[D&D 4E] Barbaric psychedelic et cetera in action

[Ron Edwards]

I finally got around to scanning my dungeon pages, so I can share how I did it. Remember, this was one of the two "areas" that I'd written up for the first level adventure, roughly.

The first step was merely to grab a ton of geomorphs from Dyson's site. I didn't choose them one by one. At the time, you had to download them as a block, which I printed out and cut apart.

I did know I wanted this "wrap" technique, like this.

Second was to decide how many geomorphs to use. I thought about 3x3 but settled on 4x4. I chose the sixteen squares almost randomly; I knew I wanted mainly corridors with a few tunnels, and at least a few cool-looking rooms, but just grabbed away with that in mind. I did not fit them together or decide what goes with what in any predetermined way before choosing them.

Third was to put them together. I knew I wanted neat rooms in the middle, and again, that's about it. I didn't go one by one, or lay them down carefully, or consider different arrangements. That landed me with this, and I made a bunch of copies to doodle on

Fourth was to trace the routes that were now evident in the map, and get an idea of what sorts of territories were distinct from one another, which was a bit tricky and fun in this case because of all the wrapping. Each geomorph has two connections on each side, so that meant eight north-south wraps and eight east-west ones. This is an example of the kind of route-tracing I did on several of the copies.

Once I was pretty confident about the distinct areas, I color-coded them using colored pencils. Here's the main map I used during play which shows these areas, in tandem with this one, which designates relative depth (as if the map were flat). Remember, the idea is that the center four squares are inside the 3-D matrix formed by the outer twelve, but the relative depth brings you closer to the center too. So I had to have both of these on hand.

When you look at the first map, here's the "territories" key:

BLUE = the ghoul-women's domain, using the wrapping corridors to hunt and double-back on intruders, and with the deeper cavern as their lair with their scary lover.

GREEN = the nymph's domain, with the arrows indicating points where her siren call would force saving throws in case you didn't want to go the way the arrow pointed.

ORANGE = the former quarters, temple, and easy-access control areas inhabited by minotaurs, all of whom are dead now; it includes a fungus spore-trap thing and the blood-drinking skimming monster that killed the minotaurs.

YELLOW = a "flawed" area in the vortex, basically like rot or being eaten away, inhabited by a horrible slimy ooze-monster (which was really a young black dragon, rules-wise).

RED = similarly  "flawed," basically a manifestation of a Cosmic Horror taking a brief interest in the situation, which means monsters, and notice its proximity to the deepest, most important areas.

PURPLE = the aforementioned important areas, from where you can control the vortex, and which is threatened by the monsters from the red zone - when the player-characters took an extended rest, that gave enough time for them to open a narrow breach, but not to swarm in and cause a disaster the way another such rest would permit.

As a confirmation that I understood what I was doing, I wrote this key as well, partly so I didn't forget what the available entrances and exits were during play.

I'll tell you more about how I decided what was in the place later, as it is a bit multi-dimensional, no pun intended. I didn't "build it and then stock it," exactly. I'll also post my encounters list soon.

Questions, comments?

[James_Nostack]

Questions, comments?

One of us can't count to four using those geomorphs; maybe it's me.  (Also, not that it matters, but you've topographically created a torus, so it's not like the middle square is more "central" than anywhere else, but that's okay: the effect is still pretty effin' weird.)

[James_Nostack]

Damn it, "topologically" not "topographically."  I can't think or count.

[Ron Edwards]

Oh lookit that, I went with 3x3.

Torus? Nope. You're thinking as if the map actually worked physically as represented. It doesn't. The middle geomorph is deeper "in" than the outer ones, and the relative depth also goes "in," and just keep telling yourself that, overriding your reading of the map whenever necessary. Impose the construct, don't go by perception.

And listen to this while you do it.

