C is for Choices, too many of them...

Today, I had a hard time thinning things down to one topic.  There were simply too many choices for a blog entry that started with the letter "C", so I wanted to actually talk about 3!  WOW!! So, here we go.

Cartography

I would be amiss to forget the fact that this month, Dyson Logos, of A Character for Every Game, is hosting the RPG Blog Carnival.  This month's topic is, as you guest it, about Circuses... jk.  It's about Cartography, i.e. Map Making.  I'm way amateur at it, but Dyson is a pro! If you haven't used/seen his geomorphs yet, you're doing the internet wrong!!!

I really like his blog, and he's always kind of enough to drop me a comment once in a while.  I had promised to do an adventure, or an encounter, or something with some of his Geomorphs and I think that this month, I am finally going to get around to it, given that Cartography is our Topic of choice this month.

If you are looking for some cool maps for your game, or some tips on how to make maps, I definitely recommend you checking out the Cartographer's Guild.  I'm a member on their forums and they have some great tips for improving your mapping skills, especially the digital ones.  I troll that forum more than I post there, but it is definitely a great resource for GM's.


Common Sense
Considering my goal for this month of providing information relevant to improving your adventures, I think one of the most important things to always consider, when playing any RPG is the idea of "Common Sense" and what that actually entails.

I particularly like this motivational poster.  There are so many people that complain about how their campaigns get ruined by stupid people that act in ridiculous ways just because they are playing a RPG.  I think a lot of GM's maybe approach this the wrong way; sure, some players might be persistent, but in every game that I have every played, whenever a player comes up and spits out some line about how he is going to stab NPC X and take all of his stuff, I, as a GM, quickly use my "Common Sense" assume this fool is simply screwing about, and then /ignore him in real life.  Said players actions in the game are quickly ignored and passed over as he/she is quickly considered to be disrespectful and daft git in the real world.  Nobody likes playing with that guy.  What is also pretty nice is that if you use your common sense as a GM when dealing with these jerks, they will quickly tire of being ignored (since all they were trying to do in the first place is get attention) and then use their common sense in the game.  They will cease to be disruptive and you can move on with the bloody adventure.  OK.  Rant over.  Common sense rules people.  Use it.

Can and Cannot

This ties, to some extent, in with the above, Common Sense, advice.  There are some things that you can do in the game and there are some things that you cannot do in the game.   As a DM, running an adventure, really become familiar with what your personal guidelines for Can and Cannot is.

If you aren't interested in reading the following i.e. TLDR - If it's fun = Can ; If it's not fun = Cannot.

Ok.  Explanation.

If something adds fun to the game for everyone at the table, including you as the GM, that to me is an automatic can.  You should go and give your players everything they want, in game one, of course, but for example, if all the players came to me and said that they wanted to start with one additional feet at level 1, when we were playing D&D 4e, I would have no problem with that.  Everyone is on the same playing field and I can up the difficulty level of the opponents accordingly.  Everyone has a right old fun time.

Another example.  If someone says that they want to re-skin (change the thematic elements) X of a race/class/power/etc. in order to make their character into Y, but aren't really interested in changing anything mechanical, I will almost always say "YES!" to that.  This kind of thematic change shows that a player is taking special interest in the story and flavor of his character and is dedicated to making the game lost lasting.  These are the kind of players you really want to have.

However, on the flip side of the last example, if a different player said he or she wanted to change Rule Z so that he was an ever-living bad mother $%&$%&#R than I would almost definitely tell that person that he or she cannot do that because it would spoil everybody's sense of fairness and fun.  Thematically, virtually anything can be explained through the use of good story telling, but you can't explain away the feeling a group of players get when they have just had their adventure ruined by some jerk who insisted on playing a Beholder, got the permission of the GM, and then death rayed all the enemies without the rest of the group getting to have any fun.

I hope that my 3 C's today have proved interesting.  Go, Game and Prosper!!

Getting rid of Weapon and Armor Proficiency the Demon's Souls Way

Pretty much as soon as the announcement that Dark Souls was going to be coming out, I got out my copy of Demon's Souls that I had put away since picking it up at Christmas and decided to give it the play through that it deserved.  I'm going for 100% trophy completion.  That is not going to be an easy task, but it should sure be a fun one.  Right now I'm about Soul Level 100 and about to finish my first run through of the game (that is only about 25 Hours of actual play time - I'm a quick one).  The other challenge I set for myself was that I was going to play the entire game offline - nobody will be helping me on this solo path towards greatness.  I will probably end up jumping online to PvP with people, but only because I'm a griefer who enjoys hunting and killing other collectors of souls.  ;P

My current character, Azmodeous (gotta love him) is a bucket of fun for several reasons.  One of those being that I decided I wasn't going to be taking him down a particular special road through the leveling process.  Instead, I decided to keep him pretty well balanced and try to make him have as much options accessible as possible.  He is turning out to be very mage-like, but he can swing one of the above big bad cloud swords like the best of them.

