If this campaign ended tomorrow...

I asked my players this question a week or two ago:

"If this campaign ended tomorrow, what would you still wish you’d gotten to do?"

Why did I do this?

I've been experiencing a bit of an existential crisis in my Crawljammer campaign (I swear I'm going to write more about what I've actually done in the campaign, this is just really on my mind right now).

When I initially started the campaign, I wanted to have a very 'let the players drive' philosophy about it. They would choose where to go and what to do and I would make that happen. I have to admit that I've absolutely failed in that respect. I like to think that, on the micro-level, my players have lots of choices about how they approach things, who they choose to keep alive or kill, and generally how to handle situations. But the situations they get into? I'm creating those--and sending them to them. So I've sort of accidentally created an 'adventure path'.

Why did this happen?

Probably mostly because I began the campaign without enough prep to feel comfortable with the idea that I wouldn't know where it was going. Also I'm still a relatively new DM and my players aren't any more experienced than I am--so we ended up doing something that's more familiar. A guided experience. I, through NPCs, give them missions--they go do them. I don't think there's been a single instance in the campaign yet where the players haven't wanted to do what was offered--so in that sense, I feel a bit better about all of this.

Is this really a bad thing?

I would argue that it isn't--because we're having fun. The players are engaged and enjoy themselves and that's my job, so I can say that it's been going pretty well. I AM frustrated that this isn't really the game I set out to play, but I think that's a lesson for the future.

So what's the point?

Asking that question was important for me and my players because now I know what they care about as I figure out where we're going. I can direct things towards the stuff they care about. I'm also going to include some other stuff because the game is also about me--but a plot point that I wasn't sure they wanted to follow up on was universally brought up--so I also know that I've got to return to that.

I really think this is a simple, straightforward question that some DMs might not ask because they're trying to maintain some sense of 'mystery' or maybe they just don't want to include their players in the process of where the campaign is going. I can see arguments for that, but I'd counter that it's nice to know where people are hoping to go--we literally have our audience right there to offer some guidance on what they want to see/do. Why not use it?

Giving The Black Hack 2e a Test-Drive

About a week ago, I ran The Black Hack 2e for the first time.

I never read/played the original edition of The Black Hack (TBH)–but I'd read mostly good things and I'm a bit of a system whore, so I decided to take the leap when they had a Kickstarter for this second edition.

As far as the book itself–I can't speak to whether someone should move from 1e to 2e, but I CAN say that I find the 2e book to be pretty sweet. The actual rules of the game are summed up succinctly and it doesn't take much to understand how the game works. It's a roll-under system, which I'm coming to enjoy as a mechanic, and it introduces things like the Usage Die–An abstraction to avoid the tedium of counting things like the amount of rounds remaining for a torch. The rest of the book is DM advice, drop-tables, and tools for generating dungeons, towns, and hexcrawls. I'm not sure I would actually use these tools as suggested–but browsing them and making stuff out of the ideas generated is also a great use and they work well for that.

Since I was going to run a one-shot with rules I'd never run before, I decided to find a traditionally-styled one-page dungeon (I own PDFs of all of them) that would take very little overhead on my part to put together and run. I settled on The Burial Mound of Gilliard Wolfclan by Josh Burnett, over at Bernie the Flumph–And I'm so glad I did! A simple story hook (go get that magic sword) sends the party to a burial mound that is currently inhabited by some goblins and their leader, Skazic the elf. The goblins don't know that there's actually an undead uprising beginning down deeper in the dungeon!

This really was a great setup because it involved multiple things I enjoy but don't do as much of since I've been running Crawljammer–a traditional dungeon with traps, both basic and magical, traditional monsters, and factions! The module suggests that the biggest, baddest goblin is actually unhappy that the elf is in charge–I took that and ran with it, suggesting that he actually used to BE the leader, but was usurped by goblin democracy (sure, why not?) because the elf is literate and can do math–something none of the goblins can do.

The game went really well–we had three players (two newbies and one experienced), I made them all level two, the experienced player made two characters, and we dived in.

I found that the game was quite smooth to run. In TBH, the DM doesn't roll for a monster attacking a character–they tell the player to roll for the character to block/avoid the attack. It was very weird to not roll for those things–but I got used to it, and I came to enjoy that I could keep my mind on what the monsters were actually doing instead of looking at sheets and dice to determine things. I still rolled damage when the monsters hit, but it might be interesting to not do that either.

Another thing I enjoyed was that the duration of most spell effects are based around the Usage Die–So when the wizard cast Web, we kept checking to see if the web was holding by rolling a d6–if it landed on a 1 or 2, the die was demoted to a d4–and when THAT landed on a 1 or 2, the spell ended. This adds a really interesting tension to the game and creates, I think, a weirdly more truthful representation of magic. It is powerful, but uncertain. I dig it.

