[D&D 3.5] Wyrd Tales

[Matt Snyder]

This past Sunday evening, we got to play D&D using my new Wyrd experience system.

The Group

In about May, my group of old friends and younger brother started off a series of new D&D sessions. But, through even this month, sessions were infrequent and irregular. We played about 5 sessions or so of a game set in Eberron. I found the setting almost irrelevant to the relatlively small game we were playing. It might as well have been set anywhere, except for the fact that two of the three players used Eberron races. One player, Leland, was unable to attend most sessions.

The summer sessions were pretty straightforward D&D (we're using 3.5 books). For each Sunday evening session, I prepared simple fights and one slightly longer session of a 12-14 room dungeon. The players seemed to enjoy the sessions, particularly the prepared dungeon. I found them pretty uninteresting, overall, for two reasons. First, there was very little in the way of story going on. I framed a simple situation, they spoke some dialogue while going along for the ride, and then we played out a couple 30-45 minute combats. Second, while I'm a raving story fan, I'm all for lengthy combats with interesting events and tactics going on. These lower-level combats became less about interesting tactical choices and challenges and more about figuring out mostly-absurd means to survive as low-level characters with too few options and too few hit points.

The Players

Dave -- Dave's my brother. He and I don't speak much about gaming (whereas, a friend and I do more so), but he enjoys it. I notice he's particuarly good at portraying a character, by which I mean using fun dialogue aloud, figuring out a "hook" in terms of his abilities AND character personality. "OUtside" the game, he's pretty quiet on likes and dislikes. "Inside" the game he's what many traditional players would describe as a "good role-player" by which they mean someone who does a great job "Playing his character." I admire this in my brother, because he often surprises me with a serious characterization. He doesn't often, say, make startling choices (somethign I do and something I like to see in others). Dave doesn't profess love for D&D, but he finds it relatively comfortable and familiar.

Leland -- Leland is an old high-school friend. He's very fond of D&D and nostalgic of many D&D-related settings, media and so on from the "good ol' days." He's not interested in other games (but neither is he hostile). Leland has a difficult time creating characters because he reads so many of the D&D books, and can't pick just one thing he'd like to try. In play, he's very eager to know what the story is -- one of the things I most admire in him. He loves the dramatic surprises, say, a villain will introduce, even for other player characters.

Aaron -- Aaron is another high-school pal and long time friend. We recently worked out some serious issues after parting ways late last year. Aaron and I play in another game group with Aaron, his wife and other friends. Aaron, like Leland, also loves D&D. He spends a lot of time outside of sessions pouring through books, but whereas Leland likes to simply read whatever for his own interest, Aaron tends to enjoy seeking out character options he can work toward and employ in play. He describes this process, which we've referred to off-hand as "character building" as one of the biggest rewards he gets out of gaming. D&D provides such options in spades. He has not found indie games he enjoys that provide similar options (we have, notably, enjoyed Riddle of Steel very much in our other group previously).

Then there's me. I'm a big fan of indie games, but I've always had fun with D&D. I have been the GM for years with this group (I was not always GM). Our games have frequently expired after I become too exhausted trying to run the game, particularly preparation and what amounts to story creation and framing. I have long tried to get these guys to participate more actively rather than passively, with varying levels of success.

I have observed many Step-On-Up moments among these three players. They are energetic when fights go well, and like crying babies when dice roll poorly. (I kid because I love.)

The New Game

Having felt exhausted yet again running the Eberron game, I came to some realizations. First, I wasn't interested in tying our games to any particular setting, specifically one with excessive page counts. It lacked any real focus in our group's play, and had little influence on the game.

Last week, as I considered some of the reasons I was exhausted with this game, inspiration struck. I penned the Wyrd D20 alternate experience rules. In a nutshell, the system forces players to define their own fictional goals and reap XP rewards upon their completion. This is comparable to Muses in my own published game Nine Worlds. But, I think there are important differences that keep this more about rewarding interesting strategies and tactics while empowering players to contribute to the fictional elements of the game.

