Unafraid of the High Level Game

Well, this week we got in another session of the Night Below, and the second game of the assault on The City of The Glass Pool. The final stretch of the campaign.

I was sort of fearing this part of the campaign for a couple of reasons. One, I don’t have all that much experience with levels above 7th, even after all these decades. I’m not saying characters haven’t hit 8th, 9th, or even higher in past games. It’s just that my preference is to run for low to mid levels (1-7), probably because a campaign would end and I would be interested in new groups of PC’s. Secondly, I just thought that an assault on a city would be a logistic nightmare of the type I haven’t run for many a moon. Sure, I’ve had characters involved in wars and great battlefields, but an urban location being attacked by players is rare in my games.

One thing I do like about high levels is that things get more like comic book battles, which is what I was brought up on. And the last couple of games have been no exception. The COTGP is somewhat in lockdown mode, which means the streets are not exactly crawling with enemies. There are some large patrols, but in the first foray into the city the party used the 100 hydra teeth to create a small army of skeletons to run interference with patrols, and also Krysantha had whipped up an insect plague to mess with part of the city while they attacked the Illithid building and then in this game the slave pens before hoofing it out of the city and back to base for a rest (with some help from allies blowing up part of the city gate for easier exit). They got out and back to the safe place with around 100 slaves, many of them dwarves with skills that might come in handy. This was all much more fun than I thought it would be for me. It really is just like running a dungeon, just with much bigger corridors!

Back at the “Derro Town” captured mind flayer tower, the party found out that a band of drow, Avatara and her crew from games early this year, had taken over the tavern in the deserted under-town. Their goal is to eventually make their way to the site of the old drow city on the Sunless Sea. This is why they are rooting for the party to destroy the COTGP. Just one of many evil groups the party is forced to deal with.

As we are on the last couple of games of the campaign, here is a list of all the PC’s and NPC’s who are the “heavy hitters” of the campaign. For posterities sake if nothing else.

Vaidno (Andy): 8th level chaotic/good half elf bard from the big city up north. Not a btb bard, but my own more musically inclined bard class (based off the old houri class from White Dwarf magazine). Vaidno has survived many near death encounters, leading me to call him “Survivno.” Acrobatic, skillful with blades, Vaidno faces the nightmares of the Night Below setting with great bravery and is more like a fighter in mentality. Often gets short-shrifted on magic items. Recently gained both a tower and an 18 charisma from the Deck of Many Things.

Krysantha (Dan): 8ish level fighter/druid. Female drow raised by druids. Formerly lawful neutral, decided recently she was plain neutral. I think she is chaotic, but I’m tired of arguing with players about their alignment. Remorseless murderer of NPC’s, and big time grudge-holder. Along with Vaidno takes the most vocal leadership role in the group.

Helena (Terry): chaotic/neutral with good tend. 8ish level fighter/thief. Does not live a thiefly livestyle, is actually a kleptomaniac. Was raised in a house with several fighter brothers who taught her sword and shield. Has a knack for talking the other players out of magic items without even having to steal them. Like many of Terry’s characters, is obsessed with marriage. Got wishes from the Deck of Many Things, and used most of them for fairly petty gains.

Kayla (Terry): 8th level hobbit cleric of Sheenara and Sherriff of the southern hobbit border. A character of Terry’s since the early 90’s, I let her join the party pretty much just because she was in the area (and they did not have a cleric). A player kind of complained about Terry running two characters, which has some merit because Terry often takes a long time to take a turn for a character. As the other players did not defend her presence, I had her go back to her castle, where her new band of followers awaited her anyway. A high level cleric would be a big boon to survival right now, but since the players have not requester her they can lump it. If Terry’s Helena dies in the next couple games, I’ll have Kayla appear.

Lumarin (Big Ben): 8th level high elf lawful good MU. The main party magic user. Lost several points of intelligence from a Deck of Many Things draw. Originally joined the party early on in The Night Below campaign when the party saved him from being eaten by Gnolls.

Lily (Paul): chaotic/neutral (later evil) 7ish level thief/MU. Greedy harlot who was saved from Gnolls along with Lumarin. Got in many confrontations with Krysantha over stealing items from treasure troves. Eventually betrayed the party to her boyfriend Xavier. Ran off with Xavier and his gang after the fight. Officially out of the party, but still active in the campaign in case the characters want to find her and kill her. They kind of have bigger fish to fry right now.

