[D&d 3.5 / Donjon] Lengthy and Rambling Very First Post

[hurtmypony]

Well, it all started out with an old school friend of mine getting a pre-made family when he married a divorcee. 

A few months back, after being married for a bit, he calls me up and says, "hey, my 12 year old stepson has been bugging me to play D&D with him.  I was wondering if you could help me ensure he doesn't get a date until college by introducing him to the entertaining world of pen and paper RPG's".   

He called me because I was the GM back in the day.  Always the GM.  I spent a good 10-15 years GMing my friends through D&D, Gamma World, Boot Hill, Paranoia, Aftermath, Pirates & Plunder, Top Secret, Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, Star Frontiers, RuneQuest, etc.  I rarely ever got to be a "player", and, during play, I would look over at them in envy.  Sure, I had all the authority.  Sure, I was the guy that called the shots.  Little did they know that my GM screens imprisoned me in a cardboard fortress of solitude and sorrow. It's lonely at the top!  Anyway, at least I felt I had a good grasp of GMing.  But then, a couple of years ago, I stumbled into The Forge and even my notion of being a good GM died quicker than a Paranoia Character. 

It was cool, though.  Even though I had no group or time to play, I started buying the books, just to read them.  Little Fears, Sorcerer, Over The Edge, Fudge, Donjon and some free indies.  All these amazing things had happened to RPG's while I was away!  So bittersweet.  It was like running into that ex-girlfriend you left because she was jobless, fat, and boring, only to run into her on her way to accepting an award for finding a way to cure cancer simply by being a tan, lean supermodel billionaire.  Good for her, but too bad you weren't around to be part of it.

So, after a ten year lull in actual Role-playing, I took a second mortgage out and bought all the D&D 3.5 books, miniatures, modular dungeon kits and some new dice and sat down and studied it all. 

On to the Actual Play:

My Players were:

Raul:  My old RPG buddy – Half-Orc Barbarian
Ulises: My other old RPG buddy - Rogue
Jack: My 12 year old son - Mage
Drew: Raul's 12 year old stepson - Sorcerer

We picked Sunless Citadel for the adventure. 

The adults knew the drill.  Rogue goes in and searches for traps, Orc waits at the door to stomp the rats/zombies/skeletons that will inevitably jump out of a coffin or something.  Casters in the rear, thumbing through their level 1 spell-book content that you could fit entirely on a sticky note, waiting for the time they can cast that magic missile that they'll have to wait another 8 hours to use. 

By the third room explored, we started to lose the kids.  The ceiling became very interesting to them as their characters waited for the rogue to give the "all clear" sign.  It occurred to me that the 2 kid players were doing exactly what their characters were doing – waiting.  You see, from a tactical standpoint, there is an optimum way to explore dangerous dungeons, and having the casters up front where they can take that alpha strike from the acid-spitting skeleton cat people that just erupted from the floor tiles is not the way to do it.

"But where is the fun?" I asked myself as I thumbed through the literature looking for the exact weight of 60 feet of rope, and the hit points assigned to a "2 inch thick door, Wooden, with brass locks".  The Fun Table sure as hell wasn't written anywhere on my gamemaster screen.

By the end of the session, I had two adults excited about playing again, and two kids unsure if they really liked the whole RPG thing.  But I had a plan brewing, one I would employ for the next session, that would likely hit the jackpot...

[hurtmypony]

SESSION 2 (or more like 1.5):

"It's called Donjon", I told them, and I threw the pitch about how the players make up the content.  The two adults were intrigued but wary.  Jack was eager to play.  Drew was bewildered that I would even suggest abandoning D&D at all.  He had never played D&D until I had GMed it for him, but I guess some of his friends that do play hold it in pretty high regard.  He didn't want to try Donjon if it meant no D&D.  I suggested we try Donjon for one session, using a whole different adventure so we wouldn't spoil Sunless Citadel if we decided to never play with the Donjon rules again.  He reluctantly agreed, and we sat down to make his character...

"What do you want to be?"
"Can I be a demonic sorcerer that has a pet demon that he can fuse with that gives him special powers?"
[No joke.  That's the character he wanted to play.  Suspicious, I immediately searched his backpack for Ron Edwards gaming materials]
"Sure.  We'll make your pet a support skill that grants you a bonus in combat."
"Can I cast fire magic?"
"Sure.  And you can cast your spells as much as you like, provided you spend a turn gathering power."
"Really?  But I also want to use a huge sword..."
"Sure.  We'll just make sword fighting another one of your skills."
"Really?"

