The End of Down Time

My covid-19 quarantine ends at midnight tonight (about 2 hours from time of writing), so I'm back to work tomorrow. We had a pretty good day. Played some emulated console games with son #2 after I finished teaching my online classes. Ordered delivery fried chicken for dinner. Rewatched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings with the boys. Scheduled my Star Wars RPG session for this coming Sunday. All in all, a pretty good day. 

So, since I've been talking about my actual down time, why not discuss D&D down time a bit after all? 

I don't have much in the way of downtime activity in my West Marches games. Magic-Users can, per Holmes Basic, create a scroll given a week's time and a bit of gold. I rule that to 1 week per game session, but the scroll-crafting can only be done in town. So the past several sessions in White Plume Mountain haven't allowed the characters to replace scrolls used. But once they get back to town, that's one way they can spend their time/money. Also, those that don't have magical weapons or armor can commission +1 items (only) from Rupert the Town Mage or Sister Clarion, the town Matriarch (technically, they could also go to Toutates the Priest [druid] as well, but so far no one has). But each of these NPCs can only work on one item at a time, and it takes several game weeks (sessions) for the item to be completed. Once PCs reach Name level, they could then do these projects themselves. 

So not much for down time rules in my current game. 

In one of the 5E play-by-post games I am in, though, there are some rather extensive rules for down time.

First of all, it's also West Marches style (and the inspiration for me to want to run a WM game myself), but in the more traditional sense that there are multiple parties all exploring different areas simultaneously. But since it's play by post, it's slow and erratic. And while an adventure may take only a couple of days of in-game time, it can take literal years of real time to play out. My longest running character in the game (we're allowed multiples as long as they join different groups) is only on his second adventure after 5 years of actual real world play. But he is 8th level on the verge of 9th in that time...

Anyway, as Gygax would say, YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT or something to that effect. The GM does take careful records of time spent by each party, how many days/hours have passed, how many rations we've expended, etc. And how many days of real world time have passed since each expedition sets out to when it arrives back in town. 

But as mentioned, each party's progress can't really be tied together in one big calendar in this game. If an expedition that covers a day or two in-game time takes a year or more to play out, while another group can cover four or five game-days in the same amount of time, but both parties end up back in town at the same real-world time and switch party members, things won't add up. 

So the GM decided that he just wouldn't worry about that part. But when players asked to spend downtime days for stuff (5E allows for item crafting, earning money with professional skills, learning a new tool proficiency or language, etc), he came up with the following:

*The number of real world days that pass while in the Marches equals the number of downtime days the character has to spend while in town. They must still spend any gold required for the training desired. 

That seemed to work OK. My oldest PC in the game traded in some of his hard won gold and a lot of that downtime to learn some new languages and tool proficiencies. 

But some people weren't going to use those downtime days, so the GM came up with the following:

*You may convert downtime days to XP at the rate of 3XP per 'day' spent. 

This led to a few problems in that one of the players (or maybe two) were trying to keep track of all the members' XP totals for them, with big complicated charts. But the player(s) started assuming that all downtime days were being converted to XP, so when my PC, for example, spent quite a few days on learning stuff, it messed up the charts. Also, there were questions of when these bonus XP amounts should be added, who was adding what when, etc. It got to be a mess.

So recently, after discussion with all the players, the GM has decided to get rid of tracking the downtime days. If PCs return to town and want to do some downtime activity, they can just declare it and spend the gold needed for training (or supplies). Not sure how he's handling profession skills...none of my characters have bothered with that sort of thing. 

Long story short, 5E has some interesting rules for managing down time, but unless strict time records for the campaign are kept (or there's only one party in the campaign), they can be a hassle!

Marching On in the West Marches

 I'm preparing to run my West Marches game this weekend. It's been a little while, what with the funeral and my sons being sick and general business. I just updated the player map with the hexes that were explored in the previous session and thought why not stick it up here as well? I think the last time I did that was 2 years ago in this post. You can see that in two years of mostly twice a month sessions, they've explored a fair amount, but are still relatively close to the home town (middle right). Lots of white space left to explore.

As you can see, I started adding old school terrain markers on the map to help the players distinguish the terrain types. The key to interesting numbered areas is here: 