[Ron Edwards]

I already had some ideas about the valley and the vortex suspended over it. I knew I wanted:
A three-cornered conflict in which the player-characters can choose sides, including ghoul-women who could be negotiated with
A golden statue-man
Minotaurs in the vortex, but as corpses not encounters
Two icky "burning away" or "corroding reality" effects in the vortex (as indicated by the map's core)
Some kind of "outer" dynamic between the vortex's content and the conditions of the valley

So I opened the DM Guide to find very structured rules for encounters by level. Following these rules, I listed a bunch of first-level, five-player-characters encounters by category, which later, I revised to three-player-characters. The list comes almost right out of the DM Guide and looked something like this:

6th level Soldier (Leader) with five 1st level Skirmisher Minions
2nd level Controller + two 1st level Skirmishers
Two 1st level Soldiers + level 1 trap
3rd level Solo Brute
... and a bunch more

I upgraded or downgraded a couple of the creatures according to the rules for doing so when I liked a particular build that wasn't quite on-level.

As this list shaped up, I pulled out the Monster Manuals, which have very useful lists by level and type in the back pages. I made this list of my own so I could print it and take notes on it.

I started placing the encounters across my valley and the vortex, and deciding which creatures composed each one based on internal-fictional logic. This began a three-cornered creative process, among (i) my own aesthetic and logistic ideas about the fiction, (ii) the strategic challenge-oriented options and standards in the rules, and (iii) the aesthetic power of the book material.

Most of this was just as I'd planned, as when, looking through the creatures, I really liked the Fell Taint build for the ghoul-women, and I was pleased by re-tooling young dragons into oozy, shifting masses forming into creatures.

So sometimes it was driven by my creative needs ("So what would a globe of chaos slowly becoming a godlike golden man be like, monster-wise?") but sometimes in reverse, by inspiration from the book - the most obvious would be the Warforged Captain and Spring Nymph, which struck me as perfect right off the pages, the former as a particular "new species" that was surging across the shattered/dimensional lands, and the latter as a blast from the pre-cataclysmic past.

More often, it was a little more subtle, both book-and-idea mutually resonating. For instance, the ghoul-woman Ecstasy is the Controller, so she needs a couple of Skirmishers, and I hit upon the idea that she had a couple of the obedient Warforged critters on her side of the three-cornered conflict. Of course, I can skin any monster any way I want (just as she is a Fell Taint Thought Eater), so I chose Xivort Darters. This worked brilliantly, giving the players instant information about the  conflict's complexity, and it arose completely from my need to fill in that technical category. Similarly, Goblin Cutters are hilariously perfect as Warforged Minions. A blend of the two directions of creativity is demonstrated by the lover of the two ghoul-women in the vortex, which I hadn't planned on but took shape perfectly when I needed an Artillery + Skirmishers combination and then my own ideas drove the choices after that.

All of this was done after coloring in the vortex zones as I described above, so for the vortex at least, I was using the map as a hard constraint. The valley was a bit more vague in my mind until I finally hit upon the expedient of making the Golden Man part of the three-cornered fight, as the result of cracking the Cosmic Egg/Orb Thing. This level of creativity was also tied up with the variety of quests I was adding in at the later stage of prep, as you'll see from my notes.

Here's the document I eventually ended up with as my DM-play-notes. It did get revised along the way as I got to know the rules better through the first two sessions; for example, the red area originally featured a Vizier Devil and Maw Demons, which weren't really right for what I wanted. If you check it out, the first three pages are an overview, and its main text begins on page 4. I'd merely flip to the right page and be all set, keeping track of hit points and stuff in the white space.

Again, questions and comments are welcome.

[Ron Edwards]

For anyone reading: James and I are both talking about prep, not about improvising content into the situation during play. I'm saying that profuse prep without (much) fight-scene rehearsal leads to better and more colorful fights. Improvising content (whether there's a mill-wheel) in the moment is a very distracting topic and I don't want it to undermine the point, which has now gained its own thread, [D&D 4E sort of] Stocking dungeons and pink slime fantasy.

SOME LAST DETAILS
I forgot to mention the nymph's name: "Love Love Love."

I mentioned grind-down fights in playing T&T and Champions. It's pretty simple: when you have chances to hit and relatively predictable units of damage, when you have known defenses and banks which are reduced by damage, and when defeat vs. victory is a matter of whose banks are brought to zero first, then the outcome of the fight is mathematically nearly certain. Played straight, it's a grim bore, with its only X factor being the ability to deliver extra-effective damage with a certain probability.

