Mapping the Investigation like a Dungeon

This week's offering of blogthulhu starts with a simple premise:  the traditional D&D dungeon is a type of workflow.  It offers nodes and processes and decision points, and the players navigate these decision points to reach their final destination - the boss fight, the big treasure, the answer to the quest - whatever goal that inspired them to choose this dungeon in the first place.  The dungeon as an adventure setting is such an enduring fixture because it provides a great degree of choice and agency for the players, within a limited structure that even a new DM or game master can handle well.

You could step back from a dungeon and map it out like a flow chart, and realize it looks an awful lot like an investigative scenario.  To drive the point home, I went ahead and mapped out a few signature investigative scenarios as dungeons!    Sit back and enjoy as we send our adventurers into The Haunting and The Kingsbury Horror.  The Haunting has appeared in just about every edition of Call of Cthulhu as a sample investigation, and The Kingsbury Horror appears in Trail of Cthulhu.  Spoilers abound - you are warned!

The Haunting

In The Haunting, the players are hired by a landlord to look into problems at a rental property - seems like the last tenants ended up in the nuthouse!  The place indeed has a sordid history, as a quick jaunt to the library or newspaper records will reveal, and if the group follows up these threads all the way through, they may even discover an old cultist's hangout at the abandoned Chapel of Contemplation and find their first Mythos tome.

Note how a group might choose to go right to the house (the right path), move from exploring the first floor, to the cellar, and find the secret chamber leading to the resolution of the scenario.  I've seen folks decry that the players can "solve" the investigation without going through each and every potential research point in a linear fashion.  Bah!

Before critiquing The Haunting, let's take a brief look at The Kingsbury Horror.

The Kingsbury Horror

The Kingsbury Horror is the sample scenario in The Trail of Cthulhu book.  It involves the investigators acting as consultants to the sheriff, helping to find a serial killer during an election cycle.  But this is Cthulhu gaming, so naturally the serial killer is a cultist!  Much fun ensues.

Like The Haunting, there's an investigative path on the right side of the "dungeon" that can lead to the resolution fairly quickly; once again, that's a feature, not a bug!  However, The Kingsbury Horror adds an important element to the mix that The Haunting is missing - "wandering monsters".

Wandering monsters, you say?  In 1930's Cleveland?  There are a number of floating events, such as a nosy detective, breaking news around additional killings, or "time slips" as the weirdness mounts, that can sidetrack the investigation, or increase tension as the players realize they're running out of time.  I'm just being a bit cheeky in calling them wandering monsters, but the effect is similar.  It's a simple element to add, but these events transform the investigation into a much more dynamic environment.

Folks frequently ask how to make The Haunting into a better adventure, and that's the first thing I'd suggest - add in some variable encounters that bring the surrounding area to life.  It could be suspicious gangsters or street thugs, nervous about the investigators casing the neighborhood; it could be a hobo or squatter trying to camp out in the abandoned house and yard; it could be a beat cop asking a lot of questions and checking the investigator's references.  One of my favorite ideas is to have the landlord find new renters, and press the players to cut their investigation and quickly give the house the all clear so he can move a lovely young family in there… while they know something is still very, very wrong there!

I enjoy both of these scenarios because they offer multiple paths to navigate the scenes and reach a resolution - I recommend both of them highly.  The Kingsbury Horror gets that extra edge due to the pacing and sense of building menace the Keeper can achieve by interspersing variable events.  Good stuff.

We’re not done looking at investigation design;  there are suggestions on designing your own in both the Call of Cthulhu and Trail books, and next week's blogthulhu will hold that advice up to the light.  But today's post gives you a flavor on what I value in an investigation, and how these match up with old school priorities:

• A non-linear path through the adventure
• Multiple roads to victory
• No indispensable NPCs pushing the Keeper's story - it must be player driven
• Some variable events that keep the situation dynamic

I'm reading a Cthulhu campaign book right now that has lots of "this NPC is too important to die, don't let the players kill him/her", and "the players need to trust and like this other NPC for the adventure to continue", and that kind of stuff , and it makes me reach for the heartburn medicine.  Don't do that, people, don't make Beedo nuts.  Games can feature powerful NPCs giving directives; that's how life works.  What is not okay is mandating that the players need to act or feel a certain way towards an NPC because of a preconceived story the Keeper wants to implement.

Next week we'll look at the design advice offered in the main rule books.  This series of articles started as a top-down approach to setting up a Cthulhu campaign - but one that can be managed like an investigative sandbox - so it seems only fitting to top it off with an original campaign framework at the end.  That's in the works, and it'll become my default go-to setting for both Cthulhu one-shots and campaign play (at least with my regular group).  I'll wrap up this series with that setting in a few more weeks.  See you next time!

Share some War Stories

Hey folks, consider this a small experiment.  I'm going to pick just a few modules from the hobby's past, and I'd be grateful if you could drop a quick comment here, or on G+, with a quick war story from any one of these legendary modules.

B2 Keep on the Borderlands
B4 The Lost City
X2 Castle Amber

Okay, I'll start:

B2 Keep on the Borderlands
Our group of salacious 13 year olds all got turned to stone by the Medusa after she flashed some leg from around the corner.  There's a life lesson for you!

B4 The Lost City
The party dwarfs hummed the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark while trying to outrun the boulder, while wearing plate armor.  They were flattened.

X2 Castle Amber
Our party got mauled by Killer Trees in the indoor forest, and the party magic user was torn into pieces.  The thief was carrying the spellbooks, potions, and scrolls, and got turned to stone by an animated statue.  We were able to get a raise dead for the magic user shortly, but he was very sad not to have his stuff.

You've played them, you loved the adventures, now share a tale or two!

Review of Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS)

So did Conan return the wayward daughter of King Osric to her home. And having no further concern, he and his companions sought adventure in the West. Many wars and feuds did Conan fight. Honor and fear were heaped upon his name and, in time, he became a king by his own hand…

It's no surprise that I'm predisposed to liking Adventurer Conqueror King.  I've often mused here on the blog that the goal of adventuring in the traditional versions of Dungeons & Dragons is to become a king by one's own hand.  It's right there in AD&D, you can gain a stronghold and followers, clear the wilderness, then build out a domain.  But there weren't any systems back then to facilitate that facet of the game.

To understand how a late comer like ACKS fits into the crowded mix of retro clones and neo clones, this is where I like to start, with the idea that a D&D campaign isn't limited to endless dungeon crawling.  The real objective in the game is the acquisition of power:  personal power, power through wealth and magic, and ultimately, political power and conquest.

The campaign system in ACKS is a major competitive advantage.  It gives groups that want to extend play beyond the dungeon the means to run a coherent campaign in that space.  ACKS starts by outlining how the core classes develop followers and a power base in the campaign world while striving to reach name level and gain wide renown.  Fighters and clerics are primarily interested in growing their followers and building political realms, but clerics can also develop the faith and gain divine favor towards crafting items.  There are systems for magic users to create laboratories; gather apprentices; create constructs, magic items, and monstrous cross breeds;  even build and seed their own dungeons.  Thieves get an interesting treatment, creating hideouts with gangs of lesser thieves that can perform hijinks such as spying, assassinations, robbery, smuggling, rumor-gathering, and discovering leads to fantastic treasures.

In order to rationally support domain level play, a considerable effort went into ensuring the numbers square top to bottom in the ACKS economic system.  Domain revenue and peasant earnings align with the price of mercenaries, and the prices on the equipment chart.  Even if you don't use the domain rules anytime soon, it's valuable knowing the underlying assumptions make sense.  This logic extends to other aspects of the campaign world, as well.  For instance, how many fifth level fighters should exist in a kingdom?  Using the demographics by level chart, a game master can quickly determine the relative levels of power in the wider world.

If I had to use one term to describe this overarching philosophy in ACKS, it would be Fantasy Realism.  ACKS presents a set of game rules for a functioning fantasy world that makes sense economically, but also explains why the areas beyond the borderlands are littered with dungeons, why adventurers looting vast treasures makes sense in the context of both the fantasy world and real world history, and why legitimate rulers should always be high level characters.

I've appreciated the idea behind the game since the Kickstarter was announced.  Although I haven't played pure Mentzer D&D in quite a few years, I've long had appreciation for the vision of Mentzer, and how he extended the D&D experience horizontally from dungeons to the wilderness to domain rulership.  ACKS is a true spiritual successor to Mentzer.  The similarity extends beyond treading into domain rulership; ACKS uses a similar class list, race-as-class, 3d6 in order for ability scores, a similar spell list, and a similar monster list to Mentzer.  Except for the Skittering Maw, the shark-headed, poisonous, giant, centipede, monstrosity that has become the unofficial poster monster for ACKS...

