Olde Worlde - my first encounter in my first game as referee

This is a cross-post from my "official" game blog for my online play-by-post S&W game. I was really nervous about this first encounter, having up until now only been a player. Would it be too hard for the players?  Too easy?  Would I totally botch up the flow of things?  Would my players call me a nOOb?  Well, here's what happened.

First off, let my just squee about how cool it is to have Matt "Mythmere" Finch joining in!  Like I said joking with my husband, "Oh yeah..he's JUST the guy who wrote the rulebook I'm using. Uh-huh..No pressure, nope. None at all. Nosireebob!" 

So.how do you insert a new PC into a game in-progress?  Easy!  He was there all along, but none of the nine-dozen other folks in the adventure-procession really noticed.

Anyhoo, whilst bashing down the door to a randomly treasure-seeded room, our brave adventurers called down a posse of three gnolls on themselves. Again I used the random-encounter chart to generate a wandering threat in the hallways, but to be honest I was kind of worried I had served up more than the players could chew. Gnolls are dang hard to hit, much less to wound and kill. And they're deadly. I should know. In a solo outdoor adventure last winter I lost my 3rd level elven PC and six hirelings to a patorl of gnolls.  This was in spite of being armed with magic and lots of longbows.

I had no idea that Charm Person could be so much fun. Good thinking on behalf of Paraphin (Mythmere's Magic User character).  If for whatever reason the gnoll had passed a Saving Throw, it could have been bad for the fighters up in the middle of the scrum.

So..what do you do with a pet like that?  Well, you ask it to be your native guide as you tour the rest of the dungeon, that's what. To see how the gnoll reacted to the idea, I consulted the monster "Hostile/Friendly Reaction Table" from the Holmes Basic D&D book.  I gave the charmed "person" a +6, and as it turned out, he was "enthusiastic - volunteers help".  Then he had to convince his two gnoll comrades of the validity of Paraphin's idea. Being that they are of the low-intelligence follow-the-leader sort, I rolled for them on the table, but with disadvantages. One got -2 simply for being an unreasonable brute, and the other a -6 for having been shot at by the archer. The former turned out to be 'friendly' while the latter turned and bit the elf.

The dwarf Brag Ironballz (gotta love that name) jumped in and defended Chu-toi (gotta love that name too) and bravely killed the ever-lovin' bejimmies out of the gnoll.  The DM gleefully awaits the Save-or-barf results.

So now comes the time to dole out XP. With so many players to divvy up experience points, I may have to up the danger level just a bit. I suppose they won't want to be low-level forever. But for what it all is worth, I'm really enjoying running a game and surviving my first encounter.

In other slightly-related news, I just ordered and received a small Chessex wet-erase game mat with 1" squares on one side and hexes on the other. If I ever hit my stride as a PbP referee, I'm wanting to run something face-to-face in realtime. I'd like to be ready for that by ReaperCon at the end of May.

Swords & Wizardry Play-by-Post - already in progress, actually

I know I announced a while back that I was maybe going to gather up a play-by-post RPG using Swords & Wizardry Core Rules on the Reaper Miniatures forum.

Well.... following a hectic end-of-December/start-of-January, I jumped right in with both feet and started the game...and neglected my blog as usual. Sorry 'bout that, folks.

Finding five players willing to commit to my regular posting schedule was amazingly pretty easy. They all did their homework, downloaded the rules, got themselves familiar with character generation and how the game plays, and we were off and running in record time (compared to other PbP games I've seen).

The game-gathering topic may be seen here. >>  Spike's Olde Worlde OOC (out of character)

Almost as soon as people began signing up, I figured I'd best get going on a dungeon and quickly. I'm what you might call a digital-junkie in a pen-and-paper world when it comes to old-school gaming, so I went to the Cartographer's Guild forum and found a great topic on mapmaking here >> Creating an old-school map in GIMP  For those of you not familiar with GIMP, it does many of the same basic functions as Photoshop...except emptying your bank account.  As for the tutorial, the instructions for GIMP translate seamlessly to Photoshop.  While making my own map, I improved upon a few processes and will post my own tutorial here at a later time.

Next came the stocking of the dungeon. This was really a challenge for me since I've never even ran a game before, much less created an adventure. The S&W book has some guidelines, but in the end I referred to my copy of Holmes Basic for help with appropriate challenge levels, how many rooms to leave empty, and how to handle the monsters that inevitably wander the corridors.