TBH uses the same concept for things like arrows, oil, potions, and light sources. I've gotta admit, I go back and forth on arrows. I can understand from some perspective why that makes sense–if your 'vision' is that, in combat, we're really just rolling to see what the result of a series of attacks is, then you didn't really fire a single arrow in combat, you might have fired one and you might have fired several. The Usage Die abstracts that idea. As far as torches, the Usage Die was perfect–because it added tension constantly during dungeoneering that otherwise could have been boring because I wasn't using random monster rolls for this game.

So, I would say that this run of TBH2e was a success and that I, and the players, really enjoyed ourselves. Josh's dungeon was a pleasure to run and the system did exactly what I think a good system should do–get out of the way and let the fun happen.

Crawljammer: Universal Escapades, Part 1

One of the first things that caught my eye when I realized there was more to D&D settings than basic fantasy was Spelljammer.

I mean....c'mon.

However, after running a 5e campaign that eventually petered out because I was going through some medial health stuff that kept me from being able to run a consistent schedule, I had found a game that appealed to me a lot more than 5e. Dungeon Crawl Classics.

The DCC Community has lots of settings--you can do just about anything with it. Once I found Crawljammer, the deal was done. I had to run this.

Every issue is a treasure.

I knew I wanted to run a CrawlJammer campaign, but the question was, how to get there? This was going to be my second campaign ever, and the first that wasn’t just fantasy tropes. I felt that it was smartest to start the characters on Earth (Aerth, as we refer to it), so that the entry to space would be a surprise—so I needed a module that I could use to catapult the players into the larger universe in its conclusion.

Enter: Frozen in Time!

MODULE SPOILERS FOLLOW

Excellently written by Michael Curtis (one of my favorite RPG writers), Frozen in Time (FiT) can function as a funnel or a level 1 adventure—since my players all had funnel-survivors from previous one-offs, I decided to it was time for them to get their feet wet with actual DCC classes.

The adventure begins with the players being recruited to investigate a mysterious glacier, the face of which has recently crumbled to reveal mysterious 'eyes' that spew a green smoke. Upon investigation, they realize these 'eyes' are actually tunnels into the glacier itself, where they're immediately confronted with technology far beyond anything people from a pre-industrial world could have any familiarity with.

We played the module out, essentially, just like it's expected to be: The players explored, poked stuff, got into some fights, and found some cool loot.

The module's fiction is based around the idea that this glacier is actually the well-hidden sanctuary of a time-traveling wizard/ne'er-do-well who has been storing the various gains from his illegal activities. His hiding spot worked so well, in fact, that he died a while back and no one has found him. Along with the dead wizard, the crew found a group of 'specimens' kidnapped by the wizard and frozen in stasis: a walrus man from the nearby tundra, an ant-man from the future (maybe a nod to Gamma World or another post-apocalyptic game/Appendix N source?), and several others. As the explorers do their thing, the hideaway's power systems are failing--and the captured specimens are freed! They are, of course, confused, pissed off, and ready to attack whomever they see.

It's at this point that I tweaked something Michael Curtis put into the module. He includes a human male (or maybe just human, I don't recall if he specifies a gender) among the group of stasis-trapped monsters and suggests that the GM figure out what to do with them. I feel like the most-likely intention is that this guy can become a member of the party, especially if someone has been killed so far. That's always a nice thing to include in modules that I wish more folks considered.

My pivot was to use that Do What You Will Man as a plot device to get into space! When he came out of stasis, he quickly saw the party as potential allies and explained that his name was Jaxon and he'd been tricked by some 'asshole wizard' with a spiked drink and was now waking up in this strange place. BUT--he was also pretty sure that the wizard would have kept 'his ship'--and if the crew would help him get to it, he'd help them get out of this place before it came crashing down on their heads.

I'll fully admit that was pretty ham-fisted. Why does Jaxon 'know' that the wizard would have kept his ship? How could he possibly know where it is? Sure--grasping at straws--but it definitely made for fun action as the party ran through a crumbling wizard's tower, avoided a very pissed off T-Rex, and then ran across the glacier to find what looked like a Grecian ship secured to the back of it!

The party jumped on, freed the ship, and it–Dun Dun Dun–flew into the sky!

Once the excitement of escaping was past, Jaxon began to feel sick--he realized that whatever the wizard had drugged him with was also acting as some kind of poison or allergy to his system. And where did Jaxon know he could get the healing help he needed?

Why, Venus, of course!

How'd we get here?

I touched on this in the last post, but I thought I'd layout my basic history with RPG gaming.

I live in Chicago now, but I grew up in West Texas. As a kid, I'd only ever heard of Dungeons & Dragons vaguely, much less any other role-playing games. I think the one time I ever really heard anyone say anything about it was my very religious and conservative grandmother calling it Satanic after it was mentioned in a movie or something. I probably saw it in movies occasionally, but I didn't have the context to know what I was seeing–I imagine I thought it was a board game. I certainly played a lot of role-playing based video games--I clocked more hours on Knights of the Old Republic than I could ever attempt to estimate.