There are some differences between ACKS and the classic versions of Dungeons & Dragons that will be readily apparent.  Various dice rolls (throws) are expressed in ascending difficulty, mirroring modern design sensibilities in the d20 world.  A modular proficiency system is included, giving a flavor of 3rd edition's feats and supporting a bit of character customization, such as distinct fighting styles.  Many abilities from classic D&D classes are included in the proficiency system, supporting the emulation of advanced favorites like the paladin or ranger.

A recent post here on Mentzer, Metnzer Madness, bemoaned the 36 level grind in the Mentzer system; I feel like the D&D sweet spot for wrapping up a campaign is somewhere between levels 10 and 14.  Classic BX only went to level 14, and ACKS also tops out at level 14.  (It's like they read my mind).  A ritual spell system has been added to allow the cleric and magic user classes limited access to the higher level spells that showed up in AD&D or BECMI past level 14.

One of the more interesting chapters is the guide on setting creation.  It presents a comprehensive top-down approach to generating and stocking a large campaign area with wilderness and dungeons, and just reading it makes my campaign creation OCD bubble into a rapid boil.  If ACKS were published 20 years ago, it's likely I wouldn't have finished college.  As it is, I have a fairly clear idea on what my ACKS campaign world is going to look like; now I just need to clear a handful of other projects and I'll get right to it.  But you know, that next campaign is only a TPK away…  muhaha.  My players love it when I kid around like that, really.  They say it's motivating.

This discussion of the game book is waxing long, so let's start to wrap things up.  My group has had some history with the system, so this isn't a blind review; a few of my players attended the play test with the designers while we were at Gencon last year, and  a few of us also made it up to New York one weekend for a game day with Tavis.  ACKS plays like D&D, and you can play it like a straight update of BX or Mentzer, and never even crack the chapters on campaigns or setting design.  (Fair warning:  Those chapters are a bit table heavy; ACKS is crying out for someone to put together a good macro-driven spreadsheet).  But if you want to play a game where all that stuff makes sense, ACKS leads the way.  We've been playing other games while the guys finished their ACKS Kickstarter, but I've been using ACKS assumptions in the background of my campaign for quite a few months with our play test copies of the rules, so I'm already adjudicating my group's current domain building efforts with ACKS.  Having witnessed many of the great discussions on the development forum, I can vouch for the thorough testing of the systems.

The physical hardcover book isn't out yet, but the PDF is nicely hyper linked and is well indexed; I enjoy being able to jump from the table of contents, or one of the indexes, to quickly get to the right section or table.  I like this new trend of hyperlinked PDFs that are both tablet and table friendly!  For you folks that love artwork, there are plenty of excellent full page black and white pictures that show classic adventuring situations, or capture some of the new campaign mechanics, like hijinks, in action.

Would I recommend ACKS?  Sometime ago, I pointed out how there's an evolution in what people want from a campaign: Beedo's Hierarchy of Campaign Needs.  Many folks are totally satisfied with a game that revolves around characters, monsters, and dungeons.  As you climb the pyramid, different priorities emerge, like the desire to leave a legacy on the campaign world, to build castles, to conquer lands, to exert some power.  ACKS is the first new generation game that climbs that pyramid, and for that I give it a hearty recommendation.  A version of their mass combat system should be on the way soon (though real life has prevented me from trying the play test versions) and they have some interesting products in the pipeline, like their Auran Empire Gazetteer.  With a heavy nod towards BX, Mentzer, and the various Known World Gazetteers, ACKS is a sturdy bridge across nearly 30 years of gaming.  If D&D 5E doesn't work out for those Seattle guys, I've got my long term campaign game right here.

Target Rich Horror Gaming

Blogthulhu continues!  I've been looking at how to structure a Cthulhu campaign and enable some of the free-form sandbox play we enjoy so much in old school D&D and avoid the linear rail road.  The sandbox style is one where the players have a high degree of choice and agency, there's no formulated story, and the events of the game unfold primarily through player interaction with the setting.  Sandbox is far from the only successful style of play in horror gaming; at some point I'll take a look at some of the pros and cons of the famous published rail road campaigns in the genre, but for us, sandbox is the style we prefer.  For the D&Ders, most of this idea should also carry over into weird horror gaming in any historical setting.

Previous installments of the series have declared an overarching metaphor for horror gaming (points of darkness), discussed the difference between active and passive plot hooks, and then argued for the importance of an investigative organization to provide a campaign framework.  A framework solves common problems in Cthulhu gaming, like access to plot hooks, replacement characters and continuity, and a lightweight approach to getting new characters in the game without a ton of back story.

Now let's look at how choice defines sandbox play.  There are two scales of choice that are important to me when enabling player agency - at the campaign level and at the adventure level.  On the larger scale, there's the question of which adventure the characters are going to pursue; when they've made an adventure choice, I then want to make sure it's structured to support player planning, different strategies and roads to victory, and variability of outcomes.

Let's use a simple example from the D&D space.  The ubiquitous elf, dwarf and a cleric, at the local tavern, learn there are bandits in the nearby woods, a weird hermit stalks the north woods, a dangerous swamp lies nearby with rumors of reptilian marauders, and beyond the nearby hills, the legendary Caves of Chaos await.  This is that top level of choice - what will they do?  Once the party makes the decision on which rumor to investigate, the actual adventure site offers many different approaches to how the group resolves their exploration.

In horror gaming that first level choice emerges via the plot hook.  The first hurdle in porting a similar sandbox approach to Cthulhu gaming is to provide a "target rich plot hook" environment - the equivalent of deciding between stopping the goblins in the woods or heading out to the ruined moat house.

The nice thing about the organizational frameworks from the last post is that the Keeper has a venue for introducing options to the players and giving them the same kind of experience.  "According to these news bits from our clipping service, there's an art gallery in New York City displaying a series of paintings from that notorious artist, and there was a ritual murder in Central Park last week.  It could be nothing.  The other item that's come in off the wire is this announcement of a new fraternal order recruiting in Boston - anyone care to join the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight?"

A risk with an organizational frame work is to provide real choice, and not make these plot hooks directives from an NPC boss in the hierarchy.  One criticism I have with Delta Green is that "missions" tend to be presented as immediate orders from superiors - pretty much the opposite of what makes player planning in a sandbox fun.  The default setting in Delta Green assumed the players are rank and file agents that take orders; in my preferred style of play, that would be adjusted.  There would still be some reactive, urgent missions, but players would also be able evaluate intelligence and make decisions on longer term cases to pursue.  It's a simple but important switch to flip.

A nice opportunity emerges regarding plot hooks that are passed over; other NPCs in the organization may investigate those plot hooks instead, and that can add some interesting verisimilitude later on.  "Remember how we sent Doctor Horton to investigate that Hermetic Order in Boston?  He's stopped phoning in reports… we may have a situation."

So one key component to this style of campaign is to have an input funnel that regularly presents plot hooks to the player characters to create that target rich environment.  Looking at some of the sample organizations from the previous article, it could be projects or expeditions presented by the Miskatonic faculty - "Should we outfit a voyage to the Yucatan seeking the legendary crystal skull, or pursue this rumor that the tomb of Nephren Ka might have been found in Giza?"  It could take the form of intelligence briefings gathered by Project Covenant, Delta Green, or The Laundry.  The Gilchrist Trust might use a news clipping service as they try to find positive evidence of the supernatural on their globe trotting search.  The Bookhounds scour auctions and estate sale posts seeking forbidden tomes.

One interesting variant to the plot hook funnel is a true info-dump.  When I was thinking about a similar campaign in the D&D space last summer (The Library of de la Torre), the idea was that the characters could inherit the journal or library of a recently deceased adventurer who had made a career of exploring occult mysteries and fighting monsters.  I saw this character as an analog to Howard's Solomon Kane, but you could port this type of idea into Cthulhu gaming just as easily.  I hear there's a famous Lovecraft story that used the same technique… it's on the tip of my tongue… Call of… Cthul-something or other.  Kidding aside, don't lose sight that The Call of Cthulhu story is essentially an info-dump of the memoirs of a deceased Lovecraftian investigator, and the protagonist sifts through the material and then launches his own investigations.  It's the epitome of the target rich investigative setting.

