What’s On the Table

Since our dice haven’t been clattering on the table, what’s going on here?  At SR-West, Dante & I have been throwing back and forth ideas on possibilities to play with a smaller group.  And I’ve been continuing my game play in Dragon Age: Origins after surviving the two weeks of no X-Box while it was out for repairs.

We’ve also gathered a small stack of books for evaluation.  Without active gaming, it’s been harder to really review some of these, but we’re looking forward to preliminary reviews as we work through our scheduling difficulties.  I’m really looking forward to the DA rpg, which I have acquired but haven’t finished reading.  And Dante, of course, is looking forward to throwing evils at us from the Underdark.

So stay tuned, and we promise we’ll have something more to share with you soon!

Tasty, tasty inspiration

As if someone was monitoring my blog watching for me to desperately cry out, we got a review copy of both Martial Power 2 and the Underdark supplement.  Without even a breath, Stupid Ranger ripped right in to the Martial Power 2 book looking for new goodies for our Warlord and Ranger to use.  I was on my way out to karate practice at the time, but I did grab the Underdark book and look inside quickly.  A scan of the Table of Contents provided the required keywords I was looking for “Denizens of…” and “New Monsters”.

And that’s only the start.  Since my campaign has just entered the Underdark, this book was tailormade for me to drop all sorts of terrible stuff on my players the next time we get together.  I started reading the “Geography of the Underdark” section to decide how much retrofitting I would need to do to make this campaign guide sing in my current game (not much, hooray!) and I was happy to see that there are several new Terrain Features, including a section on the emotional effects of adventuring in the Underdark.

I am excited about this book.  Expect to see much more from this supplement as I unleash it upon my unwitting players.  Mwhahaha!

First, Stupid Ranger’s been bothering me to play a Swordmage.  Our D&D discussions lately consist of the following: “Let me play a Swordmage.  Can I play a Swordmage now?  Can I repurpose Character X to a Swordmage in our campaign?  PLEASE?” So I’m thinking about getting together a side campaign to make this happen.  In addition, thanks to some kind people at Wizards of the Coast we’ve gotten a few review copies that I’ve not made it to yet and I think having a sandbox will help me in doing a proper review of these books.

A few questions, if I may…

How many of you regularly play pick-up games?  Do you go for quick-gen characters?  A shifting campaign setting to encompass a bunch of different ideas?  Dovetailing these campaigns into your main storyline?  I’m interested in hearing how to overcome some of the logistics of having a secondary gaming group and how to make the campaign stay coherent with an irregular schedule.  Help a Dante out!  If you give me a good enough idea, I’m sure I’ll write an article about it so now’s your chance for minor Internet Fame!

Perception or Reality?

Does this actually happen?  Yes.  Does it happen in my campaigns?  Not on purpose.

I usually structure any significant damage dealing encounter in a fashion where player actions will determine who gets the brunt of the badness, but in the case of a battle with ignorant opponents I tend to let proximity to the bad guys or randomization (i.e. a die roll) to determine who gets hurt.

That is fair, isn’t it?

Only if you’re making it obvious to your players that you’re using a die roll to determine who gets the reaction.  The trouble with this mechanic is that patterns emerge, especially in small groups like most D&D adventuring parties.  This may be perceived by your players as favoritism or picking on a player, depending on if the die roll is awarding good fortune or bad.

One way that I cope with this problem is to use a cheat sheet to keep track of who the dice have chosen for good or bad results.  This way I can selectively skip someone if they’ve been randomly selected too many times.  Does this eliminate the value of using dice in the first place?  Some people may say yes, but I’d rather use a mostly fair 90% random, 10% fudged process than have a discussion why the same person got attacked 4 out of the 5 last rounds by the bad guys until they were a bloody pulp.  When real life feelings get hurt, then you’ll wish you had fudged something, I promise!

What happens if there really is favoritism going on?

