New Fish in an Old School asks, “To Kill or Not toKill?” and comes down on the traditional (and, I think, fairly common) compromise of not to kill much, with an emphasis on letting the dice fall where they will. (Frankly, I think that’s the actual Old School preference. Yes, the dungeon is designed to be deadly, but it’s also beatable. That’s often what Old Schoolers mean when they talk about putting “game” before “role playing.”)
That’s an attitude I have a lot of sympathy with, and it’s been my default mode for decades. Lately, however, I’ve been drifting away from it. You can see that in my Table of Death & Dismemberment; sure, there are broken bones and lopped-off limbs, but the most likely results are knock-outs.
Why is that? It’s not because death is inconvenient. I do not base my campaigns around any one character (PC or NPC), so simply killing or dying won’t derail things. Likewise, with the opportunity to hire henchmen, it’s fairly easy for the PCs to fill out the ranks of the party if there are holes in their team.
No, the real problem with death is that it’s, well, boring. You roll up a new character, the other players weave in a bit of grief and angst into their play, and you move on. And that just feels rather “meh” to me.
(Let me make an important distinction here, however; while death itself may be boring, the threat of death is not. Though this can highlight the problem even more, as the death of a character can feel horribly anticlimactic, after the threat of it has been ramping up.)
So, what other than death? Maiming, broken bones, and unconsciousness. If only one or two PCs are incapacitated this way, now the others need to figure out what to do with them. They certainly don’t want to abandon their comrades to capture or being eaten. Now the tension of the fight rises. The players of downed characters are still riveted to the game. Will the others be able to drag them away to safety? How much will those still standing risk to safeguard the fallen? This is a lot more thrilling than rolling up a new character.
This means, of course, that I have to be a bit more on top of things ahead of time. What does it mean when the bugbears capture the party? Do they have a history of ransoming captives? Do they keep slaves? Or do they have a relationship with some other race, deeper in the dungeon? Will the PCs be kept in cells until they are to be eaten or sacrificed to their dark god? And if that’s the case, what are the cells like? How or when are the PCs fed? How long will they be kept before they are sacrificed? What are the opportunities for escape?
It also means TPKs are far more likely. Defeat to unintelligent monsters probably means some, if not all, of the party gets eaten. (And though they were intelligent, that always makes me think of Bilbo and the dwarves, strung up by the spiders, kept poisoned and weak until it was time to feast.) Who gets eaten first? What happens to those “saved” for later?
Luckily, I love answering those questions, and usually I find examples in real-world animal behavior or the fantastic cultures I’ve created for my game. And heck, if I do get a TPK, the way my campaigns are usually put together, that means an adventure in the realms of the Afterlife.
Art by Charles-Gustave Housez and Edmund Blair Leighton.
There are so many good blogs out there! I might almost say too many; I'm having a devil of a time keeping up with all the good stuff going right now. Case in point: nearly a month ago, Navdi posted about his desire to use Pathfinder materials to run a more sandboxy, Old School game. I just discovered this last night. It struck a chord with me because 3e in all its incarnations leaves me cold, but I love Paizo's design style, artwork, and just the look-and-feel they give their stuff. So, how to infuse a more Old School feel into a game that is based on Paizo's rules and Pathfinder adventures?
I offered some suggestions in his comments, and this is expanding on what I wrote there. Generally, what the players want from 3e and its ilk is a sense of story and verisimilitude to their adventures; they don't want to just whack random monsters for random amounts of treasure. What DMs pining for a more Old School game often want is a more open-ended story and a more proactive approach from players towards tackling challenges; they don't want the players twiddling their fingers while they wait for the DM to deliver the adventure on a silver platter. With a creative and flexible DM, those goals are absolutely compatible. (Where you'll run into trouble is the conflict between the players' desire for mechanical customization of their characters and the DM's desire for simplicity. If you find a good way to harmonize those discordant themes, please let me know.)
I don't know any of Paizo's adventure paths well enough to say, but the ones I have read at least make nods towards player choice (and their latest, Kingmaker, promises to do more than that), and as Navdi points out in the comments of his blog, Paizo does a great job of establishing settings that are larger than the mere adventure path and its dungeons. With all that in mind, here are my suggestions to Old School-ify your existing collection of Pathfinder adventure paths:
1) start the players off with a clear, obvious, but open-ended problem. My favorite is a shipwreck (players need to gather supplies and find their way to civilization), but you can also use a natural disaster or alone in the wake of a military defeat for their side.
This works great because the players are presented with concrete, obvious problems to solve, but while there's no dungeon in sight, they're immediately put into the proper, creative, open-ended problem-solving mode that is the backbone of Old School play.
2) Once they've reached civilization, shift the focus to an urban environment. Everyone knows that Old School play and city adventures are incompatible, right? (We just won't mention Aerie of the Slave Lords and Vault of the Drow. Or the Random Harlot table. ;) ) Give them something concrete to do as soon as they get into the city, or better yet, have it be something they need to do that they discovered while solving the issues of the start of the campaign. During the course of this first urban adventure, start planting the seeds of conflict that will inspire the players to make choices: let them hear rumors, find treasure maps, or make enemies that will guide them to your adventure locations. Let them choose sides in local conflicts, and make those choices matter. Most importantly of all, make it clear to them as early as is reasonably possible that their choices have a direct and powerful impact on the setting. If they're not utterly bizarre, they'll love it. And again, that puts them in the proper headspace for Old School play.
3) Use more than one Pathfinder series. Since you're giving the players choices about what challenges to tackle, you'll likely need more adventures than one Pathfinder series can provide. So feel free to seed your CotCT adventures with some cherrypicked from Rise of the Runelords or Legacy of Fire. If they don't know much about the OSR, you might be able to squeeze in a Raggi adventure or something from Fight On!
4) By the time the PCs reach 4th or so level, most of the work should be done; they'll be interacting with the world as a place, rather than looking for the markers pointing them towards the next adventure. Don't be surprised if it takes that long, however. Even when the players are all on-board for that sort of thing, it can take some time before they know enough about the setting and the NPCs to really start being proactive and taking their destinies in their own hands.
This grew out of a number of conversations (some online) about the massive amounts of wealth old school characters (who earn most of their EXP through treasure) tend to acquire. Carousing rules work great, but if you don't want to use those for some reason, the PCs are going to end up with giant piles of treasure. Here's what I've done in the past to allow the players to fritter that great wealth away:
Potions and Magic - I've usually had a very small local market (usually one hedgewitch or the like) selling potions and a few magic spells. The potions are usually utilitarian things, like healing potions and waterbreathing potions, and sell for 100s of gp per use. Even first-level spells should probably sell for no less than 500 gp. Nothing above 2nd level is available, and little of that.
I also allow the PCs to pay sages and such for identifying magic items plundered from the dungeon. This also tends to be expensive, usually costing 50 gp or so to identify a potion and 300 gp for weapons and armour.