Sunday night we gathered to play without Leland. Dave had requested the session, which was a good indication he was eager to play after a long spell of failing to get a game going on Sunday. (An aside: In a previous week, we examined The Burning Wheel, and even burned sample characters and tried a very quick melee fight. In the end, I think they found it slightly overwhelming and unfamiliar, but intriguing. Perhaps another game later on.)

Enthusiastically, I pitched the new Wyrd rules which Aaron had already read and responded well to. Dave seemed interested, too, asking good questions about how one completes a Wyrd, how to get new ones, and so on. I had drawn up a simple map for a Norse-inspired game, and gave them some very basic concepts. We call it the "giant killer" game. (Another aside: Leland has requested such a game for years. He was very sad to have to miss this session!)

Player Characters & Wyrds

So, with very little set-up, Aaron and Dave began making characters. Before I could even blink, Dave was writing down inforation for a Cleric, and very shortly afterward Aaron settled on a Ranger. They began rolling dice and rounding out their completed characters. They completed this process in about a half hour. Often, when we start a game, this is an all-night afair. A good sign!

Next, I explained more about Wyrds, particularly that THEY would have the power in writing their Wyrds and thus basically tell ME the GM what their adventure would be. Both took to this pretty naturally.

Dave made a cleric of Death. We used an existing Forgotten Realms deity (Kelemvor) with the serial numbers filed off. He came up with a Wyrd something like "Cleanse the secluded shrine to my deity, Arannus."

Almost simultaneously, Aaron came up with "Protect travellers on the road."

So, for both, I asked some questions to get more details, basically doing a good amount of game prep for me!

I asked Dave what was infesting the shrine, and he said undead. I had a similar idea, so that worked. He further explained that their presence was defiling the god and might make the proper dead restless, something his god wants him to remedy.

I asked Aaron to clarify his goal, since it was basically limitless. I suggested some time frame, and he responded "Until help arrives." We then agreed that help would come in the form of the king's men (thinking some Norse king's thanes or something). He also added a detail that might come into play next session -- that his sister had gone to seek the king's men for help.

I then asked what's bothering the roads, and Aaron suggested "goblins or whatever." Goblins it was.

Actual Play

Coming soon!

[Andrew Cooper]

Um...  This is so kick ass...  I'm totally stealing it.

Can't wait to hear how play went.

[Simon C]

I'll be interested to see how this turns out.  It sounds like you may encounter some problems with characters with conflicting/non complimentary wyrds.  Your ranger type who wants to "protect travellers" may not be too keen on taking time off to go help clean out some temple.  I can see this leading to trouble down the road, especially when characters have mutually exclusive wyrds.  Some conflict is good though. I can imagine great situations where two characters are trying for the same goal, but for totally different reasons.

Keep me posted!

[Aaron]

I also think this looks pretty interesting.  I read the Wiki and am looking forward to seeing how it plays out.  It would be really interesting to see how a larger group would handle it, like Simon C has already said with possible conflicting Wyrds.
I'm not sure how the ranger is going to complete "protecting travelers on the road".  In fact it would seem a long term Wyrd would be very detrimental to a starting character who can only achieve experience from completing this one activity.
Is it possible that a player who has "cashed in" all his allowed Wyrds for a session may lose interest now that no more experience is available?

[Aaron]

P.s.

I'm not the Aaron mentioned in the first post!  Just another Aaron. :)..
Though the similarities are pretty spooky....(Reading over D20 books coming up with character ideas, the high school conection with most of my gaming group, TROS..)  Weird....or shoud tha Wyrd??

[Matt Snyder]

The play's the thing

To kick things off, I described a small village near a forest -- small huts and large longhouse lodge. There is no standing army or soldiers, but the men have spears and swords and act as a kind of militia when needed. The village is home to Aaron's character, Xanos (the ranger). Dave's character, Ruddnor (the cleric) there on hiw way to the shrine.

