D&D ran like an indie rpg - almost

[Ry]

For those who mentioned interest in E6, it is available in rtf form at EN World:

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3632040&postcount=49

[Ry]

Ran the first weekly session with E6 and the new house rules last night.    Players were Mr. and Mrs. Q (brand new to roleplaying), Rob (Valvorik from these boards), Remi (veteran D&D and near-freeform player), and Sandy (local D&D meetup organizer).  Rob I met for the first time in person, I work with Mr. Q, I've met Sandy before at meetups, and Remi's my Brotha By Anotha Motha and 10 year veteran of my games.

The plan was to have players make 3rd level characters, and then start from there if there was any time that day.  I planned on having players level to first, doing a bit of roleplaying, levelling to second, doing a bit of roleplaying, and so on.  That plan went out the window very early on.

Again, D&D ran like an indie rpg - almost.  This time it stalled on introducing new roleplayers to D&D's lengthy character creation process.  I scrapped the idea of making 3rd level characters since it would take too long, and I was able to insert some gaming in between the character creation steps.  The players jammed off of each other's situations really well.

That last bit was a huge success; the first rolls of the game for each character were stakes-setting, basically from the Dogs in the Vineyard character creation rules.  Each player had a different background, but then I asked them to set some stakes and a situation they could win or lose based on that background.  I gave them a few minutes to think about the situation while I helped another player.  All the stake-setting situations the players came up with were excellent, and I hope set the tone of the campaign as one where the players have real input on the consequences of their actions (and even the setting).  In fact, I may use stake-setting to kick off each session - but I won't force it if we're drawing a blank. 

As usual, Conviction was used well and helped share the spotlight. 
As expected, the Death Flag meant I could throw a serious challenge at the players without worrying that I was consigning a new player to another hour and a half of character creation.
As hoped, Raising the Stakes was used, although it wasn't part of combat (which is something I want to encourage).
E6 really wasn't a factor because we had first level characters.

[Ry]

I can see 1000 views on this thread, so I'll update again.

Second weekly session; 3 players this time (the Qs are sick) Sandy, Rob and Remi.  This time, D&D ran like an indie rpg with no qualifier.

At the beginning of the session we did some "between the games" stake-setting.  This included: Rob and Sandy jockeyed over whether they should trust the city guards after seeing some corruption, and then rolled Knowledge checks to determine which one was actually right (their suggestion, I went with it).   Sandy also barely squeaked by a swindle that he did against a powerful NPC, managing to steal a trivial item but making a serious enemy.

Then I told them that the Aagen family, which the players are connected to, had seven living members (parents and 3 teenage boys, 2 younger girls).  I told them that on a particular day in early spring, they will all be killed by assassins - except per the players' stake-setting.  We established that they would get a tip-off.

Remi jumped in, saying he wanted to hook up with the assassins the night before, and bluff them by saying he was sent as "extra muscle".  He managed to pull it off by spending some Conviction, but couldn't convince the assassins that he was trustworthy to act as a guard while they slept the night before.  Between some lucky rolls and raising the stakes Remi pulled it off, killing 4 assassins and saving 3 family members (the three boys).

Sandy created another situation where the carriage carrying the girls was diverted down a dark alley.  His character went in first and he set stakes based on finding the assassins or thinking the path was clear.  He rolled a twenty and decided to try for combat against the 2 assassins, which he won by a very small margin (using all his Conviction, and saving the 2 girls)

Rob, playing a cleric, put everything into identifying assassins trying to poison the sacrament at Church on that day (this was all his idea, worked great).  If he failed he was going to also be poisoned.  Rob also succeeded the first try, the assassins were discovered, and the family saved.

After that, we fast forwarded to the hottest day of the summer in the city; some strangely co-ordinated rioting was starting to happen, and the players intervened.  They could tell something was up but besides knocking out a few thugs and saving a few shopkeepers and local monuments there hasn't been a lot.  One nice thing was that this all occurred in Five Angels Square, which was invented by Sandy during the previous session (not by name) - that was the location of the near food riot.

So basically I had to run a few mooks and then our time was up.  Two and a half hour session all told, Rob and Sandy both mentioned how much they liked the campaign, Remi's got a whole vision for his character as a budding (counter?)assassin and all in all it was a total breeze to DM.

[Valvorik]

Rob from above speaking - yes the game is very cool to play in.  Watching the other players posit situations and stakes has been very fun and given 'shared authorship' around the table in way I would never have thought possible in a d20 campaign.

Ryan's a very 'say yes' DM.  His use of stakes has been a very nice way for a GM to draw players into populating the complications in a setting to be player-character-based in a way different than "beliefs" or "relationships" - though the assassin scene was more about "elaborating on and then resolving" the complication the GM positied.  So it's been both a way of players authoring content and an "alternative conflict resolution" method.  Lastly, it's been a way of sharing screen time which is something Ryan seems to be very conscious of ensuring.

I think the mixed "d20 resolution" and "more staked resolution" has made for more "story rich" play while still keeping some "woo hah, rolled a critical" fun.  Would be interesting to see what Terence and Lisa would say (the QQ's) but I think it's also probably a less intimidating/more intuitive introduction for people less familiar with the system or any system.

I've also been thinking "this so needs a relationship map"!

[Ry]

I'm doing an r-map of locations in place of a physical map on the back end.  I try to keep track of any places the characters have mentioned and then include them in the web.  Sort of a "map of the sets" if my campaign was a TV series.

The pdfs for E6 and Raising the stakes are available for free at the E6 wiki, esix.pbwiki.com   

J A Dettman, who did the layout for me, did a fantastic job.

That site might contain spoilers for my campaign.

[Hans]

Is it just me, or is that "epic 6th level" link at the top not working anymore?  I'd like to look at these rules, but the link to EnWorld tells me "No such thread".

[Ry]

You're right, the link is broken (they consolidated threads and I can't edit an old post here)

Here's the newest thread

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=202109&page=1

The pdfs of Raising the Stakes and E6 are available at

http://esix.pbwiki.com