A published adventure following this approach is The Armitage Files; the campaign dumps a lot of information into the player's hands at discrete intervals, giving them massive freedom to determine how to proceed.  Masks of Nyarlathotep does this as well.

You may be thinking, Beedo, are you out of your mind?  If I give the group multiple plot hooks every time we start a new adventure, doesn't that mean I need to generate all those adventures?  I have a life outside of gaming, you mad monkey!  I'm well aware of balancing sandbox constraints, and I've referred to it in the past as the sandbox triangle.

It's a fair criticism, and I have a few suggestions.  The first one is a really simple Pro Tip:  Don’t present plot hooks at the beginning of a gaming session!  Present the next briefing or opportunity to review leads at the end of a session, or in between sessions, so the group can discuss the pros and cons of different leads and make their choice ahead of time, giving you ample time to prepare for the following week without having to over prepare.  It's a fair trade-off for giving them so much freedom to pick their adventures.

Another recommendation is to leverage the massive back catalog of published adventures for Call of Cthulhu.  Chaosium has been producing collections of short adventures for 30 years, they're all compatible with the current rules, and most are available in PDF.  Couple that with short adventures from Miskatonic River Press, Pelgrane Press, and The Unspeakable Oath, and you've got a ton of material to intersperse with your own creations - just file off the plot hooks, which are typically passive plot hooks, and add your own that would bring them to the attention of an active investigative unit.  There were some additional magazine publishers as well - The Black Seal and Worlds of Cthulhu - but I never collected them.  The Black Seal was focused on the modern UK and I wasn't collecting when Worlds of Cthulhu was printed.  I'm hoping Worlds gets converted to PDF some time.  If you read those, let me know what you think of them.

Alright, that's enough for now.  I'll see where the Cthulhu muse takes me next, either a review of The Armitage Files (since I've mentioned it a few times now) or on towards open-ended adventure structures.  Ciao!

Book Review: The Mathematics of Magic, The Complete Enchanter Series

About the time I started blogging, a little over a year ago, there was a movement towards rereading the classic fantasy works that inspired Gygax and Arneson for making Dungeons & Dragons.  These have been listed out most famously in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Appendix N.  You'll often see lists identified online by one gamer or another as 'my version of Appendix N'.  I've aspired to read through my own list as well, and finally got the chance to finish another one - The Mathematics of Magic, a collection of novellas by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

The protagonist for this series is Harold Shea, a clinical psychiatrist who discovers a way to slip from our dimension to various alternate realities where the worlds of earthly literature and mythology exist as real places - he visits mythic Ireland and Finland, the world of the Norse gods, the realms of literary creations like The Faerie Queene or Orlando Furiousa (The Madness of Roland).  Other realms that are visited include Kublai Khan's Xanadu, the Land of Oz, and Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom.

If you like stories where modern characters either travel back in time or find themselves in a fantastic realm, you'll appreciate the central conceit for each of these.  Harold Shea is brainy and bold, and constantly has to match wits with dangerous "heroes" that are both stronger and a bit homicidal.  Protagonists that seem to be idealized stand-ins for the author are oft referred to as a "Mary Sue", and Shea falls into that space.

One aspect of the stories that will be fairly interesting to gamers is this; Harold Shea is a fencer, and many of the challenges involve using fencing styles against other styles and armor.  At the end of the collection, there are a few interesting essays from the 1960's debating whether fencing would work in other times and places, including various field tests by the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism).  There's also a letter by a young General Patton, then only a lieutenant, discussing sword techniques for the pre-World War I era army, and revising army doctrine around slashing and stabbing.  Considering the frequent arguments in the blogosphere regarding shields in D&D, table top gamers would find the essays quite interesting.

The writing in the Shea stories isn't fantastic, but many of the fantasy books I've read from the 40's through 60's don't light the world on fire with their prose, so take that as you will.  The primary reason I found the collection enjoyable was because of the author's interpretation of those various mythic and literary realms traversed by the characters.  For instance, I've never read The Kalevala, but Harold's adventures in mythic Finland are intriguing and I could see myself adding that to the reading list.  Same with mythic Ireland, and the stories of Cuchulainn bounding over the turf in a chariot and chopping off heads to mount on his wall of trophies.  I would recommend reading one of the novellas, going off and reading something else, reading the next one, and so on.  500+ pages of Harold Shea straight through started to feel like a grind.

Inspirations for Gaming
The Harold Shea stories are often held out, alongside Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, as inspiration for the magic system used in Dungeons & Dragons.  I tend to think Vance's influence was primary, but Harold Shea does need to learn various verbal, somatic, and material components to perform his spells, and anyone who's played 1st Edition AD&D is familiar with those terms.  The magic in Shea's stories often uses theories of sympathetic or contagious magic, as well, which we see in the choice of material components in AD&D.

This book is likely the inspiration for the D&D green dragon; in the Norse tale, a dragon emerges from a cave and breathes poisonous, chlorine gas.  Other creatures I remember include cockatrices and griffins.  But most of the antagonists are the violent, homicidal "heroes" of myth and folklore.

So perhaps the most direct inspiration is on AD&D's Deities and Demigod's Cyclopedia.  The heroes and gods of Finnish, Irish, and Norse myth are featured in the book, along with some introductions to their mythic realms, and an enterprising game master could use the Deities book, along with the source materials and the staging in the Shea stories, to create a campaign built around traveling from one mythic realm to another.  Don't tell me that wouldn't be totally awesome.

Premature Evocation - Gothic Greyhawk Game 52

Player Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-7: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf F/MU 5/5: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-6: Mike
Shy, a Fighter-6:  JR
Leonidas the Paladin-5:  Nogal
Digit, the Elf Thief-7:  Z
Konstantine, Magic User-5: Smitty

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf Fighter-5
Grumble the Smug, Halfling Thief-7
Donavich, Cleric-4
Boris, Druid-4
Meatshield 1, Ranger-1
Meatshield 2, Ranger-1
Ireena, a Fighter - 5
Vlad the Inhaler, Magic User-1
Meatshield 3, Cleric-1
*Italicized characters are back in Barovia

If you read the bit earlier this week about My Big Mouth™, you already know about the Druid and his pet bear.  The druid finessed the party past an encounter with some hungry grizzly bears.  When they made camp later that night, I haughtily heckled pointed out to the druid that he could have used the Animal Friendship spell he memorized (not sure why he took it, otherwise).  The problem with shooting off your mouth in such a way is this; the party might remember they're loaded with Rangers, that Rangers are known to track things, like bears, and just because the druid forgot to use his I-Always-Wanted-A-Pet-Bear spell today, he wouldn’t forget to use it tomorrow.  After the Rangers guided him to the bear, of course, because I reminded him about the spell.

So now the Druid has a pet bear, and the player is quite happy about it.

Overall, they're still slogging through the mountains trying to find… something.  The adventure is to find THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH, but I think they're trying to find a valley of Gnomes, first.

(See what I did there?  I'm rereading AD&D and Gygax always capitalized D&D product names.  Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth:  Not Gygaxian.  LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH:  Totally Gygaxian.  This campaign is now totally Gygaxian.).

More interesting than the quest for Gnome Vegas was their fight with an army of hobgoblins.  It wasn't a big army, mind you, but more hobgoblins than you'd face in a dungeon - 70 or 80, something like that - archers, skirmishers, and lots and lots of pole arm wielders.  And not halberds, but military forks, glaives, guisarmes, and bill-guisarmes, in great detail, because this is Gygaxian!  The hobgoblins were camped along the side of the valley, and the party noticed thin wisps of smoke rising into the air when they were still a good distance down the valley.  A good portion of the remaining game time was spent with the players huddled over the table, intensely scrutinizing the hastily sketched map of the camp, the location of the cave, the deployment of the tents, disposition of the units, the pickets, and the archers.  The party huddled behind a  spur of boulders and rock-fall while the halfling scouted (with a ring of invisibility) and everyone else crouched and planned.  Isn't that the essence of a good gaming night - the scouting, sneaking, planning, plotting, using up resources, figuring out the perfect attack plan?  Good stuff.

They used Silence 15' magic to mask the approach of their armored guys and get them into position for a charge, while some of the unarmored guys quietly climbed into a position to rain magic down on the camp from an overlook.  Mister Moore opened up hostilities with the wand of fireballs, raining blasts across the camp over the course of a number of rounds; Constantine sent his one memorized fireball down on the camp, too.