Fates Worse Than Death - catch a nasty disease from the giant rats? Or get cursed by the witch? Getting that sort of thing undone can cost some serious coin. The typical price I've seen for having a spell cast for you is 100 gp per level of the spell, making cure disease and remove curse cost 300 gp for each casting.
Transportation - Do the PCs need to travel by sea to get somewhere? There won't be regular cruise-ship traffic to the Isle of Dread, so they may need to buy their own war galley (60,000 gp) and crew it with rowers (300 at 2gp per month), sailors (30 at 10 gp per month), and a captain (250 gp per month). If the trip requires they sail out of sight of land, they'll want a navigator too (150 gp per month). Some marines (up to 75 at 4 gp per month for hazard pay) might be nice in case they run into pirates or sea monsters as well. And all these people will need potable water and provisions to consume on the voyage.
Throwing Money at Problems - Allow the players to solve some problems with money. Let them hire and outfit henchmen to accompany them on their adventures. A sage (2,000 gp per month) might be able to learn more about the dungeon or the evil duke who is threatening the region, while a spy (500+ gp per mission) might be able to ferret out the Duke's vile plans. Maybe the orc tribe will take a bribe to go pillage elsewhere, or could be hired to help take on the hobgoblins next door. Maybe the dragon won't eat you if it let it eat your horses.
Making Friends and Influencing People - Being known as philanthropists and high-rollers can result in beneficial modifiers to local reaction check rolls. This can include things like sacrifices at the local temple of a patron deity, weregeld paid to the families of henchmen who died on the last adventure, or rebuilding the orphanage burned down by the goblin lackeys of the evil duke. My college crew celebrated important milestones and achieving long-term goals with wild parties, in which they invited many of the important NPCs from past adventures. These were fun to RP, and allowed me to sow the seeds of future adventures. And, of course, they required the spending of lots of coin on food, entertainment, and clothes.
Bling - Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man. Allow them bonuses to reaction rolls when they dress to the nines (after spending money on it, of course). Maybe a high-plumed helm or banner gives a morale bonus to their henchmen in battle. You're more likely to get an audience with the Lord Sheriff if you're dressed like someone who ought to be given an audience with the Lord Sheriff. A few bribes and a fancy gift might make things go smoother, too. If you really want to look the part, you'll need servants and a carriage and all of that as well.
And if you're knighted after rescuing the count's daughter, you'll owe him a certain amount of military service every year. To avoid having dull patrols and sentry duty interfering with far more profitable dungeoneering, pay enough scutage to his lordship so he can hire mercenaries instead.
Property - There's no need to wait until reaching "name level" before allowing the PCs to start spending money on lands and property. A small house in town can serve as a start, with a few servants and guards to protect it while they are away on adventure.
The nice thing about most of these suggestions is that they don't make the PCs feel like they are being punished for their success. Taxes and theft only make the players suspicious and angry. They can be used, but only with moderation. Instead, let the players use that money to make the lives of their PCs more fun and comfortable. Once you get the ball rolling, the players are likely to make suggestions of their own. Whenever possible, let them get what they want; "no" just shuts things down, but "yes, and..." creates new adventures and new fun.
Art by Joseph Mallord William Turner, Jean Limbourg, and Hans Makart .
Personality inventory? Like, "What are the important elements of my character's personality, and do I want it to stay that way?"
On the face of it, this kind of sounds like something you'd expect to see in a very modern game. In fact, this is a very subtle process, and until recently, I hadn't really been consciously aware of it. A year or so ago, I could've talked about the hell I put clerics through in my campaigns, which is an extreme example of what I'm talking about here. If it's more comfortable for you, think about this as stress-testing the character concept. The goal here is to make the character change with time in subtle and interesting ways.
When players create a character, they usually think about things they want to do and experience with that character. Sometimes it's fighting a particular enemy or wielding a certain powerful weapon or quite commonly walking in the footsteps of some of their favorite characters from literature and movies. This last can be especially interesting, because these characters are often defined by their weaknesses and their challenges. Elric has his thin the blood, Cudgel his poor luck, Darth Vader has the arc of his redemption, and Odysseus keeps annoying gods. It's the struggles and challenges, even more than the cool gear, which usually defined such characters. Maliszewski has mentioned how, in the groups of his youth, the listeners of heavy metal music made intriguingly dark and doomed characters. For certain sort of player, this is the stuff excellent gaming.
All well and good, but the point isn't to create an angst-fest where you just constantly dump horror and tragedy on the characters’ heads. Instead, the goal is to make the non-mechanical, more subtle aspects of characters important in the game. They're all sorts of little ways you can do this; old school games are rife with this sort of thing. Changes to the character, or the character’s circumstances, necessitate reevaluating the place of that character in the setting in relation to nearby cultures and how the character is expressed through play, the setting of goals, and the various attributes of personality. And you can find the mechanisms for this all over the place in the games you already play.
Charm: the granddaddy of them all. Even the otherwise laconic Moldvay rules mention “orders against [the target’s] nature (alignment and habits) may be resisted". These sorts of spells really get to the heart of what a character wants and what they're willing to do to get it. It's very much an invitation to review how the character has behaved up until this point. Characters willing to stab their comrades in the back to get what they want are less likely to resist these sorts of spells than those who adhere to a very strict code of honor. Most characters fall somewhere in between these two extremes, of course, but the basic principle remains. Who they've been and what they've done dictates how the spell works and its limitations.
Transformations: changes in circumstance require changes in behavior. Let's start with the most dramatic: polymorph other. A character who's been transformed into another race or even class is going to find people treating them differently. Their role in the party he changed. More importantly, their role in society may have changed. The extreme example is, of course, xenophobia. The elf becomes an orc, or the champion of the dwarves becomes a goblinoid. However, there are much more subtle options. A human transformed into a gnome suddenly has to deal with a world built for people twice his height. An elf turned human suddenly has their life expectancy drop to 10% of what it was before. Moving to or from the dominant form of life in a particular area can have significant consequences for characters’ social standing and opportunities. And we haven't even touched all the fun you can have shifting genders.
Things can get even more fun if you cast your net a little more broadly for opportunities. Usually, a character infected with lycanthropy or turned into an undead is no longer playable. However, you can have a lot of fun with the character who is trying to live with such a condition. Disfigurement in combat can subtly alter how a character interacts with the world, or even force them to be more dependent on others. Gaining the ability to use spells at higher levels can also dramatically transform how a character is perceived and in turn how they behave.
Getting rich and leveling up: nearly inevitable and usually momentous. Most games have mechanisms for characters to gain power through the mechanics. Even those that don't usually allow the characters to amass great wealth, and with it usually comes local political influence. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but even if you don’t want your PCs wielding considerable political influence, you need to explain why they don't when they can toss fireballs and toast the entire local militia, or routinely lose more wealth in their couch cushions than the local nobility spends on the upkeep of their castle. Many players and DM's look forward to the day when their used-to-be-pipsqueak neophytes suddenly demonstrate their newfound confidence and abilities. It used to be fairly standard practice for GM's to introduce some sort of bully early in the campaign to annoy the PCs with who was later trounced handily, and publicly, by the player characters to demonstrate their growing power and confidence.
