Big Fun with Dynamic Lighting in Roll20

 

I had been doing stuff on Roll20 for a couple of years now, but only now getting around to using dynamic lighting. I have always had an advanced account (that you need to us DL), but that was mostly so my players would not be pestered by ads. 

In my last campaign I refrained from experimenting with it because I was running for mostly masters of the platform, and I did not want to take time to learn as I went with them. I just used Fog of War, which I found functional enough, and pretty nifty. But now that that campaign is done, for the foreseeable future I am going to be doing a campaign with friends I already had. This is a great time to experiment, as the games will be much easier going. I can fuck around without alienating "experts."

The gang is more or less noobish, and when I announced that we would be trying DL out, they were jazzed. We got down to it, and when the time came to go in a cave I did the set up.

I was starting small, just a three or so room complex. As DM your first move is to have the cave walls outlined so vision does not pass through them. You hit all the right buttons in page set up to prepare. 

Then when the characters enter you must go into each characters setting and do up how and what they can see. For those with night vision you enter the distance, along with how much of that distance starts to dim after a certain point. Then you do up torch or lantern users (or light spells) depending on those items capabilities. I like to give firelight a nice yellow glow. 

this is all me looking from a player's POV, but
I also get to see outlines of the complex

This small-scale experiment was good, as I need to work up to the larger dungeon the campaign is heading for. Everybody loved it, but I guess my goal should be for it to eventually become old hat. Second nature. But it really adds a cool element you would be hard pressed to get on a face-to-face tabletop (without thousands of dollars of equipment).

More experiments to come. But so far so good. 

Cheers

The Encounter that what was meant to suck, but Didn't

 Besides my regular Roll20 campaign, "Trade and Turpitude," I've been doing a little campaign for my besties every few weeks. My old Friend and player "T" back in Los Angeles, and the younger couple who sort of adopted me when I moved to a new state, "B and L." I met them when they were looking for a DM to start a campaign, and when that campaign ended after maybe 15 sessions, I stayed friends with them because in all honesty they were the only players I didn't pretty much hate. Heh. And they were so good to me, I held on to them like grim death. They spend most of the year on the road travelling the country but were recently visiting town for a couple weeks. They took me to a couple of great shows, a showing of Ghostbusters with full orchestra lead by Elmer Bernstein's son, and a local theater doing Evil Dead the Musical. 

But while they are on the road we do some online stuff. Like digital Talisman, and now some Roll20.

I love B and L, but they are not what you would call outgoing players. They are fairly reserved. At least compared to my regular players in the other campaign. So after a couple of games in the campaign I showed them a "50 character questions" thing my player Mary gave everybody in the other campaign. Just basic things to flesh out a character. I even use it for some NPC's. I thought it would help B and L get a better handle on their characters, allowing them to be more at ease with basic role-playing. 

After a few weeks they hadn't done it. So I decided to "punish" them. Not really, but I thought I might put them through the ringer with a heavy role-playing situation that would test them, and maybe open them up a bit. But like a lot of chances a DM takes, it might well suck. But the point was to get them to come out a bit. I'm not looking for community theater, but its more fun if players can improv a bit with you. 

So I was going to be using a free Roll20 adventure for an easy-going session. It's called The Festival of Emerelda. It comes with a map of a whimsical fairground. 

Not a lot of content is there. The most obvious are some audio tracks featuring the halfling witch Emerelda and some of the festival event barkers, but they don't work great. In one instance uploading the tracks deleted all the other tracks in my Roll20 jukebox. 

As far as the festival, the contests involving drinking, arm wrestling, and other things were not really working for me as far as the rules and presentation of the games. But I mostly made up my own rules that suited me. The map has some things, like an owlbear chained up with a food bowl, and some Griffons in a pen, all things you can wing it to have some fun with. What interested me was a tent with a couples game, A Suitors Claim. The rules didn’t tickle me for this, so I decided to change it up, and at the same time put my reluctant role-players on the spot with it. 