So, I opened up the session by asking Dave and Aaron what they'd like to do. Dave quickly announced he wants to hire the local men to help cleanse the shrine. Cool! I quickly came up with four names, and I let Dave decide whether he wanted to hire them one-by-one or make an annoucement in the hall. He chose the annoucement, and I cued him to make his speech. He does, in character, and explained that thier kin are being defiled, and that they're next unless he cleanses the shrine. He seeks their aid.

So, I explained to Dave that he needed to make a Diplomacy check. We looked up the rules -- he needed to shift the townsfolk from Friendly to Helpful with a roll of 20. This was the first time Wyrds came into play. Dave got a +1 to the roll for his Wyrd.

I also encouraged Aaron to add to the speech, since his character knows everyone in the village. Aaron did, saying something in-character about the need to help. It's enough for me to grant Dave a +2 bonus to the roll.

But, it's still a tough roll and Dave failed. I respond with some general comments Ruddnor hears like "We've got problems of our own" and similar comments from the crowd.

But, I really liked Dave's attempt, and I got generous. I let him take another stab at ONE of the men who approaches him as everyone's leaving the lodge late at night. Again, he got the +1 Wyrd, but no +2 bonus from Aaron's help. Again, he failed.

Next, I set up a situation. Late in the night, a frantic woman arrives at the lodge sobbing that they've been attacked on the road. Wolves and goblins got some of their trader's caravan, but she and three men fled to the village. Dave and Aaron made an interesting decision -- they elect to wait until morning, and they vocally speculated that darkness will hurt them in any fight. Interesting!

So, in the morning their characters journey out to find the ambush site. No sign of dead people, but there is a ravaged dead horse. They follow the tracks with a simple track roll for the ranger (he succeeds easily, and has a Wyrd bonus in it).

The tracks lead to a stream, the split off into two groups. Aaron asks whether there are signs of people. I decide there are and say so.


First Fight

They chose a set of tracks with man-made footprints and followed it to a camp where three goblins, three wolves, and one man, tied and gagged, are around a fire.

Dave and Aaron begin to plan their rescue at my prompting. They discussed a couple strategies with each other, and finally decided to have the ranger climb a tree and shoot, while the cleric stood behind the tree to await a fight.

The fight began, and the ranger quickly killed one goblin handling the three wolves. The wolves charged, and Dave's cleric immediately killed one with a javelin (terrible hit dice roll -- I described the wolf as wounded and running on three legs).

Now, the real fight is on. It proceeds through several rounds. The wolves are a bit more challenging, but the goblins were actually 1st level barbarians raging.

Overall the fight went well for the player characters. The ranger fought from the tree. When a goblin climbed up to fight him, I made some impromptu decisions to let the nimble ranger fight on the tree limbs. Aaron seemed to enjoy this option, and we had some good jokes about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's bamboo fight scene.

Throughout, Aaron received his +1 Wyrd bonus because he was protecting the road travellers. Dave received no bonus as he was not doing anything relevant to the shrine. In at least 2 or 3 cases, the +1 wyrd made the difference between hit or miss.

Dave did not appear to be put out by NOT having any bonus.

Oh! One very interesting bit. The ranger finished off his tree-climbing goblin with a huge amount of damage. So, I saw opportunity for some good description. I "cut" to Dave's cleric fighting the last goblin (the wolves were both down by then). I described him scrapping with the goblin, when suddenly the other goblins head comes falling out of the sky between them, its face frozen in scream. I thought that was pretty neato, but Dave REALLY took and ran with it.

He came up with an idea. He wanted to Intimidate the other goblin, mainly be kicking the dead goblin's head at him. We quickly checked out Intimidate.

The Intimidate skill desribes two effecs. One is a general effect, which is really what Dave wanted. He wanted to cow the gobling out of fighting (his rage had expired by this time) and, I guessed interrogate the creature. But, Intimidate also has rules specfically for combat. Those rules incur penalties, but don't require the goblin's hostility to change as the general rules do.

I was about to go "by the book" with the combat version, but we all liked the other option so much I decided to let Dave cow the goblin, take it out of the fight in terror. It worked! Much fun.

