Storming the Wizard's Tower--my first TPK, twice

[Matt Wilson]

We played Storming on Saturday: John Spazopolous, Paul T, sometimes another guy named John, sometimes Terry, and me. I was GM.

I made a town called Skonhelle, inspired kind of by the German town Lubeck. I have a fond memory of Lubeck and a Finn named Eeva, but let's leave it at that. Yay Lubeck.

So Skonhelle is on an island in the middle of a river. There's a winery, some farms outside the town, forests, bogs, distant hills, what you'd expect in glacial valley Northern Germany. Making the map was fun. Coming up with the town was fun, especially with Wikipedia's help, and Google Maps' help.

For the character types, I spent a lot of time going um, err, and then finally cobbled together a mishmash from the two example towns. Knights, Rangers, Bards, Scholars, Druids.

For the monster, I rolled gas and bone. Gas? That made me think of decay and bad smells, and it prompted me to wonder if there were peat bogs and that sort of thing in the area. And yes, there are, so cool. My monster is some kind of bog undead. I decided that the bog is cursed somehow, full of bad magic from an age long past, and the dead who are buried or left there come back as evil things. Walking skeletons shrouded in some gross mystical effluvia. Plus I get to use the word effluvia, and it doesn't come up often enough.

I wanted one relatively tough monster, mostly because I didn't want to have to roll all these separate fistfuls of dice. But then I saw how the new swarm ability works, and yeah, cool. I figured skeletal things would claw with their bony claws, so I chose attack (rend), and I figured the weird combo of insubstantial cloud and hardened bone would give them armor. I chose that extra white die, because Vx says it's a good deal, and then I figured that nasty cloud would probably be poisonous, so I also picked strangle.

Oh strangle. The entry for this ability should say, "choose this one if you want the characters to die in three rolls."

I started working on a backstory and created a related monster also with the gas component, but it didn't come into play. I figured this monster was actually the thing that haunted the marsh/bog. It was gas/shadow. I was thinking probably someone was wronged/killed, their spirit haunts the place, etc. The urgent crisis was missing trade boats due from the south.

On Saturday it looked like it would only be john, paul and me, so John suggested that they each play two characters. They can fill in some details, but what we ended up with was the other John showing up and taking one of the characters Stavropolous rolled up. They were a scholar, a ranger and a knight.

They spent some time talking to every townsperson they could think of in what started to feel like a Dogs in the Vineyard game, until finally I had the Priest/head guy come out and scold them. "You're still here?"

So they took a boat down to the bog, and they found the wreckage of the boats, and then I had the bog husks attack.

Slaughter. And not of the bog husks. It was a comedy of damage.

I rolled 13 dice in total, and I think each round I had maybe 3 misses. They, on the other hand, rolled kind of sub-par.

And strangle, holy moses, that ability is a death spiral generator. One good strangle hit means they lose white dice, which means my strangle for next round is even worse. Plus, it sucks up their setup roll so they can't ever establish any kind of tactical advantage. It was over quickly. Probably my GM advice to myself if I use that ability again is provide a lot of warning, a lot of opportunity for the characters to learn about it, so they can prepare a strategy. And probably John and Paul are thinking, man, we need to research these monsters before we stroll on in 4e style. This is old school, boys.

It was fun, though. I'm 99.9% sure everyone had loads of fun. As a GM, I like the whole "roll and apply to everyone" rule. Nobody had trouble with the concept, and that flowchart was a great tool. I didn't find the dice cumbersome, just probably an expensive investment for a new player.

John S was amused to learn that in this game you can totally have +2 for taking the high ground. Paul wanted to know if you can also get +2 for taking the moral high ground, but we decided that was more of a Dogs thing.

[Matt Wilson]

Oh, I forgot to mention, after they all died, John S says, let's just make up new characters real quick and go back out there.

Those guys all died too.

[lumpley]

Ha ha! Urg. Frazzin razzin fleh.

So strangle + new monster rules = broken, I believe it. Probably other monster abilities too, it's what I get for changing rules without going back through the abilities, and I'm sorry that you suffered for it.

