[D&D 3.5] Badger, Goblin, Fight!

[Zak Arntson]

Our second D&D session is done, and much fun was had by all.
The first session can be found here: [D&D 3.0/35]Monster fight on the Open Sea!

Before Play

Here is the email I sent out to the group:

Okay! Here's the thing! I don't want to do the typical "DM has a secret story given out in little spoonfuls." I'd like to try something a little different, more along the lines of "DM provides a jumping off point, Players run wild."

To that end, when the adventure starts tonight, I'll just lay my cards on the table, with the various things I've loosely planned on happening. NPCs, monster encounters, and so on.

If this turns out to be not-so-fun, I'm happy going back to a more traditional D&D style.

Through a scheduling mishap, we wound up in a conference room with a computer + projector, which led to us accessing www.d20srd.org on a big screen, which was a huge boon to the byzantine D&D ruleset (we accessed everything from combat rules to weapon/armor info to spells to the gnome's war dog stats).

All Cards on the Table

I opened up the game by telling them that I wanted to try something different. I explained the situation as their characters were aware of things:

• A golbin death cult has been discovered in the Undercity, stealing the bodies of fallen soldiers and resurrecting them as zombies to dominate the other goblin clans.
• A human member of the empire has joined with the goblins. He hopes they can bring his dead son (another soldier) back to life (rather than as a zombie).
• The wife of the betrayer has come to the Empire seeking help. She doesn't want her husband to be corrupted, nor her son to be brought back by evil.

I then explained to the group that they, as players, were aware of the following:

• The goblin death cult leader was drowned and brought back by some awful god, which was his beginning as an evil priest.
• The goblin leader has a brother who wants to pull his brother out of the cult.

The group then asked, "So, what's our mission?" My response: The Empire wants you to capture the betrayer (or kill him if you have to), and stop the goblin death cult if possible.

The players were confused that I would let them in on the "DM Secrets." I explained again that I wanted to get their input on what kind of encounters they want. What situations they want to get into. There wasn't much interest in a shared authorship.

First Fight!

After spending the money gained last session, we start play. The betrayer's wife provided the location of the entrance she and her husband used to get into the Undercity: An abandoned warehouse. This was pretty straightforward. I threw down a battle map from an old Dragon magazine and one player brought all his pre-painted D&D miniatures, so the visuals were great. The fight was a typical early-level brawl, with the following special mentions:

• Cleric summons a celestial badger to scout out and report back (the gnome fighter can communicate with burrowing animals). The badger fails a Move Silently role and combat begins!
• The zombies were turned, but two characters made attacks of opportunity on one of them, negating the turn!

Everyone had a great time smashing skulls and learning some more D&D combat ropes. The party earned XP and gold, so they opted to level up and upgrade equipment. I didn't want to punish them for this, since they were so excited about it, so when they went back to the warehouse, I hand-waved with "The goblins hadn't changed shifts yet, so the guards are still not there."

I also prodded them with, "What did you do with the zombie soldier body?" There were some quizzical looks until I reminded them that the soldier was somebody's kid. This group is still very much in DUNGEON FIGHT mode! (remember this for my play notes, below)

Player Input, Take One: Spiders!

For the next fight, I opened up with, "Okay, I have more goblins and zombies, but I also have spiders prepared. Which would you like to fight?" This prompted some confusion, with responses like, "Aren't you supposed to tell us what we fight?" They then told me that after two goblin/zombie fights, they were ready to try something else.

We started with me tearing out a pair of web shapes, throwing down a cave battle map and asking for Spot checks. The two in front failed, and landed on top of a sticky web. Then everyone rolled Spot vs. the spiders' collective Hide roll to determine who was flat-footed at the beginning of combat.

And then! 9:30 rolled around, so we had to pack up and leave. I wrote down the battle map details, and we agreed to figure out our next game time (next week Thursday, it looks like).

Lessons and Thoughts

• Roll With Your Players! I wanted to try out a player-DM collaborative way of creating the adventure, by way of allowing for player input on encounters and events. The players didn't bite. They are all seasoned D&D players, from one edition or another, so they are comfortable and expecting the traditional play structure. I wasn't expecting this much push against player-creation of "DM stuff," but on second thought, it's not surprising.
  
