The 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide and Player’s Handbook provide endless inspiration to me. Despite the author’s explicit claims to the contrary, I feel like the material was written with a very specific setting in mind, one that draws heavily from the histories and cultures of the British Isles in the Medieval era. It explains why the most common settings such as Mystara, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms are all similar to each other with minor, personal tweaks, and why wildly different settings such as the Dark Sun required a heavy adaption to the rules.
So I’ve decided to take my own crack at it, and generate my own setting using the same Medieval English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Roman influences that I believe informed AD&D itself, and with a twist to tie it to our real world while yet keeping it comfortably in fantasy.
Setting:
The campaign is set in a fictional dukedom in the British Isles during the Arthurian Age. The Lord of this land is Sir Wrys, a famous Paladin and member of the Knights of the Round Table, and his stronghold is established at Castle Caerhafon, around which has grown the town of Caerhafon, where the adventure begins. The town of Caerhafon is mostly populated by humans, and is a bright spot of civilization and order surrounded by untamed wilderness. Farming, hunting, and fishing from the river are all means of self-subsistence in the area, and while there is ample trade most of the manufacture is performed in cottage industries by single families or small artisan's guilds. St. Cuthburt is the patron saint of the land, and a Cathedral devoted to him resides in the city, overseen by Bishop Robert Jarrat.
Outside the protective stone walls of Caerhafon are the wilds of the English countryside where the Pagan people live. The Pagans live in small clan villages and worship a pantheon of gods drawn from their own myth and history. Though every village has a clan Elder that is seen as an authority figure, there is no central authority that rules them. Religiously, the Pagans revere the Druids, who travel amongst the natural world and meet in Circles at sites scattered across the land. Life for the Pagans is dangerous and unpredictable, as they are frequently at the mercy of wild animals, mischievous magical creatures, and the whims of Nature herself in harsh weather, famine, and long winters. Battles with rival clans are constant, though the same clans might wage war on each other in the summer only to declare a truce to reap the harvest and share festivities before the winter.
The Pagans and the Duchy of Caerhafon are permanent enemies. The Duke sees the Pagans as lawless barbarians that must be civilized by force if necessary, the Bishop sees them as targets for either conversion or a Crusade, and he uses the Pagan as a scapegoat for any and all manners of ailments that befall the dukedom. The Pagans themselves see the English as unwelcome invaders and enemies of their way of life, and destroyers of Nature and the sacred places of the gods.
The Adventure:
Into this tense climate comes a catastrophe, somehow the Devils are being summoned onto Earth. A Devil brought into the world causes carnage and unnatural phenomena in a large area around himself. The dead rise and walk among the living as undead monsters, demons follow in his wake and prey upon the innocent, and supernatural beings are let free to cause havoc. Even after a Devil leaves, wicked monsters may linger in his path and remain a permanent threat. The Duke, Sir Wrys is committed finding the source of these devil summonings and has organized bands of men to scour the countryside and bring swift justice to those responsible. The Church blames anyone performing unsanctioned acts of magic or anyone that has dealings with the supernatural, and the Bishop has put out bounties on anyone suspected of devil worship and summoning, and on any information leading to the identification of such. Obviously, most of the blame is placed toward the Pagan people, for their godless ways and "inviting" the Devil into this world, if they were not the outright cause, and the Church is happy to encourage excursions into Pagan lands.
The players can choose which, if any, of these factions to join and where they wish to originate, and will get caught up in the quest to halt the devil summons.
Cosmology:
Since this adventure doesn't take place in a previously published campaign world, I thought I'd add a few notes about the cosmology of this universe. It is radically different from our own world or the official campaign worlds. Instead, it is based on a literal reading of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Humanity and the other mortal races live on Earth, which is the whole known world and stretches on as far as can be seen and leads into some strange, unknown places. Above the Earth exists the Heavens, where God and the celestial beings live. Below the Earth is the Underworld, the center of which is a Pit, and it is called Hell. Many mortal and immortal beings live within the three planes and though a Devil's spirit is immortal, when it is called into the mortal world the form it takes is mortal and can be killed to banish the Devil back into the Underworld.
Classes:
At this point, I only have a minor change to the Cleric class. The class is based off the description in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player Handbook, but instead of choosing a deity to follow, the implied religions of all Clerics is that of St. Cuthburt, with the exception of evil Clerics who worship devil masters. The Cleric Spell list is unchanged.
Cleric ranks have been changed to reflect the religious shift, and now the ranks are:
lvl 1 - Acolyte
lvl 2 - Adept
lvl 3 - Priest
lvl 4 - Vicar
lvl 5 - Curate
lvl 6 - Pastor
lvl 7 - Chancellor
lvl 8 - Bishop
lvl 9 - Archbishop
lvl 10 - Cardinal
Druid ranks and spells are unchanged
Magic and Magic-Users:
Magic User spells and ranks are unchanged, but they perform different functions in the opposing factions. The study of magic is an important institution in the Duke's kingdom, and many scholars, ministers, and other learned men are some level of magic-user. A large University exists under license from the Duke and is the central hub of magic learning in his territory, with many branches and satellite schools. It is headed by a Wizard, who is also counted as one of the Duke's advisors. Outside of the University system, any magic use in the kingdom is considered unauthorized and a punishable offense.