1. Silverwood (the home town) on the Gallandus River

2. Scorpion Shrine (Goblin Hills)

3. Moon Temple (White Woods)

4. Sahuagin Lair (White Woods)

5. The Caves of Chaos (Goblin Hills)

6. Centaur/Green Flame Temple (Tiger Home)

7. Long Cliff (Whispering Forest)

8. Abandoned Elven Outpost (Black Woods)

9. Border of Dead Woods (Dead Woods)

10. Chimera Shrine (Dead Woods

11. Neanderthal Village (Hellhorse Plains)

12. Quasqueton (Cloud Lands)

13. Ruins where tribal dragonborn camp (North Moor)

14. Haunted House (Dead Woods)

15. Mimir’s Well (Dead Woods)

16. Knight’s Pavilion Encampment/Endless Tournament (Far Downs)

17. Blue Dragon (deceased)’s Lair (Far Downs)

18. The Hall of Power (The Folded Lands)

19. Gemstone Tree (Black Woods)

20. Elven Spire in Quicksand Mire (Goblin Hills)

21. Twin Isle Lake (Hellhorse Plains)

22. Dark Druid Circle (Haunted Woods)

23. The Moathouse (Haunted Woods)

24. Obsidian Ridges (The Folded Lands)

25. Fairy Kingdom of King Louhi (White Woods)

26. Ruins of Xak Tsaroth (Voodoo Bayou)

27. Centaur Ranch (Tiger Home)

28. Dragon Hill (Hellhorse Plains)

29. Cyclopskin Trading Post (Hellhorse Plains)

30. Aboleth Ford, Dragontail River (Far Downs)

31. Boiling Lake (Folded Lands)

32. Petrified Forest (Cloud Lands)

33. Pavillion (Whispering Forest)

34. Hobgoblin Castle (Whispering Forest)

35. Cloud Lake Monastery (Cloud Lands)

36. Non-Euclidean Fortress (Cloud Lands)

37. Haunted Lodge (Brooding Forest)

38. Forgotten Chapel (South Prairie)

39. Halfling Village (South Prairie)

40. Red Feather Elf Tribe (Elfin Vale)

41. The Gates of Barovia (Brooding Forest)

42. Cozy Cottage (Brooding Forest)

43. Ancient Amphitheatre (Hellhorse Plains)

44. CCCP Obelisk (Voodoo Bayou)

The Baboons of Ravenloft

 Had an awesome session of my West Marches campaign last night. The players had gone to the edge of what I'd keyed already on the map in the previous session, but were on a mission to rescue the Rainbow Unicorn for Goldie the Fairy Princess (played by the daughter of a regular). So I'd spent some time turning a few simple notes on the location and creatures guarding the unicorn into a small dungeon. But I had a nagging suspicion that I should fill in some more hexes, so I spent part of the morning and part of the evening filling in some more regions just in case. 

When the game started, Goldie's player decided not to join us, so they left the unicorn in duress until another session. Goldie is hoping to rescue it, befriend it, and have it as a mount, and I'm all for that, as collecting pets is what keeps her interested in the game. 

Anyway, without Goldie, the players decided just to explore some more hexes and fill in some of the white space on the map. And I breathed a sigh of relief that I'd keyed more. But then they ended up exploring south-ish instead of north or further west, areas I'd keyed long ago. 

They finally entered a hex of the Whitebeard Mountains, a region they knew was there, but weren't exactly sure where they started or ended. They found the northernmost point, and in it a giant animated face on the side of the mountain -- The Living Stone Sage. After much debate about what to ask (like the location of PCs zapped away by the Deck of Many Things), they settled on asking it how to best defeat the guardians of the Rainbow Unicorn, and received a cryptic but useful answer. 

THEN they had a random encounter with some Stygian baboons. This is a creature that I think I got from the White Dwarf Creature Crucible book. Sort of an REH inspired souped up simian of a bygone age. They put them to sleep, slew three and tied up the fourth, hoping to use a recently acquired ring of animal control to have it do their bidding. I was waiting for them to try it, since the creature is more monster than animal (magic weapons needed to hit them) but when they did, I decided to allow it. 

In another hex, they discovered gothic iron gates in the Brooding Forest. The gates were inscribed with the words "Von Zarovich" and passing through would transport them to Castle Ravenloft. They decided to control the baboon and send it in. And various comments like "Oh, it will probably return as a vampire baboon" and "Ah, the children of the night. What beautiful music they Ah! Crikey! Monkey!" make me think, well of COURSE! The baboon will be back some day.

Another highlight of the evening was a random encounter with a treant. Since this is the moody Brooding Forest, it was a very emo/goth treant. Queeg, the party's half-elf magic-user/thief, is also very emo and they got along splendidly, although lots of comments from other PCs like "Hey, keep your chin up, champ!" annoyed it to no end. They later encountered the treant again, and it pointed them in the direction of an area they'd been searching for for several months (real time and game time), a dragon burial ground. After defeating the skeletal dragon guardians (one of them one-shotted by Queeg with a crossbow bolt +1 undead slaying), they scooped up their treasure and moved on to find a desecrated chapel guarded by a demon, which they destroyed.

Finally, they holed up in a cozy little alpine bungalo they'd found to rest up. 

Not much combat, but lots of exploring, lots of RP, a moderate amount of treasure recovered, and a ton of laughs during this session. 

Also, after the session (this morning, actually, not right away) I shared my revised TSR house rules with the group. Waiting to see what people think of them.

How I do Exploration XP

 I received this comment from Reese Laundry on my post about not dividing the XP: 

Like Daren, I do this in my BX/OSE games for monster XP only, but not treasure. IT's a minor boost and not unbalancing, I don't feel. I've considered the idea of exploration or mission XP, but haven't tried it yet. I'd be interested in seeing a post at some point on how you do it and how it's worked out for your table!

 Since I've got a bit of spare time today, might as well address it. 

When I started my West Marches game, one of the things I did was go back and read a post from Jeff Rients about exploration XP, and decided to work that into the game. 

Each hex that gets explored has a basic XP value. Any monster lair has a value for its discovery, as well. These values increase the farther the party gets from town. I've got bands 4 hexes deep (or about 1 day's travel) that set the value of these. 

Special locations, or performing certain actions at special locations, or encountering an iconic creature in a certain region, are all worth bonus XP. 

Originally, I set the game up for 5E because that's what all the players wanted to play. So the XP values were pretty small, especially in the initial band. When I switched to Classic D&D, I didn't shift the values right away, so they ended up being inconsequential. After a while, I upped them. 

One thing that I need to improve about my game, actually, is telegraphing where the special areas are that can earn bonus XP. For quite a while now, the group has been setting their own goals. And I've not found the right balance of throwing out rumors and keeping things mysterious. I'm working on it. 

I think I need to make a Google Docs with the rumors and just post the XP amounts on it if the rumor is successfully investigated. 

Anyway, here are the current values I'm using for exploration of a hex and discovery of a lair. The special area XP is pretty variable, but usually two to five times that of a lair discovery award, depending on how easy/hard or influential I think that special is. 