Zith (Paul): I had sort of planned to have some Githyanki (extra dimensional anti-mind flayer warriors) show up at some point in this campaign. I didn’t, but when Paul could not run Lily anymore I just gave him an 8th level fighter Githyanki to run in the party. Paul seems to dig that character, but ultimately this is just a player running an NPC. If anybody dies in the next game or two, they can run a Githyanki as well.

Ormac (Little Ben): 6ish level gnome illusionist. Ben played for a while the other year, but had to drop out for work. He returned a couple months ago and so did Ormac. Ben misses a lot of games in general, so Ormac is kind of a “there not there” side player in the whole thing.

Major NPC’s

Dia: teenage ranger and (unknown to her until recently) daughter of Woodlord Arcturus Grimm. She pretty much got the party together over two years ago to go explore a dungeon. They got sidetracked by The Night Below. She is from the same town as Helena, and they knew each other growing up. She eventually took possession of the anti-Kuo Toa sword Finslayer.

Arcturus Grimm: One time Woodking of the ranger kingdom of Woodaria in the far north. A controversial figure, he is also known for having been possessed by evil decades ago when he caused great suffering in the land. He now lives in the southern frontier area in a garden temple dedicated to his sister Sheenara, goddess of the wood. Arcturus was my very first character as a little kid, and I kept him in my game world to use over the decades ( one of the few “super NPC’s” I indulge in). Arcturus has apparently spent the last few decades siring children all over the land with different women.

Clovis Grimm: underdark ranger in the Night Below, and son of Arcturus Grimm. Unlike Dia he is in frequent contact with his father, and has helped guide the party in some of their travels below. Currently protecting the freed slaves the party has saved.

Avatara: a fighter/MU/thief drow NPC and drow city expat I have used for decades in my games, going by a variety of names. She is best known for living in Tanmoor and acting as guild mage for the elvish thieves’ guild there. In the current campaign she is on some kind of mission with other, younger drow to find the lost city of drow on the Sunless Sea. After an encounter with Krysantha and Vaidno awhile back, Krys has sworn to kill her, but she is an asset currently (Avatara wants the party to destroy the City of the Glass Pool so she can travel down to the Sunless Sea). This NPC is personally responsible for killing one of Terry’s characters back in the 90’s. At one point in the late 90’s I successfully had her seduce a female wood elf PC.

Bonus XP after a long Campaign

I have always liked to give a little extra experience points towards the end of a D&D campaign (or for any game that involves XP, really). Not a ton of it mind you, but usually a decent chunk to award the MVP character or player of the campaign.

In last weekend's rainy day game, I decided to have a little fun with it. I would let the players vote on a 10,000 experience point award (not really a lot in this now high level campaign) for one character. I gave them each a scrap of paper with their name on it, and told them to write down a character other than their own. The pieces would then go in a cup and a reading of votes (like on Survivor) would take place. They would use whatever reason they wanted. They could vote for Andy's Vaidno the Bard because Andy is our usual host (although Dan had us over that day). They could vote for a PC who was close to going up a level. They could vote for whatever reason struck their fancy. No group discussion was allowed.

It was fun reading off the votes. It was less fun when three characters each got two votes; Andy's Vaidno, Big Ben's high elf MU Lumarin, and Little Ben's gnome Ormac. I could understand the first two; these were usually the forefront leaders of battle and decision making. But little Ormac, run by fairly quite Ben, was a head scratcher for me. Everybody had a good laugh around the table at the three-way tie, but I just sighed and said "Ok, I have checked-out emotionally from this." That got another thunderous round of haw haw's.

Anyway, I made the popular decision of awarding 6,000 to each PC voted for, which was enough for little Ormac to go up. Then we got on with the game.

So...have you ever awarded XP at the end of a campaign, or in my little dramatic fashion as in this last game?

Spotlight On My Campaign/Group

Hats off to this interesting post at The Tao of D&D for inspiring me to ask these questions about my group and campaign to myself. It is actually pretty self-enlightening to question yourself like this from time to time.


1. How long has this present campaign been in existence?

The Night Below has been going on for a little over two years. The year before that was leading up to a high level dungeon crawl, but then I bought NB and said “what the heck” and switched gears to an Underdark based campaign.

2. How many players do you have, and how many right now were present at the beginning of the campaign?

Steady full group of the same six for over a year now. Andy (our host), Dan, and Terry (who I have known for over 20 years and played in a lot of my groups of yore) are still with me since day one.

3. How many of your players are family members?

Zero. Nobody in my family has any love for the rolling of the dice (unless it’s in Vegas).

4. How many of your present players began playing after the halfway point in the existence of your campaign? How many in the last year (if that applies)?

