RPGaDAY 2024: Day 26: Superb Screen

Day 26: Superb Screen 

I'm not a fan of these fancy architectural screens. They may look great, I've seen castles, towers and dragons, and they may have features like dice towers and shelves for minis, but I've carted around enough stuff for running games, and I prefer something lighter and cheaper.

For practicality and affordability, I'll take the opportunity to suggest my home built screen. Of course, you have to provide the actual GM's charts and tables yourself.

But for commercial screens, more specifically for the information on them, I'll jointly recommend the screens for seventh edition Call of Cthulhu and the latest edition of Delta Green. Both have atmospheric artwork on the player facing side and useful charts and tables on the other.

They don't need to be fancy, just practical. In fact, too fancy and they can be distracting (on the players' side) and finding the information can become difficult.

I will just say that there's something to be said for collating the charts and tables yourself. Only you know what's going to be useful, and what you might need that little reminder for.

One thing I regularly do, when using my homemade screen, is put area maps on the player facing side.

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RPGaDAY 2024: Day 25: Desirable Dice

Day 25: Desirable Dice 

Dice? Yeah, I got dice.

Oh, you want more?

Some dice are better than others, and I remember the original polyhedral dice where you had to colour in the numbers with a Chinagraph pencil. The plastic was softer than modern dice, and over time D20s ended up round. Given long enough, even D4s ended up as round lumps of plastic. Only the venerable D12 kept it's shape, because they never really got used.

Modern dice may have the numbers already coloured, and they keep their shape, but not all dice are equal. There's a reason why the cheap dice sets available online are cheap.

As a gamer, I've lots more dice than I need, even taking into account the buckets of dice needed in wargames (D6s mostly, but D8s for Deadzone and D10s for Warlords of Erehwon and Fistful of Lead). 

I amassed a good few more recently with the Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer partwork, and some of these are nice. My favourite set is probably the metal set, though they are a bit small.

I've seen dice with miniature weapons cast inside them, dice with skulls instead of dots and even spiked dice (potentially painful), but there's only one set that I ever thought of as desirable.

Back last century, when magazines were actual physical things printed on real paper, a company used to advertise in Dragon Magazine. They made dice out of unusual materials, and as a geology student I wanted the set made from dinosaur fossil. Really wanted them. 

But they were expensive, and shipping from the US wasn't cheap either.

Now I'm more aware of the issues in the fossil business, and I'd avoid them, but back then they were the dog's pyjamas.

And to think I thought I'd have nothing to say about desirable dice, and I didn't even rant about dice apps.

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RPGaDAY 2024: Day 24: Acclaimed Advice

Day 24: Acclaimed Advice 

It's very tempting to simply repeat my recommendation for Justin Alexander's 'So You Want To Be A Game's Master' or his website 'The Alexandrian', but that's too easy.

Another RPG pundit that I've benefited from a lot is Scott Rhem, aka The Angry GM.  His Tension Pool, or whatever it's currently called, is a great idea that I regularly used in F2F gaming, but much of what he writes is specific to certain circumstances, and aimed at long time GMs.

In fact today there's more advice for GMs and players that ever before, and there's only going to be more.

When I started playing, the rule books, especially the GMs section, contained useful advice, and then there were the magazines and fanzines. 

A lot of this seems to have moved online now, and a GM or player can spend hours each day watching helpful advice rather than getting on with designing anything useful.

So I'll settle on one very wise piece of advice that a venerable GM, witnessing me stressing over preparing to run a session at the FLGS said;

"Looks like they're going to have fun tonight".

I must have mumbled something like I hope so, I just have to get all this ready for them.

He replied "Don't forget to have fun yourself".

Now I'm ashamed to admit that I can't remember who said this. It was one of the other GMs at the shop. We'd regularly glance at each others games, but I didn't really respond beyond a mumbled thanks. I did try to catch him later, but I missed him*.

I'm certainly guilty of spending a lot of time trying to make sure that my game will be as good as I can get it. I want the players to have as much fun as possible.

Long time readers of my blog know that I've a tendancy to overthink things. 