GMs play tricks with this model by waiting until the players themselves have realized where they stand in a particular instance, then providing a decision-moment, like having the bad guy negotiate with them when they know that if they keep fighting, they'll probably lose (in three rounds). It's an Illusionist technique that, once you know it, is also a grim bore.

This is why the Saving Throw rules in Tunnels & Trolls are the bees' knees, and why disallowing Killing Attacks and Damage Resistance, among other mathematical limits, helped set up for my most successful Champions game. The point is to permit fights to become unpredictable for everyone, and to open them up to immediate tactics playing very important roles in what happens.

4E is very, very similar - unless you find a way to break the default, then fights are completely predictable, and unless you develop some flexibility with the breaking, then it's boring too. I should clarify that last point: an easy end-run strategy based on some key power is not what I'm talking about, because that becomes binary based on GM permission to use it in a given fight. I'm talking about much more varying, much more modular interactions among multiple abilities. Fortunately this is precisely what the mechanics of character-design in 4E are for.

Once you get a group of characters operating essentially outside the default framework, with plenty of "angles of attack," then you have a genuinely unique "what we're like" team including its own visual style, and a context for advancement/rebuilds that's considered across the characters and exponentially more fun than "pile on the combos I can throw on my turn."

Put it all inside the social, choose-sides or choose-goals context for fights which I've been talking about for a while, and now you're well on your way to generating your own unique fantasy (or comics) plotline simply by posing great challenges and problems and letting characters' decisions and actions go free-range during play. The quest rules certainly slot into play right here, operating way way beyond & better than the whole "fetch the gold hoop from the black troll for 100 XP" bullshit.

I'm saying this point of view is quite old, familiar to many of us especially those with thousands of hours in either or both of those two games.

THE LATEST SESSION
And back to play reporting!

I spent a fair amount of time photocopying the Feat lists and the relevant Powers pages, to make a packet for each player. Since each character is a hybrid class, and since I'm using all three Player's Handbooks, as well as both Primal Power and Psionic Power, that's a lot of pages. I then went through and sharpie'd out everything that wasn't eligible for each character, per packet.

If we were playing rogues and clerics, period, that bit of photocopying and striking-out would have yielded maybe four pages per packet; as it is, more like fifteen. But doing this made it really easy for people to choose their new powers and their second Feat without going insane from opening multiple books and scanning several ineligible options.

Long ago, I learned that DM/GMing time is much better spent in this distilling and orienting acts than it is on story-planning. Without it, people get tired and choose options without any creative or strategic investment, and therefore suffer from the system instead of engaging with it. This way, they spent real time doing real character level-up, and got energized for play.

My prep for the next material was a bit easier, as I had a better idea of what things like "2nd level Skirmisher" means when the dice hit the table. I also considered strategic design a bit more carefully in light of the small size of the group and their low level, meaning that more hordes of smaller creatures is better than one big tough-ass creature. This way the players can get used to trying their powers in lots of different ways and in combinations, and get good at messing with their rather flexible movement abilities, without just pot-shotting at a big target hoping to get lucky before getting ground down.

If you remember anything about the immediate setting I've been describing, you'll recall there's a monastery built into the side of the mountains at the far end of the valley. It wouldn't have anything at all to do with this real-world location, oh not at all!

Encounters are defined as either sitting there waiting to happen, especially if the characters don't do something sensible first (like do the basic meditation first before moseying into the advanced-meditation area, for instance), or dependent on the rest mechanic, as in, what happens if they do or do not take an Extended Rest at a given time.

I have decided that this whole section of play is to be hippie-dippy to the max. Their first fight in the session wasn't against some ravening enemy but against their own thoughts, just because they wandered into the "advanced study" section of the monastery. The idea is that every encounter has a Minor Quest involved with it, defined as close as I can get to an Ice Cream Koan without totally going over the line. Or as I put it during play, "I have a whole bag of Californian sitting right here!"

It's my private goal to get every player to groan and pelt me with wadded-paper all at once, sooner or later.

Remember that we're not using actual coins and gems in this game, but rather adding value as the players see fit, when they choose "monetary" treasure. In this case, I'm opening up the game to the purchase of rituals, seeing as they're in a monastery, so if they choose big-ass money treasure, they can get some great rituals to use. (For non-4E people, this means spell books and scrolls.)

They also went and prompted a dimensional breach so the observatory got swarmed with invading Warforged automata.

