Encountering D&D: 5-19 Yulbraxis

There are a few things going on in this session that are interesting for bringing back to your home games. The first is that Yulbraxis, Young Black Dragon starts the encounter already bloodied. The second is the introduction of Chandera, a half-elven priestess that is going to give Lord Drysdale some much-needed healing.

For both story reasons and mechanical reasons, I love that Yulbraxis starts the game bloodied. A level-four solo creature against a mish-mashed party of level threes is a bit much, but if you cut that creature's hit points in half, you might be able to get it done within the allotted hour. Also, it means that your players get to fight a big-ass dragon for the third time in the season without overdoing it on the resources lost before the Boss Battle next week.

The story reason for the dragon having been bloodied could have been a lot more dramatic, in my opinion. Something like this gives you a chance to join a combat in media res.

You come to a square just in front of the inner keep. The broken and bleeding bodies of dozens of men and women litter the cobbles as a battle rages on beyond them. Lord Drysdale fights alone against a cadre of lizard folk and an ebon-scaled dragon the size of a heavy clydesdale.

Drysdale plunges his sword deep into the dragon's shoulder and the creature spews acid and hatred into the square. It knocks the lord to the ground and lunges, burying it's claws in Drysdale's body before turning to look at you.

Two of the lizard men scurry off into the inner keep, dragging Drysdale's body between them. "It's too late," he hisses. "If the little lordling isn't dead, he will be soon." A cadre of guards arrives from the south, behind you.

"Ah good," the dragon whispers, licking its lips. "I was afraid this would be too easy."He roars, then charges.

Now, I know I don't actually give a shit about Lord Drysdale, but I think some players somewhere do, and to have him brought low right in front of you is a lot more dramatically intense than having the dragon offhandedly remark about how he's probably dead right now. Just saying. Plus, describing battle in D&D Boxed Text is a lot more fun than describing a black dragon that's just sort of... y'know... wandering around.

Chendera, the half-elf priestess that is hiding out in the alley, is an interesting addition to the adventure mostly in that I've always loved challenges that involve escorting less powerful characters through a difficult encounter. I mean, she has 35 hit points, and a couple of weak attacks, and she's supposed to survive DRAGON BREATH? Still, there is a nice chunk of experience reward for keeping her alive, so if you can make it happen, it's totally worth your effort.

I'm really loving the allies sub-theme in this final chapter of the season, and it seems that Mr Sims pulled out a lot of stoops in making it one of the more engaging and mechanically interesting chapters thus far. The role-playing opportunities touted for this season have been relatively solid, and it looks like the season is going to wrap up with a bang.

Good on you, Chris. You did a damned fine job putting this together.

In other D&D:E News!

We have some information about the new season, namely how the whole thing starts, and some rules changes that are coming into effect. It looks like we're going to be doing the "Y'all signed up with a caravan of settlers," thing. Which would be fine, if it didn't so closely resemble the opening to the car-wreck that was D&D:E II: Dark Sun. I do hope this Encounters season more closely resembles Sims' work on D&D:E III. I'm not at all familiar with Mr. Thompson's work as an adventure writer, so I can't say as I really know what to expect.

If you come in later in the season, you're going to be a first-level character. This is going to make some people happy (me) and others a little less happy (players who habitually forget their shit). If you make a new character for the second chapter, your new character is going to be first level. If your character dies, I'm pretty sure the Death Penalty is still an option, as opposed to rolling up a fresh character in the third chapter.

Characters are still using Essentials. I don't really have anything to say one way or the other on this. Essentials is their "introductory D&D product," and Encounters is an "introductory D&D event," so they just sort of... work together. There was an announcement about a hard-core D&D event that doles out the harshness later this year, and since it's aimed at more established players, I hope that it uses options from both D&D 4E Core and D&D Essentials. This is especially true if they want to try and convince us that Essentials is not D&D 4.5 (and I, for one, am not convinced).

Treasure distribution is getting shifted around. I can't say as I ever really cared for the way loot was given out in Encounters. To be honest, this is a lot more like the method of treasure distribution I use in my home games ("A'ight, roll me a d10, and I'll compare it to the packet chart"). I think it's a solid move, though there is a lot more room for maxing out your character's gear when you give the players the option to choose their own outfits.