  I'm fully happy to change my expectations and meet the players' play goals, so rather than disband before we get dysfunctional, I'm switching to a more traditional DM role and hoping to ease the players into a more author-oriented approach. Possibly as they get more invested in their characters. But again, if the players aren't at all interested, I'm having fun running a lot of miniature combats!



• Talk to Your Players!: Post-game, I had the chance to talk to two of the players outside of the group; one right after gaming and one the next day. As it turned out, neither wanted the shared authorship, and would rather be wholly surprised by "what was around the corner." So they were hoping for the opposite of what I was trying to provide!
  
  It's also an indication that the group may never lean towards shared authorship, which is an eventuality I have to embrace (and will, happily. I'm a sucker for monster fights, too).
  
  I also go the great line:
  

  
  It's awesome! None of this "talk to the King for two hours" bullshit. I'm just running around killing monsters with my lance!
  




• Encounter Surprise Question: Before combat begins, opposing groups will be making certain checks against each other's skills. I know that it's Hide vs. Spot, and Move Silently vs. Listen. But are these ever combined? What if you're trying to Move Silently while Hiding in order to sneak up on the heroes? How is this resolved? Do we roll two separate opposed checks?

For Next Time ...

Though I'm adjusting my expectations for player authorship, I'm sticking to another decision, which I want to emphasize. I said last time that, What I don't want to worry about is trying to balance an illusion of PC free-will and my pre-planned adventure. Even though I'm going to provide a more typical DM experience, I don't want the players to suffer from me trying to pull their strings without them knowing. If we move off my prepared items, they will know full well that I may have to pause the game for more prep.

I'm also going to suggest that we incorporate their characters more into the world. The first two sessions have been spent getting used to each other (as rpg participants) and the D&D rules. I think by the end of the next session, I'll have established enough world detail that they will feel comfortable inserting their characters into the world. While I was hoping for some player authorship from the get-go, I think it will have to happen gradually and organically.

[ffilz]

Sounds like you had a good time (hopefully the "players were confused" parts weren't long drawn out painful staredowns - I've seen that happen when a GM tries to get input from the players). One thing to be carefull of is planning to "sneak up on mode." I would say continue to offer them expanded opportunities to contribute. You can ask them things like "is there some kind of creature you would be interested in fighting next week, or something we've been fighting you're tired of?" and I've always found some willingess from players to answer such questions. But as you are realizing, don't expect a wild swing in attitude.

The way to keep from railroading them is to be aware of what decisions they WANT to make. For traditional old school "kill things and take their treasure D&D" it's perfectly fine to start off a game session with: "You are standing outside the entrance to the dungeon." This doesn't rob the players of a meaningful decision.

Frank

[Steven Stewart]

One thing I have found to help "ease" players into something more collorabtive, is to give them something in game for contributing to the story. I don't want to go on to long, but I remember a few things that I have done in the past:

(1) Letting the players develop an "orginazation" - a classic of fantasty gaming. They develop the name, goals, and roughly the flavor of it. In exchange they get a few hundred XP, plus some "contacts". I get as DM some group they are personally motivated for to use in adventures. I also have let players design 3 "org" feats, that they can get as they advance.

(2) Letting the players design a magical item, a legacy item. It grows in power as they do. However it is also very famous and has its own set of subplots. When the player makes the item, they define what it can do at 1st, 5th, 9th level etc. But they also have to specificy (not in game terms but in narrative terms) who else knows about it, and why they want it back.

Just some ideas. Hope your game goes good.

[DAudy]

As long as everybody is happy with playing miniature tactical battles with a bit of plot and non combat activities to tie things together and drive forward than thats great.  Sounds like a pretty good example of how to do Gamist play right.

From the sounds of it your players might be more comfortable with up-front contributions rather than in-situ ones as I can see how being able to 'decide' what the next encounter is and knowing the GM 'secrets' can feel like cheating for players used to traditional D&D play.  Definitely easing them into the collaborative aspects will help with the confused moments.  It sounds like your players really enjoy the exploration and surprise aspects so Steven's suggestions for easing players into more collaborative play are great.

