Talif's journal, day 2

It's been a while since I updated, so I'll be somewhat summarizing the intervening time.

The following day, I enacted my plan. I borrowed a rope from Laurie and set off towards the cave mouth. The journey was less than an hour. There was a stream flowing in and I had to wade through it for a while. It finally pooled and diverted, and I was able to make my way on dry stone. I came to a steep smooth outcropping and had to use one rope to make my way down safely. I would have to come back later to gather the rope. At the base of the outcropping, I quickly made my way back to the familiar main cavern.

In the cavern, I began gathering flash rocks around the mining tunnels near the support beams, so as to cause the most devastation. Once done, I used my rope and grappling hook to climb out of the mine shaft. At the top, I gathered the rope, summoned my fenix and directed it into the shaft. I had it settle on the flash rocks and focus until they ignited while I braced myself a distance away.

The cave in was pretty spectacular. Rocks flew from the mine shaft, and the ground sunk in where the subterranean shaft had been. This done, I showed Laurie. He was satisfied. I gave him his rope back and he began to make preparations to leave. He asked if there was anything I could do for him, and I asked him to deliver a message to my father that I was safe. He said he would be happy to do so.

Following this I went back to the cave mouth, gathered my rope, then set back upon the north road.

Talif's journal, day 1, part 2

Just as I arrived back to the main road, I saw a figure in the far distance walking in my direction. As it drew nearer, I made out the colors and markings on the robes. They were imperial.

For a few moments I considered hiding or disguising myself, but my discipline bade me to grit my teeth and hold my ground. I waved a hand to signal my presence and then sat myself down on the road to wait.

It was an old man who approached. His cloak was indeed imperial, but the sparse markings signified that he was a minor governmental serviceman. I introduced myself as a traveler, and asked if he would mind some company upon the journey north. He obviously noticed my imperial insignia and questioned them; "What is a soldier doing alone out here?" I explained that I'd been discharged and would prefer not to leave the story at that.

The traveler introduced himself as Laurie, a civil engineer. He would indeed enjoy the company. He was out here on business--he'd been sent to find and survey an old mine. "In fact, by my map," he remarked, "it should be nearly due east of here."

My pulse quickened. I countered, "Well, I just came from that way, and I saw no signs of any mine. Perhaps we should continue north and look for this mine a little further on." He seemed to buy my story and agreed to continue on.

It was getting on to evening as we were walking. Ahead of us there was a nearly steady stream of black flying creatures streaking from some point in the east westward over the river. Upon noticing this, Laurie perked up. "Perhaps we should head towards the point of origin of those creatures."

A coldness set in my stomach as I realized that those were the probably same creatures I'd seen earlier; they were leading us back to the natural cave entrance that would have been some distance down from the high ledge that made an obstacle for me.

Somewhat resigned, I questioned him about the nature of the creatures. "They seem to be similar to the grats that live in the empire. They are cave dwelling flying animals." I decided I had no choice but to accompany him on the way to the cave. When the night fell over us, we were rather near the mouth, although we could no longer see it. Laurie and I both thought it a good idea to set up camp.

Laurie was amazed at the ease with which I could create a fire. He considered himself lucky to be in the company of one of a battle mage. I had made up my mind about my course of action this time. "Laurie, what would you say if I told you that the mission you've been sent upon was going to lead to people's deaths?"

"What? That's preposterous!" Laurie laughed. "I am a simple engineer. My work is peaceful. There is no way that it could bring harm."

I confessed that I had been in the mine, and I explained my suspicions about the explosive minerals being used as weapons. "Look I'll show you what I found." I pulled out a small amount of the powder that was in my pack and threw it in the fire. It instantly flared up and the fire surged outward. Then the fire just as quickly returned to its normal size.

I continued to explain that the emperor Luca had ambitions to attack Essum. I said that I had heard talk of a secret weapon, and that I believed this must be it.

Laurie cried, "But Essum is a peaceful country! I have family that lives there. Emperor Luca is such a vicious man." We spoke for a while more on the empire. Laurie said, "Listen, I love my country, but I have no love for Luca."