Once the magic started flying, the fighters jumped up from where they were crouched behind an embankment, and started their charge across open ground, yelling and hollering.  The hobgoblins were scrambling to regroup after getting pounded by fireballs, but they had enough time to form a rank of pole arms against the charging fighters, and they inflicted massive damage on them - 20-30 points to each of them.  But once the fighters got past those blades, the hobgoblin line quickly collapsed under a vicious series of slashes.

The DM's other moment of almost-glory was when an overlooked group of hobgoblin archers piled out of some hidden tents and formed a squad to pepper Mister Moore with arrows.  8 hobgoblin archers, using AD&D's 2 shots per round, meant the unarmored Mister Moore had close to 16 arrows coming his way (a few went towards the nearby Grumble the Halfling).  But I had a disastrously bad run of d20 rolls, Mister Moore survived, and then he hit them with a fireball… in the FACE.   It was all over for the hobgoblins except for the crying.

So that was another spectacular victory for Team BK Inc., beating up a horde of 1 HD mooks (albet in style).  Now, about the title of the post.  We switched back to AD&D this game, and it's been a long time since we played with segments and casting times and that kind of stuff.  It was completely fun, and I loved pulling out those 1970's classic hardbacks.  But the players were disappointed spells were taking so long to resolve; they'd win the initiative, but the spell might not happen before the monsters acted.  Segments and casting times are a big change from BX's simplified approach.  And thus, the great punch line of the night was set up:

Konstantine (seriously):  "Mister's Moore's wand goes off so fast, it's faster than my magic!"
Mordecai:  "Yeah, isn't that what his hot NPC wife was saying the other week, Moore's wand goes off too fast?"
Forlorn:  "They have a term for that, you know; it's called Premature Evocation."

We could have ended the night happy right there.

Campaign Frameworks for Cthulhu Games

Cover image from The Armitage Files

I've been interrupting the regular stream of Dungeons & Dragons posts this year to bring more Cthulhu blogging, and my first big project has been to step through campaign structures and different approaches to launching campaigns.  I'm particularly interested in exploring ways to run investigative sandboxes to enable the kind of free-form, sandbox style I enjoy so much in D&D.  If you're wanting to run a weird horror D&D game in a mundane or historical world, these posts should offer ideas for that as well, since there's a lot of overlap with games like Cthulhu Dark Ages or Cthulhu Invictus.

Last week's entry, Points of Darkness for Horror Gaming, contrasted a horror setting with the typical D&D fantasy approach (points of light).  It emphasized the importance of plot hooks for engaging the characters;  I further separate plot hook approaches into "passive" or "active".

Passive plot hooks are related to the back story of the characters before the adventure:  "You are all gathered together as friends of  Important NPC™ Jackson Elias."  Or, "You receive a letter from your old friend, Henry Hancock, the African explorer, asking you to come to Scotland and help him at his current dig site…"  I have issues with the passive plot hook approach.  They trade on some pre-existing emotional connection between the player characters and the NPC.  While I expect players to buy into the general premise of the game, I don’t like having to tell them to feel a certain way towards an NPC so they have the right emotional resonance with the scenario.  That's not very old school.

The second issue with passive plot hooks is that once the scenario is initiated, there's no longer a credible reason for replacement characters.  One of the in-jokes in COC gaming involves a party narrowly escaping a TPK, needing replacement party members, and recruiting the waiter, the store clerk, the taxi driver - you get the idea.   Here's one caveat; while I dislike the passive plot hook approach for a campaign game, I recognize that it works well for one-shots and convention games; the Keeper can distribute pre-generated characters with appropriate backgrounds and push the game right onto the tracks.

This isn't a new problem.  There was an 80's publication that took a tongue-in-cheek approach to an organized group of Mythos busters (The Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society) but it wasn't until Pagan Publishing's Delta Green (1997) that a campaign setting outlining a comprehensive framework for investigations altered the face of Cthulhu gaming.  I consider myself an old timer, so I'll trace the evolution of these frameworks from Delta Green through the latest books I've seen published.

You might ask, what's the big deal?  Important characteristics of the investigative frameworks are that they provide built in objectives for the game, as well as solving the problem of credible replacement characters and campaign continuity.  The campaign now transcends the player character party and a TPK is no longer fatal.  The casual dramatists and authors in the group can still write their detailed character back stories, but the frameworks make it easier for everyone else to make their 15 minute character and start rolling the dice.

Delta Green
Delta Green is a (fictional) conspiracy within the United States government, to investigate and stop Mythos activities, and keep the existence of the Mythos horrors secret.  Players take on the roles of cross-departmental government agents who manage to use official cover, appropriations, and false orders to get involved with investigations that have alien or supernatural elements.  One guy could be in the ATF, someone else in the FBI, and so on.  It tends to feel a bit like The X-Files, badges and guns, with more hardware and spy tech (since it's an underground conspiracy communicating through back channels).

The most interesting part of the Delta Green setting is how other corrupt organizations have learned of the existence of Mythos magic, kept it secret, and attempted to wrest power from the supernatural by weaponizing  the Mythos.  It always goes horribly wrong.  The signature opponents in Delta Green include various inhuman Nazis that have extended their lives unnaturally, and the Majestic 12 group (formed after the Roswell incident) which has been benefiting from alien biotech while turning a blind eye to alien abductions.  Don't get me wrong, the opponents in Delta Green are not like the pulp Nazi sorcerers you see in a Mignola Hellboy comic; the situations in the Delta Green books tend to be fairly dark; they're smart, slick, and mature.  Delta Green captures that pre-millennial conspiracy angst from shows like The X-Files or Millenium.  The books are hard to get, but I hear PDF versions are nearing release at the usual places, and an updated version of the setting for the post-911 "war on terror" world is underway as well.

Call of Cthulhu d20
I wasn't a fan of the d20 level-based approach to COC, but the d20 book itself was still chock full of useful campaign advice for Call of Cthulhu; John Tynes, one of the driving forces behind Delta Green, had taken his skills to WOTC during this time and worked on the d20 Cthulhu book.

The d20 book recommends the use of a tentpole NPC - a powerful figure behind the scenes that ensures continuity for the investigation - or the creation of an organization.  It goes on to describe Cthulhu setting genres and  sample organizations for each one, such as Lovecraft Country, Hometown Horrors, Private Investigators, Badges and Secrets, Esoteric Orders, and Global Hot Spots.  (Delta Green even makes a cameo).

The other thing I really liked in the d20 book was that it took each of the genres and looked at how it might change for different time periods, and included good movies or TV shows to help set the mood.  Good stuff all around.

Trail of Cthulhu
Last week I did a review of Trail of Cthulhu; Trail provided three detailed campaign frames, two of which have been further developed in later books.  The first one, the Armitage Inquiry, assumes the various professors of Miskatonic University, having previous Mythos encounters  (as detailed in some Lovecraft stories), recruit like-minded individuals from the faculty and student body to explore and document Mythos occurrences.  The second frame, Project Covenant, suggests the Naval officers, involved in destroying the Deep One colony at the end of The Shadow Over Innsmouth story, form a secretive investigative arm of the government - similar to a 1930's version of Delta Green, but with actual government backing.  The final suggestion is Bookhounds of London, which puts the players in the role of book merchants collecting and selling rare and highly sought volumes (and frequently encountering the mad occultists seeking said books for all the wrong reasons).  It reminds me quite a bit of the excellent novel, The Club Dumas.

Two of those campaign frames get the full treatment in The Armitage Files (cover pictured above) and Bookhounds of London.  Both are excellent, so I'll definitely review them in the future.  The (award winning) Armitage Files is unlike any game book I've seen, and warrants a full post (and a warning!)

The Laundry RPG
I don't have The Laundry yet.  It's a BRP system like COC, based on a series of books by Charles Stross (The Atrocity Files), that details a secret British agency known as The Laundry.  The Laundry is tasked with keeping the world safe from occult horrors.  My perception is that it mixes quite a bit of office-culture and Information Technology humor juxtaposed against high-tech Mythos investigations in a world where computers have made monster summoning a not uncommon affair.  I'm not sure how the black humor would work out in game play, but I'll keep my eyes open for getting a copy and plan on reading The Atrocity Files at some point.  Although I'm a purist at heart, I'm sure my group of regular players, all tech geeks, would probably find this approach entertaining.

This discussion waxes long!  Providing a framework for ongoing investigations has become de rigeur in the Chaosium licensees making modern Cthulhu games.  There is an alternative to a structured organization, mentioned briefly above, it is the idea of using a "tentpole NPC" to anchor a campaign; I'll visit that one shortly.  Then we'll return to campaign development, perhaps looking at structuring investigations, and what makes for a good one.  Ciao!

