Tag Archives: D&D

Session summaries

Having write ups of a game session is helpful to keep track of when the party was where, and whom they met, and what they did.

I first experienced session summaries, as an official thing players can do to earn XP, in the AD&D [Affiliate Link] campaign, Graveyard of Empires, of over four years of Wednesday nights. I’ve written about it many times. The DM gives 150 XP per level, so at 7th level, I’m earning 1,050 XP per session. John, the DM, wants at least one player to do an “official” summary, but each player can participate. We used a G+ group for this.

For the AD&D campaign, John made us pay for training. After awhile, he modified the Session Summary award for virtual GP equal to our XP awards that could be used to pay for training, and could be shared with others.

John carried on with that in the two year Stars Without Number [Affiliate Link] campaign, and now the follow-up to the original campaign, called After The Fall, using OSE [Affiliate Link]. The Stars Without Number game was posted to a Discord server. For After The Fall we are using a wiki software called MediaWiki that the GM hosts on his website.

My Campaigns

I use session summaries that I write as GM for my games, to ensure I don’t lose track of anything. I write them for the players, as I know what the GM needs to know, but also sprinkle in some things they didn’t necessarily know to reward them for reading it. I used the free Campaign Wiki site. It requires manual formatting, but is simple, and one can export it to text or HTML.

I first did this with my AD&D [Affiliate Link] campaign, The Broken Lands, and then the Delving Deeper campaign, Delver’s Deep. With Delver’s Deep I also put it into the Markdown editor Joplin. Joplin has a desktop and an Android and iPhone app and it can be synced vie Dropdown or similar service.

It may seem like a lot of work, but the information is built over time. the most amount of work is getting the starting information the players need, and to cross-link things as they begin interacting with the world. After 10, 20, 30, and now 43 sessions, The Broken Lands wiki looks quite impressive.

For the most part I try to do the summaries right after the session so it is more complete. I do this for both the Wednesday night campaigns and my campaigns.

The Benefits

There are several benefits for a campaign wiki:

  • The GM has a handy cross-linked reference to minimize forgetting what the players know and keep track of multiple threads of information.
  • Diligent players can keep up with things, and also have a reference.
  • New players or players that miss a session can more easily get up to speed with what is going on.
  • It could be the basis for a novel or short stories, or help create modules based on the campaign.

My First Experience With Campaign Summaries

Campaign summaries are nothing new to me. Back in the day when I first played Griswald, the namesake of Follow Me, And Die! i wrote up a personal summary of what Griswald did. I maintained that for every session for a few years of real time, and over ten years of game time. I did this because my brother Robert, my first and favorite DM, has a very rich campaign world. It is about 36 years old. Now his wife and kids and spouses play in it.

I still have it somewhere, and at one point when I had a decent enough computer, I typed up those notes.

One funny thing is I used the dating system of my brother Robert and I have Griswald at one year ahead of where Robert said I was. He said he was DM and he was right, so I accepted it.

What is your experience with campaign summaries whether back in the day, or more recently?

How I run AD&D

I’ve mentioned bits and pieces of how I run AD&D in various blog article and quick blurbs on various social media, but I don'[t think I’ve ever done a complete explanation.

AD&D (and by that I mean 1st edition), is what I’ve played and ran the most. AD&D is a collection of “modules” that one can use or not use. My preferences for how I run it are largely influenced by how we played it back in the day. One example is weapon speed. We tried it a few times and gave up on it.

In some ways AD&D is a better as a source of an example system for something, like random gems and jewelry. I like a simpler set of rules, like Delving Deeper. The Dungeon Master’s Guide is a great tool for any GM for any game.

AD&D is also a great example of how NOT to organize an RPG rule book. Like rules should be near each other, like height, weight, and age tables. I recall similar things being near each other in the DMG, but that is only my mental catalog, some things have 40 or 50 pages between them. Then there is something like multiple attacks by fighters like 3/2 attacks per round, which is mentioned in a couple places in the Players Handbook and a couple more in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

I used to have a fully functioning catalog and ability to find stuff in the various manuals, but over the years, some things have faded. Things that I recall as near each other, are nowhere near each other. I am slowly getting the pieces needed organized.

Books Used:

For the DM, whatever I want. But generally the Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, and Fiend Folio. I use all kinds of things for planning settlements, lairs, tombs, and dungeons.

For the Players, the Players Handbook and spells from Unearthed Arcana as they discover them.