Such displays almost invariably change the opinion of those who witness it. It would be odd indeed if characters who had saved the realm a handful of times, defeated menacing ogres, and slew giants and dragons were not treated differently by those whom they had both helped and thwarted.
How players and their characters deal with success can be as telling, and is interesting, as how they deal with adversity. Into every life a little sun must shine, and most people don't pay as much attention to how they handle success. Good times are seen as a chance to let your guard down. The true nature of the character may be revealed in such moments, often with consequences that outlive any momentary good fortune.
Again, this is not something overt and certainly not something that should interfere with gametime. Instead it is very much part of the give and take of play. Characters change, and the world reacts to that change. Characters then react to the world’s reactions. This creates a chain of events that follow logically from each other in ways that are largely predictable, but allow for great variations. This is where players craft their characters. This is where two fifth-level fighters exhibit their unique individuality from each other. This is where the magic happens. This sort of thing is far more flexible, and infinitely more powerful, as well as frankly more interesting, than anything mere mechanics can achieve.
Art by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Claude Vignon.
In the Doom & Tea Parties game one of the PCs recently had a conversation with an NPC about freedom, or the lack thereof. They discussed how choices are made for them by society (like parents, superiors in their organizations, and just social custom), and how choices were curtailed by past choices. This may seem unusual for an old-school campaign. After all, the whole point of sandbox play is ultimate freedom for the players: freedom from railroads, freedom from plots and storytelling, freedom to explore wherever and whenever they want.
Life, however, doesn't always cooperate. As players explore the sandbox, and the players and DM together fill in the blanks, roadblocks begin to appear before the players. Mostly these are social. Sometimes they are physical, like mountains, oceans, or other impassable or nearly impassable terrain. Specifically right now, however, I’m talking about social constraints. As the players rescue prisoners, fence the loot, and complete little jobs or big jobs for the Powers That Be, they began to entangle themselves in the social network of the setting. As they acquire power the Powers That Be will take notice of them and may in fact act to entangle them in the social network of the setting. This only makes sense after all, since they want the PCs, especially as they grow in power, to be on their side.
However it happens, the PCs will find that certain actions come at a cost. Allies become important, enemies seek to block their actions, and the PCs more and more have to weigh their own goals against the social costs of their actions. Do note, however, that the players are not forced to take actions or follow a plot. There is still leeway in their still choices. However, unlike at the beginning of sandbox campaign where the players can do pretty much anything and there are no real consequences for them, now their choices begin to cost them. The operative word here is "cost." They still can choose to do the socially expensive thing if that is their wish. Freedom is still there. It's just that now there are consequences for the things that they do, consequences they understand and, if everyone's been working together to build the setting and to tie the PCs into the setting, consequences which they understand and which are meaningful to them.
This, in my opinion, is when a campaign really starts to sing. At this point the world is real to the players. The players know where their characters fit into the world, and how the world interacts with the characters. The DM's job becomes a lot easier as well. Finding motivation for the players is nearly no longer an issue. The players will create their own motivations based on that social network. They want their friends and allies to be stronger and safer. They want to thwart the goals of their enemies. In fact, the primary job of the DM at this point is to keep the ball rolling so that the players are always scrambling to keep up with their own plots, their own goals, and missions that they create themselves.
Things might be different in a West Marches style sandbox. I haven't played one of those yet, but it seems to me that if you have a wide diversity in the people who show up from game to game, there's going to be less of this buy-in into the setting. Also, West Marches games tend to deemphasize time spent in the city, which makes it harder for the characters to get entangled in the social web of civilization. That said, they are very likely to get entangled in the social networks out in the wilderness or in the dungeons. Alliances with humanoids, relationships with certain powerful monsters, and attempts, much later in the game usually, to clear the wilderness and settle it, will create something like these same networks of social interactions and social entanglement, but outside of the city, and out in the wilderness or in the dungeons. Again however, if the group is different people every time, this is less likely to happen. This sort of play really requires frequent play by a consistent group of players. As the players learn the world and who the movers and shakers are, and develop relationships with them, they began to build their own networks and find their places in this world. Players who don't put in the time or the effort to learn how the world works socially are not going to have this sort of involvement or investment in the campaign. Instead, they are much more likely to just skim across the surface and focus primarily on the assumed things like killing monsters, exploring the wilderness, and collecting loot.
Which works best for you and your group, of course, really depends on you what you’re after. I myself love this kind of play, and as I said, really think campaigns take off at this point. Other people see it as distraction, or disruptive, especially since it means certain players may start to dominate the game, leaving the rest to twiddle their thumbs while the more socially aware and interested converse about the NPC’s families or recent gossip or things like that. If you're going to allow this sort of thing to happen in your campaign, or even to encourage it, all the players need to be on board or at least be willing to tolerate the sort of interactions with NPCs that may take time away from dungeon-delving, monster-murdering, and loot-gathering.
Daddy Grognard has a great little article about hirelings, mentors, meatshields, and Marry Sues. Luckily, my ego is tied up more in the game than any particular characters, so I’m fairly good at avoiding the pitfalls he brings ups. I also roll up my NPCs and let the PCs pick from a small list of the available hires. Here’s a list of sorcerers recently looking for work in Pitsh, as I sent it to my players in email:
Keshnal of Druusis – A tall, emaciated guy with long, greasy hair and bloodshot eyes. His clothing consists of a tattered robe he wears open and pair of linen pantaloons. His reputation is one of brilliance, and he has a history of really coming through when the chips are down, but his opium addiction and sarcastic attitude make him erratic and difficult to live with. He wants 50 gp up front, and a half-share of the treasure.
Norbis Lal – He'll proudly tell everyone and anyone he's the second son of the third wife of the Warlord of Korba, one of the strongest human city-states not in alliance with the gods. The bookies give his claims only a 30% chance of being true. He's short (5'4”), pudgy, with a round face and warm, expressive eyes. His robes are of fine but sturdy linen and his sandals are simple, but he wears a fancy-looking ring on every finger. He's a competent sorcerer, if not inspired, and he reads and writes both normal and High Fey. He wants 65 up front, a half share of the treasure, and the first wand, staff, or book of spells you find.
Meshna – Is young for a sorceress, with long, black hair, and haunted green eyes. She wears surprisingly long, black robes that would seem sensible back in a dwarven community, but are too heavy for Pitsh. Still, she doesn't sweat. Her eyes move constantly, flicking between the exits as she answers your questions in short, to-the-point phrases. She has a reputation for being weird, even for a sorceress, and vicious in a fight. She wants 60 gp up front, a quarter share of the treasure, and dibs on anything you can find that creates illusions or turns people invisible.