There were some great events and visuals during fights. My favorite was Brian's chance to shine with Asteron: he gets a free melee attack when he kills someone, gets a free melee attack when he goes to 0 hit points, and other stuff like that. It coupled very, very nicely with Zazenna's Ardent powers, which played back and forth with the above in a dramatic way. Three little Warforged automata (mechanically, Xivort Netcasters) bola'd and netted Asteron, who was on then lower level of a fairly awkward, enclosed space, then all jumped on him with their nasty "+2 damage vs. restrained" attacks, all hitting, one with a critical and another rolling maximum. He lost about 75% of his hit points in one second ... which, incidentally, took him to 0. But wham! The instant-free hit annihilated one of the foes, then Zazenna's power rejuvenated him, then on his turn he saved (getting out of the net), and did some other awful power, killing another assailant, then hopping up onto the medium-level platform in one of those scary cinematic "rises up" moves, and nailing the third, or maybe Shrakk's bolt got one of them, I don't recall. Some of that extra-action was due to one of Zazenna's powers because she was in the Wrath of the Destroyer aspect, which has something to do with an ally being bloodied. So it was total minotaur battlemind-barbarian carnage there for a bit, especially satisfying because Asteron had some really bad luck with his attacks until that point, and because it relied on interplay among all three characters' powers.

And what would a monastery be without an impending murder mystery, too? Which I finished with, when two of the monks were discovered killed ... or rather, the only thing left of them was the tops of their skulls, sliced off, lying there. (see what happens when you take an extended rest?)

[Ron Edwards]

The adventures at the monastery continue.

Oh wow and I mean just wow
After our characters' self-discovery and discovery of the imminent robotic invasion, they put some thought into what they'd like to do with themselves and the monastery. It was rather heartwarming, as they rallied the monks to claim the whole valley as their home, and not either to hunker down and let it all blow over them, or to pack up and go somewhere else. Asteron got himself onto the little monk council and is basically acting as the head guy Kzekk's deputy (Kzekk has disappeared on some mysterious mission). All of this was skill-based play, with their rolls working out what could and couldn't be negotiated or influenced among the monks.

As they began planning to find the golden man creature they'd unleashed in their earlier adventures (plus being a bit worried about how they'd influenced him/it to destroy things), the lurking murders began. They didn't know this yet, but in a (psychedelic) nutshell, the monks had all meditated to remove their fears, but unfortunately all those fears congealed in one of them, transforming him into a psychic force of lurking fear and murder.

Monster mechanics-wise, this fellow was coded by the Skulk Murderer, which is all stealth and only stealth. It has a huge Stealth skill, it can seek total concealment with the rules for ordinary concealment, it does extra damage when it strikes from concealment, and it can move a lot more freely while concealed than other characters. It's suited for sudden appearance, damage, and vanishing into the shadows. He's also accompanied by the walking corpses of the guys he's killed, two at the start, coded by Bullywug Muckers. The idea was that after each encounter, if the players chose an Extended Rest, he'd kill again elsewhere in the monastery on an Extended Rest, or if they chose a Short Rest, he'd make a try for it that they have a chance to stop. And every time he succeeded he'd get another two of the walking corpses.

Did I mention that when he kills, all that's left behind are the victim's sliced-off skull tops? So there they were looking at two monks' skull-tops and deciding how to start dealing with this, and I rolled the foe's first Stealth roll ... to see a 1 looking at me. Which means they simply saw him right out of the gate, in a moment of me describing him, finishing with the malevolent glee of his expression, and how it changed to slack-jawed "uh oh" as he realized that all three of them were looking right at him.

Given that event, the cat-and-mouse aspect of the situation changed fast. It would have been completely subverted if they'd managed to get him in that fight, but he got lucky when one of the walking corpses bum-rushed Asteron and knocked him down, and was able to hide and duck away with a hit point or two left. That fight also showcased the character's distance techniques: Zazenna has her spirit animal, Shrakk has his Shaped Consciousness, and Asteron has his crazy movement abilities, basically allowing them to operate as five points-of-view around the battlefield, as well as changing up their positions very effectively.