The Pagan clans view magic use differently. For them, magic is a part of life and part of the natural world, and many villages have herbalists, medicine women, and other cottage magicians supporting them. The transfer of magical knowledge happens in an apprenticeship manner, in which a higher level Magic User will take a younger one under his wing to teach spells and arcana. Those with the will and aptitude to become Magic Users are encouraged to travel around the world, seeking knowledge and wisened teachers, from village to wilderness, honing their craft.
True Wizards though, are part of neither faction but live in remote places on their own, in windswept towers or hidden strongholds far from intruding eyes, where they hoard their magical knowledge and perform their research. Some are attracted to the political power and stability of Arthur's Kingdom, such as Merlin who holds court at Camelot, while others prefer the freedom and awe they gain among the Pagans, and travel with the Druids.
*
I support my theory with a further point about the Elves. In English
folklore, the elves are shorter than humans and more whimsical, and
sometimes they have dark skin and are burned by iron, which means this
myth was influenced by the faerie myths of the Celts and Irish. On the
other hand, Elves in Germanic folklore are creatures of the trees, tall,
pale skinned and malevolent. And it is specifically English styled
Elves which form the basis of D&D’s elves, as opposed to Germanic
style, which were adapted for use in The Lord of the Rings. Gary Gygax
specifically mentioned his description of the Elven race to explain the
differences between his own work and J. R. R. Tolkien’s.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Truly Barbaric Barbarians
I feel like the Barbarian class in D&D is so named only for style, and not because the class lends itself especially well to non civilized cultures.
In fact an accurate representation of a D&D Barbarian would be a Fighting-Man that chooses to clothe himself in furs and lighter armor instead of heavy, fitted metal armor. (Fur would have to be relatively cheaper in the lands where this barbarian came from for this to make sense)
The term Barbarian is a misnomer anyway, it was a pejorative used by the Ancient Greeks to mean anyone that didn’t live within the Greek city-states, and a mocking of their language, which the Greeks said sounded like “bar bar bar”.
However in the real world, truly barbarian-like cultures have been contacted by more technologically advanced ones. The Aztecs and Mayans created high civilization, government and religion, but technologically they were in the Stone Age and could not survive contact with European explorers. The same is true for Native American tribes in North America. Even the Gauls were technologically inferior to the Romans, until the Romans pacified them and spread their knowledge and manufacture.
However the stereotypical Barbarian culture, the Vikings, weren’t Barbarian at all! Despite their reputation for raiding and warfare, they had Iron and Steel technology, and actually subjugated the post-Roman Britains. I actually think that it was the Britons that reverted to barbarism after the Romans left the Isles.
The popular image of Barbarians has nothing to do with history, but comes from a fiction series written by Robert E. Howard, which is a pure fantasy yet has captured the imagination of generations of readers and fantasy enthusiasts, and is now the template by which we judge all subsequent barbarian heroes.
A D&D class that tries to fit the mold of Conan the Barbarian comes off poorly, as the most accurate depiction is the Barbarian class in the 1e Unearthed Arcana, and though players took to it with enthusiasm, most of the class’s features and almost all of its restrictions are house ruled away - in other words breaking the mold it was made to fill.
The 5e Barbarian class bears no resemblance to Howard’s heroes nor any to history either. The 5e Barbarian is well clothed, well fed, takes to warfare by choice, and may or may not have some kind of outdoor woodsman or hunting experience. They also optionally get a spirit animal, like a Native American, somehow.
The best way to see this class, in the current D&D timeline, is as a strong, physically adept Warrior with a penchant for furs, lighter armor and larger weapons, whose ancestors once scrabbled in the wild to survive, but who himself has had social support since birth. Sounds more like a mercenary or Landsknecht than a tribal nomad.
In fact an accurate representation of a D&D Barbarian would be a Fighting-Man that chooses to clothe himself in furs and lighter armor instead of heavy, fitted metal armor. (Fur would have to be relatively cheaper in the lands where this barbarian came from for this to make sense)
The D&D Barbarian doesn't match any known history
The term Barbarian is a misnomer anyway, it was a pejorative used by the Ancient Greeks to mean anyone that didn’t live within the Greek city-states, and a mocking of their language, which the Greeks said sounded like “bar bar bar”.
However in the real world, truly barbarian-like cultures have been contacted by more technologically advanced ones. The Aztecs and Mayans created high civilization, government and religion, but technologically they were in the Stone Age and could not survive contact with European explorers. The same is true for Native American tribes in North America. Even the Gauls were technologically inferior to the Romans, until the Romans pacified them and spread their knowledge and manufacture.
However the stereotypical Barbarian culture, the Vikings, weren’t Barbarian at all! Despite their reputation for raiding and warfare, they had Iron and Steel technology, and actually subjugated the post-Roman Britains. I actually think that it was the Britons that reverted to barbarism after the Romans left the Isles.
The D&D Barbarian doesn't match popular fiction either
The popular image of Barbarians has nothing to do with history, but comes from a fiction series written by Robert E. Howard, which is a pure fantasy yet has captured the imagination of generations of readers and fantasy enthusiasts, and is now the template by which we judge all subsequent barbarian heroes.