First Band (1 to 4 hexes from Silverwood): Hex 100xp, Lair 200xp

Second Band (5 to 8 hexes): Hex 200xp, Lair 500xp

Third Band (6 to 12 hexes): Hex 500xp, Lair 1000xp

Fourth Band (13 to 16 hexes): Hex 1000xp, Lair 2500xp

Fifth Band (17 to 20 hexes): Hex 2500xp, Lair 5000xp

Sixth Band (21 to 23 hexes): Hex 5000xp, Lair 10,000xp

Again, the Giants?

 My players are slowly creeping towards the more dangerous areas of the West Marches, now that the lowest level party member (my 6 year old who only sort of participates) is 3rd level, and most are in the 4 to 6 range. I've got the next ring done (although I think I still need to convert a few zones from 5E notes to Classic -- while just pulling open my monster book is often good enough, treasures are too low if I leave them at 5E levels), and they have made a few tentative in-roads into that band of challenge. So I'm working on the next ring out. 

The Giants modules are going in this region, even though they're a little tough for the intended level. But since I have at least one player who's played many of the classic modules before, I want to switch them up a bit. Rework a few things, maybe make some map changes. And no, I won't give out too many details of what I'm doing, since a few of my players read this blog. Suffice it to say they won't be exactly the same. 

Also, since West Marches is player-driven in terms of plot, I will not likely be sticking the D and Q modules anywhere. And while I'll likely retain connections between the three giant strongholds, there won't be as much metaplot to discover (maybe, I could change my mind on that). 

Today I read through Glacial Rift, and really, even if I wanted to play them straight, the upper level is a bit bland. There are some interesting encounters and situations there, but a LOT of them are similar. Want to spice things up a bit. Also, will probably switch out some of the treasures to again provide some uncertainty/discovery for my veteran players. 

Plus, as I've mentioned before, Gygax can be a bit verbose. These modules are fairly compact, but at the table, I really don't need all that level of detail for most of the areas. So I'll be spending some spare time in the next few days doing some mods to the module.

Hail the Dragonslayers

 In my West Marches game yesterday, the party was searching for a rumored dragon burial mound. They didn't find it, but they did stumble across a lake with an island housing a ruined monastery. And in that ruined monastery there was a fledgling bronze dragon atop the wall. 

After much hemming and hawing about what to do (the dragon didn't talk, and seemed to be warning the party away), they scared it with some impressive phantasmal force spells (failed save and failed morale check!), then followed it into the ruins. It went into its nest to wake its brethren (as it was on watch). But a fireball wand and a magic missile spell finished them in the surprise round. 

As the party were exploring the priory for loot, they heard a larger dragon roaring outside. Cue big battle!

Except I wasn't expecting it to be as epic as it turned out to be. The "adult" dragon (8HD 'small' bronze in my version of BECMI) had way less than average hit points, only 20 when the average is 36. It did have two more wyrmlings with it, though, so the battle could have gone south quickly. But the party had initiative in the crucial early rounds. The fireball wand took out the two wyrmlings, then the parent cast darkness while one of the party's magic users cast haste and another cast web on the entrance. 

When the dragon came in, it got stuck for a few rounds in the web. It did manage to breathe on the cleric, but even though she failed her save, she had enough hit points to survive. The party managed to then inflict some serious damage on the dragon, but it then cast hold person on four of the PCs, and three failed their saves. It managed to get off both of its remaining breath weapons, but in its damaged state they didn't do much. The party finally finished it off. 

And also, one PC has an arrow of teleportation. He drank a potion of luck to ensure that he'd hit with it and teleport the dragon away. It was a smart plan, but they managed to do so much damage to it that they called him off from using it. 

It was a pretty tense battle, and I'm happy that it went on long enough to have the dragon cast a few spells and use all of its breath weapons (although I guess I should have had it use the fear gas breath after it was damaged, might have given it time to escape the web, but I didn't think of that in the moment, and the party was so spread out only one or two would have been gassed anyway).

I really enjoyed running the encounter, and I think the players had a good time as well. And now a few PCs get to level up!

Using my noggin

Nate, who has been playing Tusken Tumble, the Half-Orc Acrobat in my West Marches game, started a 5E game using the free content WotC has been putting out during the coronavirus lockdown. He started us as 1st level PCs in the Lost Mines of Phandelver module, which is I guess the 5E equivalent of Keep on the Borderlands.

I rolled up a Wizard (Conjurer specialist now that he's 2nd level). And among his spells, only one cantrip does direct hit point damage. It's called infestation, and it summons up fleas, mites, etc. to bite and annoy the target. All of his other cantrips and spells are 'utility' magic.

Out of four sessions Nate has run, I've only played in two (the most recent last Friday night). So I just hit level 2 after this past session while everyone else is level 2 or 3 already. But that didn't really matter. I've been a pretty effective character when I've been there.

Minor Spoilers for Lost Mines of Phandelver below:

In my first session (second of the campaign), we were exploring a goblin cave to rescue some prisoners and stolen goods. The goblins had wolves (dire? worgs? not sure) as guards. Dean's Gnomish Bard and I combined our minor illusion cantrips to get the sound and image of a cat, to lure them out, which worked. We were able to take them on more easily as some were chained and some were not. Later, inside the cavern, my familiar (a Raven, not the most optimal familiar, but stylish!) scouted out a chamber that was up a hill of bones and rubble, and found several goblins, a bugbear, stolen goods, and a prisoner. Some of the party climbed up, but then retreated when they saw how tough the opposition was. I cast my second spell (the first being mage armor) to grease the slope, and the goblins that pursued slid down into our waiting warriors' axes/swords/pummeling fists. Then we all went up the slope, rescued the prisoner (Jeff's character, as he joined the session late), and when reinforcements arrived, I was back to using infestation and minor illusion to distract.

