[D&D 3.x, partly the basic game] Beware: The orcs bite!

[Callan S.]

I recently tried out my 'try to throw a dice into a distant box to see if a monsters there' idea. Played last weekend with my seven year old son Max and partner, Barbara, and again this weekend. It was split because my partner prefers, when she plays, to play for around thirty minutes. Max is fighter, Barb is rogue. Premades from the basic game box.

I still had some writers block in terms of prep - I had that stumped feel. In the end I just treated it as a toy - I used what D&D minature figures I had, collected their printed stats cards toghether, shuffled and pulled one out at random. Also pulled the dungeon floorboards (came from the D&D basic game) at random too. A background free associated itself into being, rather than me trying to make one and yeah, I had some lay out. Basically in terms of the technique, about half the monsters would always be there, and the other half would hinge on a 'throw'.

In the first room, I threw to see if a wolf skeleton was there. Gah, first throw and I fail. I decided to still put it in, but I said to alll I'd failed the throw - it was a sort of slightly quivering pile of bones in the corner that wasn't going to attack. I could still have a bit of cheap melodrama fun with it. Then the players set to exploring a statue that was pictured on the dungeon tile. I've played with Barb and Max before, and I hadn't realised Barb would remember some of the tropes like searching stuff, using the search skill. There was nothing actually in the statue as planned, but they both seemed enthused that there would be something there that it seemed a shame to miss this 'fleshing out of the world', as you might put it. There was a treasure in the next room, so I asked for a search roll (DC 15) and if they got it, the treasure would be there. If not, it'd have to be found where it had been planned. Didn't say this too them - I guess it made sense to me though - if you search in incorrect spots, a DC 15, in really unlikely spots, an even worse DC. But if you look in the right spot, no roll.

Tricky issue is that Barb rolled, and passed. Fair enough. Then Max wanted a roll too. Umm, what exactly was I suppsed to turn up for that? Fortunately he failed, so I got to skip that conundrum. But then he wanted to search the wolf skeleton bones. I said 'so you want to touch the quivering bones?' and he said 'I use search!' 'You have to touch them to seach them'. This went on - there was a sort of detachment between a search roll and what you'd have to do to search. Then again in a technical sense, it was adding a requirement onto the use of the mechanics. Sometimes what 'makes sense' blinds you to that and so you insist on an extra as if you don't have to ask. Anyway, he shuddered at the idea of touching the restless bones and said no, he wouldn't search.

I think they start to get opportunity paralysis about here - they look around and so some other stuff I forget, but then sort of look stunned, wracking their brains for what to do next. I prompt them along to the door and - I dislike this - what if they had thought of something but I cut them off just before? After the game I made the plan that outside of combat, players could do like two things (or whatever pre set number), and then they end up at the next door (or whatever point/scene I declare to them before they take their actions). That way the GM isn't ushering players along, the player is, cause he knows taking an action gets him toward that.

So, they then have to deal with their first door. Barb really has remembered a few things, trying a spot check. Similar to above I say 'So you open the door a bit?'. She starts looking up the spot skill on the back of her sheet, not hearing the importance of the question. I mean, their opening the door and if any trap was there it'd go off. I don't want to say 'oh, YOU triggered a trap' - she was only interested in passing or failing her spot roll. It'd be like someone slam dunking but then you say 'uh, left foot landed before right, -1 point!' - it's not...I dunno, of interest.

Anyway, so she looks in. Orphidians are bloody hard to see in dungeons, I find. She doesn't pass the roll, so I desribe the room, its table with scattered bottles around a sack, a small cage with something in it in a corner, some book shelves. Ie, the sack was the orphidian. Yeah, I lace some clues around so if you miss the dice roll, there's still a chance of pure wits getting past the issue. It kind of flummoxed them - they suspected the cage and the sack of something. I'll clue you into the background now, though it was there for a bit of fun in game. The local village had been attacked by a monster (the orph), which had apparently been sent by the local evil alchemist. This is his cave/lab.