T was running a fairly outgoing bard, but I would make an example of B and L. I would put them into this heavy role-play contest as a trial by fire. I decided to make it like a 70's dating game show. The party was divided up by two males and two females, so it was perfect. They were split into two sides and they would have to ask questions of each other. The audience would be played by me, and my reaction to the questions and answers would dictate the couple that would finally win. 

Each one of them got 5 questions of varying levels of intimacy, and each character would choose 3 of them to ask. Here are some examples of the questions I came up with:

1)      do you still have feelings for any of your exes? Tell me about it.

2)       What's the worst advice someone else has ever given you?

3)      What do you think happens when you die?

4)      Get up and Dance like your life depends on it for one minute.

5)      Lick a bar of soap.

 Describe the weirdest thing you've ever done while inebriated or impassioned

What's one thing in your life you wish you could change?

What's something you've done that you'd judge someone else for doing?

Put on womens clothing and walk through the crowd

Eat a teaspoon of mustard

I found a jazzy lounge type music in the jukebox to go along with the game. 

And it was on. So, I figured B and L would hem and haw and have a tough time with the improv. I imagined I would be cutting it off in 10 minutes, B and L having learned that they need to get more in touch with their characters just for the sake of role play. I mean, not so much to interact with me, but at least all the players need to be able to communicate openly with each other in rpgs. I got it going and was prepared for it to bomb. 

Here's the crazy thing. It didn't. OK, B was kind of hesitant. His male sorcerer was teamed up with Evador the female cleric, an outgoing rich girl. Seeing that B's shy sorcerer was having trouble with the questions, she assured him it was alright. She asked him the less embarrassing questions, not worried about winning the 50 GP prize money. This seemed to kind of spark an understanding between the two. Still, B rose to the occasion a bit, nicely answering a question about the most embarrassing thing he did drunk (getting naked on a chilly hunting trip).

T and L were far more outgoing. T was running her beautiful Elvish bard Xanthia, and L was running her male elf ranger Myrnigan, a character she created as being very dumb but a bit of a womanizer. With those traits I really wanted L to come out of shyness closet with this character, and with the help of Xanthia she did. Myrnigan and Xanthia asked each other the most challenging questions, and asked each other to perform outrageous acts, like duck quacking and dancing around for a minute. "Lick this bar of soap." They had such great fun with this and were highly entertaining. They of course won the prize. 

So what was supposed to be a minor encounter that bombed, this ended up taking most of the three-hour session! I never expected B and L to enjoy a game with almost no action, but they loved it. I tested them and they passed with flying colors despite my expectations. 

I take chances with sessions here and there over the years, doing something that I know has a decent chance of bombing, but it is so satisfying when your fears turn out to be unfounded. And in this case especially, a couple of reserved players came out of their shells a bit. Gotta love it. 

Cheers

Hey kids! More Game Sex!

 

Not that I am in a salacious state of mind or anything, but after posting about male players and their D&D their character sex lives, I was thinking of some other situations in games related to females and their female characters in my games. I mean, their characters are fully capable of seeking romance, and sometimes they do. 

IMO though, there is a big difference between male and female players, and that may reflect real life to some degree.   For the guys make believe relationships aren't goal number one. It about their whatever getting their "jimmy" "copped." For female players I found that since my earliest days, it's about relationships and often marriage. 

It was usually around 95% of the time with NPC's. Sure, the were very often sort of stand out, heroic NPC's that they met, or were around for whatever reason. But I remember in a campaign around 10 years ago one of my players characters, a female fighter who grew up with lots of brothers in a military family, had met a somewhat non-descript soldier NPC in the course of the campaign and dated him briefly before heading in the Underdark for The Night Below. During the course of that, the characters found a deck of many things. A couple of them got wishes, including this female character. What happened next was baffling, humorous, and controversial among the other players (who did not learn about it till way later); she used her wish to have the NPC she fancied propose marriage when she saw him again. Awesome. Some might call this daft; some might call it great role-playing. I'm the DM so I can have no opinion. I do not judge.