As a look at one of my GMing practices, this is how I described the lurking psycho-fear murderer creature: Githzerai, gimp suit with a lot of skin showing,visible only on either his right or his left half, which randomly flickered back and forth. I deliberately did not say "sort of like Skorpius from Farscape," because in my experience players not hear the "sort of" and instead completely insert a visual cue like that, as such, right into the SIS,, and I didn't want us collectively to start calling the character "Skorpius" and otherwise losing touch with this hot-psych-barbaric thing we're doing.

Now the hunt was on, and they had a pretty good idea that the more he killed, the more walking head-top-gone corpses he'd have with them. "We don't need no stinking rest," which was a good idea because it let them forestall another murder attempt. This was another skill-fest, including Zazenna using Nature and her Speak to Animals power to confer with the spiders in the monastery - who were of course enlightened philosophers - to help find the guy.

This fight mattered because they knew if they didn't get him, they'd probably have to take at least a Short Rest and he'd have a good chance of getting some more corpse-allies (they'd managed to put down the first two). Most of the rest of this post is about the tactics they put into play, for the first fight and especially for this one. I should also point out the fun bit of Action Point spending, for all three of them at once with three missed rolls turning into three surges of action, for three successful rolls.

To round it out, I enjoyed their actively seeking to figure out what this threat was, in the third round of perfectly legitimate skill use, in a combination of Insight + Intimidation + Arcana.

Come together
I've been pushing Brian to organize his power cards in a particular way and finally managed to get him to do it. And as far as I can tell, if you don't do this during combat, either you're doing it in your head or you are really not making the most, or even half, of this system.

Here's the turn structure: you get a Standard, a Move, and a Minor, and you can convert any of them but only to the right (in the order of this list). So ... unless I miss one off the top of my head, here are the choices (they're in a little table in the book anyway).

Standard + Move + Minor
Standard + Minor + Minor
Move + Move + Minor
Move + Minor + Minor
Minor + Minor + Minor

Now, you can do these in any order you like during your turn. So the best way to organize your power cards is not by color, but by action type, and that way you can decide how to parcel out your options at any given turn.

Even more important, you can choose any subset for held actions, not just your whole turn as a unit, so you have a lot of coordinating power with the other characters' abilities after your turn is over. Since all powers have clear range parameters, this also provides the reason for extremely tactical movement in addition to immediate concerns like flanking. Zazenna might, for instance, do a standard action but hold her minor and move, then later in the round, move right when an ally does, to put him into the range of her ongoing Mantle of Enlightenment, and to have one of her you-heal-I-heal Minor powers set to go off when his attack is over. [shoot, this is wrong - you have to delay a whole/entire turn, you can't parse it like this - phooey - RE]

With the visual organization on the table, these rules finally came together for the first time and some very awesome combos hit, none of which were possible right off the static character sheets but which became possible given the conformation of turn order and events in that one round. This is also important in that what seem like boring little powers become incredibly functional, like being able to treat a shift as a Minor Action instead of a Move, for the monsters as well as the player-characters.

And finally, this is why I officially concede that the fixed turn order throughout the rounds of a fight isn't all that bad a thing. The initiative roll at the start gives whole fights a "character" based on its unique order, especially among the player-characters, because it affects what kind of combination opportunities can appear. It's also another reason why fights in 4E aren't "all the same," in a big way.

To see what condition my Condition was in
That pretty much says it all, given the physical nature of the game. We're using the bare tabletop for the surface, sometimes putting out the map if it's area that isn't secret, like the monastery at this point. We're using the round 4E counters that Megan brings, and slowly more little doohickies have been added as we find uses for them. We use little blue glass beads for "walking" conditions like Marked, and these blue plastic rings Brian brings that remind me of the part you discard from a snap-on type bottle top, for more drastic conditions like Immobilized or Prone.

The only issue is that with this few PCs, there's not very much opportuntity to exploit Conditions, since they typically last "until the end of your next turn" or "to the end of its next turn," or ended by a save which is at the start of someone's turn, or can be ended with a Minor Action (like standing up from Prone). If a round included eight to ten player-characters, that'd be a lot of time and events to exploit a Condition, but with just three, the group pretty much has one shot to make any given Condition count. With the little doohickies we're using now, you can look at the board and see what condition the Conditions are in, and use that as your basis for the strategizing I talked about above.