Big Ben and Paul started a little over a year ago. Paul is 20 and it was his first table top gaming (after playing a lot of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights). Little Ben (also known as Ben 2.0, Ben-ny and The Jets, and “Ben Dover”) played a couple of years ago, had to stop for many months for work, then started again a few months ago.

5. How many long-term players (played for more than a third of the campaign) have you had that dropped out? Were any reasons given?

All my guys who played for more than the first three months have stuck with the group.

6. How many short term players have you had since the campaign started who did not come back? How many of them gave a reason?

For that first year I think a total of four temp dudes played for a couple months or so each. Various reasons given such as work, school etc. In all honesty, I’m not sure my freewheeling style and lots of house ruling appealed to them. I was disappointed in a couple of them, because there was a certain amount of investment. “Caleb” is his own story (search his name in my blog if you want to read about that, but not really worth going into at this point), but one of these past guys before he came to the game called me on a Sunday afternoon while I was sunning and sipping beer in the back yard, and proceeded to grill me about the game. It was like an hour long job interview. I should have said “no thanks” at that point, but I kind of wanted more players. He showed for maybe two games. Waste of my time.

I’m more happy with all my current players than I would have been with those other guys anyway. A Couple of them were a bit weird (and not in a good geeky way). I hope they found gaming happiness, and managed to avoid the couple of groups I had terrible experiences in the area outside of my own. These experiences gave me new gratitude for the group and players that I have put together. Honestly, despite past gripes (what, me gripe?) about some of my players, there is not one "Rod-turd" in this punchbowl. I feel very fortunate as a GM to have these people to run for.

7. How many of the players in your world have never played a roleplaying game before?

21 year old Paul was a noob, but played a lot of fantasy video games. He is a natural at it, and has even caused controversy in the games (without being a trouble making douche).

8. Estimate the appearance rate of your players. How often does your campaign run?

Couple times a month. As I want all the long-time major players (Andy, Dan, and Terry - my original varsity team) there for my main campaign, we have often had to wait a month or two to get back to the Night Below. In those times I mostly ran some Metamorphosis Alpha (with Mutant Future), some OD&D, and a little bit of Champions. Terry makes more games than she used to, but still has a tough time scheduling. “I have a life,” she often says, despite the fact that most of us have more of a life than she does (sorry Terry, but “having a life” is not a rare condition, even among gamers).

9. Name the three principle reasons for people not appearing in your campaign.

Vacation, business trips, school, etc.

10. How often is it that players in your campaign do not appear without having given a reason?

Never.

Rainy Day, Stormy Game

Southern California has been experiencing several days of almost constant rain. I cannot remember the last time it rained so much and so hard. Well, as I said in a post from a year ago, I love rainy day gaming. The rain makes me want to game or at least to work on my game material. So inspiring.

Saturday afternoon we got to do one of our rare weekend sessions. Dan, freshly back from one of his international business adventures, was hosting us in his nice big house in the hills above Bel Air (near Mulholland Drive). It was just pouring non-stop for hours on end. I got soaked to the bone several times that day, but loved it. Dan’s living room has all glass walls looking out on his back patio (very “Los Angeles”). He has a view of a hill across the way, one of the Santa Monica Mountains, and it looked so wintery and wet. It had a real “misty mountains” look that had my “G Zone” (that hidden organ in us that demands that we roll dice and kill things) in high gear.

I went into this game really run down. I had been running ragged for weeks. Not just at work, but all the holiday parties and junk food, and all the high end booze had my innards working overtime. And at work I have been surrounded by sick, coughing and sneezing humanoids. Everybody who walked by my cube last week seemed to have this bad cold going around. Friday night I actually emailed Big Ben and told him to be prepared to run his D&D in case I was not up to it. You see, we are in the last couple of games (I hope) of the Night Below campaign, and running for high level characters is work enough. Adjudicating their assault on a Kou Toa city is another thing entirely. Walking into Dan’s house wet with shoes in hand had me doubting my abilities on this day, but the rain outside and the cheerfully snarky banter inside got my G Zone juicing and we were soon getting into the game after a relaxing half hour or so of goofing around, drinking Heinekens, and munching snacks and pizza.