He was sold on Donjon from that point forward.  I helped him pick some magic words, fleshed out the other player's characters, and we were ready to play, but with only 90 minutes before bedtime!

The Characters (from memory):

Half-Orc Named Sue: Hit Things With Huge Weapon, Bust Up Dungeon Architecture, Shrug Off Melee Damage, Bully, Detect Ambush
Mansquito: Macgyver Effect (can create things using some provisions), Backstab, Hear Stuff, "You Fell Right Into My Trap", Sneak
Max The WarMage: War Magic, Sword play, Hurt Undead, Use Shield, Sense Monster
Draco The Demon Mage:  Fire Magic, Pet Imp, Sword-fighting, Fuse Form

I had framed a few scenes from one of the first modules I ever played as a kid called "Slave Pits of the Undercity".   Since I wanted to hook the players with the game play and we were short on time, I skipped the town part, granting them all crappy "starter" armor and weapons and set them down in front of the temple.  Ulises, who was playing the Rogue, could not stick around for the game.

They went to the temple rumored to be the secret base of some slavers.  They approached from the front, and through the portcullis, spied some goblins in a courtyard tinkering with a fruit cart laden with all sorts of hoses and a long cannon-like appendage. 

Sue the Half-Orc quickly ripped the bars off the portcullis, using his skill "Bust Up Dungeon Architecture", and hurled the bars like a spear into the cart.  The bars skewered the cart, which began spurting a black fluid.  The Demon Mage and Max the War Mage. guessing that the cart would be flammable (and not yet understanding they could make it so) began to gather magic power to toss some flame magic at the cart and the goblins.

The goblins freaked out and ran from the spurting cart, giving Sue some time to bust the 2nd set of bars.  By the time he got through, though, some goblins recovered and charged him.   He quickly dispatched one with a Huge Ass Axe, but 2 others used a swarm attack and slashed him across the chest. 

Max the Mage casted a column of flame from his palms but missed a particularly deft goblin.  In frustration, Max drew his broadsword for more direct butt-kicking.

Draco the Demon Mage, having rolled well on his magic gathering, hurled a massive fireball that took out a few of the goblins.  He then began gathering more magic to do it again, but scurried out of sight when I told him he might explode if hit with a stray crossbow bolt when carrying around such a large magic charge.

Max and Sue took out the two goblins nearest them, and Sue hurled a corpse at a goblin across the room, knocking him off a table.

Draco stepped back into the fray, and dished out a fireball that killed the rest of the goblins and exploded the cart.  Draco used his successes to state that amongst the flaming wreckage, there was a genie lamp that was powering the never-got-a-chance-to-use flamethrower cart.  I let him have it, since he said "genie lamp" and nothing about whether or not a genie was inside. 

He rubbed the lamp to no avail.  When he opened it up, there was a card that said, "Sorry we missed you!  We'll be back at..."  The card had a picture of a little clock.  The big hand was on "3", and the little hand was on "Q".  Apparently, genies have an unconventional method of time-keeping....

Bodies were searched, the players told me what they wanted to find.  Raul, not being greedy, found some Scale Mail and a Sharp Huge Ass Axe.  The kids, being a little too greedy, blew their loot rolls trying to find stuff too powerful to have much of a chance to find on such weak opponents.

The Summary:

Fun Factor:  All and all, they seemed to enjoy it a lot more than D&D. 

Player Empowerment: I was pleased when Drew added the Genie Lamp, but, despite my prompting, even the adults are having trouble understanding how much narrative power they actually have.  This will be helped when Ulises comes in as a player, as it seems he delightfully grasps the concept.

Play Mechanics:  The massive dice pools add a thrill.  The frequency of the rolling constantly give the kids something to do, and I think they feel like they are participating more because of it.

But the big payoff was when I asked Drew if we were going to play Donjon or D&D next weekend.  He looked at his character sheet and said, "this is a million times better than D&D!"

[Sydney Freedberg]

Whoot! Yeah, that sounds like a blast.

Here's the thing: D&D is derived from miniatures wargaming. It does tactical stuff pretty well -- really, really well in the later (d20-based) editions like 3.5 where they consciously embraced a kind of Magic the Gathering / Pokemon-like structure of special abilities that lead to other special abilities that lead to still other special abilities. People who love the crunchy tactical stuff love late-edition D&D. You can spend hours carefully constructing the coolest, most combat-effective character. (Go to Storygames.com and look for a thread called "Pimp my Blackguard" started by Ben Lehman, who is also the author of one of the most innovative and utterly non-D&D-like indie games, Polaris). You can spend hours figuring out the exact right plan to bust through the dungeon with minimum casualties and maximum loot. It's fun!