"Then do this for me. Go back and say that the mine had collapsed completely, and that there would be no way to reclaim it."

"But I can't do that. They may send someone else after me to survey. I am only the first."

My face fell, and I pondered on this for a minute. "Then I'll collapse the mine. You can go back and tell them the truth when you report that it is completely devastated."

"That is a great idea! You are doing me a favor. This will save me the trouble of climbing through the cave. I am an old man and my strength is not what it used to be."

With the plan set in place, we settled in for the night.

Talif's journal, day 1, part 1

I began my journey walking north along the road on the eastern shores of the great Lake Harnell. The road was dusty and foot trampled. The terrain was sparse and dry rolling hills, full of scrub grasses, bushes and little else. I had a rough map of the landscape, showing the rough path of the road and the locations of the few towns in this country (I counted 8 total on the map.) Since I had nothing else to do, I was making my way north toward Wahr; this was the nearest town, perched on the northeastern edge of the lake, and it seemed to be about a day and a half's walk, judging from my progress along the curve of the lake so far.

Around midmorning I spotted the remains of an old signpost on the right side of the road. I searched around and found the original sign and was able to make out the faint words "Old Mine." I worked the sign back onto its post how it might have originally been and found the general direction it seemed to have pointed. Although there was no path leading me east, there was a sort of dip in the land that may as well have been one, so I decided to follow it.

I walked eastward for nearly an hour, all the time seeing nothing but a small herbivorous creature, studying me curiously from a hilltop. Eventually I came to a dusty square object. Upon observation I realized that it was a wooden box, overturned on its side and broken in places. In the box were a couple of large rocks, each about a span in diameter. The rocks were dusty and rather unremarkable, but this was the only sign of human construction that I'd seen yet.

I decided to make my way to the top of the nearest rise, so that I might remark the layout of the country around me and perhaps find something else noteworthy. I took about ten steps eastward and was all of a sudden greeted by a sickening crack. The ground underneath me quickly gave way and I went with it. A desperate grasp saved me from a steep drop, but my staff clattered down below. I pulled myself back to the surface and surveyed the scene.

This was apparently some sort of man-made shaft that had been covered over with boards. Over the years, dust had so covered the opening that it now appeared invisible. I peered down the hole and found nothing but darkness. I found a nearby rock, imbued it with magical light and dropped it down the shaft.

About 50 feet below, the rock found the bottom, where the light glinted off of the metal of my staff. Rotten beams supported the squarish sides of the shaft all of the way down. I surveyed the beams near the surface and tested their strength with my hands. I found one that seemed to be sturdy enough to support my weight, so I pulled the rope out of my pack and tied one end around the beam. I dropped the rest of the rope down into the shaft and rappelled along the beams and rocky outcroppings to the bottom.

Once down, I grabbed my staff and transfered the magical light source to the orb at the end of my staff. There were some sort of vehicle tracks along the ground in both directions. I followed them about 20 paces west only to find that they ended abruptly in stone debris that completely filled the tunnel. This appeared to be the scene of a cave in.

I then followed the tracks and the tunnel eastward. This was definitely some sort of mine shaft; the walls were unnaturally carved in even proportions about the height of a man and there were more support beams spaced evenly along the shaft. I walked for nearly 100 feet when the shaft finally opened up into a natural cavern. I could see ahead of me where the tracks ended abruptly; there were two carts here with more of the same rocks.

As I stepped into this cave with my glowing staff, I heard the rustling of some creatures above my head. I looked upwards, but could find no sign of a ceiling. I began to chart my way along the sides of the large cavern to get a feel for its size. It seemed to slope up to the north and downwards to the southeast. Along the north wall I found obvious signs of mining. There were rocks of various sizes, including some ground to a fine powder. I decided to test the properties of a tiny portion of powder by putting it to flame. To my amazement it flared in a brilliant flash of light. I tried the same with a rock, and it had a somewhat explosive reaction, breaking into smaller chunks. This strange rock had some powerful properties, and I guessed that the empire would try to harness this as a weapon in order to subdue their enemies.

