The Will of the Dice

The dice know all, see all.

I have a decent commute every morning - I'm on the road about 30-40 minutes each morning getting to the office - and I've gotten into the habit of listening to podcasts.  My two favorites are Hardcore History and the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast, but I also listen to some fantasy sports, some Cthulhu gaming stuff (yogsothoth.com), and an AD&D podcast - Roll for Initiative.

Listening to a recent Roll for Initiative podcast, a realization took hold - I no longer play the game like those guys do.  Somehow the topic of fudging dice came up, and they were talking about the importance of making their monster hit when they wanted it to hit, or making a monster auto-miss if they didn't want to kill someone - basically changing the results any time the dice disagreed with what the DM wanted to happen.  I know on a previous show I got all fired up when they were talking about moving encounters around to make sure the group ran into the encounter the DM wanted them to meet (a bit of Illusionism).

I used to DM in this style  - I did a lot of event or scene-based games and always guided the action to a degree.  In fact, lots of game systems and game mastering styles require the DM to have a strong hand in laying down the story - super hero games and modern genres pretty much necessitate this style.

However, one of my recurring talking points on the blog is the sense of discovery the DM gets by allowing the game to unfold through a healthy amount of randomization.  Over on Mule Abides, I read the phrase "oracular power of the dice" and that's really a fitting phrase, isn't it?  The oracles from antiquity prophesied the future, but there was a fair amount of interpretation that needed to happen to the pronouncements.  Any time the DM is randomizing elements of the game and incorporating new things on the fly, they are acting as improviser and oracle and fellow explorer.

So here's how this ties back to the Strahd post from yesterday.  Strahd was a random encounter!  The group was making their way to the study, looking for the Tome of Strahd, and the random encounters in Ravenloft are set up so that one of the results is Strahd himself.  When that came up on the dice, it certainly sent things in another direction.  Strahd was aware of the PC's quest and decided to meet them in the study.  He'd been chastising them in his nightly visits for not approaching him and having a "civilized" conversation face-to-face, so he would force it upon them.  There he waited in the sitting room before the roaring hearth, leafing through the Tome of Strahd.  He had no idea he was about to be nuked!

Things would have turned out differently under the management of 1990's Beedo.  I might have fudged the Strahd random encounter, or had him automatically make the saving throw, and definitely would have had it be a fake-Strahd decoy.  Getting randomly gacked by a spell on a scroll just wouldn't have fit my sense of drama.

These days, I'm finding there's a lot to be said for never fudging the dice, never swapping out encounters or otherwise manipulating things behind the screen.  The players can always tell; making up dice results affects the game's integrity.  Letting the dice fall avoids any perception of favoritism.  The game develops in unexpected ways, pushing me to improvise and incorporate unforeseen elements.  Sure, characters may die for unplanned reasons - random reasons - but it's old school, we expect a bit of that, and the victories the players enjoy are sweeter because they know I'm not pulling punches.  For my own enjoyment, there's this sense that I'm discovering what's going to happen at the same time as the players, and that's pretty dang cool.  It's not all laid out ahead of time and carefully plotted.  Trust in the wisdom of the dice, eh?

There's plenty of advice on the other side - most DMing manuals have a blurb right near Rule Zero that says something like, "Don't let random dice results ruin your game..."  I guess my definition of 'ruin' has changed - I'm having a hard time seeing a random result ruin anything.

Since I brought up the podcasts - anyone have their favorites?  Let me know why I should add your recommendation to my iTunes queue!

Die, Strahd, Die!

My group killed Strahd last night - destroyed him, literally.  I'll get around to a game report this week, but the story of how he died is worth discussing on its own merits.

Discouraged by getting the snot kicked out of them last week, they dug deep and spent half the session pooling resources and making battle plans - very strategic, fun stuff.  Planning is fun.  Digging through the inventory meant reviewing every spell scroll for any advantage.  It went kind of like this:

"On this one, we have Dispel magic, Sticks to Snakes, Speak with Animals, Continual Light, Dispel Evil…"

Stop.  "What did you just say?  Dispel Evil?  Doesn't that destroy undead?"