A D&D class that tries to fit the mold of Conan the Barbarian comes off poorly, as the most accurate depiction is the Barbarian class in the 1e Unearthed Arcana, and though players took to it with enthusiasm, most of the class’s features and almost all of its restrictions are house ruled away - in other words breaking the mold it was made to fill.
The 5e Barbarian class bears no resemblance to Howard’s heroes nor any to history either. The 5e Barbarian is well clothed, well fed, takes to warfare by choice, and may or may not have some kind of outdoor woodsman or hunting experience. They also optionally get a spirit animal, like a Native American, somehow.
The D&D Barbarian is too civil
The best way to see this class, in the current D&D timeline, is as a strong, physically adept Warrior with a penchant for furs, lighter armor and larger weapons, whose ancestors once scrabbled in the wild to survive, but who himself has had social support since birth. Sounds more like a mercenary or Landsknecht than a tribal nomad.
Incorporating the Mythic Role Playing and Game Master emulation system
So I bit the bullet and bought this rule system off of drivethruRPG. I was primarily only interested in the Game Master Emulator, since it seems to be the most oft recommended resource for solo play, but the difference in price for the full game system was only $2 so I figured I'd by the full version and hopefully get some extra value.
One thing I want to do is incorporate more role playing and randomness into my solo sessions. Making decisions for my characters based on metagame knowledge lead to boring play. The Mythic technique is to write down a simple yes/no question then roll a d100 to determine the answer, so the technique I'll have to learn is to write down the large, broad questions my characters would make in some situation, then break that down into simple yes/no ones. Hopefully this will result in a more unique, personal campaign as I will not be just running through text in a book but crafting the setting itself as I go along with dice rolls and table lookups.
I also downloaded the 4AD PDF for solo play, but that seems to be geared more for dungeon crawling than role playing, and I have yet to see a compelling reason to use any resource beyond the Dungeon Master Guide for random dungeon crawling.
The technique I intend to use for dungeon crawl encounters is to craft the encounter AFTER I've encountered it. This would simulate my character's not knowing what they've run into, as I slowly calculate CR's, look up monsters in the Monster Manual, and roll dice to determine number, statistics, and combat tactics
Another thing I need to keep in mind is recording time. The 1e Dungeon Master Guide (hereafter referred to as the holy gospel of D&D) greatly stresses the need to record time used by the Player Characters, and the published modules and 5e rulebooks mention it non trivially, and the 4AD guide gives a simple method for planning it out. This method is to begin the adventuring day at a certain time and keep track of every activity that passes and how much time it takes by hour. This idea seems very interesting to me and would ground my character's adventure, even though it would lead to more bookkeeping on my end.
UPDATE: well Mythic has a lot less charts than I expected, and nothing that guides social interaction, but oh well, at least the Fate chart could be useful. There's two ways of resolving actions in Mythic, to either guess the probability of an event occuring and then mapping that against the scene's "chaos factor", or by taking the relative strength of a character's ability and measuring that against the relative difficulty rank of the task. However since I'm using the D&D system for all my statistics, I can use d20 difficulty class and ability checks instead of Mythic's resistance system.
Also, the 1e DMG proves its usefulness yet again by mentioning exactly how often to check for encounters during overland adventures, modified by terrain type, and also the distance the encounter is from the party. Both of these directives were lacking in my solo play and forced me to wing it, which meant I did them in a manner that was most favorable to my party. This information is missing from both the 5th edition DMG and the Storm King's Thunder adventure module, and so I greatly appreciate having more concrete rules for encounter frequency and distance.
The 'missing ingredient' of the Mythic system was, for me, how to pose a "dramatic question". I guess this concept is familiar to literary and liberal arts types, but I had never heard of it before. Basically, its a statement of the protagonist's current objective in a scene phrased as a yes/no question. Now it all makes sense, why the Mythic system came with blank sheets for scenes, NPCs, and resolutions. I guess it really is a creative writing exercise. In order to adapt this for play, I would simply have to set up a scene (DM-type activity) and then state my party's objectives (player type activity) and then use the Mythic tables to resolve the outcome.
One thing I want to do is incorporate more role playing and randomness into my solo sessions. Making decisions for my characters based on metagame knowledge lead to boring play. The Mythic technique is to write down a simple yes/no question then roll a d100 to determine the answer, so the technique I'll have to learn is to write down the large, broad questions my characters would make in some situation, then break that down into simple yes/no ones. Hopefully this will result in a more unique, personal campaign as I will not be just running through text in a book but crafting the setting itself as I go along with dice rolls and table lookups.
I also downloaded the 4AD PDF for solo play, but that seems to be geared more for dungeon crawling than role playing, and I have yet to see a compelling reason to use any resource beyond the Dungeon Master Guide for random dungeon crawling.