I filled my pack with a good portion of the powder and some of the smaller rocks, then made my way up along the cavern slope. I finally glimpsed a few stalactites, so I cast light upon them. The cave ceiling was covered in small, winged creatures that were somewhat disturbed by the sudden illumination. I continued along the wall east to find an alcove leading to a steep ledge. I had left my rope at the entrance, so I could go no further. I assumed that above this ledge there was a natural cave tunnel that lead to the surface, since the creatures would have to leave the cave somehow in order to forage.

I examined the rest of the cavern and found nothing else of interest, so I made my way back to the opening shaft and climbed up. I covered my tracks and made my way back west to the main road.

Behold the frontier!

Last Friday, Nate told me about his diceless campaign. We went through character creation in about half an hour and then began some actual play.

I decided to be a magic user. Nate had me make up four spells off of the top of my head that would be equivalent to what a first level character might have. He decided I would get four spell uses per day. I made all of the spells based on a fire theme. I then asked him about armor restrictions, and he explained that there weren't any. His game was more about thinking realistically, not about balance. My character could do whatever he wanted.

While I was working on that, Nate drew up a map of the frontier and surrounding countries. If a page was divided in half, the frontier was the upper half. It was divided from the three southern countries by a nearly impassible mountain range (which is why it is very sparsely populated) and a large body of water in the center. Below this was a country to the left, the republic of Essum, and a country to the right, the Highland empire. South of Essum was a sea, and south of Highland stretching west below the sea was the Kingdom of Jowston.

I decided my character was from Highland, which probably meant I was used to more authoritarian rule. Well maybe he was naive about the rest of the world, but basically well

meaning. This led to a discussion about why I might be in the frontier.

So here's what I came up with:

Character: Talif

Abilities: battle mage

25 years old. Average height.

He wears chain mail with an imperial robe, red and purple with yellow embroidery along the collar. (Nate says, "you might not want to show that off"). Also wears leather gloves, jackboots, a skullcap and has a long knife in a sheath at his side.

He carries a backpack with a rope and a grappling hook, a spellbook, a water skin and simple provisions. In his hands he carries a staff. The staff has a runed metallic orb on one end, and a metal sheath covering a thin spearhead on the other.

His spells are as follows:

1. Fire shot. Shoot a fireball long range.

2. Flame Jet. The orb of his staff essentially becomes a close range flame thrower.

3. Flame Aura. A heat whirlwind surrounds my character affording protection from projectiles.

4. Summon Fenix (Nate suggested I spell it this way). My character calls a flame bird from the sky to serve him.

In addition to these spells, he can perform any minor cantrips (such as creating magical light or creating a small flame across a room) at will.

Here's the story we came up with:

Talif's father was a glassblower in the town of Brindle (in the western part of the empire, somewhat close to Essum.) All children in the empire are required to serve in the youth brigade, and those who show great promise are selected to train at the battle academy in the capital. Talif was one of the select few chosen to become a battle mage.

Nearing the end of his training, he learned more and more about the Emporer Luca's ambitions to invade the peaceful Republic of Essum. Talif's uncle was from Essum, and he was very fond of the country; thus he began to distrust the empire.

Talif decided to desert the service, but a rival and prefect battle mage, Edric, ratted him out to the captain as a traitor. He had to flee for his life and ended up faking his own death "Fugitive" style by jumping down a waterfall.

After this he managed to hide in a wagon cart to escape the city. From here he fled along the outskirts of the mountains until he found a pass to the north.

The campaign begins as our hero clears the mountains and makes his way along the main north road into the frontier land.

Nate's campaign teaser

The other day, Nate asked me if I'd be okay with him trying to run his own campaign. He was tired of getting bogged down with rule sets and wanted to try to create a game without all of the excess rules--i.e. the stuff that left me rapidly flipping pages while he would sit waiting.