Everybody seems to be enjoying their characters, especially Dan and Andy. I have to say, with my attitude towards their PC’s around a year ago or so at this time, I have to admit that I am fairly fond of these characters as well. Dan’s drow Krysantha is a killing and ass-kicking machine, and I think the others characters would be foolish to get on her bad side (and she only seems to have a bad side). Her murderous actions of the last game are forgotten now that the party is in situations that could translate into Total Party Kill. And Andy’s Vaidno, well, it is a great character. Not just heroic in good ways, but at the same time the bard is a hopeless showboater and showstopper who cheats death at every turn. Choices from the Deck of Many Things a few games ago gave him a tower (back home in the city area) and an 18 charisma, and it is kind of fun to see him beam with pride at this character that has survived one near-death situation after another and continued to thrive. “Vaidno SurvivnoThriveno!” Goddamn Andy.

Well, some time was spent preparing to sneak into the city (through cracked water pipes learned about from the thief Prentyss that Krysantha murdered last game). In they went and the action was truly on!

After dealing with crossing and fighting the affects of the Kuo Toa “Relaxation Pool,” Krysantha cast a mass insect swarm to molest a nearby section of the city, while the party ran through the town and towards the Illithid quarters in the hopes of taking possession of the Crown of Derro Domination. As groups of Derro and Kou Toa patrolled the streets, the party let loose with all 100 of the hydra teeth they had. *poit*poit*poit*poit* sounds filled the air as 100 skeletons appeared with sword and shield to do their bidding, and the skelly’s ran to attack the patrols to keep them off of the party.

At the Mind Flayer building, the party fought a hard battle against several of the monsters, but a combination of good tactics and good die rolls helped win the day there. Unfortunately, the main Illithid, Zantacore, was not present so the crown was not achieved. We had to end it around then, but we managed to leave off with the players having a great sense of the possibility of success in this assault on the city.

Really, my players are not known to me as great tacticians. With characters like Vaidno and Kryantha usually taking the lead, it was more about gung ho “let’s just take ‘em head on!” type stuff. But they actually thought this one out a bit, which made me kind of proud. It was a great game and a great wintery day to have it on.

Unfortuantly, we did not get to finish the campaign by the end of the year. But the good news is, by February I’ll get a break from AD&D and be able to refresh with some new genres. But boy, this is pretty exciting. I’m running a game for high level characters, which can be a decent amount of work. But now I am at a point where I can look back upon it all more and I have to say, this has been a fun campaign with a great group of people and characters.

Too Many Blogs?

When Bob over at Cylcopeatron first posted a list of gaming blog rankings (by follower) some time back, I was surprised by two things. First, that my blog at that time was somewhere around the top 25 percent of such blogs. And second, there seemed to be less blogs than I thought out there. Bob posted such a list again recently, and two things stuck out at me. Firstly, there were now a lot more blogs out there. Secondly, a lot of low-follower blogs had grown substantially in the amount of followers.

Now, my blog hasn’t exactly grown that much since the first list, despite fairly regular posting. Well, here’s the thing; I don’t think amount of posts, nor necessarily the content, matter that much anymore. A couple of years ago it did. Grognardia has such substantial growth in large part because of sheer amounts of posting, not necessarily the content. Other large follower blogs were either around a long time, or had a female or porno connection of some kind. Not to say by any means that these guys did not have great posts, which of course they do. But it is kind of arbitrary in many cases. If Playing D&D With Porn Stars was just “Zak’s D&D Musings” without mention of gangbang girls running elves, he’d probably have somewhere around 200 followers (or less). Don’t get me wrong, he is obviously a smart and talented dude, but lots of smart and talented dudes (and I don’t necessarily consider myself one of those) often have only around 200 followers.

After that first list at Cyclo’s, I saw one blog that was basically just a dude posting text from Edgar Rice Burroughs with no personal commentary, shoot up fairly quickly from around 20 followers to around 50. Perhaps that is in no small part because Bob at Cyclo asked that his readers support these low-follower blogs (many of which had few followers for obvious reasons). I saw another blog who had followers somewhat less than my count, shoot up past me soon after that Cyclo list. Why? Well, the content certainly did not necessarily improve. But I’ll tell you what, every new blog I look at has this one guy as a recently subscribed follower. He figured out that the more you sign up on other blogs, the more of them will do you a solid back and follow you. His comment in Bob’s recent post was “wow, I’m inspired to try harder!” Harder doing what, signing up for every other blog out there? All that takes is having time on your hands.

That’s all great, but I don’t personally care about amount of followers. It is not at all indicative of my content, nor that all of them are actually reading it. I tend to look at and subscribe to the folks who comment on my post. That is how I learn about and join other blogs. I have no interest in starting my own low-end fanzine nor advertising some new game or scenario I have created for sale. I’m just a gamer doing some gaming, man.