In many ways his suggestion is a lot like Witch Mountain's limited setting authority for fate introduction.  The player generates an item (group, magic item, locale, mission, etc) and then hands it off to the GM who then gets to run with it.  That gets you some player contribution without them losing the surprise and wonder at what this session will bring.  The other advantage is these could be used as very rudimentary flags.  If a player chooses a magic staff which originally belonged to the Cult of the Devouring One and was used to slay the Great Werewolf Leader, this suggests that the player would be interested in Mad Cultist and lycanthropes showing up in later adventures.

If you go this route I'd suggest a fairly firm system for anything that would boost player power so that it stays in the same realm of resource management and tactical choices that the gameplay is about.  The rules from Oriental Adventures for hereditary weapons might be a useful place to start for comparison.

----

That aside I have a couple questions for you about the session.

Badger Scouting - was this a contribution that everyone thought was cool, fun, and a creative use of abilities?  Or did some players feel that it detracted from the getting to stuff and beating the heck out of them?

GM Secrets - what is line of thinking on wanting to share these with the players rather than present them to be discovered through interactions and use of abilities in play?  It strikes me that just handing things like 'the goblin leaders brother wants to pull him out of the cult' to the player removes some of the tactical aspect of choosing abilities that would help draw that information out and what resources they might be able to draw on for bringing the cult down.

Anyways I'm glad you shared another AP with us since the Forge doesn't see as much Gamist insight as it does for other creative agendas.

-Dan

[Lance D. Allen]

Don't have a great deal to say on this, except to address your question on Move Silently -vs- Hide. As I understand it, Hide is used primarily when the character is stationary, and Move Silently is used when the character is moving. Don't try to combine them, don't double up on rolls.

It may be slightly counter-intuitive, especially when the opposed skill rolls are so neatly divided up into sensory groups. But if you tell yourself that Spot actually means the ability to see things that are not moving but hidden, and that Listen is the ability to hear things that are trying to move without being noticed, then you'll be okay, I think.

[Callan S.]

I didn't get to see the type of question I was talking about in the last thread :( . To show it again, here's two examples so as to contrast it:

• What monsters do you want to fight next?
• Let's have harpies, that'd be a great fight! Let's have it? (subtext; take my idea and add to it if you wish, or leave it as is, it's your call not mine, even though I want this)?*

There's a significant difference between the two and I was hoping to see an example of the latter. Though I have to say, my interest wasn't in terms of co-op story telling, it was in unburdening the dreadful task of dungeon design and balance. In the last thread the balance of the test fight was neatly put in the players hands. I've sat and taken on that 'add goblins cause of cleric turn' type of question before all by myself - I suspect it's impossible to address correctly without some mind reading ability. I was intersted in what happened in the last AP and wanted to see more of it's application, to see if it was working as I thought.

* For players who like secrets, this is easily added in 'Harpies and they have a secret monster!'. The players can adjust that secret if they want, or leave it - it remains as mysterious as they want it to be.

[Chris Peterson]

One thing I have found to help "ease" players into something more collorabtive, is to give them something in game for contributing to the story. I don't want to go on to long, but I remember a few things that I have done in the past:

(1) Letting the players develop an "orginazation" - a classic of fantasty gaming. They develop the name, goals, and roughly the flavor of it. In exchange they get a few hundred XP, plus some "contacts". I get as DM some group they are personally motivated for to use in adventures. I also have let players design 3 "org" feats, that they can get as they advance.

(2) Letting the players design a magical item, a legacy item. It grows in power as they do. However it is also very famous and has its own set of subplots. When the player makes the item, they define what it can do at 1st, 5th, 9th level etc. But they also have to specificy (not in game terms but in narrative terms) who else knows about it, and why they want it back.

Steven: Those are great ideas. When I was a (struggling) DM, one of my players kept telling every game that he wanted to build a wizard's keep. I knew he was stoked about it, but story-wise I didn't know what to do with a wizard's keep. It just seemed so static and boring (to me). I feel bad that I didn't ask him for more details because he obviously had some ideas that were important to him. Maybe I could have introduced an opposing wizard's guild..

[Zak Arntson]

Frank: Confused players were a few brief seconds of "Man, that's weird!" dialogue, and then we moved right along.