The technique I intend to use for dungeon crawl encounters is to craft the encounter AFTER I've encountered it. This would simulate my character's not knowing what they've run into, as I slowly calculate CR's, look up monsters in the Monster Manual, and roll dice to determine number, statistics, and combat tactics
Another thing I need to keep in mind is recording time. The 1e Dungeon Master Guide (hereafter referred to as the holy gospel of D&D) greatly stresses the need to record time used by the Player Characters, and the published modules and 5e rulebooks mention it non trivially, and the 4AD guide gives a simple method for planning it out. This method is to begin the adventuring day at a certain time and keep track of every activity that passes and how much time it takes by hour. This idea seems very interesting to me and would ground my character's adventure, even though it would lead to more bookkeeping on my end.
UPDATE: well Mythic has a lot less charts than I expected, and nothing that guides social interaction, but oh well, at least the Fate chart could be useful. There's two ways of resolving actions in Mythic, to either guess the probability of an event occuring and then mapping that against the scene's "chaos factor", or by taking the relative strength of a character's ability and measuring that against the relative difficulty rank of the task. However since I'm using the D&D system for all my statistics, I can use d20 difficulty class and ability checks instead of Mythic's resistance system.
Also, the 1e DMG proves its usefulness yet again by mentioning exactly how often to check for encounters during overland adventures, modified by terrain type, and also the distance the encounter is from the party. Both of these directives were lacking in my solo play and forced me to wing it, which meant I did them in a manner that was most favorable to my party. This information is missing from both the 5th edition DMG and the Storm King's Thunder adventure module, and so I greatly appreciate having more concrete rules for encounter frequency and distance.
The 'missing ingredient' of the Mythic system was, for me, how to pose a "dramatic question". I guess this concept is familiar to literary and liberal arts types, but I had never heard of it before. Basically, its a statement of the protagonist's current objective in a scene phrased as a yes/no question. Now it all makes sense, why the Mythic system came with blank sheets for scenes, NPCs, and resolutions. I guess it really is a creative writing exercise. In order to adapt this for play, I would simply have to set up a scene (DM-type activity) and then state my party's objectives (player type activity) and then use the Mythic tables to resolve the outcome.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Storm King's Thunder: new party members
I've decided to expand the party of character's I've been using in my solo campaign, to give myself a bit more survivability in combat, but also because I feel it would be more true to my two existing characters. Although my original two characters were more or less just vehicles by which I could experiment in solo play, they were actually based on characters I had created in other games and media, and I brought over their personalities, biases and a little of their history too. In such a context neither would travel alone. Sergor, my male human Barbarian, actually has a family and children, and the world he lives in is harsh, lethal, and precarious to survive in so he wouldn't just leave them alone to go gallivanting around the continent with no end. Aldellah, being an elf, is more of a free spirit but even she has a tribe and it stands to reason that she wouldn't just join a human tribe for no reason, so even her people are tagging along.
And so I've incorporated Sergor's mate Ysolda and their two children, Sofie and Lucia into the party. They are non-combatants, "level 0" by 1e reckoning but "commoners" as described in 5e. They do not partake in battle nor delve into dungeons, and must be fed, clothed and taken care of as well, but they maintain the living conditions of the party, tend to the camp, bedrolls, shelter and equipment, and even provide minor support to the adventuring characters such as gathering material components and resources, administering minor medical aid, and fashioning useful trinkets.
Since Sergor never had any strong connection with his parents' tribe, his small family is the only clan he knows and he is fiercely protective of them, so it makes sense that he would never leave them for long and since they're all traveling barbarian nomads anyway, its only natural that they venture together. An easy hook into the adventure module is that they're all running away from the Giant attacks which are increasingly frequent in the North, and could easily result in the whole family being annihilated.
Joining Aldellah is her grandfather, a wise old Elf Druid (or Wizard or a Sorcerer, I haven't truly decided his class yet, I would have to read the spell lists to see which would be the most appropriate). Aldellah's Wood Elf tribe and Sergor's have been erstwhile rivals, but the Giant attacks decimated her tribe and she and her grandfather joined the humans for mutual survival.
The last character I want to add is based off my wife's character from another campaign. The fit is not seamless but the character's story hook is so good that I'm excited to use her regardless. She is a Cleric from the Barbarian tribe, but she is not a shaman like the Uthgardt shamans described in the appendix of Storm King's Thunder.
The 1e Dungeon Master's Guide (seriously it has everything) describes shamans of orc and uncivilized races as thus: "Shamans are tribal clerics of 7th level or under" while Unearthed Arcana makes provision for Barbarian Clerics but with the stipulation that "Barbarian clerics are always non-player characters."
My new character, on the other hand, is a full fledged Cleric, but comes from a barbarian background. What this means is that she has directly spoken to God, and has been granted the power to perform miracles. This is in contract to the superstitious nature of shamans, who use animism and communion with spirits for their powers, my Cleric has clear miracles directly from a deity. This makes her closer to the real world concept of a "prophet", who can speak to the divine. She is however a Barbarian by birth and by upbringing (and in my campaign, which is set in the Stone Age, there are no other kinds of men) and thus is restricted to Stone Age tools and weapons.
With this party of 4 (or 5) I expect to have a more dynamic and interesting game, but also a slower one as I juggle 3 new character sheets and take 3 more turns in battle and in dungeons, on top of all the monster turns, and with significantly more overhead.