Once that was done, I began making use of Chgowiz's One-Page Dungeon Template in keeping track of what is where. This download was made for MS Word but works just fine in OpenOffice.  As you can see, I'm a real fan of freeware.

I decided that it would be good to put all my game information in a single place seperate from the Reaper forum so that the players could be just a click or two away from their character sheets, game information such as marching order, passage of time, lists of looted treasure and such. For that purpose I made a new blog here >> Oldeworlde Chronicles.  It's still a work-in-progress as I've not finished formatting character sheets and may yet put in some more fluff about the setting.

And now for the fun part...the actual playing of the game!

Like I promised, this game is whimsy-loaded and not meant to be taken terribly seriously. The story begins with all the characters conveniently railroaded into a tavern called The Epicurean Orc, at which they learn about Lord Arbitrary's reward of 16,353 gold pieces to have his dungeon made monster-free. And to make things even more convenient, there is a ready gang of day-labourers assembled at the tavern looking to hire on and help the party. These fine folks were lovingly though randomly picked from 140 Henchmen for Hire, by Garish (a.k.a. Steve Page). 

Once the players picked their hirelings, I let the players take control of their own particular followers as far as actions and dialogue are concerned. Eventually when PCs start gaining experience (both in XP and in gameplay experience) I will let them pick a favoured follower who will probably be given an extra share of the party's XP in order to advance quicker and be better prepared to become the player's next PC should the player's current PC become incapactiated or worse yet "teh dead".

If you want to follow along, the in-game topic is here >> Spike's Olde Worlde RPG

The cast of characters (in a metaphorical nutshell) are:

Solace- a very devout human female cleric, who would seem to be the voice of sense and reason of the party.

Kane- a sharply-dressed human rogue with shifty eyes and a taste for adventure, even if it means having to go slumming in orc-operated drinking establishments.

Taryn, human fighter who has brought his father's longsword out of retirement in hopes of finding fame, glory and gold...because he, like everybody else, didn't come there for the food.

Chu-toi- elven elf (since elf is also a class) archer and mage who has discovered that the cheese at the Epicurean Orc can probably double as "improvised weapon"

Brag Ironballz- dwarven warrior with some amazing abilities...except Charisma....but who really needs Charisma anyway. Just look at Steve Buscemi!

Jonah Redshirt- not a hero, nor really much of an antihero..but I can guarantee you that if this was a Disney cartoon, he'd have narrow eyes and a sinister moustache in addition to his one arm and fat pockets. He's what you might call a meatshield-broker.

Lord Arbitrary- Actually nobody knows much about him..not even the game referee. It's rumoured that he once single-handedly defeated the dread gazebo.

Matilda- human serving wench, who is single, likes kittens, long walks in the evening, and men who aren't afraid to cry.

Spike-  female orc bartender...but you already knew that, didn't you.


"We now join our regularly scheduled RPG already in progress"

It would seem the players just miiiight be about to encounter something as they begin exploring corridors.  Thusfar all they've found is Lord Arbitrary's trash-dump, a little bit of buried treasure, and some mundane rats.  Let's see what's behind Door Number One!

The Whimsy Factor

Preface - Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Recently I got to take part in yet another PbP RPG implosion. This time it was a 3.5 game refereed by a self-proclaimed novice, for which a small amount of the blame may be entitled, but the more I think about it, the game in general was lacking.

The ref is one of those guys who prepares for everything. Mind you I'm not saying that preparation is bad, but it is possible to take it too far and in the process ignore the players' needs to feel as though they are still in control of their own destinies. Furthermore, it is entirely possible to turn a fun game into too much work for both the players and the referee and spoil the flow of the adventure with the nit-picking of details.

Getting to the point, I have a few people who want in on some retro style PbP roleplaying, and I want to have a go at refereeing. I may very well fall flat on my face, or lose the players' interest, or a little bit of both, but I digress. Some of the guys who played in that ill-fated game with me expressed their own opinions of why the game came undone and it seems that for most of us, it was the encounter-to-encounter pace, the lack of opportunity for players to be spontaneous for being "still in combat rounds" and the general feel of being run through the gauntlet for the sole reason of letting the referee see how quickly he can kill the party.  While it is fairly well known that Challenge Ratings are not an integral part of old-style RPGing, there is such a thing as being the "killer GM".  There should be a balance between the real risk of losing a character and the players feeling as though they've been thrust into an unescapable encounter that they can neither fight nor flee from. Most of the  players also seemed to be quickly put off by all the bickering back and forth about various abilities and actions and just how or in what order things were to be done. And not one single player was happy with the referee's insisting that the players all use an online dice roller "for record-keeping purposes". The entire flow of the game was then at the mercy of a site that was often experiencing downtime, and when it was in working order seemed to have randomness issues.  I would provide an example for you right now, but as luck would have it, InvisibleCastle is once again 505. 