I didn't play an RPG until I was in college--My wife and I (we marry young in Texas) were living in married-housing, which was basically just apartments, and our neighbors were Very Into Fantasy. I was never a big fantasy kid growing up--I cared a lot more about space ships and blaster rifles than dragons and broadswords. But my neighbor, who I'll refer to as Derek, lived for it. If it had orcs or elves, this dude was in.

Derek was a player in a weekly 3.5e game--did I want to play?

I had no idea what I was doing. The style of game these guys played was what I'd later find out is referred to as munchkin style. Derek, while a pleasant enough guy away from the table, was probably the worst about it; he seemed obsessed with having the Most Badass Character Ever--and he accomplished it by manipulating and abusing every rule/splatbook he could find. I can see the appeal to this kind of game; it's a system with numbers and logic and a lot of nerdy folks (myself excluded) like working in a system to achieve a goal. It's a game inside the game. Or a game encompassing the game? Semantics--the point is, Derek was one munchkiny, rules-lawyering son-of-a-bitch.

Basically every session would devolve, some quicker into others, into rule debates and arguments. The DM, as I best recollect, really couldn't keep up with Derek's rules knowledge/recall, and Derek knew it. But the DM was also, and I'm really sympathetic to this, very aware that he was getting steamrolled and so he tried to combat it by making Derek prove that the books really said the obscure thing he was trying to do.

As a guy who didn't even own a book, this was all CRAZY overwhelming. I'd just step out and have a cigarette or two while they hashed it out. I could usually tell it was time to go back inside because the yelling would subside.

As terrible of a picture as I'm probably painting, I still enjoyed the game a lot of the times. I saw something in this weird game where we sat around and talked and rolled dice instead of holding controllers and staring at a screen. There was so much possibility here.

I don't remember how that game ended--for one reason or another, we all went our separate ways.

About 4 years later, I ran a short-lived Pathfinder game. If I'd done more than an ounce of research, I'd have found out that Pathfinder is a pretty crunchy system--because it's basically 3.5e and 3.5 was also crunchy--and that was something I distinctly disliked. I'd read the book multiple times and I was running one of Paizo's adventure paths, but I was still stuck doing a ton of book searching in the middle of the games, slowing things to a grind.

My players were wonderfully patient, but it wasn't as satisfying of a game as it should have been. I don't really remember how that game ended either--I suspect that scheduling difficulties caused us to lose momentum and eventually quit. A tale as old as time.

It was D&D 5e that brought me back. A friend asked me if I'd ever played D&D because she and her boyfriend were trying to get a game going and I jumped at the opportunity.

The game was fun--it was run by a DM who'd had the childhood I wished I'd had--he could rattle off the stats for anything, had played in all of these different settings, and just generally had a great command of the game. I guess that's what really kicked my interest into high gear--seeing someone who really loved this thing in a way that I could relate to.

Since then, I've spent a LOT of money on books, run some D&D 5e, Dungeon Crawl Classics, The Black Hack 2e, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and have a huge list of other stuff I want to run someday.

I really love this hobby--I haven't been lucky enough to be in it for the past 40 years like some grognards out there, but I'm excited to continue learning and writing and playing games.

What are we doing here?

This blog is, hopefully, going to be a few things--each with a different motivation.

1. A kick in my ass to write more.
I'm a lot of things. Husband, TTRPG hobbyist, software developer, comic book nerd, bass player; to name a few. I've been writing, in some form or another, for most of my life, but have largely dropped it from my life for the past couple of years. And that makes me sad. Even if it never 'goes anywhere', writing has always been a huge part of my life. A couple of rough years in terms of mental health have shaken my confidence--several dropped projects have pulled it down even further. It's time to get back on this horse.

2. A way to download my RPG thoughts.
Over the past year and a half or so, I've gotten really invested in RPGs. I'm particularly drawn to the OSR/Classic versions of D&D--I love the rules, philosophy, and general concepts going on with publishers like Goodman Games, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, The Hydra Cooperative, and DIY RPG Productions. I love the indie, don't-give-a-fuck vibe these publishers have. They're making what they want and having fun doing it. There's others, too--those are just the ones that come immediately to mind because I've been reading their stuff most immediately.

3. A place to talk about what I'm reading/running.
I read a lot of materials--and currently run a bi-weekly Dungeon Crawl Classics/CrawlJammer campaign. I'd like to have a place to review/talk about the stuff I'm reading and put up some play reports about the game I run because:

• I've seen a misconception out there that DCC can't be used for ongoing campaigns and I haven't actually seen that to be true
• I've been using CrawlJammer extensively and want more people to know how great it is!

Along with all of the above, I'm probably going to talk about comic books, TV series, and movies I'm enjoying (or hating). So, if you dig those ideas, maybe you'll wanna subscribe or favorite it or however you choose to follow blogs. Feel free to comment, just to say Hi.