What Hat is the DM Wearing?

Yesterday's brief post about my big mouth generated some good comments - the issue of the DM or gamemaster offering advice to the players is fairly nuanced.  Is the DM's role that of an impartial referee?  Is the DM an adversary?  Is the DM a coach?  In many cases, the DM is the most experienced gamer at the table (or knows the rules the best) so one could argue the DM has a duty as coach and teacher of the rules.  Does that drop away when the players are sufficiently experienced?  How about coaching for strategy and tactics?  When the players are tossing ideas back and forth regarding how they're going to attack their current problem, should the DM interject and point out which ideas would or wouldn't work, or should he or she keep quiet unless directly asked, and let the players execute their plan, making the rulings then?

Then there's the bad poker player, the DM that's having a hard time keeping their mouth shut about that obvious thing the players are overlooking... that was me with the bear, the bad poker player.  But in this age when folks have a ton of things on their mind, distractions at the table, faulty memories, should the DM play it close to the vest at all?  These questions are a bit of a parallel issue to Stuart's GMing badges regarding game mastering philosophy, albeit these are more subtle elements of presentation.

My own position is that the DM needs to give the players space to execute their own plans; success or failure should come from their own efforts.  When they succeed, they've earned it, and they can feel great that it came honestly.  And don't fudge the dice.  If there's a crushing defeat, after the session I might spend some time tossing out some alternative approaches they could have used if the players seem stumped.  It's their game, and they need to have the freedom to play it - and sometimes that means they miss things, or choose a sub optimal tactic, or forget they're carrying the silver bullet all along.  At the same time, don't you take a lot of pride in your players when you throw everything you've got at them, and they pull out an amazing victory? I know I do.

Oh, and lest I forget - sometime's the DM should even play the fool -  this video exhortation over at Alexis's place was great:  Vlog the Fool.  We need to be able to put on that silly hat and that performer hat from time to time as well.

The DM Has a Big Mouth

Let me ask you if you have this problem, too.  The party just got pasted by a monster, they run out of there dragging their dead companions and cursing the unfairness of gaming, the session wraps for the night, and you mouth off about all the things they forgot.  "You didn't even have to fight the Elemental.  What's-his -name has the Protection from Evil 10' radius spell and you guys could have hedged it out and moon-walked across that room…"

If I have a fatal flaw as a DM, it's giving the players the DM's perspective after their failures and not letting them figure this stuff out for themselves through head banging, frustration, and trial and error.  It's one thing doing an after action review with some newbies, but I'm always blabbing my mouth off about play refinements, even with the seasoned vets.

Case in point from the other night, and this one came back to get me.  The party was making camp in a stand of evergreens (they're way up in the mountains) and their ranger scouts noticed a small group of grizzly bears come down out of the opposite trees and start splashing in the river that split the valley.  Then one of the bears rises on it's haunches, sniffing the air.  Did it smell their horses, or the cooking meat?

The druid goes out there with a sack of food, cautiously uses Speak with Animals, ends up convincing the bears to be on their way, after giving them a few weeks worth of rations to drag off.

So they're camping later that night, and I snicker, "Good thing you didn't remember you took Animal Friendship…"  That's the spell that lets druids turn an animal into a permanent companion.   The gears started turning in the minds of the players… could they afford to miss a day of travel, and have the rangers and druid double back and track the bears, so the druid could attempt Animal Friendship?  Dang it!  By the next night, the druid was working on teaching his new bear companion some tricks, after burning a few Speak with Animals and Charm Mammal spells out in the wilds.

In all truth, this was a fine turn of events for the players, the druid guy loves his new animal companion - "I have a bear!" - the players laugh during Speak with Animals when the bear talks like the Yogi Bear cartoon character, and seeing a grizzly bear maul hobgoblins later in the session was entertaining all around.

But seriously, I need to learn to shut the hell up!

Blogthulhu

Does anyone know of some good blogs on Cthulhu and Lovecraft gaming?  I regularly read Ken Hite's and Dan Harm's blog (when they post), and Pookie's Reviews from R'hlyeh.  AD&D Grognard started a blog for Cthulhu board games.  There are lots of places that discuss Lovecraft fiction, but other than the campaign journals on yog-sothoth.com, not a lot of blogging.  (Flames Rising sometimes has COC or Trail stuff, but mostly World of Darkness).  Let me know what I'm missing!  thanks-

Converting to AD&D

1E is back on top!

Ever since the announcement that 1E is being reprinted, my group has been asking the question whether we should switch completely to AD&D.  We're using Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, so we're pretty much playing AD&D with classic D&D stats and race-classes already - we have a Paladin, for instance.  But we're not actually using the old 1E books at the table, despite one of the players (Mike) bringing up the idea of converting at every available opportunity… for months.  With the 1E announcement, he's been able to sway the table - the group voted to switch whole cloth to AD&D.  The Trampier cover is back in the house.

There are some obvious things to change - the Dwarf becomes a fighter, the Elf becomes a fighter/magic user.  The more interesting question is what to do with the stats?

On 3d6, the average roll is 10.5; on 4d6 drop the lowest, the average roll is 12.24  AD&D characters have an average of 10+ more points spread across their ability scores.  And it shows.  A fighter in classic D&D gets +1 to hit at strength 13; that same fighter needs a strength 17 to get the same bonus in AD&D.  Stat inflation, baby.

What have you done for converting existing "classic: characters to AD&D's higher stat requirements?  The two options we discussed were re-rolling using 4d6 drop the lowest, but arranging the scores in the same relative order - so if Character A was highest in Intelligence, he would put his highest new stat back into Intelligence.  The simple approach is this - since AD&D characters have much higher stats, 10 more ability points, on average, just give everyone 10 more points to spend.  That fighter with a 13 strength can pump 4 points into strength, giving himself a 17 and staying on course.

I'm enthused by the 1E reprinting.  We don't know how limited will be the print run, and whether it will stay exclusive to hobby stores; I'd be delighted if it was successful and they chose to roll the reprints out to retail.  I don't need to go looking for cynical reasons to justify the reprint;  WOTC is helping the cause of getting new folks to pay attention to older games again, and that's just dandy.

Points of Darkness for Horror Gaming

Last year I spent some time thinking about how I'd run a historical D&D game in a "weird horror" mode, and I called it the 'Wide Area Sandbox'.  Points of Darkness is a simpler and more evocative term for horror gaming; I saw it over at Brendan's blog (points of darkness) and it stuck with me.

The idea behind the Points of Light trope is the fantasy world is essentially a dangerous place, and the DM can structure it as civilized settlement (a point of light) surrounded by a vast swaths of wilderness that are unfriendly or hostile (the darkness).  It's a great approach for starting a standard D&D campaign, which typically involves a fallen civilization and lots of ruins.

Lovecraft Country: not for hex crawling

Horror gaming often takes place in the regular world - it could be 17th century Europe, the Victorian age, 1920's America, or the modern day.  Day to day life may be different than our world, but it's still fairly mundane; whatever supernatural threats or horrors exist, they do so on the fringes of society - the remote mountain fastnesses of Transylvania, untouched tombs of Egypt, sleepy New England coastal towns where the forefathers made a pact with aquatic horrors.  The points of darkness where eldritch horror lurk are few and far between, and they keep themselves secret and hidden.  This is a problem for putting players in touch with the horror!

The traditional 50 miles of hex crawl centered around a medieval manor or barony doesn't work as an organization structure for a globe-spanning horror game set in the mundane world.  The characters aren't going to hex crawl through New England before discovering the weird events surrounding the lonely Akeley Farmhouse (from The Whisperer in Darkness).

The plot hook becomes the primary method for ferreting out the existence of a Point of Darkness, and so the horror game is defined by its approach to plot hooks.  I haven't always appreciated the plot hook; it's very easy for a DM enamored with their own ideas of "story" to slide from presenting plot hooks as information into plot hook as rail road.

There are two basic approaches I've seen to using plot hooks in horror games; the first approach emulates the literary genre by associating the plot hook with character back story, the second approach functions more like a police procedural.

In genre emulation, the protagonists often have a close, preexisting connection to the plot hook and the Point of Darkness; they’re already in the wrong place at the wrong time when the story starts.  Henry Armitage gets involved with The Dunwich Horror because he happened to be the Professor at Arkham University; Francis Thurston of The Call of Cthulhu (story) was the nephew that inherited the papers of his dead uncle, and pieced together the fragmented tale of the Cthulhu Cult; Walter Gilman in The Dreams in the Witch House happens to be the student that chooses to stay in the Witch House and has those bizarre experiences.  The protagonist's initial involvement is almost passive.

