[Storming the Wizard's Tower] Monastery of Crows

[tonyd]

We played Storming the Wizard's Tower, and it was a blast!

Now I'm going to brain dump my questions and observations.

Prep took quite a long time (about 4 hours), but most of that was town creation. Next time should be much shorter. Our town was a prosperous trade city on the Silk Road in fantasy Afghanistan, about a generation after the death of Alexander the Great. Our town is dependent on seasonal caravans and limited water supplies. The character classes are caravan guard, Western bloodline (descendents of Alexander's people), Hill folk woodsman, People of the Stones (ancient natives of the region), despoiler (basically a tomb robber).

Ben plays Bareil, the grumpy retired caravan guard with his wolf pelt armor
Lukas plays Ihl Ram, the ambitious son of a highborn Western family
Lesley plays Shirat, the young desploiler
Kingston plays Za Eli, the taciturn mountain man

The town's water supply is befouled by something vile. A young girl is sick and near death. The town turns to its best and bravest to take the mountain trail to the Monastery near the spring that sources the town water. In the monastery there is fear and starvation. After falling sick, the abbot has morphed into a gargantuan bloated caricature of himself. He hides himself in the catacombs and bellows continually for more food. Awful crow-things haunt the skies. The heroes must brave the trail, harried by crow things, convince the reticent monks to let them in, find out what's going on, and confront the abbot.

Setup is pretty awesome. The structure of the game gives me a living, breathing town, PCs who have a reason to care, and hazards that are naturally integrated with the setting.

Each character has a town connection. It's just begging for an early scene that reinforces the PCs' tie to the town. I don't get this right at first, until a scene with Ben. Bareil wants his foreign wife to prepare a charm to protect him from shadow magic. How do I make this into an interesting scene. Of course! The wife doesn't want her husband to risk himself. The scene is short, sweet, and even a tiny bit touching. That helped set the tone. I'm disappointed I didn't get a good setup scene for every player.

Ambushed in the mountains, my players throw me my first curve. Za Eli's been asking about what the animals on the trail are doing, which is just the right question to spot the coming ambush by crow-things. He uses his familiar spirit to scout the way, grabbing dice for a perception roll through his danger sense to spot the ambush, rolling into his rallying at the start of combat, handing a giant mound of dice around the table. Someone's been reading the rulebook. As far as I can tell, you're supposed to do that sort of thing in this game, so I'm not worried about it, and anyway, the fight still turns out to be pretty challenging. There are lots of tactics and terrain rolls involved.

This party makes great use of rallying and tactics. A lot of dice are going around. They have an alarming ability to chew through monsters. Monster creation is a challenge. Later the PCs will handily dispatch the abbot-monster in a single round, even though he's almost the same XV as the difficult crow-things. Rallying seems quite strong, too. I'm a little worried it will become the dominant tactic, but time will tell.

Later, the heroes have gained entrance to the monastery, where the starving monks are trying to put a good face on things and ignore the horrible distant bellowing that occasionally shakes the caverns. There's a heated conversation. Some PCs want to help, but the rules don't seem to offer many ways to do it. It looks like a conversation is primarily one-on-one. Am I missing something here?

One of my favorite moments: "what would it take for him to trust me?"
"You'd have to be a monk."

Also, one player suggests another useful question might be "what would I have to offer them to get them to do what I want?" I guess you can just make up a question for heated conversation and if the GM agrees, go ahead and use it. Does this sound reasonable?

Later the PC's traverse the labyrinth (they've already dispatched the abbot-monster). Bareil wants to use his first-hand account here. But earlier he used the first-hand account to know something about magically befouled streams. Can he use it now to help with the labyrinth? I decide he can, but on later thought I'm not so sure. How many times can you use a map? Once it becomes described in the fiction, is it locked in for the rest of the session? Maybe forever?

Here's how I want to handle it: once per session, when you use it, you describe it in the fiction, explaining how it's relevant. That description stays for the rest of that session. Sound good?

Another nice moment: Shirat wants mountain heather for her apothecary friend, but the monks think it's kind of sacred. Shirat decides to bring something on the journey to trade to the monks. I ask her what she wants to bring. After mulling it over, she decides on a big jar of honey. Later, negotiating with the starving monks, food turns out to be just the perfect thing to have on hand. This epitomizes the way that the gear rules mesh seamlessly with the fiction. What it is and how it's described explains how it impacts gameplay. This is as much a matter of how Vincent has written he rules as it is of the mechanics.

[tonyd]

And while I'm thinking about it, a few questions...

So when the party XP reaches 50 or so, we're ready for level 2. We played with a big group, and I missed the part where you said limit the adventure to 20XV. We now have 22 XV from one adventure. A bigger party means more monsters, means more XP, means faster advancement. I'm a little concerned that 3 adventures will probably put us to level 2. Should I be worried, or is this about right?