One of the reasons that is actually very easy in Demon's Souls is through the way that they deal with equipment and proficiency.  In order to use a particular weapon, all you need is the requisite minimum statistics.  There aren't any Feats you have to deal with, or any skills you have to train if you want to use something like a wand or a big huge sword.  All you need is a bit of magic power or a bit of strength or faith and you're good to go.  I love that. 

In the course of leveling this character up, I have tried to stay very general in the advancement process, though I have been putting a few more points into some statistics than into other.  I have tried to give him the ability to have as many magic spells as he can, as well as cast as many miracles as allowed (this game's equivalent of divine magic).  Right now, I am almost maxed out in both of these areas.  I can remember 5 of 6 possible magic spells and 3 of 4 miracles.  This gives my character a lot of flexibility as to what spells or miracles he can cast when.  Also, having both spells and miracles means that he has a pretty good balance of defense and offense making him a reasonably good PVE solo character.

But, spells and miracles are only half of it; there are also all the weapons.  There are actually suprisingly more magic weapons in the game than I remembered.  The reason for that is probably due to the fact that my first time playing through the game took me well over 200 hours.  I got beaten down badly all the time.  But, once you figure out the game, and get better at it, you learn to remember where things are difficult and where the bad things are going to come out of the darkness and the game's difficulty level becomes a bit more manageable.  Because the game took me soooooooo long to play, I remember using the same basic gear for a much longer period of time.

But now, that is a very different story.  I am going through weapons pretty quickly - I have gotten a bunch of new magical gear which keeps me entertained.  And, since I'm kind of middle of the road when it comes to stats, I almost never worry about not being able to use something - being a generalist certainly has its perks.

Maybe the simulationist has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why certain weapons may require proficiency to use well, or why some weapons are harder to use than others, or why a certain weapon might require special training to be able to actually hit someone with, but in the end, that all just feels like a lot of dead weight to me.  I don't want to have to tie myself down to using only Fullblades for the rest of my fighters career, when I pick up that Exotic Weapon Prof Feat at level 1.  Retraining aside, I think it is much more fun to simply allow people, within reason of course, to use whatever weapon they want whenever they want to use it.

The way that Demon's Souls does this is pretty clean and simple.  Every weapon has an associated set of abilities; maybe that is strength, or dexterity, or maybe it is faith, magic, or luck.  If you don't have the requisite ability score, you can't use that weapon to its full power.  You suffer some damage when wielding the weapon in question.  Most of the time though, weapons that are in the same category all pretty much use the same ability scores as a baseline.  If you're going to be hitting someone over the head with a big sword, you will likely need a high strength; the same can be said for medium sized swords, and other two handed weapons as well.  By doing this, the game allows you to pick from a lot of different weapons, keeping the game fun, and also keeping you from getting bored.  Variety is the spice of life and this system keeps life very spicy.

You could easily make whatever pen and paper RPG you are playing work the same way.  D&D 4e is particularly easy in this respect.  For example, you could simply rule that anyone with a strength of 18 can use a two-handed weapon and gain the proficiency bonus for it.  You could also say that 16 is required for things like axes; maybe 14 for stuff like one-handed swords, etc.  House ruling like this will let your players experiment with different types of weapons and will allow them the flexibility to pick up something new once in a while and try it out.

Marrying D&D 4e with FATE

In a conversation I had yesterday with @digitaldraco on Twitter, I brought up the legal question of whether or not you could unite the FATE system, which has an OGL with the D&D 4e system used under the GSL.  I'll get into the reasons for this in a second or two, but apparently it would seem there is some legal precedent for this.  Although I haven't played the Dresden Files RPG, I have heard a LOT of talk about it around the web; I am informed that the game uses the GSL for D&D right alongside the GSL for FATE.  It seems to me then that there is some precedent for using the open game license for FATE with 4e.  Cool.  Question pretty much answered (if this is wrong let me know).

The reason for this madness of mine is this:  I really love the tactical, miniatures based combat that D&D 4e provides, but I definitely see the problems it has for roleplaying.  I love me some 4e, but the groups that I have had play it usually ignore more roleplay opportunities in favor of hitting monsters with pointed sticks or blunt objects (or both).  I wouldn't say that the system used for D&D 4e discourages roleplaying; I just don't think that it goes out of its way to encourage it.

