To the Imaginarium!

Just so you're aware, I have started a new blog!

But don't worry - Part Four will continue as before, so you can continue reading all about my adventures with the band, with sock conspiracies, and with experimental cookery right here.

As you know, I'm a rather big fan of RPGs, and all things related. As such, I have been occasionally posting here about the topic. However, I'm also keenly aware that virtually everyone who reads the blog (both of you) are not particularly interested in RPGs, and so if I were to just constantly post on the topic it would get really tedious (as tedious as my "Independence" posts got a couple of months ago).

Hence, new blog.

So, for anyone who is interested, you can read my pedantic witterings on the subject of RPGs over at Stephen's Imaginarium.

(Incidentally, I may well post the occasional RPG-related matter here, if I think it's of more general interest. And, indeed, I may well post the same thing in both places where appropriate. However, I'm not going to pollute this blog with 500 posts on RPGs to the exclusion of all else!)

A Tedious Update with Further Thoughts on Treasure

Since my previous post on the subject, I've been giving quite a lot of thought to the subject of assigning treasure in D&D. This is primarily motivated by the planned restart of the "Eberron Code" campaign. (I'm projecting a mid-May restart, but that remains an aspiration rather than a certainty. For the time being, my horizon remains the 12th of April, so I'm not really in a position to be making many plans beyond then.)

Anyway, I thought it might be useful to run through an actual example of what I discussed last time, and also to address some of the magic item types in more detail.

The second part of "The Eberron Code" begins with the PCs at 6th level, and heading for 7th (of course). According to the "Wealth per Level" table, at 6th level they should have approximately 13,000 gp of equipment each, and at 7th they should have approximately 19,000. Having looked at the character sheets, this is reasonably accurate, although the current group are a little heavy of not-quite-ideal magic weapons.

Given that there are six PCs, this means that the step from 6th to 7th level should see them gain about 36,000 gold pieces worth of equipment. Note that that is equipment, not treasure - if they are given a huge pile of gold but have no opportunity to spend it, then it doesn't count.

As discussed in my previous post, I'm inclined to think that a good balance is about one-third 'valuables' to two-thirds 'magic'. As such, in the first few sessions, they should have opportunities to find roughly 12,000 gold pieces worth of valuables (some gold or platinum, but with an emphasis on historical artifacts, artworks, jewellery, and the like). I have several ideas for how this should be placed, which is quite nice... and I'm not going to recount them here - sorry Brindy!

As further discussed in the earlier post, I'm going to multiply that remaining 24,000 by a factor of 5, this representing the resale value of any magic items that the group decide to get rid of. (I also expect them to expend a significant amount of the magic found - potions, scrolls and wands are there to be used, after all!) So, that should be roughly 120,000 gold pieces of magical treasure, that should be stuff that they can use... but probably not stuff that they would choose for themselves.

But... how to then assign the treasure?

Well, D&D helpfully places magic items into categories, so...

• Weapons: As discussed, the group is currently rather heavy on magic weapons, including examples of the holy quality and the bane vs evil outsiders that I noted were probably the most powerful in the game. That being the case, I'm going to avoid magic weapons for the time being. Longer-term, I'm inclined to think that magic weapons should be constructed with three guidelines in place. Firstly, the PCs should never find a 'simple' +N weapon - there should always be some sort of special quality attached to the weapon. Secondly, the 'plus' on the weapon should roughly match the 'virtual plus' attached to those special qualities - a holy weapon should also be a +2 weapon, for example. Finally, the special qualities should avoid the obvious 'power' choices. So, no flaming or equivalent (though flaming burst and the like are fine), no holy (though axiomatic and the like are fine), and no bane vs evil outsiders (although any others are fine). Of course, any of the 'special' weapons are fine, as are pretty much any of the traits from other supplements.
  
• Armour and Shields: Armour and shields are somewhat simpler than weapons, in that the 'power' option is usually just to maximise the flat 'plus'. In general, there's an especially desirable armour in each category (that is, studded leather or mithral shirts, elven chain, or full plate; oh, and heavy shields over light of course). So, the same guidelines apply about giving special qualities as well as a flat plus, and balancing the qualities with the plus. The only qualities to avoid are the animated shield and mithral shirts that give bonuses to Hide or Move Silently skills. Everything else is fair game.
  
• Potions: Potions should generally be awarded as treasure only at very low levels, so don't really apply to this campaign. When placing a potion, absolutely anything is fine except healing potions. Because potions are one-use items, they can be considered 'safe' treasure to give out - they won't unbalance your game.
  
• Scrolls: Scrolls are much like potions, in that as one-use items they won't unbalance the game. In general, scrolls placed as treasure should always be of a level higher than the party spellcasters can already cast, or should be arcane spells that the Wizard (or Bard) doesn't know. Placing a scroll of fireball when the party Wizard already casts that spell routinely is something of a waste.
  
• Wands: Wands are limited-use items, and so are fairly safe, but not entirely (as 50 uses can last a long time!). As with scrolls, wands should usually be more powerful than the spellcasters can already manage, or should be of spells that they don't know. And, when placing treasure, avoid healing wands at all costs!
  
• Rings: Any ring, except the ring of protection can be placed as treasure. As these are very valuable, but tend to give a lousy return on investment, they make for ideal magical treasure.
  
• Rods and staffs: Any of these can be placed. As with rings, they make for ideal treasures, being both expensive and giving a lousy return on investment.
  
• Wondrous Items: I'm not a fan of the Craft Wondrous Item feat, because it allows access to an absurdly wide set of items, but as placed treasure these are generally great. There are only a small list of particular items to avoid: those giving stat boosts, those giving skill boosts, and the amulet of natural armour. Almost anything else is fair game.
  
• Psionic Items: The psionic items fall into slightly different categories, but these are generally just the magic item categories by another name. In each case, the same guidelines tend to apply, although as psionic items are more exotic simply by virtue of being psionic, there tends to be less of an issue in their placement.
  
