[DSA] In the Cave of the Sea Ogre

[Jasper Polane]

We've been playing DSA, a German fantasy RPG. The 4th edition is translated into English as The Dark Eye, but we're playing 1st edition, which for the most part is a completely different game.

The Dutch edition of DSA (called Oog des Meesters over here) was our introduction to role-playing, and to fantasy as a genre. We've started the campaign mostly for nostalgia reasons, I guess, but so far it's a been a lot of fun, much more than I anticipated.

Our group:

-Jorrit: The GM. He's a fun, easygoing GM, and he gives his players a lot of freedom to play. You never have to ask "can I...?" or "may I...?", but allows us to fully contribute. In DSA, this isn't really expected at all.

-Martijn: I've been playing with Martijn for almost 20 years, and he always plays a fighter, a dwarf, or a dwarven fighter. In this game he plays Bjorn Cernson, a Viking with a big axe.

-Michael: He joined our group about a year-and-a-half ago and didn't roleplay before that. He's playing Erdog, war leader of a northern barbarian tribe.

-Maarten: Maarten always plays dark, brooding characters, but in this game, he plays an elven girl called Teleria Bladklauw. He's having difficulties not playing "the dark one", I can tell.

-Me: I always play girls, dunno why. This time I play Ilke, a farmer's daughter now traveling the continent. She's inexperienced but enthusiastic, and is learning sword fighting from the warriors in the group.

In this adventure, called In den Hohlen des Seeogers (in the Cave of the Sea Ogre), we learned that Fedora Copperfield was going on a journey to pay ransom money to the Sea Ogre, who has kidnapped her brother. We found out that the group of "adventurers" she had hired for protection was planning to rob her, so we warned her and offered to take their place.

We traveled over the river but were followed by the bandits. The bandits have made a couple of attempts to steal the money, but we stopped them so far. Last session ended with a big fight with the bandits.

Stuff I like:

-Although we're playing a campaign, there isn't a big metaplot underlying it all. The adventures are more like short stories, featuring the same characters, but not really connected in any other way.

-Exploration of character. Just playing my character when Erdog is teaching her how to use the sword, or when she's getting drunk in the tavern and wakes up with a splitting headache.

-The mood of the game is much more down-to-earth than in other fantasy games. Low magic, and we're fighting bandits and pirates more than monsters. I also like the fairytale elements the setting has, which I totally didn't "get" 20 years ago.

Stuff I don't like:

-Whiffs in combat. I usually try to attribute failures to the speed of my opponent ("damn, he dodged!"), but sometimes when a character misses many times it is interpreted as "you can't fight" by the other players. This is starting to deprotagonise some of the characters, mostly Erdog and Teleria.

-Sometimes, the game is slow, especially in comparison with the PTA games we've been playing lately. When we're "between scenes", after we've done something and before we're doing something else, I'm just sitting there, waiting.

--Jasper

[Adam Dray]

Hi, Jasper!

Are the whiffs due entirely to a task resolution system? Can you walk through a sample roll from the game, even if you have to make up numbers to reconstruct it?

What is going on with other players or the GM when you're "between scenes?"

[xenopulse]

Oh, DSA. That takes me back. It was my first RPG as well; I started right when the 2nd edition boxes were relatively new.

My experiences match up with yours. The low-fantasy and yet fairy tale feel was there, as well as the campaign made of discrete adventures. I think a lot of that was based on DSA pushing adventure modules; the game world is not conducive to introducing your own adventure ideas, because it's very detailed and at the same time very tame.

I think DSA is an example of a game that draws its positive aspects not from the rules, but from the setting and feel of it. The rules, especially the first edition, are a lot like old D&D. Some parts are worse (you make an attack roll, and if you succeed, the opponent gets to make a parry roll to negate; this leads to longer handling times and more whiff).

[Halzebier]

-Whiffs in combat. I usually try to attribute failures to the speed of my opponent ("damn, he dodged!"), but sometimes when a character misses many times it is interpreted as "you can't fight" by the other players. This is starting to deprotagonise some of the characters, mostly Erdog and Teleria.