When you're setting up an adventure, there are things you put in that are obstacles for the heroes, but aren't monsters per se--like the obstinant monks who won't give answers. The players spend time getting around these, but they don't get any XP for it. Am I understanding this correctly?

[lumpley]

Excellent! Hooray.

I'm going to try to hit your questions in order. If I miss any or get lost, just ask again.

Helping in conversations: When we played at GenCon, there was this cool conversation where John's, Ed's and Brandon's characters all participated. John rolled command to make the swamp guy stay in the conversation; Brandon didn't have the command to keep the swamp guy from just storming out. Brandon had the perception to get info out of him, though, where John didn't. And, um, Ed used up John's hits by giving the swamp guy grief (challenging his commitment), which was funny.

In a big group conversation, you can have everybody who wants to roll perception, and all ask their own questions, for instance. There isn't any straight mechanical helping, like passing your hits to someone else, by default. As GM you could create an ability or treasure that lets them do that though.

"What would I have to offer them to get them to do what I want?" Consider it added. I'm definitely interested in what questions playtesters wish were on that list.

Reusing maps: I just wrote about this on the Storming blog, I'll quote it:

How I GM it, most of the time: it's a set of childhood memories, like a set of lockpicks. It's not single-use, but it is single-subject. I make exceptions case by case.

The rule is, as GM you have to make judgments about whether this particular map is useful under this particular circumstance, every time. If there's a principle you like better - if you prefer maps to be single-use, for instance - then go with that as the basis for your judgment, and make exceptions case by case.

Your plan, to have the description stick for the whole rest of the session, is great.

This epitomizes the way that the gear rules mesh seamlessly with the fiction. What it is and how it's described explains how it impacts gameplay. This is as much a matter of how Vincent has written he rules as it is of the mechanics.

Say more about this? I'm not sure I get what you mean (but I suspect it's good, and I always love to hear good things about how I've written rules).

About leveling up at 50XP: I don't know if you should be worried, but I am a little. I know that calling it a straight 50XP means it doesn't have any scaling flexibility; my hope is that 50 falls within acceptable range for groups of 3-5 characters. (It probably doesn't for 6.)

I suppose I could make it 20+10 per player, so a group of 4 would level up at 60. That might be better. Or I could do something stupid with XP, like say that everybody who fights a monster gets 3/n of its XV as XP, with n = number of characters. A group of 3, everybody would get the full XV; more, everybody would get less. I dunno.

The other leveling up requirements - at least one alignment, at least one heroic stat, at least one new character type - are small speed bumps, but the more players you've got the more likely they are to get alignments and heroic stats. Maybe I could introduce more speed bumps for larger groups. I still dunno.

Any suggestions?

No fight, no XP: you're understanding correctly.

Thanks, Tony!

-Vincent

[Ben Lehman]

XV should probably scale with the number of players. Why not just divide it between them? It's the same thing as your 3/n thing, except you, uh, don't multiply by three beforehand.

yrs--
--Ben

[tonyd]

One way to do it, espcially with a large, somewhat rotating group of players, is let people spend XP on finding the Wizard's tower. Once the party has spent a certain amount of XP, you all level up. That lets them choose when they're ready for second level.

Speaking of which.... how long before we see the rules for level 2? 

Oh, and where I talk about gear and meshing with the rules is simply a comment on how, when you want to know whether something is useful or not, you go straight to what it is, rather than to some rule about it. I like rules that bring everything around to common language. Your text deals with it nicely by explaining the use of gear as a straightforward and commonsense procedure.

[tonyd]

We played another session last night, this time with 5 PCs! It was quite a crowd and got very hectic at times. Bareil the caravan guard was resting for the day. In his place we had Aziz, a high born Western warrior mage, played by Andres, and Osim, a caravan guard played by Guy.

It's caravan season in Miltar, but there's a problem. The first large caravan of the year is turning around and heading back to Ikhrain! It appears that caravan members have been disappearing in the night. The caravaners believe that a malignant Djinn is haunting the trade route and they want nothing of it. Someone must solve this mystery.

The PCs soon determine that a mysterious traveler named Tufiq has likely desecrated a tomb in the desert, calling down some kind of spiritual retribution on the region. In the process of establishing these facts, Za Eli the mountain man promises to smuggle the caravan master's lovely young wife out of the caravan and hide her at the house of his reluctant ally, the town healer.

Searching for the lost tomb, our heroes encounter the beguiling music of the Djinn, and Aziz willingly submits, leading them via a short cut to an ancient ruin, wherein they grapple with (and handily defeat) some nasty crossbow traps and a bunch of tomb scarabs.

Deep in the tomb they find the answer to the mystery. A guardian spirit of the tomb (AKA the Djinn) is angry because a tomb robber (Tufiq?), desecrated the body of the giant Cyclops king buried there. It has been luring people to the tomb in an attempt to use their body parts to repair the mummy (to no avail, since it's skull is missing). All hell breaks loose. The strange glowy gem is beguiling people, scarabs are carpeting the floor, and enthralled caravan folk are trying to strangle people. Finally they shatter the gem, breaking the influence of the guardian spirit, and exit the tomb burdened with treasure and leading the surviving victims of the Djinn.

