[DexCon][Donjon] A Donjon Too Far?

[Iskander]

I ran a couple of Donjon pickups at DexCon, hot on the heels of The Dread Castle Playdor, because that game was such fun. I'm hoping to resume the Playdor game with the kids some time this week, by the way. The first game, with Bob Manning and RobNJ was fun: the default race was demonic and Bob's Knight was therefore a demon knight. Rob's human was, like all humans, a snivelling slave-thief/archer type, who belonged to Bob's Knight. The two of them were hunting terrible human cultists growing flowers and worshipping some appalling god called Christ. It was a blast - and I don't think much more need be said about that. The second game, though, was rife with problems, and was "pretty much un-fun", in the words of one player. Here goes...

Setup
An impromptu pickup game with not a lot of time played by:
Me, (Alexander) as GM.
Mayuran Tiruchelvam - as Kai, the thieving archer with shadow magic
Drozdal - X, the assassin
Chris "Praetorian" Gunning - as Farl, retiring gladiator (awesome 2ary ability: poetry).
Michael S Miller - as Gu'laag, the wizened cryptic old sorceror (MSM was the only one who'd played Donjon before).
Nathan Paoletta - as Darzøg, barbarian priest of the frozen wastes
Judd "Paka" Karlman - as Lady Zerania, seductress (cool 2ary: abducted by evil mastermind)

We wanted to play a game in the style of Worst Schwarzenegger Conan Movie Ever, but try to maintain a seriousness of plot that heightened the absurdity of that sub-genre. For my money, we failed to keep the absurdity at a meta-level (I am still keen to try to play a Donjon game in a serious mode), but more on that, later.

Lowest High Point of Any Game
"So, Judd, how much damage do you want your vagina poison to do?"

It Starts Well...
Character creation was as fun as ever. Everyone was having neat ideas, and there were some really groovy secondary abilities flying around. This bit was fun. Then, when everyone was good and ready, we were in the town of Frozen Peaks, high in the Rillichilli Mountains, and the guys were going shopping. MSM scored a staff for Gu'laag, Chris got hold of a trident for Farl, and I think Judd got the poison for Lady Zerania's vagina, but everyone else failed to get anything. Now, I had quite a lot of fun as the surly son-of-a-bitch running the store, but the energy at the table (as MSM observed) dropped as soon as we got into town, and the experience of consistently failing to buy anything - despite my advice to start with high Wealth vs. Provisions if they wanted to start with stuff - really sucked for the players. I was rolling hot, and I stayed hot, and they failed a lot. It occurs to me that I may have forgotten to have them add their Sociality to the roll, which would have been exceptionally dumb, and explained why they failed so much. Can anyone remember? Oops. Sorry, chaps.

Nevertheless, the failure led to something that also came up in the earlier game: Mayuran wanted to steal from the shop. Of course. I mean, why not? He's a sneaky shadowy roguish, thief type, why wouldn't he steal in town? Because from my reading, the rules don't support it: you buy in town, you loot from corpses, that is how you get stuff. It's no more inconsistent than the premise of any of the type of adventuring game that Donjon nods to (why don't the ubermensch adventurers just rob everyone, if they're such ubermenschen?), but it feels lamer to me to say that, than to try to work out how they can use their shadow magic or whatever to steal what they want... which usually works out badly. As it did.

The failure at Grumpy McBastard's store left the lot of them nursing their sorrows in the in inn across the street, when some plot hook stumbled in and mentioned that the next town over just got nuked by the region's evil wizard, before passing out (possibly at the sight of Lady Zerania's beauty), but not before mentioning an orc hermit that could tell them how to get there. Mayuran looted the soon-corpse to get a map, which - thanks to MSM's reading ability - showed the wizard Xindanexor's tower at the other end of the range of mountains from the PCs. My thinking here was that I had already pegged the tower and wizard as level 4 or so, and the culmination of an adventure that they wouldn't get to reach, but that what little of the journey we had time for would be fun, anyway. Stupidly, I neglected to mention this to everyone else.