Best, Ron

P.S. Megan's character's shamanic spirit-critter is technically a cat, but given the whacked psychedelica of it, she's determined that it has a different distorted jumbled-body shape every time it's summoned, usually sketching it. This time she showed the sketch to us and we all kind of looked at her without saying anything, and she said, "I drew it like a toothed vagina because it's for Ron's game." How does Megan get away with this stuff at other tables when I'm not there to shift blame onto, is what I want to know.

[Callan S.]

the lurking murders began. They didn't know this yet, but in a (psychedelic) nutshell, the monks had all meditated to remove their fears

I was rather hoping at this point that the issue was that the monks had been entirely effective, in an absolute locus point. The murderer had no fear - killing did not frighten them, any more than breathing frightens us. Almost apt Ted Bundy quote "I don't feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt." Ie, the murderer would pity the PC's.

How does Megan get away with this stuff at other tables when I'm not there to shift blame onto, is what I want to know.

Probably still blames you. Probably still works! heh

[Ron Edwards]

We're rockin' and rollin' every week, which is a lot of fun.

So it had come time for this level's dungeon crawl. This time, I'm not doing as much three-cornered, decision, who-to-fight stuff; I'm basically setting things up and saying "getcher ass in there." I'll put some thought into getting back to that more flexible aspect of my vision for play, and even heating it up a little.

Anyway, the dungeon was Kzekk's head, literally. There he was, floating horizontally in the whacked void-space at the lowest level of the monastery, with his head open at the top, bizarrely expanded so they could literally see into the descending, narrowing conical rings of his mind. Upon traveling to him, the whole perspective shifted so now they were themselves going down into the depths of (cough, dungeon) his psyche.

Here's how I designed it. First, I searched for "pyschedelic maze," and chose this. I liked the idea that I could interpret it as a concentric cone, so each of the circles is a level, with the middle being deepest. When a little corridor crosses into a new circle, it's a drop-off, and when it doesn't, it's not. I made a "depth" map like this. My idea was they'd enter at the top left and in order to rescue Kzekk, exit at the bottom right – so, they have to go all the way down and all the way up.

Now that I had an idea of this physical layout, I mapped out zones for various things' activities. The idea was that the descent and ascent are "the path," and the various side-trips (orange, blue, yellow) are bad/dangerous zones ... in fact, spend too much time or fail to figure out "what is this all about," for any of these, and Kzekk can get turned into a vegetable. So doing this dungeon is like a whole Quest in and of itself, worth 1000 experience points, if they don't screw up Kzekk.

I was also struck by the diagonal bands of the design and decided to give them some meaning too – but only as visual color, meaning the source-less ambient light filling the designated areas, not as anything mechanical. Part of that was to keep myself from going nuts (e.g. different bonuses or penalties to saves in different bands), and another part was to provide fun color, literally, for the players that they didn't know had no meaning. Or rather, the only meaning was a possible tip-off that they might be going backwards. So that version of the map looked like this

In case it's not clear, the colors are 100% independent across the maps, usable only for their internal keys. The only colors which are literally in-universe are the bands, indicated the ambient shadowless light in each part.

As I developed these maps (depth/level, zone, and bands), I started stocking it. I put some "psychic wind" difficult terrain at the entrance and exit, where the arrows are, and I figured the ascent and descent are very much about Kzekk and his relations with other people, whereas the side-trips/dead-ends are negative/distorted ways for the intruders to get messed up by their own minds.

My final use-document looked like this. The first few pages concern the "adventures in the monastery" stuff I posted about earlier, and the dungeon material starts on the fourth page.

So, how did it go?

First, it was surprisingly fast, as they got through it in a single session. However, they did play it very smart, trying to figure out the point of it all and once they thought they had it, tactically retreating or fighting to get through to a relevant exit rather than sticking around to kill or be killed. Shrakk's Shaped Consciousness power is incredibly important in a dungeon situation, as it's the perfect scout, and Asteron's Dungeoneering + Shrakk's Arcana helped figure out the layout after a few rooms and levels in. Zazenna's Insight rounded out the meanings of the various encounters too, so they quickly figured out that they needed to get to the bottom and back up, then worked hard to suss out the right route and stay on task.