The season will be using the Fortune Cards, both in the game and as rewards. Those cute reward cards you got during previous sessions are gone, replaced with a product that is going to need some serious reworking to be usable at most tables. I've already decided that I'm going to play the cards straight at my D&D: Encounters tables, but they will not be making much of an appearance in my home game. Unless the Game Master (me) is the one using them.

That's all I've got for this week, folks. Join me again next week, when we're kicking the crap out of Benwick (and I'll tell you all about how I shot him in the face).

Encountering D&D: Recurrance and Fortune

Dragon Magazine used to have this kick-ass series of articles about the Adventure Paths that were running in Dungeon Magazine that same month. The format was, admittedly, quite different from the D&D: Encounters format, in that the Adventure Paths tended to focus on an entire story arc rather than a single encounter, but I think there are cool things to be learned from D&D: Encounters and the way the good folks at Wizards have put together their initiative. Encountering D&D is a weekly article that discusses the coolest points of each week's session.

One of the cool things about this chapter of Keep on the Borderlands is that it's bringing back elements of previous encounters, depending on how those elements were handled in earlier chapters. In Encounter 5-17, both Moxulhar and Vermastyx play a part in the unfolding battle, assuming you let both survive. In this week's Encounter, Ferdinand Ronnick is back, again assuming you let him live Way Back in the Day (Chapter 2).

For an adventure designed for beginning players, this is a surpassingly next-level Dungeon Mastery maneuver. Chris Simms is not an adventure designer to be fucked with, ladies and gentlemen; this guy knows exactly what he's doing when it comes to making your adventures cohesive and interesting. Sometimes, game masters forget about things like this; bringing back story elements from the Before Times is a great way to give your world and your story some cohesion. And having the villain from the first couple of chapters come back as an underpowered ally later is a quick-and-dirty way to show some character growth and development, things that most role-playing games lose in a haze of Cheetoes and Mountain Dew-flavored Monty Python quotations.

Other Things to be Learned From This Encounter:

Sometimes, the bad guys aren't just sitting around waiting for you to come in and kill them. Sometimes, as you're killing bad guys, more bad guys show up. Sometimes, there are huge waves of bad guys waiting in the wings, and if you don't kill them quickly enough, you are going to get overwhelmed. And sometimes, the answer isn't just stabbing the bad guys to death; sometimes you need to get creative and find a new way to stop them from showing up. Close the portal, block the cave entrance, drop a house on their way in, pile the bodies in front of the door, light a huge cart full of horse dung on fire and roll it up to the gate. This sort of thinking should be encouraged. Give players who come up with these sorts of ideas bonuses to doing whatever it is they're trying to do.

One thing I would suggest to budding adventure designers, though, is this: Provide more than one victory condition. If knocking down Benwick's house is the only way to stop the onslaught of bad guys, then there should be a few ways to make that happen. The catapult is one, how about setting the house on fire as another? Pushing a cart in front of the door and guarding the windows? As with any situation that has the potential to completely overwhelm the player-characters, there need to be a variety of ways to keep that overwhelming from happening. I actually had to tell the players in my second flight to get the catapult after the house; they completely ignored the clues and were happy to just bash in heads ad infinitum.

From My Table to Yours:

When it was finally brought to the players’ attention that the catapult could be used to destroy the house, and thus stave off the waves of bad guys that were flooding in through it, I decided that the guys on the walls manning the thing were going to be having a smoke break, talking about their kids and the state of the Lord’s marriage. There are times when I like to infuse little modern bits like this into my games. It gives completely useless side characters some depth, gives your world a bit of a relatable edge, and gives you the opportunity to throw some humor into your gaming.

Dragging people around in nets was way less productive than I wanted it to be. I think next time, I’ll be making drag attacks like that deal damage, like getting hauled behind a horse or something.

Fortune Cards

Before Playing With Them:

I got in a preview box of D&D Fortune Cards in the mail this week. One of the perks of being the games manager at a FLGS is that Wizards of the Coast sometimes mails me stuff for free, and then I get to try it out and see how it goes. Yesterday I opened two packs of them, and I will be giving a pack each to my players at D&D: Encounters tonight (we haven't actually played yet, as of this writing; I will write a short review of how they played after the second flight is done). My initial thoughts on the product:

1) It has fewer options than I am immediately happy with. You get one card in your hand at any one time, and that card is determined randomly (you shuffle your deck then draw one). The chances that the card you pull is going to be useful are pretty low. At first look, I'm thinking that a hand of three cards would add utility to the product without over-powering it.

