Donjon Krawl Adventure

[Tim C Koppang]

I finally got around to playing Donjon Krawl!  Overall it went well, with only a few snags.  Most of the hold-ups were due to lack of rule knowledge, but that's what I usually expect when trying a game for the first time.  So I thought I'd post a detailed synopsis of the game here alongside some of my praise and concerns.

First of all, I thought you might want to know how I prepared for the session.  Even though I've read some of the modifications posted here on the Forge I decided to give the game a try plain vanilla style.  So I sat down in front of the computer and began to type out an adventure using the guidelines in the rules.  I must say, Donjon Krawl has great mission prep rules.  They worked wonderfully.  I was able to come up with a bunch of encounters, an interesting town, and a whole mess of monsters.  I didn't bother mapping out the dungeon itself, but I don't think I would have had to (the players actually never made it to the dungeon itself, but they had plenty of fun on the way).  In case anyone wants to see my adventure, I'm posting it on the web.  It's made for level 1 characters, but could easily be modified for more powerful PCs.

http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~koppang/roleplaying/content/haunted_mines_of_icewood.htm

I didn't have time to stat up all of the creatures I planned to use, but I made sure I got everything done for the first step of the adventure, and then I skipped ahead to the Big Bad.  I only planned on 3 steps for the adventure, and I made the Big Bad level 4.  I'm not sure how the players would have survived all the punishment I had planned for them, but that's another reason I skipped making stats for every creature on the higher steps.  (Note to Clinton: When the game gets some more play-testing, I'd recommend writing up some recommendations for what 1st level characters can handle because I felt a little unsure about throwing so much evil at them right off of the bat.)

Character Creation
I gave the players all a basic rundown of the rules, and then set them about making characters.  There were four players all together - each one of them experienced role-players, but with different backgrounds.

The first thing I had everyone do was roll up their stats.  I told them that they should role 3d6 six times and then arrange the numbers among their abilities.  Thinking that the game was more of a D&D parody, they declared that they would rather roll straight down the line and take what they got.  I told them it would be fine, as long as everyone agreed.  There was one voice of dissention, but he was out voted and the dice began to fall.  They quickly realized that this was a dangerous decision, so I allowed one mulligan on the dice.  In retrospect, I don't think they really like having to roll for random stats.  I think in the future I may suggest the point-based method.  Another point of disappointment: when they found out that they would have to translate their scores into dice bonuses, they kind of groaned.  I think they enjoyed the feeling of using a 20 pt scale for attributes.

The first player decided to make a wizard.  At first he found the idea of classes and race a bit too wide open, and so he dabbled with the idea of extreme multi-classing, but once I informed him that it wouldn't really have any effect on the game mechanics he settled down a bit.  So his wizard he decided would be a (brace yourself) taffy wizard.  Yes, the sticky candy.  He chose an appropriate magic skill and then asked me for more explanation of the secondary skills.  I told him that the lesser skills were really only meant to help you in one type of situation, but that they could add to anything (initiative, damage, etc.).  He pondered the notion for a while, and then asked me if the skills could add to he magic tests.  I said yes.  I'm not sure if this is how the rules were intended to be used, but I wanted to keep the free-form atmosphere going.  So he took all five of his skills in magic, and told me that he wanted them all to add to his magic rolls.  He didn't want any extra words, but he did want more dice to gather power with.  He managed to convince me that this would be alright (I'm smacking myself now), but he said that because he would have no skill in anything else that the min/maxing should be allowed.  Sure I said, why not.  After reading through the rules again, I noticed that a magic test (or any other for that matter) only involves one skill at a time.  I think this should be listed in bold big letters so that dümkofs like myself don't get confused.  Nonetheless, this set a precedent for all the other characters.  Luckily none of them were feeling quite so abusive.

The second player wanted to make an elven prince of some sort.  He also wanted to be half pixie, and have some sort of pixie powers.  These would cause trouble later, but I'll get to that in a few paragraphs.  Simple enough - he took his skills and after a brief stint of multi-class/race abuse (all of the players got a big kick out of the idea of making up their own races), we moved on to the next character.