You see a similar approach in game materials that try to emulate horror source literature; everyone has to play pre-generated characters that come loaded with a back story that places them in nexus with the upcoming horror.  Many Trail of Cthulhu adventures use this approach.  Alternatively, everyone makes a character, but they're required to have an appropriate background before the first session - "The adventure involves Mayan ruins, so you need to be an archaeologist, or someone associated with a dig site, at the start of the game".

That approach is fine for one-shots and limited engagements, but doesn't work so well in a campaign where the players want to use their own characters.  The "police procedural" approach puts the players in some kind of narrative framework that provides access to plot hooks over time, and the group chooses to conduct investigations that could ultimately lead back to a Point of Darkness.  A good example from television was The X-Files; the main characters were FBI agents who often investigated murders and abductions that put them in contact with supernatural or alien forces.  Most TV shows that have a recurring horror element have a narrative framework that puts the protagonist in touch with frequent plot hooks - one per episode, right?

The nice thing about the procedural approach is that it gives the players quite a bit of agency in how they actually carry out their investigations.  They still need to buy-in to the basic premise of the game, first; "I know we said we'd be occult investigators working for a rich philanthropist, but that sounds kind of dangerous.  How about we all become bankers instead?"  Short game.

So what's the point about this analysis?  Really two-fold.  When taking a look at published scenarios, you should be able to ferret out fairly quickly the approach the writer is expecting.  Most early Call of Cthulhu materials used back story or connections to a friend or benefactor to get the characters engaged; thus, it was often a struggle having a rationale for introducing replacement characters as the body count rose; be warned.  Later publishers in the space have offered various forms of narrative frameworks supporting the procedural approach, obviating the problem and supporting ongoing campaigns that feature degrees of mortality.

As a scenario builder, you'll likely start with a horrible situation in mind, and have to work backwards to getting the players involved (starting at the center of the onion and adding layers).  It'll be helpful to know which approach you mean to use - will the players encounter the plot hooks passively or actively?  In an upcoming post, I'll discuss common narrative frameworks for games like Call of Cthulhu, and then pivot to discuss different ways writers have presented investigations and adventure sites.  After all, what we want are free form sandboxes that maximize player agency!  I've got a review of Trail of Cthulhu almost done as well.

Ode to Mystara

I Got Your Gonzo Right Here, Buddy

Hey, I just found a new blog (Stocking the Dungeon) and noticed it's dedicated to campaigning in my old favorite, Mystara.  These days we are strong with the power of AD&D and Greyhawk, running a campaign featuring all the classic AD&D modules, but I spent most of my DM career campaigning in Mystara.  For many years, the Grand Duchy of Karameikos was always the starting place for new campaigns.

Mystara tends to be overlooked by the old school crowd, folks that got their start in the 70's and early 80's; by the time Mystara was hitting its stride, they had checked out of TSR and its 2nd Edition and its death from a thousand settings.  Mystara followed the pattern of the time, releasing book after book after book, describing all the nations of the Known World in Gazetteers, the Hollow World, and something I can only describe as RACE CLASS MADNESS (in other words, those four Creature Crucible books and Orcs of Thar).

But while many of the TSR settings of the 2E period went for different flavors of theme and simulation, like Al Qadim or Kara Tur or Maztica or The Horde, Mystara saw that, raised them, and then went gonzo.  As in, "the moon is ruled by katana-wielding Cat People Samurai Ninjas, who ride giant saber tooth tigers, in space."  That, my friends, is either stupid, or awesome.  Or as Jeff might say, stupidly awesome.

This is what happens when you're the red-headed stepchild of AD&D.  The suits ignore your product line, and you're given freedom to have some fun.  Basic D&D is for kids, right?  Sit tight and see what happens when the inmates run the asylum.

First off, Mystara kept Dave Arneson's Blackmoor firmly in the setting's prehistory (for those that wanted some time travel, there was the opportunity to jaunt back to the Temple of the Frog or visit the Egg of Coot in the DA series of Blackmoor modules for Mystara).  The good ship FSS Beagle crashed on Mystara, and its nuclear reactor exploded, destroying the ancient world of Blackmoor and turning the globe into a prehistoric nuclear wasteland.  All magic on Mystara is fueled by low levels of background radiation, and the existence of magical creatures can be traced back to magical mutation.  The first step to awesoming up your setting is putting a global thermonuclear catastrophe in the ancient past and declaring that magical races (elves!) are actually unwitting radioactive mutants.

In the Glantri book, there are even ways for wizards to learn how to manipulate radiation-magic directly (it's called The Radiance) and a practitioner will either become immortal or get turned into a Lich suffering from radiation sickness.  But don't worry, the 20th level wizards wasting away into radioactive Lichdom fit in with all the vampire wizards and werewolf wizards in Glantri.  It's a party.  Too much manipulation of the Radiance can actually alter the flow of magic on Mystara, causing Potions of Longevity to fail and magical creatures (elves) to slip into lethargy.

Before I forget - a little Clark Ashton Smith makes any setting better, so those whacky Mystaran writers transplanted the whole crew from Averoigne right into Glantri by way of Castle Amber.  I love the fact the Enchantress of Sylaire graces the cover of the Glantri book.

The Mystaran sky is filled with various nations that have mastered air ship technology, like the expansionist Heldannic Knights of the Heldann Freeholds, or the Alphatians, descendants of the Atlanteans of Earth myth.  The Alphatians went on an inter-dimensional odyssey before ending up in Mystara...  every setting should have ties to sunken Atlantis.  We learn that Alphatia is ruled by a council of no less than one thousand 36th level wizards.

If "magic as technology" isn't your thing, you might be annoyed by Mystara.  There are flying carpet courier services, islands set up as theme parks for ordinary folks to experience "the adventurer lifestyle" on holiday, and Glantri City is lit by continual light spells.  An entire kingdom of gnomes floats high above the ground in their orbiting clockwork city of Serraine.

In case the surface doesn't have enough wahoo, consider that Mystara is hollow.  There are huge voids at the north and south pole where an explorer could literally walk around from the outside to the steaming jungles of the inside world, but powerful divine anti-magic prevents flying ships from making the trip.  The hollow world is a night-less place where the immortals of Mystara transplant dying cultures in a kind of world-sized bottle city; it's filled with analogs of the Aztecs (with dinosaurs), the Romans (with dinosaurs), and the Egyptians (with dinosaurs).  One of the hollow world deities is Ka, the patron god of dinosaurs, so the place is crawling with prehistoric monsters and the scantily clad barbarian princesses that ride them.  It's ideal for a savage world, swords & sorcery style game (with dinosaurs).

I mentioned that Mystara featured RACE-CLASS MADNESS.  It's what happens when you can't resist the urge to turn any monster or humanoid race into a  playable class.  I mean "Pegataurs", really?  Mystara took the Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling classes, as laid out in Moldvay BX and Mentzer, out to its logical conclusions.  There are race classes covering every type of lycanthrope, lots of woodlands creatures (centaurs, pixies, sylphs, dryads, satyrs, and more), all manner of aquatic races, and every kind of monstrous humanoid.  One could even run an entire humanoid campaign centered on the monster realms in the Broken Lands - wouldn't it be fun to visit Trollhattan, or Bugburbia? Mystara didn't take Gygax's "humanocentric vision" very seriously, and enjoyed plenty of in-jokes.

In addition to stretching the bounds with gonzo weirdness, the D&D line featured products that took classic D&D out of the dungeon and added new dimensions to game play, like mass combat, domain rulership, and quests for immortality.  I haven't been shy about talking up my support for Adventurer Conqueror King, especially because it's improving the systems first field tested on storied Mystara.

The story line that was begun in X4 Master of the Desert Nomads and X5 Temple of Death reaches fruition in module X10, Red Arrow, Black Shield - a double sized adventure that plunges Mystara's Known World into a continent spanning war against "The Master" and his desert hordes.  It's really two games in one, first a series of player character quests as the players traverse the Known World as envoys enlisting the kingdoms of the world to rise up against the Master.  It's also a continent spanning military campaign using old school hexes and cardboard military counters to track the progress of a war spanning dozens of nations and hundreds of army units.

Domain rules are fully embraced in C1, Test of the Warlords, which opened up the Norwold region of Mystara for colonization, allowing your 15th+ level PC's to carve out wilderness domains, raise armies, and hold off various invasions.  Norwold would go on to be a mainstay in the M-series of modules as well, and thrust the players right into the middle of the conflicts between Thyatis and Alphatia, the world-spanning empires on Mystara.