Frantic flipping of pages.  Boo yah - they had a nuclear option.  And that's what happened - wandering the castle looking for Strahd's study, they found the vampire waiting for them in his sitting room.  He charmed Forlorn to hand over the Book of Unspeakable Shame, and while the group focused on wrestling Forlorn, Mordercai popped off the Dispel Evil scroll and employed the WIN button.

Strahd burst into flames and quickly reduced to a pile of ash.

Okay, okay - I was suddenly presented with all sorts of questions.  Was that really Strahd?  Is the story of the vampire bigger than the game - meaning he can only be destroyed dramatically and theatrically, ideally after fighting the way to the tomb and staking him through the heart?  You can't kill my villain like that!

Boba Fett fell into a worm's mouth and Darth Maul got cut in half - that's all I'm saying.  Villains frequently die like chumps.

The group had also been sitting on a scroll with a Commune spell, and figured this was a good time to reach out to the higher powers - "Did we really just destroy the vampire, Strahd?"  And the universe answered:  YES.

So - here's the question to readers, and it goes right to the heart of your DMing style - would you have done something to make Strahd immune to certain high level spells (Raise Dead wouldn't slay him, or Dispel Evil wouldn't destroy him)?  If this happened to you, would you have made it a double or replica or decoy Strahd to draw things out?

I'm really comfortable with how it turned out.  I try to avoid Illusionism and fudging dice and the railroad, and this was a good plan, executed well.  Strahd may be a genius, but in his arrogance, he failed to perceive the 4th-5th level guys as a threat, he lost initiative, and he failed a save.  BOOM.  Dead boss villain.  The group erupted in cheers when they learned the pile of smoking ashes was indeed the great vampire.  One of the guys said it was the coolest game moment in 30 years of D&D.  This is an excerpt of some emails the players passed back and forth late last night:

Wow, I'm still blown away, I can't believe it! Good job everyone. That was totally Awesome!


It really didn't sink in until the drive home.  I'm as blown away as Strad.  Z- had a good idea on the ride - we should gather up his ashes to put in the trophy room at our Tower.


Great idea:)


-

Gothic Greyhawk - Game 34 - Ravenloft!

Cast of Characters:

Mordecai, a Cleric-5: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-4: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-5: Mike
Soap the Wizard, Magic User-4:  Nogal
Barzai, a Cleric-4:  Ben
Shy, a Fighter-4:  JR
Arden, an Elf-1:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-4
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Starkweather, a Thief-4
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-4
Serge, a Fighter-4

=========================================
AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
=========================================

"Hey you in the mansion", called the vampire from beyond the gate.  "I know you can hear me, I can smell you cowering in fear behind the barred door.  That was both brave and foolish, spurning the hospitality of my castle.  You have something that I want - something beyond just getting Ireena.  I wanted to be able to talk to you about it, in a civilized way, but now you've holed yourselves up in that house and won't invite me in.  I expect you to be back in my castle tomorrow, ready for our visit - the carriages will be waiting for you.  Otherwise, I'll return tomorrow night and fireball this place...  The flight down from the castle is tiring - I must now go and feed on the peasants.  And it's all your fault".

That's how we opened last week's game of Gothic Greyhawk (and this report will catch us up to the present - next game is tomorrow night).  The characters spent the rest of the night resting and reflecting on the vampire's words, and much time was spent in the morning debating potential courses of action.  Should they fortify the mansion and spend an extra day making preparations?  Should they take the carriage rides the vampire offered and try and survive in the mansion?  Ultimately, a vote was held, and the group settled on spending an additional night in the town so they could have two days of the cleric preparing continual light objects for their foray into the murky crypts beneath the castle.  On the second day, they would set out at the crack of dawn, and finish the vampire off in a single day.  Best laid plans.

So they spent the first day healing, recovering spells, reading books and testing magic items.  Arden has been toting around a wand, presumably a wand of fireballs, but he doesn't know the command word.  So he spends all his free time pointing it somewhere safe and throwing out random command words.  "Flame on.  Inferno.  Blammo.  Burn.  Burnorama.  Burnomatic.  Burn baby burn!  Cinder.  Cinderama!"  And so on.  No luck so far.  And Forlorn has finally decided to start reading the Book of Unspeakable Shame they've been carrying around, a grimoire liberated from Death Mountain that describes all the vile practices of the Death Cult - the necromancy, necrophilia, necrophagy, and other fine points of Orcus worship.  I guess there's just something about that fresh Barovian mountain air that inspired him to start such an interesting page turner.

