to read them.

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If you have read my previous reviews, you know by now that I don’t think Harley Stroh could write a bad adventure if he tried to.  Certainly here has tried to write a great adventure.  The Jeweler Who Dealt in Stardust is for 3^rd level characters, and is a city-based adventure wherein the characters attempt a heist in the home of a jeweller known to be a fence for the thieves’ guild.  Nothing could go wrong with this set-up, right?

I’ve been lucky enough to run this one twice, once for my home group in preparation for Free RPG Day, and once at Duelling Grounds in Toronto for Free RPG Day.  The first time, I ran it using pregenerated characters culled off the Internet, the second time I used the pregenerated characters supplied by Goodman Games on their website.  In the following, Group A is my home group, and Group B are the players at Duelling Grounds.

Both times the adventure was a lot of fun.  The basic set-up is that Boss Ogo, a notorious fence for the Thieves’ Guild of Punjar, who fronts himself as a jeweler, has gone missing.  His house is closed and locked, with no sign of life therein.  For the bold, a fortune in jewels is surely there for the taking, but it is equally sure that others will be watching the house, thieves and vultures waiting for their own chance to swoop in and steal the prize.

There are three (relatively easy) ways into the house – through a large window on the upper floor, through the sewers and cellar (Group A), and through a side door protected by a walled garden (Group B).  Within…..well, Fritz Lieber or Robert E. Howard would be proud of Harley Stroh for what is within.  Needless to say, there is enough cool here to seriously creep-out your characters, and enough encounters that require combat or cleverness to test 3^rd level PCs well.

There is a nice handout illustrating Boss Ogo’s house from the front, showing all three potential entrances.  Group A includes more than a few outside-the-box thinkers, and they tried the windows on various floors, and checked the chimney as a potential entryway before settling on the sewers.  Of course, these other possible entrances have been considered by Boss Ogo (through the agency of the author), and entry there is made practically impossible.

Group B went through the patio, facing Spiders of Ygiiz – a very well realized monster, with some cool effects that, sadly, I didn’t get to use either time I ran this adventure.  What was notable for me, when I ran this for Group B, was that a player who had no previous experience of the Dungeon Crawl Classics system decided to cast spells not for their primary effect, but for the mercurial magic effect that went along with it, and in a successful way.

The sewer/cellar entrance, the one used by Group A, is my favourite, because the way in offers the supreme creepy moment in the module – three men hang, wrapped in webs, in a place containing thousands of mundane spiders.  The spiders go in and out of the men’s open mouths, which are all that is uncovered.  If you investigate, you discover that they are wrapped in bandage-like cloths marked with runes dedicated to Ygiiz, and they are still alive.

Do you kill them?  Do you not?  Encounters are logically linked together, and what you decide here may affect what you discover elsewhere.  Some of the encounters are potentially quite brutal.  Others have cool eerie components.  All is not as it seems.  Players who decide to use up their resources inside the house

At the very end, Ogo’s lieutenant and his men wait outside for the PCs, prompting a last fight that is likely to be deadly for PCs who have used up their resources inside the house.  Group A shut themselves back into the house and took to the sewers.  Group B was strongly considering surrender when I pointed out that, as a one-shot adventure, they might as well go for glory.  The fight was memorable, and they almost won, but it ended in a TPK.  Still, fun was had by all.

Michael Curtis’ The Undulating Corruption is a different kind of adventure.  In search of the means to deal with magical corruption, the PCs uncover references to the Crucible of the Worm, and eventually uncover its location.  Now, as 5^th level adventurers, it is time to remove some of the debilitating corruption that has afflicted the party wizard.  Or wizards.  Or elf.  Or elves.  Or other characters foolish enough to make spell checks using 1d10.

Unfortunately, the Crucible is in ruins when the party arrives, and the very well-conceived Night Worm is on its way toward the nearest population centre.  Will the PCs be able to stop it?

The Undulating Corruption is a pretty cool little adventure, despite being fairly linear in nature.  There are some neat monsters to fight leading up to the Night Worm, and the fight with the Night Worm is one which the players are likely to remember!  The Night Worm makes use of the strengths of the DCC system, so that fighting it is not as straight forward as one might expect, and the party may discover itself loathe to slay the creature too soon. 

That some of the party may want to keep the monster alive long enough to benefit from it, while each round increases the damage that the party takes (and therefore diminishes their overall chance of success in defeating it before it reaches a major population centre) is the masterstroke in this adventure. 