• Custom items and artifacts: It should go without saying, but these can always be placed freely!

Treasure!

I had an epiphany the other day - although it was probably a realisation of the bleeding obvious.

The issue under discussion was placement of treasure in D&D. (Those of you who don't care about D&D can switch off now - I'm not working my way back to some more general point.)

In the first editions of the game, treasure placement was haphazard, at best. The DMG had a bunch of random tables that DMs mostly ignored, and (in 2nd Edition at least) included dire warnings against giving out "too much" treasure - a term that was largely undefined. Meanwhile, the published adventures were much more treasure-happy, which created some odd results when trying to use a published adventure in an ongoing treasure-poor campaign.

When they came to do 3e, WotC revised the treasure tables, making them much more robust, and insisted that their published adventures stuck to those guidelines. Furthermore, they formally introduced the buying and selling of magic items (which had been common up to that point, although the rules never really supported it). Finally, they introduced a "Wealth by Level" table for DMs.

On the one hand, this was a massive step forward. Suddenly, the rules were nice and consistent across DMG and adventures, there was a clear definition of "too much" and "too little" treasure, and it was now obvious how much gear a starting PC should have.

However, there were three complaints:

• The easy market in magic items gave rise to a "Magic Item Walmart" complaint. Now, that wasn't really implicit in the rules as written, but it was a mindset that took hold and was never shaken.
  
• DMs objected because suddenly they 'had' to give out a particular amount of treasure - too much or too little would throw off the balance of the game.
  
• Probably most significantly, some items gave much better results than others, and those items tended to be really dull. One of the best items for a Fighter was a belt of giant's strength, but that was one you just added to the sheet and then forgot about forevermore.

With 4e, WotC dropped the random treasure tables entirely (in fairness, they had always been largely ignored), and replaced the "Wealth by Level" table with a much simpler formula. Finally, the DMG recommended that the DM ask the players for "wish lists" of magical treasure that they would like to find, and then the players should "just happen" to find mostly those items as they went. This idea came in for much mockery. What I think is wanted from treasure in the game is the following:

• The players should have a sense of wondering: "What are we going to get?"
  
• When they find out what they've got, the response should be, "Cool!"
  
• You probably want the players to actually use the items they find... but don't necessarily want to enforce this.

Now, what I have traditionally done in the past is to place treasure largely in the form of gold, plus a small number of 'cool' items, and a small number of 'tailored' items - these being those "dull but powerful" items I mentioned previously. However, I've typically assigned treasure to a budget - the WbL table says they should have X gold; they currently have Y gold; I will therefore assign (X-Y) gold in treasure. I think that's the wrong way to go about it. Instead, I think a much better solution is probably:

• Over the course of the level, about a third of treasure should take the form of non-magical valuables. (That is, (X-Y)/3 should be valuables.)
  
• Of the valuables, only a small percentage should take the form of raw gold. Instead, as much as possible, it should take the form of more interesting items - a gold crown from the giant empire, a set of paintings by some famous artist, and so on. Ultimately, these are going to be liquidated into gold, but they're worth a moment or two to lovingly detail.
  
• When placing magic items, you shouldnot place the perfect item. So, no belt of giant strength, no ring of protection, no +1 flaming holy bastard sword, bane against evil outsiders (which is probably the most powerful melee weapon in the game).
  
• Instead, when placing magic items, assign double the value in items that are useful and interesting, but not quite what the PCs would choose for themselves. (Or, in 4e, or indeed my house-ruled game, assign five times the normal amount - because items can be traded in at only 20% of their purchase cost.)
  
• One more thing: it's okay to assign an item that the party simply can't use. Since they're likely to take such a thing off a defeated NPC, that only makes sense. However, such items should be considered as part of the "non-magical valuables" part of the treasure assigned.

That way, the items that are found are suddenly nice, powerful items, likely to elicit the "Cool!" response. Additionally, they're more likely to be kept and used (until the party outgrow them, but that's fine too). And if they choose to trade them in for the "powerful but dull" items, well, that's their choice, but it's not exactly efficient!

The consequence of this will immediately be being felt in my "Eberron Code" campaign when it returns. Up until now, the PCs have not really been receiving enough treasure, so it had been my intention to give them additional funds to boost them up to where they 'should' be. However, I wasn't looking forward to doing that calculation. But now I don't have to - I can just give them a flat 8,000 gold pieces and not worry about it (since that takes them well past the 13,000 value on the WbL table). Additionally, it means that when they go on their quests from here on out, I can start assigning more treasure than before.

Somehow, I can't see anyone complaining about getting more treasure...

The Last Game

After the fund-raising, I spent Saturday afternoon running the Star Wars game I talked about in a previous post. This was probably my last game before the wedding in April, and one that I had been looking forward to for some time. It was also one that I had put a fair amount of work into.

And it was okay. Not spectacular, just okay.

Sigh.

There were really two issues at work here that I think contributed to my dissatisfaction. The first, and probably most significant, was that I was just a bit too over-loaded on Saturday. I got back to the flat a mere ten minutes before the scheduled start time, and hadn't even finished getting changed before the first knock on the door. In hindsight, I should have given myself at least an hour to wind down from the fund-raising before trying to run the game.

The other issue is that RPGs are incredibly dependent on the people around the table. Ultimately, it doesn't matter all that much which game you're playing, or how exciting the premise is, or the nature of the setting, or the characters, or how well prepared the DM is. The majority of the enjoyment of the group will come from the people around the table.

At the legendary Hunter game of last year, we had a spectacular group, who really grabbed their characters, were excited at the premise, and who really ran with it. At the Christmas game, again, we had a great group round the table, who generated all sorts of craziness, bouncing off one another.