[All of the above links are Affiliate Links.]

Character Creation

4d6 arrange as desired. I have a rule I call, “But I want it….” that allows players to have the minimums they need to run the sub-classes.

But I Want It – Players wishing to play a class who do not roll the stats for it, can set the minimum stats for those ability scores that are pertinent, but all other stats will be rolled on a d4+8 making their range 9-12.

Starting gold is 3d6 x10.

Hit points are maximum at first level, including the bonus or penalty from Constitution.

Death at -10 Hit Points. Binding wounds stabilizes, but does not bring consciousness. If knocked to negative hit points, you have experience trauma and are out for 1 hour per negative. Magical healing can minimize this.

Birth Date: Calendar is 12 months of 28 days, so d12 for month and 3d10-2 for 1st-28th day of the month.

Alignment: Good and evil are as one does. I have evil characters who are saving the world as long as they continue to get rich off it. Are they truly evil?

Alignment Languages: NONE. We NEVER used them that I can recall back in the day.

Detect Evil – Only beings of great power and consciously and consistently devoted to evil will register. I don’t necessarily play kobolds, goblins, and orcs as evil, just against the status quo of the “civilized” groups. I take this from the DMG. Good or Evil are based on one’s actions. Call yourself evil but if you save children from a burning building, you’re not necessarily evil.

Classes: Players Handbook, bard class document. Any race can play any class. I also allow non-standard multi-class options, like a half-elf cleric/ranger.

Experience Points for casting spells. Spell casters get 100 XP per level of spell they cast that benefits the adventure. The spell has to work, so interrupted spells are just waster, no benefit. I took this from my brother Robert, my first and favorite DM.

Reading Spells – We never required Read Magic to read spells. That’s how I still do it, as do most I have played with. Nor do we require Write to inscribe a spell into a spell book.

Spell Components – We alternated or were not consistent with spell components. sometimes back in the day we were super strict about spell components. Other times we only required components for the big power spells that needed rare or valuable components. In my campaign, I don’t worry about spell components.

Spell Range and Area of Effect – Range is in feet indoors and yards outdoors. Area of Effect is ALWAYS as stated, feet are always feet. It’s easy to confuse this and an enormous AoE gets used, when it really isn’t that big.

Gaining levels. If the party acquires enough loot to level up, they must be in a safe place, such as getting back to town, or a fortified location that allows them to rest up. On the journey across the sands of The Broken Lands, I have ruled that the lairs they cleared out are secure.

Don’t Roll a 1 – When a task is relatively trivial, but there is urgency, danger, etc. I tell players, “Don’t roll a 1.” on a d20. This ratchets up the tension and focuses everyone to watch and see if the 5% chance of failing a simple task under stress thwarts their plans. I use this mostly at convention games, and use it in all games I run, not just AD&D.

Deities – Not really a rule, but they way I’m handling deities in my campaign. Instead of pantheons and all the different bits, the main focus is the general phrase powers of light and powers of darkness. There are individual deities, but few stick to just one. This has a bonus for the home brewing GM. You don’t have to make up a pantheon to fit your world, or file off the serial numbers from another pantheon to make it fit.

The powers of light support life and natural death. The powers of darkness deceive and promise eternal life, that ends up being undeath. This is the good/evil conflict in my campaign.


GM Rulings

As situations come up in the course of play, I make GM rulings and add them to a GM rulings document in Roll20 for the players to see, and to remind me.

Shooting Into Combat – Normally, there is a chance to hit allies. After a fight with an Ettin, I decided to make a formal change, so it is clear. It makes sense to me that when the party is fighting a giant sized creature and no one in the party is Enlarged/Polymorphed/Etc. to also be giant sized, and there is sufficient illumination/vision to see both targets, that there is no chance for friendly fire. I made one formal check and no one was hit. I silently decided not to make further checks to avoid bogging down the combat with discussion. If you do missile fire into the dark or vs. an invisible opponent, even if a giant, there is a chance to hit an ally.

Spell Casting While Invisible – Enlarge does not constitute an attack when cast on an ally. Thus an invisible caster stays invisible. My current party loves to enlarge their tank so he hits harder.

Adding spells from Unearthed Arcana – I added some spells as part of the normal spells, like ceremony, phantom armor, and alter self.

Brazier for summoning Fire Elementals – As per MM p. 37 Elementals can only be summoned once per day per device. A device capable of summoning more than one type, can summon one of each type each day.