On the other hand, FATE is driven by roleplaying.  The narative power of Aspects is pretty amazing.  I feel like there is a lot of power behind that system which drives players to roleplay well.  Using FATE points to activate or compel a character's or even a creatures Aspect is an amazing game mechanic. 

I see no reason why these two system should not, or could not be wed into a blissful union that combines the best of both worlds. 

The power creep in 4e is pretty immense.  When you think about the fact that Fortune Cards recently hit the FLGS shelves, you can imagine that your characters will be getting a few new bonuses to their rolls which up until now they weren't getting.  What would happen if instead of giving these +X bonuses to your players based on some random card that they pull out of a deck, you gave them based on activating a character Aspect and thus encouraging roleplaying even during encounters? The answer: nothing bad. 

Aspects in FATE have a nasty double sided nature - they provide your character with a potential strength, but they also give the GM a pretty little weakness that he or she can exploit.  Giving Aspects to characters is a great way to change up the story and perhaps lead to some very, very interesting results. 

I can't say whether or not I really dislike the other elements of the FATE system because in all honesty, I have not really gotten to see stuff like Stunts and Skills in practice during a game.  My experience with FATE is limited to what I have read, or typed in PbP games.  I don't necessarily think the system is lacking in that respect; I just think 4e does it so exceptionally well that I wouldn't really want to move to a different system just to play other tactical fantasy combat.  My jumping ship to a different system is usually spurned by wanting to try something different, not try the same thing in a different way. 

My idea for combining these two would be to allow every character to start the game with 10 points to buy Aspects.  For every Aspect they pick up, they lose 1 point.  You start the game with whatever FATE points are left over and whenever you take an extended rest, you refresh X number of FATE points.  You can then invoke or compel Aspects whenever you want - you can use them to get a +2 to a single d20 roll (skill, save or attack) or gain a +2 bonus to AC (no rerolls allowed because of the difference in die size in the d20 system).  If you like that little houserule, why don't you give it a try and tell me how it works out.  I would love to know.  TTYL

Shadows of thier Former Selves - Ghost PC's ala Demon's Souls



This week, I mentioned that the Sequel to Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, would be coming out in 2011 and I may have mentioned in a comment that I am working on something of a Demon’s Souls Pen-and-Paper based clone. That is one of the many side-projects for a campaign on my current to-do list (which just keeps getting longer and longer).



The Blue Dude is Dead... Ghost Form FTW



One of the core ideas behind Demon’s Souls video game is the idea that death is not an end, but simply an obstacle to your character. When you die, your spirit leaves your body, you lose some of your max health and you get to go into the dungeon again as a ghost in order to retrieve your body and all of your lost exp.

I like that idea a lot. One of the cool things about ghosts, at least in mythology, is the idea that the spirit refuses to pass on as long if it is leaving its work unfulfilled; I find that this would make a great hook for the players and provide a reason for you as the DM to turn your players into ghosts after they die, instead of simply killing them off. Let’s face it, your players are the center of whatever world you are playing in. They have some epic destiny that they are all headed for right from the get-go. So, why should they be allowed to die off?

Resurrection has been in RPG’s and video games for a long, long time, but playing ghost characters doesn’t seem to be nearly as popular. There are all kinds of mechanical problems that you have to deal with, especially with D&D 4e when you want to run a ghost as a PC, but, why not just ignore most of that?? I like what Demon’s Souls does with their ghost modes. You lose a bunch of maximum health and have penalties when you die in ghost mode, but those penalties are much less than those you would face by actually losing your real body and dying that way. If you dye while in any of the game worlds, you face a host of penalties including shifting the alignment of the world in a particular direction; if you get killed by another player, you might even lose stats because of that death, but dying in ghost form is just a speed bump. You simply need to go retrieve your body and reclaim the exp that is still hooked up to your corpse.

I think thematically, this fits really well with D&D characters. You have your destiny, it needs to be fulfilled, and not even death is going to stop you. 4e also makes it easy to implement something like the Demon’s Souls system – if your player dies, one round after he drops, let him rise up as a ghost. Make his or her max health equal to his or her bloodied value and maybe restrict them only to at-will powers instead of letting them use dailies and encounters and action points (hey, they did die); but, other than that, let them play as normal. Don’t let them walk through walls like Casper, and don’t let them possess people, but let them keep on keeping on. When the fight ends, a little spiritual jolt is enough to implant them into their body again and function, once again, as normal.

Try this method out and see how it goes. I think it might need some play-testing to make it fair (and balanced) but I think thematically, it could work fine.