Second Fight

With the goblins and wolves defeated (about a 20 minute to 30 minute ordeal), they rescued "Halgar" the traveller. He then informed them the other goblin is much smarter, has a wolf as big as a horse and that he's captured his wife Gynfa! He grabs an axe and they chase after the trail.

By this time, our session was getting close to expiring. We generally play for 2-3 hours or so. So, I quickly set the scene, and sketched out a very rough map. It was very similiar to the first scene in terms of set up. I described a sloping hill and a shallow cave. Near the opening of the cave/hollow were two goblins, one very large wolf, and a strange effigy / shrine to which Gynfa was tied. I then asked the players what they'd do.

They were going to try the tree-sniper trick again. But, I made Aaron roll a Move Silently roll, which he failed miserably. We through in the cliched twig snapping (giggles) and the fight was on.

The big wolve rushed in. The goblin (a 3rd level druid) cast Obscuring Mist, and the second goblin rushed in.

This fight became a long, miserable spell of awful rolls, and Dave and Aaron were getting frustrated with their awful luck. Aaron alone had Wyrd bonuses. I gave the goblin druid a Wyrd ("Eat the woman." Yuck!) He also summoned more wolves.

Sacrificing Wyrds

The fight was UGLY. Dave had to sacrfice his Cleanse the Shrine Wyrd to restore himself from Dying to 1 hit point. He quickly penned a new Wyrd. I think it was "Survive this battle" although I also suggested "Defeat the goblin leader" or "Defeat the goblin leader and his wolf." The results would have mostly been the same, although it occurs to me know that him running away may have allowed him to fulfill his "survive" Wyrd!

But, like I said, things got ugly. Dave had to sacrifice his SECOND Wyrd as well!

The fight ended ridiculously. Bad roll after bad roll ensued. Halgar's fighting got awfully luck to help. Aaron's ranger finally finished off the big wolf.

We tried to find rules about what happens when a summoned creature's summoner dies. We couldn't find the rules. They lobbied for "it disappears" which I was sympathetic to, but I decided that barring other rules, it stays. (Only lasted 1 more round at the time anyway.)

Now, I liked the effect of the sacrificing Wyrds to stay alive. The players also agreed. However! One big downside is that at the end of the session, Aaron earned 1000 XP for completing his Wyrd, but Dave received 0 XP, and had no Wyrds left. We decided that the "consolation prize" of 200 XP for a failed Muse might apply for sacrficing, too. Then again, he did get to remain alive. I'm mixed on that one. I certainly don't like the idea that Dave played well, came up with interesting ideas and tactics, and earned literally no XP. But, I'm still on the fence.

That issue was one of two the main criticisms for the Wyrd system I observed. The other was something people have already inquired about in this thread. That is, Dave's first Wyrd was ineffective for this session (which, granted, was short). There wasn't much overlap.

Suppose we had reached the shrine part of the session. In that case, Aaron would have already completed one Wyrd, and could have added a second for the shrine. Now, he's outpacing Dave by 1000 XP mainly because I decided to throw his "protec the road" issue at the players first. Dave's choices hosed his potential rewards.
Interesting! This may mean that the GM needs to do a better job of framing issues related to players more equitably. It may mean players just need to get more savvy about penning Wyrds such that they 1) overlap and 2) are quickly relevant.

Denouement

Oh! Yes. Dave and Halgar stabilized from dying (by the book with the 1-in-10 rule to stabilize, but boy did I feel like we bent over backwards to save their butts after some awful whiff factor and low hit points), so I quickly narrated a session closer. They spent the night in the cave, and the villagers finally came out to help them the next morning. The returned to the lodge and healed for almost a week, when the king's men arrived. Aaron's Wyrd was complete and he earned his XP, gaining 2nd level.

[Bankuei]

Hey Matt,

The PCs were 1st level right?  3 wolves alone would be a pretty tough encounter for 2 1st level PCs, much less against 3 more barbarians (goblins or no).  I'm actually surprised they survived at all!  Were you using the CR/EL stuff in the DMG?

