Being Creative with online session Discord Calendar Invites

  

In the face-to-face days we just used emails for our game scheduling and reminders. In the mid to late 90's we only played a couples times a month at best (though we played far longer sessions then. An entire day into the evening usually), but also saw and talked to each other since we were mostly friends outside the games. But going into the 2000's and running for groups who were just "gaming friends" emails and/or Yahoo groups or whatever helped. 

But with the advent of my Roll20 online gaming several years ago, and my use of Discord for voice and text, I got the advantage of actual dedicated calendar reminders to remind the humanoids that we had a game. 

Needed? I dunno. Since going online with my campaigns the schedule is pretty set. This year since around February have done DnD every week on Saturday nights, And for a few months now have run my "Haven" campaign with Marvel Multiverse on Friday night. Dedicated regulars. So they know full well we have weekly sessions. 

But the things is, I found out early in my Discord usage that I could be kind of creative with the calendar invites/reminders. 

I mean, it's kind of what it's all about, right? Making a little magic. So any creative element you can stick in there is important to me. And for years now in campaigns, I have done what I can with the invites.

Besides indicating which voice channel you are using and the day, time and date, you can add an image and a title for the session. That alone stirred my imagination. Originally I was digging that players could "like" the calendar invite, as it would indicate to me who was planning to attend. Not always reliable though. In the latest campaigns you can count on 3 or 4 players to like it, but not everybody always does. 

But I loved that I could use an image and a title to maybe sort of foreshadow the session. Not give it all away, but maybe sort of rile up some interest in what was going to happen. Sometimes mysterious or sometimes not. 

Some things from my generation may inspire me on this. I remember on old TV shows you would get an establishing shot, and "on tonight's episode of Mannix - lonely is the hunter" or something like that. 

I have sometimes made them as simple as an image of a country road and a title like "the road goes ever every on" for DnD travel. And sometimes I made them more meaningful. To me, anyway. Sometimes a private joke. 

Since Discord does not archive past invites, here are the couple for this week's games. In my DnD campaign, I am once again using the old Pawnshop adventure from Apple Lane for Runequest. This week we are heading into part two of the Pawnshop attack. This invite was pretty easy. Just put an image of one of the foes the party is now facing in the shop, and a "part 2" indicator.   

Nothing super creative, but it gives the players a little something to maybe pique their interest in the next session. An image of the monsters they have seen but not gotten into full steam battle with yet. They know it starts right from the jump next session. 

For the Marvel rpg sessions, things are getting a little harder to figure what will happen next. I have 5 steady players, but since it's the weekend and there are not quite as many players in the pool as my DnD, a player or two might have to miss a session. I have been sort of planning out two session arcs, but honestly, we only play for two hours or so on Friday. And the players might sandbox a bit. "Can I go patrol for a few minutes?" And I have been giving players 20 minutes or so here and there to do their own thing from time to time (against my general better judgment. I mean, we are not doing very long sessions). And as of last week I am deciding kind of last minute what might be best depending on what players we have for the night. If I plan a little couple of session encounter arc, somebody I need for it might not be able to make it that night. Or maybe last session is going to bleed into the next a bit, and I might want to wait a week or two to start that for whatever reason. 

Like last week, I decided a half hour before the session that I just wanted to have a little low-combat encounter. I dreamed up a couple of floors of an office building being set ablaze by a professional arsonist. In that half hour I found a couple of office building floors to use as maps, and went into Demiplane to whip up an arsonist dude. Found an image that worked for it. And decided this would be an architectural firm being targeted by a rival. 

I will maybe briefly touch on that in the next post, but for the following session how will I start things off? Since we had to wrap it up right after the victims were rescued and the fire put out, I figured this might be the first real interaction with the characters and emergency response, and maybe reporters as well. "hmm.." I thought. Maybe I could expand on that. What if a character took the time to answer a reporter's questions? Or maybe I could have an "on the scene" start-up streamer crew looking for cred and popularity actually ask a character if they could be their "dedicated news team" (an idea I got from a card in the King of Tokyo card game). Promise them positive coverage if they give them tips on things that might go down they can report on. Since all this was on my mind, and at the very least the first few minutes of the next session being them at least being approached by reporters and later seeing a news report on the encounter, it was enough to include it in the invite for the next session. Easy peasy. 

Just a generic reporter image (who I am going to use for an NPC) and a title "More New at 11" (just happens to be one of my favorite Public Enemy songs)

This invite was not exactly high art. None of them are. Really, if anything they are a more personal thing for me. But in the case of this invite for the Marvel game, it's kind of a mystery box. The players will have no idea what it means. And the meaning will not be deep. But it lets me tap into maybe the barest of the plot for the next session, and since I have no idea yet how the majority of the session will pan out, this at least connects to it in a minor way. And if the characters kind of go with the Dedicated News Team idea, it could have greater ramifications. 

But yeah, the invite is a minor thing, but its fun for me to decide on a title and an image at the very least. And we GM's gotta get our jollies any little way we can, eh?

Cheers

D&D and the character party Foe Gauntlet

 

The "Foe Gauntlet." There is probably a better name for it, but regardless, it's a thing. 