The encounters leading up to the “main event” are flavourful, and help build the proper mood for what is in turns a terrifying, icky, funny, potentially lethal, and potentially useful final encounter.  Players who “figure out” the rules of the Night Worm may be well rewarded.  Those who do not will probably pay for their failure with their characters’ lives.  But there is enough tension between the potential benefits, the damage taken, and the overall threat to force players to make tough decisions for their characters on a round-by-round basis.

While I have not run this adventure yet (I had meant to for Free RPG Day, but the opportunity failed to arise), the themes, setting, and monsters would mesh very well with the Great City from Purple Sorcerer Games’ Perils of the Sunken City and The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk.  There should be no difficulty in placing this adventure in any campaign setting.

Death Frost Doom Part III: Doom Comes to Us All

(Spoilers, Sweetie)

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So, last night my players finished James Raggi’s Death Frost Doom.  Running that last bit was a draining experience.  Playing in it seemed to be equally draining.  When the last die dropped, two players were out of characters, and the survivors were pretty glad to be alive.  On the other hand, faced with the overwhelming odds of what was occurring, my 13-year-old daughter swore at me for the first time.  I didn’t blame her, either.  It was an emotion-laden adventure.

The group used a combination of a rope work and a very potent spider climb to get to the ceiling of the ceiling of the main temple, and from there up the shaft.  When they saw that the shaft was barred, some groaned, but Mike, playing Dob, knew that his wizard could rust the bars out as a consequence of the mercurial magic effect on his magic shield spell.  Another wizard then used his rope work to shoot 50 feet out of the hole, immediately becoming ghoul bait.

(As a brief digression, we had a discussion about how something is easier to see if it is above mist than through mist.  Also, used to other campaigns I’ve run, my players know that I tend to have some un-dead able to sense the living.  They also know that my ghouls do not like the sun, and believe that if they can just get beyond the mist, they will be all right.)

They need to haul up their rope, which means having a front line against ghouls converging from all directions.  On round one, 1d6 ghouls come.  On round two, 2d6.  On round 3, 3d6.  By round 4, everyone is either on the floating rope or dead.  Dob, the wizard whose lucky rolls saved him from the Hound of Hirot, is slain and falls back down the shaft into the Temple of Duvan’Ku.  The rope is long enough to drop the remaining PCs beyond the mist, but ghouls follow them along on the ground.  Dropped in the sun, the ghouls leave them alone.  For now.

Two hours later, the PCs discover that their dog and falcon are gone.  Their conclusion?  Zeke Duncaster ate them.  Two hours after that, as night falls, they decide to camp and start a fire.  Remember, the cold is deadly on the mountain.  The PCs are wounded, dismayed, and low on Luck.  For some reason, they think that the un-dead will be confined to the cemetery even after dark.  One of the PCs is still paralysed at this point, because ghoul paralysis in DCC lasts 1d6 hours, and the clerics are concerned about disapproval by this point.

The fire attracts the ghouls.  I decide that 1d30 are attracted every 5 minutes, appearing as they did before:  1d6 on round 1, 2d6 on round 2, etc., until all the ghouls arrive.  Only five are rolled, 3 arriving on round one and 2 on round two, but the players do not know this.  One cleric is paralysed, and there are still two ghouls left.  The players are pretty sure that more will keep on coming.  The PCs flee, leaving the paralysed cleric behind.  I state odds and roll; the ghouls are distracted enough to eat the cleric while they run.

This is seeming more and more like a horror movie with each choice made, and as the consequences of those choices pile up.  The module as written offers players some hard choices, but the extra oomph of DCC magic actually prevented my players from taking some of the “outs” worked into the module, much to their overall detriment.

The PCs reach Zeke’s shortly before dawn, and collapse from exhaustion.  When they have recovered, they take Zeke (“I told you so!  I told you that you were all doomed!”  “Only half of us were doomed.  So you’re half right.”) with them.  As it turns out, going up there to get more names, Zeke found their animals and rescued them, so they are at Zeke’s “hut” in the woods.   

The group flees onward to Hirot, where they attempt to warn the town.  This means soap-boxing in the town square, visiting the new Jarl, Clohn the Bald, and talking to the witch.  Ymae is openly disdainful and asks what they are going to do about it.  The answer?  Nothing.  Run.

Overall, a bleak module, but definitely worth running.  The players keenly felt their net loss.  The surviving wizard has the spell, cantrip, which the player has been moaning about the uselessness of, so I pointed out that they could have recovered the lock of hair they were after with cantrip, without having woken the dead.