Steven: Nice suggestions! I really like the idea of something "leveling up" with them.

Dan: Front-loading the player contributions is something I tried to do with the initial three campaign question, "Where does your character come from." One thing that dawned on me last night (d'oh!), was that I didn't re-ask this during chargen. I was just as guilty of treating the characters as miniature battle tokens as everyone else!

Badger Scouting: This was a group-planned way to sneak up on the goblin guards. They wanted a scout to check things out before they went in. It went very quickly (I wasn't about to roleplay twenty minutes of badger-scouting):

• Look up Celestial Badger at d20srd.org.
• Grab a kobold miniature, throw it on the map where it would first have line-of-sight of the kobolds.
• Ask the cleric's player to make a Move Silently check for the badger.
• Badger failed, so combat starts. Ruling that the party heard the clamor of the goblins, the party decided to bust in and fight.

GM Secrets: I wanted to try something different than the typical "DM runs the story, the players react using only their characters." But as it turns out, the players were very much expecting just that kind of play!

Lance: Thanks! I'll remember that Move Silently and Hide While Still are two exclusive skills. It does seem strange, though, that if something Moves Silently through the underbrush, you couldn't catch it with a Spot check!

Callan: Yes, I mistook your question type. I see now what you're saying. I will definitely have the chance to try this in later sessions, as I will plan different monster combos to ramp the difficulty between the Easy to Challenging ranges the DMG advises.

Thanks, everyone!

[Chris Peterson]

Here are some (untested) DM notes I made about how to read D&D players' "Flags":

Inspired by Chris/Bankuei's "Flag Framing" and Vincent Baker's "Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore: Practical Conflict Resolution Advice", I was pondering my stint as a struggling DM. D&D doesn't have explicit flags: no Kickers, Descriptors, Spiritual Attributes, Beliefs, Instincts, Keys, Secrets, Drives, Passions, Traits, or Relationships. What's a DM to do?

The D&D literature does not explain how to read the players' interests from their character sheets. I was a weak DM, reluctantly railroading my players because I was using published game modules with linear stories. I had to work hard to keep the players on track. My players didn't know any better, so I think I was the only frustrated person at the table.

Maybe this is old news to good DMs, but here are my rough ideas for reading D&D's flags. Some are player flags, how a player wants his character to shine. Some are group flags, communicating the group's thematic and setting interests. It's important to balance the players' thematic interests versus pandering to their strengths, feeding them "gimme" challenges again and again.

* Feats are a great player flag. A player uses feats to specialize their character, differentiating (say) their cleric from every other cleric and from the other members of the party. If a player invests heavily in a particular feat tree, he knows what he likes. He is a master of a particular feat tree, so give him opportunity to show off all those feats. When a player uses his favorite feat successfully, consider giving him a +2 bonus for his next related action (like Sorcerer bonus dice).

If he starts taking random, unrelated feats, then his interests are changing or he is still searching for something cool. Give him opportunities to try out his new feats. Don't bother him with his older feats; he has new interests. Consider giving him a +2 bonus (for some "unrelated" environmental reason) when he tries out his new feats. Give him some successes as he is still shopping for his character's interests.

* Feats are not a very good group flag because characters usually specialize in different feats, so feats don't express the group's common interests very well.

* Skills are a good group flag. Skills sketch out the environment the players expect to encounter. Look at the players' character sheets. Add up all the characters' ranks per skill. (Players directly control how they spend their rank points, whereas their total skill points include racial and attribute modifiers that players have little control over.) Highly ranked skills are a common interest for the party. Lowly ranked skills are things the party probably does not want to see in the game. Create settings and situations that spotlight those high rank skills. Avoid settings and situations that poke at the characters' lowly ranked skills. They will be frustrated because their characters will look bad as they flail then fail.

* Skills are a good player flag. Have any of the characters specialized in a skill that no one else has? Like feats, create situations to spotlight each character's unique skill, giving each player a chance to "save the day" for the party in a way no onen else could. When a player uses his unique skill successfully, consider giving him a +2 bonus for his next related action to dramatically accentuate his unique contribution to the party.