I'm going to skip discussing Mystara's approach to Immortals and quests for Immortality, seeing as this Ode to Mystara is waxing long.  Wrath of the Immortals was a boxed set that put this element of play front and center, and probably deserves it's own post at some point (it's both ambitious and controversial).  Suffice it to say, Mystara's approach to integrating gods, known as "Immortals", was just was wahoo as the rest of the setting, centering Immortal politics around a location on the moon known as the Vaults of Pandius that's presented a bit like the halls of the Justice League.

Let's hope part of WOTC's appeal to lapsed buyers gamers includes putting those old PDFs back on sale; there's a lot of great stuff in the Mystara catalog that should be experienced by modern gamers and mined for ideas.  The Grand Duchy of Karameikos is still the best campaign starting area ever published...

Call of Cthulhu's Old School Roots

One goal for this year was to write more frequently on subjects with nexus to Call of Cthulhu - reviews, discussions of the literature, how to play the game and run campaigns.  If you've hung around here a bit, you know in my D&D discussions I'm biased towards the rules light, old school style of play; a good place to start any discussion of Call of Cthulhu is how it measures up as an old school game.

Simulationist
My power trio of early games is Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, and Call of Cthulhu.  One important element that ties all three games together is they attempt to simulate a game world, with a set of coherent rules where conflict and skill resolution are handled by dice; you don't see any of the things that creep into later generation games like dice pools, resource pools, action points, or similar elements that support cinematic, action-hero play.  The game master exerts strong narrative control, and all three games lend themselves well to free form, exploratory scenario design.

Characters
The default approach to Call of Cthulhu is to play ordinary folks in the 1920's, who through one reason or another, begin to investigate occult mysteries.  It's the game that pioneered such exciting character choices as "Antiquarian", or "Historian".  The action oriented might choose to be a "Police Officer", or "Private Detective".  Characters are generally fragile, and the scale is human (as opposed to the super-human action heroes that grace power fantasy gaming).  Like other games of the period, COC uses random character attributes.

Conflict and Balance
All of the chief conflict resolution systems use dice for resolution - combat, skill checks, and sanity rolls.  Like Traveller, character skill is an important element to the game - investigators are typically armed with such exciting skills like reading ancient languages, or knowledge in various scientific fields like botany or zoology.  (Gun skills are useful for dealing with cultists and mortal foes, but not so much against monsters).

There is no "game balance" whatsoever.  Invariably, the investigators will cross paths with cultists armed with terrifying spells, or horrible monsters from the Cthulhu Mythos.  Survival during an investigation is primarily dependent on player skill, since physical conflict against monsters is a bleak proposition.  The ability to analyze clues and information, marshal resources, and solve problems, is critical to successful Call of Cthulhu play, and the game challenges the players far more than their characters.

Paradigm of Investigation
Characters in Call of Cthulhu perform investigations, which are essentially fact-finding, exploratory scenarios.  One of the things I'll highlight in some upcoming posts is how investigative scenarios are basically virtual dungeons; you can flow chart an investigation much like a traditional dungeon (and I find it's helpful in scenario design to avoid a linear experience).  One issue we'll visit below is that poorly done scenarios are essentially rail roads.

Rules History
Call of Cthulhu was first published back in 1981; the first few releases were boxed sets, followed by progressively more elaborate core rules.  I've heard there have been something like 30 different unique printings of the core rulings in one form or another, although the game is officially on the 6th edition, with rumors of a 7th edition in the works.  Unlike D&D, that generates wide-scale changes between editions, COC typically features only minor variations, and early edition supplements remain completely compatible with the latest and greatest set of rules.

Issues
We tend to have big debates in the D&D world about play styles and DM approaches; sandbox play is right, and rail road play is wrong, that kind of thing. Similarly, in the Cthulhu space, one can find scenarios that are written in a linear style with foregone conclusions and elements we'd describe as a rail road.  One of the things I'll get to discuss over the course of the year is which published scenarios and campaigns support free-form exploration in the old school style, and which campaigns and scenarios are linear rail roads, and how groups have different expectations.  For instance, many Call of Cthulhu devotees are more interested in good horror experiences than character agency, and don't mind a linear plot if the situation provides a novel experience.

Another thing that drifts from old school play, is when scenarios put significant emphasis on character background and back story, more than we're used to in old school Dungeons & Dragons.  This isn't inherent in the game system, it tends to be the foible of a specific module writer.  You folks that complain about the pre-generated characters in Dragonlance know of which I speak.

The original game doesn’t provide a lot of guidance on campaign structures that allow a group of disparate investigators to come together without straining credulity; it really becomes a problem when the body count piles up and replacement characters need to be introduced.  "This is Bob, my other character's second cousin's brother…"  Call of Cthulhu D20, Delta Green, and Trail of Cthulhu all added useful tools for structuring campaigns that provide an ongoing rationale for character involvement, and I'll explore these ideas in upcoming posts as well.  Despite the issues, Call of Cthulhu is absolutely an old school system, and it's possible to structure the same kind of free-form, exploratory adventures in COC that we enjoy so much in old school D&D.  It'll be fun to discover here on the blog.

My goal is to do a Cthulhu-related post or so each week, but not overwhelm the D&D stuff; judging by how the side poll is going, the majority of folks that come by here are either COC players or somewhat interested in the game and genre, so that should be fine.  Let me know how it's going!

Happy Friday the 13th!

My kind of M:TG card!

It's Friday the 13th, and the mind invariably drifts to slasher flicks and cheesy killers in hockey masks.

Okay, well that's what I was thinking about today, at least. Such a long dreary week.  Don't Be Afraid of the Dark came in the mail, and I'm excited to experience the Del Toro remake.  Tonight is a good night for some horror!

Far and away, the worst opponents in any horror game are the psychotic humans - the mad, deranged killers, and the hillbilly clan of cannibals.  When the group's attention is focused on monsters that look the part, they often fail to notice that they've entered the domain of a two-legged monster, that looks just like them, until it's too late.

Implacable and insane human opponents play a key role in a few of my favorite Call of Cthulhu scenarios - let's take a look at The Worm that Walks, and The Hills Rise Wild.

The Worm that Walks is one of the chapters in The Shadows of Yog Sothoth campaign; while the group is visiting a benefactor, they discover a lead that takes them out to an old cabin ("Don't go in the woods!") where something occult may have happened; what's really waiting for them out there are a bunch of characters straight out Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The signature scene is when one of the killers bursts out of a pile of bones, startling any adjacent investigators, and whacking one of them with a huge axe.

In The Hills Rise Wild, the adventurers are trekking overland in rural Dunwich looking for a fallen meteor.  When they take advantage of some country hospitality, they put themselves at the mercy of a deranged cultist and his downbeaten and abused family.  It's quite creepy.

For a literary reference, take a look at Lovecraft's The Picture in the House.  It's one of the earlier tales, and has an ending reminscent of an Edgar Allen Poe story.  It's an excellently creep story.  A traveler in the Miskatonic Valley enters a lonely farmhouse when caught out in a storm; the minimalist story begins to get unsettling when he starts flipping through an old book and has a progressively more disturbing conversation with the menacing owner of the house.  I don't want to give the ending or twist away if you haven't read it; it's a short story so go check it out yourself.

I haven't been mean enough to put a nasty family of hillbilly cannibals into a regular D&D game; players accustomed to only seeing monsters where they have green skin or tusks would be far too easy to lure in - like shooting fish in a barrel.  But it's time I rectified this egregious oversight.  In the meantime, let me know how you've used "cannibal hillbillies" in the comments.

I'm off to see Don't Be Afraid of the Dark!

Recent Poll Results

I'm off to "the Big City" today, so not much time for a deep thought post.  How about we take a look at how things went with some recent polls?

THE LOCATION FOR THE ADVENTURE LIES BEYOND TREACHEROUS WATERS. CAN THE PLAYER'S SHIP SINK ALONG THE WAY, KILLING EVERYONE?

Yes - If it happens, time to roll new guys (31%), No - The story would be over before it began (69%).

See - I tricked you - I put in the words "story" in the second answer, a clear tip off that making rulings to fit some notion of a predetermined story is the wrong answer, prima facie.  By now you should realize story is irrelevant; no player characters have plot immunity.  If they choose to hop in a boat and head into unsafe waters without precautions, of course the ship can sink.  Blub blub.  That all being said, I appreciate the well-thought out comments in the post - many folks were fine with raining havoc down on players that sailed unwisely into ice-berg laden northern waters, but rather than making a sinking ship equal instant death, they advocated a wide range of complications - ship damage, lost cargoes, lost resources, man overboard, forced to abandon ship to a lifeboat, tons of options that still get the point across.  I'll be a wiser judge with all your useful suggestions in hand.