One important thing, too, that they found out is that taking Extended Rests would be very harmful to Kzekk, so they needed to husband their resources pretty carefully and not squander hit points.

The confrontation with Kzekk's ego was very satisfying on all counts, as Shrakk was addled by its glamorous praise (that's how I defined the attacks), whereas Zazenna was totally onto its bullshit.

I'm a little sad that they didn't fight the bulbous guys based on the kobold slingers, because I liked both the visuals and the powers for those monsters. Another day perhaps.

Annnnd, they leveled up! So the next session will be a character-upgrade sit-down rather than an adventure, as we'll bring the characters to tenth level. The next phase of play will be getting into and then enjoying Paragon tier.

Everyone, I would very much prefer to talk about this game experience than continue to beat the pink slime with a stick. Help me out with that: ask stuff, compare your experiences, get some ideas going about what this group is doing here.

[Callan S.]

Kzekk is the head monk guy? Was he a victim of the murderer, somehow? Seems the same modus operandi.

[Ron Edwards]

Yes, Kzekk's the main monk. However, he didn't get attacked by the fear/killer guy. It was a deep meditation that went a bit awry, that's all. The top of the head imagery is apparently a motif I was interested in during this series of adventures' prep, but for reasons unknown, as it's showed up twice without consideration on my part, without any link between them. I'm happy to leave it as a revisited motif without particular in-universe logic.

[James_Nostack]

So here's a table level question:

1.  How long are your sessions?

2.  How much time do your players spend debating what large-scale activity to do next, or is it all, "Hey jackasses, get in this particular dungeon and make relevant choices within it?"  I've seen D&D played at either extreme, and tend to prefer the latter, but I'm curious how 'pushy' you are about getting on with the fuckin' show.

3.  How much experience/insight do your players have with 4e? 

4.  How long does a fight against an equal "Encounter Level" last?  (I can't remember 4e's exact vocabulary on this point, but it's got a bit of that 3e-era encounter design / calibrate the fight difficulty type shit goin' on.

5. Why did you decide to go with hybrid classes rather than the feat-based multi-classing option?

6. You have no idea how much it offends my sense of symmetry that you included the Ranger among your class options.  4 psionic classes; 4 primal classes; plus this doofy martial class.  Ugggggghh.  (This isn't really a question, sorry.)

Overall this has some really groovy parts to it, and it inspired me - against my better judgment - to spend a small sum buying much of the Essentials line.  (I don't have the stomach for the full 4e experience, and from what I gather, some of the earlier material of regular 4e isn't as well-designed as what came later.)  But I'm still squeezing slime out of my head before I feel comfy doing my own stuff with it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James

Ooh, numbered questions, let me see ...

1.  How long are your sessions?

About three hours. We meet for four, four-plus hours, and enjoy a little conversation first, sometimes a little bit after. One person in the group has an interesting job history and at this past session, their account of the "desk of misfit toys" at a particular magazine publication office ... well, I'd planned to get going a bit earlier but sometimes what someone has to say is interesting, you know?

Oh, and I should clarify, we usually meet at the Dice Dojo, a play-oriented game store in Chicago. They've recently made the basement usable and it's surprisingly comfy for something that looks like a real dungeon.

2.  How much time do your players spend debating what large-scale activity to do next, or is it all, "Hey jackasses, get in this particular dungeon and make relevant choices within it?"  I've seen D&D played at either extreme, and tend to prefer the latter, but I'm curious how 'pushy' you are about getting on with the fuckin' show.

It varies by session, and especially (apparently) per level-scale prep. My vision for prep was supposed to afford them a lot of choice about what to do next and and whom to approach, and our first couple of sessions did a pretty good job with that, when I really had no idea whom they'd side with against whom. But this set of material turned out to be a little more constrained than I'd thought. At least the adventure-part itself allowed for a lot of choices and decisions about how to handle it. I need to think about how to keep that open-endedness available in the physical dungeon situations.

3.  How much experience/insight do your players have with 4e?

Megan's an expert, owns all the books, ran a ton of it, knows various rules back-and-forth. I rely on her as the human book a lot, and am trying to get an atmosphere at the table going where she can correct me and there's no boundary issue about it.