Koreat Pashnal – Koreat is in her mid-thirties, and so the oldest of those suggested to you. She's practical, smart, and has a reputation for staying cool and collected no matter how crazy things get. She has ginger-colored hair that she wears pulled into a bun, a smattering of freckles across her face, and an expressive mouth. She wears a linen kilt and halter-top, buskins, and a broad straw hat. She speaks and reads common Fey, Nagpa, orcish, and makes a point of telling you, in a voice just a hint over a whisper, that she's had “experience dealing with efreet before.” She wants 70 gp up front, a half-share of the treasure, and dibs on the first spellbook or magic staff you find.
I don’t share the stats with the players, and they can sometimes learn more about these characters by asking around. And these are characters, with personalities and interests beyond just being a pocket-full of neat tricks for the PCs to whip out when needed. They don’t often get forgotten in the middle of the dungeon. “Oh yeah, isn’t Koreat with us?”
I can usually whip folks like this up off the top of my head pretty quickly, but there are tables in the back of the 1e DMG that make rolling up personalities a snap. (True story: my 8th grade English teacher had photocopied the tables and handed them out in class as tools to help with creative writing assignments.)
So the players get a basic reputation, how much they’ll charge, and a brief list of pros-versus-cons in hiring each potential person. This puts the ball in their court; do they want the slightly unstable but more experienced sorcerer? Or someone who’s a bit more boring but more dependable? Or do they want to pay for both quality and reliability?
Luckily, these sorts of decisions are usually set up near the end of a game, so I have time to whip these descriptions up and email them to everyone, and they have a few days to chew on it before making a decision and buying equipment for them.
Art by Ludovico Marchetti and John William Waterhouse.
So, what I’d like to hear from the community is what you think would make published adventures better. What areas are WotC adventures lacking in that could be improved? What makes a good adventure for you, and why are the published adventures so far not doing that for you?
If you want to just post some thoughts, that’s fine by me, and I’ll be eager to read them. However, if you REALLY want to be a superstar, when you talk about something that can be improved, give me an example of a WotCadventure that does that thing badly (or not at all), and an example of an adventure that does that well.
Unfortunately, I’ve not played any of the WotC-authored adventures for 4e, so I cannot cite chapter and verse as requested. That said, I doubt Mr. Thompson could go wrong by starting with a high-level review of how maps can be laid out and the flow of play that creates and allows.
If they really want to bring their A-game (and stealing Mr. Raggi’s brain isn’t an option) they can leap from that high-level of abstraction to a down-in-the-mud-and-the-blood-and-the-beer worm’s-eye-view of how mood and expectations are shaped from before a module is even purchased. It’s a bit long and content-rich, however, so I suggest you block off some time to follow all the links, have a nice cup of tea or an adult beverage of your choice handy, and read with an open mind ready and eager to have thoughts provoked.
From this point on, I can give vague suggestions based on what I’ve read. For instance, in H1: Keep on the Shadowfells, the game begins with a kobold ambush. There’s no thought given to how the players can avoid the ambush, ambush the ambushers, or the like, and it’s a nightmare for characters of the Defender role since it takes place in a wide-open field where the kobolds are free to move and “shift” all over the place. While I certainly won’t complain about challenging encounters, it’s usually not best to start things off with a frustrating encounter, and this one reads a bit like playing whack-a-mole while ants crawl up your leg, biting every inch of the way.
But again, I’ve not played it. Oddysey, wasn’t this the one you ran your crew through? Any thoughts?
There’s been a bit of good-natured snickering in some circles at the play we’re seeing in Grognardia’s Dwimmermount campaign. “He’s playing a Silver Age game,” is the cry, and, as much as I’d like to beat him with that stick (again, good-naturedly), his beef with the Silver Age is more its obsession with realism and the front-loading of story and detail that came later.
So I’m not sure if I should call myself a Silver Age DM anymore. I also adore the Dungeoneers Survival Guide, because I think it’s a perfect sourcebook; full of inspiration for when you’re planning your campaign or an adventure, but I never touch it when the game’s actually going on. Which means, in effect, I’m ignoring something like half the book. The moral of the story, I suppose, is watch how we play, not what we read.
While a good character background (and “good” is not necessarily synonymous with “long”) gives you something to start with, it’s only a start. What players really care about are the things their characters do. This, to my mind, is the key difference between computer and pen-and-paper RPGing; computers can only react to things they are programmed to notice, but a good DM can react to any- and everything.
The players are going to need treasures and magic items identified, so they’ll naturally build a relationship with the local sage. They’ll want their loot fenced, so that means a relationship with local jewelers, collectors, and patrons of the arts. They’ll need wounds healed, curses removed, diseases cured, and a steady supply of holy water, so that means a relationship with at least one local temple. And, as they acquire skills, magic, and powerful weapons, they’ll become a force to be reckoned with, which means the local temporal powers will want some sort of relationship with them (even if it’s mostly the understanding that if they step out of line they’ll be squashed like bugs).
The classic West Marches campaign minimizes stuff happening in town, so a lot of this might be glossed over, but that’s fine as it’s weak sauce compared to what happens in the wilderness and dungeons. This is why the wilderness encounter tables are full of humans and beasties the PCs probably won’t be able to overcome easily. This is why the monsters in a dungeon are not necessarily going to attack the PCs on sight and why Gygax didn’t bother to name the residents of the Keep on the Borderlands, but did explain the relationships between the various humanoid tribes living in the Caves of Chaos.
The players should be putting down roots, especially if they’re exploring a megadungeon. Even if they eventually intend to turn on and betray the goblins they’ve allied with against the orcs, they have a stake in what happens to the goblin tribe. They should hate the troll sorcerer who charges them to cross his bridge, have a wary, arms-length relationship with the witch who lives in the woods and can be good for a few healing potions or cure poison when it’s desperately needed, but maybe asks them to perform actions of dubious morality in exchange. And possibly also a love-hate relationship with the fun-loving but emotionally rough-and-tumble satyrs who camp in the clearing halfway between town and the dungeon.
The point of simplicity is not to keep things simple, but to give the campaign room to grow. Your players will show you what they’re interested in and how they’re interested in playing with it by their actions and the questions they ask. Some may need some encouragement, but generally speaking, everyone wants to know they’re leaving their mark on your shared imaginary worlds. Show them how they can do that, find out how they want to do it, and you’ll know how to fill in those blank spots in the map. As Mr. Maliszewski says:
That's the real key to my current refereeing style: creative leeway. I don't fill in any more details than are needed about anything, whether it be the setting of the game or the rules that govern it. My feeling remains that, if there's no immediate need to establish a fact or make a ruling, it's always better to refrain from doing so. That may make it seem at times as if things are "incomplete," but I prefer to think of it as leaving "room for expansion." One of the real reasons I've come to detest most pre-fab campaign settings and bloated rules sets is precisely because they establish facts and rulings outside of the context of play, which, for me, is utterly backwards.
UPDATE: Mr. Conley goes into greater detail about how he helps his players create the backgrounds for their characters. It may result in stronger identification with that character than many OSR DMs want, but it certainly will get the players thinking and knowledgeable about your setting.