Now for what we learned:

We used the card drawing mechanic instead of dice, and I think everyone found it less satisfying than dice. Two decks were not enough for fight scenes, so we had to use there, which was very ungainly to shuffle and manage. It also seemed slower than dice. I think that each player needed to have their own double-size deck of cards for this to work at all with five people.

Five people is a lot for this game. It worked, but it was a challenge. As GM, I found it very hard to stay on top of stuff. The adventure was 22XV. Much less would not have made a great challenge. Some heroes now have over 40 XV, meaning we'll be ready for level 2 after one more adventure. I think the XP definitely needs to be scaled to party size.

Designing monsters and encounters continues to be a challenge. That's not a complaint, just an observation. D&D 4E, for example, is similarly challenging, and takes 2-3 times as long in my experience. It's a skill I hope to improve through much repetition.

Mesmerize plus swarm is devastatingly powerful. When the Djinn had good cards, it meant that the whole party was in serious jeopardy.

That's all for now!

[lumpley]

Has anybody been knocked out of the next session yet?

-Vincent

[Ben Lehman]

When we played the first time, I don't think that there was even the potential for anyone to be knocked out. A group of four characters seems basically capable of taking anything, as long as they have a basic understanding of the rules. Extra characters in StWT are force multipliers, rather than force-ads, which means that a sizeable group shouldn't have trouble.

yrs--
--Ben

[tonyd]

In last night's session, it proved seriously difficult to challenge the PCs. In the final battle, two PCs were making endurance rolls. They were the two new characters. To do it, I had to throw everything I had at them and then some. The mesmerizing spirit was sapping half to all their white dice every round just to hang in. That encouner was 10XV.

By contrast, the party was able to defeat 3 scarab swarms in 1 round with 1 box of damage taken total. Scarab swarms are 3XV monsters with swarm, biting attacks, extra white dice, and extra endurance boxes.

Ihl Ram can easily muster 12 dice for rallying with his heroic command and tactician abilities. Za Eli routinely rolls 10+ dice when he can combine danger sense with feats of strenth.

So there's this problem where I build up a lot of tension for the eventual scarab attack, then excitement as everyone gets to do their cool stuff to deal with it, then a bit of disapointment as I annouce that the monsters are all dead.

My response to this is to drop 2-3 extra XV into each monster and spend it on endurance boxes. Maybe 1 of them goes into extra dice. This is what the monsters need to survive that extra round. If the fight can go 2-3 rounds, it feels like a real fight.

Balance feels just right for 3 characters. 4 is stretching it. 5 is a strain.

[lumpley]

Okay! I'm hearing from everybody, online and off, that the cards aren't great. So I'm going to reopen that one in my head and see what I can do instead.

I do have a scaling fix for you to try, though. I just thought of it, it tackles (solves? who knows) both problems. As written, the baseline monster is worth 1XV and it has 3 abilities. Try this instead: the baseline monster is worth 1XV and it has as many abilities as there are players (excluding the GM).

-Vincent

[tonyd]

Yeah, I think that might be it. Personally, I'd recommend spending the additional abilities on dice and endurance boxes. The monsters don't seem to need any additional woogie powers.

[Guy Srinivasan]

In the final battle, two PCs were making endurance rolls. They were the two new characters.

And having looked over the rules again, I realized that we each had 11 XP from "new characters get half the group XP" to spend which we didn't, so throw in another couple cards for the PCs per round, and 5 PCs look even meaner.

Guy

[tonyd]

In the final battle, two PCs were making endurance rolls. They were the two new characters.

And having looked over the rules again, I realized that we each had 11 XP from "new characters get half the group XP" to spend which we didn't, so throw in another couple cards for the PCs per round, and 5 PCs look even meaner.

Whoops! Your friendly GM missed that.

[Lukas]

Both sessions were a lot of fun.  I'm not sure how much substance I'll add to this conversation, but I'll touch on a few of my thoughts.

* Making monsters is fun!  I've spent quite a bit of off time tinkering around with them, even though I'm not actually running a game.

* As previously mentioned, scalability can be a bit of let down.  Our groups of both 4 and 5 players defeat 75% of our monsters in a single round.  Adding additional powers is a start, but if you're focusing on core stats (hit boxes and white dice, as Tony mentioned) adding two of one or one of each probably wouldn't have made an appreciable difference with the monsters we've fought.  It feels like hit boxes in particular need to be more abundant.  Perhaps making them a 2 for 1 XV purchase or scaling starting hit boxes based on group size would help as well.

* I love the three core non-combat rolls.

Again, the game has been a blast so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing Levels 2 & 3.  I'm also itching to run a game set in fantastical ancient Russia now.

Cheers!

[lumpley]

scaling starting hit boxes based on group size

Ah! Yes. That sounds good.

-Vincent