Number three wanted to play a kobold... a kobold wizard.  I wasn't advocating race prejudices, so I said fine and I'm glad I did.  He make his wizard short, unbelievably adorable, and a bit on the stupid side.  The wizard had a blue bathrobe with patches resembling magical symbols stitched on.  Of course, the kobold insisted the tattered thing was a powerful wizard's cloak.  That got laugh.  His main skill was "unimpressive kobold magic" and so was his name decided for the rest of the game as the unimpressive kobold wizard.

The fourth player, picking up on the animal trend, said that he intended to be a lizard man, and I said sure.  His intention was to speak with a snaky "sssssss" sound throughout the game.  He too wanted some magical ability and took dessert magic as a secondary skill - ironic enough considering the adventure was to take place in an ice covered forest.

The Game
Taking a hint from Valimir's game, I decided to let the players have some fun in town before setting out into the mines of Icewood.  The first thing they did was pay a visit to the local armorer.  We had a bit of interaction with the shopkeepers and I introduced the wealth and provisions rules on the fly.  This went especially well.  The shopkeeper informed them that most goods were cheap, unless they wanted anything made of steel (I made the markup 4 instead of 2).  This got the player interested because they wouldn't be able to get any decent swords.  On the other hand, most of the wizards just wanted a good staff.  I think the players liked the idea that they got to choose the damage ratings for their weapons and armor.  They weren't too hip to the whole player-authoring concept yet, but this was the first hint that they would have more of a say in the adventure.  Funniest item bought: the unimpressive kobold wizard traded in his wizard's hat for a pot, which he proceeded to put on his head for one point of armor.  He called the new hat his wizard's pot for the rest of the adventure.

After a short attempt to rob the shopkeeper blind, they failed, the taffy wizard decided to try his luck with the elven woman in the tavern.  His idea of impressing them was to turn the tables into piles of taffy.  This was the first example of the magic rules in action.  The players really got into the idea of freeform effects, so much that the unimpressive kobold wizard tried his luck with the pile of taffy.  The kobold wanted to animate the taffy.  Since the elven woman had never eaten taffy before in their lives (they were devouring it at a rapid pace), I had them make resistance roles against the new spell.  The wizard won, and the blob of candy solidified into a big ball with stubby feet.  This was a victory for the player, and he was determined to take his new pet with him for the rest of the adventure.  He needed a saddle for the thing if he wanted to ride it though, and so I explained how he could attempt to pull anything out of his gear bag with a successful save vs. provisions roll.  He did just that, and rode the taffy beast, now named Mr. Gooey Chewy Yum Yum, out of the tavern and up to the highest branch of the town where Lord Greenleaf was waiting for the party with their quest.

Lord Greenleaf informed the gathered party that there was a shortage of iron, and that the local mine had been recently inhabited with banshees.  I barely had to use the enticement to get the players to accept the mission.  They seemed to embrace the obvious linear style of my plot, which threw me for a moment.  All those early years of using book adventures with no success, and now the players are jumping at a none-to-subtle plot hook.  Go figure.

The party set out in the morning for the great valley that would lead them to the mine entrance.  After their guide left them with wishes of good luck, they were faced with their first challenge.  The valley was steep and covered with ice.  If they were to get into the valley without taking damage, they would have to come up with a creative solution for negotiating the slippery surface... But with a taffy wizard present the problem was quickly sidestepped.  He simply summoned a load of taffy, which shot out of his staff in a steady stream and made a sticky path down the hill.