Though I am sure it has appeared in various media in history, I think the first time I saw such a thing was in old Spider-Man comics as a kid, where in at least one instance he had to fight each of the Sinister Six enemies, such as Vulture and Doc Ock, one at a time. 

I cannot help but be offended by the derogatory
and racist word Spidey throws at Electro

Then at some point in the Bruce Lee movie Game of Death. The film has a very storied background (look it up), but it inspired the "fight your way through a series of enemies to get to the boss" in video games to be sure. 

I also believe in the Batman story where Bane breaks his spine Bats had to fight through a series of villains set up by Bane to soften him up for the final fight. 

and it went down at ComiCon so
nobody really noticed it happened

And I remember Hulk Hogan doing something similar in his earlier WCW appearances against the Dungeon of Doom (a good idea with terrible execution). 

Pre-Attitude Era wrestling was pretty crappy

One time I did such a thing in a game, that I can remember, was in a solo game I ran in the 90's for one of the players in my Champions game. It was a Bourne Identity type character. He had developed his own little Rogues Gallery of foes over a couple years of campaigns, and for a solo outing a "gauntlet" sounded like an easy thing to game master. His foes were mostly non-powered dudes, like martial artists and a trio of former pro wrestlers who were getting into the mob enforcer business. I remember the character being worn down in several fights throughout the city, ending up fighting the wrestler trio in the foamy surf at the shore in Venice Beach. Then he fought the big bad and barely won the fight. 

So the idea came to me for the DnD characters in my current Roll20 campaign. The night the party arrived with a caravan to "Lemon Tree" (my stand in for Apple Lane), Gengle (my stand in for Gringle) the pawnbroker was negotiating with the Vaishino snake people. The negotiations went bad, and the creatures took out their anger on the surrounding area which included the caravan the party was camping at. That fight went OK for them, and they got thier long rest through the night. But the next morning the long day (which including the pawnshop assault that night), that would last several games, began.

The caravan left and the party walked down the hill to the village. Therein lay the first fight. Several Vaishino warrior jumped out of tree to attack. No problem. Then the party went to the Tin Inn. Several members of the Biglaugh the Centaur gang (whose gang members in the original material were all Dragonnewts and such, but I had it be just human bandits in mine) came into the tavern for a morning eye opener, and of course got into it with the party. Not a big deadly fight, but still, the party had to use resources for. 

A couple of those bandits were immediately thrown into jail by Dronlon the Sherriff, and by early afternoon Biglaugh and company caused small fires and ruckus' around the village while the prisoners were released, and the characters had to fight them off. 

So by early afternoon the party had three conflicts, and with the pawnshop scenario coming up by night fall, they had no chance for the beloved by 5th ed player's long rest. They had to go into that shop assault fairly depleted. 

I loved the concept, but you can probably count on players NOT to love it. They like to have their resources in a fight. And for the pawnshop those resources were mostly used up. Especially healing. 

It was a harrowing building-based combat that went on for almost 3 sessions. I felt it was all pretty dramatic, and at the end a couple of players had their severely wounded characters lean up against a wall and exhale in relief. But overall it was clear, I loved the concept more than them. But that's players for you, especially the more modern ones. 

They really feel entitled to a long rest after any kind of fight. 

YMMV. Cheers. 

Another Campaign Ends

Last night we wrapped up the fairly short (maybe 8 sessions or so) Runequest campaign I popped on the group a few months ago. I had actually intended to mix in a lot more Call of Cthulhu, a sort of Chaosium mix, but we were having such a good time with the RQ that we pretty much stuck with that and breezed through the campaign.



I used the classic Apple Lane setting for this, and went through the usual progression (besides my own added bits and encounters) of the tribal initiations battle circles, Pawnshop Baboon attack all the way through finishing up Rainbow Mounds last night. Whiteeye and his trollkin defeated, and the Lizard Mother and the Lizard Spirits destroyed (the Newtlings made Terry’s character Rowan their queen – for what it was worth).



The party got to touch the adamantine column hidden behind the newt idol, gaining some spells. They also found the Issaries statue to later sell to Gringle. In a wild twist, the party forgot to search White eyes’ lair for the main treasure. They rested after the White eye fight for a night before moving on into what they though was a tunnel to another area (it was actually a small chamber with White eyes bed and the main treasure of the adventure), then later got distracted and didn’t finish searching that area! Thousands of lunars and other precious stuff left behind! Kind of a hoot.



I mean, they were told there would be a lot of items White eye and gang robbed people of, but they happily left without any of that. I waited until they were back at the village to tell them. There was the usually thrashing around for a couple of minutes trying to find the poor GM at fault, but the realization set in that they had been idiots to not realize they didn’t have what they, in part, went to the Rainbow Mounds for. Doesn’t really make up for anybody not getting killed or maimed in the campaign, but it helps.



So time to regroup, get out the Star Wars stuff, and repack my mini’s box with Sci Fi figures. We’ll be doing KOTOR for the rest of the year, with the odd Call of Cthulhu game thrown in here and there when we are short on important players.



But yeah, there ya go. Another campaign in the bag. It’s always kind of a satisfying peace that comes over you when you are at the finish line of a fun campaign.