Okay, they go in, rogue sneaking ('hide is sneaking?'). Again I place the mini's, which I don't like in the same way I described before. I roll the orphids spot roll against rogues hide roll and he see's the rogue. The 'sack' clambers off the table, a book sliding from its hand. "Oh, we should get that, it's probably got useful magic spells in it" says Barb. I'm flummoxed - I only put it in to hint at the Orphs true nature (see below) and as colour - I quickly think and can't think of any way the book might be made to help latter (made to help, as in making some puzzle the book is part of). Anyway, Combat!

In the basic game, initiative is static - instead of a 1D20+2 init, you have 12 init, for example. Rogue shoots and misses, I think. Fighter charges...wait, no, he shoots his shortbow and hits. The orph goes for him, rushing past the rogue in his anger. I describe here how AoO work, and try to instill the idea that I wont always remind them of when it applies. Hmm, that's a bit of a lame 'cut off' from tutorial to remember it themselves. I also tell quickly demonstrate flanking. Mental note; think about that. Barb says something about the GM being kind, which I guess I try to deflect saying that monsters aren't perfect robots. Background - the orphidian IS the alchemist! He used alchemy to turn himself into an uber CR 2 monster! heh! Anyway, it messes with his head a bit, so he's apt to make mistakes.

Barb goes to flank, but notes herself that a chest is in the way for her to do that. Perhaps horribly, I take up the players note of that to add adversity in the form of a roll "Yeah, your kind of short so it'd take a DEX roll to get on it...err, DC 5". I dunno, maybe I shouldn't have bothered, but it didn't seem a perfect situation, so an automatic move seemed not in order.

Anyway, she passes, they flank, he gets shishkabobed. I do consider having him five foot step so as to spoil one of them in terms of flanking. But it seemed kind of petty and non resolving - they have the flank - it'd just draw stuff out and make the whole sitution less clear, it wouldn't produce anything new or amazing.

Blat! They kill him! They take the book and go to open the chest. I think I said "Ohh...so you go to open it...and..." and Barb stammers "Oh wait, no, we search it! For traps!". They find one, flame trap, and disable fails. So who's going to open it and take the heat? It's agreed fighter will - but in the end, Max had taken some damage from the orph, and now he took some from the trap. They roll treasure and its a masterwork ranged weapon. I roll to see who it's suitable for - Barb or Max, as I thought they used different ranged weapons. It turns up as Barb - and Max begins to look upset. He's taken some scrapes and really hasn't gotten anything for it, system wise. Barb diplomatically says he can have the treasure (and I diplomatically ignore that it would have been a small sized shortbow).

In the book there's a note which I tell them says a soldier kobold had left payment with the alchemist and was further in, collecting lethal mushrooms for an attack on a human skum settlement.

Well, over thirty minutes had been eaten up by that! And I still had two board sections to go! Barb laughs at this - she finds the time the whole roleplay thing ends up taking funny, I think. Max is still raring to go, so eventually they hit the next room, after peeping through the door. There's a mongerl folk here and an orc. I throw for the orc, but - heh - I forgot to deploy him! They see the mongrel folk, it see's them, they plink it with arrows and it drops before even moving. Kind of a anti climax. And it's 45 minutes now - so we wrap it up for now.

The next weekened I offer another game and Barb isn't too tired from the week. Okay, this time I'd prepped things a bit more - the combat's had been way simple. In this one I added monsters which would fight for two rounds, then leave - thus not dragging on combat, but making it more complex. Most of these were throw determined. Oh, one thing I added here was that if the combat goes over 15 mins in RL, they lose the combat and are either dead or captured (players choice).

Okay, the first room - remember that orc I forgot? Well now there's two (guarding a chest, pictured on the dungeon tile). Also there's another mongerl folk AND the orcs throw knuckle bones on the ground that will in one round form into skeletons.

Except, the last two are throw based. And I fail both throws, shesh! So it's two orcs. And apparently, two orcs are just enough. The players are in the open, since the orc should have shown up last time during that mongral folk fight. So no surprise round. The players both shoot (fighter loves to shoot), and shoot at seperate targets, neither doing enough to drop an orc (close though). Anyway, one orc wastes his turn throwing the knucklebones (hey, I can still have them in play - they just fail, much to the orcs changrin! And it freaks Barb and Max a bit!).