Once in the valley they began to hear howling in the distance, and I told them that there were many large snow banks all around.  This didn't get them too riled up, so I told them that there were also small caves on either side of the valley.  Again, they didn't care and so I told them that the snow banks began to move, shake, and crumble.  It was brought to my attention after we quit that this would have been a perfect time for one of the players to request a roll to inspect the snow banks, but instead the party just stood there and waited for four white wolves to jump out and attack them, and thus started combat.  If I were to run another game I think I would emphasize the fact that the players can ask for rolls at anytime, and that they will be able to decided on elements of the world if they generate any successes.  As it was, my players were still a bit hung up on the old style gaming where you wait for the GM to throw stuff at you.  On the other hand, when I requested rolls from the players they always came up with interesting facts that added a lot of flavor to the game.

The combat system was fine.  Some of the player, and myself for that matter, were a bit confused about when they got to state facts and when they didn't.  I told them that we would skip the facts for the duration of the combat, but they seemed to really want some more authorial power when they connected a hit on the wolves.  This may be something to try in the future.  Seeing as the all of the characters had some sort of magical ability, the fight was really in exercise in the magic rules.   Here's where the taffy wizard faced a lot of frustration.  He would try to gather power, and because I was letting him add more than one skill to this test he was rolling a boatload of dice.  I set the difficulty at easy because he was off in the background and the wolves weren't attacking him at the time.  The problem being however, he was very frustrated that he was playing such a skilled magic user, but couldn't gather more than three points worth of power in a situation rated at easy.  This I think is a possible problem with the dice mechanics as they are.  Even if you were only allowing characters their one skill, as you should, at higher levels a player will still be rolling lots of dice.  Unless the difficulty is high, that extra skill won't show up in terms of being able to gather more power.  The number of dice the GM is rolling at the time limits the mage.  There was a suggestion made after the game to fix the problem, but I didn't get a chance to try it out.  Basically the thought was to allow any die rolled that beats the lowest die of the GM's roll translate into another success.  This way, if the mage is rolling lots of dice against only three for an easy situation, he can still gather lots of power.

The other complaint with the magic system was the handling time.  It requires two separate rolls, plus some time in the middle while the mage decides on an effect.  In a group full of magic users, anyone mundane character is going to be very bored.  This happened to the elf prince.  He waited around for everyone to take their turn and cast a bunch of spells; and when it was time for him to take action he swung his sword and we moved on.  I think the authoring facts would come in handy for situations like this.

After the wolves were defeated, a couple of players had to go to work.  We didn't get a chance to search for any treasure, not that a pack of wolves would have much anyway, but we did give the XP rules a try.  This was another set of rules that were problematic for the group, and while I believe that some of our problems with the previous rules were partially due to our inexperience with the system, I agreed with my players when they began to complain about the XP rules.  The party defeated four level one wolves, the combat took quite some time because we were all trying to be creative, and I really wanted the characters to get some rewards - but they all ended up rolling their level (one) in dice against the wolves' one die (four divided by 4 = 1).  As luck would have it only one player rolled low enough so that my roll was a success, and even so he only got one experience point.  So after all that work and the battle with the wolves no one really gained anything.  This put everyone out a bit, and I think rightly so.

---

Of course I left out how much fun we had during the entire session.  In fact, we all had a blast.  Between the taffy wizard stoking his beard and taffy attacking everything in sight, the kobold riding a  blob of candy around on a saddle, the lizard man hissing at all the others, and the elven prince abusing his incredibly vague main skill of pixie powers, the whole party was a blast.  So kudos to Donjon Krawl.  I do have a couple of suggestions for anyone planning to run a session...

Make sure you don't do just hack & slash.  Half of the fun is seeing what people do with their successes and failures when interacting with people.  Plus, combat can get boring because the players just don't have as much say in what goes on.

Make sure you emphasize that fact that players can ask for skill checks whenever they want.  This should be the first thing you tell them, and you should remind them throughout the game until they realize how much more fun the game is with their input.  I personally think the first page of Donjon Krawl should state this in bold.

That's it for now.  Since I started writing this post, I've managed to get another session in with two new players.  If I have time, I'll do a bit of a write-up on that session as well.

Until then,

[Jared A. Sorensen]

First of all, I totally wanna game with the kolbold's player.

