[Donjon] Failed First Attempt

[Selene Tan]

I tried GMing my first game of Donjon yesterday... Parts of it went, well, parts of it went disastrously. There were a LOT of rules disputes. One of my players pointed out later that I should never have entertained any of them, even if they resulted in rulings that made sense, because it just encouraged worse and longer disputes as play continued. Most of the rulings never actually came up a second time...

First off, character creation took something like 2-3 hours. I'm not sure what took so long; when I was test-creating characters it didn't take me anywhere near that long.

Characters:

Connor o'Connor, Merchant Grenadier
Plentiful Wares (adds to Provision rolls)
Grenade Magic - flame, rejuvenate
Find Treasure
Throw Grenade (bonus to, well, throwing grenades)
Haggle (bonus when turning Wealth into Provisions)

[He never said his name in-game, maybe Marcelus?], Mime
Mimic (repeats last action and last target of a selected character in combat, using Mimic and the stat rolled for the action, rolling no more dice than were last used. I'd intended this to be the last action/target period, and I thought I'd communicated that... By coincidence, it usually ended up that way.)
Mime Magic - wall, fishing pole
Silence (bonus for moving silently)
Silent Communication (able to communicate with gestures instead of speech)
Obvious Observation (bonus to seeing obvious things)

Red-Handed Jill, Pirate
Swashbuckling (defined as a combination of Fight With Cutlass, Swing From Ropes, and Look Dashing, i.e. 3 secondary abilities together)
Pillage (bonus to looting rolls, destroys loot target afterwards)
Smuggle (bonus to Provisions checks for foreign items)
Storytelling (bonus to bluffing)

Belfind, Lune Seer
Word of Knowledge (knowledge about monsters, only useable once/individual, can't contradict existing information)
Lunar Magic - luminous, lunacy; weaker during the day
Change of Lunacy (allows roll on failed save vs mental effect; successes change type of effect)
Curse of the Oracle (Allows Lune Seer to state one thing he believes is true, in a way that will make listeners believe it's false... Kind of an inverse bluff.)
Spectral Sight (bonus to seeing spirits and demons)

I decided to run "A Fungus Among Us." I let them start with 4 Worth total of permanent possessions. I let the Mime and Grenadier have outfits with armor bonuses (basically treated as normal armor). The Grenadier got a DR 2 throwing weapon that we called a "Grenade"; I didn't want to try worrying about splash damage. The characters started in town. Connor converted some Wealth to Provisions. The Mime started performing and managed to gather a crowd, then moved to the tavern as it was getting dark. Jill and the Lune Seer wandered into the tavern as well.
As a really obvious adventure hook, I had a man run into the tavern shouting that the Emerald of Cissilda had been stolen. The pirate (who might have been confused about the hook?) tried to bluff her way out by saying that she hadn't done it, and failed the roll miserably. I decided (which was probably a mistake) that the guy believed she'd done it, and went off to call the town guard. Combat ensued.
Combat took a long time. There were 3 guardsmen (I used level 1 Knights) up against 4 PCs, and I got the feeling that it wasn't a fair fight even in the short stretches where it ended up as several simultaneous one-on-one matches. The merchant's playter told me that also felt pretty ineffective, so I think it was just everyone... Also, it took at least 2 hours to resolve. After the first round, I ruled that we use d10s for initiative, since otherwise, people had a tendency to pick up their initiative dice for other rolls. (I kept track of NPC initiatives and the current count number on my laptop, which also had the sourcebooks open.) Some of the players had issues with the way I was assigning distances, and argued that a bar should not be 5 Actions wide. I told them "It's a bar. You have to avoid tables and stuff," and then got the argument that missile and thrown weapons ranges still didn't fit the distances, at which point another player said "It has a ceiling. You can't aim that far because you'll just hit the ceiling." (This was probably a dispute I shouldn't have entertained.) One of my players did have fun when he managed to trip one of the guards, describing how he fell into a table of drinks, spilling one of them onto a burly guy sitting nearby. The mime soon ended up in that direction, and managed to anger the burly guy, who entered combat and started chasing the mime. After a while the combat ended, and I gave out experience; the players seemed to feel that it was too little considering how long combat took.

Somewhere during either that combat or the next one, the issue came up of whether or not PCs could delay turns. I ruled for a Deadlands-style approach, i.e. you can keep one turn "up your sleeve" to use later whenever you want, but only one turn can be up your sleeve.