Nathan was keen to find a ride for his priest, so he used an ability to get an undead wolf to appear at the edge of town. Naturally, the wolf attacked, and Chris/Farl took it down, but not before Judd had used Lady Zerania's ability to be kidnapped by the arch-villain: she was whisked off to Xindanexor's tower. Nathan resurrected the wolf, to ride it - although it still stank of rotting flesh, and then MSM pulled some magic out of Gu'laag's ass to have the PCs whisked off to the tower. (I'm abbreviating the journey.) Whereupon I made the stupidest nail-in-the-coffinest mistake of the day, and separated them all. That pretty much killed the game, and there's not much more to say about it.

(I've elided a lot of the fun, funny and interesting contributions that everyone made. There was no shortage of imagination on their part, or anything else, but it's not too relevant to this AP. Please feel free to point out each other's funnies - if only to make me laugh again.)

So, What Went Wrong?
- Buying stuff, and the town as a whole was boring and energy-sucking. With the kids, and Castle Playdor, I just gave them a weapon, some armour and one other permanent possession at worth 2. They enjoyed thinking up what they wanted (like a magic toaster, armour made from corn husks), and we avoided the shopping phase of town altogether. MSM suggested that the town phase was nostalgic for a mode of play that is no longer very relevant, and I think he's right. Next time I run from scratch, I'm just going to make the same mistake I did with the kids: let the players pick some starting loot and get on with the plot hook situation. That should also avoid the apparently inevitable "I steal it!" response from experienced gamers, that I suspect is a form of damage.

- I failed to adequately describe the play style (irrespective of the tone). So, for me, the fun part with Donjon is the duel of wits between the GM and the players as they try to get to the Big Bad, and I try to screw them up, railroad them, kill them, and generally present opportunities for them to get XP and loot. The tussle between fact-creation and narration is a lot of the fun. Getting to the Big Bad is unlikely for a less-than-3-hour con pick-up. Also...

- I was unprepared. The earlier session and the game with the kids led me to believe that it was basically a question of busking it with the game. I'm confident I can do that improvisation well, but with my physical copy of Donjon in the hands of the kids, referring to a PDF copy just took too long. For future games, I'm going to prep a bunch of NPCs, towns, monsters and villains of all levels, and have lists of names and stuff ready. Also, another physical copy is a must.

- Separating the party into individual prison cells was the most stupid thing I've done in a long time. In a six-player game, it just took too long between scenes for players, and there was not enough going on for everyone else to stay interested. They had no reason to. This is a problem we ran into with a D&D game recently, and it was sucky. (By contrast, Ganakagok retains great interest when you're not the spotlit character).

- I rolled insanely hot. I think in all the many rolls, only once was my high die less than 19. This added to the feeling that the game was "fail, fail, fail", as Mayuran put it. It shouldn't be like that (and wasn't in the earlier game with 2 people).

- I failed to sustain the tone. We wanted something that wasn't completely daft up front, and I fell into a personal trap of having the first things that come into my head be spoof-ish. Despite my understanding (and shared desire) that the game not be a spoof, the mountains were "Rillichilli", and crap like that. Lists of names would seem to be in order to fix that problem.

Also, A Nebulous Qualitative Difference
It's often bruited that roleplaying of the kind we play in our adult games is similar to some golden ideal of make-believe that we recall from the halcyon days of our youth. Quite apart from the reality that much of my youth was grim, I felt a difference between the gameplay  of the Playdor game, and this one. I don't think the kids think of their game was absurd at all - playdoh enemies, and Simon Cowell, and ant sorcerors notwithstanding. They lived in that place, freely inhabited it, and freely added elements to it that were weird, but consistent. They played in it. The adults in this game did not do the same thing, and I'm having a hard time putting a finger on it. It may just be my projection of disappointment that the session was so unsatisfying for everyone, but I don't think so: I believe there was an awareness on the part of the players that coloured their input to the scenario, and detracted from the playful quality that the children have. Does anyone else know what I mean?

[Iskander]

Dro took pix:

Chris the Spook does not like Lady Kate, my powerbook.
Judd does the reverse Mona Lisa.
I am unapologetic.
The pasty finger of doom points to... Nathan, I think
Not completely miserable, then.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Alexander,

Thanks for posting this! (And killing my hot run of Donjon sales from your other threads.) (Seriously, I'm glad. Anyway.)

So, yeah, buying stuff the first time around is hard! It is nostalgia, although I'm not certain that it's "a mode of play that is no longer very relevant" any more than Donjon is. (Which is to say, of course it's nostalgic for an outmoded form of play that I don't do anymore, but the entire game is, and if I were to do that form of play, I'd play Donjon.) I remember being so poor starting in my early games that I'd get the cheapest weapon possible and maybe some hide armor and go fight and come back, so happy to be able to buy some scale mail.