We talked briefly about what the players would like to do next, but my players decompression as much as I did, so I am not completely sure what the next session will be.  I am considering running another session of Through the Cotillion of Hours, to give the players a chance to undo some of the damage they have done.  There is a certain pulp grandeur in giving them the chance to travel back through time to prevent the dead from rising – one last chance to win or lose their surviving characters – that seems irresistible to me.  Of course, they would have to solve the Cotillion to do so.  And then they would still have to deal with the earlier version of Death Frost Doom if they succeed with the Cotillion, and James Raggi still holds some surprises for them!

As I said in a previous post, a little Raggi goes a long way.  I think I’ll hold off on The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time for a while!

Everyone Else IV: People of the Pit

I was waiting to get a chance to play this one before discussing it, but then I realized that I would get bogged down with other modules still waiting in the wings.  And, really, have I played through all of Barrowmaze yet?  No.  So better to just hop to it!

I picked up People of the Pit by Joseph Goodman at the same time that I grabbed Sailors on the Starless Sea, and I gave them both a good (avid!) read-through almost immediately.  Spoilers will, of course, ensue, so if you are going to play through this module, do yourself a favour and skip to the next blog.

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When you take a look at the basic cover of the core DCC rulebook, and see that adventurer staring at a door across a mist-wreathed chasm, you might as well be staring at the genesis of People of the Pit.  If that image stirs your soul, this module will as well.

And the cover to the module?  It downplays what you are facing.  Considerably.

People of the Pit pits the PCs against a cult of degenerate humans that worships a great tentacled monstrosity living in just such a mist-wreathed chasm.  How big are these tentacles?  You can ride or crawl down them to get from one level to the next.  How degenerated are the cultists?  Depends upon how high in the hierarchy they have climbed…and bold PCs gain the opportunity to risk some of that degeneration themselves.

I noted what I believe to be nods to H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Roger Zelazny ‘s Amber series, and I am pretty sure that there were other nods that I missed.  The climactic encounter could well have appeared in a novel by Abraham Merritt.  The module drips Appendix N flavour.  A wand that can be found herein was influential on my version of the create wand spell that appears on this blog and in Crawl! Fanzine #3.  It is part of a very nifty encounter.

The map itself follows the theme of entwined tentacles rather strongly, and is pretty evocative.  I am imagining that most players will “get” this, either consciously or subconsciously, as they try to navigate the spaces they are exploring.

Joseph Goodman includes magic teleport pods that allow characters to get from one place to another within the complex.  These pods require a spell check, and I admit that I was a little puzzled by them.  Goodman notes that anyone in DCC can make a spell check using 1d10, and it is nifty to include something in the module that allows players to make use of this rule.  But what is the penalty for failure?  Do you get to roll until you succeed, or is there corruption on a natural “1”?  Is there a limit to how often you may try?  I get the feeling that different judges will have different answers to these questions, and that seems perfectly fine to me.

People of the Pit is also interesting as there is the chance to incur a loss of Luck, a strong part of the implied setting from the core rulebook, but not often used in adventure creation to date.  There is also an NPC trapped in the area being explored that can be used as a replacement PC.  This is a good provision, as the module is deadly, but the enterprising judge may wish to prepare a character sheet using the Purple Sorcerer Tools so that the new character can jump right into play.

Judges interested in bringing patrons into play should also consider this module.  Although there is no patron write-up for the great tentacled beast…but there could have been.  You do get two new spells, and you certainly do get some creepy-good ideas.  Not every patron should be PC-friendly, or something that you’d want to take home to meet the folks, and this should definitely remind the players to be careful about who (or what) they make alliances with, if they would not like to end up like the cultists.

There are a lot of imaginative bits in this module, and it is one that I recommend.  I’ll be talking about it again, I feel certain, when my players have gone through it.  The module is very deadly, with some encounters that could certainly decimate the unwary or the unprepared, but adventurers who are clever, mostly cautious, but bold when they need to be, and lucky to boot should do well.  Certainly the players will have had an experience that they will not soon forget.

This is not Joseph Goodman’s best module to date – in the DCC line, I’d say that’s a toss-up between The Emerald Enchanter and The 13^th Skull, both of which are cooler than a frozen penguin on ice – but it is a very, very solid 1^st level adventure.  That I think the other two are better is a testament to how good they are, and is not a knock against People of the Pit.

I am looking forward to running this one, and give it a big thumbs-up!