On Saturday, we were slightly hampered in that one player completely forgot it was on, and when called felt that he should instead use the time to study. And fair enough - actually important things must come first! The other three players took their characters and worked with them, playing competently... but there didn't quite seem to be that 'spark' that turns an okay game into a spectacular one.

(Plus, there wasn't much by way of plotting, sudden but inevitable betrayals, or general backstabbing as I had expected, and maybe hoped. But maybe there just wasn't the opportunity for it?)

Still, everyone had fun, which is the main goal. There were some lovely and iconic scenes. And, of course, they spotted the Ackbar/trap correlation immediately. I neither found myself running out of material, nor having large amounts of excess material prepared. All of which was to the good.

The lessons learned, I think, are fourfold:

1. The 'magic' that turns a decent game into a great game can't really be manufactured, so all the DM should try to do is run a functional game, and let the players take care of the rest.
   
2. There should have been more opportunities for scheming, and more overt opportunities for scheming.
   
3. A game like that probably needs at least four players. Additionally, there are a couple of our players who serve as ideal "agents of chaos" - that's something this game could have done with a bit more of.
   
4. I need to remember to give myself more time between activities in future. Starting the game while tired was not a good plan.

And that's that. Barring a sudden resurgence of the Saturday Game (which I don't now expect), that's my last game before the wedding. After the wedding, all being well, the next game will be the restart of "The Eberron Code". And then I potentially have a game to run in September, titled "Black Crusade: A Heresy of Angels". But whether that happens or not will depend enormously on how the next few months play out.

How to write a good mystery adventure

Back in October, I did a post on how not to write a good mystery adventure. Given that I am currently in the process of putting together an adventure for a game on Saturday, that may or may not be a mystery, I thought it would be a good time to post about how to put together a good mystery adventure.

I'm going to talk in terms of a murder mystery, but that's just a useful shorthand. Most types of mystery can be developed in much the same way.

Step One: Create the Characters First

More than most other types of adventures, mysteries are all about the characters, both living and dead. If there has been a murder, it is important to know who did it, how they did it, and why they did it. If the murderer discovered that his wife was having an affair and killed her lover in a rage, that's going to lead to a very different set of clues than if the wife was a long-suffering victim of domestic abuse and so quietly poisoned her husband over some months.

So, create the characters first.

Start with the murderer and the victim. Presumably, they knew one another, but what sequence of events brought them to a violent end? Was it the culmination of a long-standing hate, or was it a sudden reversal?

And then, create the characters around the central pairing. What friends and relatives did they have? What about co-workers? How did the local police interact with the two? (This last is particularly important, since if the PCs are investigating the murder, sooner or later they're going to have to interact with the local police. So, you'll want to know who they are.)

Step Two: Fill in the Details of the Mystery

Okay, you know who committed the crime, and who was the victim. Now, fill in the details of how the murder occurred, the set of motives that led to this most heinous of deeds, and the set of clues that immediately resulted.

So, where did the murder occur? And how did the murder occur? Was there anyone else there?

Trace the key events leading up to the murder, starting either a day before the murder took place or the point where the murderer decided to act (whichever came first), through the preparations for the murder, to the point where the two were together, the murder, and then the next day or so.

Who saw the victim last (other than the muderer)? Who knew where he was going? Who might have seen the murderer acting strangely, either before or after the deed?

Consider the nature of the murder itself. All murders generate evidence of some sort, even if that is only the dead body itself. What did the murderer do with the corpse? Did he have clothes to clean or destroy? A murder weapon?

At this point, you don't need to fix specifics. All you need to do is generate a whole bunch of potential clues for the PCs to find.

Step Three: Prepare the Locations

It may seem a bit odd, but it is not until this point that you want to lock down the locations in the adventure. You'll want some nice, mundane locations: the hostel where the PCs are staying, the police station, the local church. You'll want some 'neutral' locations keyed to the victim and the murderer: places of work, their homes, the homes of their ex-wives or mistresses. And you'll want the locations tied directly to the murder: the lock-up where the deed occurred, the pit where the body is buried...

Again, you don't need to tie these down with specifics too tightly at this place. In many cases, these will just be 'stock' locations: the church may well just be a church, same as any other. You'll need a handful of 'flavour' details to bring the place to life, but not much else.

Step Four: Build the Web

Now, we get to put things together.

Start with the conclusion that the PCs need to reach. "Col. Mustard, in the Study, with the crowbar."

Now, determine the clues that they need to find to come to each of these conclusions. Here, you want to establish the minimal set of investigations to get from the start of the adventure to the finish.

But at that point, you might be tempted to stop. Don't!

You need at least three clues for each conclusion the PCs need to reach, and these shouldn't all be in the same place. Furthermore, you need various 'entry points' to the network of characters you have - knowing the Bob has been killed may well point the PCs to speak to his wife, but probably won't direct them to his mistress automatically. But if Bob's wife comments bitterly on "that woman", that may direct them to the mistress, and the clues she has.

And so, you get an adventure that looks like a web. It starts at a single point (the PCs arrive), and ends at a single point ("Col. Mustard, in the Study, with the crowbar."), but in between there are lots of different points, joined by lots of little lines, all marked with clues.

(And when you run it, the PCs are likely to jump all across the web, probably skipping off the lines quite frequently. That's fine - you just need to make sure you have enough to ensure they don't get stuck.)

Step Five: Take a Break

You've forgotten something. No, really, you have. And if you just leave it at that, either the PCs will get stuck, or they'll immediately short-circuit the thing and ruin your adventure.

So, take a break from your planning, for at least an hour and preferably for a day or more. Then come back to it, check the web again, check the characters, and try to think "what if..." And then plug the holes you find.

Step Six: Play!

Some more thoughts:

• Remember, your players aren't Sherlock Holmes. They won't pick up on fine details unless you specifically point them out, and if you point them out then they're not really details so much as "big honking clues". So, make your clues fairly obvious and easy to find.
  