Last night, I felt like I was a bit more creative with my spells. We started out in town, seeking information on the Red Brand bandits who the party had tussled with in the third session which I missed. We ended up impressing a farm boy who knew the secret location into the lair by my mending cantrip and Bumblesnick's minor illusion cantrip. Once we got in the lair, we encountered a creature called a nothic (one-eyed twisted former mage with mental powers) and decided to fight it. The Ranger and Monk did most of the work there.

But after we killed it, we found a room with some red cloaks. They were filthy, maybe diseased, but a prestidigitation cleaned them. But since they wouldn't be much good as disguises shiny clean, more prestidigitation gave them cosmetic soiling.

The final room we investigated had three sarcophagi with armed skeletons leaning on them. With the help of both my and Bumblesnick's unseen servant rituals, we had the servants thread ropes gently through the bones of the skeletons to tie them up. When Denis' Tortle Monk entered the room, they animated of course, but the ropes kept them from mobbing Chell the Monk while we battled them.

Finally, we had a cache of weapons, beaver pelts, and the treasure from the nothic. It was a lot to carry. So I cast Tenser's Floating Disk to carry the loot out.

Dustie, playing a Half Orc Ranger, was wondering why I wasn't blasting away at things. I just laughed and in character wondered why any spell-caster worth his salt would be so crude.

Considering that a very high percentage of spells in 5E are damage dealing spells, I don't think Dustie was overreacting. I just found it amusing that I was getting by without much in the way of direct damage spells, and definitely making things easier for the party.

______________________________________

Story Two!

In my West Marches game this afternoon, the party was asked by the local king of the Fair Folk to wipe out a lair of river sahuagin (piranha people instead of shark people), in exchange for help transporting their large piles of treasure taken from the fledgling dragons last session. Justin's character, Queeg, is an antiquarian (MU/Thief).

On the way to the dungeon, they met hostile satyrs, but Queeg's phantasmal force spell (or was it the wand of illusion?) of frolicking nymphs distracted most of them.

Queeg has a stone of earth elemental control which he used to summon an elemental to battle the sahuagin (until it was dispelled by the sahuagin priestess of Blibdoolpoolp). That weeded out a fair number of sahuagin guards.

Then the party waded in. The remaining front room guards were reinforced by the priestess and her retinue, plus they had a giant crab. While battling, Queeg made good use of continual light to blind the priestess, his wand of paralyzation, and his mirror image spell to even the odds a bit (very necessary, as the priestess had used hold person and paralyzed Abernathy the Dragonborn Fighter/Magic-User, and Calvin the Half Orc Cavalier) [Yes, home brew Classic D&D!]. He also used a staff of dispelling to remove the paralysis of the hold person spell.

Later, fighting the Sahuagin Baron and his bodyguards, Abernathy finally got to shine, with sleep spells (Queeg also used sleep) and magic missiles.

Two things are clear from this: One, Justin is also using utility magic well to solve problems. Two, Queeg has a lot of magical gear (being the only MU in the party for some time, he got a lot by default).

Getting Old?

A week or so ago, I had a bunch of ideas for blog posts. Of course, this was right before bed time, but somehow in the morning I still had them in mind. But I didn't write them down, and since I've been so busy the past few weeks, they've completely slipped my mind now. All I can remember is that I had interesting ideas for things to write about here. Frustrating!

Anyway, things are going well on the gaming front. My West Marches game is coming along well. We had a great session of it over the weekend. The party managed to explore a bunch of hexes on their way to the Ruins of Xak Tsaroth, and scouted it out a bit. No one died, and my younger son got his first taste of D&D (he turns 6 in two months, so he wasn't really paying that much attention, but had fun clicking on the button to roll dice in Roll20 and enjoyed making a character).

The Star Wars d6 game is also going well. But my wife and kids are back in Korea (if you couldn't guess) so my gaming time is going to be much reduced. When it was only me, it was no problem gaming two or three nights a week. Now it's going to be once a week if that. And with West Marches on a regular schedule, Star Wars is going to be much less frequent.

Dean's 4E game is going pretty well. It is fun, despite the drawbacks of the 4E system, and I'm enjoying my quirky character.

Nate, one of my regular players in West Marches, has started a 5E game using the free content WotC has been putting on their website over the past couple of months. I didn't get to play in the first session, but I made a PC -- a human conjurer with a pointy hat as his arcane focus. Named Preston. Any resemblance to 80's cartoon characters is purely coincidental!!! Honest!

Then there are the PbP games I'm involved in on RPOL.net. I've joined too many games, I think, but players in games I'm enjoying were starting new games, and I jumped in on them (along with my previous games). I'm running two (Classic D&D megadungeon, and my d6 Star Wars stuff) plus playing a dozen characters in eight different games (in two games I have three characters each).

And then I'm still plugging away at Treasures, Serpents, and Ruins - East. Once I get the main rules set (working on the GM stuff now, which is tedious and going slow) I'll get back to work on the East Marches setting/module idea I've got. But again, with work stuff and my family back with me, don't expect it any time soon.

Daggertooth is Dead!

Finished up running another session of West Marches. The players finally defeated the substitute boss of the Caves of Chaos, Daggertooth the Troll (also a 6th level Cleric). He and his army of thouls are wiped out. The gnoll cave was never explored (or just the first room maybe), but every other cave has been cleared. So I declared the gnolls vacated.

Finally, after I don't know how many sessions spent in the Caves of Chaos, we're done with it. [If I hadn't taken in a lot of new players, and hadn't created Daggertooth to take over after Warduke was slain, they would have moved on long before.]

It's pretty amazing how much use I got out of dropping B2 in the West Marches. Sure, they've explored quite a fair amount of the map near Silverwood, the home town. But multiple iterations of the group have explored the caves, little by little. Sometimes they'd leave it for a while, going to explore other areas. But they kept coming back. And finally, their persistence has paid off.