I barely had to use the enticement to get the players to accept the mission. They seemed to embrace the obvious linear style of my plot, which threw me for a moment. All those early years of using book adventures with no success, and now the players are jumping at a none-to-subtle plot hook. Go figure.

I think this is because the players knew that wherever they ended up, they'd have fun. A likely reason that linear adventures don't usually work is because the players think that more fun can be had over there . If the game is actually fun to play, then it doesn't matter where the characters go.

[Valamir]

One thing we did, though I can't recall if I explicitly mentioned it is we did not do an either or Facts vs carry over dice...I treated it as an AND.

Say you get three successes on a combat roll.  The facts are:

"I jump up on the table"
"bash his helmet down over his eyes with my sword swing" and
"push him back with my foot".

As GM i'd say that this is an attempt to "overbear" or "knockdown" or otherwise inconvenience rather than directly damage the opponent, so instead of a standard damage roll I'd use a Virility vs Virility roll and add 3 dice from the above roll to it.

That way you get the power of adding dice AND the fun of authoring facts, AND the GM can do things other than the usual strike, roll for damage sequence.

[Tim C Koppang]

Say you get three successes on a combat roll.  The facts are:

"I jump up on the table"
"bash his helmet down over his eyes with my sword swing" and
"push him back with my foot".

As GM i'd say that this is an attempt to "overbear" or "knockdown" or otherwise inconvenience rather than directly damage the opponent, so instead of a standard damage roll I'd use a Virility vs Virility roll and add 3 dice from the above roll to it.

That way you get the power of adding dice AND the fun of authoring facts, AND the GM can do things other than the usual strike, roll for damage sequence.

So you were using facts in combat?  The way I read the rules, you usually just worry about the damage and get on with things.  I too think the game would gain if you used facts for every roll.

One thing I noticed about a couple players: they were telling me how they wanted to attack the opponent (aka aimed shots and the like) before they rolled the dice, but I found myself just saying, "roll the dice and we'll see what happens.  I suppose I could have handled the situation by uping the difficulty and then increasing damage with a successful hit, but I believe the game has a more elegant solution to the problem.  If facts were used during combat, things would not only be more interesting, but it would take care of players wanting to aim there shots in a system that does not otherwise provide a mechanic to model that level of detail.  Bottom line is - once you give your players authorial power they are going to want to use it all the time.  In a game about dungeons and chaotic evil bad guys, combat is the one time when you should not take away that power.

[Tim C Koppang]

First of all, I totally wanna game with the kolbold's player.

I think this is because the players knew that wherever they ended up, they'd have fun. A likely reason that linear adventures don't usually work is because the players think that more fun can be had over there . If the game is actually fun to play, then it doesn't matter where the characters go.

Everybody wants to play with the kobold's player - just make sure you provide the opportunity for silliness.  He's a hoot.

As far as linear adventures go: I think that's one of the reasons I was so attracted to Donjon Krawl.  It gives the players the opportunity to make their own fun no matter where they are.  It's kind of like no limits poker.  Players know they can bid as high as they want, so they usually keep things within bounds.  When you put a limit on the pot though, everybody starts bidding the maximum.

A linear adventure in most games limits the players, so they try to break away from those limits - they try to gain some power of their own.  When you show the players that they actually have some power, then things tend to operate much more smoothly.

Of course I have lost a bit of money in no limits poker lately, so maybe I should stop this analogy before I hurt myself.

[Bankuei]

I'm more than sure Clinton will address the issues above, but I can certainly give you some advice based on our playtests.

I myself, have totally gone with the random roll take em as you get em view.   You should really check out the new rules, they simplify the attribute rolling incredibly.  We have had groups were some went with random roll and others with points, neither group seemed to have gotten major advantages during gameplay.