  
• Everyone lies. In a mystery adventure, it seems to be quite common to have a whole bunch of "nice guys", and then one "shifty guy". That is, the regular folk are nice and helpful, while the murderer glows brightly under detect evil. Gosh, that's a tough mystery... So remember, everyone lies, and everyone has something to hide. The grocer maybe didn't kill anyone, but if he was also having an affair with the murderer's wife, suddenly he might seem a tad evasive. The local police are being awkward - did they have something to do with it, or do they just not want amateurs getting in their way?
  
  
• Don't forget to include some "floating clues". Chances are that, despite your best efforts, the PCs will get stuck. If you have some clues that can be dropped in when they just "ask around", or do something you didn't expect, you can easily get them going again.
  
  
• No matter what you do, there's still a real good chance that the mystery will fail. Either the players simply won't be able to figure it out, or they'll solve it in an instant, quite possibly by accident, and you're stuck for the evening. Ultimately, though, that's not that big a deal. Have the bad guy make a run for it, and turn the adventure into a big chase instead. Or just accept that sometimes things fail.

And that's it.

Loss of Enthusiasm

For the first couple of weeks since the announcement of 5th Edition, I was actually really quite enthusiastic as to what was happening. It seemed like they were avoiding making the same mistakes again, there was a definite sense that the community was coming together, and it was all good.

This weekend was the D&D Experience convention in the States when we got our first look at what the new game might actually hold... and suddenly I find myself cold on the idea. It's starting to look like they're in the process of making a whole new bunch of mistakes.

Part of the problem is that I have some very clear ideas on how the game should be structured, and while I'm not absolutely insistent that that is the way it must be, I do have good reasons for those opinions - when they go in the exact opposite directions, it doesn't give any confidence that I'll like the destination.

Plus, they're in the difficult position that I have a game that does 90% of what I want already, in 3rd Edition. There are sufficient glaring weaknesses (and those weaknesses are sufficiently bad) for me to be interested in a new edition. But any new edition needs to be significantly better than what I have for me to consider switching. It's not enough for it to just fix the problems, if in doing so it introduces a new batch of flaws.

Shame. I was having fun looking forward to the new game, too.

Sanctum, and Building a Better Adventure

Fresh from not watching "Birdsong", I instead watched the film "Sanctum" on Tuesday (and "Star Wars" yesterday, but that's not important right now). It was a good film, far better than I had expected, although not as good as "The Descent".

What particularly interested me about the film, though, was its application to D&D, and in particular to dungeon adventures.

The basic concept of a D&D adventure is pretty simple: a group of adventurers head down into a dungeon (or cave system, or ruined castle, or whatever), kill a bunch of monsters, and take their stuff. (There's more to it than that, of course, or I wouldn't still be playing after nearly 23 years, but that's the basic form.)

And, as far as the location is concerned, that's about it - it's a 'dungeon', or 'some caves', or 'a ruined castle', or 'whatever'. Basically, it's just a place, just as 'a school' is a place, 'Tesco' is a place, or 'a football stadium' is a place. That is, it's entirely mundane, a necessary setting for more important things, but largely trivial itself.

But in both "The Descent" and "Sanctum" (also the generally-poor "Vertical Limit", and indeed much of "Lord of the Rings"), there's a lot more to it than that. It's not just a location, it's an alien and hostile location, full of many dangers and snares, and that is utterly unforgiving to those who aren't prepared and/or skilled. If you mess around down there, you are going to die.

That's something I've been musing on quite a lot recently, and something I think the game is lacking in it's most recent incarnations (and perhaps all incarnations).

Several years ago, I went to visit CJ in the States, and while there I took the opportunity to head over to Arkansas to visit an old friend. While I was there, said friend's father-in-law took us out to a cave system. (Where I bought my t-shirt with frogs on.)

The experience was something of an eye-opener. It was incredibly dark. What light there was played tricks on us, such that perspectives were useless. The colours were amazing, and bizarre, and alien. It was oddly warm, and there was very little movement in the air. And there were bats.

And that was a safe dungeon-crawl. Throw in some tight tunnels, flooding water, sheer climbs, and the like, and you've already got an adventure. Heck, you don't even really need monsters!

I don't really have a fix for this. Except perhaps to note that I'm becoming increasingly convinced that D&D adventures, by default, should be set in actively hostile environments. This ties into the "Mythic Underworld" that I discussed some days ago - the characters haven't just ventured into 'some caves' - they've stepped into a realm possessed of a malign spirit that will do them harm if it can.

And all that from an okay-but-not-great film.

Three World-Building Concepts

I'm working on a new fantasy setting. At the moment, I'm not sure whether to use it for role-playing campaigns (possibly in the upcoming D&D 5th Edition), or as a setting for short stories. Perhaps both. Anyway, the banner under which I'm working is "Life Under the Wheel", which makes perfect sense if you know what "The Wheel" is, though I'm keen not to reveal that detail too soon.

At the heart of the setting are three world-building concepts, each of which I lifted from somewhere else. But that's fine - it's the way the concepts are put together, rather than the concepts themselves, which would make the setting unique.

Points of Light

The first of the concepts was first named, as far as I'm aware, in the run up to the release of D&D 4th Edition. The concept itself is pretty simple: civilisation is threatened on all sides, and all that remain are isolated pockets - a "Point of Light" if you will. Of course, whether or not they are truly 'light', or indeed 'civilised' is an open question!

This concept should be familiar from pretty much any post-apocalyptic story. The world has fallen into ruin, and all that remains are the few survivors.

The World Malevolent

One of the differences between the "Lord of the Rings" films and the books surrounds what happens on the mount of Caradhras. In the films, the way is blocked by Saruman, who is controlling the weather. He and Gandalf contest wills, and Gandalf is beaten; the Fellowship must turn back. In the books, it is the mountain itself that opposes their way.