3/2 Attacks per Round – Like so many other simple things in AD&D, all the rules for this are scattered. I made a GM ruling that gathers all the information together and how it works.

This rule is all over the place and buried in the Gygaxian prose. It ONLY applies when fighting non 0 Level types. Any classed PC or NPC or monsters of 1 or more Hit Dice. For 0 level types fighter classes get 1 attack per level up to 6 available opponents, if surrounded.

3/2 means every other round of melee you get 2 attacks, once at beginning of the round, and once at end. The first attack goes first, in spite of the initiative.

This is made clear on page 63 of the DMG (see quote below in yellow) that the 3/2 means every odd numbered round of melee they get 2 attacks. (Every odd numbered round of melee for that individual is how I interpret this. If the first round of combat is only melee for SOME combatants, and those with 3/2 don’t engage in melee until round 2, then it is their 1st round of melee. One attack at beginning of round, and one at end.)

Those with 2 attacks per round get one at beginning and one at end of each round of melee.

Haste adds one to this number, 3/2 would be 3 attacks one round and 2 the next. 2 attacks per round becomes 3. Slow removes the 2nd attack in melee.

Casting Verbal Component Spells underwater – Water Breathing or Airy Water or similar required to cast spells while underwater.

Water Breathing in air – Air breathing creatures in air with this spell can breathe normally and don’t need to stay underwater until the spell expires.

Rules From Other Games

I like the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic from D&D 5e. This would make sense in a situation where a player or party says they avoid the medusa’s gaze. If the medusa tries to gaze into their eyes rolling the save vs. petrification with advantage makes sense.

I also like the Usage Die from Black Hack [Affiliate Link]. This makes a lot of sense for a magic item with charges. The DM assigns a usage die and that way there is the mystery of no one knowing how many charges it has, and the benefit of the DM not having to keep track.

Fudge/Fate dice are interesting and can add a special element to a challenge or other scenario. The plus, minus, blank options could be used to gauge the degree of something. For example, with a reaction check, you could “flavor” the role with a fudge die. + means the best possible interpretation, – the worst interpretation, and blank a meh interpretation.

I have yet to incorporate these into my campaign, it is there in the back of my mind, in case there is a situation where it makes sense to use it.

Conclusion

I feel like I’m leaving something out. If I think of it, I will update the above. Part of my method is habit and preference born of habit. The rest is either from my experience as a GM or playing with various GMs.

Read An RPG Book In Public

This week is the second of the three annual Read An RPG Book In Public weeks promoted by The Escapist, AKA RPG Advocate.

The whole idea is to read any RPG related book in public to show people that it is an acceptable thing to do. This comes from the mindset of those who lived through the Satanic panic. Now that D&D is cool, and the hatred and misunderstanding is abating, we should still celebrate our hobby and keep it in the public eye.

The week of March 4th is GM’s Day and coincidentally the day Gary Gygax died in 2008.

The week of July 27 is Gary Gygax’s birthday.

Finally, October 1 is Dave Arneson’s birthday. Dave Arneson invented what would become D&D.

It is fitting that this Saturday, Luke Gygax and WOTC are teaming up for Founders & Legends to celebrate the founders and pioneers of the game. It isn’t just all 5e and Eberron. Stephan Pokorny of Dwarven Forge is running AD&D! In addition to lots of online gaming, viewers are encouraged to donate to Extra Life. Luke will even be playing his old character Melf with 5e stats.

Frank Mentzer’s 0D&D Game At Gary Con IX

I managed to get a gold badge for this year’s Gary Con, which means that you get into two special event games.  This year, one of them was Frank’s game. I had interacted briefly with Frank at Gary Con last year, and at Gamehole Con IV last November.

This year, I made it to Frankenparty IV, a party that Frank and his wife Deb host in their home. They only ask to follow their wishes about parking and a small donation to offset the costs of food. I touched on this in my Gary Con wrap-up post.

Frank’s game was very informal and I found it enlightening to see how one style of original play was handled. We only needed three dice, d6, d10, and d20. He provided pregens, which speeded preparations/play. Being 0D&D d6 for all damage, and d20 for combat.

He had us use the d10 to resolve things that had a chance of failure. through mutual negotiation and explanation of what our characters did, Frank would have us call high or low before we rolled the d10. Frank said that that is what they did before they started developing rules for things. He also had us use THAC0, which he said started in Lake Geneva and he thinks is a quick way to know if you hit.