* Alignment is a decent player flag. Most characters are good or neutral, not evil, so there's not much story meat there. For lawful and chaotic characters, DMs should push them to test their convictions, but also give them opportunities to demonstrate their alignment. For neutral characters, the DM should push them to see if they might lean lawful or chaotic. Consider giving players +2 bonus for honoring their alignment and a -2 penalty for acting out of alignment. And if a player wants to change their alignment? Let them because that is interesting stuff!

* Alignment is a decent group flag. If the party has mixed alignments, then consider testing the party's different reactions and cultural norms. If the party strongly leans towards a particular alignment, challenge the party's convictions.

* Class is a decent player flag. It gives the DM a rough idea of what the player wants to do with his character. A player can't change his character's class, so class is not a very dynamic flag. Multi-classing and prestige classes do give the DM notice of a player's changing interests, but classes are so broad, it doesn't seem very useful for the DM.

* Class is a weak group flag because most parties are "balanced" (i.e. a cleric, a magic-user, a fighter, and a rogue) for gamist optimization. A balanced party doesn't communicate much to the DM. However, if the party has multiple characters of the same class, then the DM could focus on shared interests and conflicts between those characters.

* Race is a minor player flag. It gives the DM some idea of the player's setting interests. A character's race doesn't (usually!) change, so it can't flag a player's changing interests. Give the character opportunities to spotlight their race's unique abilities to help the party. Create situations that test the race relations between party members and allies. Consider giving +2 bonuses or -2 penalties for inter-race interactions, though this might be too controversial for some players.

* Race is a good group flag. If the party has diverse races, then consider testing their races relations or different reactions and cultural norms. If the party has a couple members of the same race, consider using that race's home setting as a backdrop for your game. It gives characters of that race a strong tie to the game setting and it gives characters of other races opportunities to play an outsider. Just be careful to not give too much spotlight on the featured race.

* A cleric's Domains and a magic-user's School also give the DM ideas for friends, foes, and challenges that might interest that player of the cleric or magic-user.

[James_Nostack]

Zak, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that there are a lot of fantasy games with a higher Hippy Index than D&D which still allow the slaying of many monsters.  It sounds like by promising D&D, specifically an all-slaying, all-the-time mode of D&D, there's a social contract, or at least a strong presumption, against Being Hippies. 

I guess my suggestion is, talk to these guys about story stuff & so on.  Explain that you're happy to do FIGHT MONSTERS for a certain period of time, but you might like to try a more Hippy style of play too.  And see how that shakes out.

[Andrew Cooper]

Zak,

An option for the Hide vs Move Silently that I've used is to give the player a synergy bonus from Hide to his Move Silently roll.  You don't have to do this and it probably isn't canon but I've gotten good mileage from it.

[Zak Arntson]

James: I don't need to move into "Hippy" territory, I just thought the group might enjoy it. Truth be told, the dungeon crawl is a really fun way to play, so long as we're all on board for DM as Monsters vs. Players as Characters. None of this "I'll fudge a die roll to save your fighter!"

I have a lot of play habits gained from all sorts of non-D&D gaming. My favorite gaming experiences have been: InSpectres, Donjon, Gallant, Shadows, Dying Earth, and non-dungeon-crawly highly-improvised D&D 2nd Edition. I'm quickly adding D&D 3.5 to the list, and it's because of its focus on miniature tactics.

Andrew: I like this addition, though we are trying to stick to the rules as written. Perhaps once somebody gets five ranks in either, I'll propose it (they just hit second level, so it may be some time) .

I also read at d20srd that a group of people can make one combined Listen check, though they don't say how. I enjoyed having each player roll separately against the spiders' single Hide skill in order to determine who was surprised.

[Zak Arntson]

Chris: Nice list! I'll try it out as far as driving player interest in what I throw at them.

[Joel P. Shempert]

I just wanna chime in that Chris, your compendium of D&D flags is awesome. I've actually been discussing Flags with my group of mostly-D&D players, so this is useful and well-timed.

Peace,
-Joel

[Chris Peterson]

I think these D&D Flags are mostly for color. You don't want to make the game too easy by always pandering directly to the characters' strengths. However, a DM can use these player flags to "repaint" an existing, balanced module to something more in line with the players' thematic interests (even if the DM uses much of the existing module content).