Similarly, in Fangorn Forest, it is noted that the trees are old and angry. They actively try to do harm to those who venture within.

That is the concept of the World Malevolent. Nature is not a passive, neutral thing. Nor, indeed, is it "red in tooth and claw", but ultimately just operating on instinct. Instead, the world itself has turned against man, perhaps as vengeance for our many wrongs...

The Mythic Underworld

And thirdly, and finally, we have the mythic underworld. One of the key features of "Dungeons & Dragons" are, of course, the dungeons. For a long time (decades in fact), there has been a move in adventure design to a very 'realistic' style of dungeon design - the monsters need places to store food and water, they have societies and comprehensible aims. And the dungeons themselves are, broadly speaking, just buildings.

Not so in the model of the Mythic Underworld. Instead, the dungeons represent a gateway to some other, and as such are a realm where the laws of our reality don't really apply. As with the World Malevolent, the dungeons are not just a neutral location; they actively conspire against man, and seek to destroy his works. A foul cancer gnaws at the world, and the dungeons are the vector by which it spreads.

And so, there it is. Those are the three concepts that are sitting at the heart of my setting. Now all I need to do is write it. Or not.

Two Thoughts From Yesterday

The third part of "Great Expectations" was no better than the first two. In fact, it was considerably worse. And the ending just doesn't bear thinking about. (The next paragraph contains spoilers for the series and the novel. If you don't want to know, feel free to skip to the paragraph beyond, which will be spoiler free.)

Now, here's the thing: Pip does not love Estella. He does not even know Estella. He is in love with the idea of Estella, and that really is no basis for them being happy together. The mega-happy ending of the TV adaptation is completely wrong. Dickens understood this, hence the notion that they would "remain friends apart".

The other major thing that happened yesterday was that Wizards of the Coast announced that they are developing a 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and are having an open playtest of the rules as they develop. Their stated goal is to reunify the fanbase, which was badly fractured as a result of 4th Edition.

I was a bit surprised, not by the announcement, but rather in that I thought I would be more excited. Instead, there was just the relief that a long-awaited announcement had finally come.

I wish WotC well in this endeavour. But I am hopeful rather than confident. I suspect that the goals they have set themselves are simply too large for them to succeed - the very things that people liked about 3rd Edition (and its descendant, Pathfinder) are the very things that many 4th Edition fans don't like. I don't see how they can satisfy both groups, and I fear that in trying to compromise they will fail to satisfy anyone.

A shame, really. I really did used to love that game.

How (not) to write a good mystery adventure

The group for the Saturday game managed to actually get together this week. We had The Talk at which it was discussed that as of April the group is essentially done. We discussed possibly ways forward, but I don't think anything will come of it.

Anyway, that's by the way.

The game on Saturday wasn't great. Our characters were agents of the Inquisition, seeking out signs of heresy on a far-flung outpost of the Empire. So, we arrived, made our introductions, and started investigating the strange goings-on.

The investigations didn't go well. We spent several hours absolutely convinced we were missing something desperately important, because there seemed to be absolutely no connection between events. There was a sense that we urgently needed to put the mystery together... and absolutely no clues as to how we should do that.

At length, we found the heretic and dealt with him, but we did this via the cunning expedient of just waiting around until things got out of control, and then just mopping up.

It turned out that we hadn't carefully avoided all the clues that would have helped us solve the mystery sooner. It turned out that there was no pattern to events, and that it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. And, to be honest, we caught the bad guy more because we were just itching to cause some trouble, rather than because he actually hame himself away.

Still, success!

The key problem here is in the way the adventure was written (it was a pre-gen adventure, so not the GM's fault). And the crux of the problem lies in one of the key differences between fiction and a game.

When Sherlock Holmes investigates as crime, he walks into the room, finds all the clues that the author wants him to find, comes to the conclusions the author wants him to come to, goes to the next location, and repeat... Because the author controls everything, he knows both who committed the murder, why and how, but he also controls all of Holmes' thought processes, the steps of his investigation, and so on. Moreover, he can give Holmes as many or as few clues as needed, include red herrings or irrelevancies, or whatever else, safe in the knowledge that Holmes can just jump to whatever conclusion is needed, no matter how flimsy the evidence was.

In an RPG, this just isn't the case. There's no guarantee that the PCs will even look for the clues, much less that they'll look for them in the right place. Even if they do think to look where clues are to be found, there's no guarantee that the dice will be kind enough for them to actually find the clues.

Even once the PCs have found clues, it is by no means certain that they will have all the information they need to work things out. And there's no guarantee that the players will come to the conclusions that were expected, especially given the penchant of players for latching on to irrelevant details, and especially if there is a red herring in their somewhere.

Unfortunately, while most adventure writers realise these crucial differences between fiction and games, they tend not to be very good at adapting for them. Too often, adventures can become stuck because a single vital clue is missed, or because the author expects the players to follow a particular chain just as Holmes would, or because the author decided to be clever and put a false trail in the adventure.

I don't have a lot more to add here, not least because most people who read this blog have little interest in writing mystery adventures for RPGs (but also because most of what I know I've lifted from the work of other people on the subject). Still, here are some handy rules of thunb:

• Make clues easy to find. Generally, if the PCs look in the right place, they should find the clues.
  
• Have a number of 'floating clues' - if the PCs just generally investigate, or "ask around" or whatever, let the roll, and on a success give them a clue.
  
• Give at least three clues for each conclusion you want to PCs to reach. This assumes they'll miss one, not realise the significance of a second, but finally 'get it' on the third.
  
• Don't build your mystery as a chain of events for characters to follow. But then, that should really be true of every adventure!
  
• Don't include red herrings. The PCs will find their own irrelevant details to obsess over, will come to all sorts of wrong conclusions, and will generally do this bit for you. There's no need to muddy the waters further.
  