UPDATE 2:And Uncle Bear goes someplace similar. Combining what Uncle Bear says with what Mr. Maliszewski says, you remain aware of the questions, but you don't answer them until you need to, and you base your answers on the demonstrated interests of your players. If they want grand, epic battles, then you lean towards there being a major war brewing in the background. If they prefer stealth, skullduggery, and intrigue, maybe the goblin bandits are in the employ of a rival merchant guild or religious order set on harming a rival faction.
Art by Reinhold von Moeller, Eugene Pavy and John Frederick Lewis.
I think I’ve skirted around the edges of out-and-out saying that when you roll the dice, you’re not playing, and when you’re playing, you’re probably not rolling the dice. Games are about making choices; dice are about random chance. You might be making a choice that affects how the dice are rolled, or making choices based on what the dice have dictated. But, as in craps, the playing part comes before and after the dice do their thing. Sailing, after all, isn’t windspeed and waves; it’s what you do with the sails and rudder.
And, as Oddysey enjoys pointing out, I really like playing with social aspects and confrontations in my games. Whenever the PCs are back in town, or when they encounter an especially dangerous monster, there are usually opportunities for conversation, making deals, and learning more about the world around them. Most modern games have mechanics to handle this sort of thing, either via social combat or influence rolls or the like. I play neo-classical games like Labyrinth Lord, so I don’t have those mechanics…
Well, actually, I do. Those old games came with some very simple reaction tables that could be used to dictate how creatures encountered reacted to the PCs. It’s fairly simple stuff, but most folks I knew way back when ignored them, just like they ignored the morale rules. They’re probably too basic for most folks who enjoy that sort of thing, but combined with the morale rules and a multi-racial dungeon like the Caves of Chaos, they can create a lot of interesting situations to play with.
But again, those sorts of things leave me cold, and I think that’s due to how I build my NPCs. My battlecry after college was “situations, not plot” but what I think I was really getting at was the central importance of conflict to my style of play. In a nutshell, all my NPCs are in conflict with someone or something. They all have something they want and obstacles that prevent the satisfaction of their desires. This can be something as simple as finding their next meal or as complex as winning passage of a new piece of legislation. The best NPCs, of course, have multiple (and sometimes competing or contradictory) goals. Regardless of their goals, the best way to win a NPCs heart (or, at least, their cooperation) is through their self-interest.
Deciding what my NPCs want is usually fairly straightforward. Some are simply functions of who and what they are: the merchant wants to make a sale, the thief is looking for the big score, the knight wishes to win renown and cover himself in glory, the suitor wishes to win the hand and heart of his intended. Some characters can get more complex. Is the slave’s duty to his master stronger than his desire for revenge against those who reduced him to such a state? Is the goblin’s greed stronger than her loyalty to her tribe? I use my themes to answer those questions. Chatty would probably invoke the “Rule of Cool” while Raggi might decide based on the mood he’s trying to create.
The real fun, however, comes in trying to learn what will motivate an NPC. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is warned in advance how to handle Circe. Sometimes my PCs are that lucky, and they can find someone who will tell them. Sometimes, they have to learn through observing the NPC or learning obliquely of their desires through their habits, past actions, or allies and enemies.
And that’s how our adventures grow: the players need to get past Verdinashet, the Dragon of the Forest. They can’t hope to defeat her in combat (not at 2nd level, anyway). The old campaigner at the Oarsman’s Rest can tell them about her love for beautiful musical instruments. The elven glassblower in town can make them a crystal harp, but he’ll need certain rare elements to make the strings, and they may not have the coin on hand to commission the harp yet. But he’s pining in love for a priestess at Uban’s temple…
Wyatt here suffers from DM crises. Not a single crisis, but an ongoing cascade of self-doubt and second-guessing. Yeah, not fun.
I’m going to buck the trend here and say that your players having fun is not the end-all, be-all of good DMing. That’s adequate DMing. You’ve managed to entertain your friends for a few hours. Hurrah! Not bad, but have you given them anything they couldn’t have gotten going bowling or watching a movie or thwacking each other with paintballs over that same span of time? Why RPGs instead of something, anything, else?
To be a good DM, you have to give them that something extra that only RPGs can deliver. That means you need to know what your game is about. I do this with themes, but you can do it with genres or proverbs or whatever floats your boat.
Why is this important? It does two things: first, it puts everyone in a similar headspace so you’re all grooving to the same tune, even if not everyone knows the words. Second, it answers Wyatt’s Spartacus question. Sure, if your game is Gritty Gladiator Grindhouse, Spartacus should get stomped. But if it’s Anime Action Hour, Crixus will mop the floor with Spartacus until the cute sidekick shouts, “I believe in you, Spartacus!” Then Spartacus will find an unexpected reservoir of power deep inside his heart, and he’ll splatter Crixus across the landscape. In the Strong, Silent, Macho Dudes RPG, Spartacus gets pounded into the sand, but he and Crixus find a surprising respect for each other and bond as brothers in the crucible of pure, raw, mano-a-mano combat. And in the Quentin Tarantino RPG, whether or not Spartacus wins or loses isn’t nearly as important as drawing out the tension before the brutal disfigurement we know he’s going to endure at the hands of Crixus.
Once you know what your game is about, your questions answer themselves. Should the goblins charge forth and attempt to swarm the PCs, dying to the last man? Sure, if you’re playing a game about tactical maneuver and logistics. Should they leap out in waves, each wielding bizarre and vaguely humorous weapons that inflict freakish handicaps and transformations on the PCs? Absolutely, if you’re going for a fairytale/looking-glass/labyrinth sort of experience. Maybe they should scuttle behind the walls, like rats, only occasionally revealing their red, beady eyes when in the peripheral vision of the heroes? That certainly works for a more disturbing, psychological horror game.
I suspect Wyatt already has some idea of what his game is about. He’s thinking about this issue, if somewhat tangentially, in his choices of soundtrack. Other things to consider are your choice of game. Do the rules support or impede the sort of play you want? The great thing about most flavors of D&D is that they are flexible enough to support a wide range of styles with just a bit of tweaking. Are the assumptions, characters, and interests of your players compatible with what your game is about? Not every player is a good match for every game. You may need to rework things to accommodate a player, or let that player find a more suitable game.
This is important because, once you’ve mastered running a game with a thematic core, you’ll want to move on to the next challenge: helping your players realize their vision of their characters.
Well, maybe you will. Honestly, at this point, we’re talking the bleeding edge of the best of the best. Most DMs never give a second thought to anything like the themes of their game, and wallow in a vague set of pseudo-Tolkeinish assumptions implied, but never really nailed down, by the rulebooks. Simply being aware of such issues raises you above the pack and delivers a superior play experience more consistently for the entire group.
Helping your players realize their visions of their characters is a whole level beyond that. Quite frankly, it requires a level of social acumen I’m fairly sure I don’t possess, which makes it a monumental struggle for me. Others may find that part of it easier, but that’s not the end of the challenges.