But not for your group, apparently, because they're clearly not into careful, crunchy tactics: They're into doing wild & crazy stuff, with action and explosions and daredevil risktaking that they know won't get them killed, which is generally seen as Not Fun. (There are games where being killed isn't a big deal, and your character is every bit as powerful as a memory and in flashback, but that's tricky stuff).

So you did the exact right thing. Instead of trying to make D&D stop rewarding careful, clever tactics and jury-rig the rules to do something else, you switched to a game designed to reward the wild & crazy stuff your players actually wanted to do, namely Donjon. This is such a great example of what "System Does Matter" is all about. This is also a great example of listening to the other people in your group and having the guts and the flexibility to say, "Hey! Let's try this new thing instead!"

[hurtmypony]

Oh, I love the tactical stuff, too. 

It's just that the original purpose to get together and play was to pass the gift of role-play down to the kids and it didn't look like we were capturing their imagination.  I say "original purpose", because I think all the adults, myself included, now have the RPG fever, and are genuinely interested in  playing for more reasons than just "passing the torch". 

So, while I think the adults would have been quite content to continue D&D with all its crunchy bits, it was for the benefit of the kids we switched over to Donjon.  As it worked out, I think all the adults agreed that we got the same thrill with less work and rule study.  Plus, even after a single session, I don't think I can play another RPG that doesn't have some kind of mechanic that allows such player involvement.  I know it is old news to all of you, but for this old dog, the whole "everyone participates in creating the story" is really just a mindblowing, amazing concept for me.  It's like I have been eating crackers all my life, and just discovered how well they taste with cheese!

[Callan S.]

Bodies were searched, the players told me what they wanted to find.  Raul, not being greedy, found some Scale Mail and a Sharp Huge Ass Axe.  The kids, being a little too greedy, blew their loot rolls trying to find stuff too powerful to have much of a chance to find on such weak opponents.

They seemed to hit a few game conventions of D&D very quickly. I'm interested in how they reacted when they ran into this game convention of Donjon, where your not going to find great stuff off wimps. How did they react? Was there a lull? Was it more the previously built up enthusiasm that got them hungry for the next part of play after that? I don't imagine failing a loot roll got them excited, just as much as waiting patiently for an all clear in D&D didn't.

[hurtmypony]

First off, I failed to honor a tradition at The Forge, so I will correct that now.  My name is Tim Creevay.

As for the blown loot rolls, I think the whole loot process actually was a thrill for them. But I'll get to that in a couple of paragraphs.  Sorry I am so wordy...

This is going to sound goofy, but exposing these kids to RPG's is magical for me.  And not just for me, but for the other adults playing as well.  Taking one look at the list of games we played when younger, and you can guess that we easily and often drifted into a Gamist form of play.  Though we never knew that term before, we certainly had a vague sense of something "tainting" the original purpose of our roleplaying sessions.  It was us gradually drifting away from making characters and scenes that were fun to play and instead making more mathematically abusive models of the game system (known to me as the "Min/Max").   

Game exploration for us was a dichotomy:  on one hand, it is so exciting to "look under the hood" and tweak this or that about your characters for maximum performance, as it helps give you a good understanding of the gaming world and mechanics.  On the other hand, the exposure of the Man Behind The Curtain is what has ruined all the sense of wonder and thrill from every game we have ever played.   

Take leaping across a crevice as an example.   

Knowing that you at have a chance to make it safely certainly allows players to make valid judgments that improves their understanding of the "do's and don'ts" - which in turn increases the fun factor. Knowing your threshold can avoid some nasty surprises - a good thing, I think.

In contrast, being able to know, with a simple glance at your character sheet, that your character has exactly a 34.7% chance of making the leap may provide the player the same information, but it also steals away the mystery and thrill of the jump for the player.  The math, with all of its sensibility, robs him of the romance of The Unknown.

WITH THAT IN MIND, PLEASE CRITIQUE HOW I HANDLED THE LOOT SITUATION...

First, I told them they could decide what they would like to have a chance of finding.  I followed it up with the generalization "...but the more powerful it is, the less likely you will find it."  I followed that up with an explanation of the actual mechanics, and then showed the chart that determines the number of opposed dice.  I also gave them a few examples of what could be interesting gear for their particular characters.   

