Graph Paper Games

It's an off-week for the group but we still decided to try to get a game in, not the least of reasons being that next week's regular game night is a bust.  Since it was an off week and two of our regulars couldn't make it, we decided to try out the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons for a brief one-shot.  I also invited two new people who had expressed an interest in playing: Tony and his daughter.  Tony had played D&D years before but hadn't been able to find a group, and he especially wanted to introduce his daughter to gaming.  I'm a big supporter in getting new people into the hobby, so I was happy to help out. I can see why the OSR grognards like Fifth Edition.  It has a lot of early edition elements to it--low hit points, limited healing, no more "just make an Arcana check" stuff--while at the same time having some "modern" game aspects, including ascending Armor Class.  We used miniatures because I find it helpful ...

Recently a friend told me to take a look at Dungeon World , a more Cortex-esque fantasy RPG.  Ironically enough, I've been wondering about the latest edition of Castles & Crusades , which I ran a few years back.  It's on its fifth edition, which frankly seems a little ridiculous to me, especially because I understand the changes are minimal, but since I skipped the previous four, I'm wondering if enough shifts might back the game worthwhile. But here's the thing.  I own a lot of fantasy RPG's.  A lot.  For D&D alone I own Basic, Expert, the all-in-one compendium, 1st and 2nd editions of D&D, 3rd and 3.5 Edition, Fourth, Essentials, and now the trial D&D Next.  I also own Hackmaster , Swords & Wizardry ,  Labyrinth Lord , Basic Fantasy , OSRIC , Pathfinder , and the aforementioned Castles & Crusades .  Outside the D&D family tree I own Palladium Fantasy , Dragon Warriors , Rolemaster , Ingenium , and if it counts, ...

Well, as part of my hope of being a better gaming blogger, I thought I'd share my own real-life experiences running a game, which for those of you who read this blog know is Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition .  You'll also know that it isn't my favorite game, but it is a good game and my group loves it and we have fun, and as I say in the tag line, that's what it is about. So, who's the cast? Revan, a Tiefling bard Rogar, a Dragonborn sorcerer/elementalist Yvanna, an Eladrin wizard Aukan, a Goliath warden Komos, a Githerazi avenger Skyhawk, a pixie ranger So, what's the story? Previously, Yvanna was kidnapped by a lich necromancer called the Icicle King who was running a club for vampires in the PC's home town of Grimfest.  The PC's traveled to the Demi-plane of Ice to rescue her, but the Icicle King told them that he had information about a demon named Astaroth who killed off most of Yvanna's family. Checking in with their q...

Sometimes I wonder about RPG-themed blogs.  What do people really put in them?  I can't write about what it upcoming in my game, because some of my players read this blog.  Writing about what happened in my game always seems to me to be a little underwhelming, a little bit like "how I spent my vacation" articles.  Ironically enough, the most prolific RPG bloggers seem to not be gaming at all, but instead talk a lot about what kind of game they'd run if they had people to play with.  Food for thought. I am still gaming, still running D&D 4E.  We had a great bit of moral dilemma in the last story when the lich who had kidnapped the One Female Gamer's PC told her that he had secret knowledge about who really killed her parents, but would only tell her if she agreed to stay with him instead of being rescued by the other PC's.  In character, the One Female Gamer decided she would stay (although personally thinking that she really shouldn't).  The...

Last Friday we had a pretty satisfying gaming experience with my 4E D&D game, making it two pretty solid sessions in a row.  Both times I've begun to learn some lessons about what works and what doesn't. First, the most recent session featured a Hannibal Lector-esque figure named Benalkazar (whose name was stolen shamelessly from some a family I know).  Benalkazar is a humanoid figure with a long robe, gloves, and mask who claims that he hasn't seen his face "in years."  The PC's don't know what he is.  Altered human? Demon?  Aberration?  Minor god?  He can do stuff magically that aren't in the rules, like perform rituals without materials.  He has a magic item also not in the rules.  And he basically snookered the PC's into releasing him from this prison, and then sent them an engraved thank-you note.  I half expected them to either side-track their current quest to go after him or at least file it away for a future quest, but ins...

I'm running a quasi-sandbox D&D 4E campaign right now.  I use the term "quasi" because I don't have an elaborate map of the city of Grimfest, where the campaign is largely located.  What I do have is a running tally of multiple quests, anywhere from three to seven on average, that the PC's can tackle.  So before each session the players tend to email each other saying things like, "hey, those ogres are continuing to hassle the outlying farms around Grimfest, but I really want to return this statue to its rightful place at the temple of Eternal Dawn." The Icicle Club, a   private club for the wealthy and decadent of Grimfest that also serves as the hunting ground for a group of vampires led by a Baelnorn Lich, has been the most engaging of locales.  Earlier the group had infiltrated the club and discovered the lich's presence (also, on the side, destroying a few of the master vampires that make up the lich's inner circle). Last night the p...

I realized, amidst my waxing on about non-existent fictional campaigns, that I hadn't been talking about how the game I'm actually in is going. Right now I've taken over running the 4E game for my group, a solid group of six players (including my son).  I'm doing a sort of urban sandbox-style campaign where the PC's are presented with multiple options for minor or major quests and choose how they wish to approach them.  I also keep the encounters a little less structured--for some there is a sense of location, but others are more fluid.  For example in the last session the PC's were being tailed by a group that is intended to ambush them.  The PC's then find a place (using a Streetwise roll) to go where it will be difficult to be ambushed and make their stand, setting up a counter-ambush with their bow-themed ranger. It's interesting to see how a city-based campaign plays, because I've never done one before for D&D.  For one thing, the sense ...