An End to Speciesism: Ability Score Bonuses in 4e

My review of Gamma World this week has put some interesting gears a turning in my head today. I have been working on a host of homebrew races lately, maybe you have read one or two of them, and one of the things that I always hate to do when homebrewing a race is figure out the racial bonuses to ability scores. Figuring out what ability scores go to a race is probably one of the easiest things to do in 4e race homebrew, but at the same time, it hurts me deeply knowing that I am pigeon-holing a race to be used with a certain type of class.

The new edition of Gamma World didn’t do that, which I find to be a major plus. Once you roll to get your origins, you get to put an 18 into your primary origin and a 16 into your secondary, then roll for the rest of the stats. Great. This method of tying what in 4e would be the racial bonus directly into your character’s origin guarantees that no matter how random your character may be, you are going to be on roughly the same playing field as everybody else when it comes to hitting in combat. What an excellent idea.

One of the things that 4e I think does badly, and actually 3e did badly as well, is hinder creativity and thematic openness in character generation by tying ability score bonuses to races rather than to classes. While in 3rd Edition, it made a lot of sense to do that when you have monsters that can be used as player character by taking a level penalty, for races in 4e, I have just not been able to find any reason to cling to this method, especially when you have all the races in the game being all the same starting level.

A lot of people talk about wanting to play a certain character race/class combination, but either don’t do it because they don’t want to be underpowered, or, they do it, and feel a bit out of balance with the rest of the properly matched party. Some of the designers from WotC have even suggested talking with your DM and asking if they would let you shift your bonuses around a bit so that you aren’t as ineffective at the table.

If this thought has ever crossed your mind, then why hasn’t this specisist behavior been put to an end. Ability Bonuses inherently promote the idea that a certain race is physically more capable at doing something than another race. THAT IS SIMPLY WRONG!! I believe that something needs to be done to end this type of prejudiced behavior. I propose a new system for ability score bonuses when creating characters.

My solution to this problem is tying ability score bonuses to your pimary class rather than your race. At level 1, when you make your character and say, “hey, I think I want to play a fighter, but I really want my race to be kenku,” take your ability scores bonuses based on the class and style of character you want to play and ignore the fact that you belong to a race whos ability score bonuses don’t match up with your class.

This method would still even support races that only get a single ability score bonus, like humans, just pick one ability score instead of two and get your feat like normal.

Can we please see a change to this style of race generation in future editions of the game? I know I am not alone on this. I know the players at my table would love this. I know the internet would love this. Please, for the sake of the hobby, help end speciesism and let us pick our stat bonuses unhindered.

Thank you.

Fast Forwarding Combat Part 3 – The 75% Rule

I remember back when I played Warhammer 40k on a weekly/daily basis that I always hated it when my Dark Elder or my Space Marines decided that they didn’t really want to fight any more. Having your troops run away and hide is always a pain, especially when it comes to War games.

If you check out the Dungeon Master Guys Podcast, in Episode 2, they give some good general tips for speeding up combat when the general outcome has been decided. They recommend getting inside the mind of your monsters, which I whole-heartily agree with. However I think some situations call for a bit more specific guidelines; although thinking of "outs" as mentioned in the podcast, is a really good idea, having a general idea of when those "outs" are going to kick in is a good thing to plan for.

I think a too many GM’s fail to use the “Run and Hide” option when they are in combat. I know in one of my encounters, a few very pesky Sniper Orcs had themselves a nice little perch and were hailing lead on the party through the entire combat – They also watched as about 90% of their fellows were brutally beaten, fried, and lightning bolted to death before their very eyes, without every stopping their bombardment of gunfire. The players then spent the next 2-3 rounds trying to get up to the two pesky snipers before finally popping them in the skull.

At some point, the combat has been firmly decided and victory is going to be whole sale for the party. At these points, it is really better to just let the party win quickly, so you can move on to a new, fresh encounter, which gets the party thinking, rather than grumbling. I realized after the last encounter, what I should have done is ended the combat when only the 2 snipers were left and had the poor fellows beg for their pathetic lives; of course, the party would most likely get whatever information they could out of them before looking up the Coup De Gras rules in the Rules Compendium, but again, that is a bit of fun that they wouldn’t have had if they spent time climbing a ladder and using an at-will power a couple times. While the Dungeon Master Guys recommend that when the Leader falls, the minions will take to the hills, I also would recommend that when the minions see most of their buddies painting the walls with their insides, those minions are not going to want to stick around, even if their leader is still standing.