Well, its hard for me to answer this question.  I’ve had the good fortune of not experiencing this problem personally, although I did participate in a few campaigns where certain characters were made much more significant in the plotline than others, which tends to erode party dynamics in a very “un-fun” way.  When this occurs, you can either choose to talk about it to the DM or just go with it if it doesn’t bother you that much.  I tended for the latter approach and it turned out to be a very fun game to participate in despite the extra-special treatment for certain characters.

Has this happened to you?  Have you been a pet player or been in a campaign with one?  What was it like, and how did it resolve?  Inquiring minds want to know!

The Story

Previously in our adventure, we encountered John, who has been working for the Drow because they took his wife hostage.  We entered a deal with John that we would rescue his wife from the Underdark if he told the drow that he had a way to infiltrate the restricted section of the library (we needed more info about the Drow and their plans for items from the library).  So after much wandering around in dark tunnels, taking those roads less traveled to avoid wandering parties of Drow, we found ourselves at a dead end: two Drow guarding the wife, Silvia.

For those of you who haven’t been following along, I’m currently playing Eaerenel, an Eladrin Wizard who specializes in fire spells.  And if you’re not familiar with the fire spells, they usually affect everyone in the area of effect, not just the bad guys.  So if Eaerenel cast a fire spell to affect the guards, she was going to be making life a little extra toasty for poor Silvia.  To make matters more urgent, the Drow decided to kill her instead of letting us try to rescue her and had cast a spell that enveloped her in web of spiders.

Things were looking desperate, and this is where I got creative.  With the DM’s permission, I invoked my ability to Twist the Arcane Fabric to move Silvia to safety before casting one of my fiery spells.  Twist the Arcane Fabric is a feat from Arcane Power (p 130), that allows an Eladrin to use her fey step ability to move an ally out of the way before casting an area or close arcane power.  Dante allowed that since “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Silvia could be counted as an ally.  It was a spectacular moment that made my whole night; I got to save the day!

Be Creative!

Creativity during game play is one of the cornerstones of roleplaying.  Without a touch of creativity, the game becomes mechanical.  To keep that spark of creativity burning,  you have to know your character’s capabilities; how can you plan an awesome course of action if you don’t know what you can do?

Also, Genghiscon is coming February 11-14.  Check out the Denver Gamers Association website for more details!

Today I admit an uncomfortable truth: I have never read any of the Drizzt novels or pretty much any other Forgotten Realms related novelizations.

Before I hear the “door slamming”  sound of the rest of my readership leaving the premises, allow me to explain:

I have spent most of my D&D career learning at the feet of masters.  My original DM, Chuck, was exceedingly well versed in Salvatore-lore and all other manner of Forgotten Realms storylines.  He painted so many vivid and disturbing examples of Drow culture that it held me over for quite some time, and since my first real campaign was a continuation of his storyline I didn’t have to know much more than I already did.  My other campaigns have predominately revolved around non-Forgotten Realms themes and topics I haven’t had to revisit the setting, so my interest wasn’t focused there.

And now I’m screwed.

Well, maybe not screwed… but I do have a situation.  I have worked up a plot that involves the dark elves, and strategically timed it such that I had all holiday break to do some reading to prepare me to subject my characters to a proper representation of Drow society.  The trouble is that I didn’t do my homework and now I need some crib notes for how to whip up a Drow society and make it believable.  I’m going to crack open my 4e Forgotten Realms campaign guide and see what I can glean in a few sessions prior to this weekend, but I’m open to any suggestions on how to bone up fast.

Also, I would like to extend my apologies to everyone who has written in the Forgotten Realms universe.  I consider this one of the most grievous gaps in my D&D education, one that I fully intend to rectify.  Just not this week!  I fully expect to suffer the barbs of my fellow roleplaying bloggers on this one, so the comment thread should be fun!

Yes, I know, I was as shocked as you. Especially with the recent upswing in Bullywug Awareness throughout our culture, it is difficult to look on such ignorance. I don’t know whether to be sad or angry. Did this poor soul simply not have access to a proper education? Or is this simply a willful choice to disbelieve that anything so magnificent and deadly could exist?

