Donjon Post-Apocalypse

[Matt Wilson]

Last night started a short run of Donjon inspired by both Gamma World and the Fallout series of computer games.

The characters are from a village where the children are getting sick, so the tribal elder has summoned them for a great quest: seek the ruins of See-ah-tol, where you might find the legendary Vault 23, whence the founder of this village came. Within Vault 23 there may still be some of the powerful technology of the ancients.

The characters...

Kain - a tinkerer with a mutation that enables him to see energy fields. He has an old .38 revolver and an armored jacket from the Federal Way Police Department.

Abel - this guy is a big beefy ass whomper (yes, Kain and Abel. They claim to have come up with the names independently). He carries a sword fashioned from the leaf spring of a '57 Chevy that they found in an old retro diner. His armor is made out of paneling from the car.

Chrysler New Mexico - this fella is - crap, I don't know how to explain him. I'll steal from the writeup: "He has constructed his identity from his collection of ancient pop-culture media (see Stuff) and fancies himself the best Cowboy/Pirate/Folksinger/Cop that there ever was."

The game session included one planned encounter, with some giant snake-moth things that tried to coil around the characters and crush them.

After that, the entire rest of the session came out of a fact that Wilhelm stated in play: we come across a river.

Crossing this river took the remainder of the game session, which included Kain falling in, Abel trying to cut down tree branches to help him, Chrysler rubbing moth wings together to summon another moth for Kain to fly away on, and of course the ubiquitous waterfall.

One of my favorite moments was Chrysler, after summoning another of these creatures, planning to leap out over the river and onto the moth's back, so he could wrangle it down to Kain and pull him out of the water. The player failed his roll, and I ended up with two facts: 1) you are under water, 2) you see nothing but teeth and eyes. And then I whipped up stats for some sort of giant piranha thing.

I'll try and blame it on serious lack of sleep, but I had a hard time only stating facts when the players failed rolls. I kept wanting to narrate.

Oh, one more thing. Despite the wackiness of the characters' actions, I implemented a rule for looting enemies. If the item you're looking for is unlikely to be on or around the thing you fought, the DM rolls additional dice. For example, the moth things would not likely be carrying any sort of weapons, regardless of their value. However, it'd be relatively easy to find armor on a bandit you were just fighting.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Three of my favorite things: Donjon, Fallout, and Gamma World. All three have gotten serious play from me - my first RPG experience after years being away in the mid-90s was a GURPS Fallout game I ran. (I know, Clinton and GURPS. Laugh all you want.)

So, questions:

- Did the fact that the river took up so much of play work for you guys, or did it seem like one of those dreary AD&D games where combat takes 3 hours of the session? It sounds like fun, but I don't know how you took it.

- It sounds like failure ruled the day in crossing the river. Just for reference, what were the character levels, and what was the Donjon Level? (Or Rad Level, as I suggest calling it.) Why was failure so prevalent?

- Where do you see the game going next session? How long to you plan to play the game?

- Is it possible for me to breed with some leather-clad female embodiment of this game and raise a mutant child that will be my high priest and wonder-boy?

[Matt Wilson]

Did the fact that the river took up so much of play work for you guys, or did it seem like one of those dreary AD&D games where combat takes 3 hours of the session? It sounds like fun, but I don't know how you took it.

With me being on five hours of sleep, I loved it that the game kept prompting ideas to everyone involved. The fact that Wilhelm's character spent a good 45 minutes of game time in the water was pretty funny. And John's character rubbing the moth wings together to try and attract a moth to fly away on was awesome.

- It sounds like failure ruled the day in crossing the river. Just for reference, what were the character levels, and what was the Donjon Level? (Or Rad Level, as I suggest calling it.) Why was failure so prevalent?

It was all level 1, with difficulties set at either medium or difficult. I had hot dice mojo last night and continually rolled 20 after 20 (that's right, we used d20s baby).

It was interesting the way the dice worked. The monsters scored impressive hits in combat, and then my damage rolls flopped. I only managed one nasty hit on Abel, and he pretty much healed up by the end of the river scene.