I think it was Mark, from RPG Circus, who mentioned that in order to speed up combat with a large group, he pondered whether or not he was going to have to turn a bunch of monsters into minions in order to get the combat done quicker. He ended up not having to, because his party was on task, but actually, his point is really good. There are some situations in the game where monsters are not going to run and hide. These might be the mindless Undead or other creatures that disregard the beating that they are taking. In situations like that, I think it is often a good idea to turn a creature that into a minion, after it has taken a significant amount of damage and has very few ways to continue to deal damage to the party.

Under both of these Circumstances, I think you could easily follow the 75% rule (which I believe is the number used in 40k for Morale, If my memory serves me right). When either 75% of all the important monsters in a combat are dead, or 75% of the last enemies health is gone, either turn the creatures into minions or have them surrender, run, hide, beg for mercy, or some combination of the preceding. Your players will enjoy getting on with the game, and they might even come up with some interesting way to finish things off.

Fast-Forwarding Combat Part 2 – Quick Stealth Kills

In the last post, I talked about using my house rule: Overwhelming Victory as a means to fast forwarding through trash encounters in D&D 4e. However, occasionally you are not going to want to go quite that simple, even if your players are going to be slaughtering their way through all of the enemies.

There are times when you don’t want your blade hacking through enemies to make too much noise. Actually, I guess I should rephrase that. There are times when you don’t want the enemy you are hacking to bits with your blade to make too much noise. Yea.

If you are invading the Kobold Hall and are attempting to murder your way through the dungeon to the King of the Kobolds, there are times that you might not want to alert the enemy to your presence. Under these circumstances, using a simple series of Stealth Checks is a nice easy way to speed up combat against a group of monsters, which alone, provide no threat, other than acting as a very pesky alarm. I can’t have been the first person to think of ruling some Combats as Skill Challenges. The idea is pretty obvious, but I think a lot of people just lack the guideline to actually do such a think for themselves.

Have each of your players roll a stealth check. Decide the DC of the Stealth check based on the level of the monsters / their skill in perception, and see what happens. Success means you can skip the encounter, leaving a trail of corpses in your wake; failure means that the guards go on alert, and you probably have to use the Overwhelming Victory rules (which I presented yesterday) to see how many healing surges you lost because of your failure to stay quiet and hidden (not to mention the BBEG now know that you are on your way to claim his head). You could also expand this from a skill check into a skill challenge if there are a lot of enemies present. If you do something like that, let your players freely explain what they are doing and the kind of skills they want use in order to accomplish their goals.

Fast-Forwarding Combat Part 1 – Overwhelming Victory for D&D 4e

I think a lot of people notice that D&D 4e can drag a bit. I have especially noticed this in the few games that I have hosted this year. The Guys at RPG Circus brought up in one of their podcasts the idea of limiting the number of meaningless fights that you go through in an adventure and really skipping toward the last boss type of big encounter that you get near the end, but then again, there are still a lot of people that fall in that middle ground; these are the people that really like having lots of monsters populating their dungeon. They want to have a bunch of progressively more difficult combats which lead up to the big final boss encounter.

I guess that I fall somewhere in the middle of these two courts. I really feel a drag sometimes when I am throwing encounters filled with flunkies at the party; these combats take time, but the victory is almost always decided in the parties favor and very few casualties, much less damage, ever gets suffered.

If you look at games like WoW, even their developers realize that nobody wants to spend hours fighting the trash mobs in instances. They have started to shrink the size of the dungeon, limiting the trash mobs, and then break those dungeons down to 3 or 4 big combats before the final boss.

I really prefer this model. So, I have been trying to think up some house rules which I can use to essentially fast forward through the meaningless battles, that are essentially just filler before the party finally gets to fight the BBEG. This series will talk about a few of those house rules and how I plan to use them. Today I present the first of these rules: Overwhelming Victory

Overwhelming Victory
If you think about the typical organization of an organizations lair, or a dungeon populated with Gnolls/Kobolds/Orcs etc. you would usually expect there to be a lot of bad guys filling up a rather modest sized dungeon. But, playing out all of the combats with the rank and file can be monotonous. Now, you could simply say that the players mow through all of the enemies unscathed, but I really think that doing something like that takes a bit of fun out of the game. And, when you realistically think about it, even the mightiest of Players might take a lucky shot to the skull by a Goblin wielding a Big Hammer.

One way to keep these enemies in the dungeon, but speed through combats with them, and essentially skip their encounters, is to use a house rule which guarantees victory for the players, but has them rolling dice to see how much of their precious resources they expend. I think D&D 4e actually does a really great service by giving us Healing Surges, which can be used to gauge roughly how many times the players get hit in combat.