Daggertooth made for a good villain, too. He never showed up until the final fight, but they kept hearing about him, how he was more powerful than a regular troll, how he carried a sword on his back but never used it (it's an intelligent Lawful sword, that's why...yes, the party got it identified, and the Lawful Fighter was the one to test it out on a poor unsuspecting random encounter baboon so no surprise shock damage...the sword did send a strong dislike emotion regarding the fighter's other magic items).

Oh, and so that's finally a thing in the campaign! They discovered the first intelligent sword! Always fun. Dean's fighter has good intelligence and wisdom, though, so he's likely to retain control except in extreme circumstances.

Anyway, once again thanks to Gary Gygax! The Caves of Chaos have definitely been a hit, and all the players new to them in this campaign will be able to share in a bit of the D&D zeitgeist that I never got to when I was young and new to RPGs.

Game Trek: The Next Generation

My research trip/vacation in the US is almost over. It's been a good month with my family. And one of the best parts has been seeing my boys' interest in gaming increase while I've been here.

I've got two boys, Flynn (12 next month) and Stevie (5). Flynn played in my West Marches game while he was in Busan, but for the past year they've been in the US so he only got to play once with us online last year. He has tennis practice or tournaments most Saturday mornings, so our Saturday evening Korea time games are usually busy times for him. Stevie's been asking to join the D&D games ever since Flynn got to participate, when he was only 3.

They've gotten into board games, and one I got for Flynn last Christmas was the updated version of Dungeon! We played a few rounds of it while I've been here.

In this game, Stevie and I were both the Rogue (Elf in the original version) and Flynn was the Wizard. Flynn ran out of spells pretty early on, and Stevie went to level 4 and kept getting damaged by a werewolf that he kept fighting to get his treasure back, while I went around levels 1 and 2, got the treasure I needed, and won the game. They had fun and learned a thing or two from the game, I think. 

Later, we went to the local hobby shop. I think I mentioned this the other day. The first time we went, Stevie picked up a pair of HeroClix singles based on Thor: Ragnarok. He got Valkyrie and Arena Thor. The next time we went, he convinced us to buy him a set of 6 Captain America themed figures (Cap, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier, and a couple of Cap clones I'm not familiar with from the comics) and a map, so he could play. We've done some actual(ish, no rulebook so going on my memory of what the powers are/do) games, and just played around with the figures, as well. Stevie's only 5, so he's got plenty of time to actually learn the game. And yesterday, we were back at the hobby shop and the dude there just gave him some more figures and maps for free! They were old promo items, he explained. 

At the same time we picked up the Captain America set, Flynn got four Official D&D Minis of dragonborn (which he played in West Marches, they didn't have any Half Orc Paladins, which he also played) and he's been painting them himself. He's got two done and another nearly complete. 

Pretty good for his first time! He's always been artistic. Hopefully he'll get the last two finished tomorrow, since the weather will be good and I can show him how to use the spray-on top coat I bought while the weather is nice. 

Finally, one day while rummaging around my old bedroom at my parents' house, they found this 2E era starter pack for D&D. I picked it up many years ago when I was working at WaldenBooks (back when there was a WaldenBooks) mostly for the minis and dice that came with it, because I had the employee discount. The boys brought it home, and we've been talking about playing it but they keep finding other things to do. I'm leaving it with Flynn, though, so maybe he'll go through it and give DMing a try this year. 

It's a bit disappointing that we haven't actually played D&D together this month. We still have this weekend, but since it's my last one in the States for a while, my parents want to get together one more time, the boys want to go out and do fun things...we'll see what happens. I just feel good about leaving the boys with a gaming itch. I bet they're going to be bugging my wife to take them back to the hobby shop from time to time to get more HeroClix, minis to paint, and so on. 

Oh, almost forgot. We watched The Mandalorian together as well. They both loved it! And they want Mandalorian helmets an LEGOs and so on for birthday presents. Flynn wants to craft his own armor for next Halloween. :D 

All in all, this has been a great trip for me to share my love of gaming/geekery with my boys!

Caves of Chaos in the Bag, Plus Gundark Hunting!

I'm about to start teaching another intensive English Camp tomorrow, so I got in some extra gaming this weekend. Last night I ran a second session of d6 Star Wars and today I ran West Marches.

In the previous session of West Marches, the party found a magic bag. Today, almost all of the treasure went into it. And it was a bag of devouring, not a bag of holding. Just shy of 3000gp worth of treasure and a shield +1 disappeared. Still, the party still got the XP for the treasure they earned, and they managed to strike bargains with both orc tribes (after eliminating most of the warriors from Cave C and the leaders of Cave B), took out the ogre, and then negotiated with the goblins, who were already weakened from previous losses and the elimination of their hobgoblin and bugbear allies. So at least one PC leveled up, and anther is less than 100xp shy of leveling, and they're happy about that.

Last night's Star Wars game was a blast to run, too. I'd started out with the basic Seven Samurai idea -- defend the village. But instead of bandits (or stormtroopers), I decided the threat was gundarks -- not realizing just how tough they are in d6! Plus, instead of being hired by villagers, I had them working for an ore mining company -- company spaceport, company shop, company mining village, etc. In typical 19th Century style, the company owned everything, and the gundarks needed to be driven off to protect corporate property (oh yeah, and the ugnaught technicians who operate the machinery and repair the mining droids). The party had a tough time with the gundarks, until in one round a few good rolls completely changed the tide of battle in their favor. And we played for nearly 5 hours with only that one battle.

Checking My Achievements

I was looking over my posts from last year. I was surprised that I'd put out seven whole posts in February last year, since I spent almost all of February in the US with my family. But in that last week, I managed to crank out those seven posts.