As far as min/maxing all into one skill... I can say exactly how it would be run: We'll call the primary magic skill A, and the other 4 B,C, D, E etc.  You'd make a basic roll for E, then if there is any successes, it'd carry over as bonus dice to D, then if there's any successes from that, to C, then to B, then finally that would be bonus dice to A.  This would take an assload of time to resolve, and since on most successful rolls, you only get 1-3 successes(even at high levels), most likely the player might get an extra die or 2 to his magic skill A.  Not only that, but each one of those rolls would eat up an action.  So he'd get 1 spell a combat, letting loose for an extra 1-3 dice, maybe.

Using facts in combat:  We do it all the time.  You can choose to use your damage successes to create facts.  In fact, our last session was nothing BUT combat, but we certainly created tons of narration from it.

My highest recommendation to all Donjon players:

Take a skill that will give you narrative control.  Usually these are sensing, finding, or lore/knowledge based skills.  Things that I have seen that have been cool:  Spot trouble, sense danger, find trap door, find dangerous objects, etc.

Take a skill that gives you some form of defense.  This can either be a dodging skill, a damage absorbing skill, or else a high attack skill for deadly counterattacks.

And finally, it doesn't really pay to push any dice pool too far past 10.  Usually at this point, you only still get 1-3 successes, when you do actually get a success.  You might want to raise other skills and traits before you totally min/max one.  Nothing is as disappointing as rolling 16 dice of damage and having it deflect off.

Chris

[Valamir]

Tim, that's it exactly.  "Narrate your success, loser narrates the rest" is a mantra I applied in every situation, including those usually lame

"What are you doing"
"I'm getting a drink at the bar"

exchanges.  
Make 'em roll Soc + something.  Then make 'em narrate the resultant facts.  Sometimes I got lame ones, but more often they used it to do something THEY'D be entertained by (once they got the concept).  If the GM wins, same thing.  Throw a couple facts at 'em..."the surly dwarf spills his beer on you", then step back and let them decide what happens.

Heck with enough premade encounter seeds and index cards with stated out monsters and NPCs...you wouldn't need even the minimal scenario preparation the game suggests.

And Chris's advice about narration skills is a good one.  I wouldn't give EVERYONE something because that would get a little too chaotic (I'm not a big fan of confusing sillyness myself), but a couple of good ones work well.  Course, I bent the rule about requireing facts to be specifically about the skill that was rolled anyway.  Frex, as GM, I'd ok successes from a "beer chugging" skill, to narrate rumors of a treasure filled dungeon told by some drunk guy at the bar.  



Chris, your last point is why I'm not quite as big a fan of the Sorcerer die mechanics as Clinton is.  One lucky high roll by an enemy with a single die can totally screw you even if you're rolling 6-7 dice.  To my mind 6-7 dice should CRUSH 1 die very nearly every time.  But in practice 6-7 dice usually squeaks by with just 1 maybe 2 successes, and actually LOSES far more frequently than makes sense to me.  Not sure how to fix without going to a more traditional Dice Pool type mechanic.  Not really sure if it needs fixing, given that failures can be pretty fun, but it does grate on me a bit.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Chris, your last point is why I'm not quite as big a fan of the Sorcerer die mechanics as Clinton is.  One lucky high roll by an enemy with a single die can totally screw you even if you're rolling 6-7 dice.  To my mind 6-7 dice should CRUSH 1 die very nearly every time.  But in practice 6-7 dice usually squeaks by with just 1 maybe 2 successes, and actually LOSES far more frequently than makes sense to me.  Not sure how to fix without going to a more traditional Dice Pool type mechanic.  Not really sure if it needs fixing, given that failures can be pretty fun, but it does grate on me a bit.

I actually have a fix for this, but am not using it, as it's another step. Basically, though:

The person with the larger amount of dice can "bet successes." He can remove dice from his pool, until his pool is equal to the opponent's, and the winner takes all those dice as successes.

Example:

Tim is rolling 10 dice and Pete is rolling 6. Tim can remove up to 4 dice (leaving him with 6). If Tim succeeds, he gets to add 4 more successes. However, if Pete succeeds, he gets to add 4 more successes.


All that said - I don't see the current mechanics as much of a problem. Failure is about as powerful as success in that you still get to narrate. The only place the current system can be a bit unsatisfying, in my opinion, is damage rolls.