Basically, what I have decided to do in the future is that when the player’s are fighting an encounter which is below their average character level, I will have each of them roll a Saving Throw. For every level that the (not being played) encounter’s level is below the players, they get a bonus to their Saving Throw roll. If they make their Saving Throw, they make it through the combat unscathed. If they fail the roll, the group loses one collective healing surge. So, if you had 5 players and 2 of them failed their saving throws, 2 people from the group would lose a saving throw. The Default for this rule is that the person who failed the saving throw would lose his or her healing surge, but, if the group has a tank who want to lose that Surge for the team, he or she can lose his surge in exchange.

I look forward to giving this house rule a test drive. I will be interested in tweaking the bonuses to the Saving Throw, or the number of Saving Throws you force the players to make.

Multiple Weapon and Armor Enchantments in 4e pt. 3

In the pat I have discussed the process of putting multiple weapon and armor enchantments on a single piece of gear. Today, I will get down to the crunch and explain my homebrew rule for making this possible.

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Combining weapon and armor enchantments is very similar to Multi-classing in the most basic 4e form. The first thing you will do is do is determine the base item. In other words, you must first select a piece of magical armor, or a magic weapon, which you want to put an additional enchantment on.

You can put any secondary enchantment onto a piece of gear as long as that enchantment would be legal if it were the first. In other words, you can’t put an enchantment that requires the gear to be cloth armor, when putting it on a piece of plate. This follows the standard rules for enchanting items.

You can only put secondary or tertiary enchantments on weapons of higher level. In other words, the base weapon’s enchantment level must be higher than whatever enchantment you are putting on the weapon or armor.

The cost to put a secondary or tertiary enchantment is reduced by 25%.

Enhancement bonuses from enchantments do not stack, you always use the highest enhancement bonus from either enchantment.

In the case of weapons, always use the enhancement bonus with the highest critical high bonus.

All properties from any enchantments on the weapon or armor always remain active. Regardless of the number of enchantments on a piece of armor or a weapon, the properties on that piece of equipment are always ON.

Weapon powers are limited in the following ways.
At-Will and Encounter: When a piece of armor or a weapon has multiple at-will powers granted by different enchantments, regardless of the type of action, you can only use the at-will power of one weapon per round. In other words, you must designate which weapon you will make at-will and encounter powers with during that round. When you spend an action point, you may use a power from a different enchantment.

Daily: When a piece of armor or a weapon has multiple daily powers granted by different enchantments, regardless of the type of action, you can only use one daily power per encounter.

30 Day Game Part 3

Here is my 3rd installment of my, going to run seemingly forever, 30 day game module, which i'm building. In this entry, we get to look at the Introduction and some of the backstory.

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The Introduction

The following section should be read to the players as soon as the campaign starts, after character generation. The players should hear all this then immediately before they begin the first encounter and not before. Try to keep some measure of surprise regarding how the world has devolved before the players get wind of it.


The world is gone… the entirety of the material plane has vanished in an instant as the many planes come together and collapse in the cataclysmic destruction of not one world, but nearly all of them. Only a single bastion of light remains in the vast swirling chaotic mess that has become the universe: a tavern by the name of “The Black Cat.” Before the collapse, assorted travelers of race and background had converged within for a meal or to spend the night, none of whom were prior acquainted to each other or had any presupposition of what would soon occur. Moments before the end, a crazed and panicked gnome burst into the tavern; he hurriedly produced from within his robes a device which at first glowed dully before bursting into a circle of radiant energy. One of the guests to the tavern, panicked, ran for the door and opened it only to find himself sucked from the tavern and ripped into a million pieces, but through the open door, those within bore witness to the world’s collapse and the end of all things.

The gnome, who had not the chance to protest the initial patron from being torn asunder stood in front of the door barring anyone else from leaving and asked all those within the bar to make no attempts at escape as The Black Cat is now the only place left in existence and those within the tavern are the last hope for preservation of not only the planes, but the gods as well.

The gnome pulls himself together, brushes his matted hair back away from his sweating brown and holds the device out in his outstretched hand.

My name is Cornelius Fibble, I believe John Haverwell, this good establishment’s owner may well be acquainted with me as this isn’t my first time within these walls. I live just up the street from here, a home to which I retired following a life of travel and education in order to, how should we say, experiment in my now copious free time. You see, I am both a man, well, a gnome, of science and an inventor. In my travels and interactions with the many magics, both arcane and divine throughout the world, I’ve come to appreciate and expand my horizons to a degree that you here may believe to cross a boundary into the impossible. One of the devices that I have had in my possession for some time is a glass of sorts which continuously looks into the very near future; I use it, for the most part, to avoid confrontations with unwelcome bill collectors, but today, well, your today, it foresaw the end of the world. This is a device which I constructed that could, for a period, stop the flow of time in a small area, about the size of a one story building. It has allowed me to live far beyond the standard length of any normal individual’s life and continue my research for the span of many lifetimes. I’ve now used all but the one you see before you and I no longer have the materials needed to produce more. I have spent my time, I’m not sure how long analyzing and researching the present phenomenon and I believe I’ve been able to not only pinpoint the problem, but also a solution and a means to said end, but it will require your support as you are, perhaps the plane’s last and only hope. I have been able to construct various devices which might be able to help you in this task.