One of them had this list of goals for 2019:

Now, here are my potential RPG related projects for this year:

1. Converting my West Marches 5E game to Labyrinth Lord. Some players won't like it, but I'm ready to get back to basics. Fewer classes, fewer spells (but often more powerful in effect), and a lower power level; but hopefully more action/interaction.
2. Starting an online Chanbara campaign. Probably with the usual Hangouts/Roll20 gang (Busan Gaming Group plus any of Dean's 5E gamers I can lure into it). If any blog readers are willing to make time on Saturday evenings East Asia/Australia time (Saturday morning North America, midday Europe/Africa), let me know.
3. Finishing up my next set of paper minis (just need to format the book then get it online). It has the Isle of Dread module monsters plus the creatures in BX that aren't in BECMI's Basic and Expert books. 
4. Moving on to the Mentzer Companion Set for the next set of paper minis? Or making a set for OA/Flying Swordsman/Chanbara? Or AD&D monsters? Or AD&D/later edition character types? 
5. Releasing the dungeons/locations of the Chanbara game, plus some for more standard D&D type play, as cheap modules for sale through Hidden Treasure Books.

Overall, I did pretty well with this.

1. I did, sort of. I converted to my house rules Treasures, Serpents, and Ruins, which is BECMI with the serial numbers filed off and some more content inspired by AD&D and 5E. And I couldn't be happier with the game now. Why did I wait so long to convert?

2. I did start the Online Chanbara campaign. Snow Pine Island. I made a map. I made several dungeons. The players made characters. They explored one dungeon. And honestly, I lost interest. I realized later that I'd tried to set up too many factions on this tiny island full of monsters. The players picked the factions they thought would suit their characters, and they were all over the place. Trying to figure out all these conflicting motivations, and goals for each PC that were at cross purposes to every other PC, was just too much work.

Next time, I'll mandate ONE faction that all PCs must have allegiance to, and then let them choose a second one of their choice for some conflict. That way, I can use the shared liege to give them adventure hooks, but let them decide whether to support that goal or try to subvert things for their secondary liege's goals. Make the players do the work on that.

3 and 4. I not only finished the BX Extras/Isle of Dread minis, I also put out a Chanbara minis book. More paper minis this year? Probably not. They're fun to make, but time consuming, and don't really sell that well. What I should do is finally get around to reformatting the Basic Monsters pdfs to match the Expert books, with multiples of monsters usually found in groups to save people the effort of having to print multiple pages to get more than one figure.

5. This is the only one I didn't get done. But I did start in on East Marches, which will likely have recycled content from my earlier Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara campaigns. Hell, even from my old AD&D OA game from 1997, and my 3E OA game from 2006-7. Because as I posted before, there's a lot of stuff that needs to go into this thing. Might as well save myself a bit of effort and self-plagiarize, when things fit.

Next Year's Project

My West Marches game is going well. I plan to continue it. And I've hinted a few times before about an "East Marches" game. I'm going to try and get this out sometime next year.

I've got the map. I've got an outline structure for writing up the campaign in a way that should be intelligible to anyone other than me (my West Marches notes are pretty sparse, because I only need enough written down to jog my memory of what the encounter, mysterious location, or lair is supposed to be about).

Of course, the map has 748 hexes (with six basic terrain types), and I've got 120 "locations" (in five types) marked on it. And there are eight zones of progressing difficulty.

So to make this happen, I need to have four to six wandering monster tables for each difficulty zone (one for each terrain type in that zone). I need to detail 120 locations that can be discovered/visited. I need to come up with hooks and rumors that will drive exploration. I need more monsters.

I plan to make this fairly generic "old school" but primarily for Chanbara. So I'll use Chanbara monsters, and Flying Swordsmen monsters (that aren't already in Chanbara), and probably 1E OA monsters that aren't in either of those games. And some monsters from BX/BECMI (lots of normal and giant animals, giant insects, and general monsters that might as well be in an Asian fantasy setting as a European one). I'll probably need to include  full stats for the monsters for DM convenience.

Oh yeah, and I'll need to write up the "home base" including several Lieges for Chanbara (or just as patron NPCs for other system games). 

So this will be a pretty big book, actually. I figure the difficulty zones should allow for some overlap, and take characters up to at least "name level" if not higher.

Plus Carousing -- Reinforcing XP for Treasure

I really shouldn't be doing this, but I made a hex map for an East Marches exploration game for TSR-East. I'm still not done with the rules (although getting close, since it's pretty much just BX/BECMI stuff beyond the classes/spells, and monsters).

In my current West Marches game, using my TSR rules, there's XP for monsters, XP for exploration, and XP for treasure earned.

In Chanbara, there's XP for gold donated to your liege. The idea, if you haven't checked out Chanbara (and you should, it's pretty cool!), is to reinforce the idea of duty to your lord/organization, which is something that I think makes Asian themed gaming a bit different than the wild-west style of normal D&D.

And I just had this epiphany. Give XP as I do in my normal West Marches game. Explore new hexes? XP. Find interesting locations? XP. Fight monsters and defeat them? XP. Bring back treasure? XP. But also, when the players spend that treasure in the home base on potions and scrolls, enchanting weapons or armor, hirelings and henchmen, magical research, or just blow it on carousing, they ALSO get XP. So getting the loot and spending it gets double of just hoarding it.

Benefit? For the players, they level up faster if they choose to do so. For me as DM, it's easier to tempt them with hints of treasures, and things like bandits/thieves/ninja that steal loot, or rust monsters that destroy treasure, become bigger worries.

Drawbacks? None that I can see. Characters who are hoarding their wealth are likely going to spend it eventually.

Character death is becoming a feature of my game

Talking of my West Marches campaign, of course.