And so I've incorporated Sergor's mate Ysolda and their two children, Sofie and Lucia into the party. They are non-combatants, "level 0" by 1e reckoning but "commoners" as described in 5e. They do not partake in battle nor delve into dungeons, and must be fed, clothed and taken care of as well, but they maintain the living conditions of the party, tend to the camp, bedrolls, shelter and equipment, and even provide minor support to the adventuring characters such as gathering material components and resources, administering minor medical aid, and fashioning useful trinkets.
Since Sergor never had any strong connection with his parents' tribe, his small family is the only clan he knows and he is fiercely protective of them, so it makes sense that he would never leave them for long and since they're all traveling barbarian nomads anyway, its only natural that they venture together. An easy hook into the adventure module is that they're all running away from the Giant attacks which are increasingly frequent in the North, and could easily result in the whole family being annihilated.
Joining Aldellah is her grandfather, a wise old Elf Druid (or Wizard or a Sorcerer, I haven't truly decided his class yet, I would have to read the spell lists to see which would be the most appropriate). Aldellah's Wood Elf tribe and Sergor's have been erstwhile rivals, but the Giant attacks decimated her tribe and she and her grandfather joined the humans for mutual survival.
The last character I want to add is based off my wife's character from another campaign. The fit is not seamless but the character's story hook is so good that I'm excited to use her regardless. She is a Cleric from the Barbarian tribe, but she is not a shaman like the Uthgardt shamans described in the appendix of Storm King's Thunder.
The 1e Dungeon Master's Guide (seriously it has everything) describes shamans of orc and uncivilized races as thus: "Shamans are tribal clerics of 7th level or under" while Unearthed Arcana makes provision for Barbarian Clerics but with the stipulation that "Barbarian clerics are always non-player characters."
My new character, on the other hand, is a full fledged Cleric, but comes from a barbarian background. What this means is that she has directly spoken to God, and has been granted the power to perform miracles. This is in contract to the superstitious nature of shamans, who use animism and communion with spirits for their powers, my Cleric has clear miracles directly from a deity. This makes her closer to the real world concept of a "prophet", who can speak to the divine. She is however a Barbarian by birth and by upbringing (and in my campaign, which is set in the Stone Age, there are no other kinds of men) and thus is restricted to Stone Age tools and weapons.
With this party of 4 (or 5) I expect to have a more dynamic and interesting game, but also a slower one as I juggle 3 new character sheets and take 3 more turns in battle and in dungeons, on top of all the monster turns, and with significantly more overhead.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Storm King's Thunder session 6: Travel and Harshnag
So I finally managed to get past the whole overland travel section of this chapter. Having ended the last chapter by successfully defending Triboar, my PCs traveled east along the Evermoor Way in order to complete the quests given by Triboar's NPCs in the most efficient way possible. In the last two sessions I had taken a granular approach to play by recording time traveled, distance traveled, travel costs, and other associated bookkeeping, but this time around I only focused on the quests themselves and my character's decisions. As a consequence I also was no longer rolling for random encounters either, since the system was tied to time-of-day, distance and travel pace, so you could say I wasn't so much playing the game as much as just reading flavor text, but I found the random die rolls to be more immersion breaking and momentum halting than as fun as they were supposed to be. Also, random encounters lend themselves more to theater of the mind combat than they do to gridded play, unless I wanted to spend time setting up the encounter myself, which means I would basically be creating it whole from the ground up myself, so what would be the point.
None of the quests had any really interesting encounters attached, but at least there was a good amount of treasure rewarded upon completion. The only really involved one was the final quest I played, encountered on reaching the final destination of my travels, Urgala Meltimer's quest at Zymoran Hall. This quest required us to go back to Yartar, find a thief, chase him down, find his stolen goods, bargain, bribe, and negotiate with several NPCs before gaining the quest reward. There should have been more quests like this and had I been playing this at a table with a live group I'm sure it could have taken an entire session on its own. However unexpectedly, it provided a satisfying capstone to the otherwise tedious traveling of this section and right at the end I had my PCs meet Harshnag and gain the knowledge to advance to the next chapter of the book.
Also after all this travel and questing I'm primed for combat. I would run a few random encounters just for fun, but Chapter 4 is a dungeon crawl and I'd be more interested to play that instead. Dungeon crawls also lend themselves better to solo play, a concept that goes back to 1e AD&D. The modern Dungeon Master's Guide harkens back to the 1e DMG in granting tables and suggested rules for solo dungeon crawls as well.
Overall I give Chapter 4 a 3.5/5. The beginning and ending of the Chapter were great, with a lot of backstory and a satisfying conclusion, but the central travel of the chapter felt like a slog. I was going to end my solo gaming experiment here, but I think it might be worth it to play at least one more session in Chapter 5, to see if the dungeon crawl might be enough to carry me through the game.
Also I had been reading through the 4e "Scales of War" adventure path. I'm disappointed I didn't know of its existence sooner, since I had been unknowingly running a 4e campaign for a while and I'm much more familiar with the playstyle of that edition, and with the focus on encounters and skill challenges and lighter roleplay elements might make that easier to play alone. Also I feel that as an adventure path it is much more epic than the adventure modules released for the current edition. Storm King's Thunder and previous modules such as Tyranny of Dragons feel a lot more limited in scope, you're restricted to the Sword Coast, just one part of one continent of one world in one plane and your enemies aren't varied much either, while "Scales of War" has you journeying into the Shadowfell, the FeyWild, Elemental Planes, and finally the Nine Hells itself in order to fight Tiamat, encountering along the way the many wild denizens of all these places and a number of epic-tier monsters, gods and deities. Bahamut doesn't even show up in Rise of Tiamat, like WTF.