Both of them decided on a medallion that boosted their magical skill by +2 dice.  I showed them, with the dice divided appropriately in my hands, that it would be an 8 vs 1 dice roll against them. In other words, I gave them a full, mathematical understanding of how this would likely turn out.  I did this as a potential shield against possible frustration.

The math did not phase them at all.  They collectively decided to try to find the medallion on three bodies each, losing every time.   However, I will say they were both intensely involved in the loot rolls, right down to exaggerated howls of misfortune when each made his last failed roll. 
Afterward, I felt my detailed explanation of the mechanics, while its intention was good, might have sent them down the road that has killed so many games for me, understanding that the Matrix, for all its cool sights and situations, is just a bunch of 1's and 0's!
Obviously, I must find a balance between informing them enough to be successful when they want to be, but not so much every move becomes a calculated gamble against the laws of probability.

Has anyone encountered this in their games, or am I just being too analytical?  I know as a Donjon Master, I am supposed to "give them enough rope", but as newcomers to the hobby, I also have the duty of making their introduction to RPG's a pleasant one. 

[greyorm]

Tim,

Welcome to the Forge! Sounds like your Donjon session was a blast; it makes me want to start up the Donjon game a couple of us orphaned some time back.

Now, as to your question and concern: being analytical is a good thing, being overly analytical can kill a game because it pulls you out of having fun and into second-guessing yourself: focusing on what might be wrong rather than what is or will produce fun, right now. I know exactly what that is like because I have done this, and I think...no, I know it stumped up a number of the games I've played post-Forge. Even if it also helped improve my play in the long run, at-the-table play was slowly ruined by it because of the erroneous direction of my focus.

So, when you refer to the howls of disappointment, be certain these aren't howls of enjoyment at being disappointed. They were really invested in something, they went for it, and they failed. But did they have a good time doing it? That's what you haven't really told us yet. We know they failed. We know they reacted strongly to that failure.

Were they grinning, laughing about it, even as they hollered and shouted how disappointed they were? Were they frowning, swearing, and looking frustrated? What was their body posture during the event and after the game? Did you talk to them about whether they felt the failure-event was no fun?

The answers here will tell you a great deal and hopefully put your mind at ease.

[hurtmypony]

Oh, yes!  My "exaggerated howls of misfortune" didn't come across as I intended.  I meant that they were enjoying playing up the drama, all eyes focused on them for the moment, in the spotlight, just them and the luck of the dice locked in vicious combat.  They enjoyed the attention, I think.  Were they investing in the dice rolls because they wished to experience/challenge the probability of success or because success plays second fiddle to being in the spotlight?  I don't know.

[Callan S.]

Hi again Tim,

I think your worried about slipping into hardcore gamism, where the imaginative space/world is ignored totally in favour of hard numbers. From your account of D&D play, that's what you and your friends had slipped into - following a set procedure of dungeon clearing, regardless of the game world situation. Refined to the point where ignoring the game world was part and parcel of the procedure. The procedure kicked ass over the game world, for sure. That's why you'd go for it (system matters). But it kind of killed what made RP different from the other games.

What do you think?

To be honest, I thought you'd report they would be genuinely unhappy with the failed rolls. I was wrong. Now the question is, are they gunning for risk taking with the game world? Or with the games mechanical system?

[Ron Edwards]

I'd like point out that Gamism per se does not indicate an adolescent drive to win by cheating or out-advantaging one another, or by finding broken rules and exploiting them. It sounds to me like you guys are enjoying tremendous Gamist play right now.

We don't need to discuss it in this thread unless you want to, Tim, but if you'd like, check out my essay "Gamism: Step On Up" (see Articles link at the top of the page).

Great actual play posting. Everyone else, spare Tim from a big discussion of the jargon term unless he indicates otherwise.

Best, Ron

[xenopulse]

Tim,

Welcome :) Now let me make this short:  Yay for you for realizing that your group needed something else and finding the right game to do that.  Boo for me for not doing the same thing when I tried introducing my kids to RPGs and they couldn't get a handle on DnD (that was pre-Forge for me, though, I didn't know any better).  And finally, yay for you because this thread has finally given me the motivation to try it again.  So thanks :)

As to your question about the mystique of the treasure roll, I think it's fair to tell the players what their odds are.  It seems like it allowed them to take their chances, and they enjoyed it.  Sure, it all seems more magical if the players don't know exactly what's going on, but that also robs them of some cool choices, so I think it's all good.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Yeah, you totally had the right instincts. You were all, "hey, y'know, the odds are really lousy," and they were all, "dude! Spin that wheel! Double or nothing! Whoot!" It's another way they're wired different from the careful tactical planners, that's all. Ron's "Gamism" article has a nice discussion on the difference between Gamists who like crunchy calculation and those who like gambling.