In regards to stealing stuff - I should have thought of that! No doubt you can try, and I'd, in the grand tradition of old RPG play, and especially old computer RPGs, make the shopkeeper like 10th level.

I think you pointed out something here that's important to remember: Donjon play needs prep. I've seen this with some other games that are supposed to be wacky - people will grab them and think that wacky = no prep.

Out of all my games, I think Donjon has the best GM advice (for it - not in general.) While it has some glaring flaws (the magic system), the GM advice, if followed, will result in smooth-rolling adventures.

Maybe I'll have to run it at GenCon after all this talk. It's been about two years since I actually ran the game. Hmm.

[Michael S. Miller]

1st thing: I played because I had read how Alexander had made Donjon fun and I wanted to see that in action. I was particularly curious because I had screwed Donjon up pretty badly when I ran it a few years ago (Autumn of '03, I think).

2nd thing: I was a bad player insofar as I had to keep leaving the table to check on the party preparations. I figured that with 6 players I'd be able to get back before my turn came around again. Bad call. If nothing else, it caused me to miss the coolest roll of the game. Judd used his ability "Get captured by Archvillian" to do just that -- and circumvent the whole travelogue bit.

Remembering the excitement and coolness of character creation, and contrasting that with the mess that actual play became, I think this session fell down exactly where a lot of traditional play falls down: It didn't translate the protential coolness displayed in character creation into actual coolness during the play of the game. In the clarity of hindsight, I suggest:

We had nothing to fight. Donjon isn't a Narrativist hugfest. It's supposed to be a Gamist romp, i.e., "Let's have fun by beating the snot out of each other." Alexander used a wait-and-see GMing style that, in retrospect, is more suited to PTA. He should have been throwing monsters at us from the word "Go!" That constant, hard adversity would have driven us to rely on our abilities and maximize our effectiveness in pursuit of victory. IIRC, in the Playdor game, the players didn't even get out of Town before they were attacked by a pair of goblins. I can't help but think of that D&D boardgame played w/ Clinton at Origins where he upped the monsters in the last room to make the game better.

Without adversity, we players got bored and (due to craptastic shopping rolls) frustrated. Speaking for myself, all the D&D-parody bits of Donjon served to bring back memories of "when you're bored and frustrated, you should just do any old thing to make SOMEthing  happen." Thus, a great deal of the chaos: Players wanting to do cool stuff, but not having the opportunity to do it.

[Mayuran]

This was a weird session. Not bad. Just not very fun.

I think because of who was at the table, and the fact that we all knew and liked each other, we were expecting awesome and ended up disappointed.

Is there a place in the rules for the players to come up with their adventure? Like a very simple plot "We are hunting down an evil wizard who has wronged us." Instant buy-in. This could even be randomly generated right after we come up with the characters, so that we have something to build towards.

On Tone:
We started off without having the direction but with high expectations. I think we lost our tone (over the top but serious - a la John Milius Conan) in the first scene, with the shopping, and from then on didn't know what we were supposed to do. Basically with the shopkeeper being a wacky Alexander character, combined with his awesome roles, it became a screwball comedy about losers very quickly.

On Thievery:
I thought the stealing was handled well (and I didn't know it was supposed to be impossible) - Alexander did make the guy a super powerful high level detector.

On Mechanics and Facts:
I don't think we realized that the facts are the currency in which the GM and Players use to manipulate the world and each other. The first facts bought were the map to the villain's dungeon (which I looted from "plot point messenger"), and then Michael established where the tower was by reading the map.

Eventually, Judd was able to use his ability to get kidnapped from the Wizard, and Michael established that the wizard was his rival (for power and Judd's seductress). I think that is a really powerful mechanic, and wish there had been more pay-off (being "bad players" who couldn't roll dice well probably contributed to this disappointment).

For example, in the six round fight to defeat the zombie wolf, we could have established facts about the wolf rather than just attempt to hit it, right? These facts could have had just as much impact as physically wounding it?