His main motivation was to take all of the meta game stuff out of the hands of the players. No, you don't roll for stats. No, you don't even roll to hit. Anything that would need to be decided would be in the hands of the DM, whether he chose to roll or not. This was extremely simple, probably too simple, but I was willing to give it a try.

In fact, we tried it out, and I've been left feeling very inspired, but I'm going to leave it at that for the moment. I'll start detailing my experience and thoughts over the next couple posts.

What makes a great game master?

Once, when I was talking about how to run a first edition campaign with Carl, he explained the common sense rulings in "oldschool" games. Players didn't have a list of skills with numbers for "Athletics" or "Diplomacy." These things were decided by what sort of profession your character was.

If your character was a plumber, he wouldn't have to roll to see if he could figure out what was clogging the sink drain. He deals with that sort of thing every day. But if it came to something unusual, say a student had dropped a lit cherry bomb down a toilet in the school bathroom, well a plumber might still have to roll, but he would have a much easier time figuring out the problem than a teacher. In the old days, the DM would just assign these rolls accordingly without referring to a stat sheet.

To help explain this further, he ran a little roleplaying session with me. I was a thief, number19. Old number 19 wasn't around anymore, so I had just been promoted. I was supposed to steal a necklace from a wealthy patron in the city. Here I was looking at the manor house and walled courtyard from a hilltop. I didn't see anyone around, and I'd heard the old lady was out shopping in the agora, so I decided to break in.

I made a horrible mess of the job. The lady wasn't out shopping; she was in her courtyard, and tried to attack me with pruning shears. I didn't plan on the bodyguards. I tried to tell them that the lady was in the market and needed help, but it didn't fly. I ran for it. There were two doors to the house. I chose the left. I found her room, and grabbed some jewelery only to realize that the windows were just were too small for me to escape through. I was blocked in by the body guards. One good punch and I ate it.

Here's the thing that amazed me. This was extremely fast paced and heart racing, and Carl made up everything on the spot. We didn't have dice with us, so whenever I got in a situation where I had to fight someone, he played rock-paper-scissors with me. I had three hit points. If I lost three times, I was dead. The lady had one hit point, while her body guards had three as well. I think I got lucky and managed to take out one of them, but two were too much for me.

This was magic. I feel like I finally got to experience the tao of a good game master. The rules are just guidelines, and ultimately don't matter. The heart of the game is much more akin to a sparring match than a board game. It's like the fast paced narrative of a debate--a battle of wits, or thinking on your feet with only confidence and creativity at your disposal.

Finding a better edition

Since fourth edition wasn't my cup of tea, I began looking into other versions of Dungeons & Dragons. I looked to my friend Carl to help me figure out what to do next; since he was a long time DM, he would be able to tell me what system was the best and what sort of problems I might to watch out for.

My synopsis of his response is that all of the D&D editions had drawbacks. First edition AD&D was imbalanced and complicated because all of the classes had separate rules. They leveled at different rates. You had to refer to a table to determine whether or not attacks succeeded. The later editions tried to fix these problems by making the game more balanced, but they ultimately failed in the attempt. Second edition AD&D is more convoluted. Third (3.5) edition streamlined some of the work by getting rid of the THAC0 table and made the classes somewhat more balanced. The imbalance problem is still there, however, and once characters are about level 7, the game becomes so imbalanced that it is nearly unplayable.

I'd played 3.5 and felt that the rules were extremely confusing compared to fourth edition, so I didn't want to go down that route. Since Carl mentioned that he was interested in trying to run a first edition AD&D campaign again, I decided that maybe this is what I should try as well.

I went to a bookstore and bought some cheap used copies of the books, and spent the next couple of weeks perusing them. I downloaded the OSRIC rules from the internet and looked through them. I started listening to the Roll for Initiative podcast, which deals solely with 1st edition.