And lastly, another idea for a future time, is that I might run a solo campaign with a completely restricted scope, by going back down to 1st edition AD&D and playing through the Village of Hommlet adventure. I've never played 1e, I don't think I even understand all the rules, but I'd love to teach myself it and see if it really is wildly different from later editions, and if it really is as harsh and dungeon focused as I think it is, and if it really does live up to the hype.
Or I could, you know, try to find a group online and keep to a regular schedule.
None of the quests had any really interesting encounters attached, but at least there was a good amount of treasure rewarded upon completion. The only really involved one was the final quest I played, encountered on reaching the final destination of my travels, Urgala Meltimer's quest at Zymoran Hall. This quest required us to go back to Yartar, find a thief, chase him down, find his stolen goods, bargain, bribe, and negotiate with several NPCs before gaining the quest reward. There should have been more quests like this and had I been playing this at a table with a live group I'm sure it could have taken an entire session on its own. However unexpectedly, it provided a satisfying capstone to the otherwise tedious traveling of this section and right at the end I had my PCs meet Harshnag and gain the knowledge to advance to the next chapter of the book.
Also after all this travel and questing I'm primed for combat. I would run a few random encounters just for fun, but Chapter 4 is a dungeon crawl and I'd be more interested to play that instead. Dungeon crawls also lend themselves better to solo play, a concept that goes back to 1e AD&D. The modern Dungeon Master's Guide harkens back to the 1e DMG in granting tables and suggested rules for solo dungeon crawls as well.
Overall I give Chapter 4 a 3.5/5. The beginning and ending of the Chapter were great, with a lot of backstory and a satisfying conclusion, but the central travel of the chapter felt like a slog. I was going to end my solo gaming experiment here, but I think it might be worth it to play at least one more session in Chapter 5, to see if the dungeon crawl might be enough to carry me through the game.
Also I had been reading through the 4e "Scales of War" adventure path. I'm disappointed I didn't know of its existence sooner, since I had been unknowingly running a 4e campaign for a while and I'm much more familiar with the playstyle of that edition, and with the focus on encounters and skill challenges and lighter roleplay elements might make that easier to play alone. Also I feel that as an adventure path it is much more epic than the adventure modules released for the current edition. Storm King's Thunder and previous modules such as Tyranny of Dragons feel a lot more limited in scope, you're restricted to the Sword Coast, just one part of one continent of one world in one plane and your enemies aren't varied much either, while "Scales of War" has you journeying into the Shadowfell, the FeyWild, Elemental Planes, and finally the Nine Hells itself in order to fight Tiamat, encountering along the way the many wild denizens of all these places and a number of epic-tier monsters, gods and deities. Bahamut doesn't even show up in Rise of Tiamat, like WTF.
And lastly, another idea for a future time, is that I might run a solo campaign with a completely restricted scope, by going back down to 1st edition AD&D and playing through the Village of Hommlet adventure. I've never played 1e, I don't think I even understand all the rules, but I'd love to teach myself it and see if it really is wildly different from later editions, and if it really is as harsh and dungeon focused as I think it is, and if it really does live up to the hype.
Or I could, you know, try to find a group online and keep to a regular schedule.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Storm King's Thunder: session 5
I was able to jump right in and start playing this session, due to the fact that I had already dealt with all the number crunch overhead during the prep for this chapter. Regardless, I don't want to ever stall my play sessions just to deal with overhead, so from now on I'll be playing smaller sessions where I will mix play and DM crunch at the same time. Even if my PCs make little progress per session, I expect this will be more rewarding than doing all the planning beforehand and burning myself out before I have even begun playing.
My PCs made modest gain this session, traveling from Calling Horns to Noanar's Hold, arriving at the inn and completing a quest at the village keep. There are two possible quest hooks here - murderhobo kill the 5 undead Hunt Lords in the keep, or get involved in an inheritance dispute between 3 aristocrat brothers. Sergor and Aldellah, being pragmatic, nature minded, survival oriented, uncivilized barbarians, would have nothing to do with either quest, though my d20 rolled high so I guess I have to be involved.
I did chide my wife during a session that if she wanted to play the game, she should actually commit to playing the game, but in my own solo sessions I'm studiously avoiding every encounter and am relieved on every failed random encounter roll. I think maybe I don't actually want to play STK, but just run through the story on my own.
On the other hand, I did join a Facebook group centered around D&D solo play, and through them found many resources to aid in solo play, so I now have more tools to craft a richer experience for myself. What I enjoy more, however, is reading examples of other people's solo play.
My PCs made modest gain this session, traveling from Calling Horns to Noanar's Hold, arriving at the inn and completing a quest at the village keep. There are two possible quest hooks here - murderhobo kill the 5 undead Hunt Lords in the keep, or get involved in an inheritance dispute between 3 aristocrat brothers. Sergor and Aldellah, being pragmatic, nature minded, survival oriented, uncivilized barbarians, would have nothing to do with either quest, though my d20 rolled high so I guess I have to be involved.