[Valamir]

[quote="Clinton R NixonThe only place the current system can be a bit unsatisfying, in my opinion, is damage rolls.[/quote]

Actually one thing I'd like to see, and maybe its in the new version that I haven't seen yet ;-) is the option for non opposed rolls.  There are times when having every roll be opposed really slows things down.

I'm thinking especially when you are making a roll whose sole purpose is to generate dice to get added to another roll.  Also when doing a lot of off the cuff things that are fun to roll for but that you don't want things bogging down.

Fer instance, if I'm doing a "Hear Noises" roll that has the potential to open an entirely new branch to the story, then the high randomness and natural limit to the number of successes of an opposed roll seems perfect to me.

But if I'm just making a "carousing" roll while boozing it up in a tavern this can be a little annoying.

It may be useful to allow rolls against a static difficulty number.  You still have the randomness of your own roll to deal with, but you eliminate the randomness of the opposing roll.  This would probably work very well as a standard way to handle damage rolls, and gathering spell points rolls.

It should be a relatively easy matter to determine what the "most common" highest die roll will be over the course of 100 rolls with X dice, and use that as a guide for setting static difficulty.  That way you still have the same statistical out come in the long run, but can cut down a couple of rolls, and a good number of whiffs.

[DaR]

It may be useful to allow rolls against a static difficulty number.  You still have the randomness of your own roll to deal with, but you eliminate the randomness of the opposing roll.  This would probably work very well as a standard way to handle damage rolls, and gathering spell points rolls.

It should be a relatively easy matter to determine what the "most common" highest die roll will be over the course of 100 rolls with X dice, and use that as a guide for setting static difficulty.  That way you still have the same statistical out come in the long run, but can cut down a couple of rolls, and a good number of whiffs.

Because I had ten minutes to figure this out:

Code Select Expand


Dice Average High Roll
1 10.5
2 13.8
3 15.5
4 16.5
5 17.1
6 17.6
7 18.0
8 18.2
9 18.4
10 18.6
11 18.8
12 18.9
13 19.0
14 19.1
15 19.2
...
20 19.5
...
30 19.7
...
40 19.9


So for rolls of 'easy' or 'average' difficulty it's probably okay.  For anything approaching difficult, it becomes less useful, as the difference between rolling against more than around 6 dice very quickly reaches the point where your top dice aren't going to enough determine the outcome, as the high dice will cancel (or carry over, if you're using that option), leaving the lower dice as the ones that actually control the outcome.

From what I've seen in practice this is quite true.  Even when rolling 3 or 6 dice it was fairly common for things like both the GM and player to both roll a 19 as their high, and tie a 17 as their next, and determine the outcome on their third highest die, which might be a 14 or even 10.  If the GM had one high die and two crappy dice and you had one high die and two relatively good dice, this also means you could take 3 successes away from a 3 die roll, where rolling against a static number you'd have ended up with only one.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it'd work well in practice, especially not with the number of dice you tend to roll in a Donjon game.

-DaR

[Tim C Koppang]

It seems that out of both play sessions that I have run, the biggest complaint comes with expirience points - especially at 1st level.  What I actually did to help mend the situation, although I don't think it's a good long term fix, was award a base number of exp pts corresponding to the avg level of enemy defeated.  Only then did I tag on the additional "roll for xp" rule the system recommends.  This of course is for combat situations only.  I think the xp for treasure rules work just fine and really play a big part in getting characters up to the next level.

My personal preferences shine through when I consider the number of xp to gain an additional level.  40 pts for 2nd level seems high if your games don't involve a combat with lots of high powered enemies at every turn.  So unless you are giving out lots of treasure, the progression is slow.  To me, and I've said this before, the most interesting part of the game is when players are using their facts or narrating their failures.  Has anyone toyed with the idea of linking xp to narration in any way?  I understand this skews the reward system of a gamist system, but with a bit of thought I don't think it has to.