Cornelius moved to the bar and set his device upon the bar top. He then produced from his cloak a bag and from it he produced several silver pocket watches, one for each person within the bar.

I would ask that you come closer so that I can give these to each of you and explain their purpose and use.

The bartender first made a move for the watch and as he touched it, the chain that connected to it quickly attached itself to the bartenders flesh through his shirt at the waist, he seemed to take a start however made no exclamation of pain nor discomfort.

Each of these watches has been forged for the purpose of allowing you to venture into the nothingness and chaos that exists beyond these walls.
You will see that each of these watches is possessed by several dials, the largest of these marks the day. This is perhaps the most important thing I should mention, from now you will have only the length of a single cycle of the moon during which you can complete your task and save us all, after this time, the magic of my time stopping device will cease and we shall all be lost to this chaos.
The smaller dial within marks the hour, the magical energy of the watch only supports 12 hours of continuous use before it must return to the source of its power within these walls, you may therefore venture out for only 12 hours at a time before the watch must return here for an equal amount of time in order to recharge. The device you see before you here on the bar possess within it a powerful homing beacon which can reach beyond any plane or any world; each of the watches is connected to it. When the charge on the watch has run out, it will return to the beacon via its magical connection and bring the user of the watch with it. . I have constructed each of these watches to link to an individual’s soul. Soon each will link to one of yours. Because it is linked to your soul, should the watch feel that it is in jeopardy of destruction after you have fallen in battle, it will return you here so that I might care for your wounds in a timely manner and have you back out on the battlefield in the following day.
The third device within this time piece you will note is a series of dials. On each of these watches you will take head that the dials are currently reading 0, however on the watch which has now been bound to our good innkeeper John, now reads a total of 100, a measure of our fellow’s ‘soulestial’ worth. In my vast research and studies over these countless years, I discovered a value in one’s soul which increases with respect to his life experiences. You can therefore view this number and measure your strength, a process which might prove both humbling and scary depending on how you might value your own personally worth. It is here, not because I have a desire to press upon you the personal psycho-analysis that may even drive a perfectly collected wizard to the brink of madness, but because of another device I have developed; I call it the “Soulestian Apparatus.” This device constructs an item at the request of an individual providing he has enough “soul power” to bring that item into being.
This device has the power of our salvation. I developed with it another device that can identify sources of soul energy which are profound and powerful out there in the chaos. I believe that if we can gather all these sources of unbelievable soul energy out there, and should they all be brought here together, that when united and presented before the device, they will be able to call forth an artifact of pure soul energy as powerful as the cosmos itself that can undo the madness that has befallen the planes.
Your first task is to gather these and other items from my workshop up the street. I had not the power, nor the speed to gather these items myself before coming here. You will find the streets outside to be decidedly different in nature since last you saw them, but I would have you be courageous and brave this first challenge as many as those that are to come. Now each of you, take hold of your watch and go with strength.


Once the players get their watches, which they should first of all, they will notice each of the soul meters has been increased to 100 just as high as the bartenders figure. They are given the opportunity to talk to Cornelius as well as to the bartender and each-other. John has very little to say regarding much of anything other than the geography of the town outside the bar and he can draw the characters a map should they ask him to. If they ask, the gnome will put his house on the map and describe the layout of the house as well as the description of the two machines they need to retrieve. He also gives the players a pair of portable holes which they are instructed to use in order to retrieve the pair of machines.

30 Day Game Part 2

Well, continuing my posts regarding my long worked on 30 Day Game, mostly in light of the fact that others have come to notice it through Greywulf's Lair, here is the second installment of my many-parted series regarding 30 levels of play in a month(ish) of game sessions.