So, back on topic, a few of the players and I were chatting about retro-gaming and I kind of let them twist my arm a bit. One of the guys said he wanted something less serious and one of the girls said she just wanted to have some fun and maybe get the chance to do something with the really cool character she had made.  It seems people want from gaming exactly what I want from gaming, and that is to above all have an enjoyable experience, be part of a story, and not feel committed to a pile of books, rules, and books about game settings that have their fantasy environment laid out down to the very last paving stone.

What we all want..is whimsy.

Before I go any further, if you are one of those uptight grognards who believe everybody should play old-school exactly the way Gygax did, you may with to click through to another blog. This might hurt.

My plan is to start up with a simple subterranean encounter for the players. It'll be like a training exercise in which they can learn their capabilities and how the game works while still having a good chance to escape or seek healing if things go badly..which they still can.  That in and of itself isn't so unorthadox, but I am seriously considering an option which will likely have folks like Red Priest coming round to my house to revoke my OSR Secret Decoder Ring.  I want to give the training exercise more of a short-term video game feel by allowing players who are killed to quickly return to the action and for new players to jump right in.  This will be accomplished by reincarnation.  Since the older games allow players to take along hirelings, there will be extra ready-made slots in the adventure party awaiting their chances to become primary player-characters as needed. I recall an article in one of the OSR zeens or blogs calling this the entourrage philosophy or somesuch, but it seems a good way to give the players a sort of safety-net of lesser-developed characters to fall back on rather than have to start completely from scratch.

This will also be a trial period for me. Not only do I get in some real-life practice in refereeing, but I get the chance to gauge the collective attitude of the players and see what style of adventuring they are suited for. They may very well decide they like a more hack-and-slay sort of game, or they might see the combat as nothing more than an interruption to inter-character theatre. And knowing these players, it might also turn into an episode of Three Stooges or Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

I'm also completly open-minded to working with players who want to play a character type that is not in the book. The most important sentence in the book I will be using is "Imagine the hell out of it",and that is the main rule I plan to abide by. A player should feel at least some connection to their new character from the beginning.  I'm also willing to hear out any players' requests for gear or spells that are not in the book.  Why should the referee get to be the only one doing the imagifications.

Hopefully, once the game roster has settled down to a core of dependable players who are having fun and who have learned the ropes and have survived past the "glass cannon" levels, I will graduate the game into the "real" world where dead is dead, the wrong word to the wrong NPC can get you thrown in the geol, and in the woods you better beware because "dragons happen".

This game will hopefully begin in January. I'll post again in the nearer future once I post up a game-gathering topic on the Reaper forum where I will run the game.

As for the 4e game I had joined, it is still in progress, but the GM's computer crashed and took with it all his game-resource files. Hopefully it will be resuming soon, as I was really starting to like it.

Descending Armor Class ....Does ANYBODY still use it?

In my ongoing education toward becoming a game master (dungeon master, referee, labyrinth lord or whichever you prefer), I've been reading my Swords & Wizardry Core Rules book from front to back to be sure I'm not confusing my recollection of the rules I am going to use with tidbits from any of the other RPG systems I've played.

Then I got to the part about Armor Class and how to use ascending and descending AC charts in combat...and felt compelled to thank my lucky stars that our group has always chosen ascending AC whenever we have been offered the choice.

Okay..a quick refresher course in old-school weirdness for those of you who are late coming to the party and can't remember back to the times before there were Feats and when Half-Orcs were only allowed to be monsters.

For some odd reason, back in the early days of The Game We All Know, it seemed like a good idea to let the lack of armour be represented by 9, and the very best magical protection to be represented by a -9.

Uh-huh... less is more.... makes sense to me.

So in the beginning when there was combat, and you were a first level Fighting Person,and you wanted to attack an orc with an AC of 6, you consulted a table and saw that you needed to roll a 13.