When I felt like I was finally ready to DM (or at least attempt), I played through some solo sessions with my friend, Nate. These didn't go too badly, but I found myself frustrated with the combat system. All of the special powers were gone, which was a major plus, but I couldn't stand having to keep looking for the right table when it came to determining attacks. It was just too bulky. The D20 system did a great job in making a straightforward combat model.

If I slogged through the inexperience and became very familiar with the rules, this system would probably work for me. However, I just feel like I don't want to get into it. I've yearned for a simple, straightforward system, and I think I may just build my own.

Attempting to fix fourth edition

Assessing some of the frustrating aspects of playing 4th edition D&D led me to think that maybe I could fix them. I spent a fair amount of time on En World and other websites collecting homebrew rules.

The biggest issue was that combat dragged on and became a sort of chess game. Players would spend to long looking at their list of skills and deciding what to do next. Everyone seemed to have too many hit points. It was fun the first couple of times, but I started to feel like we were playing two games.

The first game was ione in which we role played. We had skill sets that created a sense of accomplishment when overcoming challenges. There were risks involved because the players had to roll against difficulties to overcome challenges. They had to be creative to use their skills effectively when confronting challenging situations.

There was one point in the campaign where the characters were helping a group of people construct fortifications for their village. Someone could help by researching "how to build fortifications" in the local library, while someone else would spend their time gathering wood. It was kind of hokey and unrealistic, but it was at least creative and enjoyable.

I had very few problems at first with this aspect of the game. I tried out some skill challenge sessions with three of my friends on two separate occasions, and it worked out pretty well. The problems were associated with the second "mode" of the game.

Whenever the characters got in to a battle situation, I began to feel like we all put down the role playing game, pulled out a battle mat, threw down some figurines, gathered our special move cards and began playing a tactical wargame. The special attacks were reminiscent of the fighting moves in video games, ie "I press left, left, right, right to activate my special flying kick."

The battles began to take up most of the time in sessions. When I tried to run a campaign, my players groaned as soon as a battle situation was introduced. Thus, I decided this is what had to be fixed.

I considered making enemies have half of their hit points or just turning all of the combat into a skill challenge, but I realized that this wouldn't fix the problem because most of the advancement in fourth edition was focused around gaining more powerful combat abilities.

I finally gave up and decided that fourth edition just wasn't for me.

D&D Experiences, part III

Finally I was introduced to fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons.

My friend Josh was eager to run a campaign, so those of us looking for an outlet were eager to join in. I had heard a lot of the down-talking of the new edition from the hardened gamers before I even got a chance to see the game; so I expected to be let down.

My first impressions were not as I expected. A lot of the over complicated rules had been simplified. There was a computer program to help choose skills for and advance your character (Josh was subscribed.) All of the abilities were spelled out for us. For once, I understood all of the options available as a player. I actually quickly caught on to the rules for the DM too.

Our three player characters played through a module and some quick homemade dungeons before we began a campaign in earnest. Our first characters were really silly; mine was a flatulating dwarf named Big McLargeHuge. We added flair to make the abilities fit with our characters. It was very fun at first.

When we began our campaign in earnest, some of the glaring frustrations began to appear. First it was just the length of combat sessions. We'd run encounter sessions that would have to be cut short. Combat quickly began to get tedious.

I spent some time talking with Josh about ways to make the campaign run better--less focus on getting to the "end" of the dungeon. Throw in some randomness to make the game more freeform.

I decided to playtest my own sessions to see if I could do a better job. I made a random dungeon and had two players go through it, and it seemed to work pretty well, but combat was still a mess.

Thus began my long obsession with fixing D&D.

D&D Experiences, part II

It was about a year after my first time playing when I was reintroduced to the game. A friend of mine, Nick, was very familiar with the books (he owned a large collection of 3.5 books), but his interest was somewhat in power-gaming as a player. Nick's DMing was pretty freeform, but one of our players was rather frustrated by the fact that there wasn't enough action, and he made it very clear that was bored through the sessions.

Then I met Carl. Carl was a long time DM and was comfortable enough with the rules and his abilities to let his players explore the world as they pleased. We didn't get very far in that campaign because he switched to the Traveller system shortly after I started playing, but I got a taste.