One orc walks up and ABOSOLUTELY MURDERS THE ROGUE. Okay, not murder, but slaps the rogue from full health to -5. Damn, didn't know they rolled 2D4 AND get +4 damage, AND are +4 to hit! Whoa!

Fighter shoots the orc, hits and downs it. The other orc walks up and NATURAL TWENTY!!!!!1!1!!one!! Actually, why do I get excited about that...it's a hit, and just a threat of a crit, I still have to roll to hit. WHICH I DO! God, 4D4+8...I think it was 18 damage in total!

T - P - K ! ! !

My first ever, actually. Actually, I lie - I hadn't accepted it yet. I looked around - reading the 'vibe' of the situation - not sure there was any way of reversing this if it had to be done. We'd just sat down about ten minutes ago and its all over already! And then I thought about it and...it didn't seem to come out at nothing. We had a result! So I stop reading the vibe and instead carry one myself - were done - weve finished the procedure and here's the result!

Okay, I didn't feel it then, so maybe I'm reading it into it now, but the throws - they stopped this all being my doing. I didn't make this exact scene - it wasn't my intention for this set up to happen. So I didn't just decide they would die, somehow. I think this detachment facilitated that switch from reading the vibe to carrying a vibe of accomplishment.

And in the wake - well, Max isn't thrilled - Barb assures him that we'll just come back next time. He then corrects her 'You dont just come back, mummy!', but seems to cheer up from telling mummy like it is *roll eyes*. And...I can't remember the small talk, but I talk about the CR, hand Barb the stat card and she kind of asks this and that and eventually we get onto range and how she could have stood further back and shot, out of their first round of movement. She thought you had to be closer (though I'd actually said when she moved her figure to fire, that it has greater range - didn't listen, I guess). So she started piecing together a solution. She's fiercely competitive in games (should have seen the last epic chess game we played against each other), so in a way it's not surprising - but it's still very gratifying. There's something odd about that to me - it's not surprising, but its very gratifying. Oh hell, I probably shouldn't type it at all, it looks like a major tell of something.

On a last side note here, kind of in sync with the 15 minute combat rule from above, when they (was it Max, or Barb, or both?) asked if they were dead, I said 'You decide, dead or captured'. Max kept asking me for awhile and I kept throwing it back to him. Eventually he said 'DEAD!', but it was with a sort of 'how about that, do you accept that' tone. I said that too him (though perhaps it was his choice?), that he didn't ask, he just decided. He then said captured, with the same tone. Eventually he said captured with more of a firmness, but I felt kind of dumb as I might have shooed him away from what he might have really chosen. It reminds me of when I ride home from school with him - sometimes I ask him which bus stop we should get off at for the change of buses. And he'd answer 'firrrrst one?' as a question back to me. I said 'You don't ask me, you just do what you decide', at which he affirmatively pressed the bell for the first stop. Perhaps some mechanical action would be suitable here, instead of verbal. Once you've physically done something, it's done. BTW, Barb went for captured too, no questioning tone in her voice!

Anyway, I was going to blather on about the set up of D&D and it's expectations vs what can happen, but I've ragged on for long enough for now. I don't really have any questions, I just really like how the 'throw' system went.

[Filip Luszczyk]

So, recently it struck me that since I'm playing almost exclusively via Skype these days, I could do the whole prep for D&D in a few clicks of mouse, using online random dungeon, treasure, NPC and what have you generators. Amazing. I've always had an issue with the amount of prep in D&D - it's either "spend some hours learning the module" or "spend some much more time writing your own", and I always felt kind of wrong when choosing the challenges.

And here, in two clicks I got a complete dungeon with ready adversity that I'd only have to pit to my best skill against the players. Add some background by free association, and voila, an instant dungeon crawl. If it's too tough, too easy, not rewarding enough or whatever, blame the designers

One orc walks up and ABOSOLUTELY MURDERS THE ROGUE. Okay, not murder, but slaps the rogue from full health to -5. Damn, didn't know they rolled 2D4 AND get +4 damage, AND are +4 to hit! Whoa!

Yeah, little swine-nosed butchers they are. Recently, I've been showing one of my players how combat in D&D works, and with mere 10 orcs I took over a half hit points of his 4th level Ogre Barbarian, heh. My memory may be wrong, but I recall in 3.0 edition they had 1d12 + something great axes listed as their default weapons - a CR 1/2 or 1 (?) monster, for God's sake!