I did chide my wife during a session that if she wanted to play the game, she should actually commit to playing the game, but in my own solo sessions I'm studiously avoiding every encounter and am relieved on every failed random encounter roll. I think maybe I don't actually want to play STK, but just run through the story on my own.
On the other hand, I did join a Facebook group centered around D&D solo play, and through them found many resources to aid in solo play, so I now have more tools to craft a richer experience for myself. What I enjoy more, however, is reading examples of other people's solo play.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Storm King’s Thunder: session 4
I might be grouping it under one session blog entry, but my campaign notebook records 3 sessions of me actually sitting down and moving my characters through a part of this adventure. And that's not counting all of the prep work of accounting for travel expenses, tracking sidequests, writing my character's backstory, reading the location descriptions in the book, and reading through the chapter to figure out how this adventure to end. I'm still let down by the fact that this journey has no real point and Harshnag is supposed to show up randomly and end this chapter.
As a result I played very conservatively and rushed through as much as I could. I avoided all combat where possible and generally didn't play at all like a live group, who relish combat, the hunt for treasure, buying and selling items, and generally becoming more powerful and rich.
Highlights from this session include:
Writing Sergor as a Reghed Barbarian separated from his tribe. He wears a Bear skin pelt, so he might be from the Clan of the Bear, but he holds no ties to them and is unsure what clan his father really did come from.
I felt that the Reghed barbarians were the best fit for Sergor, as the more civilized Northlanders are based around Viking Scandinavia, and are seafaring raiders replete with longboats, and Sergor lived his life inland as a forester. On the other hand, I chose not to make him Uthgardt because I think the name is dumb, the clans are dumb, and they're set up to be antagonists in this module so I would prefer if there were rivalry and hostility between the two. Plus the Uthgardt have very specific territories so I would be tied to a specific clan territory that Sergor would have had to come from.
Aldellah on the other hand was a much easier choice: Wood Elves in the Savage Frontier live primarily in the High Forest, the largest wooded land in the region which takes up a majority of the map, and they live in small, reclusive, natural communes. So without having to strictly tie her down to any one village or tribe, Aldellah is free to be a Wild Elf from the forest, going on a journey wherever nature takes her.
All the NPCs from the Defense of Triboar survived, so Sergor and Aldellah were accosted with many quests, and decided to take the Evermoor Way out of Triboar and head East to Yartar and Calling Horns. Though there were many campaign hooks in Yartar, but Sergor and Aldellah ignored them all and simply went about their business.
At Calling Horns they were attacked by a pair of hungry trolls, and killing Trolls is what Sergor and Aldellah are all about. Defeating them was tough but they managed, and as a result they were brought in to track down the source of the increasing troll attacks. Searching the Evermoors for 2 days brought them to a Fire Giant who was using the trolls to bring food to her from raids. Sergor and Aldellah chose not to engage a Fire Giant, which was a metagaming fail on my part since I read the directive in the book that said they would be rewarded anyway. After all was done, the party wasted 3 days in Calling Horns chasing down trolls, and are more than happy to be on their way.
I feel like this campaign would take many more mini-sessions. I might throw out the onerous travel expenses and time keeping rules, since I would do those as both player and DM, which means double work and less fun, as it more accurately simulates accounting than role playing. The only casualty would be the lower frequency of random encounters, but I can always work random encounters in at my discretion.
And I finally leveled my characters up, just to fight the two trolls at Calling Horns.
As a result I played very conservatively and rushed through as much as I could. I avoided all combat where possible and generally didn't play at all like a live group, who relish combat, the hunt for treasure, buying and selling items, and generally becoming more powerful and rich.
Highlights from this session include:
Writing Sergor as a Reghed Barbarian separated from his tribe. He wears a Bear skin pelt, so he might be from the Clan of the Bear, but he holds no ties to them and is unsure what clan his father really did come from.
I felt that the Reghed barbarians were the best fit for Sergor, as the more civilized Northlanders are based around Viking Scandinavia, and are seafaring raiders replete with longboats, and Sergor lived his life inland as a forester. On the other hand, I chose not to make him Uthgardt because I think the name is dumb, the clans are dumb, and they're set up to be antagonists in this module so I would prefer if there were rivalry and hostility between the two. Plus the Uthgardt have very specific territories so I would be tied to a specific clan territory that Sergor would have had to come from.
Aldellah on the other hand was a much easier choice: Wood Elves in the Savage Frontier live primarily in the High Forest, the largest wooded land in the region which takes up a majority of the map, and they live in small, reclusive, natural communes. So without having to strictly tie her down to any one village or tribe, Aldellah is free to be a Wild Elf from the forest, going on a journey wherever nature takes her.
All the NPCs from the Defense of Triboar survived, so Sergor and Aldellah were accosted with many quests, and decided to take the Evermoor Way out of Triboar and head East to Yartar and Calling Horns. Though there were many campaign hooks in Yartar, but Sergor and Aldellah ignored them all and simply went about their business.