2) Monsters don't get cards. Whenever you add utility to player characters without adding equal or greater utility to the monsters they're fighting, you are making encounters easier. While I'm all for a certain level of ease in the Encounters initiative (re: Dark Sun), I think that this season has been generally underpowered and have had to make adjustments to make the challenges more... well, challenging. My monsters will be using Fortune Cards, but will stick to the one-card-in-your-hand rule to keep it balanced (as more monsters have access to the DM's hand, making it more likely to be relevant).

3) The back of the card is pretty. The face of the card is not. The card-front looks like it was designed by the same guy who designed the Vangard card-frame for Magic: The Gathering, which is my least favorite of the frame designs in that game. From the company that puts out card designs like the Future Shifted cards or the Planeswalker frames, the fortune cards lack 'production value.'

After Playing with Them:

1) Do these actually add anything to the game? One of my players complained about the increased amount of system required to use the cards while they didn't actually change the game all that much. The most positive reviews the cards got were "They were useful sometimes." One of the Game Masters for the first flight remarked that the encounters would need to be scaled up significantly whenever the cards were used, as the occasional power-up was still enough to make tonight's Encounter a cakewalk.

2) People forget about them. This is pretty similar to the major problem facing Ongoing Damage. No one remembers that the mechanic exists until about halfway through their turn, or even after their turn is over. Doing things like this at the beginning of your turn seems to go against the grain of the game; the play-flow of D&D 4E seems oriented todwards Standard/Move/Minor -> Bookkeeping -> End of Turn Effects. Players (and DMs, including myself) consistently forget about Auras, Ongoing Damage, and now cards, because all of those things seem like they should live in the middle or end phase of your turn flow.

3) It works better with more options, but also bogs the game down. We tried both the one-card variant and the three-card variant, and both versions of the rule (the former is the official, the latter is something suggested to me by my rep at Wizards) bogged the game down considerably. People read the cards, and that takes a few seconds. They also have to consider how the card is going to interact with their plan for the turn. In a game where combat already takes for bloody ever, it seems strange to want to bog the game down as much as the cards do. Moreover, the cards seem to slow the speed of choice to a crawl, so much so that I actually had to start counting down when players were taking too much time to come to decisions.

4) It would work better with starter decks. The random nature of the packs is meant to get people collecting them, like the Gamma World cards and, before them, Magic: The Gathering cards. Honestly, though, the cards would have worked better in a themed deck, especially as an introduction to the product. The cards were all over the damned place and were rarely any help to the players holding them. When they were a help, they helped out a lot, but those occasions were few and far between. How much better would it have been if a defender could choose the Defender Deck, and have a boost that was going to work well with his or her abilities? Even if the individual cards drawn were less than useful, at least they would tie into what it is that role does, ne?

5) They don't cost you anything. There is absolutely no reason that you should not be running a deck of these cards beside your character. To use a card does not cost you an action. It does not in any way impede any of the functions you previously enjoyed. I think this is a major error on the part of the cards' designers. Every card should cost something to use. A card can cost an action, hit points, healing surges, movement, a status effect. Make the choices difficult. Should I give myself a +2 bonus to all of my defenses in exchange for being dazed (save ends)? Whoever designed these cards should be forced to read this article [ROSEWATER ON DECISIONS].

6) People are not going to pay for these. They are going to print them out and put them into card sleeves the exact same way they do with Power cards. There will be an online database of them, and you will be able to write up a whole deck of the little bastards, print them, and use them in your games. Which is a damned shame, because nothing sells better in brick-and-mortar stores than game accessories, usually. Wizards of the Coast keeps making accessories that suck, though (re: Power Cards).

Why I Kill Player Characters in D&D:E

I really like the Dungeons and Dragons: Encounters initiative happening over at Wizards of the Coast. It’s a neat way to get people involved in the game, have them play for an hour or so, then go home to their normal lives. It’s also an interesting model for people who think they have too much going on in their lives to play D&D. You can’t spare one hour a week to get together with your friends and roll some dice? Even if you’re only going at an encounter per week, you’re still playing and that’s the important thing.