[Iskander]

As ever, Michael, I think you've nailed a key failing I missed. You're very right - I had no clear idea of the adversity I was going to thrust upon the group, and even the zombie wolf (which was supposed to be Nathan's ride, but I perverted) - due to grotesquely mismatched die-rolling - ended up being a snooze. As Clinton says, Donjon needs prep, and two unprepared successes notwithstanding, without it, I fell on my GM-ing ass! By comparison, in the Playdor game the opposition grew much more organically from the situation of the talent contest, because I had created real situation. The plot hook guy wasn't nearly grabby enough

Mayuran - re-reading the rules today, you would buy facts like that with a damage roll, to affect your opponent's attributes, rather than just lopping off Flesh Wounds. The example text says it better than I can:

When Jonathan has Fiera attack the minotaur this on her last action at 10, he gets to roll seven total dice, while Nikola (GM) only gets to roll two dice for the minotaur’s Adroitness. Jonathan succeeds with a whopping four successes. Jonathan then makes a Damage Test versus the minotaur, rolling Fiera’s Virility of 5, plus her breath weapon’s Damage Rating of 3, plus the four bonus dice from his attack successes for 12 dice. Nikola rolls the minotaur’s Wherewithal of 6, plus its Main Ability of Tough Hide of 5 for 11 dice. Jonathan’s not so sure Fiera’s massive attack is going to do any damage, but he ends up with three successes. He could remove three Flesh Wounds from the minotaur, dropping it from 6 to 3 Flesh Wounds, but he doubts Fiera will get in as good of an attack again. With the minotaur’s formidable Attributes and Abilities, he needs to guarantee her success next time, and instead spends one damage success to declare, “Fiera’s flame breath sears the minotaur’s hide, withering its torso,” and uses the other two successes to remove two dice from Wherewithal. The minotaur will still be formidable, but has two less dice to roll when defending against damage now.

My understanding is that you could also use those successes to buy facts about the environment to your advantage - but the chances are you're better off damaging the opponent. i.e. facts that circumvent the damage rules or the movement rules are cheating, but anything else goes.

Clinton, I think the 'mode' stuff was more to do with the players at the table than anything else: I don't think any of us were in the mood for any kind of spoofy nostalgic play at all, but that's more-or-less what we sat down to play. Small wonder it didn't work out too well. Certainly Mayuran, Dro and I had just suffered a distinctly unhappy couple of D&D 3.5 sessions, and nostalgia for early editions wasn't high on my priorities. However, I think the system's viable for more than that, if the players get some appropriate starting possessions, and we'll be trying that out tomorrow with a blood-and-rust mercenary company adventure (from which I will certainly generate AP).

On further reflection, the nebulous difference I mentioned in the OP may have been to do with the seriousness of the players' approach to the game. The Playdor game's wackiness notwithstanding, the kids took it all very seriously: Squishy's Flaming Pancreas of Doom was a murderously effective spell, intended to murder. I think we all approached this Donjon game with the expectation of "we'll all go have some awshum wacky Donjon fun now," where we would have been better served with a more serious approach. (No blame - c'est la vie.)

Finally, thinking back to the rules-understanding/explanation problem, I am pretty sure this is another grave failing of mine. With the children, I already knew I would have to take it slowly with the rules to ease them into it and explain the ramifications and options as I went along; with this group, I think I expected everyone to instantly grok the rules somehow. After all, everyone at the table was either a game designer, or someone who played and analysed a lot of play... why wouldn't they? If I'm honest, I find rules naturally easy to internalise, to the point where I find it hard to understand when friends don't have the same knack. This has caused problems playing new boardgames, for example, where I grasp what's going on very rapidly, then get very impatient with everyone else for being so slow. I am working on being a better human being, though, so I hope that will get better!

[Nathan P.]

Yeh, the game was wierd. I pretty much agree with everything thats been said so far - the shopping pretty much killed the energy, and then splitting us up, with the 6 players, made it tough to be engaged with what was going on when it wasn't your turn.

The game was also strange because it was the first time I've played a straight-forward task resolution system in...quite a while, and it was hard for me! During chargen I decided that I wanted my barbarian priest of the frozen north to ride a white winter wolf as his mount, and once we got outside the town I grabbed my chance! Alexander was mocking me by saying it would be a really hard roll, so I looked at my character sheet. I had the ability to Turn Undead, and it was the only one I could think of applying (without using magic, at least) - so I told Alexander that I wanted to find an Undead Wolf, so I could Turn it...into my mount.

