Dudley-Do-Right Vs. The Orcs From Hell

[rabidchyld]

So..I ran a game Sunday night with just Trey (hubby) and Eric (neighbor), because of the bad rpg experience they had Saturday night....that thread is here.  It was totally old school D&D, and it was awesome and hysterical.  That was just what we all needed.

 I was not going to post about it, but Zak suggested that I do, and add a note that it was simulationist gamist style or something like that.  I don't use those kinds of words usually, so...whatever...


Anyway, Trey was a paladin and Eric was a cleric.  Trey played the paladin like Dudley-Do-Right, and apparently Eric's character was his trusty sidekick.    

The goal of the game was to defeat the mysterious threat that was destroying villages in the vicinity of a Lord who had asked the villages to swear fealty to him.  They all refused, and then this mysterious threat had been set upon them.  

The charcters had no idea what they were up against, but since they were steadfast men of their god, they set out with enthusiasm to defeat the "evil".  They came upon a couple of villages that had been burned and all the people killed.    Then after the second village, they ran upon an "abandoned" camp, which just happened to have a troop of goblins waiting to attack them.  

They took care of the goblins fairly easily, and moved on to the next town.  They came across another trail to an encampment, but decided not to investigate it and instead went to the next town which hadn't been destroyed yet.  They warned the villagers and tried to get them to stay and fight, but they all ran away, and they set up the town and waited for the mysterious enemies to come.  

During this time, they had found evidence that the Lord had sent this band of whatever it was to destroy the villages because they refused him fealty, but they had no positive proof.  

The mysterious enemy came, under cover of fog, which the PC's were ready for.  They did a wall of wind spell and blew the fog away to reveal an orc army.  There were 37 orks (including the orc boss and the evil witch doctor), plus some crazy beasts they were riding and 10 goblins.  Ther were 2 PC's....hee!  

They fought....and fought...one of them dropped...got healed..and they fought some more...and then some more....

Finally, both of them were alive and all the enemies weren't.  They actually defeated an orc army.  May the gods bless them.  They had the brilliant idea to go take the head of the dead orc boss to the Lord and cast speak with dead on it and confront the Lord with his foul deeds, but a local villager brought logic to their hearts and convinced them that their word and a dead orc's head against the Lord wasn't such a great idea.  They instead went to all the surrounding villages and told them about the Lord's foul deeds, which convinced them not to ever swear fealty to him.  

Well...I'm sure that will piss off the Lord and in the next game he will definitely have to do something about those damn goody-goody clerics.

Hee!  More like this!  Oh!  Also, Zak had suggested using facts from Donjon in this particular D&D game as well.  At least the narration bits if they roll really well.  I think it would really add to the general goofiness of the game and help my players continue their baby steps toward true narrative play.  

Thanks for that, Zak!  

melodie

[Zak Arntson]

I was not going to post about it, but Zak suggested that I do, and add a note that it was simulationist gamist style or something like that.  I don't use those kinds of words usually, so...whatever...

Yeah, I'm a strong believer in discussing play, regardless of if it's an indie game or not. The play's the thing.

Anyway, Trey was a paladin and Eric was a cleric.  Trey played the paladin like Dudley-Do-Right, and apparently Eric's character was his trusty sidekick.

Question: How did closely aligning (in both career and alignment) your PCs differ the play experience? It's one of those age-old "rules": The party must be balanced: In a fantasy game you need a fighter, a rogue and a healer. (Who hasn't heard the "Well, my party needed a cleric, so that's what I was") What'd be wrong with an all-fighter game? It's good to see games like Paladin and Sorcerer out there.

[qupte]The mysterious enemy came, under cover of fog, which the PC's were ready for.  They did a wall of wind spell and blew the fog away to reveal an orc army.  There were 37 orks (including the orc boss and the evil witch doctor), plus some crazy beasts they were riding and 10 goblins.  Ther were 2 PC's....hee! [/quote]

And this is what D&D is all about. Glad you had fun!

Hee!  More like this!  Oh!  Also, Zak had suggested using facts from Donjon in this particular D&D game as well.  At least the narration bits if they roll really well.  I think it would really add to the general goofiness of the game and help my players continue their baby steps toward true narrative play.  

My suggestion is to take the d20 roll, and give the player a number of facts equal to the tens-digit rolled. Also, are your players wanting narrative play but are timid? Why do are you gearing them towards more narrative control?

Thanks for that, Zak!

Thank you for posting. I try to read ALL the Actual Play posts. So much to learn from them!

[xiombarg]

What'd be wrong with an all-fighter game?

As a quick aside, the problem with an all-fighter game, at least in D&D3E, is the standard CRs assume a cleric with the party. I have run into problems time and time again in my Sigil game where the lack of a cleric has meant serious problems for the PCs that I as a GM and the system in general did not anticipate, because no one is playing a pure cleric. While in a Forgotten Realms game I'm in, where we DO have a cleric, we can confidently defeat monsters of a CR several levels above our own because of the pure druid in our party, and the healing powers he brings us.

Not to say you can't play an all-fighter or all-rogue game in D&D3E. But it takes more work, because you have to factor in that the system is built (and was playtested) on the assumption of a "balanced party".

[rabidchyld]

Question: How did closely aligning (in both career and alignment) your PCs differ the play experience? ....... What'd be wrong with an all-fighter game? It's good to see games like Paladin and Sorcerer out there.

They had 2 goals when they were creating their characters.  The first one was to have characters who knew each other and had a common goal.  The second thing was to live through the adventure, because ...well, there were only 2 of them.  

In closely aligning themselves, because they had several of the same abilities and worshipped the same god, they were inspired to work more as a team, which helped them a lot in the game.  A lot of that may have been the dynamic between the players themselves, though.  

The spontaneous healing rule helped, even though the poor cleric got 7 or 8 attacks of opportunity every time he did it.  It made for a really tense situation for them.  

There's nothing wrong with an all fighter game, it's just usually a short game.  There must be a way to heal yourself in D&D.  The whole point is to fight..you fight, you get hurt, you get hurt, you die.  Trey ran a game one time where we all played some sort of fighter and he had to create an NPC cleric to keep the game going.  It was great fun, though.  

Also, are your players wanting narrative play but are timid? Why do are you gearing them towards more narrative control?

I am gearing my players toward narrative play because they do want it.  We have discussed it at great length and they are excited about it, but very timid.  They are afraid they won't say the right thing, or not know what to say at all.  They wanted a method by which they could learn narrative play instead of being thrown into it cold, so they asked me if they could start small, and that's when I started letting them have more narrative control in the D&D games, although they are still not utilizing it that much yet.  

The next logical step would be to give them a clear opportunity to use that control.  Right now they are unsure when to speak up.  If they know when they roll successfully, they can make something up of their own, they will be thinking about it and hopefully looking foreward to it.  I'm hoping that will give them more confidence to use their narrative control in the rest of the game.  


I talked with Trey last night about using the Donjon facts rules and he was really excited about it once I explained it to him.  

We will probably pick this game up again on Sunday, so I'll see how it goes.  

Thanks,

melodie