When I started it two and a half years ago, in 5E, there was early on an encounter with three 1st level PCs -- Thief and 2 Monks -- against ten or twelve skeletons. It was a near TPK. All of the PCs were down to 0hp. The skeletons moved on. Death saves ensued. Only one PC, the Thief, managed to survive.

I think there was one more character death early on before anyone reached 3rd level, but I don't remember exactly. There was a long span without many close calls even (but with two Clerics, a Paladin, a Bard, and occasionally a Druid in the party, they had lots of healing powers).

After most PCs had some levels, Dean's paladin (who was maybe 2nd level) was killed by will-o-wisps. The Deck of Many Things was employed in an effort to get a wish to revive him, and Ferret Jax was Imprisoned.

Jeremy's character in an online play session was charmed by dryads and never rescued. I think Brad's ranger may have also died facing sahuagin. 

So in nearly two years of 5E play, we lost three or four characters to death, and a couple more to mishaps.

Since I switched to Classic this past March, death has been a more frequent visitor.

Some new players were starting with low level PCs, and yes, deaths have been pretty common.

Nate lost both of his early characters in combat. Julian's Berserker tried a potion and it was poison - he failed his save. Someone else fell victim to the Deck of Many Things as well...maybe one of Justin's characters. There was the TPK a few sessions back (including Nate's 3rd character, the Muscle-Wizard).

Last night, in another online session, Jeremy's Fighter was killed by Dean's Fighter who was mind-controlled by an intellect devourer. And when he was released and Justin's Mage-Thief and Jeremy's backup Ranger were both hit by feeblemind but Dean's PC was freed, there was a pretty tense battle of low hit rolls and low damage results (Dean's Fighter is an archer with high Dex and low Str), lots of misses and whittling down hit points on both sides. Eventually Dean won and slew the second intellect devourer. So we avoided a second TPK.

While the game was fun in 5E, it was a lot less of a challenge for the players. These days, because death is a real possibility, I think the players are feeling like survival (with treasure) is a real victory. Especially when events like last night occur.

When it rains, it pours

Yesterday I ran West Marches again. Having just secured five magic weapons in the previous session, they set out to gather up some extra fertile mud they'd heard about in a rumor (the local alchemist said he could use it to devise a formula for potions of growth) and an abandoned "centaur" temple with a flame that could enchant arrows.

They found both (and a few other things as well). And one of the random encounters they had was with a manticore. They managed to kill it (Goldie's wand of magic missiles helped a lot, removing 2/3 of its hit points! It shoots 3 missiles, and she rolled 6's for two of them). Then they thought of looking for its lair. I gave them a 2 in 6 chance of finding it, and they rolled it.

So I broke out the treasure tables and my d% dice. It had 4000cp. No silver. No chance for electrum. No gold (despite a 60% chance), no chance for platinum, no gems, now jewelry. Pretty meager haul. And then, yes, you saw this coming, magic items appeared.

2 items, plus one potion.

Roll 1: swords
Roll 2: ranged weapons
Roll 3: potion of levitation

Roll on swords table: normal sword +2
Roll on missile weapons table: longbow +1

So they've got even more magic weapons now. And they did manage to kill an ogre with some gold and nabbed some giant bee honey as well. And the alchemist will produce one potion of growth for them for free, and add that to the list of potions he can brew on demand.

The Pendulum Swings Back

I've been using my house rules to Classic D&D for many years now. Call it a Franken-game, call it D&D Mine, call it a heartbreaker. It works for me. But I'm constantly tweaking it. Sometimes based on how the rules play, sometimes just based on my feelings.

Ever since I started this blog 10 years ago, I've been using additions to Classic D&D based on AD&D and WotC editions. Ever since Gamma World 4th Edition came out in the early 90's, I've been a fan of ascending AC. Yes, the math is the same. But there's one less step involved compared to descending AC. And I've been using it so long that if I use a module with descending AC, I'm instantly converting the number in my head to the ascending value.

It really does save time, as sometimes you know just based on the die roll that it's a hit before the math gets applied. So I don't think I'll ever move my house rules back to descending AC, even though sometimes the nostalgia of having an AC 2 or AC -1 makes me reconsider.

Recently, for fun and as a bit of an experiment, I did start a (play-by-post) game using the RAW. OK, there are still a few house rules. But just the classes from BX/BECMI, descending AC, all that. And it's been pretty fun. Of course, being PbP it's slow at times. If I'm busy, or the players are busy, we end up waiting around a long time for things to move forward. But the main thing is, I'm playing it mostly by the book. And the house rules I'm using are as follows:

Spell Progression -- not technically a house rule, but my printed edition of Mentzer has different spell progression for Magic-Users, and Elves than the PDF version or the RC (print or PDF). So I'm using the version in the printed book I have, which give more low level spells earlier. And for Clerics, I'm using the BX spell progression. This gives more high level spells earlier, but limits them to 5th level spells.

Fighters (but not Dwarves, Elves or Halflings) get the AD&D ability of one attack per level against 1HD or weaker creatures.

Thieves use the BX advancement table for their abilities, which again is a bit more generous than BECMI.

And that's it. That's the extent of my house rules. Nothing is actually made up or cribbed from an outside source, it's just taking a few pieces of other old school TSR versions of the game. And as I said above, it's been fun.

So now I'm looking at the Gothic abbey that is my house rules document that I've been tinkering with for over a decade now. At the moment:

9 Races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Dragonborn, Changeling

12 Classes, divided into the 4 main classes and 2 subclasses each: Cleric [Cavalier, Druid], Fighter [Berserker, Ranger], Magic-User [Bard, Illusionist], Thief [Acrobat, Assassin].

And yes, there's a chart with what races can be what class, and what level they can rise to in each class. And each race has a list of allowed multiclass options.