[Callan S.]

I think I prefered the axe wielding orcs - 2D4 averages pretty hard, while a D12 has a wonderful randomness to it. Also orcs should be swishing around bendy swords, dammit - THEY USE MASSIVE AXESSSSS! heh!

In terms of prep, I don't like the two click method you mentioned. What I prefer is a sort of partly assembled toy box that you start building (dungeons) out of, simply because its fun. Much like you might start building something out of lego if you sat down in front of some. I used to make levels with the old PC game duke nukem 3D, making quite elaborate ones in the end, but not from real intention but in a toy box sort of way.

One thing I'd like to note about this session is the expectations that the shared imagined space almost demand. I mean, it's 'everyone get ready to imagine this big complicated space', so they get ready and bam, dead in five minutes. I've never had it so upfront before. And the death result is fine, but the imagined space demanded such dedication it suggests that isn't the point of play. Not to mention if someone is out and others till playing, the primary tool of play - speach - means they are removed from socialising after losing. This doesn't occur in monopoly - plenty of people lose in that without it being an issue.

But at the forge I see some posts resting upon the idea that exiting play is bad, when really any bad is a side effect of a tool we primarily use - the SIS. Designing to meet the apparent needs of the SIS (which I'm calling side effects here) is kind of like changing the job your working on, cause your tool isn't quite right for that job.

I'm just saying this as I can see it easily subverting my agenda to simulationism, or atleast heading that way, halting as I look at where I'm going, heading back, subverted again, and so on in a loop. I wonder about the history of roleplay in Ron's RP history essay, how there was this big gamist movement (along with the rest) near the start but then it seemed to become sim dominant. I wonder if gamism hit this SIS side effects/needs bottleneck and was...converted by stealth? Again I'm thinking about Ron's podcast interview the brain damage part, where people would be told they could get X, but couldn't, so (some of them) would try again and again. In terms of gamism, and being promised wonderful challenge, and banging your head against the 'needs' of the SIS over and over and fucking over again, you just default to simulationism? Like some guys who from a rock band and heads out to write new songs, but to get by they do covers...and more covers...until years latter the only thing they can imagine is doing covers.

I'll tell you one thing, when I just casually described the SIS as just a tool we primarily use, it jolted something. "We primarily use?" part of me says, as if there wasn't something else to use it for! Without actually saying it, that assumption means using the SIS for the sake of the SIS - it's simulationism. But it doesn't say it, it's not a deliberate aim for simulationism. It's the result of using a tool like the SIS with its side effects over and over until your conditioned to avoid those side effects but in effect you've changed the job your doing in order to accomidate those side effects.

Or is it doing a job at all? It might be more like having a car that constantly breaks down. You think your a person that drives places, but you spend more time under the hood with it on bricks than driving. You intended to drive places, but you've ended up a mechanic - hell, your desire to win even fuels this, making you want to really fix that engine! Thus shoving the priority of driving to somewhere right off the horizon.

Okay, rambling a bit. And I keep thinking of that rant about nar I wrote ages ago - I should go have a look at it again soon.

[Will Grzanich]

One orc walks up and ABOSOLUTELY MURDERS THE ROGUE. Okay, not murder, but slaps the rogue from full health to -5. Damn, didn't know they rolled 2D4 AND get +4 damage, AND are +4 to hit! Whoa!

It's interesting, if you think about it.  A bog-standard orc -- a CR 1/2 monster, so a pair of them is nominally an appropriate-level encounter for a party of four 1st-level characters -- can positively annihilate all but the hardiest 1st-level characters in a single blow.

If I may dork out briefly:  by my reckoning, the most hit points a first-level character can have by the core rules is 20 (dwarf barbarian with 20 Con and the Toughness feat).  An orc, if it crits (and falchions crit pretty often, comparatively speaking), can deal up to 24 points of damage in one attack, enough to take Barbie down to -4.  Even if you just look at the average damage done (9, if ignoring crits), it's pretty scary for a low-level character.

Okay, I'm done.  As you were. 

-Will