[Donjon] via IRC, third session

[JamesDJIII]

If anyone wants to read the logs, you can see them by joining the Indie-NetGaming Yahoo group. I've posted the last 2 session logs there.

The highlights from last night's gaming:

• Our first real combat.
• First real chance to see how close some PCs came to "being close to being almost dead."
• Tons of mis-read victories and self-corrections.[
• Lots of mis-understandings about how magic and magic like powers are used.
• A brief chance for me to start filling in some more Big Bad details for the players.

This session seemed to move a lot faster than the last session. We're gaining momentum as we turn our conscious lack of skill to becoming unconsciously skilled. It's a great mental struggle for myself to stay in that Donjon mindset as a GM. I had to repeatedly stop myself from trying to tell the players that they couldn't do this or that. A couple of time they used victories to really throw my notes into utter chaos - but I really liked that feeling.

I can't tell you how many games I have run where there is only one real path to success, and I felt bad about the poor players who just didn't "get it." No problems with that in this game. The players are in so much control over a lot of the game metabolism. It was a fun change!

And now, for the specific questions I have. We tried to wing things we didn't have a good grasp of - but if the Donjoneers out there have corrections and comments we'd love to hear them!

* Healing spells. This is how we handled them (ignoring our really gaffs about magic poer gathering in general): once the Spell Dice were gathered, it was an unopposed difficulty with victories used as recoveries to damaged attributes and Flesh Wounds.

* Generally speaking, Raven wanted to use his psionics to "scan" the hallway ahead of them. I figured this was like a Discernment test, with victories used to establish facts or to be carried over. This is how we handled it.

It didn't occur to us late that the whole Gather Power and then Release handled Spell Dice as a pool that was spent on the spell's effects until AFTER the spell pool had been established. I read it like you had to define the spell at the start. Sorry about that Raven. You're reading of the rules was more accurate.

The players and my comments about them:
Raven [Granix] - seems like he has been reading and posting on the Forge for a while. I'm glad that he is so forgiving of my mis-reading of the rules. I know I absolutely screwed him on at least  3 rounds in the first flurry with the power gathering and whatnot.
Nathan [Vareena] - not a Forge member (or hasn't been one for long). Made a curious comment about the game early on about "a non-slow game of DarkSun". I don't know if he meant because FTF games were slow or that pbp games were slow.
MikeD [ZakThor] - just joined us. I was particularly proud that we didn't get caught up in the whole "How do we shoehorn in his guy into this session?" issue that so plagued every game of GURPS I have ever run or played in.

Overall - we're stoked about playing next week!

[Mike D.]

This was my first time playing Donjon, and I enjoyed it immensely. It really changed the way I look at role-playing (being from a group that plays mostly in a sim mode), I think this game is a refreshing change of pace from what I am used to. (Don't know if I ever want to play a sim game again). :) Very thankful for the forge and showing me that there was more to RPG's than I knew about.

Really looking forward to our next session of IRC Donjon...

--MikeD

[greyorm]

I have a confession to make: I wasn't looking forward to playing and I forced myself to show up.

Not because I didn't have fun last time, and not as a reflection on James or anyone else in the group or the game, but because I realized some time ago doing so has become habit for me. I've become acclimated to getting cold feet just before play and not really wanting to play, then pushing ahead into play anyways for a number of reasons.

The cold feet began because play in my other group's 3E game rarely turned out the way I wanted it to in terms of personal enjoyment, pacing, emotional content, and (especially) system-use, etc., so I rarely really enjoyed myself. Sure, we had sessions that were fulfiling, but for the most part they usually left me feeling hollow. Play was not awful-bad-horrible, just mainly mediocre, in the vein of "Hey, I wonder if that movie is on tonight?" -- play that could have just been better.

Like a video-game you play mainly because you always do, and because occasionally you do something really cool in it, but otherwise find the experience only mildly engaging.

This time, this game, I enjoyed myself. I mean that: I really, actually enjoyed playing. Screwed up magic gathering checks aren't even on my radar. I don't care because I had fun. I wasn't asking myself throughout the session, "Ok, am I having fun? Is everyone else having fun? How can I make this fun?" I just had fun, and it felt like everyone else was having fun, too.