Regardless, I feel that it is my duty to enlighten this poor soul, and to give the rest of us a refresher. Let us start with the basics.

Bullywugs were discovered in the year 1852 by a sociologist by the name of Eberhard Anheuser. While on a nature hike through the virgin woodlands of what would later be known as Belgium, he happened upon a tribe of what appeared to be frog-people sacrificing one of their own upon a large sacrificial altar. This was accomplished by rolling a large boulder over the sacrifice, which caused a veritable tidal wave of bullywug-humors to cascade all over everyone in a 10′ radius. (This, also, was the origin of the little known Abjuration classic, “Eberhard’s Protection From Humors, 10′ Radius”.) These humors, as it happened, turned out to be both incredibly delicious and addictive, a fact that Mr. Anheuser quickly capitalized on. In 1854, he mobilized a small army of men to build a factory and to hunt and breed bullywugs in captivity for the sole purpose of  the later harvesting and bottling of their tasty bodily fluids. This beverage was known to the locals as “Wugweiser”.

The bullywugs did not take this lying down, of course, and within the year had developed a strong (and amphibious) resistance. Under the leadership of one Frederick Wuglass, known both for his oratory skill and fantastic hairbeard, the bullwugs brought production of Wugweiser to a standstill. It was not long after that Mr. Anheuser began to act very strangely, retreating from friends and family, and spending most of his time sunning himself on a rock. When he eventually did return to the office, he ordered a complete shutdown and retooling of the plant to make a much more uninteresting beverage with a far more uninteresting brand name using fermented grain. The locals believe Mr. Anheuser was secretly kidnapped and replaced by one of the bullywugs, but that is complete nonsense. Everyone knows that bullwug magic is only for making rainbows and powering the Great Engine that fulfills dreams for the Make A Wish Foundation.

The bullywugs had hoped to recede back into obscurity after this incident, but unfortunately a man named Gary Gygax invented a game called Dungeons and Dragons and, using a book of forbidden knowledge he accidentally checked out from the Lake Geneva Public Library, included many of their secrets in the game. The last straw came when the D&D cartoon was released in the United States in 1983. Though largely unnoticed by the general public, it prominently featured brutal, racist caricatures of many key members of the Bullywug Parliament. Outraged and insulted for the last time, the bullywugs vowed blood-revenge on humanity. That is how hip-hop music came to be.

And that, Frank, is what the f*ck a bullywug is.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas (or a great Friday if you don’t celebrate Christmas).  Happy New Year to everyone!

The Details

It’s a 2-4 player game, where you and your friends, as you’re wandering around the Ren Faire, start to feel out of place in your T-shirts and cut-offs, so you decide to buy costumes, one piece at a time.  In order to earn money for your costume purchases, you engage in performances with or against your friends.

The Performance cards are fun and entertaining.  There are physical challenges, such as arm wrestling or staring contests.  There are creative challenges, such as drawing something renaissance-y or whistling a tune.  It’s a fun combination of entertaining performances, and successful performances win you one or more coins.

With your new-found wealth, you can purchase costume cards that have one or more costume elements on them.  These cards are really the reason I wanted the game; the costume cards are clear plastic (see the promo pic here) so you can stack your cards and see your costume as it all comes together.

Dante vs Stupid Ranger

Dante & I gave Ren Faire a try.  We modified the rules a bit; instead of attempting to fill all six icons on our player cards, we decided to go for four.  Game play went pretty quick for us, and we finished in about a half an hour.  The Performances were fun, even with only two of us, but we both felt that the game as a whole would have been more fun with more players.

General Comments

There is definitely a high level of absurd and quirky fun; this is not a serious game!  The recommended age is 13 years or older, and I would agree with this; between the Performance challenges and the strategies involved in building your costume, this age frame seems appropriate.  And I recommend playing with more than two players; it’s playable with two, but it would be more entertaining with more.  If you’re looking for a fun, light-hearted game, I would recommend Ren Faire.