The PCs ran out of town, so I had them run into the Crimson Forest to get them into the adventure anyway. The Lune Seer saw the translucent leaves and decided to try to use Spectral Sight; he succeeded and stated that they were glowing with a protective aura. I added that the aura seemed to grow stronger to the northeast, figuring that the Mushroom King had laid some sort of protective spell on the forest. Also it gave them a suggested direction. In any case, they decided to rest for the night, and the Mime managed to find a cave big enough for the tent the Merchant pulled out.
I decided to try running a combat with a single, higher-level creature, and picked a Troglodyte since they were in a cave and it looked interesting. In the first round, the Troglodyte targeted the Mime using its tail, and managed to reduce his Flesh Wounds to zero. The Mime's player got up to leave, thinking that he was basically dead, and it had to be explained that he wasn't even unconscious. A little later, he complained that he'd just realized that slamming was easier for creatures with lower skills than those with higher ones, which made no sense. I told him that was just the way it worked, and he shut up for a while. Then the Lune Seer used Word of Knowledge to make it weak versus metal, confused by bright light, and solitary, which was slightly inconvenient for me. I need to learn how to deal with things like that better. During the fight, people kept getting confused about what to roll when using Active Defense. I had to state several times that it was just a to-hit roll. Also, it took the Mime a while to realize that passive defense takes no actions, even though the issue had come up before. In this combat, the Mime mimicked the Grenadier's actions to gather Grenade Magic, and then the Troglodyte died. That soon led to a discussion about whether or not it was possible to safely dissipate magic. I ruled that it wasn't possible. The Grenadier ended up using it to try casting a Rejuvenate spell to neutralize the poison damage on the Mime; I let him try with a Hard difficulty. He failed, but the Mime mimicked it and managed to cure himself. Then we took a break since I was feeling tired and my shoulders were kinda sore from bad posture and sitting too far from the table I was rolling my dice on. (This was possibly my body's hint to me not to continue...) Before resuming play, we discussed the situation with magic again, and ended up with the conclusion that you have to make a roll similar to the roll to hold gathered magic when hit. Then they started asking about intentionally letting go of gathered magic, which I ruled was possible but would take an action. (I should probably not have entertained further discussion over a topic I had already made a ruling on; maybe after the entire session, but not in the middle, even during a break.)

In any case, I fast-forwarded the PCs into the second chapter of A Fungus Among Us. The Daolite trap got triggered, leading to a cave-in that made it inconvenient, but not impossible for them to exit the cave. After some time, the Pirate tried to find a secret passage, and succeeded. I had the secret passage lead into an area with the Poison Toad encounter. The mime stayed behind to check for traps and failed, and I used my successes to start the encounter. In the surprise round, only one toad was visible, and then I had the others come in after the PCs went. (The toads seemed more effective than the town guards from earlier... I think their abilities combo'ed better, and the higher Adroitness helped.) Combat ensued.
Somewhere in the middle of combat, the Lune Seer cast a spell with the word lunacy, trying to confuse the toads into attacking each other. I rolled saves and recorded the numbers of success dice for each. Then when it came to the toads' turns, I rolled Discernment vs confusion dice (rationalizing that they were trying to figure out who was actually a target and who wasn't) to see if they attacked the PCs or each other. The Lune Seer argued that the rulebook said I should just give them penalty dice whenever they tried to do something other than attack each other, which then ended up in a dispute about whether or not that effect was too powerful or made sense, at which point another player started arguing that the roles of Discernment and Cerebrality didn't make sense because resisting magic effects should be Cerebrality and casting spells should be Discernment or something, and then one of the players pulled out the book and started quoting the table describing what each stat governed... So I stood up and walked out of the room.
One of the players told the others off, then went to get me, and I'd cooled off a bit, so we resumed play. Then one of the players managed to slam a toad, and commented again that the definition of slam really needed work and made no sense since fewer dice meant a higher chance to slam. I cursed, threw a ball at his arm, then stormed out of the room. The other players ended up clearing up, and I met them on their way back with my stuff.
I know those were probably not the best or most mature responses, but I was really frustrated, and I didn't think that shouting at them would actually accomplish anything.

Later, the Grenadier's player told me that he felt there were too many tied rolls. I didn't think they came up that often, about on par with critical hits in my regular D&D3E campaign.

So that was my first Donjon session. I'm sure there are more things I managed to get wrong in GMing then I've realized.

[Bankuei]

Hi Selene,

Ties are very, very, very rare in Donjon.  For that to happen, every single die on both sides has to tie...  Did you know that you're supposed to keeping going down the list of dice until you reach one that ISN'T tied?

For example:

A rolls 19, 18, 15, 3
B rolls 19, 18, 13, 7

A wins, because 15 is higher than 13.  A wins by 3 successes(the 15 plus the two ties).