It can come from some unexpected places. A few short years ago when I first moved into town I met "B and L," who wanted to do some D&D and were looking for a DM and group to get together. B had some 1st edition experience from the military, and L had zero DnD experience. Well, within a year or two they had become my besties. This younger couple pretty much adopted me. In large part because I was in a new town where I didn't know anybody, it was a godsend. 

That Xmas Day they invited me over 
for booze, food and boardgames. I otherwise 
would have been home alone on the XBOX,
or in a casino. BTW after spending a holiday
alone on video games or in a casino I like to 
have a good cry. Kind of a tradition. 

But anyway, we got this little face to face group going. "L" ran a half orc fighter, Emen. 

One of very few female half orc images
that don't just look like a full orc.

L had no RPG experience, was not a heavy role-player as far as her character, but one thing stood out fairly quick about her. She fancied an NPC and went after her.

OK, here it gets complicated. So I was using The Lichway. It was an eventual destination. But in this go around I had Dark Odo and her gang, a staple of the module, and had them in the city where they met the other characters at a party held by the PC party's rich patron. Just to relieve the fact that all these unconnected groups "just were" in The Lichway, I thought I would expand upon them. Give more gravitas and make it have some sense. So Most of the inhabitants listed in Lichway were at this party. Odo's gang, the four thieves encountered there, etc. They would all hear about Lichway, and most would go there prior to the party doing it. So there was some method to the madness therein. Just a new approach to the dungeon denizens.

One of Odo's gang in the material was Runis. A female chaotic evil fighter. I changed her up a bit. I toned down the alignment to neutral. I had her obsessed with using a variety of weapons (I think because in the Lichway she had a bunch of weapons). And I also had her be a Sandlander from the module, one of this race that once ruled the area but now exist in small villages in smaller numbers. Runis was convinced by Dark Odo that as one of the last pure blood Sandlanders she could help her become a ruler in the area. 

Anway, as she was a beach-grown person, I gave her light colored hair and a build like a pro volleyball player. The material also described Sandlanders as "Dour," so I included that in the image search. Here is what I found:

"Dour?" Check. 

Emen moved in on her, and the dice responded favorably. I found this fascinating. Not only was L not a deep role-player by any means, but I saw no indication that L herself liked the ladies in any fashion. Though it's true, I've only known her like three years now. But this, to me, was a stand out moment of role-play. That she cared enough for her character to get into a relationship with another shows that she at least cared about the "story." Anway, when the campaign ended Runis and Emen (after some tension in the Lichaway as they were in opposing groups) were living together in the big city. 

I really don't know how much of this happens in other groups. I have mostly run for private groups and don't interact with the outside gaming world much. But in the 90's when I was almost exclusively running for groups made up of people I already knew well, the potential for sex among the characters was probably easier to digest. 

Though through Roll20 I am coming across more people, strangers, than ever before, and as described in my last post things got a little hot and sexy with a male character and a female NPC. And all my players, male and female, got a kick out of some of the humor that came from that. A situation I can't wait to see more of in coming days. Most of the other characters either distrust or outright hate this NPC. Will he succumb to player-on-player meta-peer pressure? The Discord is chock full of derision for him getting with her. 

But outside of all that, and to put a cap on this, I will say that the most important thing to me is that I run an adult game for adults. I want there to be adult trappings along with all the high fantasy. So, when these adult things happen in my games, I'm always glad and consider it a good sign.

Not counting that bard player mentioned last post
who made me feel like a pimp for PC's.

YMMV.

Cheers.

Campaign Gaming and "Plot B"

 "Plot B" is a concept in media, but mostly pops up in Sitcoms. Like almost every sitcom episode ever made since the 50's.