[rafial]

Did the fact that the river took up so much of play work for you guys, or did it seem like one of those dreary AD&D games where combat takes 3 hours of the session? It sounds like fun, but I don't know how you took it.

I think there was a certain amount of player frustration at one point.  After you've thought of the third clever way to get out of a jam, and whiffed it, it starts becoming hard to think up new things to try.  Mark made a "polishing my armor" roll at one point when he ran out of ideas for fishing me out of the drink.  But overall, it was enjoyable night.  It was certainly nowhere near as deadly dull and frustrating as my recent exposure to Exalted, which did bring back the memories of which you speak.  In my case the frustration was only at the dice, I did not feel like I was being prevented from taking action, which is the truely frustrating experience to have.

Why was failure so prevalent?

Two reasons really.  One being Matt's hot streak with the dice, and the other being that (at least for my part) I had not fully slipped into the Donjon mindset of "invent the conditions for your own success".  This was, believe it or not, my first actual play experience with Donjon.  It wasn't until about halfway through the session that the lightbulb went off as far as dice/success == currency thing (my Sorcerer experience helped).  So I expect next time around I will be trying to make Matt's life significantly more miserable.

I think I could really come to enjoy Donjon's take on the Sorcerer dice mechanic.  The gamist structure that Donjon brings to the mechanic is really a lifeline for me.  Whereas in Sorcerer I always felt like I was "whining for dice" with the vaguest of justifications, in Donjon I can easily plot out clever sequences of actions to build up my dice pool that clearly follow from the rules.

Oh, but I would like to say that I do think 6d is way to wimpy for a .38.  There!  How's that for whining for dice? :)

Where do you see the game going next session? How long to you plan to play the game?

I believe we are going to do about 4 sessions.

Is it possible for me to breed with some leather-clad female embodiment of this game and raise a mutant child that will be my high priest and wonder-boy?

Why ask us?  Shouldn't you be clearing this with Jenaya? :)

[John Harper]

The game was indeed a blast. I'm playing Chrysler New Mexico, the freak-show of the group, and loving every minute of it. My favorite ability is "Thinks He's a Cowboy" which I actually managed to use once or twice.

I agree with Wil, though: the river section dragged on a bit. After 3 clever plans to get a man out of a river, things can degenerate into silliness very easily. The moth-wings idea was borderline, but we were grasping at straws by that point anyway. I think the problem was that none of us had really played Donjon before. Matt was sleep-deprived on top of being an inexperienced Donjon DM, and the players hadn't yet figured out how to drive the story with their rolls. So, we floundered. It happens.

Being the savvy navel-gazing Forgites that we are, we analyze, learn, and get better for next time. Yay team!

[Hafaza]

Hey y'all. I am playing Abel in this Donjon session. I had fun and am really looking forward to the next session as I think we all learned some important stuff this time around.

I most definitely felt a bit of frustration towards the end with my character, so much so that I did propose to take a roll for polishing my armor. (Did I fail?) The string of failures really became absurd after about 25 or 30 minutes. We tossed out the idea in emails that Discernment is King, that if it is nice and high you will have a fat dice pool to support a high likelihood of being able to declare facts that will help you. With a low pool you are less likely to be able to state those facts. Hence, with my discernment of two I failed quite often in attempts to see things that would help our predicament. I was reduced to really just thrashing along the bank of the river ineffectively. At one point I considered jumping into the river just so I would stop being a spectator and start having stuff happen to me, even if it was bad, and become part of the story again. That was my fault for not doing that.

Also, related just to our session was a problem of the order of characters. In combat of course your rolls determine it but outside of combat it really felt like a free for all. There was one point during the river section that Wil rolled, then John rolled, then Will rolled again and then John rolled again. At some point Matt looked at me and said, "What is Abel doing?" I think that was when I said he was polishing his armor. Mind you this was not a big deal since I was just thrashing about on the bank getting tangled up in the bushes. In future sessions we might want to enforce a direction around the GM for turns. You can delay till last if you like, but you should always have to state you are doing something or you are not.

My .0002 cents...