When I was in teacher training our tutor instilled in us a very 'belt and braces' approach, but quantum ogres notwithstanding, in RPGs this leads to a lot of wasted prep (in lesson planning too). 

In the end, this leads to frustration and burnout, or at least, it does for me.

I came close to this with the 4E campaign. Ironically, one of 4E's flaws, the overly detailed and slow combat, especially at high levels, helped me here. I never had to plan in detail very far ahead. 

I still ended up designing an entire dungeon based around a Blue Dragon that the players completely avoided though.

If I'd remembered to have fun myself I suspect the campaign might have ended sooner. I'd certainly have worried less about getting everything perfect. I'm sure as well that when the GM is having fun, the players pick up on it and have a better time too.

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*Now I realise that this would be a better story if no one else had seen him, or that the staff had said "that sounds like 'Owd Tom'. He always sat there, right up until the night he died".

Still, it's possibly the best advice I've ever heard.

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 23: Peerless Player

Day 23: Peerless Player 

Oo, a tricky one, I don't want to offend my players by missing anyone out, but nominating 'everyone I've ever played with' is trite and inaccurate. Besides, I'm related to half my current group, so I don't want to be accused of favouritism.

But over the years I've had the pleasure to enjoy this hobby with very many people, so I'm going back to my early days, to the days of the KMMGS, Huddersfield New College Gaming Club and games played at each others' houses. 

Dennis was in the year above at college, and as keen a fantasy fan as I. He tended to be a player rather than a GM, though I remember him running S1 Tomb of Horrors to deadly effect.

He tended to play wizards, and got the best out of his spells, not just Fireball and Lightning Bolt either. He came up with imaginative uses for spells, and often saved the party with a Reduce or Polymorph.

I think he was the first player I knew who actively pushed the idea of the party as a team. New players back then often saw the game as their own personal hero trip, which went well for a while, but tended to go badly when things got tough. He encouraged us to work as a team and make choices that benefited the group as a whole.

He was there in the Halls of Anubis and going through the lich mega dungeon.

I remember both adventuring with and GMing for Fordeldrax, his favourite wizard character. Playing alongside him I learnt a lot about exploring different solutions. Back then many adventures had a regrettable tendancy to present problems with only one way out (often combat). He looked for different ways, and certainly as a DM I responded by being more open to this, and now, in the words of Justin Alexander, I 'prep situations, not solutions'.

Dennis also introduced me a lot of music I'd never heard before. He led a trip to Leeds to see a group and we missed the last train. Lacking the funds for a taxi, we all spent the night in the waiting room improvising a game using coins instead of dice.

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RPGaDAY 2024: Day 22: Notable Non Player Character

Day 22: Notable Non Player Character 

I can't speak for the players, but from my experience as GM, I'm nominating a character from a published module who took on a life in subsequent adventures.

Klas Jorga appears in the Second Edition D&D box set, Hail the Heroes. This is an above average adventure (despite the cheesy CD) and it fitted nicely into the third edition campaign I was running at the time*.

Jorga is a foil to the PCs activities, representing the extreme end of a rival faction also seeking the Temple of the Shield. While he could be used simply as another combat encounter, I played him as a fanatic who will play dirty to succeed. He KNOWS his side is right, so that excuses his actions, he avoids getting his hands bloody, but understands how to use others to achieve his goal. He frequently sets up situations that can be blamed on the PCs.

This is pretty close to his description, see above, but the players loved him (their characters less so). One of them was a member of the Temple of Traladara, and was just as driven. Both Jozan and Jorga viewed the other as basically good, but misguided. They only needed to see the error of their ways to come over to the light.

So the party and Jorga had mutually exclusive goals. He proved a thorn in their sides through the adventure, but the party prevailed, and Jorga went into hiding in disgrace.

Several of the NPCs from Hail the Heroes returned, but Jorga made such an impression that he triggered a later adventure. He survived that too, but lost an eye and gained a much grimer demeanor. The party had a much less positive attitude towards him by now, he'd done some unpleasant stuff, believing that the end justified the means.

His final appearance was in the 4E campaign, where he sported a magical eye, and led a band of thugs. He was instantly recognised by Jozan's player, and just as quickly loathed by the characters.

