[Donjon] Silly allegory, anyone?

[Jacob Ossar]

Here are some highlights from a session of Donjon I played with James Sterrett over the phone.  I was DM; the name of the adventure is Rendezvous with Rana.

The Setting:  The town of Mainstream, which lies on the edge of an as yet nameless swamp.  (Yeah, I know it's bad form not to have named it.  Anybody have a good suggestion?)

The Hook:  The swamp has long been home to giant leopard frogs, more commonly known as RPGs thanks to their scientific name, rana pipiens giganticus.  Typical RPGs are interested primarily in combat.  Luckily for the residents of Mainstream, anthropomorphic Frogmen live in the swamp as well and ride herd over the RPGs.  Residents of Mainstream view the RPGs and Frogmen as weird and scary, but mostly they ignore them because the Frogmen seem to be completely uninterested in bringing either themselves or their RPGs into Mainstream.  Recently, however, RPGs that are not part of the Frogmen herds have been spotted in the swamp.  Unlike their brethren, these independent RPGs seem intent on entering Mainstream.  Rumor has it that a midget Frogman sorceror named Rana Dwarfs is behind the creation of these indie RPGs.  A page, reputedly from one of his manifestoes, has recently been recovered from deep in the swamp.  Much of it is written in arcane sorcerous jargon, and other portions are illegible thanks to their journey through the swamp, but it seems clear that the device or place Rana Dwarfs is using to create these indie RPGs is called the "G[illegible]N[illegible]SForge".  (At this point, I should note that James and I are both afficionadoes of the fine indie CRPGs made by Jeff Vogel at Spiderweb Software, including the Geneforge series.)

The Goal:  Stop Rana Dwarfs' nefarious scheme to take over Mainstream with his horde of indie RPGs!

The Enticement:  The mayor of Mainstream offers a starter deck of Gathering:  The Magic cards.  These are one-use magic items that can add bonus dice to a roll to Gather Magic Power.  (Question:  are items like this "stackable"?  That is, could five or ten cards of one die each occupy one inventory slot, or would the item have to be set up so that the PC must use all of the bonus dice all at once in order to be able to carry this item over from one adventure to the next?)  

James expressed some hesitation about the setup, suggesting instead that maybe the indie RPGs et al should be the good guys.  I ruthlessly nixed this suggestion, though.  A little oedipal kill-the-father fun between friends never hurt anybody....

One of the better encounters occurred when James heard a croaking noise that sounded like "Guurrppps, Guuurrpps".  He found a bunch of RPGs herded, not by a Frogman, but by a Mini-Ogre.  I was all set to run a fight, but James exploited the Mini-Ogre's low Cerebrality to pump it for clues about the location of the G_N_SForge.  After owning up to a dislike for indie RPGs ("They not crunchy enough!"), the Mini-Ogre let slip that they seem to be coming from a region of the swamp he called The Pool.

I was also proud of James' encounter with Pipiens, an NPC Forgman sidekick I threw in so I could send more monsters per combat after James.  (A lone PC really cramps one's tactical options.)  Pipiens had been with a group helping his friend Frogo accomplish something-or-other involving a ring, but had become separated....

The session ended at the edge of The Pool, where James had to convince a giant turtle to ferry him across to the island in the center.  The turtle demanded a story.

James:  Do I have to say what kind of story I'm telling?
Me: You betcha!
James:  How's about I tell him about my adventures so far?
Me: No dice.  That's just a Transcript.  The turtle demands a Dramatic Narrative....

Come to think of it, I probably should have had him offer the Transcript and given the turtle bonus dice to resist.  Oh well, I'll get him next time.