Should You Trust Your GM? (And other stupid questions)

On this thread on DragonsFoot, I have offered some opinions akin to (and the cause of) my previous blog post, Is Fudging Just a Style Difference?  I also opened up two polls to test premises that (1) players can generally detect when fudging occurs, and (2) most players prefer no fudging.

Now, I am a strong advocate of not fudging, and have been so for a very long time.  I am also a strong advocate of the GM running the game that he wishes to run.  Nor am I responsible for the initial thread, or the initial topic.  But, in the “As aplayer, do you prefer your GM to fudge or not fudge?” poll thread I triggered this from Frank Mentzer, who has been active in the initial topic, and whom I suspect has not actually read what he is responding to.

As this topic has turned into 3 separate threads (all driven by Raven_Crowking), I have a brief comment here.

(See the 1e forum thread "DM Cheating" for lots more, mostly from R_C).

The basic and insidious point here is to make you think about dishonesty and cheating in your games. A lot.

I reject that premise entirely. MY games start with mature cooperation and mutual respect.

While dishonesty may occur, it is normally a rare event.

If you accept R_C's premise -- that this is a Major Issue that you should be thinking about while you're gaming --

the entire experience is tarnished and degraded.

Anything can be discussed here on a message board. But when the underlying message starts with "don't trust your fellow gamers," imho that is a Bad Thing.

So be warned. Don't let this infect your game.

F

I realize that I write mostly from the GM’s point of view.  Most of my experiences take place on the GM’s side of the screen, and most of what I write about is what, for me, makes for the best gaming experience.  I do not think that advising the GM to “be trustworthy” is somehow advising players not to trust the GM. 

I am not responsible for the title of the 1e thread I responded to, nor am I responsible for the wording of the poll options.  Nor do I think that attempting to determine whether or not some assumptions I am making (to whit, that most players can detect fudging, and that most players prefer not to) are valid is attempting to infect anyone’s game with anything.  In fact, there are some results from these polls that are already forcing me to revise my position to some degree, so I believe that they are of value.

It has been a long time since I’ve written on the topic of whether or not you should trust your GM, and that was on EN World….I deleted a bunch of posts there, but some survived the cull.  This one is from April 2011, and is reproduced in full so you don’t have to visit the site.  I’ve used red to indicate the quotes from Hussar that are being responded to, as I reproduced Frank's post in red above.  My responses are in green.  If you don’t believe me, the actual post can be found here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hussar

Reverse it around though. Given the benefit of the doubt, a mediocre player can do a reasonable job.

Maybe we're using "benefit of the doubt" to mean different things here.

In most games, a player advocates for his character. It is neither in his interest, or in the game's interest, that the player try to make things more difficult for himself.

In most games, the GM tries to make things difficult for the PCs in such a way that the PCs can, through effort, triumph more often than not.

IMHO, and IME, a mediocre player will attempt to advocate for his character through the application of the rules, i.e., will attempt to maximize effectiveness (potentially at the cost to other players). If you did not also experience this, your position on the Wizards and Warriors balance thread would be markedly different than it is.

So, no, in terms of "what is allowed", the GM should be actively involved in ensuring that all players have a relatively level playing field before the dice hit the table, and that the characters chosen by one player do not damage the fun of the others unduly.

Good players, IMHO and IME, do not have these problems. It is the GM's job, at least in part, to help a mediocre player become a good player.....just as it is the players' job, in part, to help a mediocre GM become a good one.

OTOH, the GM is specifically in a role that requires that he provide opposition for the player characters, essentially in the role of supplying all of the sudden reversals, unexpected dangers, WTF moments, and villiany that players enjoy overcoming.

If the players do not believe that challenges are there to make the game better, then these reversals do not seem like the GM doing his job, but rather like the GM being a wanker, the players lose motivation to overcome the reversals, causing them either to miss out on the payoff or causing the GM to just give the payout to them. In either of these last cases, the game spirals into a sink of diminishing returns and sooner or later folds.

Quote:

Given no benefit of the doubt, a great player will seem like a total wanker.

This is true if, and only if, the GM thinks that the players' job is to stroke his ego or to lose. The GM must indeed give the players the "benefit of the doubt" that their attempts to overcome his opposition are in the best interests of the game, and the GM must also give the players the benefit of their efforts.