• Provide some sort of 'escape hatch' for the GM to use for those cases where things just go horribly wrong. Otherwise, the players are likely to get really bored once they find they simply can't solve the puzzle.
  

And that's pretty much that.

Ultraviolet: Code-500

On Saturday I ran the one-shot game that I mentioned in a previous post, and it was excellent. A strong group of players who were engaged with the plot and their characters, one of my better performances as Game Master, and a good time had by all.

One of the great things about these games is that the GM usually has a story in mind when writing the thing, but that story never quite survives first contact with the players. Saturday was no exception.

The team arrived on-site late on Thursday night. At this point, I expected them to very quickly turn in, and start their investigations in the morning. After all, I made a point of noting just how late it was...

However, the party elected to get to work right away. This was fine, except that the plot also had certain events going on on the Thursday night that the PCs were expected to miss... Thus, they were able to short-circuit a big piece of the plot, and cut out a lot of the investigations that were to follow.

Still, simply because it was unexpected didn't mean it was bad. Fortunately, the plot wasn't so fragile that those events had to work out just so, and I was able therefore the re-plot.

Anyway, it was all really good fun, and probably the best game I've been involved in this year. And given how good this year has been for gaming, that is high praise indeed.

Meanwhile, it looks like one of the guys in the other gaming group is now permanently working on Saturdays. If this is correct, I guess that definitively wraps that up.

Too many games, not enough time

At the weekend I'm running yet another game. This one is "Hunter: the Vigil", one of the 'new' World of Darkness games. The adventure is titled "Ultraviolet: Code-500", and is based on the old Channel 4 show Ultraviolet.

Anyway, last night I was busy creating the characters for this game, and I was reminded just how much I used to love the old World of Darkness games. There's just something really smooth and elegant about the way the characters are put together. It's just fun, in a way that D&D no longer seems to be. And while I got really burned out on the "Vampire" iteration of the games, and have no intention of going back, running a game for hunters (the flip side, if you will) is extremely attractive.

The only problem with that is that I just don't have enough time. I'm currently busily running my latest D&D campaign, "The Eberron Code", which may have as much as two years still to go. Additionally, I have at least one "Star Wars Saga Edition" campaign I want to run ("Through a Glass Darkly"), I've sort-of promised myself that I'm going to run a "Serenity" campaign, and then there's the "Emergent Reason" campaign I've been thinking about for the last five years... And as soon as I started up "The Eberron Code" I immediately came up with two other D&D campaigns I want to run!

So, once again I find myself with a whole bunch of campaign ideas, and a total lack of time in which to run them. Woe is me!

Mourning the Friendship

The Saturday game has been on hiatus for several months, due to the pipe band competition season. It was due to restart last weekend, but that fell through. Then, it was due to restart this weekend, but that has now fallen through. It can't restart next weekend, due to another commitment on my part, so is now rescheduled for the 24th. We'll see if that happens.

The truth is, I really need to put an end to this one. I don't really have time for everything that I'm involved with, so something has to go. And Saturday afternoon is 'premium time' - it's the time that is most useful for other things, and the time that is least suitable to just being wasted. I really can't afford to tie up every single Saturday afternoon for a game that is almost always cancelled, especially with a wedding to plan, and double especially after the wedding.

(That said, Lady Chocolat is flying off to Kenya in a few weeks and for a couple of months. So, the time between now and the end of November is slightly more flexible...)

So, this spell between now and the end of March was always going to be the last hurrah for this game group. After that, we were going to have to adopt an entirely different pattern, or simply stop getting together for the game at all. It's starting to look like I have to call a halt six months early.

So, I know what I need to do, but why the reluctance? Well, this group has been together (in one form or another) for sixteen years, since my second year at university. Two of my three "greatest ever" campaigns have been with this group (being the "Rivers of Time" chronicle for Vampire, and the "Shackled City" campaign in D&D). We've had a lot of good times.

But we're not 20 any more. We're not even 28 any more, which was probably the last time we really had the numbers for reliable gaming. Martin left to move to the States. Andreas left to return to Sweden. Johannes left to move to various places to continue his studies. Molly just left. Craig's work schedule meant that he could no longer attend. Andy's ever-growing family likewise meant he could no longer attend... Gradually, we went from having too many players down to a group of four. And since the game really has a quorum of four, that created the major problems that I've been posting about on and off for the last two years.

Killing the group probably means cutting ties with the remainder of the group. We only really get together for the game, and although we might well say we'd continue to get together at times for other things, the truth is that it just wouldn't happen.

It also means cutting the last link to my university days. Since leaving, I've basically lost touch with everyone I met at university (again, some immediately and others over the years). So, ending this group means finally closing that chapter.

But then, this isn't the first time. I had a game group during school, and it ended when I left school. Over the years, I've gradually lost touch with every friend I made at high school (although, oddly, there are a couple of people who are now friends who weren't when we were at school together).

It's time to pull the plug. I just wish it wasn't so hard.

How Was This Game Ever Popular?

As I noted in the blog in January, and as I've continued to note in the ongoing list of books, I have been gradually reading through the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks for the first edition. I've been doing this mostly out of interest in the roots of the game; although my very first game was under first edition rules, I've never read the rulebooks before, nor have I ever run that edition.

Having read the 'core' rulebooks for the game (the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual), I am completely at a loss to understand why this game was ever popular. The rules are complex and badly laid out, the books are extremely dense, and there's no real sense of organisation.

The Dungeon Master's Guide, in particular, was rather shocking. I have occasionally heard this hailed as a work of genius, and that may be so. But if so, it was one of those crazy geniuses that you know is brilliant, but can't follow at all. The book was a nightmare!

Having read this I can say confidently that, had I started with this edition, I would not now play these games. And, in fact, as nearly-heretical as it is, I have to say that the much-maligned second edition is actually the better game, if only because it is significantly more approachable.