At Calling Horns they were attacked by a pair of hungry trolls, and killing Trolls is what Sergor and Aldellah are all about. Defeating them was tough but they managed, and as a result they were brought in to track down the source of the increasing troll attacks. Searching the Evermoors for 2 days brought them to a Fire Giant who was using the trolls to bring food to her from raids. Sergor and Aldellah chose not to engage a Fire Giant, which was a metagaming fail on my part since I read the directive in the book that said they would be rewarded anyway. After all was done, the party wasted 3 days in Calling Horns chasing down trolls, and are more than happy to be on their way.
I feel like this campaign would take many more mini-sessions. I might throw out the onerous travel expenses and time keeping rules, since I would do those as both player and DM, which means double work and less fun, as it more accurately simulates accounting than role playing. The only casualty would be the lower frequency of random encounters, but I can always work random encounters in at my discretion.
And I finally leveled my characters up, just to fight the two trolls at Calling Horns.
Friday, January 11, 2019
Storm King's Thunder: pre session 4 part II
The amount of prep work for this session was unreal. By the time I was done I didn't even feel like playing the chapter, just skipping it entirely and automatically leveling my characters up. Most of it felt like accounting, taking stock of distances to travel, resource consumption rates (food, water, living expenses) and planning out directions and sidequests. This is not how I journey in real life or even in video games, and it made everything drab and tiring. Entirely unlike how the live session with my sisters went, where they managed all that accounting separately.
When I finally sat down to play, I didn't even bother leveling my characters from 5 to lvl 6, because that would involve opening one more sourcebook and doing more accounting. A big feature of this chapter is the involvement of random encounters as you travel through the map, and the adventure book directs you to the Dungeon Master's Guide to manage the random encounters. The DMG uses a lot of words to basically say "DM's discretion", but a small passage provides a method of rolling a d20 and triggering an encounter on a roll of 18 or higher. That's exactly what I did because I didn't want to play through endless encounters for every day of travel. I played through the "suggested encounters" because I wanted to actually play the game and kill trolls, ogres, orcs and giants at least, but combat remains the least interesting part of this game.
In between work and children, I actually haven't found much time to sit down and really enjoy a game of D&D, so I rushed through this chapter as much as possible. Reading the descriptions of the towns, choosing sidequests, and getting involved in the plot is the best part, but the busywork in between all that turned into a real barrier to actually playing. I might just end this solo experiment here, and just read through the book plainly, maybe dropping in my characters at the appropriate level if there was a chapter I really wanted to play through. Perhaps sometime soon I'll have more downtime where I can actually play without stress.
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Storm King's Thunder: pre session 4
This hardly feels like a single session because I spent so much time doing prep work and just reading this chapter through when I had the time, and I spent multiple, physical sit-down sessions just planning my character's journey through this chapter's story.
Chapter 3 of Storm King's Thunder is where the real meat of the setting is. This chapter has descriptions of the peoples and places of the North, so my characters finally have their backstory. I was looking forward to the overland travel experience of managing my food and living expenses and dealing with random encounters, but since I just played a session with my sisters where we did exactly that, the novelty factor has worn off. I hope the random encounter tables given in this chapter make for some interesting side encounters, I've since learned that there is a gulf of difference between reading an encounter and playing it.
The weakest element of this chapter, I expect, will be Harshnag. According to the book he's supposed to just be dropped into the campaign whenever the players are beginning to get bored, but online resources recommend introducing him in the middle of a tough battle, or during some other encounter. Obviously, his entrance has great roleplay potential, and I'm sure that a DM with a live group could have a lot of fun with it, but that's the worst part of solo play in that I already know the reason behind his appearance and the result of the story, so I wouldn't make the same kind of unpredictable decisions that live players would.
On the other hand, there was so much in this chapter that I was excited to finish it and start the next chapter, but I'm holding firm and forcing myself to actually play through it before reading ahead and possibly spoiling the story for myself. After all, as a half-player half-metagaming DM, the major plot of this adventure is still a mystery to me and I'm liable to make more interesting choices due to that.
Chapter 3 of Storm King's Thunder is where the real meat of the setting is. This chapter has descriptions of the peoples and places of the North, so my characters finally have their backstory. I was looking forward to the overland travel experience of managing my food and living expenses and dealing with random encounters, but since I just played a session with my sisters where we did exactly that, the novelty factor has worn off. I hope the random encounter tables given in this chapter make for some interesting side encounters, I've since learned that there is a gulf of difference between reading an encounter and playing it.
The weakest element of this chapter, I expect, will be Harshnag. According to the book he's supposed to just be dropped into the campaign whenever the players are beginning to get bored, but online resources recommend introducing him in the middle of a tough battle, or during some other encounter. Obviously, his entrance has great roleplay potential, and I'm sure that a DM with a live group could have a lot of fun with it, but that's the worst part of solo play in that I already know the reason behind his appearance and the result of the story, so I wouldn't make the same kind of unpredictable decisions that live players would.
On the other hand, there was so much in this chapter that I was excited to finish it and start the next chapter, but I'm holding firm and forcing myself to actually play through it before reading ahead and possibly spoiling the story for myself. After all, as a half-player half-metagaming DM, the major plot of this adventure is still a mystery to me and I'm liable to make more interesting choices due to that.
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