First, it assumes your players have some idea of who or what they want their characters to be. Most do, even if it’s just using a particular collection of powers to dominate certain mechanical aspects of the game. What they may not have is a clear and consistent vision. No vision of any PC I’ve ever created has survived the first session of play. Some things simply don’t work the way I expect them to, or circumstances force me to accentuate certain aspects over others. In all honesty, the guy who wants to be a bad-ass monster-mauler with his spiked chain and carefully selected array of combat feats is much easier to deal with than the budding thespian who vacillates like Hamlet over whether love or vengeance is central to their character concept.
Once you and your players think you have something fairly solid, then you have to help them cultivate it. No, this doesn’t mean flopping down like a welcome mat while your players engage in self-indulgent, overly verbose monologues. (Usually. At this point, we’re deep into some very subjective territory. Proceed with caution!) As most writers can tell you, characters blossom brightest when subjected to adversity. It isn’t the moment of sweet snuggling with the holder of his heart that makes a lover, it’s the struggle he goes through to get there, and it’s the romantic tension that’s the fun part as he grapples with the myriad obstacles that seek to thwart him. It’s not how he pounds the bad guys that makes John McClane such a cool action hero. It’s that he’s barefoot , body and soul abused and bruised and bleeding, passing through a hideous gauntlet of physical and emotional abuse while he does so.
It’s a bit like polishing diamonds. You have to know where to cut, how to hurt the characters so that the aspects that are important to the player come shining through. And the player’s ideas might be changing over time. And you’ve got a whole group of players to do this for. So yeah, not easy.
But, if you can pull it off, you’ll have given your players an experience no other media, not movies or books or computer games, can give them.
Art by Jean-Leon Gerome and John William Waterhouse.
There’s been some neat discussion around and about over new character classes for various versions of D&D. In spite of my numerous additions to the field (My LL game currently includes six new classes: rogues, gnomes, pixies, nixies, half-ogres, and witches) I remain rather loyal to the notion that what most folks want to play can be a variation on the primary themes of the original character classes. So while I enjoy adding classes, and it is pretty easy, I try not to go crazy about it. And while I admit there’s a heavy dose of Rientsian “if it’s fun, wallow in it” in my choices, I do try to make certain that my classes fit at least one, if not both of the following criteria.
FLUFF If I’m going to create a new class, it has to fit my campaign setting. Sure, one of the joys of LL is how generic it is within the realms of fantasy, but I’m not making these for addition to the LL core book. These are for my game primarily, and I share them with you because I think they’re cool and some of you might get something good out of them. But my witch class, for instance, is built around concepts that are pretty specific to my campaign. Most folks don’t want to touch gender with a 10’ pole, and I can certainly understand that. It’s one of my favorite themes to play with, and so I have the witch class.
CRUNCH Mostly, however, I’m trying to do things that the basic classes don’t touch. My gnomes exist to highlight the hireling rules. Witches bring in the 1e druid spells. Rogues let me do funky things with the to-hit tables and offer a magic-dabbler class. Half-ogres offer a powerful bruiser to the players and let me play with my weapon damage rules.
The odd ducks in the list are the pixie and nixie classes. The pixie was a request from a new player (who hasn’t been able to start yet, though the character is done, I think) while the need for a nixie class grew out of a transformation that happened in the game. Because both classes have interesting powers and challenges, I couldn’t simply use elves and say that was close enough, but the elf class was the model for both of them. That said, both fit my fluff and crunch criteria, the pixie being a tiny flier and the nixie having a handful of Aquaman’s abilities.
However, I don’t have a courtier class, or a raconteur calls because I don’t want the dice to do those sorts of things. That sort of thing is for playing out. Just like I don’t want any “social combat” rules, I really don’t want any classes predicated on that sort of thing, either.
So how did you weave the plotlines between urban/social settings and the wilderness necessary for many dungeon encounters-- or did you keep your dungeon urban as well?
I’m very glad he asked that, because it’s a topic that never would have occurred to me. I really don’t see a strong separation between the urban/social settings and the wilderness. The two wove into each other naturally.
An early adventure in the college game involved foiling a plot by wererats to infect the town guard of a large city with their brand of lycanthropy through the brothels favored by the guardsmen. The adventure started in the city, then moved into the wilderness roughly a day’s march from the city, where the leadership of the wererats had their secret hideout, then back to the city to root out the wererat infestation. So this was an example of having dungeon-esque elements inside an urban environment which were tied to a traditional dungeon out in the wilderness.
In the Doom & Tea Parties game, the action has primarily focused on the ruin-infested island of Dreng Bdan. The only outpost of civilization on the island (that the players know about, anyway) is the city of Pitsh, founded by the priests of Uban for the purpose of exploring the ruins and cataloguing their history as well as securing anything of significant power that might be found there. The governance, economy, and focus of the city is so heavily tied to the activity of dungeon-delving that what happens out in the wilderness has a strong effect on the town. In the solo game, that meant working closely with the Ubanites. In the group game, the players have been trying to hide their activities from the Ubanites. In both cases, these choices have had a strong impact on what the PCs do when in town: how they fence their loot, where they stay, where they shop, and who they go to for information on the things they have found and the places they’ve explored.
In both the college game and the Doom & Tea Parties games, the separation between wilderness and civilization has been fluid at best. Sometimes, the monsters chase the PCs back into the city and cause them trouble there. Sometimes the town does something that has a strong effect on which dungeons the PCs investigate, or how they go about it. This sort of fluid web of interconnections is the core of my style. I basically let the players do and go where they wish. I create adventures for them primarily by asking how what they’ve done has affected those with the reach and power to affect whatever place they end up next.
Good game design rewards behavior meeting the objectives of play.
By which he means, an effective game rewards the sort of play that the game is intended to create. To whit, if you make the Tarantino Cinematic RPG, it should involve lots of people sitting around and communicating who they are as people by using pop culture references when discussing matters of morality and psychology, or invoking the creative process, punctuated by periods of horrendous and blood-spattering violence. A Star Wars RPG should be able to handle swashbuckling action between individuals ranging from tiny droids to giant monsters as well as the clash of large armies and massive fleets, while encompassing not just the physical results of such conflicts, but also their spiritual implications as well.
So far, so good, and I’m in completely agreement with JB. He chose as his example the Elf Quest RPG, and I’ll admit that while I’m a fan of the comics, especially the original series as collected in the first four TPBs, I’m going to take his words as an excuse to leap off into areas that I think he only brushed up tangentially against. So this should not be seen necessarily as a criticism of what JB wrote. As I said, I’m largely in agreement with his theme, and believe that a mere character creation and combat system do not an RPG make.
JB is primarily talking about reward systems, but too often people conflate rewards with mechanics. It’s easy to do, because once you’ve mechanized an aspect of an RPG, you’ve made it quantifiable and thus easy to handle in terms of rewards and difficulties. If you have rules that quantify a character’s chi, for instance, it’s then easy to use those numbers in other aspects of the game and control the level of a character’s chi. You can know what amount of chi a character should have at certain points in the game, and you can easily see what sort of obstacles are appropriate for a character who has that much chi.