As for the popularity of the game, I can only posit three explanations:

1. Most people actually started playing under the earlier 'original' D&D or the various 'basic' D&D sets, which had much shorter and more compact rulesets. When they moved to first edition they didn't read most of the new rules, but just continued using the old rules with the new monsters, spells and classes.
   
2. Most people actually started playing under the tutelage of existing players. As such, they never read the rules, but instead just went with the flow. This is basically the 'Monopoly' approach.
   
3. There was a fairly small corps of DMs in those days who had read the rules, and who served as the 'rule masters' for their respective groups. Most people just played under the aegis of these people. (This is similar to, but not quite the same as, #2 - in #2 people would gradually pick up some form of the rules; #3 posits a small, closed circle of 'expert users'.)

Or maybe I'm just old, and jaded, and tired. But a year ago, when I started picking up the first edition rulebooks, I had a notion of running a few games under the system to see how it compares. Having now read through half the books, I'm disinclined so to do. Oh well.

Can't Take the Sky From Me

As you may have noticed, in the last month I've been busily reading a number of "Serenity" books. These are actually supplements for the "Serenity RPG" by Margaret Weis Productions, a short-lived RPG based on the film "Serenity", which was itself based on the short-lived "Firefly" TV series.

At Christmas, I had the opportunity to run a one-off adventure using the "Serenity RPG", and although it was really not a great adventure, it was enjoyed by all present, and there was some interest in kicking off a campaign. And so, I hunted up the books, and got stuck in to the reading.

I've also been doing a far amount of musing about game design, and have been doing a fair amount of reading of late, largely into those blogs that are part of the "Old School Renaissance". A lot of what they have to say is really quite interesting (and a lot is nonsense, of course), but particularly of note is their emphasis on Doing It Yourself, rather than relying on publishers producing adventures, and settings, and other material to bloat out the setting.

In that regard, the fact that both the RPG, and indeed the "Firefly" series itself, was rather short-lived is actually a boon. There's just enough material to inspire campaigns, but not so much as to further constrain the group from making The 'Verse their own.

So, where am I going with this?

Well, firstly I think I'm inclined to actually throw out the rules system in use in the Serenity RPG. It's actually not very good. I'm probably inclined to go for Savage Worlds - it's pretty close, and it's a very good fit, but it also has a bit more robustness to it. (That said, I understand there's now a "Cortex 2.0", which takes the Serenity system and vastly improves it; perhaps that warrants a look?)

Secondly, if the crew are going to have their own ship (which of course they are), then they're going to be fairly mobile. This suggests to me that the best thing to do is a 'sandbox' style game - they can go wherever they want, and adventure will find them there.

This in turn suggests that, thirdly character advancement should be fairly slow, or indeed static. This is fine, since both the Serenity RPG and Savage Worlds use fairly slow advancement schemes anyway. Still, I may even be inclined to just not bother giving out advancements at all - characters are created at Veteran level, and stay there.

Fourth, since there is a fairly small amount of source material available, and a grand total of six published adventures (mostly short), I'll need to do a fair amount of leg work coming up with interesting things for the crew to do. I had hoped that the "Serenity: Adventures" book would be more useful in that regard, but it was not to be. Amusingly, the Star Wars Saga Edition book "Sum & Villainy" may be more use.

Fifth, I really need to watch "Firefly" again!

Update on Games

Speaking of my D&D groups, time for an update:

The Saturday game seems to have settled into a reasonable pattern. I have brought my Warhammer campaign to a close: the Company of the Black Hand uncovered the corruption at the heart of Walkenburg and rooted it out; in time they were able to depart the town as heroes, albeit ones wounded and deranged by their experiences.

I have taken a step back from running games with this group for the time being; one of my friends is instead running "Dark Heresy" for a while. It's an interesting game; we'll see how it pans out.

The group also seems to have settled into an almost-monthly meeting cycle, which seems to work reasonably well. It's not ideal - I would prefer to meet more often - but it's much better than our previous arrangements, and actually means we may meet more often this year than in each of the last two. So that's good.

The other group is currently in something of an interim period. We don't have any ongoing games running, with a couple of new campaigns about to kick off. Despite this, the group seems to be quite busy: we've had a number of one-off games, we have a cinema night planned for Friday (going to see "Your Highness"), and we're in the process of moving the site from Meetup.com to GroupSpaces, due to the changes made to Meetup.

In the middle of next month, I'm going to be starting up a new campaign, "The Eberron Code", which I've described as "like The Da Vinci Code, but starring Indiana Jones, set in Eberron, and better written". There seems to be quite a bit of enthusiasm about this one, and I'm rather looking forward to it also. I've had a good number of ideas for plotlines and adventures, have a good idea of the campaign metaplot, and am quite keen to run a game again.

So, it's all looking quite good, really.

The Orks Are Coming!

Since the start of the year, I have completed the painting job on the first quarter of my Space Orks. The second batch are now about halfway done. At the current rate, I should be finished the whole force by the end of the year, which would be nice.

In parallel with this, some of the members of my gaming group have expressed an interest in actually playing some of the wargames (for which the minis are intended). Of course, they have naturally indicated a preference for the fantasy game, rather than the sci-fi one, rendering my orks somewhat useless!

(This is especially amusing as the only reason I have the orks in the first place is that when I moved to Yeovil, the group there played the sci-fi game rather than fantasy. I do have two entire armies for the fantasy game, but they're packed away in boxes, and I don't really want to unpack them, as they take up a lot of space.)

A funny thing about the painting: I find the whole process very relaxing, and yet there isn't a single part of the process that I would actually say I enjoy. Preparing the figures for painting is a hassle, the undercoating is a nuisance, the early coats are dull, and the later coats are very frustrating. I don't even particularly like looking at the finished figures - they tend to get shelved as I move on to something else.