Mark and Brian have both played about as much as I have, before this game - maybe Mark a little more, Brian a little less. I think all of us are enjoying the learning curve of finding out how much it rewards knowing the mechanics.

We talk a fair amount about the game in design and prior-play terms, in the before/after conversations, too.

4.  How long does a fight against an equal "Encounter Level" last?  (I can't remember 4e's exact vocabulary on this point, but it's got a bit of that 3e-era encounter design / calibrate the fight difficulty type shit goin' on.

That's one thing I really like about the game. Somehow, the metric for difficulty is pretty accurate without the fights' outcomes being predictable. Those emergent combo situations apply to my critters as well as to the players, so if positioning and some particular set of abilities allow, I can really rack them hard - in fact, it was the Level 1 creatures based on the Goblin of Maglubiyet that gave them the hardest time in the last session, more so than the Level 4 Controller. The latter is indeed tougher on paper, but the little bastards got the drop on them and had some good luck with their recharges.

To answer your question, I'd say a solid fight for 375 XP (that's considered equal for three 2nd level characters) ... um, given that there's almost certainly going to be a bad turn for someone in the first couple of rounds, because I am not a wimpy fight-DM, and assuming that nothing sidelines the fight or changes it into a non-fight (which can happen) ... well, I'd say four or five rounds. But remember that my experience is not a mutual grind-down, because we play hard with the rules by which either side tries to get an end-run around doing that. Both players and I are angling for a curb-stomp as best we can, so the final round-and-a-half usually reflects which side managed to achieve it.

5. Why did you decide to go with hybrid classes rather than the feat-based multi-classing option?

Mechanically, it's immediate. More importantly, it fit the Color that was exploding in my mind. It also messes with the niche-thinking which D&D character classes are built for, and which I have nothing too much against, but in this case I wanted personal creativity involved to make each functional class completely original. I like the hybrid rules a lot, especially since each class has internal options too. Shrakk isn't a Psion who knows a bit about Seeking, he's a Vengeful Shaper, a distinctive and unique class of his own.

6. You have no idea how much it offends my sense of symmetry that you included the Ranger among your class options.  4 psionic classes; 4 primal classes; plus this doofy martial class.  Ugggggghh.  (This isn't really a question, sorry.)

I see your point, but i had two reasons. Well, three. (i) "Ranger" doesn't mean Aragorn, it means forest-fighter guy, which is pretty close to Primal, and I was casting the net wide at that point for anything that might fit. (ii) I got a huge geek hard-on when I realized you could hybridize an Iron-Soul Monk with a Two-Blade Ranger. (iii) I hadn't really understood what a cool Striker the Barbarian class is, and while I was making that list, I think I'd wrongly assumed the Barbarian was more of a grunting hulk. I'd probably do just as well to leave the Ranger out, except for (ii). You can be happy that none of the players chose it, so your pain remains a mere distant possibility.

On a related point, I'm still not sure that choosing Shaman over Druid was a good idea. The Shaman class is a lot of gun in this game, and I'm wondering whether it's not overshadowing the Ardent in Zazenna. Megan uses the Ardent powers all the time so that's not the issue, it's the Color of it all. Or maybe I should be using more psionic jargon and generalized Color ... I mean, if actually walking into a guy's head and having that be the dungeon isn't enough.

And finally, it might be too limiting, but I'm at least considering altering the parameters (if I do this again) so that you can't combine roles. Zazenna is a Leader-Leader and Shrakk is a Controller-Controller, and maybe ... well, I dunno, they're both pretty cool and there's no "balance" issue going on. Maybe I'm getting too picky and was too romantically interesting in hybridizing the roles as well as the classes, and should retain the flexibility - as is, there's 20 possible "classes" this way (actually 24 with the non-hybridized psionic classes), and that's a good thing.

[Callan S.]

Have you thought about prepping a handful of encounters (to various degrees of prep) and then using whatever seems apt depending on where they go - as a sort of gamist analog to narativist bangs? Unless I'm not getting bangs at all, in which case *cough*, this post never happened!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Callan,

That's what I'm doing already. My observation is that for the level 2 material, the players had less agency to pick and choose what to do than they did for level 1. I've observed it, I've said "h'm," and I'm taking it with me as a consideration when I set up the next unit of prep.