I haven't played first edition for a long time, so I can't quite remember whether it has fumble tables for combat actions. 3rd edition has (though I dunno about 4th) and we've reinterpreted it for the last couple of years, stripping out the flavor text. For instance "falls down, misses next two parries" simply means you miss two parries and it's up to the player to narrate how that comes about (without having a high-level character look like a dunce). Somewhat similar to what you're doing, the players will usually narrate a fumble as bad luck, not incompetence. I should note that we did not arrive at this approach without a discussion - we had a camp of literalists and a camp which did not want characters to look bad roughly 1 time out of 20.

Regards,

Hal

[Jasper Polane]

Hi Adam, Christian, Hal.

Are the whiffs due entirely to a task resolution system? Can you walk through a sample roll from the game, even if you have to make up numbers to reconstruct it?

The resolution system is simple: My character has an attack value and a parry value: Ilke, has an 11 and a 9, respectively. To make an attack, I roll 1d20. Roll under my attack and I succeed.

On a successful attack, my opponent can parry. If his parry fails, I roll for damage. If his parry succeeds, I roll to see if my sword breaks.

The amount of whiffs are definitely due to the low starting values, and even when my attack succeeds, there's about 50% chance it's negated anyway.

But what's really bothering me is the way it's explained in-game. When playing D&D (for example), I have to roll against my opponent's Armor Class. When my attack fails, I can say "his AC was too high." The failure can be attributed to my opponent.

However, in DSA, I roll against my own skill. So when my attack fails, it's because my own skill is too low. I did bad, my opponent doesn't even have to parry. That's a major source of deprotagonizing.

I think DSA is an example of a game that draws its positive aspects not from the rules, but from the setting and feel of it. The rules, especially the first edition, are a lot like old D&D. Some parts are worse (you make an attack roll, and if you succeed, the opponent gets to make a parry roll to negate; this leads to longer handling times and more whiff).

Oh, it's your typical fantasy heartbreaker: Some parts are better (like having more hit points), some parts are worse.

As an introduction to role-playing and the system, the 1st edition Basic Set was perfect. I dislike the obsessive detail of later editions of the game, both in the rules and in the setting.

I haven't played first edition for a long time, so I can't quite remember whether it has fumble tables for combat actions.

1st edition doesn't have a fumble rule, but we're using it anyway. I wonder why? Must be a leftover from our 2nd edition play.

I don't mind fumbles when they're explained as bad luck, but it's almost impossible to do. How do you do that without making the character seem clumsy and incompetent? Especially when even a normal failed roll does.

Best,

--Jasper

[Sydney Freedberg]

Stuff I like:

-Although we're playing a campaign, there isn't a big metaplot underlying it all. The adventures are more like short stories, featuring the same characters, but not really connected in any other way.

-Exploration of character. Just playing my character when Erdog is teaching her how to use the sword, or when she's getting drunk in the tavern and wakes up with a splitting headache.

-The mood of the game is much more down-to-earth than in other fantasy games. Low magic, and we're fighting bandits and pirates more than monsters. I also like the fairytale elements the setting has, which I totally didn't "get" 20 years ago.

Cool. Interestingly, this all sounds a lot like the style of play advocated in Ron Edwards's Sorcery & Sword, which is officially a supplement to his Sorcerer game but largely constitutes a treatise on how to rescue fantasy from D&D and its imitators.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Hello Jasper,

However, in DSA, I roll against my own skill. So when my attack fails, it's because my own skill is too low. I did bad, my opponent doesn't even have to parry. That's a major source of deprotagonizing.

I can understand that this is a source of frustration for players, because the characters are portrayed as losers, even when this is not the image of the character that the player has in mind. (You want to play a cool, self-possessed character, but the systems tells you that he keeps fumbling.) But do you think it is actually deprotagonising, in the sense that is usually used here in The Forge, that is, that it reduces your ability as a player to pursue a Narrativist agenda through making decisions for your character? I don't immediately see how that would be possible.

Since you play both the narrativist PTA and old school OdM adventures, maybe you could say a bit about how you enjoy playing these premade adventures. Is the GM railroading you towards the important plot points? (Or is that not the way OdM adventures work?) If so, do you think it adds to or detracts from the fun? I think it would be interesting to hear how one experiences premade adventures after having played narrativist games.

By the way, and unrelatedly, I see that you live in Leiden, where I work. I'm currently looking for more opportunities to play indie RPGs, so drop me a PM if you're interested.