But still, there's something about it. It's probably a combination of two factors: the ability to spend an hour here or there focussing on a simple task without worrying about anything else, and also the clear and obvious progress towards a clear goal - with every hour, the minis become visibly more complete.

It's interesting.

Plus, it's quite good fun to dream about the next painting project - do I build up my ork force into a proper army, do I invest in a bunch of character models for use in D&D, do I do something else entirely (maybe a Dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy?)... or do I do nothing at all and just pack it all up again once these ones are done?

Guilty

For the first time, we've had to remove someone from our gaming group. Due to circumstances beyond the control of anyone in the group, one person just didn't fit (and, with the best will in the world, really couldn't). Unfortunately, the nature of what we do (and, particularly, where we meet) meant that there really wasn't a compromise solution available.

The worst part of all this was that I didn't have a particular problem with the person in question, but because I am the Organiser of the group (el queso grande), and indeed because I don't have a problem with this person, I felt it was my responsibility to be the one to break the news, and to be the bad guy in all of this.

Responsibility sucks.

Oh well, it can't be helped. It really had to be done. Still, if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash my mind out.

Drama!

At 2 pm this afternoon, Meetup.com made a massive change to the layout of their sites, and also to some of the ways in which those sites operate. Unfortunately, this took the Meetup that I run, and which was pretty much perfect for the purposes I wanted it for, and turned it into something completely useless.

(Two analogies as to the scale of the change immediately spring to mind: the change to the 'ribbon' interface with Microsoft Office 2007, and the change from D&D 3e to D&D 4e.)

I guess the change would be great for someone who actually liked it. If you don't, though...

Probably the most frustrating thing about this is that there is so much on the site that is customisable, sometimes to the point of being annoying, and yet when they do something like this, they don't offer a "Classic Mode" option.

Ah well. We have a couple of guys in the group who are very web-savvy. There had already been some talk about moving to a dedicated site, to avoid the fees that the site changes for use. I guess this just makes the decision that much easier. Still, it really put a damper on what had, until then, been quite a good day.

#2: "AD&D: Player's Handbook", by E. Gary Gygax

A door that won't stay closed

Way back, in days of yore, when I bought my very first D&D rulebook (the legendary "Red Box"), the store owner threw in a couple of little metal men with the box. Little did we know that this small act of kindness would have far reaching consequences...

Back in those days, D&D didn't require any sort of figures to play. Strictly speaking, it still doesn't, but with the two most recent versions the publishers have done their level best to change that - playing the game without some sort of token or other marker to track movement loses a lot. I don't really consider this an improvement.

However, back then, it was not long before we converted to the use of miniatures, a practice that would actually only last a couple of years before being discontinued as being too much hassle.

But in that time, I was hooked. See, the thing is that the miniatures are supplied unpainted, and so require a certain amount of time, effort, and skill to prepare for 'real' use. And I always found the process of actually painting the miniatures very restful, and a good relief of stress. The concentration and attention to detail required necessarily took my mind off of whatever issues had been bugging me, at least for a while.

(I was never a fan of the 'other' parts of the process. See, the miniatures also had to be cleaned up before painting, they sometimes needed assembled, and they also needed undercoating (and varnish afterwards). Still, those were necessary evils.)

And so, I found myself buying hundreds of the little guys, especially from Games Workshop. I always liked their miniatures, although I never got into their games. I found them unnecessarily complex (basic attacks required four rolls to resolve, when it should have been only one, and there were too many exceptions littered around), and the design was also cynically done to favour the person willing to spend the most money (the best figures were always the most expensive).

Eventually, I found myself with more than a hundred unpainted figures, and with progressively less time to paint. And I do so hate having things left undone...

In 2003, found myself unemployed for the first time, and for a number of months. During that time, I dedicated myself to getting the remaining figures painted. I wanted it done, and put away. And so, just after the New Year in 2004, I put the final coat onto the last outstanding figure, and put away my brushes.

For a while.

It seems that the itch never quite goes away. When I moved to Yeovil, I was involved (briefly) with a gaming group there. And one of their specialities was Warhammer 40,000. Naturally, all my figures were for the fantasy game, so I needed a new army to get involved. I duly bought a number of new figures, got some significant way though assembling them...

Then decided to leave Yeovil, and put them away.

Two years later, I was again briefly inspired to do some painting. This time, I was inclined to purchase a small number of 'adventurer' models to represent a new party. I bought them, cleaned them up, undercoated them... and then never quite got around to putting any paint on them.

Now, as I've mentioned, I don't like leaving things undone. And so, with a part of an army of Warhammer 40,000 Space Orks to paint, and a quintet of adventurers to paint, and two weeks of holiday, I thought to myself that I would do some painting. Why not, indeed?

And so, I dug out the various gear, and set to work cleaning up and assembling some of those Orks. And, in doing so, I found that my existing superglue had dried up (and my plastic glue was long-gone). "No problem," thought I. "I'll just pop round to the shop and get some more."

Fortunately, before I went I thought to check on my various paints. Were they still in useable condition?

Well, no. Turns out that every single pot of paint I own (and have carted the length of the country, twice) has dried out and become useless.

Truthfully, this isn't (or shouldn't be) a surprise - I haven't used them since 2004, after all. But, somehow, it was.

Anyway, I decided that my inspired state wasn't enough to persuade me to spend large amounts of money replacing lots and lots of paint (and glue, and, probably, brushes, and other tools and kit). So, I packed everything up again, threw out the paints, and considered this a sign that the door should remain closed.

Until next time, that is. After all, Reaper miniatures are about to release a new dragon 'miniature' that looks really nice...

#27: "Star Wars: Threats of the Galaxy", by Rodney Thompson and Robert J. Schwalb
#28: "Rebecca", by Daphne de Maurier (book six from The List)