Jorga's importance grew through two campaigns, but what if he'd died early on? Well he certainly didn't have plot armour, and initially he was no more prominent than the other NPCs (ah Kriss, who remembers you now?). It was simply the way he 'clicked' with the players that inspired me to keep bringing him back. It was nice to get repeat use out of him, but, beyond his actions triggering 'The Temple of the Sword' he was completely disposable.

And I suppose there's a lesson there. Memorable NPCs can develop organically, and are often the better for it. But it's a mistake to artificially keep them alive. Don't plan on them surviving first contact with the heroes, and you might be surprised what develops. I certainly was with Jorga.

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*Again with the mismatch of game world and edition 

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 21 Classic Campaign

Day 21: Classic Campaign 

When I stop to think about it, I've played in or run very few 'proper' campaigns, at least in the way most people think of them now.

Early D&D was very much a series of adventures with characters drawn from a pool depending on who was available and what the party needed. The closest we ever got to playing a linked series of adventures was the classic G modules at college (we bought them out of club funds and three different GMs took it in turns to run them. I was set up to continue with the D modules, but we never got that far).

Even when we started playing Call of Cthulhu, it was similar. I ran whichever investigation I'd just bought or written. I did seed references to the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaign, and some of the investigators joined the Silver Twilight, but that's as far as it got. In fact, they never even suspected that the Silver Twilight had any sinister intentions, and when they found the Shining Trapezohedron in an abandoned church steeple in Boston, they handed it over to the Lodge for safe keeping John Scott was delighted.

Since then I've managed to run a BECMI* campaign set in Mystara. This was for a gaming club, the successor to the Kirklees Military Modelling and Gaming Society. It was still a bit 'adventure of the week', but there was a clear goal and end point. 

Likewise, I ran a 3/3.5 edition D&D campaign, again set in Mystara. This was a series of plot arcs, but the final one, the module Night's Dark Shadows, was unfinished.

Because then we moved to fourth edition, and we actually managed a ten year campaign with foreshadowing, character arcs, a proper ending and everything.

 I'll admit that it started out as just trying the system by playing Keep on the Shadowfell. But once that was done, and it was clear that we wanted to continue, I did actually have a plan. Well, I planned up to the end of Heroic Tier, then as that approached I extended the scope to cover Paragon Tier. As Epic Tier loomed I took various plot threads and brought them together to provide, I hope, a suitably epic conclusion.

I even managed to include references to events that happened in the previous campaign as some of the players had taken part in that. The feeling that they had influenced past history was very empowering to them.

But none of these get my vote today, party because most of the early stuff had no real design, and by the end of the 4E campaign I was experiencing a lot of dissatisfaction with the system. I still enjoyed it, but it had become hard work, and that colours my memories of it.

So I'm nominating a campaign that I played in rather than one I ran 

The best campaign I've ever played in was a Golden Heroes campaign run by Grim.

He based it in our area, and while the first few sessions were fairly low key, it became apparent that something was happening to the world around us. The way he tied events into West Yorkshire was fun (we had a base next to Leeds Central Station; if you wondered what the current road works and alterations are, it was probably something to do with us).

But the changes, subtle at first, really made it special.

At the time I had very little comic book knowledge, apart from reading a few early Marvel titles pre teens. Now I'd draw parallels with Wolverine's disorientation at the start of House of M. 

Eventually we traced the changes down to one character, now I'd describe him as a slightly less malevolent Mad Jim Jespers. We eventually realised that we had just as much control over the changes as he did, and set things back to rights. Or to a version of 'right' that suited us.

Highly enjoyable and marvellously fascinating, a tribute to a system that is great at reflecting it's genre, and a GM who really understands the system and the genre, but is not afraid to twist it to fit his own vision (rather as we did to end the campaign).

It also keyed me in to the joys of running games in a familiar location. He'd run a game before which was based on us playing fictionalised versions of ourselves. 

I now try and find a way to localise most games I run, obvious fantasy excepted.

Which brings me to my honourable mention, my own Delta Green campaign. Without Grim's localised Golden Heroes campaign, it would never have happened.