[Jasper Polane]

Hello Sydney,

Interestingly, this all sounds a lot like the style of play advocated in Ron Edwards's Sorcery & Sword,

Oh, DSA is nothing like Sorcerer & Sword. It's very much a simulationist game.
I'm planning a S&S campaign right now (maybe to play after this?), it's definitely the sort of game I like.

Hi Victor,

But do you think it is actually deprotagonising, in the sense that is usually used here in The Forge, that is, that it reduces your ability as a player to pursue a Narrativist agenda through making decisions for your character?

I think it effects more than just the image of the character, it's much stronger than that. It changes the whole character concept, to the extend that he becomes someone else.

Erdog is supposed to be a great warrior of his tribe, right? And when he says, "I'm the greatest warrior of my tribe", it says something about his personality: He's proud and boastful (like most warriors from the north). But when he makes a fool of himself in combat, he becomes dumb and delusional for thinking himself great.

So it actually changes who Erdog is without Michael making a decision for him. It is deprotagonising in that sense,I think, yes.

Is the GM railroading you towards the important plot points? (Or is that not the way OdM adventures work?) If so, do you think it adds to or detracts from the fun? I think it would be interesting to hear how one experiences premade adventures after having played narrativist games.

This adventure is basically a journey with encounters on the way. So it's pretty much railroaded: "When the heros reach this point, they're attacked by the bandits, when they spend the night there, the bandits try to steal the money", that sort of thing.

So there isn't much of a plot, but what little there is is predetermined. I'm fully aware that my goal should be to bring the money to the Sea Ogre. I can't leave the ship, or I'll leave the adventure as well. So I'm definitely playing along, there.

But I don't think there's a set outcome for the encounters. The bandits could very well succeed in stealing the money, for example, and play could still continue. So it's not a straightjacket, and I like that. It's still unpredictable.

Our group plays about 5-10 sessions of a game, and after that switches to another game, only to come back to the campaign later (after we played PTA, for example). I don't think I would like playing this game longer then that. After two adventures, I definitely need a break.

--Jasper

[Halzebier]

But do the rules support you saying "Erdog is a great warrior"?

The whiff factor is high in DSA and it's largely independent of a character's level. That *is* a problem. But if Erdog was a great warrior, mechanics-wise, he should hit and parry almost all the time.

I've seen players, particularly newcomers, being unhappy with the rules of FRPGs which assume that the PCs start out very weak. The players probably have images of Conan, Aragorn and Braveheart in mind -- and then end up with characters who fight sewer rats one-on-one. (I'm not trying to defend this type of set-up, but merely pointing out a possible explanation for a mismatch between player desire and rules. I doubt this is your problem, but it may be a contributing factor.)

Regards

Hal

[Jasper Polane]

Hi Hal,

I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Erdog is of the Warrior class, so he should be able to fight, right?

Do you mean a player shouldn't expect to play a hero "like Conan"? Because in the rule book, the description text of the Warrior class calls out Conan by name. The way I see it, it's not a case of wrong expectations, but a case of false promises.

--Jasper

[Erdog]

Hi there,

just got a word from Jasper in my mailbox, that Erdog was a point of discussion.

This topic is about the feel Jasper gets from the game system. I agree that there is a flaw in the system. A warrior that is mostly unable to hit his opponent.

It's still a piece of luck! I think Erdog is absolutely NOT feeling clumsy. But more like feeling "that his opponent was lucky"

I admit that Erdog is a bit naïve, more because he wants to investigate, and proof that he is a male warrior, strongest of them all! Never met a more superior being than him self.

I've seen players, particularly newcomers, being unhappy with the rules of FRPGs which assume that the PCs start out very weak. The players probably have images of Conan, Aragorn and Braveheart in mind -- and then end up with characters who fight sewer rats one-on-one.

That's true, Sewer rat can be a real pain, still a warrior is a warrior, so he skipped the sewer rat thing, or did this in his early training, else I would be an adventurer. Conan, Aragon and co, those are High level warriors, that can't miss. They are great warriors. Soldiers in armies are trained specialists just like a warrior in DSA.