Usually in the case of sitcoms, it's a means to fill things out if the main storyline won't fill up the slot. Most if not all episodes of Seinfeld leaned heavily into it. Some even have C plots. Like the "Festivus" episode that had a side story with Kramer protesting his old bagel shop, and also one with Elaine trying to get a free sub sandwich. And for god's sake, there was D plot - Jerry's "two face" girlfriend. Whew, that's a lot of subplots. 

The Simpsons pointed this trope our back in the day, where Lisa is given a long vision of her family years into the future. When she asks the shaman "why did my vision include a plot where Homer was looking for buried treasure?", the magic man replies "I guess the spirits thought the main plot was a little light."

So anyway, I try to get these little subplots going in a campaign. Always have, though in the past I didn't have to think about it so much. I ran a lot of city campaigns back in the day and was winging it like crazy like you often have to do in a city setting. PC's often going off to do their own thing, and maybe 10-15 minutes having do be devoted to their activities. But at least these days I have a phrase for it. We do live in a time when we have to label everything, right? 

So your main "plot" might be the characters going to Keep on The Borderlands. It could be a full railroad "go to the keep, get rooms at the inn, hear some rumors, go to the Caves of Chaos, fight some shit. Take the treasure. How many experience points do we get. 

Fuck no. That shit needs padded out. When I ran this module last, I set up the Castellan of the keep (and named him and everybody because they didn't bother to come up with names in the original material), his seconds, the NPC's running the inn, and some interesting NPC's to fill out the market area. Enough personalities with some color to help them stand out so they can get interacted with. A prostitute, a pick pocket urchin, a handsome ranger of whatever sex. Anything to fill the dead air. If I recall in the material the only major NPC within the keep is the evil cleric who wants to be besties. That just ain't enough. Now, not all your NPC's will get interacted with. But the point is to have a wealth of them and see what might stick. 

In my last couple of posts I talked about a couple of potential antagonist NPC's who ended up piquing the interest of members of the party. But initially I packed this campaign with interesting NPC's. Most of them being part of the high-end merchant caravan the PC's would be a part of. 

There was Marge, the boisterous seasoned caravan master and boss of the outfit. 

The merchants themselves were all from the big city of Tanmoor and selling all high end, expensive wares. 

Like Lacy the clothes seller. Or Bradly the Bookseller. Or Waldorf the Wine Seller. Several NPC's whom the characters can assist along the way and get to know if they so choose. Callie, the lovely paladin and secret Aasimar, was roped into a fashion show by Lacy for a local Counts daughter to see:

Callie, the glue that holds the party together. 

Lacy kept slapping big city outfits, makeup, and wigs on Callie and rushing her out to be ogled. And it was a hoot. One of my players who had singing experience started singing "Girls just Wanna have Fun" as I revealed each image:

It was just one of the many side bits that came out of having a variety of NPC's around. Like in that particular session, this little fashion show was Plot B. And all the characters participated in a way, that is, they got to see a party member, a shy seeming, cookie baking village girl, in a different light. It was a little thing that IMO had a bit of an impact. 

Injecting things that can promote "Plot B" type things is very effective if you have players who are into role playing at all. And I'm not talking community theater here. But many players enjoy a world where lots of things can happen outside of the railroady main quest. Especially with the advent of video game RPG's, such as Skyrim where you seem to do endless side quests. 

But just making side plots possible is part and parcel of emergent gameplay. YMMV.

Man, I can't get enough of that word. "Emergent." Just rolls off the tongue. 

Cheers. 

And...then there was Eldritch Horror

 

It's kind of odd really, to be several games in to a successful D&D campaign with people I first met in the 1st session and to mostly be posting about board games. But it's my current passion. Not just any people to play with (my local besties B and L), and not just any games. All the games I have posted about that I love are games with action, mystery, adventure, and whimsey. 