Chris

[Matt Snyder]

Yep, first level characters. I vaguely KNEW the challenge levels, but didn't pay extreme attention. We did discuss after the session that the druid encounter, especially, was very tough for 2 characters (well, sorta 3 with the NPC, but he was pretty ineffective with +1 attack bonus, +1 damage, hand axe and 9 hit points).

Turned out ok given that of the three wolves, 2 had terrible hit poitns (one had 2 or 3 and another had 7 or 8 or so).

Aaron has already requested that they be allowed to play two characters, which I'm likely to allow. However, his request was based on his interest in a character type and a story reason. He wants to play his character's sister, and play her as a "ice witch" style druid, possibly wizard. I don't read Aaron as wanting 2 characters because things are too tough, for example. Though, you're right. They ARE pretty tough. They healed some during each fight, but ran out of cleric spells. I have been tinkering with that system to refresh hit points in each fight. Reserve points, is it?

[Bankuei]

3 things to consider:

First, CR ratings assume an average party level with 4 characters.  So, a CR 2 monster assumes 4 2nd level characters.  Second, PC levels on monsters assumes a CR = to the PC level.  So level 1 Barbarian Goblins are considered CR 1 creatures.  If you don't want to get deep in the math of it, at least keeping that in mind will help you gauge encounters a little better.

Second, reserve points, allow characters to heal 1 hitpoint per minute of rest- they work good for between fights, not during them.  A character gets as many Reserve points as total HP per day.

Third, another option if you don't want gameplay to necessarily focus on character life/death- characters die at negative Con, and autostabilize if below 0 but not dead.  Have them heal 1 hp per hour until they wake up at 0.  This provides a very pulpy thing, where heroes get knocked out and wake up weak somewhere.

Chris

[Matt Snyder]

Cool. I'm not well-versed in the reserve points. That might be a good option. I considered it for the first session, but ignored it once I learned Dave wanted to make a cleric. I'm going to look into that one.

I'm with ya' on the CRs. I upped the encounter in part because I knew that it'd be one of two encounters, rather than one of 4 or 5 encounters. I have it in my head an equal-level CR encounter should sap about 20-25% of the party's resources. I realize the math won't work out the same way, but my from-the-hip thinking is that 1-2 encounters shoudl sap their resources pretty well with only 2 PCs. Both encounters were considerably higher than ECL 1 (which we've been doing in the Eberron game mostly successfully). They're reasonably able to handle situations, particularly against enemies with few magical options.

That pulpy version is pretty slick! I like that with the negative CON number.

Oh, also, the goblins were "barbarians" in name only. I used their stats out of the MM, and gave them the rage ability and 40' movement. No hit dice change, etc. So, I'd count them as slightly less than CR 1. Maybe CR 1/2 or so, but better than the standard 1/3.

[Blake Hutchins]

Cool stuff, Matt.  I dig the Wyrd rules--nice port of Keys/Passions into a more generic format.  Y'know, have you thought about giving players XP for helping other player-characters achieve their Wyrds?  Some percentage deal.  Also, can the group set Group Wyrds where they all get XP for achieving a collective goal?

Best,

Blake

[Matt Snyder]

Hi, Blake. Those are cool ideas -- I hadn't thought of a group Wyrd concept, but I like it. I should tinker with that.

As for the helper XP, I'm not sure what to do there. That's in part because nothing's stopping the players from selecting more cooperative/complimentary Wyrds. In the actual play, it was great that Dave and Aaron picked two things, because we could see a kind of adventure arc forming up. But, obviously, we didn't get to the second part! So, maybe next time they'll be less inclinded to have such separate Wyrds. I'm guessing it's likely to become less of a problem as they level up and have more Wyrd options.

[Roger]

Sounds like y'all had a good time, Matt.

As far as the whiff factor goes... well, yeah, that's 1st-level D&D for you.  It doesn't really say much for or against the Wyrd experiment.

> I asked Aaron to clarify his goal, since it was basically limitless.

