[D&D 3.x] crouching cave, hidden MC

[Callan S.]

Lets see, there was Chris, Joe (brothers) Daniel & Matt (another pair of brothers) and myself. Chris and Dan are the elder brothers. This was played yesterday afternoon/last night.

We headed over to Chris's place - I thought Chris was running something since he did last time I'd gotten together. It's been awhile since we played, part the usual drift of time and distance (Only Chris drives) and I had a new little girl recently ( yay me! ).

Last time Chris ran a game I actually asked him at the start what big ending he wanted for the game, and he sort of said nothing, just learn a few things about the world. I said like 'Like three things' he said yeah and I gave a firm, appreciative okay. I thought to myself whether I wanted to do that - thought yeah. It actually worked out better when I knew a structure he and I agreed to - and the ending was actually cooler because it moved outside of the 'find things out' framework - but at the same time if it had not been exciting I could have stuck with 'find three things out' framework and been staying with our agreement. I meant to write a post about it, but really the structures the important part so you can ask about that - the smaller stuff, like my ninja (yes, a ninja! My first ever!) being slapped to the ground by a wounded brown bear we were trying to save, is kind of just nifty peripherals.

But no, Daniel was running a game that day - with our level 9-10 characters. These are characters that started at level 1 and it's been our longest campaign ever (the 3rd ed rules really made a difference). At the same time, there's a kind of intertia with the character for me - when I was playing it regularly perhaps two years back, all the stats and spells all generated plans in my head. After not playing my cleric for awhile, all those stats sit dead still - I have no plan for them, so their just kind of in the way as I rummage for what I might actually want to do.

So, Daniel was GM and really I didn't expect it and didn't have the 'sass' to ask him about what ending he wanted (Social structure thing) or work out some structure I could check to see if I wanted to play it (I'm pretty much game for any structure, but I think I just need to know what it is). I realised all this at the time and was almost kicking myself.

The game started as previous sessions do - everyones there and nobody actually asks if you want to play (I wasn't told on the phone a game was being run). Character sheets are handed out, dice spread around, talk about HP and then comparisons, mostly done by Dan and Chris. When I've GM'ed games, I've had to actually like, ask are people ready to play, and even then it seems to revolve around when Dan gets things rolling.

So we start with a recap, which is talking about a tower we own in the game now. Went through the various personel that we'd gotten trained and such. There was this odd bit where he talks about Matt's PC and how he's trained fighters...then how my PC (cleric) has some followers - but then going into quite some effort to underline they weren't anything of note. In fact it was almost a loop - everytime he said them he had to note they weren't worth talking about. Not in a nasty way, but certainly in a voice that said it was that way - but by looking at me, its clearly a question. After awhile I said "So your mentioning that their not worth mentioning?" there was this pause like I'd said some odd Callan thing again and he moved onto other business.

Plot! Merchants are missing on a certain road!

Here's where you see the MC roll of Dan again - after talking about the road for awhile and such, nobody's doing anything. Of course no one's doing anything because theirs no alternatives to choose from here. So eventually he just asks for gather information rolls. Everyone rolls cause you do know how to just do that and resolve it, even if there's no choice to it. And you might roll high! Speaking of that Mat rolls low and Daniel goes into some 'you found a pressed flower shop' thing. Not sure if that's a pop reference used for the big brother/little brother friction - but for some reason Mat talks about whether he has pocket lint to buy them and then Dan rolls for whether the shop keeper knows him by reputation (he doesn't). What's with that? It's a brother put down made to carry some part of the game world?

So we head down there (btw, barges get past okay, it's just the road that's affected). Again, Dan tells us we head down there but in a way that suggests he gets the drift of what we were doing and is just anticipating it. Keep in mind that prolly a decade ago Dan gave me GM advice saying that if characters are milling around a door, after awhile just say they go through it. Anyway, Mat says some stuff about trying to look like merchants so we get targeted, which you can tell don't find purchase in what was considered. We eventually find a trail and then a merchant cart and so on. We get to the bottom of this *something* with a cave at the top. At first there's tons of levitation plans made, primarily started by Chris with his wizards spells and levi boots. After alot of that - uh, it turns out just to be a steep slope that takes awhile to get up. We went for some time on the levitate before that became clear to all. So we trudge up the slope and bugbears appear at the top (shadowy figures). So, imagining it'd take some time to get up I break out the crossbow. Were not using a battlemat, just figures to roughly space things. The barbarian getting up to them made sense, but when the dwarf (who was behind me) manages to charge the slope, I realise I'm making choices based on thin air assumptions.