Hey, when it was obvious the fight was going against them, did they consider running away and coming back better prepared? Or, like, having the second batch of characters prepare better before diving in? Were they just like, "hey, let's put THIS hand in the meat grinder too?"

-Vincent

[Matt Wilson]

Paul and John are prepared to comment, I think, so I won't try and tell you what they were thinking, specficially. But in the first fight it did seem a little like I was getting crazy awesome rolls and they were getting crap rolls.

The second fight confirmed it, with much embarrassed laughter on my part. "Oh, sorry guys, bwahahaha." And it only took one good roll to put them in a position where probably escape looked as difficult as pressing on. But they can tell you more about that.

One thought I had about a tweak was using the tactical maneuvers as a guideline and having strangle reduce your hits on the next roll. I get three hits over your defense, so next turn you're down three hits on your attack roll, but you can maybe use your setup roll to reduce that number.

Something like that.

[jenskot]

Matt is a hilarious GM and hilarious in person so there is no surprise there!.

I enjoyed how fast it was to build characters. It made it very attractive to keep going no matter how many total party kills we faced.

The 2 total party kills were pretty awesome.

I think Matt mentioned that technically we didn't have to be dead. But all of us chocking to death in the middle of water, miles away from anyone, surrounded by skeleton hands dragging us down into the abyss seemed pretty fatal!

Our first batch of characters were ill prepared and probably deserved to die. My character was a scholar trying to be a fighter and Paul took his armor off to go swimming and investigate what had happened. Which is when we were attacked!

Our second batch of characters were min maxed as much as possible and geared specifically to handle Matt's monster. I think we only lasted 1-2 rounds longer than the first batch of characters!

Vincent, you mention "did they consider running away and coming back better prepared?"

I think since we had limited time and likely a 1 shot for these specific characters we didn't consider running away. At the time, I don't think we were clear on the helping rules which I just looked up. I think if we realized that people helping gave us 2 extra dice we might have considered different tactics. Question: if you help in combat, do you get to act in any other way? 

I really liked spending successes using command. Especially if you don't spend them right away but as you speak to someone trying to coerce information out of them without having to spend but knowing that you can if you need to.

Magic rocks.

[Matt Wilson]

It was very sad that John rolled like 5 hits for his spell, made his miscast roll and ended up with +2 strength for 3 rounds, only to be completely immobilized by the strangle. But also funny.

[Paul T]

I had a good time. Thanks for writing this up, Matt! You and John pretty much covered everything there is to say.

I'd like to add just a few comments and questions, however!

1. I really loved character creation. I liked it on paper (i.e. when reading the rulebook), but it felt even better when doing it "for real". I liked how a limited selection of Gear, for example, really colors your character.

However, one of my first characters was hopelessly combat-incompetent. He had 3 Endurance, and 4s in Skill, Strength, and Perception. All he had to fight was a dagger (1 red). How do such characters fare in this game? (In our game, he stayed behind in town and didn't join in the adventure.)

2. The way Perception and Command rolls work in conversations is great! It feels very much like an old-school "figure out what's going on" game, except the rules pretty much guarantee you don't waste too much time doing it. There is still some tension around figuring out which questions to ask and how to spend your hits, but information keeps flowing from the GM to the players, meaning the adventure can't get "stalled out".

However, there really needs to be some word of clarification on how to deal with conversations when multiple PCs are involved. Having everyone roll is clearly overkill. Maybe everyone can roll, but the total of hits can't exceed the highest roll, or something like that?

3. Matt treated the skeleton things as a single "monster", rolling once for the whole group. This seemed very workable, dice-wise, and, frankly, I can't imagine a GM rolling all those dice for all those monsters separately.

It DID mean, as we saw, that a single roll can wipe out the group, however.

It also removed some tactics from the fight. The first fight was a total surprise to us, and, as mentioned, my character had doffed his armor. The second time, however, we knew what to expect. Nevertheless, we were short on time, so we skipped much of the fictional setup and pretty much went straight to the fight.

Very little focus on the fiction meant that the fight was an abstract sort of "you're in a swamp fighting some skeletons" situation. It was hard to see how one could prepare oneself or establish tactical constraints in such an abstract setting, so we may have suffered there.