Okay, I'll give credit where it is due.  My son pressured me into running Pathfinder for him, and the rest of my gaming group went along.  As it turned out, we had a great time. The story was really straightforward: the PC's are trapped within a large building when a huge earthquake strikes the city.  The thrown-together survivors of the quake agree to accompany a small NPC girl back to her father, a wealthy alchemist in the city by moving through the city's sewer system and avoiding the chaos above. Along the way they battle a few denizens of the sewers and meet a small and very smelly group of cultists.  The father points them towards the home of a powerful wizard who might be able to ascertain the source of the (unnatural) earthquakes, and the PC's rescue said wizard from a demon the earthquake accidentally unleashed in his tower. A few thoughts about the game: I don't know if it was just changing the game system or what, but the group approached encounter...

For the past few months, things have just really been clicking with my D&D group.  We've got a good roster of people who enjoy gaming and enjoy gaming with each other.  I've been posting pics of games over at my other blog, but I can show them here too. Now, it is all coming to a screeching halt.  The story is this: we game every other weekend because on the "off" weekends one of the players has his daughter visiting him (he and the girl's mother are divorced).  Since these alternating weekends are about the only time he has with her, he doesn't spend any of it gaming.  However, after Friday my work schedule has me working every other weekend between now and the beginning of June, when it lightens up again.  That's the rest of March, April, and May where the group has to decide if they are going to game without me, or without the other player. Right now, we're brainstorming solutions.  Sunday afternoon might be a possibility, but that's ti...

I mentioned in my last post that I was making some inquiries into a game going on in the Big City.  Well, I've heard back from the GM, who games with his wife and some friends in their home.  They are basically between games but will be launching a new campaign soon.  We're going to get together and just see how the vibe is.  It looks like they might be playing D&D Third Edition (not even Pathfinder), which is interesting.  It's the edition I have the least experience with, and I always thought that it was pretty front-end heavy when it comes to planning adventures.  But hey, I'm good to play for it. I'll let you know how it works out.

So, as I have said before, I started this gaming group in my local community through Meetup.  There is a area gaming enthusiast's group on Meetup, although they are primarily interested in board games and CCG's.  But I scrabbled a small group together who were able to play on Sundays, which is the worst day for me and I can barely squeeze in a three hour session every other week. Well now, that three hour session has had a wrench thrown into it and it'll be easily a six weeks before we play again, after missing the last bi-weekly session.  I could be playing if it were not for the time, a factor dictated by the available players (including, cheekily enough, that they play in other games to which I have not been invited). So I am about to pitch the whole thing and start over.  Recruit new players, even take the dangerous step of hanging out a sign at local comic book and gaming stores.  I say "dangerous" because one time I did that and got shackled with this ve...

Okay, so over the past month I've both three D&D Essentials books: the core rulebook and the two "player's handbooks" or whatever they are being called.  I picked them up more out of curiosity as someone who's been playing 4E for the past few years to see what's changed, and because the Borders in my town is closing and everything had been significantly discounted. I would just like to express my outrage at the fact that the original three hardbound 4E books have been replaced with three softbound books and two box sets, all of which you need for certain parts of the game, but a lot of stuff that you don't.  I'm talking in particular about the box sets, which contain both the treasure tables in one and the monsters in the other.  But I have to get a ton of dungeon tiles and ridiculous cardboard tokens I neither need nor want, making me think I'll just stick with the 4E treasure from the DMG and the MM1-3 I already own. I understand the math...

I said in the last post "how I'd structure my D&D Campaign (if I was still running one)."  Perhaps I should have said, "How I would structure my FRPG" campaign, because there's nothing to say that I'd use D&D if I was to shackle myself to the task of running a megadungeon.  There are some other options, with a lot to offer. First, there are all the OSR (Old School Renaissance) clones out there, e.g. Basic Fantasy , Swords and Wizardry, or  Labyrinth Lord .  OSR clones of early editions of D&D feature spartan stat lines for monsters, encourage exploration over "room cleaning", etc.  The downside is that you might not want to get too attached to your character, since in all likelihood he's going to die from a goblin's arrow to the throat. Second, there's Earthdawn , the second edition of which is for sale over at Half Price Books right now.  I honestly think Earthdawn got people believing they could do something differe...

Naturally, having yielded my responsibilities as DM, I now miss it.  One of things I wish I had done was construct the campaign around a mega-dungeon, rather than use episodic pre-generated adventures.  Part of my decision to use pre-writ adventures was because I was frankly unsure whether a group could develop out of this.  So I didn't want to commit a ton of time to a campaign only to see it fizzle, and I instead focused on painting miniatures that will never see a tabletop.  Sometimes my internal "logic" amazes me. Megadungeons have several appealing qualities.  First, they are extremely easy to organize and facilitate.  As many have pointed out, dungeons (mega or otherwise) are essentially narrative flow charts, with the decisions made in its exploration determining the course of the adventure.  Unless they are deliberately designed as such, they are nearly impossible to "railroad," although most of WotC's free Game Day adventures with their point...