Also, arguments over "realism" aren't really what Donjon is about.  While there are plenty of games that have stuff based on some idea of realism, Donjon is definitely not it.  Did your players get a chance to read the rules, or did you just explain it to them?  I think the humor in the book/pdf goes a long way towards making that clear.

Chris

[Selene Tan]

The player meant that it seemed to happen very frequently that the two highest numbers came up the same. (And sometimes the two next-highest numbers as well... I think we once got up to four.) I suppose I should have said "tied top values" or something like that, to make it more clear.

All of the players had heard the game described by me, and all of them had read the rulebook (some more thoroughly than others). I probably wasn't doing a very good job of setting the scene for humor, since it's not my forte. I think the humor came out the best in the initial bar fight, with people crashing into tables and tripping over things and spilling drinks, but the players didn't seem to be getting into it, but it wasn't very obvious there. People created mostly-silly characters but tried to play them very seriously...

[coxcomb]

Something about Donjon seems to do wacky things to the brains of players. In my (mostly unsuccessful) attempt to play through the sample adventure, the players got it into their heads that they could be evil. They started the adventure by making a forged copy of the note from the mayor so that the weaponsmith and armorer would give them more free stuff. It all went downhill from there.

I think it is very important to establish, as a group, what you are aiming for with Donjon before plunging in. You say, "you guys can tell me what happens," without any discussion about ramifications, and it goes all wonky. Perhaps, because of the diminished power of the GM to dictate and control play, the social contract needs some more overt definition up front?

[Andrew Norris]

I think it is very important to establish, as a group, what you are aiming for with Donjon before plunging in. You say, "you guys can tell me what happens," without any discussion about ramifications, and it goes all wonky. Perhaps, because of the diminished power of the GM to dictate and control play, the social contract needs some more overt definition up front?

I think that's the beauty of games like Donjon... they bring all out that social construct stuff that's lurking deep in many groups, and force it to the surface.

I figure if I can see what my group wants when there are few restrictions, that helps me better understand how their brains work in our more traditional games.

Even if I just learn that they like to screw around, hey, there's the thought that I should help set up scenes where they can do just that, and separate that from the more serious fare.

[coxcomb]

I think that's the beauty of games like Donjon... they bring all out that social construct stuff that's lurking deep in many groups, and force it to the surface.

I'm with you there. I didn't meant to imply that this was a bad thing--just that you should go into play understanding that it is an issue.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Something about Donjon seems to do wacky things to the brains of players. In my (mostly unsuccessful) attempt to play through the sample adventure, the players got it into their heads that they could be evil. They started the adventure by making a forged copy of the note from the mayor so that the weaponsmith and armorer would give them more free stuff. It all went downhill from there.

I think it is very important to establish, as a group, what you are aiming for with Donjon before plunging in. You say, "you guys can tell me what happens," without any discussion about ramifications, and it goes all wonky. Perhaps, because of the diminished power of the GM to dictate and control play, the social contract needs some more overt definition up front?

You're definitely on the mark, coxcomb. Donjon, like its predecessors, requires a definite goal, while allowing for maximum freedom in going towards that goal. In the sample adventure, characters must go and try to get the Emerald of Cissila, just like characters in early D&D modules had to go and fight the bad guy, or the adventure wouldn't work.

It's structured riffing, and it works, but only with the right mindset. I often worry that Donjon was so intrinsic to the way I run games that I could not objectively convey how it's supposed to be run.

Selene, I'm glad to hear you ran the game, and am sorry it didn't go better. I will say that the high number of tied dice is a good thing. Try counting them out in an increasingly loud voice as you keep tying - if you get more than three in a row, your players should be on edge waiting for the next one.

[coxcomb]

I often worry that Donjon was so intrinsic to the way I run games that I could not objectively convey how it's supposed to be run.

I think this is an issue. If you ever do an updated edition of Donjon, I really suggest a detailed example of play (I really enjoyed the detailed example of character creation that is already in the book). Also, more depth on handling magical effects would go a long way toward avoiding unpleasant first adventures, I think.

[Mike Holmes]

You're definitely on the mark, coxcomb. Donjon, like its predecessors, requires a definite goal, while allowing for maximum freedom in going towards that goal. In the sample adventure, characters must go and try to get the Emerald of Cissila, just like characters in early D&D modules had to go and fight the bad guy, or the adventure wouldn't work.

And that's in the rules. No bones about it. If anybody has any problems because they don't go on the adventure, it's because they aren't playing by the rules. Not only is this important in terms of getting things moving coherently, it's important because it's part of what establishes the mindframe in question.

Mike