The GM need not "give the benefit of the doubt" that Class X, Combo Y, or Build Z will be good for the game. But within the parameters of what the GM does allow, the GM must absolutely be willing to "lose" to the players. Each roadblock, each sudden reversal, each problem that the PCs face exists to enrich the game, and to be overcome in some manner chosen by the players.

Quote:

It's a two way street.

In that both must believe that the others are there to make a fun game for all, I agree.

Quote:

See, I used to be a bit believer in the whole, "Trust Thy DM" creed that early games espoused. Then I got repeatedly bitten on the ass for it. So, no, my distrust of DM's came AFTER experience, not before.

Well, I suppose we have to take your word for that, but I have to tell you that through repeated discussions I have gotten the definite impression that there is a Freudian slip in your statement (i.e., that you typed "bit" instead of "big"). I suspect that your repeated problems with various GMs has not been as one-sided as you would seem to be suggesting.

But, I am certainly not putting words in your mouth!

I am not claiming that you have said that your distrust has caused problems with various GMs (which would be putting words into your mouth). I am saying that your various statements imply something that you are not saying. Which is, actually, an extremely common state of affairs among human beings. I doubt any of us are immune.

Another way to look at it:

With my game philosophy, I can find a group anywhere to run any system I so choose. I can say, "You must trust me to run the best game I can", and I have to choose who cannot play because I simply don't have the time or energy to run games for all who would wish to.

My games will certainly not be for everyone, but I have no fear of being able to game so long as I wish to, regardless of what happens with WotC or the D&D brand. It is not, has never been, and never shall be "Where can I get some players?" but always "How do I deal with so many who want to play?"

With your game philosophy, can you say the same?

RC

__________________

I still stand by that post.

That I believe that the GM must indeed give the players the "benefit of the doubt" that their attempts to overcome his opposition are in the best interests of the game, and the GM must also give the players the benefit of their efforts is not in opposition to, but complimentary to, the concept that the players must also give the benefit of the doubt to the GM.

If you don't trust your GM, the game will suck.  Frank Mentzer is spot on about that.  But I am not advising you to mistrust your GM.  I wasn't doing it in 2011, I am not doing it in 2012, and I will not be doing it in 2013.  That would be as dumb as a bag of nails.

Death Frost Doom

SPOILERS for DEATH FROST DOOM by James Raggi.
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In this post, I talked about my players' first foray into James Raggi's excellent Death Frost Doom, as our group's Halloween Month themed adventure.   Last night, we had the second session of that game.

Having ended with the group's finding the lens that allows them to read the language of Duvan'Ku, the characters decided to go back to the cabin and take a look at the book on the desk, which for some reason they had largely ignored during the first session.  This led to an exploration of the house overall, but, oddly enough, they still didn't follow the footprints leading from the back door.  Ah, well, after this session they probably never will.

So, the party examined the book of offerings, and discovered that there were about 40,000 names in it.  They figured out that the last names were being marked by Zeke Duncaster, and even that he was using blood to mark them because he had no ink.  Cool.  They read the writing on the outside of the cabin, and, examining the mirror more closely almost figured out what it was for.  They still think that the clock is just random.

They discovered the bedroll, coins, etc. in one bedroom (and ended up putting the coins back, not wanting anyone to know that they are there and block the trapdoor.  Which, of course, is left open and un-padlocked.  Heh.

They find the purple lotus powder and take that.  Again, heh.  James Raggi certainly knows how to come up with ideas that play with players' expectations.  Even knowing that the purple lotus powder can destroy you, I feel certain that it will get used.  It hasn't yet, but.....

In the harpsichord room, they discover the thousand-year-old oil painting of the party.  This actually offers a major clue that makes the tombs below more survivable, but the players seem not to have remembered it.  Once, in the altar room, one player asked if there was a door.  Ah well.

In this room, I had a great chance to play with the characters, because they wanted to see if the lens could translate all languages.  One player wrote "Hello" in Chaotic on the floor.  The other player, and only the other player, saw "Help" written in Elvish.  He could not read it through the lens.  After trying several other things they finally went to leave the room where the second character saw "Agony" written in large letters on the door, in blood.  Real to the one character, not to the other.  They decided that this was because they had sacrificed their dead elven companion's teeth to get further into the complex on the last session.  There is some discussion about whether or not they should add the elf's name to the book of offerings.

So, back down into the crypts!

On the way up and down, I made sure to find out who was going first and who was going last.  It is not that these decisions had any serious importance in terms of events in the module, but asking the question made certain that the players understood that someone was going to have to be down there -- and up there! -- alone.  It is hard to run a creepy scenario without making the players think about, and commit to, their choices about things like this.