The rules for creating a character seemed rather involved, but I managed to get through them. I made the mistake of choosing a psionic character, when I was not very familiar with the rules. The psionic system has always felt like it was just tacked on to D&D at the last moment, even though it's been carried through all of the editions.

I remember being a little distressed when I realized that I made my character a pacifist in a game system rather focused towards combat. I was used to role playing that was very much seen only through the eyes of the player character. I didn't get a grasp of the "meta gaming" experience until I began to grasp the rules in D&D.

Carl was pretty good at DMing the game. Because he played an open "sandbox" style, he was able to come up with a lot of the stuff we'd come across on the fly (by rolling on random tables.) We didn't have to fight everything. We managed to avoid fighting with ogres for instance by using diplomacy.

Again, these sessions ended all too quickly. I didn't get a real taste for an evolving plot. I did, however, get to see how quickly the game devolved into table talk when there was a group of seven or more players.

My first D&D experience

I've played a bit of dungeons and dragons, but I don't feel that I've had much experience with the type of long-spanning, engrossing games that long time players have. Most of the games have been "one-shot" or the beginnings of a campaign that never reached fruition. It was about the time I was graduating college; Joe and I had been making up our own board games and talking about programming computer games again, when I think I heard about the possibility of having a DM come over and run a session for a couple of my friends.

There were about 8 of us who quickly rolled up characters and played a one-shot session from the D&D 3.5 DMG. We didn't take any of it seriously in the slightest; the person playing the wizard decided that magic missiles would be shot from her breasts. It was a lot of fun, and we talked about playing more, but nothing really came of it. Looking back, I felt bad for the DM. He was just kind of thrown in to the task because he had the knowledge, and I think we was a little adverse to our jabbing that he should start up a campaign for us. I suppose it takes a little more work and ambition to put something like that together, especially for some people you just recently met.

Alas, poor Horror High

I got into role playing when I was much younger (as I assume most people do), although I never played any formal system until much later. My best friend, Joe, and I played a very informal game that had no real rules. We would just present situations for the other person to figure out and imagine the consequences.

Joe and I had spent a lot of time talking about what sort of video game we would design ourselves. We wanted to create something more open and "choose your own adventure" style.

At some point it just naturally evolved into playing out the type of story without the limitations of a strict game system.

Joe created a game called "Horror High." The premise was that aliens had taken over the school and abducted everyone while you were in the bathroom. You had to figure out how to survive a situation with these green, laser toting, amoeba-like creatures roaming the halls. Along the way sharpened pencils and straws with spit wads are the weapons that come to your aid. There was plenty of mystery involved in finding your way through the maze-like school; "natural" barriers like fallen lockers, pools of acid and locked doors had to be circumnavigated. Eventually I found my way to the space ship that had crashed through the school bell tower on top of the gymnasium, and battled the "Aliens" reminiscent boss to free the school.

Of all of the games we played, this was the longest running and the only one that reached completion. I think it was largely inspired by the NES game "Maniac Mansion." It was probably the most fun I'd had playing any sort of game growing up, and yet there were no formal rules to the game. All we needed was Joe's pencil drawing of the school with all of the relevant information written on the sides, a list of the items I'd acquired while exploring the school and, most importantly, an uninhibited imagination.

Ah, those were the days. Unfortunately, our Spanish teacher caught Joe showing off the game to a classmate, promptly confiscated it and threw it away. In later years, when we made our abortive attempts at programming video games, we tried and failed to resurrect it. Programming always proved to be to tedious and limiting for any fruitful achievement.

So long "Horror High." I'll never forget you.

Beginnings

This is a blog that I started to detail my musings on role playing. I created the account several weeks ago, but haven't really felt like I've had anything worthwhile to post. After feeling dull and listless, finally had some spark lit, and to mix metaphors, my cup runneth over. I'll try to finally begin detailing my thoughts in the next couple posts.