WHAT'S YOUR PREFERRED METHOD FOR ABILITY SCORE GENERATION?

3d6 in order, no adjustment (44%), 3d6, rearrange and adjust (14%), 4d6, rearrange and adjust (12%), Modern point buy (7%), Something else (21%).

3d6 in one form or another was the popular choice in my circles; from the comments, I got the sense the folks that picked "something else" were doing 3d6 with the adjustment scheme from Moldvay BX, and I probably needed to call that out specifically - BX called for 3d6 in order, limited adjustments, but no rearranging.   From previous polls, I get the sense by-the-book AD&D sits around 10-15% in terms of active play so the 4d6 result makes sense.  I see a lot of Advanced Edition Companion in use with classic D&D versions.

The 1970's Sandbox as a Post-Modern Experience

We often use the term "emergent stories" to describe what happens in the free-form sandbox style of play.  The DM presents an environment for play, without a preordained plot or story, and the players exert freedom of choice in how they choose to interact with the setting.  As they move about the place, gathering information and making decisions, we derive enjoyment from the resolution of conflicts, the approaches used to overcome challenges, the successes and failures.  Many things come together at the table - the DM's artistry of description and presentation, often humorous role playing by the players, and the anticipation of seeing how the dice roll at a given time.  "We explore dungeons, not characters".  The story "emerges".

Herb pointed out an observation he made regarding emergent story in the sandbox - he called it Memoir as Story.  (Definitely go read it, if you missed it previously).  Herb's analysis hit me hard in two places - first in how it should define the goal of actual play, and then how it informs the after-play report.

When you step back and consider a person's day-to-day life, it's a meaningless string of incidental events - morning coffee, a drive to work, stop at the drive-thru for a bagel, reading the morning email.  Is that upcoming meeting with a client important on a cosmic scale?  How about on a personal scale?  It's only after the fact that we fully appreciate the meaning of life's mundane events.  Herb's point was that the biographer or memoir writer superimposes importance on life's mundane occurrences in order to create a narrative out of an otherwise undifferentiated string of incidents.  Your life is a sandbox adventure, my friends.  We all suffer a bit from apophenia and pareidolia - we're the unsung protagonists of our individual lives.

It's been many years since I've stalked the halls of academia, so forgive me if I'm misusing the term, but when comparing the sandbox to story games, wouldn't that make the D&D sandbox a post-modern experience?  The argument is that the individual creates a narrative where none exists, by attributing subjective meaning to things.  The party happened to stumble into the toughest monster on a dungeon level at an inopportune time, but they manage to prevail due to some lucky rolls; it's only afterwards, when resistance crumbles and they learn they're left as the toughest hombres on the block, that they declare, "Boy that was some climax to clearing that dungeon level".  Prior to fixing the definition in place, the entire experience was sans plot and fairly elastic.  Who knew how it would turn out?  The other piece that's interesting is that there's no one version of the truth; since each individual constructs their own mental narrative, If you have five players, they could come away from the experience with five distinct stories.

Speaking of the number five, I'll reserve special antipathy for that darling of the new school set - the "five room dungeon".  I'll defer the invective for now; I don't want to derail this post too much with an impromptu barrage of vitriol.

Back to the main item, the other place the Story as Memoir metaphor holds truth is in the process of writing a campaign journal or session report.  The journal becomes an external artifact reflecting this internal process of attaching meaning to events; categorizing, sequencing, sifting, and otherwise editing our memories in order to present a view of what happened that's compelling for someone else to read.  I know when I write game reports for Gothic Greyhawk, I try and skip as many trivialities as possible.

Here's the lesson for sandbox dungeon masters; don't get caught up with concerns about story or driving the action in your campaign to any preordained conclusions.  The human condition is such that your players will take care of superimposing a narrative structure on what's happening for you; when it's all said and done, the group will be able to reminisce when a story arc started, when it was getting intense, and when it concluded - even if there was no premeditated story there to start.

Your job is to fill the sandbox with compelling elements - interesting places to visit, challenges waiting to test intrepid adventures, and strongly characterized NPCs.  The rest will take care of itself.


We explore dungeons, not characters:  Does anyone know who originated this quote?  I recall it was part of Evreuax's Sig on Dragonsfoot some years back, so it predated my entry into blogging.  Just curious - it sums up the old school gaming experience on so many levels.

Gothic Greyhawk - What's it About?

We finally got to resume my long-running quasi-AD&D campaign this past weekend.  I say quasi-AD&D, because we're using basically the BX rules with Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion - all the good stuff from AD&D without the dubious sub systems.

There are two good reasons for a quick overview of the campaign - first, it seems like two months since a campaign report, and second, the latest events in the campaign hearken back to the earliest days of the campaign, two summers ago.  Memories just aren’t that good for campaign minutiae.

Why Is It Called Gothic Greyhawk?
I have a deep respect for all the creative things touched by Gygax, despite my quibbles with some rules , so when the players clamored for a return to a traditional Dungeons & Dragons experience after our divorce from 4E, it had to be Greyhawk.  Most of these guys had never played the early AD&D modules and they specifically requested a campaign that featured the classics.  Ravenloft was also on the list.

My vision of Greyhawk was to treat it like a folkloric early Medieval setting, emphasizing a strong monotheistic church, devils and fallen angels, ghosts, faeries, vampires, werewolves, witches, and things that go bump in the night.  We set the campaign in the misty river valleys of the Earldom of Sterich, placed the hidden valley of Barovia at the headwaters of the Davish river, and unleashed a bevy of 1st level characters into a hex crawl sandbox centered on Mittleberg - this all began a year and a half ago.

Recent History
The last 6-7 months of the campaign took place in Barovia, where the characters matched wits with the vampire lord Strahd von Zarovitch.  Strahd was nuked by a Dispel Evil scroll about halfway through the time period, but the group spent months fighting a guerilla war against all the free-willed vampires, previously under Strahd's control, that now strove for supremacy over the castle and village.  Notable energy drainers appeared, such as The White Lady, The Top-Hat Man, sexy Gertrude and Helga, Sasha the Vampire Queen, and various minor vampire spawn - including risen PC's previously killed by the vampires, like the cleric Barzai the Wise.

Before the holidays, the group concluded the campaign against the vampires and were in sole possession of Ravenloft Castle (under new management); Mister Moore pledged marriage to the daughter of the previous mayor of Barovia, Ireena, and they've assumed the titles Lord and Lady of the new land.  They immediately started rebuilding the valley.

The next campaign journal resumes with the characters sending envoys out of Barovia, back down into the lowlands, to determine the state of the world.

Useful Background for Upcoming Journals
The big event that characterized the early days of Gothic Greyhawk was when the group released 13,000 hungry dead out of Death Mountain (the LOTFP adventure Death Frost Doom); the tide of zombies and ghouls swept into the river valley, overrunning the human settlements of Mittleberg and Poignard (see map here).  The player characters made a deal with the ancient vampire, Cyris Maximus, to avoid the horde, and they ended up going the opposite direction, deeper into the Joten Mountains.  Along the way they had encounters with a powerful witch, lycanthropes, and the dwarven citadel of Stonegate.

Another element that should be remembered as the story resumes is the conflict between the lowland Oeridians and the Flannish hill folk.  In the early days of the campaign, the lord of Mittleberg was supporting the Church in its effort to send missionaries into the high country to preach to the hill folk; when the latest missionary was murdered by the hill shamans, plans were drawn up for a spring campaign to march an army into the hills and sack the vales where the druidic shamans held sway.  The folk of Mittleberg were swept away by the zombie horde before this campaign ever happened.

The folk of the hills, in their high mountain vales, persisted.

Cast of Characters
Here's the crew - although I need to confirm the current levels are accurate.  Since the campaign started, we’ve had 16 character deaths.

Player Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-7: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-5: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-6: Mike
Shy, a Fighter-6:  JR
Leonidas the Paladin-5:  Nogal
Digit, the Elf Thief-7:  Z
Konstantine, Magic User-5: Smitty

Henchmen:Ireena, a Fighter - 5
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-5
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-5
Donavich, Cleric-4
Boris, Druid-3
Vlad the Inhaler, Magic User-1