When I first moved into my new town a few short years ago I looked into local board game meetups. But unfortunately, the gamenuts present had long since moved on from some of the games I loved, and on to others. Games that I didn't find especially inspiring. There was one game where you built different colors of coral. Yawn. Another popular one was Stone Age. I was excited to try it. Mammoths and hunting! But no, turned out it was all worker and resource management, something I find about as exciting as two flies breeding. I gave up on that scene fairly quickly. But I soon met B and L. They were looking to get into D&D and tapped me to run the games. The group went well for a few months, but when it folded for the usual reasons, I decided to try and get them into the board games i wanted to try. B and L already went to a local bar that had over 100 board game free to play, so they were no strangers to them. 

At first, I got them into my old copy of Talisman, and they liked it enough to quickly buy one of the more recent versions. Soon I was buying games I wanted try with them, mostly seen on Will Wheaton's Tabletop show. King of Tokyo, Epic Spell Wars, Dead of Winter, etc.  We played and continue to play the hell out of them. Some others as well. But the one that sat on the shelf since I know them went untouched. It was Eldritch Horror. 

A relative of Arkham Horror. EH was a complicated game, with tons of cards, tokens, and a huge number of fiddley rules to unpack. I was fairly intimidated by it. When I first got it almost three years ago I broke it open and tried a few rounds to learn it, and man, I was baffled. Too much. So it remained stashed away. 

But recently I was like "what the hell." I kept studying on it, and got some info locked into my brain, but the only way to learn it was to actually play it with people, and B and L were up for it. Honestly, just taking the half hour or so to set it up made you learn a lot. Many of the decks involved are identified by artwork, often very similar to different decks, which makes it harder to organize. So far we are maybe three sessions in with it. We devote our entire game day to it, but never seem to finish it. Usually, things look bad and rather than try to hang on with our characters for another hour or so, we pack it in and play some shorter games to end the evening. B and L are fairly competitive, but unless money is involved, I'm about the journey. I don't really care if I win or not. I'm a role player. 

Not to say it isn't fun. It's awesome. It has a lot of role-playing elements that appeal to me. The interesting characters, the different story beats that can happen. It kind of plays like a more epic, international Call of Cthulhu campaign. 

You basically choose of of several Old Ones, including Cthulhu, and build things around that deity. One card deck you actually have to work on to apply to that specific God, organizing it in particular layers. Then your characters travel around the world locations, doing actions (travelling, shopping, etc) and having encounters. As you play gates will appear (during the games turn; the "Mythos Phase"), and monsters as well. It's hilarious, but B and L have almost no Lovecraft experience, so I'm constantly explaining what things are. The Mi Go takes out your brain and fly it to Jupiter or whatever. Hounds of Tindalos come through angles to get at you. Etc. But playing last night a Colour out of Space showed up, and they got excited, having recently seen the Nick Cage movie of that name. We're playing with Shub Niggurath as the deity, and had to keep telling them to mispronounce it because it has an unfortunate similarity to a word we should not say out loud. I kept saying "no, say "Shub Nagrath." I'm serious, did Xenophobic HP Lovecraft purposefully use that unfortunate pronunciation? 

The game play is fun and very deep, so even if you aren't a Lovecraft fan, if you are cool with learning a lot of awkward (yet strangely effective) rules, and are willing to put like 5 hours into a game (some will be a lot shorter just due to bad luck), you might like it. We love it (B and L specifically asked to play it yesterday), but a little goes a long way. So many games to play, so little (generally speaking) time. 

Obligatory 5th Edition post

My experience with an D&D beyond 1st edition could fit into a thimble. In the early 90’s one of my players wanted to run D&D, so she went out and bought the 2nd edition stuff. She ran a few games, but I don’t really recall the major differences in systems.

One of the main reasons I stuck with 1st edition all through the 90’s was probably because most of my players tended to have very little gaming experience until they came to my games. “I always wanted to play but never go the chance” people. I of course was the “seasoned veteran,” and was able to lead these gentle lambs through many a campaign with 1st edtion. Hell, they didn’t care. That was a time of wide-eyed wonder for my players, it seemed. And I often had a lot of females in games then (at one point in the mid-90’s outnumbering the guys at many sessions), and in my games they tended to lean heavily towards role-play (especially shopping trips, which in D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions was always great for developing those “winging it” DM muscles), so task resolution was not the main source of fun during those times. We’d have these amazing several hour session with minimal combat or action.