Much as I like the Delta Green's background, I wanted it set in the UK. I developed my own organisation, called simply The Section (which may be a cover, or a replacement, for PISCES, which definitely exists in my game world). I used a mix of published scenarios reworked to fit and case files that I wrote myself. It all ended rather messily in Wales, but that's the nature of the game. The action was all set in places that I had at least a passing familiarity with, with several major events happening in West Yorkshire.

Now I'm looking forward to running Rivers of Yorkshire.

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*Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal. An acronym for the 'not Advanced' Dungeons and Dragons rule set and it was published in parallel with first edition.

It was originally released as a series of boxes, named as above, which were essentially tiers of play. Yes, you could reach Immortality.

The whole lot was later collated into the Rules Cyclopaedia.

While I'll stick with 5E, partly because it's so accessible, and there's a lot that I think they've got right, I'd definitely run BECMI if there was a call for it.

RPGaDAY: Day 20: Amazing Adventure

Day 20: Amazing Adventure

Once again for the sake of fairness I'm going for two. One I played in and one I ran.

My early days of D&D were dominated by two DMs, both of whom ran games at the club in town. They took it in turns to write adventures for our party. There was some sense of a background (the same priesthood set us tasks, and frequently Raised fallen comrades, and the geography was consistent), but it was largely a campaign by virtue of the cast of characters.

One DM, Jonny, was responsible for the massive dungeon we played over a weekend, see Day 19 for details, but the other, Martin, produced some memorable dungeons too. I should say that for us back then, adventure and dungeon were synonymous.

The best was probably the Halls of Anubis, a massive underground complex that started out in a system of desert caves before we reached the long abandoned priest's quarters. 

Then down to the mummification chambers (and a mechanism that sent coffins down to a subterranean lake). Then those that avoided the chute descended down inside a statue of Anubis to the lake and had to find their way across to the Maze of the Dead. Alas, the funeral barge had sunk, but remember those coffins? They float. Just mind the Sacred Crocodiles.

At last we reached the Maze, fought or avoided various mummies and finally faced the Demon Ghoul King.

Looking back, it was quite linear, but we didn't care. As long as we were moving forward, we felt we were progressing.

And the memories it leaves, priceless.

"Sarcophagus Ahoy!"

Now for one I ran, or jointly ran. 

It was for Call of Cthulhu. I've run 'Music of the Night' several times, set firstly in 1920s New York, and then in Arkham. My daughter expressed an interest in running Call of Cthulhu and requested a scenario to run. Now I'm a firm believer in trying to anchor games set in a version of our world somewhere that I have at least a passing familiarity with. So we relocated it to her university city and brought it up to the modern day. 

The scenario is a simple one, designed to introduce new players to the game, yet provide sufficient interest for old hands. 

It involves a music student (Michael Spencer) who has stumbled upon fragments of a late sixteenth century score. Unknown to him, the notes contain a Summon spell. 

He transcribes the notes and gathers a small group of fellow students to practice. I usually start the investigation just after the creature has appeared, killed one player and driven the others mad. Spencer has fled, and in his madness seeks to undo what he brought about.

There's a clue trail with the opportunity to recover the original MS, which contains a dismissal rite, but I purposefully leave the ending open for ingenious players to come up with their own solution.  To hurry them along, the creature is hunting down the people present at the summoning, and there are reports of a huge bat seen at night.

The adventure went extremely well. As my daughter was new to the system she handled the narrative and the determination of investigator actions, I merely filled in with rules queries.

Although it was her last bit of Keepering so far (she's gone on to other systems) I was impressed. I wish I'd been that good a GM at that age.

If you're interested, the group did manage to track down Spencer, but they didn't bother with the Dismissal Rite. They reasoned that the creature had only been seen in the dark, and seemed to deliberately avoid bright light. Using Spencer as bait they lured the thing on to the moor and flooded the area with lights, thus banishing it.

Everything neatly wrapped up in one session.

Of course, one of the characters later passed a club and recognised a familiar discordant note sequence...

Everyone had fun, so much so that a couple of the characters got ported over to my Delta Green campaign (which I realise hasn't yet been mentioned in this series).

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