They did learn a valuable lesson in all this - the Lord of Barovia doesn't lie.  When he says, "If you're not in my castle tomorrow night, I'm going down there to fireball your mother-frackin' house", you can bet the mother-frackin' house is getting torched.

Across the dirt lane from the front of the mansion were some village houses - the edge of the town.  Shortly after nightfall, Soap - on watch - noticed something streak towards them from one of the rooftops - like a bright star cluster shot from a roman candle.  It kept getting bigger.  "Incoming!"

The front of the mansion exploded into flame, spewing fiery debris everywhere and doing 10 points of damage per character (most of them had ditched behind furniture and overturned tables, reducing the damage) and the fireball was really aimed at destroying the second floor and burning down the mansion, anyway.  Arden was unconscious, and while they tended to him (slipping him the wood, duh huh, duh huh), others cleared a path through the wreckage so the party could escape out the back door.

As they watched the house burn from the backyard, they heard the wrought iron gate get wrenched out of the ground (tossed over the house by immense strength) and something large and bulky began smashing it's way through the burning ruin.  Whatever it was, it kept coming, smashing supports and timbers to expedite the collapse of the house, carrying burning sections of the house on its shoulders.

When it finally smashed through the back wall, showering the group with cinders and shards of wood, they saw a 16' tall misshapen thing made of earth and rock, wielding a burning timber.  An earth elemental!

The group quickly fell back from the elemental, forming a battle line with the fighters moving forward.

You might think a 16HD earth elemental is too much for a group of 4th and 5th level characters, but when the group is rested and has all their spells, they're formidable.  The casters unloaded their magic missiles (the clerics supported via Holy Chant and Bless - so good!) and the elemental only lasted a few rounds - just long enough to send Zeke sprawling out of the fight, badly injured.  3d8 per hit plus burning will leave a mark.

Unbeknownst to the players, Strahd had been moving half speed around the mansion in the dark, controlling the elemental, and with the destruction of his conjuration, he launched into the second part of his attack - the players heard the command words of a spell off to their left in the trees, and then Barzai the cleric was suddenly gone!  Arden, with keen elven sight, saw a mouse scurry into the scrub from where Barzai used to be standing, and they feared a polymorph spell was used on him - but Strahd was practically in their face, and the group wheeled to the left, quickly lighting torches from the burning remains of the mansion and moving into the trees to engage the vampire before he could keep casting.

Their torchlight revealed the vampire just within the tree line, putting the final touches on yet another spell.  The vampire launched skyward, his shape melting and sprouting wings as he jumped into the air.  The fighters braced for some new sorcerous attack, but quickly lost the vampire in the night sky

Everyone had forgotten about Barzai.  In the dark field beyond their vision, there was the piercing cry of a bird of prey on the attack (some kind of large owl) but no new attack came from the vampire.  Later, the Barzai-mouse couldn't be found.

They gathered themselves together and went to find a new shelter in the village - there was no dearth of empty, unoccupied dwellings from which to pick.  However, they finally chose to go to the village chapel and seek sanctuary with Father Danovich.  "Our friend Barzai has been lost to us, Father Danovich", began the charismatic Mordecai.  "It's time you became a man of action, and went with us to fight the vampire - we can't do it with a single cleric.  If we don't team up and act now, there won't be a village to protect".

I like it - not even a moment of silence for poor fallen Barzai - they immediately put out the "Help Wanted" sign and went right into recruitment.  We ended there for the night.

Epilogue / Cut Scene:
In one of the highest towers of the castle, the vampire held the terrified cleric Barzai dangling off the ground, pinning his neck to the wall.  "Who has it?  Who has the [X]?  Stare into my eyes and tell me what I want to know."  Hypnotized, the cleric told the vampire all the details about what he was after.  A moment later, Barzai's corpse, drained of life energy, was tossed casually aside.  The vampire stepped out into the night air and looked down through the mist at the village, a thousand feet below.  "Soon will my plans come to fruition".