I really like that. That is something that many in the OSR are going back to, such as Swords & Wizardry Light, and others. I have a love for AD&D, but there are so many rules, that rules lawyers bog down play if a DM doesn’t have the skill to move things back to the game. I’m slightly guilty of that, but I try to ask clarifying questions, and shut up, since I believe each DM/GM has the right to run their game to their preferences.

With old school, you only need a roll where there is a chance of failure, such as combat, or leaping over a pit in full armor. This gives more focus on roleplaying and moving the adventure along.

Frank also talked about four levels of crosstalk at the table. I tried to take notes, but don’t have it exactly as he described it.

They are:

  1. Players
  2. Characters
  3. Meta(game)
  4. Meta(world)

Old school play is reliant on player skill, so what many call “metagaming,” is encouraged, at least by Frank.

The scenario was set in the world of Disney’s Maleficent. That description of the movie/cartoon set the tone and we all had a mental image. No minis, just a written marching order on a 3×5 card.

Frank did use 3 six-sided weather dice and used the average for weather. Very quick and easy. He also told us when we were doing something that might get us killed, and commented on our choice of tactics. He gave us a chance to adjust, but we could have easily gotten killed in a fight.

At one point, one of our magic users used sleep on an opponent and all the crows in a tree fell down. I really liked the “rain of murder”. A day or two later I mentioned to Frank how much I liked that. He said that I was the only one who laughed at his jokes. Some were pretty subtle, but that’s a style of humor I also like.

Frank also shared his original campaign maps, which will help inform Darlene when she does the maps for his upcoming Kickstarter. I’ll be bringing that to your attention when I get word of its launch.

Frank Mentzer - Original Campaign Maps on Judges Guild Maps
Frank Mentzer – Original Campaign Maps on Judges Guild Maps

Frank Mentzer - Original Campaign Maps on Newer Judges Guild Maps
Frank Mentzer – Original Campaign Maps on Newer Judges Guild Maps

After the game he signed my character sheet and name card. I played a dwarf, so I named him after the dwarf in the AD&D Roll20 campaign that hit three years and 148 sessions last week. I shared that on our Google Community page for the campaign. The guys like that.

Dwarf In Frank Mentzers Game
Dwarf In Frank Mentzers Game

 

What is a Campaign?

I saw a question on Twitter today asking how long a campaign lasts. That got me to thinking and depending on your RPG experience and preferences, the term campaign has multiple meanings.

Campaign comes to RPGs from tabletop miniature wargaming, which in turn gets the term from military parlance. The military use of the term  derives from the plain of Campania, a place of annual wartime operations by the armies of the Roman Republic. [1] Generally, a campaign is a specific portion of a war, such as a series of battles or specific strategy. It can also be a region/terrain, such as the desert campaign in WWII.

Wikipedia has a handy page with all the ways campaign is used, including gaming! There are two handy articles, one on campaign in the context of RPGs, and the other is the campaign setting.

The various shades of meaning in relation to RPG’s that come to mind are: (This is in the context of D&D in my mind, substitute your primary RPG of choice.)

  • The entire game world/multiverse and all activity happening under a DM. That is, the campaign setting.
  • A specific connected set of adventures/game sessions with a clear end point.  Often this means the end of that game “world”, and after a break a new world emerges.
    • An example from published modules would be the Drow series.
  • A campaign in a DM’s ongoing world might mean a major event in the world is resolved, or it might mean players have reached a level where retirement is in order and a new batch of characters enter the realm.
  • A specific group of players and their characters. It may be that circumstances prevent that group from playing again, and the end of the campaign is the end of regular play among that group of people.
  • A DM with a single campaign setting can encompass multiple groups of players and each could be their own campaign, or they could be somehow interconnected. There are lots of examples of DMs running the same setting for decades.

When campaign is used to refer to the setting, it can be a single genre, multiple genres, homebrew, or published.

In a multi-genre campaign setting, one could have D&D set in the past, then western/steampunk, then modern, then apocalyptic, then future. The order could be different, such as in Jack Vance’s far future world where there is magic.

Other GMs have a separate setting for each genre. They could even mix and match home brew for one setting and a published setting for another.

A DM can even have a campaign to get the word out that they are looking for new players.

There can even be a campaign of war within the RPG itself.

So a DM can campaign for new players for their campaign setting that features military campaigns in the game.

What does the term campaign in the context of table top RPGs bring to mind for you?

[Tomorrow’s article explores the term adventure.]