I've got a couple of ideas for the next chapter (right now I'm thinking of calling it "Dawn Assault on Ice Island"), but I'm much newer to the Forge than James and am at a disadvantage in extending the allegory much farther.  (I probably should have taken his suggestion to make the non-indie RPGs the bad guys.)  So I'd welcome suggestions for what to do next.  I'd be particularly grateful if someone could come up with a clever name for the giant spider who maintains the web that leads to (or perhaps is)  the G_N_SForge.  The best I can come up with so far is Pierce R. Polk.  A clever name for the Frogmen would also be welcome.  James, read this thread at your own risk!

I know having only one player and a GM is far from the ideal situation for most RPGs, and we're certainly experiencing some slow spots as a result.  When things are going well, the gameplay reminds me of Harold and the Purple Crayon, but when we start to run out of ideas, it turns into the old "Take it, Tom!" "No, you take it!" Smothers Brothers routine.  I'm sure with more people sharing the imaginative burden, and also serving as an echo chamber to bounce around and amplify cool ideas, coming up with good encounters would be a lot less work.  

Even allowing for the fact that I have to come up with more ideas than I would if I were playing with a larger group, I must say I was expecting Donjon to require very little prep time.  So far I haven't found this to be the case, though.  Even if enounters are only a few lines of text each, it sure helps to have thought out the background, statted the monsters/NPCs in advance, and planned some interesting encounters (not:  OK, some more monsters attack you).  It probably doesn't help that I'm extremely rusty with GMing (I haven't done it for over a decade) and never did too much of it even when I was in practice.  So perhaps if I were more proficient I'd do better improvising cool stuff on the fly.  

I have some further thoughts about Donjon as a system and some rules questions that my session with James prompted, but while I'm formulating those I'd like to post this right away in hopes of getting some good ideas before we play again (which might well be tonight).

[Simon W]

Heartbreaker Swamp.

Just a thought.

Simon

[Jacob Ossar]

Great, I'll take it!  Thanks, Simon.  

I think James is definitely slated to meet up with a lump(le)y Frogman who can do terrible things if he can get his hands on some puppies....

[JamesSterrett]

"James, read this thread at your own risk!"

You tell me this in the thread, but you sent me an email to make sure I read it, too.  :)

Coming up with a Dramatic Narrative on the spot for the turtle was a non-trivial challenge.  :)

I got a kick out of not only tying up the mini-ogre's RPG-frogs, but selling the ogre the rope with which I did this ("See, now they can't run away!  Can't beat the convenience!") for a point of wealth - especially since the "tie up the frogs" plan began as a cover-my-ass notion that I could take the frogs out of the fight that way.  :)

[Bob McNamee]

You could always call the Giant Spider...or some other character... "Universe Alice"  :)
http://universalis.actionroll.com/index.html

and someone named ( or titled) "Inspectre" would suit well.
http://memento-mori.com/inspectres/

Fun stuff...got quite a chuckle out of this!

[JamesSterrett]

And another session rolls (roles?) by...

Excessive hilarity prevented us from getting far tonight (and in any event, when our schedules align, they tend not to do so for long sessions).

However, we rode across the Pool on the back of the turtle to an ice wharf (Geneforge 1 begins at an abandoned wharf) to the Ice Island... and what should there be at the end of the wharf but an Ice Fort - Fort Joey!

So the rest of the game turned into an Assault on Fort Joey (see this link), guarded by the SimFrogs wielding powers such as "Share the Dream" (which forced me to explain every action in terms of a snowball fight) and "Enforce Logical Continuity".  And, of course, Cunning Plans.  :)

The latter stopped my attempt to end the fight early through intimidation; after trading snowballs at a distance, I charged up the wall and tried to roll my successes over into a between-flurries intimidation to make the frogs surrender.  As a support to this, I tried to pull a flag out of my Provisions, so I could plant the flag atop the wall of Fort Joey and claim it - but, sadly, the SimFrog's resistance to this improvisation prevented the flag, and only one surrendered....

With a fairly solid concept in mind of what was supposed to be happening, we were a lot better at trading off the lead in describing what was going on; and Donjon's support for attempting the coolest thing you can currently think of is nifty.  :)