Humans can dual class as in AD&D. I also gave them a perk where each level above 1st they roll twice for hit points and take the better result.

I won't go into all the minutia of the other races and classes here. But Fighters  have a list of combat styles and they get one at 1st level and more as they level up, plus the BECMI high level combat options when they get to 9th level. So they're not the simplest class to play any more.

For spells, Bard spells are all pulled from the Cleric or Magic-User lists. Druid spells are mostly as in BECMI (most Cleric spells plus a few special unique spells), although I think I added in a few of the unique spells from AD&D as well. Illusionists have  simplified lists based on the AD&D spell lists. Cavaliers just use Cleric spells [didn't call them paladins because they're not forced to be lawful only].

For gear, I've slightly expanded the weapon list from BECMI. And I added some general equipment from other editions of the game. Nothing too noteworthy. Except for one thing. I added large shields that grant a +2 to AC instead of a +1. But since I'm using old school modules for a lot of my West Marches adventure locations (and my monsters & treasure house rule document was made before I added the large shields) all of the magic shields found so far or placed so far (2 found, a few more placed) in West Marches aren't tagged for size. So I'm defaulting to small. And players are wondering why they would give up a normal large shield for a magical small shield +1. Good question.

So even though I think large shields deserve to be in the game, and shields really deserve more than a +1 to AC, the way the game has been designed I'm seeing some small problems with this addition. I think I'll do away with it in my next revision.

And all that blather brings me to my point. I'm having fun with my heavily house-ruled game. I'm having fun with my barely house-ruled game. And I'm feeling like it's time to simplify. Go back to Race-As-Class. Get rid of the extra classes and races. Reduce the amount of pondering players do when they roll up a new character (having just come off a TPK, I realized how much faster it would have been to get everyone up and rolling again if it had just been the seven classes of BX/BECMI to choose from).

But if I pull another switch like that on the West Marches, I don't think it will go over so well. So I'll probably just save the simplification for the next campaign. 

And we're good

Today is Chuseok, the Korean "Thanksgiving" or harvest moon holiday. And it's Friday the 13th. What better way to break the party's luck after a TPK than to play more D&D?

As I predicted, and played off as information from Goldie the Fairy Princess (who escaped the TPK by only playing in the first half of the game last Sunday), the new adventurers went out and found the remains of the previous party -- and all their magical loot! Of course, the previous party had two halflings and a gnome, while this party is a human, half-elf, two half-orcs and a full elf. So some of the magical armor didn't fit. But for the most part they all got kitted out with magical weapons (a few from before, plus the five new ones discovered last session), some magical armor, and several potions, a staff, and a wand.

And they didn't die this time. Only "Boy," the 58 year old human servant of the noble Elf Fighter (NPC) got killed by a gargoyle. And the magic weapons came in handy with their first gargoyle run-in!

They also made friends with a trading post manned by cyclopskin, and are thinking of trying to set up a lucrative trade in psychedelic mushrooms from the Fungal Forest not far away. And ideas of building an alliance of neanderthals and cyclopskin, and possibly the myconids, against the mysterious and evil Horned Society.

I love this game so much. I don't need to set up plots. Just introduce groups and the players build the conflict into it.

Modifying S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

Yet another classic TSR module that I want to stick in my West Marches campaign.

I've been going through the module the past few days. Here are a few observations (in no particular order):

• I have no problem dropping "sci fi" or tech in my Medieval fantasy game, so I don't need to re-fluff everything as magic items. In fact, I might even do away with the Gamma World-style "roll lots of dice to see if you figure this thing out or shoot yourself in the chest" charts. It's always been one of those subsystems that seems like a good idea in theory but just isn't that fun at the table. 
• Instead of the tech discovery chart, maybe just have a simple Intelligence check, and if failed, a saving throw to avoid mishaps? Easier and faster than trying to describe what's happening while a series of d10 rolls are made and I'm consulting the chart. And it still preserves the outcomes of: "you figured it out" "you have no idea" "it blows up in your face"
• Classic D&D doesn't have a comprehend languages spell. Read languages is low level and easy to come across, so they can figure out any written information if they need to. Speak with monsters requires a level 11 caster. I might want to throw a few scrolls of that spell the party's way before they find the ship. Or communication with the androids and recorded voice messages will just be missed. Or just make it clear to them that while they may (probably will) stumble upon the ship at a lower level, they should wait until they're higher level to fully explore it.
• The map in my PDF scan of the original module is fine on screen, but when I print it out it's really hard to read. I should redraw the map. 
• This place is huge! I knew this, but considering how the players so far have not been as interested in dungeon crawling (with the exception of the Caves of Chaos), I think only the first level will be enough crashed spaceship for them. 
• Since there are plenty of empty spaces on the first level map, I may throw some of the interesting encounters from lower levels into the first level so that it's not just vegepygmies and androids. 
• I copy/pasted the text and have been editing out extraneous bits that I won't need at the table. I was complaining about Gygax being wordy a few weeks ago, and while this text has a lot of unnecessary verbiage, it's a lot more concise than some of the other modules I've been using. Gygax packed a lot of useful information into the descriptions of the areas. 
• I love the rooms with a bunch of stuff to experiment with -- you know (as a player) that some will be helpful, some harmful, and some could be either depending on how you mess with it. There's a lot of that in this module.

TPK

And in today's West Marches game, the players decided (based on my rumors) to go exploring.

They discovered four or five new hexes. They found five magical weapons. They negotiated and avoided combats with various monsters (neanderthals, hellhorses, giant goats, and myconids riding giant ants).

Then, when camping for the fourth night of the expedition, three carrion crawlers attacked.

TPK.

Luckily, we had enough time left for everyone to roll up a new PC.