I think the blogosphere as a community thing is great, but in the case of classic gaming I think we are starting to have a glut of blogs that don’t have much to say or much to offer. It is becoming more important to some to have a blog and have a lot of followers than it is to game.

I personally don’t have the time to join up all the others blogs out there, and especially to actually read them all. And to join just to get followers would seem kind of hollow to me. I just do my gaming, and do some blogging because I’ve been at it a long time and feel I have a lot to say. This blog has become a place for me to vent about gaming past and present. A lot of negativity has come out of that, but that is part of the vent. The truth is I love gaming, it has been a big part of my life, and it has mostly been a positive experience for me. The blog, not always so much. One guy freaking out epically on his blog because I tore up one of his creepo players some time ago actually cost me a few followers on my blog . Did he have a point? To a degree. Did I? To a degree. In our own ways we overreacted (and both of us could have talked to the other before acting, but we are dudes and dudes can be dumbasses sometimes). Do I care that some people found my rantings too offensive to continue with? Not a wit. I’m not fully the person I sometimes appear to be on my blog any more than I (or anybody) am always the person I am when I get ticked off at something in life in general. That is why I do that blog. Good or bad, I always have something to say. Either something happy about my gaming experiences, or to let off some steam.

In real life I am usually the biggest person in the room, both physically and in personality. I live large no matter what I do. But do I care if I am a big dog in the blogosphere. Hells no. I have something to say for now, and I hope at least a handful read and have something to say back to me about it (good or bad). I’m actually getting something out of blogging about gaming that I think a lot aren’t. I care not for amount of followers. I care about what I have to say and what others have to say back.

A lot of blogs will be gone in a couple of years (I don’t plan on doing this forever). But as long as I do it I will try to live it by one thing – “blog because you game. Don’t game because you blog.”

That makes sense. I think…

EDIT: I also should add that in the last couple of months I have had two unrelated computer problems that slowdown my own joining of other sites, and my commenting on them. First, my home computer got hit by the Thinkpoint virus and is still messed up, so I spend less time on it. Second, many comment functions on other blogs do not work on my office computer. Only those that allow a pop-up can be commented upon. Other problems exist, such as Bob's Cylopeatron site not loading due to adult content (which he told me does not exist on his site), and also my links to his site don't work for some reason. So to those whom I don't respond to as far as joining your blog or commenting upon, I plead severe tech problems! If you visit my blog and comment and I don't check out your stuff, be sure and remind me to give it another try!

Call of Cthulhu Friday: Cthulhu zeitgeist

There is more of it out there than I thought. Not just plushies and Miskatonic U. bumber stickers ( Go Pods!), but I’ve discovered from my Amazon.com browsing that there are a pile of Cthulhu humor books out there. “Where the Deep Ones Are” is obvious, but an interesting one, not so much humor as a “Cthulhu for Idiots” type info book, is Cthulhu 101. Made for people who don’t really know what the works of Lovecraft are all about. It gives you the lowdown on the various entities of the Cycle, goes over Lovecraft and his life, and hits on the pop culture items where the Old Ones and their crew make their mark. Cthulhu zeitgeist!

Much as I am with zombies, I’m sort of Cthulhued out (although that may not jibe with the fact that I do a twice monthly Cthulhu post). Although I’d love more than anything to have a CoC campaign going on in the coming year, I think I can take a pass on the plethora of ancillary Lovecraft floating around out there. I wonder what HP would think of all this stuff?

Wii Owner Update

Last week I posted asking for advice on my Wii system that had been sitting in the back of my closet. I had offers from a couple of friends who were interested in buying it, and I was considering using it for a few days before I decided. Well, I used it for a few days, and here’s my verdict (hold the applause). I rented Epic Mickey from Blockbuster over the weekend, and have been playing it this week (Good: fun homage’s to cartoons past – Bad: the camera angles were often very frustrating and the gameplay a bit repetitive and juvenile). I really have been charmed by the unique control possibilities offered by the controller and nunchuk (I can see this being great for sword fighting games), something I previously thought I never would. But most appealing is the possibility of downloading old games. I actually went ahead and bought a wireless router last night so I can use this out in the garage (where I usually play games), and successfully bought some Wii points. Tonight I’m planning to either buy the original Legend of Zelda or Super Mario 3 to relive some of the old magic of those clunkers (only three bucks each!). I’m sure others will follow (Castlevania games for sure. Hmm…I wonder if the original Metal Gear is available?). So it looks like my Wii is here to stay. I still want a 360 and PS3 soon, but this should occupy me enough so that I can wait until all the great after Xmas sales in January.