Barbarian rages, makes a big crit a few rounds in (great fuss made of the event with extra description by Dan). We slay them without much ado, and gravitate into the cave. There, spiders web us - we wipe spider webs off, walk forward and wack. They web us again, we wipe off again, till they die.

That's probably two hours of play there. I'm going to pause now to recollect futher (some of the social tells are sooo easy to forget latter on). Post any questions you have about the account, it may jog my memory as to extra details. Also I'm finding it really dry to just give an account of this without any social feedback.

[James_Nostack]

Callan, this reminds me of a post on the Forge maybe 1 year, 18 months ago or thereabouts--something about spider poison, and deprotagonization.  Was that your group, or am I misremembering?

In any event, could you refresh my memory about the social context here?  I understand that there are siblings involved, but I'm not sure what's up, or what the shared history is.  Do you only play D&D together, or have you shared experiences playing games with more room for collaborative input?

Also, it sounds like you have very little appreciation for this GM's style, which (it sounds like) is obfuscatory and peremptory.  It also sounds like he's trying to do an Illusionism/railroady deal, where you in particular don't want that at all and can see right through it.  Did the GM do anything you really liked?

It sounds like one of the things that frustrated you is that the GM would give hints of things y'all could do--"Hey, you have followers," "Hey, there's a flower shop," "Hey, there's a big sloping hill"--and when you would update your mental map as if these features were significant, he would then yank them away.  Is that an accurate reading on my part?

[Callan S.]

Hi James,

Yeah that spider poison one was my post, with Mat was the GM of that one. Though in terms of where poison came into the game, Chris was the one who brought up the second poison save that I didn't want to engage. That thread also had a diagnosis of my play going hardcore at that moment, which I've made a conclusion on.

What do you mean when your not sure what's up? The problem? Well, the game described so far is like being in a dream (the type you have at night) where you have no definite goal or purpose for being there or means to achieve any goal - it was just sort of drifting along like a cloud.

The shared history is over a decade long and I'm sure full of nifty trivia - in what context did you want to ask about it? Weve played a buttload of games - cyberpunk, underground, rifts, runequest, merp, shadowrun, AD&D, mutant cronicles, warhammer, and perhaps others I've forgotten. Mostly the games didn't last more than a session or three, and as I've said before, these guys get really excited about making characters (which frankly, given how mechanically concrete character making is, they should probably consider using more mechanics for playing). D&D 3rd ed has produced the longest campaign, though I have to say I GM'ed a whole bunch near the start, usually slapping a randomly generated & stocked dungeon (from a program) together with a story (slightly editing the random dungeon to be smoother). Actually, speaking of that, in a game I GM'ed back then where there were a bunch of odd creatures in a room, Mat noted it and Dan said in a kind of derogitory voice (one you might use if a friend doesn't bother combing their hair or such) that I just use all sorts of random stuff. I'd anticipated this though - I'd made up a story as to why the monsters were there (cheap traps, really). This seemed to...forfil him, you might say, by surprise. Didn't say anything else. But he was right - the monsters were random and then I'd fitted a story to them.

Also, it sounds like you have very little appreciation for this GM's style, which (it sounds like) is obfuscatory and peremptory.  It also sounds like he's trying to do an Illusionism/railroady deal, where you in particular don't want that at all and can see right through it.  Did the GM do anything you really liked?

Keep in mind what I said about the game Chris ran - he said you'd learn a few things. That was essentially railroadey too and I can and did buy into that. It's not a problem - railroads are enjoyable when you buy into that from the start.

The problem here is not what Dan did, it's that in previous games (and I'm talking from right back at the beginning, onward) I've assumed that certain structures of play are there. The problem is that I used to assume these structures where there, and now I'm becoming quite aware of their absence.

That's why I was almost kicking myself at the start - if I want these structures, I should ask for them or not play. And if they aren't on offer, not play.

This is my responsiblity - as I said, Chris' game was enjoyable. Exactly what Dan did could have been too - if I'd taken up my responsiblity (err, and I feel like playing a 'find stuff out' game - but as I said, I'm pretty open).

It sounds like one of the things that frustrated you is that the GM would give hints of things y'all could do--"Hey, you have followers," "Hey, there's a flower shop," "Hey, there's a big sloping hill"--and when you would update your mental map as if these features were significant, he would then yank them away.  Is that an accurate reading on my part?

There's no yank - its just like in a dream, none of it matters much to begin with. You try to pin some importance on it, to build toward some sort of ending, but it's building on smoke. My guess in this case is because an ending nessersarily entails waking up.

[Callan S.]

To clarify why I started typing this out, is because Ron noted I hadn't provided much information in terms of what agenda my group may be using. Though some of my questions are simply about minutae that don't really influence the grand structure of the game - but they still make me wonder.