Hmmm.  I wonder if this could be a feature?  Maybe you want the players to decide when they've accomplished their Wyrd.  If it's after one battle, fine.  If it takes ten years, that's fine too.

That could potentially help with the "synchronization" issue too, by letting everyone in the party either formally or informally decide not to wrap up their Wyrd until everyone was happy with where they were.

As far as the whole group effort / teamwork reward sort of thing goes, it might be worthwhile to introduce some sort of meta-Wyrd system into this.  So someone might have a meta-Wyrd of "Help my friend accomplish his Wyrd", or something of that sort.

> He wanted to Intimidate the other goblin, mainly be kicking the dead goblin's head at him.

Yeah, D&D 3.5 doesn't really have an inherent "Morale check" sort of mechanic.  But the mostly-compatible Miniatures game does, so it might be worth checking out and stealing, if you expect this sort of thing to turn up on a regular basis.

> Dave had to sacrfice his Cleanse the Shrine Wyrd to restore himself

I'd sorta like to see more story-impact from Wyrd sacrifice.  Like, maybe he now gets a Dark Wyrd: Desecrate the Shrine.  Or maybe just on a dramatic level, he just can't care any more about the Shrine one way or the other.  Or something along those lines.

All in all, it looks like the Wyrds are generally doing what you want them to do.  I wonder if it's worth considering scrapping XP, per se, entirely, and just tying level advancement straight into Wyrd accomplishment.


Cheers,
Roger

[Matt Snyder]

All in all, it looks like the Wyrds are generally doing what you want them to do.  I wonder if it's worth considering scrapping XP, per se, entirely, and just tying level advancement straight into Wyrd accomplishment.

Nope. The reason? II think someone caught on to this previously. It's for crafting magic items.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Last week, as I considered some of the reasons I was exhausted with this game, inspiration struck. I penned the Wyrd D20 alternate experience rules. In a nutshell, the system forces players to define their own fictional goals and reap XP rewards upon their completion. This is comparable to Muses in my own published game Nine Worlds. But, I think there are important differences that keep this more about rewarding interesting strategies and tactics while empowering players to contribute to the fictional elements of the game.

It's interesting that my first thought here, when you talked about "rewarding interesting strategies and tactics", was that the Wyrd system would be a lot more granular than it turned out to be. This may be a tangent, but I think it ties in to the result where one player ended up with no XP and the other had enough to level his character. Comparing Wyrds to Keys, it's easy to see that Keys are designed with more reward-granularity in mind as well, and maybe it's worth considering having smaller Wyrd rewards for doing things that significantly contribute to the character goal, but do not necessarily 'complete' it. As it is, it's clear that setting less ambitious Wyrds will result in gaining more xp -- for example, in the fight with the goblins, if 'survive this fight' is an acceptable Wyrd, then it makes more sense to have reactive, rather than proactive Wyrds, where you take a new Wyrd for every small-scale situation.

But what I was really thinking about when I read the above, was the idea of letting characters set tactical goals for their characters that would give them XP -- kind of like football players who negotiate bonuses into their salaries for certain accomplishments. I think the idea of a Barbarian power-attacker who gets XP whenever he does more than 30 damage in a single hit is great fun -- or a Wizard who gains XP whenever he manages to solve a problem with a single spell, or a Rogue who gains XP whenever he disables an opponent with a single sneak attack. The harder the tactical goal, the more XP -- so surviving a fight without taking a single point of damage could be very rewarding, but difficult to accomplish. The key here is that PCs are choosing a limited selection. It certainly seems like a fun way to reward the "character building" component of D&D, since it allows players to set tactical goals towards which they can then orient their character advancement.

Now, that's more of a tangent for sure, but maybe some combination would be worth considering, where the higher-level Wyrd (story goal) is packaged with some lower-level Wyrds (tactical accomplishments). So if I've got the Wyrd 'defend the tower from the undead hordes' then I might also take a bonus Wyrd where I get XP every time I successfully turn an undead creature (with double xp for destroying/controlling).