It also opens the door to a style of playing that I haven’t been a part of for many years. While broad story-based campaigns require nurturing, patience, a moderate level of kindness on the part of the Game Master, drop-in games have a strange sort of dynamic that makes them open to a wide variety of Game Mastery styles. The event is way more popular than the folks at Wizards of the Coast expected, and about four times as popular as I had expected it to be, which means that I usually need to have a stable of Game Masters kicking around to run multiple groups through the encounter at once. On an average Wednesday, I get some 16 players in to sling spells and swing swords, in two flights of two tables.

That means I get to see a lot of different styles of GM. Ian is a funny guy, and his table spends a lot of time laughing. Zak is amazingly tactical, and his players need to spend a lot of time strategizing if they want to make it through the encounter alive. Johnni likes to engage his players with detailed descriptions and avid role-playing. Daniel and Mike have both sat behind the screen for the first time during an Encounters game, which is an interesting side effect of the event. Not only are we attracting new players to the game, we’re getting players to try out Game Mastery for the first time.

Me, I’m the adversarial Game Master. I’m the guy who’s out to get you. I want player characters to die, as many as possible. My goal is the Total Party Kill. I want players to tremble in fear when they sit at my table.

Why? Because it’s fun. Not so much for me, mind. To be honest, I don’t find that style of Game Mastery any more or less compelling than other varieties. If I had to choose for myself, I’d probably sit at Johnni’s table. I have a deep appreciation for the way he describes events, the way he throws visual detail into every move, every standard action. When I GM in my home games, I’m actually pretty gentle. But there are players who prefer to sit at my table. There are players who seek me out, and sit down across from me with my terrible, evil grin. They do it on purpose.

Because they want to beat me.

Alderac Entertainment Group once put out a 50 page book that was, at the time,  the most invaluable resource for new Game Masters in print. It’s sad that it was attached to a 300-page book that was utter crap, but the 7th Sea Game Master’s Guide’s last chapter was a beautifully crafted manual/toolbox that could be used in any game during any time period and still be relevant. Of particular interest to me:

• A write-up of George Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations, and how those could be applied to role-playing games. This was pure, unadulterated gold. 
• A list of campaign plots that were entirely amazing, though perhaps not quite so amazing as the Big List of RPG Plots. They were, however, filled out in a bit more detail and specific to the pirate genre. Very cool.
• Rule Zero and Rule Zero-Point-Five: 0) There are no rules. 0.5) Cheat anyway. There’s a whole post I could write about this, and I likely will in the future.
• The Die Hard Rule.

It’s this last little bit, the Die Hard Rule, that applies to the way I GM D&D:E. To paraphrase Alderac’s awesome article on the subject, your players want you to kick the crap out of them. They want you to make them hurt. They want you to make them bleed. Over the course of a session, or an adventure, or a campaign, they want you to break them down, grind them, destroy them, mash them into barely-recognizable husks. By the end of it, they want to be Bruce Willis. They want to be walking barefoot across broken glass with a single bullet in their gun, no chance in hell of surviving, and a “Yippee-kai-yay, motherfuckers,” on their lips.

Here’s the tricky part: They also want to win.

When the smoke clears, they want to be the guys standing on top. They want to take the big bad down. They want to win the princess’ heart and become the king of a kingdom and ride a dragon to school every day. But they need to feel like they’ve earned it. The more difficult you make a thing, the more genuinely demanding the obstacles in their way, the more reward they feel from having won.

On a regular Wednesday, I kill between one and three player characters in D&D Encounters. Those players don’t stop coming to D&D:E. They come back, and they sit back down at my table, and they look me right in the fucking eye and I can tell. That person, he or she is here to take me down. Whatever I throw at the party this week, they’re going to beat it. They’re going to fight tooth and nail, to the last scrap of their ability, and they are going to fucking beat me.

And so they do, every time. I myself have never committed a Total Party Kill and D&D:E, though tonight Daniel caught one (congrats, Daniel!). Whenever a group sits down at my table, they walk away the victors. But when they win, they fucking cheer, man. Or they breathe a heavy sigh of relief, and everyone starts talking about how the encounter went. “The only reason we survived that was because…” or “If the wizard hadn’t hit on his last encounter power, we would have been toast…” And their victory almost always comes at a heavy cost.

But that cheer, that sigh of relief, that excited talking when the encounter is done, that’s what makes it worth it.