But when fighting in a match, and throwing 2 times 20 with a d20... what are the odds?! (A 20 is a critical blow! So something bad happens, break your weapon, hurt a party member, or hurt yourself)

Maybe it is the set of players where Maarten is always criticizing Michael, so Teleria is not happy with Erdog. (Maarten needs a counter part. When the DM plays a character and Jasper plays DM he picks on him.)

Example, Erdog was trying to teach Ilke to keep her balance. Teleria wanted to proof that she is better than Erdog! Like many times more. Erdog is still the one that is on the better team, because Teleria was being knocked down by Ilke. 4 sessions later I'm still picking on her, making her dark side come forward.

Still, Jasper feels like being clumsy... I fought with a Dwarf an a female dessert warrior, at the same time, without hitting a single punch, but was countering all that was coming for me.

A fight is like 10 sec a round, if I could knock-out 2 warriors in 5 or 6 rounds, I would be Conan, but I'm Erdog, too bad.
Maybe if we play the battles faster, it would be more fun because interaction would be higher, less to wait for.

Regards,

Michael

[Rimke]

Ha! A thread about the game I've been playing for over 16 years now.

First I'll explain a bit about DSA 4 for the people who do not know the game.

The system is not unlike 3rd edition AD&D. It uses stats like dexterity,  strength, intelligence etc. With xp you can buy feats to make your character  stronger, just like AD&D. Battles involve a lot of dice rolling. The adventures are almost always plot driven and the GM railroades a lot. (I know some people here will frown at the screen as they read this, but I think railroading is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you do it skilfully)

Its major difference is the power of the characters and the setting. In DSA 4 a high level character is not nearly as powerful as in AD&D 3. There are no meteor shower spells, no godlike abilities.

The setting is like "Medieval Europe and parts of Africa and Asia crammed in one small continent with some fantasy elements in it". It features  fairytale creatures like dwarves, elves and dragons, but does not have these 2 zillion monsters featured in AD&D monster books. There are  a lot of background books about the world, it is described in great detail. Every month there is a magazine you can buy with describes the latest "news", so the setting is not static but evolves in time.

This setting is both the strongest point of the setting as well as its weakness IMO. Because it's similarity to the real world it is easy to get the feeling of the country your in, even if you have not read all the background material. Because of the high detailed world it is easy to "dress up" your adventure. You never play in "vacuum" as can happen when you play an ill prepared AD&D session.
The down site is that you really haven't a lot of freedom as GM. If you differ from the official material or time line your campaign might become incompatible with the official stuff quickly. If you I "invent" a king at some place there is always this wise-ass-player going: "No that can't be the king, because here it says it is someone completely different."

Still I like the game a lot and I've been playing it for over 16 years with exactly the same group from the start, so we know each other and each other's preferences well.

There is one thing I am not satisfied with however and maybe some of you guys can help me out here.

The problem is how to create a truly epic end fight. Chance always interferes IMO. If the players roll well they win the fight too easily and it won't feel like an epic battle. It will feel like a walk over. If on the other hand the characters roll badly they will die and it won't be an epic death. It will be an unlucky die roll that did it. You'll have to be extremely lucky to have the epic battle everybody is hoping for.

This always seems unsatisfactory to us so we cheat. (We take turns at GMing, but I am fairly sure we all cheat with dice rolls). You see, when you cheat you can make it truly Epic, have the heroes on the brink of death and then safe the day.

This works well from a storyteller's point of view. You get a nice, exciting story with a happy ending. But it also takes away suspense. When you cheat as a GM it is very hard to kill a character. If you cheated to make the bad guys last longer in the fight it doesn't seem fair to kill the heroes. I think we've played over 10 years without a hero dying.  The suspense of "will my character survive this battle" is almost non existent.

I'd like to change this and I came up with an idea. (I stole it from MLwM).
For truly epic battles I'll give the characters a choice. If they want to achieve the most heroic goal there will be a chance to die. (I was thinking like 10%). We would role the dice in advance on this chance. If the character survives, battle would go as described above, I would make it an epic fight and make sure the character doesn't die. If the character doesn't make the roll I'll give him a lot of adversaries, more than he could possibly handle (even if he's extremely lucky) and I'll make sure his death will have some heroic importance in the story. (for example while he's holding of all the enemies on his own, the other heroes can free the princess and escape). This way the suspense of "do I get killed or not" is in that single dice roll. Important is that I'll always also give the option to "chicken out". If they don't want their character to die it's fine, but then they won't achieve a truly heroic goal.