As for letting people know their odds -- frankly, that's never spoiled the magic for me. In fact, sometimes it's exactly what makes the story real. The most vivid case I can recall is the final scene of a Dogs in the Vineyard game, my character and another PC facing down the villain, who turned out to be a misguided 15-year-old girl -- and who had just wounded my character's partner. And, in the fiction, my character's standing there looking at the girl, and looking at his gun; and in the real world, I'm sitting there looking at the dice I've got, and at how far short I am of ending the conflict and subduing her before she kills anyone, and at how the extra dice I'd get for escalating to shooting her would make up that difference real nicely... and I can't do it. But it was the stark numbers on the polyhedrals in front of me on the table that drove the point home: Here's the situation. Here's the only way out. Do you take it?

[hurtmypony]

Thanks for all the responses and the confidence!  Heheh, I have been reading the posts here for a while, but it is exciting to finally be able to post something.  The interaction is far more exciting than a static (but albeit interesting) read of other folk's experiences.

Well, tomorrow is the next gaming session, and I am nervous like a cat in a room full of squirt guns and rocking chairs.  Chalk it up to stage fright.  One Exciting Thing:  for the last couple weeks, I have been assembling Chunky Dungeons, the 3-D modular cardboard dungeon-builder.  Since the players are able to narrate the dimensions of rooms and their content, I thought I would experiment with allowing them to actually create a physical representation of their authorship.  The kids should dig it - like a little arts n' crafts component during the monster-stompin' marathon.  I hope all my cutting and gluing and folding has a positive effect...my poor, worn, glue-covered fingers will never work right again.

I'll report in with some more Actual Play content if that's how all this works.  Or am I only supposed to post these if my play session has some kind of issue or something?  I am sure I will have an observation to share or a question to ask, but I don't want to impose.

And it looks like I should I make a new post for new session.  Is that correct?

Also, thank you for the reminder of the articles.  I read Step On Up (and the others) a while ago, but it seems GNS Theory/Terminology has evolved a bit since I last read it.  Plus, my retention was low.  They were intimidating documents for a first-timer to digest. 

[JMendes]

Hey, Tim, :)

I have been assembling Chunky Dungeons, the 3-D modular cardboard dungeon-builder.  Since the players are able to narrate the dimensions of rooms and their content, I thought I would experiment with allowing them to actually create a physical representation of their authorship.

...

!!!!

WICKED!!

Or am I only supposed to post these if my play session has some kind of issue or something?

Dude! No way! You have to post about this! You just have to. I, like, need to know how that goes! :)

I be waitin'.

Cheers,
J.

[Storn]

I've been a strong proponent of posting when stuff does go well.  I think that the tendency to have more feedback on the "issues" of roleplaying makes sense.  People want to help each other have fun in this complex activity that we all share.  But I for one, like hearing the success stories too.

Besides, specifically, I want to hear how the kids respond to the physical "building blocks" of the shared imaginative space.  I predict, quite well.  I know something like that would bring out the kid in me.

It takes me back to when my friend Kurt and I had ordered dungeons and dragons through a squadron catalogue, but it was taking forever to arrive (we were aobut 9).  We had been playing WWII tank battles and battles from a game called Skirmish Wargaming.  So, based on what we read in Squadron, we made up our own game around the D&D concept.  running lots of guys (re: minis) through a dungeon of traps and monsters. 

Dinosaurs served wonderfully, as well as our 1/54 scale vikings (for giants) against 1/72 and 25mm romans, gauls and the few fantasy figs we did have.  Our walls (and traps) were made out of building blocks and legos.  Traps were physical, as cylander blocks would roll down ramps and crush our little dudes.  We would jam about 150 figs in the entrance and at the end of the dungeon (where three or four "gold" blocks served as the treasure!), we end up with about... 12.  Our combat system was die oriented, but much simpler than the percentage system of Skirmish Wargamming.  I wish I could remember, but it was super simple, like one hit/one kill kinda deal.  The carnage on the dungeon dwelvers was astounding.

It was a hoot.

Then we got that little white box of D&D and things would never be the same.....