Life, however, is full of messy things that are difficult to quantify. Measurements of status and prestige, as JB suggests, would have been an excellent addition to the Elf Quest game, but things are very fluid and somewhat chaotic among the Wolf Riders. Cutter is the chief, but that doesn’t stop Strongbow from challenging him constantly. And that, contrary to how things might appear on the surface, is a source of strength for Cutter.
Even worse, however, is that once you quantify something, you stop playing the fuzzy, human aspects of the thing and start playing the numbers. As much as I love BioWare’s games, they tend to boil romance and respect down to a system of potlatch, and while there are certainly historical precedents for such things (like the relationship between a chief and his warriors among the ancient celts), bribing someone to be my girlfriend doesn’t exactly feel like romance to me. Making your romance system more complex only helps if that complexity serves to hide the numbers from the players; taking my lady out for a night at the opera because she happens to be a classical music lover is a far cry from spending $150 (probably the cheapest you can get away with for a night at the opera and a decent dinner) for a +4 bonus on my “Get Lucky” roll. ;p
In short, throwing bonuses at players for going through the motions isn’t the goal. Rewarding and encouraging the sort of play we want should be the goal, and this must often be done obliquely. Old school D&D is about exploration, but it doesn’t reward you for every 10’ of dungeon corridor mapped or unusual geological formation found. It rewards you for gathering treasure and penalizes you for being inefficient about how you gather it.
So in our Tarantino game, maybe every character starts with an artistic obsession and a secret existential crisis that is referenced by those obsessions and a pile of poker chips. Getting another character (that is, the player, in this case) to agree with your argument as to the worthiness of your obsession earns you a poker chip, and two if you can turn their argument towards promoting the worth of one of your obsessions. However, if they guess your existential crisis, you have to surrender most of your chips to them, and those chips are the only things that will keep you alive in the extremely brutal combat that is always threatening to erupt. In our Star Wars game, every strategic-level conflict can include a spiritual goal that might actually be served by losing in the physical realm (“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”). And in our Elf Quest game, perhaps the resolution of individual conflict results in stronger cohesion between an entire group.
The one thing I would stress, however, is that how the game is played is more important than the rules. In the solo Labyrinth Lord game Oddysey is playing in, there was this past year a near TPK. It was, by every measure, a disaster for her character and that character’s companions. However, the end result has been the creation of a very potent and powerful association. Friendship isn’t anything like the right word, but this relationship is one that Oddysey’s character knows she can rely on. There are no rules to cover this situation, no way to measure its worth in terms of EXPs or gold pieces, and yet it has been a large part of the transformation of the campaign. Oddysey’s character is no longer a single, lone individual in a large, uncaring world. She’s now “plugged in,” with all the privileges and responsibilities that go along with it. Neither of us knew the game could go where it’s gone when we started, but by playing off each other, things have taken some very interesting turns. In short, sometimes the best reward of all is to let the chips fall where they will, and give the players something interesting to play with.
UPDATE: E.G. Palmer (aka Mr. Green) riffs off Tarantino gaming to come up with an intriguing way to use music in your game.
hmm… I wonder how Oddysey and Trollsmyth’s current on-going campaign developed. Odd has said this is the first time she’s played in a campaign that took things to this particular depth of character interaction…were her former games played in the mini-campaign or forced plot setting? Or is their current gaming style simply built on mutual rapport and understanding of narrative agenda needs?
The answer is, not quickly. That's not the sort of play you can start cold. You have to build up to it.
It would be nice if you could just say, "Hey, we're building a social campaign and it's going to deal with x, y, and z." You could, I suppose, pull it off if the DM was willing to give the players extreme amounts of narrative control, and I've done that in the past with a few players I knew very well and had played with a lot before. If you don't do that, however, you end up in a situation where the players don't have anything to talk about. Even if they've read voluminous amounts of campaign material, they don't really understand the setting well enough to interact with it. (Unless that setting is based on a well-known IP, like Harry Potter or some such, which is why such are the most popular themes for free-form RPing, I'm sure.) The background gives players something to talk about, and knowing and being comfortable with the style gives them ways to talk about those things. If either is missing, they're reduced to talking about the weather in the safest and most boring of tones.
My preferred style is open sandbox and very laissez-faire. But such games need a bit of impetus, and if the players are to be comfortable enough to stretch themselves a bit, they need some limitations. There's nothing more intimidating to a lot of people than a completely blank canvas.
In Oddysey's case, I started off with a very open-ended problem for her to solve: being shipwrecked on a strange coast. This got her used to my rather loose, the-DM-doesn't-have-a-plan-so-do-what-makes-sense-or-is-fun-for-you style. When she returned to civilization and was able to choose her own path, she latched on to dungeon-delving. This was great because it was a style she'd not had much experience with, but comes with its own set of very focused goals and geographical limitations. As Oddysey recently commented, however, it wasn't raw monster-slaying and trap-finding. Since it was a solo game, there were hirelings and such to fill out the party, mostly chosen by her. Whenever she mentioned interest in hiring a particular class to join her group, I'd gin up at least three examples (it's so easy in LL that three take maybe a half-hour or so to roll up and write down) with a brief description of their personalities, reputations, and competencies beyond their class. Because there was no one else to interact with (most of the time) there was a lot of interaction with these NPCs. And that's really where we got things rolling.
Up until that point, I wasn't really sure what sort of play Oddysey was interested in. As she points out, most of the traditional assumptions of Old School play, like dungeons, were not very well known to her, so even she wasn't sure what sort of play she wanted, other than something new that she hadn't tried before. So leaving things open and not forcing a certain agenda left it open for us to explore, and we built the playstyle together out of mutual interests.
(And yes, this did mean that certain dungeon complexes were left "uncleared" but that's fine with me. Like Mr. Maliszewski, I've never assumed that clearing the entire locale was the goal, and my players have generally been happy with focused, surgical operations rather than genocidal invasions. ;p )
The one thing I did rigorously enforce was the verisimilitude. I think that really helps, because it gives players things they can rely on, things they can trust. With that bedrock, they can begin to invest in their characters' interests and goals, and from that comes engagement with the world. And once they do that, it's easy to build an entire session around chatting with a rakshasa and a priestess about boys, because the players know who their characters are, how they relate to the rakshasa and the priestess, and why boys would be fun to talk about.
I regularly read Roleplaying Tips Weekly, and while it's not chock full of gold every week, there's usually one or two bright nuggets in most issues. This in spite of the fact that the styles of play assumed by the authors and contributors tend to be a bit removed from my own.
This week, there was a question to the readership that caught my eye:
Dear Johnn,
Just wondering if you have any tips on large-scale battles
where the PCs can influence the outcome. My entire campaign
has been to get to the point where my players can be part of
a battle that they could possibly do different things where
the outcome is not pre-scripted. It's theirs to win or lose.