I am not sure I can make this work and I am fairly sure it won't work for every scenario, but do you think it might work for some? The complain I expect from the players is that they'll feel that their special skills and stuff won't matter with that flat 10% chance. Maybe I am now mixing systems that can't be mixed, but I know that with only the DSA 4 system it is not working either.

P.S. Maybe I should have posted this in a new thread, the same problem probably presents itself in a lot of other different systems as well.
I was just very happy with my one session of MLwM, it opened my eyes on how things don't have to be that way in a RPG. So I was hoping I could do something similar here.

[Rimke]

Sorry I kinda highjacked this thread with a post that was not completely on topic. I probably should have made a different thread for it, I just was surprised to find a post on DSA here and in my enthousiasm went a little off topic.

Anyway, I read you play 1st edition rules and the adventure you play is very old too.

Do you like the simple system and the simple linear plot? We went from DSA 1 to DSA 2, 3 and then the far more complex DSA 4. At first we  were excited with the more complex new rules because of the extra options and more "realism". But lately some players are getting nostalgic for the old DSA rules, feeling that the game also worked with the simple rules in the past and the new rules only bother the progress of the games. (fights take A LOT more time with the new system, you always need to look up stuff etc.).
Do you think you would still enjoy the game if it wasn't for nostalgic reasons?

[wkoepf]

Hello!

Just two short remarks:

1) I'm not 100% sure how these things changed from one edition to the next, but I could swear that you do not fumble every twenty blows (on average) but that you are allowed a kind of saving throw when you roll a natural 20. So good fighters can avert the bad luck most of the time. I think the attack even counts as successful if the saving throw succeeds. *goestoshelfandsearchesfortheoldtomes*

...

*muchmuchlater* O.k., ich checked it in the rules I own (I think 2nd or 3rd edition, rather the later, but I have lost track somewhen over the last few years and editions weren't numbered on the cover back in the old days ;-):

• Potential fumble if a natural 20 is rolled
• Attack with a penalty of 8 to avert the fumble
• If "saving throw" succeeds the attack counts as successful and if the opponent can't parry he suffers 8 additional hit points damage
• Otherwise the fumble takes effect

2) Apart from that the whiff-factor in combat is, indeed, strong with this one: Which is the reason that many attempts were made to improve upon the basic system -- for example, http://www.kampfregel-projekt.de/ where not only one, but two distinct alternatives were explored by a group of dedicated players (some of the ideas even went into the regular rules because the designers were buggered so much by the participants). Take a look at these if the whiffage bothers you to much ;-)


Wolfgang.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Rimke, I've been thinking about a solution for your problem a bit, and came up with this. I have little to no actual experience with this problem, so maybe it's all wrong and useless, but here goes.

Just play a combat the normal way. Make it tough; like, not impossible to win, but quite likely to get at least some of the player characters killed. This should minimise the chance that they win early and too easily through some lucky rolls.

Roll all the dice where everyone can see them. No cheating. This is essential if you wish to make the fight exciting.

But now, we add a new thing. Every player gets 5 rerolls. That is, 5 times during the fight, the player may choose to pick up his dice again and reroll. (You may also reroll rerolls, but this counts against your five.)

However, every time you use a reroll, you must also roll a d10, somewhere apart. If you do another reroll, roll another d10, and put it to the previous one, up to a maximum of 5 d10s at the end of the fight. These d10s decide what happens at the end of the fight. If the highest number showing is:

1-5: nothing worse than what the normal combat rules leave you with.
6-7: some extra injuries, on top of what you have accumulated during the fight; also, you are visibly scarred.
8-9: more extra injuries; you are visibly maimed, and may have lost a hand or something.
10: you die.

Why roll the d10 immediately, instead of rolling the accumulated d10s when the combat is done? Because the cool thing is that if you roll 10 on your first d10, you can then take all the other 4 rerolls without occuring additional penalties (you're going to die anyway), which means that your character can really be the hero and die landing some of the best blows ever.

Would it work? The number of rerolls and the penalty-table might need to be revised, since I do not know the DSA system at all.