This scene was presented in game, but much like here, I omitted the identity of Strahd's target so as not to reveal anything to the players they shouldn't know yet...

I ran plenty of White Wolf stuff in the 90's, and loved the emphasis on putting cut scenes and foreshadowing into my sessions… one of the flaws in a straight 2nd person narration is that any villains the DM creates often don't get enough face-time with the PCs to develop a relationship.  How can you really hate someone if you only see them in the boss fight and listen to their crappy monologue right before they die?  The sense of achievement when finally defeating them is constrained.

Ravenloft is nice from the perspective that the villain naturally recurs due to vampiric resilience and tricks.  Giving the players an opportunity to see what's happening in 'Strahd's world' only deepens the hate they're feeling towards him.

-

Gothic Greyhawk Game 33 - Ravenloft!

Cast of Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-5: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-4: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-5: Mike
Soap the Wizard, Magic User-4:  Nogal
Barzai, a Cleric-4:  Ben
Shy, a Fighter-4:  JR
Arden, an Elf-1:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-4
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Starkweather, a Thief-4
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-4
Serge, a Fighter-4

=========================================
AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
=========================================

The previous game ended shortly after the group arrived at Castle Ravenloft, meeting a mannequin of the vampire lord and then battling a bunch of Strahd zombies.  We resumed.

The castle is a sprawling Gothic structure with intricate spiral staircases and towers, and it's very easy to change levels within the structure - finding the right stairs hidden in a  niche or down a side passage seems to be a main way to get around.  Down a secret hall, they took such a winding stair up and entered a dusty audience chamber.  Track marks in the dust led to a locked side door, and while the thief searched the door and started getting his tools ready to pick the lock, a pair of monsters climbed a far set of stairs.  They looked like squat armadillos with bushy antennae.

Rust monsters.

Some monsters evoke an inordinate amount of fear and terror.  I mean, rust monsters don't even do damage, and here is a group of 40 year olds squealing like frightened pigs and calling me "cheesy" for sending rust monsters after them.  (I'm sure Strahd has these pet rust monsters wandering the castle specifically to strip would-be invaders of some arms and armor).  Anyway, the rust monsters charged, and Kobra's armor was struck - his +1 plate mail was drained of magic, and was ready to rust next turn.  But one of the magic users webbed the rust monsters to the ground, and the group was able to step back and kill them easily at range.

The track marks they were following in the dust led to a room inhabited by a human - a villager chained to a desk who was laboring as the vampire's accountant.  He clutched a rope hanging through a hole in the ceiling, which he threatened would ring a gong that would bring a horde of monsters if the players threatened him.  At the same time, he wanted to help them (as long as he could maintain some deniability) since he only agreed to do the monster's accounting to avoid being eaten.  But all his chips were on Strahd.  "You're not the first group that's come to the castle looking to put a stake in the Lord".

They talked for a while, and the players got another perspective on the return of the vampire, the disappearance of so many villagers, and how the accountant came to be a servant.  He ended up drawing for the group a basic map on how to get into the crypts and find the tomb of Strahd, with the caveat that he had no idea what kind of traps or guardians could be on the way.

"No problem, it's a straight shot to the crypt", they said.  "But for now, we'll head out the castle front door, walk back down to the village, stay there in safety overnight, and come back tomorrow to finish off the vampire".

"Um, you can't leave the castle.  The red dragons will eat you first".

What?

Yes, so the players learned that the huge stone dragons that guarded the entry chamber would animate into ferocious man-eating red dragons if they tried to leave.  Slight change of plans.  "We're going over the wall", said Mister Moore.  "Get ropes".

They left the accountant to his work, who wished them well: "Go team-vampire-slayers, go", as they left.

They did in fact rappel down the walls of the keep into the courtyard, bypassing the guardian red dragon statues.  Now they were faced with clearing the outer walls by dealing with the raised draw bridge, dropped portcullis, and a series of heavy (magical) locks on the drawbridge mechanisms.  They ended up burning a memorized knock spell (Soap) and digging for a knock spell scroll (Mister Moore) to get the draw bridge mechanisms unlocked and lowered.  Then there was the matter of the green slime, the loose boards on the draw bridge over the 1,000' drop, the howling winds beyond the walls… Strahd really didn't want people leaving.