For instance, I was wondering how a character could arrange to be "out of range" in order to cast a spell or fire a weapon when all the skeletons are rolling one set of dice. Would that be a tactical constraint for blue dice? What if you wanted to get a shot to cast a spell BEFORE the skeletons attacked? What would that look like?

I'm guessing it would like this:

Make a setup roll to establish yourself as "out of hand-to-hand range", for this turn only. But would one hit be sufficient? Or would the hits subtract from attacks against you?

We also considered having someone climb the mast of the boat when we were boarded by the skeletons, but also weren't sure how to handle this. When you roll to establish that kind of constraint, does it remain for the rest of the battle, or do you have to roll to maintain it each round?

4. How are players expected to discover the Weakness of a monster?

I can see a few different ways it could work:

a) GM decides. For instance, you interrogate some NPC, GM decides this NPC knows the Weakness. Or, you ask the GM: "I know legends and lore. Do I know the monster's weakness?" And the GM says "yes".

b) Pure trial and error. You fight and you try to figure it out.

c) Investigation of the monster. Some kind of Perception rolls to study its tracks, victims etc. Although this seems to come down to a), as well.

How do you handle it?

Thanks for the fun game, Matt, John(s), and Vincent!

[lumpley]

1. Be a wizard! And make sure someone will protect you in fights.

2. (Copied from the playtest blog): In general, for cases like charged conversations, I think of everybody making duplicate rolls (and expecting to sum them) the same way I think of one person re-rolling and re-rolling (and expecting to sum them). That is: nope! If you could pick the lock, you would have on the first roll. If anyone can read her, it's Mitch. Right?

I'm more likely to make exceptions for perception rolls than any other. Like, if Mitch and Mary have very different agendas with regard to this one NPC, it can be very fun to let them both read her and both ask me their own agenda-driven questions.

3. I think the rules for tactical constraints in the manuscript should cover these. In general: say what your character's doing to take advantage of, impose, or ignore a tactical constraint. Roll skill. The GM will decide whether it gives you dice, red or blue, or prevents or allows a certain action outright.

Tactical constraints apply for as long as they apply in the fiction, there's no "this round only" or "until the end of the battle" or "roll to maintain" rule. Preexisting tactical constraints are usually worth 2 dice, but that's the GM's call.

"Out of range" is a plain old tactical constraint, handled the same as any other.

So you might climb the mast to get out of range, and make your skill roll, and the GM says that they can't attack you this round, but then some climb up after you, right? So in round 2, you've taken position on the arm, and they're climbing up the mast toward you, so the GM gives you 2 blue against them for the preexisting tactical constraint and you're free to do something else in setup as well.

Again, the GM's call.

To cast a spell at your enemies before they attack, you have to cast a spell at them outside of combat, which means that you have to have the drop on them. If the GM's like "okay here they come! They're attacking!" it's too late. You'll be casting your spell in round 1, not before they attack.

4. The investigation rules in the manuscript are pretty clear too, I hope. In brief: the GM decides if, for instance, you can make a lore roll to know about the monster. If you can, you're entitled to 1 piece of new information from the monster's writeup per hit. Investigate the monster using as many different rolls and conversations and so on as you can, and eventually the GM's going to have to spill its weakness.

Trial and error works too.

Followup questions, or if I missed anything, just ask!

-Vincent

[Paul T]

Vincent,

Thank you! That answers 95% of my worries about running the game (basically, "GM decides" for most of those, huh?).

Still, two questions:

1. So, in your game, when the PCs are interrogating someone, do the players kinda huddle together and decide who's going to do the actual rolling? (Like, "John, you got the best Perception, let's have you roll for this"?)

(I kinda wish there was some more concrete rule to handle this, although if it's the above, I guess that's cool, too.)

2. About the tactical constraints...

What I find a little confusing (not in a bad way, just in a, "how do this work again?" sort of way) is the asymmetry between characters and monsters. Characters make "effort", opposed by the monsters' attacks, to do stuff like take advantage of constraints, etc, in Setup.