I GM a Star Wars Saga game, so it's likely to contain big
starships and starfighters, as well as ground forces with
blasters and Jedi. What's the best way I can manage this
without going insane? Splitting the party is bad enough.
- Melissa
I'm answering this question in my blog, instead of emailing it in, because this poor corner of the 'net has been languishing and needs some love.
Actually, while that's true, I also think the answer I have isn't one Melissa or her group would enjoy. It will probably feel like cheating. But it's perfect for folks who play in a style more similar to mine.
First, don't even think about fighting the battle with dice. That way does, indeed, lie madness, or at least the risk of a few failed SAN checks. Don't think of the battle as a giant combat. Think of it, instead, as a puzzle. A nasty puzzle with a timer that kills more people the longer the PCs take to solve it.
Duking it Out
The Battle of Endor at the end of “Return of the Jedi” is probably the best example from all six movies. It includes both ground and space forces, as well as a clash between jedi, all happening simultaneously, and interacting in interesting ways.
On the planet, Han, Leia, Chewbacca and company need to knock out the shield generator. They are not there to kill stormtroopers, to blow up war machines, or assassinate the commander of the imperial ground troops.
They have one mission, and that is to take out the shield generator so the rebel fleet can destroy Death Star 2.0.
What ends up happening is a disaster of epic proportions. They stumble right into the trap that's laid for them, without any indication they're even aware of it. Luckily, because they befriended the Ewoks, they get a second chance.
Here's where things get interesting for us as gamers. Yes, they're in the middle of a battle. Yes, people are shooting all around them, and yes, people are getting shot and killed, equipment is getting destroyed, and all of that. But the goal remains taking out the shield generator. The combat is a complication to the goal, not the primary focus of our heroes. The troops they have with them are basically told, “Hey, hold these guys off long enough for us to get inside this bunker.” Bodycount is hardly a consideration; the only thing that matters is getting into the bunker before the rebel fleet gets destroyed.
No Plan Survives Contact with the Enemy
Because of the utter lack of success on the parts of Han, Leia, and Chewie, Ackbar and Lando have to improvise a new plan. Their original strategy was to smash through any defending fleet, get to the Death Star 2.0 as quickly as possible, destroy it, and then get the hell out. Because the deflector shield is still up, they have to quickly change tactics. The new plan: stay alive long enough for the folks on Endor to destroy the shield generator.
Again, as a GM, there's no need for much dice rolling here. The battle is huge and you have exact specifics on every piece of hardware in the sky. You know how many rebel ships the imperial fleet can destroy in a round, and vice versa. The trick is to find ways to minimize the damage done to the rebel fleet at all costs. “Accelerate to attack speed,” says the general. “Draw their fire away from the cruisers.” At this level of abstraction, it's more like chess then traditional RPG combat. The pieces (squadrons, attack groups, capital ships) maneuver to support one another, deny movement to the enemy, or move to threaten enemy resources. (Lando's solution to the “fully armed and operational battle station” is, I think, an especially gamist one; the Death Star 2.0 will destroy one rebel capital ship a round, but the star destroyers take four rounds to destroy a ship. Therefore, fight the star destroyers where the Death Star can't safely attack.)
Dice Rolls and Lateral Thinking
How long the fleet must endure the punishment of the trap is largely up to the folks on the ground. R2-D2 and Han both horribly botch their “pick locks” rolls. The most important fight on the ground involves Chewie and some Ewoks taking over an AT-ST. (Notice that the poor guys piloting the thing can hardly fight back. The fight is horribly one-sided, with the imperial drivers trapped without weapons in an enclosed space with flesh-eating, midget hunter-gatherers who are brutally adept at butchering far tougher game with their stone-age weapons). Since the bulk of the imperial troops have been led off into the forest, Han is able to use subterfuge to get into the bunker and destroy the shield generator. This finally allows the rebel fleet to execute their original plan of attack.
Daisy Chains of Death and Destruction
The key to making this work is the cascade of consequences in each part of the battle. The effectiveness of Han and Leia and Chewie on Endor has immediate consequences for the fleet action (which affects Luke's confrontation with Vader and the Emperor). This means that, even though the party might be split up all over the place, the players still have a vital interest in what the others are doing. It also gives the GM clues on when to cut between groups.
Han's Player: Oh, crap! It's a trap.
GM: And the shield generator is still up when the fleet arrives. Lando, when the fleet drops out of hyperspace, you're ambushed from behind by a bunch of enemy fighters, and you're not getting any reading on those shields.
Lando's Player: Ok, we'll use our fighters to screen our capital ships. We get right into their teeth and give them something more important to worry about than destroying our big ships.
(Maybe some dice rolls to take out enemy leaders or some such here, but only things that will have a direct impact on the tactical situation as a whole.)
GM: Ok, the TIE fighters are stuck in swirling furballs with the rebel fighters. Meanwhile, back on the moon, as you're marched out of the bunker by the stormtroopers, the Ewoks attack!
Han's Player: Ok, I try to get back into the bunker. We'll have R2 pick the lock.
(He rolls some dice.)
Han's Player: Crap! My dice are cursed. (He scowls at Chewie's player.) Did you touch my dice while I was ordering the pizza?
Chewie's Player: Hey, don't look at me. Uh, I try to find the leaders of the Ewoks and see if we can't get them to draw the stormtroopers away from the bunker. That should give you more time and breathing space to find another way in.
GM: Ok, while the Ewoks battle the stormtroopers, in orbit over the planet, Lando, you can see the imperial capital ships are not driving home the attack, but spreading out to keep you from escaping. Why becomes abundantly clear when the Death Star 2.0 fires it's giant, planet-killing gun to destroy your cruiser Escargot.
All Players: CRAP!
As one group finishes an action that will have an effect (or lack of an effect) on the chances the other, you switch. When one group says, “Ok, change of plans...” or needs a minute to react to a change in the situation, you switch to the other group.
Note that this is why the combined space-and-ground battle in “Phantom Menace” doesn't work as well as the Battle at Endor. In “Phantom Menace,” what happens on the ground has very little bearing on the success of the overall mission. The only thing that really matters is destroying the ship that controls the 'droids. Once that's done, the battle is over. And there's nothing the ground forces can do to make that easier or harder for the ships in the fleet action. If you're playing a battle like that, try to avoid having any PCs involved in the unimportant ground battle. If players have to be there, try to make it interesting by giving them a chance to face a hated nemesis or achieve some ancillary goal that's important to the group as a whole. Otherwise, the folks in the fleet battle are going to tune out and get bored when you cut back to ground battle.
UPDATE (11/17/2017): Variations on this theme by Chris Lindsay and Satine Phoenix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u14LRYS9qc
UPDATE 2 (08/07/18): Variations on this theme that gets into more detail on how to make this happen at the table from Emmy "Cavegirl" Allen.
This blog is NOT supported by Dragon’s Lair Comics and Fantasy®. They do, however, pay me to write on their blog about games, books, toys, etc. that they sell.
If you would like to support this blog, please consider using this link while shopping at Amazon. Thanks!
PDF
Posts