Sure enough, an undead wolf appeared. And, sure enough, we started a combat with it. Which was what I really didn't want! I wanted to make some kind of roll to tame the undead wolf, not a multiple-turn combat with it and the entire party. I could have been more explicit about this, I suppose - and I know that it attacking was part of Alexander trying to amp up the challenge against us - but it was very frustrating for me to hear "roll initiative," when all I wanted was to roll to see if I could tame the wolf or not. Sure enough, I didn't get a particularly high initiative roll, and the wolf was dead before I could act (thanks to a very cool spell by Michael's character). I swallowed my sour grapes and tried to salvage the situation, using my Turn Undead skill to Turn the undead wolf....back alive! But it felt like a "well, this is the best I can do" kind of thing, rather than a "this is what I want, whether I get it or not!" kind of thing.

So, personally, it really grated on me that I had to go through the motions (well, actually watch everyone else go through the motions) of rolling to hit, and then rolling for damage, when what I wanted to do was something that didn't need to be resolved through combat at all!

If it makes you feel any better, Alexander, I felt like you laid out the rules pretty clearly. *shrugs*

So, not a good first run of the game for me (sorry Clinton). Maybe I'll get to play in a smaller group sometime. And it really hilighted to me that I can't go home again....

[Clinton R. Nixon]

So, not a good first run of the game for me (sorry Clinton). Maybe I'll get to play in a smaller group sometime. And it really hilighted to me that I can't go home again....

Nathan,

It doesn't bother me. Remember, I wrote those rules years and years ago. In a valiant effort to kill my sales, I'll tell you that I feel the same way. I could play a game of Donjon, but I wouldn't have half the fun I did when I used to play it.

[Michael S. Miller]

Three more quick things:

Thing the First: Yes, you did forget to have us add Sociality to shopping rolls. It would have helped a great deal. I don't have the rules with me, but I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to add your Level to every roll, as well.

Thing the Second: Thank you for bringing this up:

Mayuran - re-reading the rules today, you would buy facts like that with a damage roll, to affect your opponent's attributes, rather than just lopping off Flesh Wounds.

This sets up the potential for TRULY awesome teamwork scenes once you've hit that "serious" groove. Particularly against viscious Big Bads. "I'll try to take down that hellacious Virility of his, the halfling will focus on Discernment, and the fighter will keep slamming on the Flesh Wounds." Present this as an option to players.

Thing the Third:

I think we all approached this Donjon game with the expectation of "we'll all go have some awshum wacky Donjon fun now," where we would have been better served with a more serious approach.

Guilty as charged. I sat down with certain expections of what kind of effort I was going to put into the game (little) and what sort of fun was going to be had (light parody) and therefore did not engage with the tension of the game itself.

[Iskander]

Yeah, Nathan, I am sorry. I abused your contribution to provide adversity - which is kind of in the spirit of Donjon, but can be very galling if you're not expecting it.

Wow. Re-re-reading the rules, I totally cocked up the Wealth tests; beyond leaving Sociality out (a crime), I also neglected to point out that you get to pick how much of your Wealth you're willing to spend (a felony). I can barely type for the egg on my face.

You are absolutely right, Michael. This evening I'm running a blood-and-rust, gritty Donjon for Mayuran, Dro, Thor and John/jenskot, and they will very much need to do that sort of cooperative work if they're to take out the Big Bad and sundry minions.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Three more quick things:

Thing the First: Yes, you did forget to have us add Sociality to shopping rolls. It would have helped a great deal. I don't have the rules with me, but I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to add your Level to every roll, as well.

You don't add your Level. Leaving out Sociality, though, would make it very tough. As a rule of thumb, you always roll an Attribute + Ability.

[eruditus]

Concerning the "Steal from the vendors" idea you know what might be intriguing (as a one shot, probably) is the idea of making to town the dungeon.  During the "vend-o-plot-hook" maybe the hook could be "Grumpy Mcgrady has a new shipment of shovels coming in.  I need those shovels for my illicit mining operation. Can you help me?"  And in the process the PCs could pick up some gear, running into guards, townsfolk threatening to call the alarm, town watch, Mcgrady and his family and finally The Constable.

Or is that a little too GTA?  :)

[Hans]

Maybe I'll have to run it at GenCon after all this talk. It's been about two years since I actually ran the game. Hmm.

There are always the G.O.D. sessions, Clinton!