Then along came THACO. (That's "To Hit Armor Class 0") in the 2nd edition of The Game We All Know, and suddenly each character had their own special "to hit" number based on what type of character they were and how large their group was. Of course there were tables provided to find your THACO number. Then, when facing an orc with AC 6, all you had to do was take your THACO number and subtract the orc's AC from it to know what you had to roll. This was ..and I'm quoting here.. "speed the play of combat greatly"

Ummm.. oookay... so I subtract... unless of course the orc is armoured like a tank with AC-5...in which case I add...right? Math is haaaard. I'm just a girrrrrrl!

Then somewhere around the end of the last century, some lazy person like myself got the bright idea to flip-flop the AC so that it goes up instead of down as you add on armour, and then to give your character a "Base Attack Bonus" instead of making you consult another table. I mean seriously... if we wanted to consult charts and tables all night long, we'd be playing Bosses & Board Rooms.

Well...getting back to the here and now..and closer to my elusive point...I was reading through S&W Core Rules and came across the bit about ascending and descending...and how you can either use the table as it was intended OR if you choose to use ascending AC, a simple formula..which I will quote.

"Here’s how it’s done: each character class gains
a base “to-hit” bonus as their levels increase. Add this
bonus to your attack roll, and if the result is equal to or
greater than the opponent’s AC, the attack hits."

And somewhere, some poor schmuck is going NOW WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT!

Now I normally consider myself to be just weird enough that I can actually find the bizarre logic behind just about anything, no matter how silly..but this one has me stumped. Perhaps descending AC is legacy rules from some old mothbally tactical historical game that TSR wrote back when TSR used to write such things..or maybe somebody wanted to make the math unnecessarily complicated so that non-nerds would shrink back in fear upon encountering such esoteric arithmatic.

But far be it from me to pontificate about which method of AC numbering is "right" and which isn't. I certainly don't mean to say anybody out there needs to change if they prefer the descending method...but I am genuninely curious as to why.

____

And for what it's worth, in the two years I played 2nd edition The Game, I NEVER was able to totally wrap my head around THACO. I'd just grin stupidly and allow the DM to tell me how badly I flubbed the attack and to which corner of the room my sword flew from my hand.

You want me to run a game? Are you NUTS?

As some of you may know already, my husband has been playing various RPGs for almost as long as I've been on this Earth, and is, at least in my opinion, pretty good at it. When he's not running our group's games, we have a second referee who I will hereafter refer to as Unglef, who has taken us through some pretty imaginative homebrewed adventures of his own. Being that I have as much fun as I do playing in the styles of games that both of them like to run, I have long wanted to try my own skills behind the game screen.

About two years ago, I finally got up the courage to start an online forum play-by-post game, and was thrilled to find four eager players. The adventure was one I had played in before, and was very well composed and seemingly dummyproof. I spent about two weeks getting together player handouts (html files, actually) and drawing up maps and other stuff, and the game got off to a fabulous start... but as unluck would have it, two of my players almost immediately dropped from sight, and I didn't have the heart to spend another month wrangling replacements.

That was two years ago though..and that was third edition. Since then, I've discovered retro-RPGs and am fortunate once again to have a few face-to-face friends who work reasonably regular schedules and who are eager to get a game in at the drop of a hat.

So I'm going to give it a try again. This time I'm picking a small low-level adventure from IridiaZine, an online weekly fanzine which features content on all sorts of RPGs both current and out-of-print. The adventure is called "The Abandoned Shrine of Weyoun the Wanderer" and at first read-through looks like it will suit our group's style just fine. I'm hoping that a face-to-face session will, unlike PbP, move fluidly and keep the PCs focused.

But there's one problem... and that is ME!

The guys in my group aren't nOObs. They're not powergamers either, but they know their stuff far better than I do. They know the tables and charts by heart and NOTHING gest past those guys. So I'm doing my homework, folks. I've downloaded OpenOffice so I can make use of the numerous spreadsheet game-aides available (Thnx, Chgowiz) and am reading through S&W Core Rules, adapting encounter stats appropriately, making game notes, and crossing my fingers I don't come off looking like a complete pea-wit.

I'm giving myself two weeks.

And I promise I will blog all about it... come what may. If nothing else, you all are in for some good old fashioned low comedy.