But monsters don't have a special roll for any of that stuff... right? They just fight and have Abilities. When a PC makes a move, we roll green dice. When monsters make a move---what??? I'm not sure here. Let's see:

So, if I climb up to the mast, now I'm out of range. This is established, it's not "going away" next round. Cool.

But, next round, as you say, they're coming after me.

a) What if I want to keep them from climbing the mast? Can I make that some kind of Setup, or do I just have to hack away at them, and hope I can kill them? Do they automatically manage to neutralize this constraint I've created, with no roll?

This makes sense from the perspective of "I rolled to get away for one round by climbing up the mast". But, what if it's dice... let's see:

b) Second round! They've climbed up to get me!

Now, you say "you get two blue dice for being out on the arm" (or whatever other reason; my character's taking advantage of a tactical constraint). How long does this last? For as long as we fight? One round? I mean, they're up there on the mast with me, right? Why am I still getting blue dice?

c) Same situation, but let's say I'd climbed up the sail, and was shooting at them from high above. The GM says, "They cut the rope holding up the sail! You come falling down..."

Now what? Do we roll? Do I make some kind of effort (i.e. green dice) to avoid falling (like, "grab onto the mast")? In that case, the mechanic is basically, "GM says what the danger is, you roll to see if you can avoid it".

...

What it comes down to is that the dice system in combat is so mechanically complete that it feels like it can almost handle everything on its own. But then there are some things where it doesn't seem to. You have to step in and make a decision. And, when I imagine running this game, I feel like I'm not sure when I should:

1) Roll dice to determine what happens. (Like when you compare Effort to Attack, or use the number of hits to determine the "strength" of a partcular tactical maneuver--the dice tell you what happens.)

1b) use an additional roll of some kind to determine what happens, outside the basic combat mechanics. (Like in old-school D&D or something like that, I could say, "They're cutting down the mast! Make a dexterity roll, or you'll be lying on your back next round." But in this game, it would feel kind of... well, illegal for the GM to say, "they've cut down the mast" (with no roll) "and now you're on your back, so they get two red dice against you".)

2) Use fiat/common sense/game-world logic. ("Well, if you're up the mast, obviously the rabid dogs can't bite you..."; "They've cut down the mast, so you no longer have a tactical constraint on your side"; etc)

3) Fall back on a general rule (e.g. tactical constraints are two dice, by default).

4) Just narrate bad stuff happening, let the players decide whether to try to avoid it or not in their Setup.

Sorry to bug you about this. I'm just excited about the game and want to run it, but this uncertainty about how to apply certain rules keeps nagging me.

It sounds like your answer might be "GM decides"/"do what makes sense to you" here too. To me, though it feels like the rules are so close to tracking all this stuff by themselves, that's it kind of... shocking... when you have to fall back on total GM call all of a sudden.

Thanks!


Paul

P.S. By the way, I don't know if it matters at all, but the character in question had a lousy Arcane score, too... his high stat was Command. And his class/archetype only included one spell. I figure now he should have hung back and shouted orders at the others... ha! (And taken a second spell with his "one from any list" pick.)

[Paul T]

(As an aside: a random thought.

For people with lots of dice, instead of using red/green/blue/white, you could use d8/d10/d4/d6. Just count even numbers as hits, roll them all together. With d4s as blue dice and d8s as red dice, you won't need too many of those. And if you don't have enough d4s, you could probably use two different colours of d6s for your white and green or something like that.

Just a thought. I've posted this on the blog, too.)

[lumpley]

Cool.

Question 1: Sometimes. Usually it's just obvious who's going to be questioning them, so that's who does. If they want to have a little huddle and decide who's going where to do what with whom, first, that's kind of their business.

The concrete rule is: Whoever does it, does it. And unless the case is obviously exceptional, nobody else gets to do it after.

Question 2:

a) That's fighting while. "I'm fighting, and I'm keeping them from climbing the mast."

b) If they've overcome the tactical constraint, you don't get any more dice for it. If they haven't, you get (generally) 2 dice for it. The fighting while roll last round will tell you which.

c) Is cutting the sail so that you fall something they can trivially accomplish, or will it take them some time and effort?

