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[Dungeons/Dummies] Monsters & Adventurers - Current D/D Development thread

Okay, so that was my lisence plates (expired and forgotten about, pulled over on the way home from playing, lol).
First, let me say I actually feel proud posting this! Makes me feel like I'm finally getting somewhere in my RPG design. It was a blast last night and I hope everyone finds it enjoyable as well!

Firstly: Dungeons/Dummies is a comedy RPG about Imps working for an evil want-to-be Master. Players play the Imps running the dungeon or running errands.

The group consisted of:
Myself, designer and occasional D&D player, though I have dabbled in many other systems as well as hanging around here at Forge.
DJ, newer role player, more exposure to varied systems (bought a copy of the Swing at GC this year)
Troy, veteran D&D player
Matt, veteran D&D player

Everyone was really keen on playing, DJ and Matt often contributing small flavor suggestions through the design process.
After a few games of Magic, we started with D/D around 10:30 with an explanation of the system and Character Generation. Chargen took all of ten minutes, most of the time spent looking at the various options available for Traits and picking what we wanted for ourselves and what to evilly apply to others.
One additional change was made to chargen: a second Fear was given to each Imp, whereas currently worded chargen includes only one. This second Fear was chosen by the group.
Character generation was very smooth, taking around 10 minutes as I mentioned. For the Traits and Fears that were chosen by the group, those were chosen fairly quickly as well and generally with regard to the character the player was aiming for.

The following characters were the result of the 10 minute chargen session (those features marked with an astrisk are chosen by the group):

-Scatch (Me), a Smart Imp who was a Know-It-All, Curious and Philosophical*. I'm afraid of Cheese and "Anything below the waist and above the knees"*. My special Ability was Shapeshifting.
-Slug (Troy), a Crazy Imp who is Violent, an Overeater and Clumsey*. He's afraid of Pink* things and Authority. His special Ability is Invisibility.
-Murk(Dj), a Big Dumb Imp who is Eager, Gullible and a Clepto*. He's afraid of Fluffy Bunnies and the Potty*. His special Ability is Flight.
-Sheppens (Matt), a Tinkering Imp who was Speedy, Independant and Easiliy Distracted*. He is afraid of Imps that Sneeze and the Opposite Sex*. His special Ability is "Pulling things out of thin Air" aka The McGuyver Effect.

We had roughly an hour and a half to play, so we skipped Dungeon Design, which was a little relief because what is done of it is a little shakey at best. Thus, we agreed to go with a mission, mixing two of the ones suggested in the current writing- the Fairy and the Magic Item- the Imps had to fetch a wand held by the Good Fairy.

Game started out with an introduction to the "mission" by the Dungeon Master, him calling the Imps to his main chamber. After attempting to explain the mission, I (as the DM) gave up trying to do a real explanation and just told them to get the wand- it was fairly easy for the group to act like a band of dysfunctional five year olds.

After recieving the orders, the band tumbled out of the Dungeon entrance and into the woods. North, theres the North Forest, where the Good Fairy was, and the Village, which was to the south.
First, Murk attempted to steal the sign, no go.
Next, Slug tried to retreat but was caught by the Master, and because he had a fear of Authority, was scared witless into going back into the woods.
Deciding we needed weapons, Slug led the way to the Village with the cry of "Village Ho!" . Once there, Sheppens and I decided we needed a drink and had to decide what to do.

Right about here, we had an interesting change. Up to this point, I had been offering hints- these guys had been playing more D&D than anything and unless they were GMing they weren't used to a whole lot of control as players...and I stopped.  With D/D, I want the players to have control of their characters, and they do. So, I stepped back and said "Okay, what DO you see?" And all hell broke loose...

Slug and Murk just walked right out of the bushes and into town, scaring everyone out of their mind. Other villagers lined the streets with torches and pitchforks, blocking their path at the town 'square'.
In a moment of inspiration Slug decided to charge the largest guy in the lineup to break the ranks- he charged forward...and slammed right into the guy's crotch. He fell over on Slug, crying. Murk followed Slug's lead, trying to Fly over the group...and failed, landing in a dog-pile on the villager atop Slug. A villager attacked Murk, sticking a pitchfork right in his left butt-cheek (and Dj was specific about this...his LEFT cheek).
Sheppens decided now would be a good time to help and charged into the fray...succeeding in scaring away the villagers by racing in at super-speed, grabbing the pitchfork out of Murk and impaling a villager.

And so the next hour went, one misguided attempt after another. In short order, we cleared out a village, a blacksmiths shop, and trashed everything in the bar and the shop.
Heres some things that struck me-
- The D&D weened group I played with, upon realizing they had control, went nuts and really brought the characters out. Little happened out of character (course, I was working with crude humor and crude characters)
- The one thing I thought would scare players, being able to command others to use Traits, didn't- they embraced it like mad! It worked really nicely, one of the players having an idea the others picked up on as soon as it was mentioned.
- The Abilities didn't quite work as I expected, but I think they worked fine in play. Which, means tweaking to the system: looking at granting the Imps the full-fledged abilities...just not the control.
- I think it has something to do with improv and actor/player controlled roleplaying, but there was quite a tendency to go below the waist, even without any of the encouragement that Elfs provides. I mean, where else would you find the Dildo of Healing pulled out of some Imp's shorts?

Anyhow, by the end of the night we hadn't even left town. The team tried to kill Scratch (my Imp) due to misused shapeshifting...I became a Pink Bunny, the Energizer Bunny, a Blue Bunny, a Psycidellic Bunny, and stump before finally becoming myself. A suit of armor was demolished, as was the town...and we're still there.
Dj (Merk) said afterwards that when he plays D&D he HATES not getting out of town...this time, he didn't care, he loved it. Because of these tales, I have a handful of other players who already want in on a game next week...^_^

Coolness - in other words, yes, I find it very enjoyable.