By the time they were descending the mountain, the sky was gloomy and daylight was waning.  When they came to the castle earlier that day, it was at breakneck speed riding as passengers in Strahd's enchanted carriages.  How long would it take to walk down the switchback mountain trails?

It took too long - it was well past dark when they made it to the halfway point, a major stone bridge across a gushing mountain stream.  The gypsy camp wasn't far, but beasts were in the woods, pacing them, and the howls of wolves were everywhere.

When they made it to the gypsies, they learned there would be no sanctuary there.  "We survive because we are on neutral terms with the Lord of the Castle", pointed out one of the gypsy leaders.  "You can camp with us, share our fires and food, but should the master come from you, we won't protect you".  The camp wasn't very defensible, so they decided to walk the rest of the way back to town (another hour and a half).

A bad night became worse when a ragged female thing dropped from an overhanging tree and savaged the characters, claws, fangs and manic undead strength - one of Strahd's many vampire spawn.  "So hungry, so cold… hold me." it cried.  The thing connected with Starkweather and the group looked on in horror as he lost two life energy levels to level drain, and then they unloaded on it with magic missiles and Ghostcutter (Shy's sword against the undead).  The vampire was quickly dissipated, but they watched as it reformed as mist and flitted across the ground, back towards the safety of its lair.  They had the choice of pursuing the fleeing mist across foggy countryside in the dark, or limping to the "safety" of the village.  They went for the village.

This session ended with the group realizing that leaving the castle before each nightfall would be resource intensive - especially if the night time countryside is crawling with wolves and vampire spawn.  "It's going to wear us down".

Whew - almost caught up!  I'm still one session behind (from last week), hope to get that one done in the next day or so before we play Sunday.

Fear in a handful of pages...

Chances are you've already seen this collection promoted on another site, but if not - go ahead and get 13 Flavors of Fear, a free download that contains over a dozen campaign setting ideas for a Weird fiction game (a couple of download options are in the RPG net post).  Get it, read it, be inspired.  Jack and Jeremy did an awesome job.

I already want to create a mash-up of a number of sub settings in a macro-setting.  One of my ideas for the future is to do a weird horror/Rome type setting like Cthulhu Invictus (or just convert Invictus to D&D).  I'd borrow heavily from the Weird Rome here in 13 Flavors of Fear, and then build out a few borderlands areas where the Weird is encountered more directly.

On the northern frontier - perhaps border encampments on the Rhine in the dark woods of Germania, or in northern Brittania along Hadrian's Wall - you could have something like 'The Cold Northern Wind'.  Rome is ideal for the contrast of civilization to the dangerous lands beyond the rule of law where things go bump in the night.

"Behind the Façade of the Seaside Town" could be placed anywhere along the Italian coast or any number of islands in the Mediterranean - Mare Internum Nostrum.  Just why did the ancient Phoenicians conquer sea travel so well?

Legionaries mustering out as farmers to the provinces, and wealthy landowners creating their massive plantations (latifundia), would encounter plenty of indigenous people - as would anyone in a remote trade town or seat of government in the wilds of Roman Europe - providing opportunities for Weird scenarios like 'Pilgrims in a Strange Land' or 'Pagan Outskirts'.

I'm going to file this in the Junkyard so I return to it for brainstorming and development - I even know what I'd call the setting - Terra Incognita.  I love it!

Ape Men of the Black City

The happiest White Ape

I started to put my notes together for the Ape Men of the Black City, and realized - there's probably a line being crossed in my thinking, and I wanted to get some reader feedback on what would fly in their own games.  (And remember, I game with kids, so there's going to be some things in the Black City manuscript that wouldn't be fully expressed if one of the kids is playing - I don't have the luxury of running 100% adult content these days…)

In the Hippodrome section of the city, there is the crumbling ruins of an ancient coliseum that's been inhabited by different troops of White Apes that live near the surface.  The apes live near the frozen surface, but hunt and gather food down in the fecund warrens of level 2.