This is almost new territory for me, and I am kicking myself, thinking "WHY? WHY didn't I do this three years ago? Dumbass!" Of course I realize I've done it NOW, and the journey to get here has been valuable for the contrasts provided.

(Though I still do have a little voice whispering in the back of my head, "Well, what if you're just telling yourself you had fun because the alternative is just too awful to contemplate?" but I don't know if that's just the part of me talking that has been acclimatized to doubt and disappoinment with RPGs, plus I'm mildly paranoid.)

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to next week, to playing again!

[JamesDJIII]

The cold feet began because play in my other group's 3E game rarely turned out the way I wanted it to in terms of personal enjoyment, pacing, emotional content, and (especially) system-use, etc., so I rarely really enjoyed myself. Sure, we had sessions that were fulfiling, but for the most part they usually left me feeling hollow. Play was not awful-bad-horrible, just mainly mediocre, in the vein of "Hey, I wonder if that movie is on tonight?" -- play that could have just been better.

Raven,

If I had to write down, concisely, my experiences with RPGs over the last 5 years, it would match up very closely to this. And it gets worse - when I try to analyze WHY play isn't what it could be I alienated just about everyone in my old gaming group. Seems as if they are SO burned on play that it must appear normal to them. They have no problems abandoning the gaming for sitting back and watching whatever craptastic DVD someone has brought over.

I just couldn't take it any more.

Viva la Forge!

[greyorm]

I've been thinking about this for the past couple days, and figured I might as well solicit opinions. After Granix used Mind Control on the gith, we basically went into question-and-answer mode, since they were bound to his will and would do anything he said for the Scene's duration.

I keep wondering, however, if we did that right, or if there was some systemic way to figure out what or how much we could learn from them? Because it felt, well, weird after all the player-narration-input stuff to suddenly go back to player-asks-this-GM-tells-you-this mode.

I considered whether or not converting successes into facts would have mitigated this, but given that all the successes were used to take control of their minds and given that having control of their minds implies that we could ask them anything we wanted and get as many honest answers as we wanted anyways (without need for using facts), that doesn't really provide a solution.

Maybe we could have used some sort of Discernment test against their Cerebrality, with the number of successes being the number of facts we learned (and also that we could narrate), as an abstract measure of their stupidity and actual knowledge, and our ability to read-into their crude understanding of the details they did know?

...Or am I just being anal?

[JamesDJIII]

You know, I had the same feeling while it was happening. It felt wrong to slip into that old-school question-and-answer mode. I felt as if all of the mechanics geared towards players using victories was not relevant.

Part of the text says to railroad past the boring stuff - I certainly didn't feel any need make you guys obtain victories to get them to talk.

Of course, another course was to carry the victories of your spell dice versus their failed save and allow you to state what particular facts about an ensuing conversation. Anyone have any experience with sort of thing?

[JamesSterrett]

While I'd likely have done what you actually did,

"Of course, another course was to carry the victories of your spell dice versus their failed save and allow you to state what particular facts about an ensuing conversation."

..  sounds like a much better solution.  :)

[greyorm]

I certainly didn't feel any need make you guys obtain victories to get them to talk.

Oh no, I agree that would be nonsensical. That's why I suggested a roll to define how much we learned from them, rather than whether we learned anything or not.

Of course, another course was to carry the victories of your spell dice versus their failed save and allow you to state what particular facts about an ensuing conversation. Anyone have any experience with sort of thing?

Hrm...by "carry over" you mean count all the successes from the Control Mind spell as both successes AND facts, rather than one or the other? That would be an interesting way to handle it.

I'm going to think out loud here: Of course, you could also make only those successes that could be converted into facts count. That is, "I have great control over their minds" : many dice of facts; and "My control is very limited" : only a few dice of facts.

No dice might mean very weak control, so that full concentration is given over to maintaining non-hostility...but that's starting to get too complex, I think, and if they're non-hostile, why wouldn't they tell us what they knew if we asked? And ultimately, no matter how that question is answered, it doesn't prevent a question-and-answer session.

[JamesDJIII]

Raven,

Yeah - that was the real goal fo the spell - MIND CONTROL. I you won! So - anything you wanted them to do for that scene was fine by me.

I think otherwise, just as you use victories on a Damage Test, you use victories in the Mind Controll vs. Save to state "They tell us X" and "They tell us Y".

In any case - we're good!