Once more, they use the dead elf's teeth to bypass the bronze door.  This time, they are more careful in their examinations, and turn right.  There they discover, using the lens, the Grimoire of Walking Flesh.  Do they take it?  No.  "Let's leave that now and get it on the way back."

Their wanderings take them to several other crypts, and, while the full extent of the burial vaults may not become clear to them, that there are a lot of dead folks here is.  On top of that, there are 40,000 names in the book of offerings....

They discover the Eye of Many Eyes, and are suitably creeped out, although they are fairly certain that the perception that the eye is following them as they move is an illusion.  They are concerned that, perhaps, there are eyeballs in the basin, and that they will have to pluck one out.  They go fishing in the basin, and discover that there are old copper pieces in there.  Dob, the Chaotic wizard, tosses in a copper piece, and gains a point of Luck.  That causes several other people to toss copper in, losing Luck or Intelligence, depending upon the character.  Then one character takes his copper back, and leaves.  Cough, cough, wheeze, wheeze, fever and illness.  Instant Stamina 4!  "I don't even get a saving throw?"  No.  No, you do not.

They then discover the Prayer Room, where the lens proves treacherous, because Dob reads aloud the inscription in the language of Duvan'Ku, causing characters to begin to make saving throws, in order, until one decides to tattoo the Dead Sign of Duvan'Ku on his body.  Luckily, he is prevented from doing so by his party, but during the long wait for him to recover, there is some talk of just letting him do it, and some talk of just smashing the ink bottle.  In the discussion of the terms of the curse, the inscription is almost read a second time (!) but wiser heads prevail.

They then discover the children's crypt, and open the door without putting coins in the fountain.  Twice.  With two separate characters.  Ah well.  Make a note of their ages, and go on.  The result should be fun if the characters survive the next session.  Dob is an old man in his 60's, so there might even be some initial benefit for him.

The characters then discover the High Priest's Temple, slay the sussurating plant creature, and move in to examine the room.  Quest object recovered?  Check.  Hmmm.....these golden chalices look interesting.  Better snag them.  Let's take a look at the book.  Another couple of inscriptions in the language of Duvan'Ku?  We will not read them, thank you very much, but it is interesting to note that a sentient creature must be sacrificed on the alter to open the secret door to the left of the altar.

Wait a tic....what's that noise?  The dead are starting to rise?  Best get out of here while we can!  Just a dozen or so there at the end of this tunnel?  We can push past them!  Err.....the numbers don't seem to be diminishing, the front lines are being cut off, and the judge has rolled three Critical Hits already.....One wizard has spellburned, twice, to recover flaming hands, and then immediately lost it.  Some of the players are getting that bleak look that announces an expectation of, if not a TPK, their characters not surviving.  Time to flee!  But where?  Wait a second....you said there was a shaft over the altar?  Why, yes there is.

(A funny moment when they think they might end up having to fight their own fallen characters, and it is noted that the elf, at least, won't be able to bite as easily with far fewer teeth!)

(At another moment, Dob, the Chaotic wizard, is so effective at ordering the troops to fight these minions of Chaos that he is docked a point of Luck.  He is beginning to reconsider his alignment choice, although we also had a discussion of the many, many ways he could get that Luck back.)

I ask if anyone has seen The Walking Dead.....then casually point out that if you took all of the zombies in all of the episodes and added them all together.....there are more zombies down here.  Over 10,000, in fact. I'm not sure if saying this is a good idea or not, because the characters have no idea, yet, just how deep in it they are.  I think it is a good idea, though, to let the players know, because creating a sense of dread is as much about the players knowing how bad it is as anything else.

Of course, the rejoiner is, "That's better than we thought.  We thought there were 40,000!"

And then they remember the graveyard.

Now, magic in DCC can be quite costly to the caster, but it can also be quite powerful.  Clerics are healing people to shore up the flagging lines.  Ropework is cast to good effect.  Mighty Deeds are performed to cover retreats.  A natural 20 on magic missile gives the party a short breathing space, followed by a natural 20 on spider climb, and the assistance of the lucky halfling, gives the entire party the means to ascend the shaft.

Surprisingly, nobody dies this session, despite an initial decision to charge into the zombie hordes.  There is a growing sense of hope.  We leave it there for the night.

I am pretty sure that my players will be trying to think of a way to deal with this between now and next week's game.  Once more, massive props to James Raggi for writing this opus of fun and dread!