If the latter, that's question (a) again. The GM tells you in setup that that's what they're doing, and if you want to stop them, fight while.

If the former, or if you didn't stop them, the GM simply and straightforwardly introduces a new tactical constraint. If you want to overcome it - by landing on your feet ready to fight, for instance - you make a skill roll in setup, same as for any tactical constraint you want to overcome.

--

It seems to me like you have some underlying question, and if I could answer it the whole thing would fall into place for you. Something about the GM's role, something about "fiat/common sense/game world logic." But I can't spot it.

Hey, have you created an adventure yet?

-Vincent

[Paul T]

Vincent,

Awesome.

That answers it for me, actually.

Talking --> Whoever rolls first, rolls first. If someone else wants to, that's like a reroll: no good. (Unless they have a different agenda, of course.)

That's a solid way to handle it.

Tactical Stuff --> Only players roll. So, the GM can say what the constraints are, including how monsters create them or take advantage of them. Unless they're happy with the way things are going, the players need to roll to change what's happening, or prevent those monsters' actions.

Likewise, works.

I don't know if I have a deeper, more underlying question. I feel like these answers re sufficient. However, if I can figure out what the underlying question is (and if there is one), I'll let you know!

I have not created an adventure yet, mostly because I don't know how many players I'll have and how that may or may not change the monsters. We'll see!

Thanks again!


Paul

[Paul T]

Vincent,

I think all my confusion about tactical constraints comes down to two rules-bits. I'm going to type them out here, and you let me know if that's how you play the game or not! (If you do it differently, I'd like to hear about it.)

1. Taking advantage of or creating a tactical constraint/fighting while _______

* Sometimes, your special move/action can make somebody else's actions impossible altogether (as opposed to just hindering them). A success means that you have achieved your goal, but it only takes effect in the next round of the fight (a good way to say this might be that it takes effect in followthrough).

For example, "I move out of range/behind the wall/etc": If your effort is higher than attacks against you, you succeed. There is no dice-related effect for the action during this round, but next round, your enemies can't shoot at you (at least without making a setup roll or beating your setup roll to do so).

(Currently, the text only has "if your move would make an opponent's impossible, subtract your hits from theirs this round" as an option listed for "how to adjudicate someone taking advantage of tactical features" that could apply.)

2. Monsters and tactical constraints

Monsters do not make rolls in setup to take advantage of tactical constraints. Rather, if it makes sense, they just DO. The GM announces it, and if the players don't like it, they have to roll to prevent that from happening.

For example, after you've moved behind the wall, the GM can say, "next round, they come around the corner/into range and shoot at you!" If you don't like that, you've got to roll to get out of range again in Setup.

The success or failure of monsters' "special moves" is based on whether or not the PCs can manage to prevent them with their Effort totals. (Because monsters don't get an Effort total--this has to be based on the PCs' green dice. That was my comment about "asymmetry" earlier: PCs have Effort dice for moves but monsters don't, so I wasn't sure how to adjudicate their actions.)

I would really recommend that you include these in the game text. However, it's also possible that it's just some brain-misfiring I'm having that other people aren't.

...

Finally, a last question from the playtest:

When we first encountered Matt's skeleton monsters, we were in a boat, and they started climbing up the side to get into the boat and tear us to pieces.

Matt described the skeletal hands gripping the edge of the boat, pulling themselves in.

I wanted to see if we could chop at their hands, keeping them from climbing over the edge of the deck. I think everyone else wanted to get on with the fight, so we let that go. But, if I had tried to do so, would it be "my Effort versus their Attack to see if I can keep them from climbing inside the boat"?

Because that would, effectively, make their attacks impossible (which is equivalent to subtracting Effort hits from their Attack hits) in Step 3. I guess that should be an option as well, then.

How would you have handled this? (I just want to see how you leverage the rules to get them to work for you, I'm not looking for an "official" ruling.)

(Thinking about the fact that those skeletons were a "single monster", mechanically, makes that more confusing, but I don't know if you want to touch that with a ten-foot pole just yet...)

...