Here's the thing - the literary references to white apes involve seedy ape-human interbreeding.  There's the Tarzan story about the lost city of Opar that has ape-human inbreeding (such that all the men of the city are misshapen ape hybrids).  The other famous tale I can think of is Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family, by Lovecraft.  Your momma was an ape!  Or in Arthur's case, great grandmother.  Ack, I must now go immolate myself.

So how to use these ideas in the Black City?  The ape men will be related to humans; both races having been genetically tinkered by the city founders  in the distant past.  I'm thinking the ape men were humans that were devolved by Grey bio-engineering to create a more durable, physical slave race for the aliens, and furred to withstand the climate.  Descendants have continued to inhabit the ruins and some of the nearby mountains and glaciers. (I'm sure there will be a  'devolution tank' in the city like the sensory deprivation tank in the movie Altered States, that can devolve a normal person into a White Ape hominid).

The dictates of good taste would leave things there.  But there will be some unscrupulous (human) raiders that have beaten down some of the tribes, taken 'ape wives' and fathered hybrid children in the ruins.  There's a dark exploitation theme regarding more sophisticated cultures taking advantage of the unsophisticated one that still plays out today in the third world - in this case, it's cross-species.  Most gamers "tolerate" half-orcs because orcs are monsters and "do that kind of stuff".  Orcs are just born bad.  And some folks like to play bad-dark-angsty anti-heroes - my daddy was an orc.  Even Lovecraft's deep one hybrids are inflicted on humanity by monsters.  It's awful, but humans are the victims.  But what about the callous, uncaring crew of some adventuring rivals being the abusers?  It's about looking into the mirror and realizing the monsters are us.

I'll see where the comments go - there's certainly a literary precedence for cross-species relations in horror.  White Apes and White Ape hybrids are race-class choices in Realms of Crawling Chaos, one of the supplements I'm using for inspiration.  Hybrids had to come from somewhere...  It lets me put some ugly secrets into Trade Town that some of the other adventuring groups would kill to keep secret.

I wonder what my players would do, if they discovered another crew of adventurers had done "bad things" to a bunch of simple primitives?   Not exactly sure, but I think it would involve axes and swords and a heap of frontier justice.

Note:  A radically different approach would be something like the Great White Ape of Mars and make these guys massive, carnivorous and ultra-violent, but so many things in the Black City already want to eat you, and it seems more interesting to make the White Apes into a bunch of peace-loving hippy primitive hominids.

Firmly Grasp Your Staff, Brave Cleric

Or… how my group's humor operates on the level of an 8th grader

In classic D&D, Moldvay BX, the staff of healing is the best early magic item in the game, able to bestow a cure light wounds to each person once per day - no charges, no bookkeeping, it just keeps on working.  The thing is money.  In a party of characters and retainers, that could be a dozen cures a day!

But let's not overlook the other benefit - touching everyone in the group with the magic staff each day provides an endless supply of dick jokes.

Let's see, it started with simple snickers and giggles months ago whenever the cleric said things like this:

"I will touch him with my staff."
"Let me whip out the staff and lay it on you."

After 8-10 months of having the staff of healing around, the dick jokes never seem to get old to the players.

I brandish the staff in my hand...
Slip him the wood, Brother...
...Come, rub your hands on my magic staff and be healed.
I will bestow the gift of the wood...
Let me whip out my staff and take care of that for you…
Touched again with the magic wood...
Magic wood to the rescue...

They took it to a new high (low?) the other night with these choice innuendoes:

Phat Kobra the dwarf held off getting healed until they were turning in for the night, then he finally said:

"Make sure you give me the magic staff before bed, I want to wake up healed and refreshed."  Snickers all around.

Then, after the cleric healed himself with the staff:

"You can do it to yourself?"

"Oh yes, when it comes to working the staff, sometime it's best just to take it into your own hands.  I slide my hands on the staff and it works just as well on me as it does on you."

The cleric player was laughing the whole time he said that one.  Yep, playing D&D with 40 year olds, with the humor of a bunch of 13 year olds.  Unfortunately, pretty soon the (actual) 9 year olds at the table are going to figure out what all the 'staff of healing' laughter has really been about.

I don't look forward to the day the party gets a Rod of Lordly Might.