From around 2000-2008 I was not gaming, and not even really keeping up on what was going on with D&D. My stuff was all in boxes in a garage, and my internet interests were more about comic books, music, and movies.

Then out of nowhere *BAM* I’m running games for a regular group, reading about D&D and other games constantly online, and started this friggin’ blog. Gaming and D&D was all up in my grill. Still, I’m not exactly Grognardia James in terms of my knowledge of the history of gaming, and what is going on in the OSR. Obviously I’m a much better talker than a listener. Powergame Dan sometimes marvels at what I know that is going on in gaming and the OSR, but really it’s reading Grognardia and a couple of other select forums that gives me any particular knowledge on what is going on. And that knowledge is not exactly deep even after three years.

And in all honesty, looking at online stuff about gaming is starting to lose it’s luster. “G whiz” factor is gone. It might be different in my case if I was back in semi-retirement gaming-wise. I’d look online and do a shitload of “remember when.” But with a full and regular group going, I’m trying to enjoy that more. In some ways because I’ve slowly realized that it is a fairly rare and precious thing.

As for 5th edition, well, it’s not very relevant to me. I don’t think D&D is relevant at all any more. You don’t see it getting played by characters in films or TV shows like you sometimes did in the 80’s and 90’s. You never hear it getting joked about. Even the Ubergeeks on The Big Bang Theory don’t play it. In dorkdom these days, it seems pretty bottom of the barrel. If you watch Attack of The Show for a week you might hear a smarmy D&D reference, but even in venues like that it is rare.

So I don’t much care. I have a KOTOR campaign going, a Runequest campaign just started, a 1st edition setting to get back to, a player who is regularly running 1st edition games for us, and am itching to do some Call of Cthulhu before too long. I have plenty on my plate. So let me join the throngs of “happy wanderers” and toss my own “I wish them well” into the ring. That’s it, Mac, Smile and wish them well. But it’s ok if inside you just don’t give a rats ass.

Help! A wizard stole my face!

Melee and Wizards were two games we played a lot in Jr. High and High School. Unlike a rousing game of D&D, you didn’t necessarily risk derision for it. It wasn’t pretending, it was just a board game. Everybody grew up with board games. And shit, these micro games were just board games with cool violence and blood letting. There was a guaranteed bloody death each and every game!

In private though, we did tend to role play a character a bit, especially after the point when our fave fighter or sorcerer actually survived 3 arena fights.

At Venice High we had an old history teacher whose back room was a nice little museum, with cheap artifacts under glass. Mayan ear wax scooper-outers, copper coins from ancient times, that kind of thing. A lot of us in his history and mythology classes loved it in there, and he seemed to dig the little board games we were playing before he showed up to the class. There was no real learning to be had from Melee and Wizard, but to him the art in the booklets seemed like they were out of history books or books on ancient weapons. He even started letting us play a few rounds in the room during lunch break.

At some point, just before the whole Fantasy Trip thing, I decided to create a city setting for our surviving characters, and new ones, to trod around in. We wanted the arena fights, but they had more weight if our characters could do stuff beyond the battle field. I think I called the city, simply, “Skull.”Eventually my exponential love for my D&D game world would take me away from hopes of doing more with these little paper characters to have more time for that, but there is no denying it. Melee and Wizard were great fun when all you had was an hour or two.

As for the cover of Wizard mentioned in my post title…well, what the hell can you say? My friends and I were tormented over exactly what spell this was portraying. Certainly nothing in the game, those spells seemed to have more to do with doing physical harm or summoning animals. I think there was some spell or another we suspected might have inspired the art, but not from Wizard. Maybe that high level AD&D spell that traps someone in a globe and sinks them below the earth? Naw, then why just his face? Soul trapping? Hmm. The world may never know…