All this means it can be really important to determine before any "special move/fighting while _____" is made whether it will result in a tactical constraint and whether it's a lasting or temporary one. Also, we need to know WHEN it takes effect. Sometimes it makes sense to apply it immediately, as dice to roll, and sometimes it makes more sense to handle it in followthrough.

For example, if I'm Sebastian in the fight example from the text, and I'm climbing "out of the fight onto the rocks" to cast my spell, I want to know whether that means they can't attack me at all next round ("out of range"), whether it gives me blue dice (as a tactical constraint, but only until they climb up there with me, which they can do next round unless I oppose them) or neither (as in case of trying to keep the skeletons from climbing up over the edge of the deck--that's good for the moment, but does nothing really long-term, right?).

This is actually kind of important. Because, let'say I'm doing a fighting retreat kind of thing, trying to get "out of range" so I can shoot at monsters with my bow. If I can roll to "fight while ____" to get out of range, I get the impression from your examples that it doesn't "take effect" until next round. I.e., we still compare attacks and defenses normally, because the monsters could have wounded me while I was trying to get away. But then, next round, if I'm successfully "out of range" they can't get me, right? Except... they can try to catch up to me, and if I don't roll to retreat again, they succeed, automatically. I'm guessing if you were GMing this example, you'd give me two blue dice that second round, and then nothing the following round, because they've "caught up" (of course, I could roll again to maintain the advantage). But it's pretty subjective.

The "fighting retreat/chase" kind of scenario is the one that gives me a headache with this game. ("Chase" could also be the "monsters trying to get me as I climb up a tree", or even "I'm already up there and they're trying to get to me.")

Like, let'say I'm retreating down a hallway in a labyrinth. I see monsters in the distance, I shoot at them. They get mad and run towards me. Their interest: to catch up to me and eat me. Mine: to stay out of range and keep firing at them as I retreat down the corridor. What does this look like in Storming the Wizard's Tower?

Well, I'm half thinking out loud and half probably annoying you to death. Please don't misinterpret this as anything other than enthusiasm about the game, and me trying to figure out how to get it to work for me.

Thanks! You've been super-helpful, as always.


Paul

[lumpley]

Sure thing.

Your 1 and 2 sound right to me.

I'd've handled your chopping the skeletons' hands to keep them out of the boat like this: you make a skill roll in setup to impose a tactical constraint. Your hits in setup penalize the skeletons' attack, on the grounds that each one you keep out of the boat is one that can't attack you and your friends. That's what you were trying to do, right?

I'd handle your fighting retreat from the monsters like this: your distance from them is a tactical constraint that lets you attack with your bow (but not with any hand-to-hand weapons) and them attack with their ranged weapons (if they have any). Each round, you're fighting while maintaining that tactical constraint, so make a perception roll in setup for green dice in action. If your white + green beats their white + red (if any), the tactical constraint stands.

In play, yes, you should make all of this generally clear in setup each round. If a player says to you "hey if I jump up onto those rocks, will that mean the monsters can't attack me, or will it give me blue dice, or what?" you should decide then and answer.

-Vincent

[Paul T]

Vincent,

That's awesome, thank you. Even before you posted, I was rereading the "fighting while ____" and "tactical maneuvering" sections, and the distinction between the two is actually much less ambiguous than I thought.

"Tactical stuff" = bonus in Step 3.
"Fighting while ____" = accomplish something in the meantime (like a more lasting tactical advantage), no bonus in Step 3.

Lovely!

However, while reading, I also came upon another thing. There may a tiny rules issue, maybe, in the current text:

You know your example of the two ogres? "I'm going to keep one of them between me and the other, circling so only one can attack me at a time"?

How would you handle it?

Reading that section in the rules, I see two applicable options:

1. Defensive advantage: take blue dice against the second ogre equal to number of hits.

2. You're preventing the other from attack: subtract your hits from the ogre's attack.

They don't seem terribly different, right? Like, I don't see why one is MORE applicable than the other.

But... say you roll four hits.

Under option one, you get four blue dice. So, you're reducing the ogre's attack against you by an average of two hits.

But, under option two, you just subtract four from the ogre's attack. That's twice as effective, on average.

A possible balance issue? At the very least, it makes that choice more difficult for a GM...


Paul