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The 30 day game’s mechanics

The Point of the 30 day game
The point of the game is to get a character from level 1 to level 30 in thirty days. The reason to conduct a game in this way is mainly due to a time crunch in terms of actual play days afforded to the players involved. Perhaps you play this game every day as the name of the campaign insinuates, or perhaps you play one, two, or three times a week, but the players involved desire to get there characters as far as they can in the time that they have and to experience as much growth in their characters as they are able.
Make no mistake, this is a combat based campaign experience, however there will be chances for players to make use of numerous skill challenges which may help to reduce the difficulty of certain combat challenges.
The ultimate campaign experience would then mean that the players are able to reach level 30 in 30 sessions. This is the ideal and perfect reward for the campaign – seeing your character to the completion of his epic destiny.

Encounter Difficulty
Each day, the players face a variety of encounters. During the heroic tier, when combat is less complicated, each day the players will face between 3 and 5 encounters. The first encounter of the day is always the easiest, it gives the players a chance to get used to their new gear from the day before and test out their new abilities. It also helps the players get back into the game, remember what they were doing, remember their tactics and their powers. It also helps the DM judge whether or not it is going to be a good or a bad game day based on the mood of the players involved.
During the paragon tier, there will be fewer encounters and the first encounter of the day will not be quite as easy as during the heroic tier, but will still give the characters a chance to try out new tactics based on the new gear they received and the new powers they gained from the day before.
During the epic tier, the players should have a pretty good idea of how their characters work and how the game works as well. Players who are new to the game when the campaign began should have a pretty good understanding of how the game works by this point and should therefore not need as much time to grasp their powers or the other players with whom they are playing. The further they get into the epic tier, the harder the encounters get. The last few days of the campaign will be single encounter games which will severely test the tactics, cooperation, and ability of the players. The final day is a massive boss battle which may or may not find the characters saving the world. If they get to this point, there aren’t any do-overs.

A level every day
If you’re going to play a game in 30 days and go from level 1 to level 30 that means one level a day. The condition to gain this level a day feat is by living through each day. If a player dies during a session, he is brought back to life at the beginning of the next session, but didn’t gain the level from the last session. If the other player’s were able to complete the days encounter without that individual they all advance a level while the other person lags behind. In addition to not gaining a level that day, the individual also doesn’t receive a magic item of his level per the experience requirement for gaining a magic item.

Item Acquisition
As mentioned previously, the players are allowed to pick an item they might desire at every level or exchange an item they have received at a previous level for one of that level’s equivalence. In order to better facilitate the speed of this item acquisition, each player should put together an item wish list for their character divided by level before they begin the campaign. Should they want to amend this list, they are able to at the DM’s discretion.

The total party kill
Each of the following encounters has varying means of increasing or decreasing the difficulty level as need be for less or more experienced players. If everyone dies, the players get another chance, actually they may get many as long as they don’t screw it up too badly (beyond the point of beating the encounters of the day). If they all die, chances are their tactics were grossly misguided, their luck was bad, or the DM did something wrong. If everyone dies and it’s the fault of the DM, the players are all saved by the gnome who immediately heals them and sends them back in to where they were with all of their daily powers refreshed and the players get to keep the magic item they earn if they beat the encounter. If they player’s luck ran bad or they used their tactics poorly, they come back into play, but may or may not get their dailies back and or they don’t get the item for the day that would have been gained for beating the encounter. If the players can’t beat the day’s encounter more than two times, it is left up to the DM’s judgment as to what to do…

Rules for Critical Failure on Skills

I saw that some people on the WotC forums were making posts regarding to adjudicating critical failures on skill checks. The rules below how we roll critical failures in skill checks in our games.

How to Determine a Critical Failures on Skill Checks

Whenever a character rolls a natural 1 on a skill check, that individual has done so poorly that something bad must befall him. If the character is trained in the skill to which he was using when he rolled a natural 1, roll another d20 and if the result is anything but a 1, that player is considered to have failed that skill check, but no abnormally poor result come about from it. If that player rolls a 1 on the second d20 roll, the skill check is a critical failure.

For players who are untrained in the skill to which they rolled a critical failure and if the player's race grants the player a skill bonus to the skill then, roll another d20 and make a save against bad luck (a roll of 11 or higher is a success).

If the player's race nor the player's training grants him no bonus in the skill, then the first roll of a 1 is considered a critical failure without any second roll.

What happens in cases of Critical Failures on Skill Checks
If you roll a critical failure as part of an extended skill check, the failure is considered to count as two rather than one failures. If you roll the critical failure as part of a standard skill use then any damage that would be taken as part of the fail is automatically considered maximized. If the skill is a knowledge skill being used in combat, then the result causes the individual to recall misguided information. If the result is for things in the case of stealth or thievery, the player believes that he has succeeded whereas the target knows that he has failed and thus gets the jump on the player. From this direction other skill checks can then be adjudicated as necessary.

Exception
You cannot roll a critical failure on knowledge based skill checks outside of combat.