Great to see people with the D&D background take so easily to a game where they have more player control. The humour and sillyness might lessen the burden of 'responsibility', thus allowing them to jump right in. As to the 'below the waist' tendency - it's been noticed before that com(ed)ic(al) games do this - it's ice-breaking. Like kitchensinking in Uni that also slowly fades away as people get to grips with the power of the game, maybe.

I wonder how totally new (role)players would take to this game?

Chargen made some cool characters, imho, and 2 Fears sounds like more fun (happen more often) than 1. I like the speed as well - sounds like this would be a great game for 1-shots (that then (d)evolve into whole campaigns).

Was sheppens' action (racing, grabbing, stabbing) the result of one success, or did he get really lucky?

Why were the imps so successful in clearing out the village? Their given immortality? GM-set threat level? Player creativeness? Character powers?

What was that tweak on Abilities? I'm not getting it.

Really cool, though, and if you want to get me a copy of whatever draft you've got lying around at that point, I'll pack it when I and my girl go to Madeira for the upcoming week...

I'd like a copy of whatever draft you have too. This looks like SO much fun. It would also really appeal to my friends and my younger brother (the only one that I really end up role-playing with) with the crude humour and crude characters. We'll see how one D&D fanatic, one little kid who only wants to play the Scarlet Wake playtest and one guy who'll play anything so long as he gets to wreak havok go playing this game!

Luck,
Kirk

I'm not quite sure why, but your account makes me think of the AP posts from people about Greak Ork Gods. I'm curious as to whether thats been an influence for you in any way.

Are you going to go into dungeon design next time? I would suggest you should, because the rules aren't totally gelled yet. Anytime anyone goes "uh...." its your cue to take some notes.

Sorry there's not more substance to this post....sounds like you had a ton of fun, which is awesome. Congrats.

lol- excellent, let me touch it up some and I'll get it posted (Or click through the link at top, theres notes and other Design Links)

Re: Tobias

1) Sheppens - Sheppens wanted to race in and save the other Imps. The TN had been raised to like a 6 before this and he spent a couple points to raise it to 8...and rolled an 8! Thus, he was given reletive narrative freedom, as opposed to a 'narrow success' or a 'barely missing' situation. The Speed was a trait, so I was lienient in how that was used (racing in, racing around etc), the pitchfork was a result of the roll. The villagers running was a consequence of those actions- they would have thought A) Oh my god theres more than we thought! and B) Holy Spit! Its gonna kill us all! Thus, it was easy to say "Okay, the square is cleared!"

Just before the town, I relenquished almost all control of the game, only keeping enough to rein it in every once in a while when it devolved to bad jokes, and even then it was "Okay, Troy, Slug is doing this, DJ, you're stuck in this situation, Matt, you're...yea, and I'm doing this", and that got everyone back into the game. Thus, there were almost no GM-set threats or what not, it was all the players from the Bushes on.

2) Abilities - Abilities currently read

Quote from: RulesAbilities are rated on a 1-6 scale, players needing to roll a check, 1d6, less than or equal to their Rank to make a successful use. A failed use usually means nothing happens though rolling a 1 means the Ability is successfully activated but not used in the manner the player intended.

The way we played: Abilities are still rolled 1d6, failure means you have no control how the ability goes off (we generally asked the others in group "Okay, I blew it! What now?") while on a success we got what we wanted.

As to the players: I think it helped that Troy and Matt also had a vast experiance in GM'ing and are then used to having roughly *complete* narrative control. D/D is more limiting to some degree than GM'ing, but alot more freedom than normal D&D playing as a PC.

Look to the Indie Design forums for a Draft 3 post (draft 1 already up, draft 2 an assembly and alterations from the posting and disussion, draft 3 altered from Play)

Quote from: Nathan P.I'm not quite sure why, but your account makes me think of the AP posts from people about Greak Ork Gods. I'm curious as to whether thats been an influence for you in any way.

Honestly no. Elfs may be closer, but that was just from reading some AP posts on that after I already had a lot of my core ideas together. Can't say I've read any from GOG.
And heres the thing too- from what I see of Elfs, it encourages the below-the-waist mentality. Like I said, I encourage none of that, however we ended up with my Imp afraid of genitalia and a pitchfork in another Imps LEFT buttcheek (I still find his details of the situation hilarious by themselves).
I have to agree with Tobias, it probably has alot to do with comedy and icebreaking in general. All of my theatre classes that did improv had a high instance of bathroom humor.

As to Dungeons:
Yup, I want to.
The night we played we were under a little more of a time constraint, I had no idea how long it would take in AP to layout a Dungeon and get an adventure going based on that, so thats why we didn't.
We're planning another game night Tuesday, I'll be working on polishing the existing notes on Dungeon design and handling and we can try to start an hour earlier, to afford Dungeon design time and setup.
Its important to me NOT to walk in with a pre-made Dungeon because the design of it I want to mean something to the players. Its THEIR Dungeon, not mine as GM/DM. They should lay it out, the traps, the puzzles etc.

I think one of the most fun things about this is you can jump in with little idea whats going on and play. I walked into the evening with no idea what I wanted to do, just the list of scenario ideas. Everything can be generated quickly, need to see about the Dungeons yet though, and without a GM or DM running the game, which is even better! Someone just has to set up the scenario and POW, away everyone goes.