nemomeme's slumberland

But on the morning of game day I recalled that they didn't have enough of the "Hopeblossom" flowers they'd been collecting and that if they elected to leave the swamp that might prove to be a problem later.  So I decided that the NPC they would soon rescue would know of two other locations where the Hopeblossoms might be found - a couple islands that were more or less on the way to the Skandik islands they were bound for.

I looked the islands up quickly in the published campaign setting and saw that one of the islands had some ruins and a lot of giant carniverous apes, and the other had something to do with pirates.  I dug out my One Bad Egg Apelord pdf and cut and paste 4 different ape statblocks into a Word document.  Then I wrote down a thousand XP worth of human stat blocks from the Monster Manual for pirates and jotted down three sentences of what was likely to happen if they landed on either of the islands.  That entire process took less than fifteen minutes and I was at least somewhat prepared if they went to either of those islands.  The human stats were things I could use straight out of the Monster Manual for any number of situations they might find themselves in.

The previous combats I'd prepped were more or less "set pieces,"  where I had either a WotC paper map or a dry erase Paizo map already prepared.  But if the party ran into either apes or pirates the combat terrain would be made on-the-fly.  They ended up going to the pirate island and got into a melee with a group of pirates on the beach.  I think they had fun, in part because they absolutely steamrolled the pirates, but the on-the-fly map I set up wasn't nearly as interesting as it could have been.  There was a huge swath of difficult terrain soft sand.  But there was no compelling reason (like some artillery baddies on the far side) for them to want/have to cross the soft sand.  There also weren't any combat goals other than "kill 'em all," which is something I prefer to stay away from with forethought.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how quickly I was able to throw together something in fifteen minutes the morning of game day.  And I was also able to improvise a "prevent the mutiny" skill challenge when one of the players decided to get in the face of one of the longboat's mercenary crew-members.  4E is really nice for this.

Tomorrow I'm going to see how many level-appropriate encounter stat-blocks I can put together for 4E in one hour.  I'll bet I can do ten.  And then I'm pretty much ready for wherever the characters might go.  But then I need a second stage where I make up a list of interesting features or combat goals that can be applied where appropriate.  Like a dozen of those and then I pick two or three to overlay the stat blocks as needed.

While I enjoyed playing 3E most of the time, I absolutely dreaded the thought of running it.  4E works really well for me on this front.  A big part of my interest in and enthusiasm for small-press/indie games has to do with subject matter and play style preferences.  But I am realizing than a big part of it was (and is) the low to no-prep than many of them permit.

The roof the roof the roof is on fire
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
We don't need no water let the mother*ucker burn
Burn mother*ucker burn

- traditional Skandik war chant

Our 4E group just wrapped up a chapter of the "Sven Chronicles" and I'll be DM'ing the next chapter.  One of the players, Nate Marcel, is an artist who sometimes draws these great pictures of some of the ingame action.  I was in another D&D campaign with him years ago and he actually drew a series of comic books based on our adventures, cool artifacts that I'll always treasure.

Anyway, the characters had just about had it with all the goblins in the dungeon.  One of the player characters had died at their hands, along with a series of NPC "red shirts."  Once the party succeeded finally in slaying the villainous traitor at the dungeon's heart, they piled all the furniture, crates, and torture chamber implements into the "rat hole" pit in the dungeon's first room, doused it with oil and set it alight.

This is the party grimly returning to their longship for further adventures.  My character, Harek Bjornsson in the foreground, broods over the men that were lost on this adventure.  Nate's character, Vengarr, slings his battleax and considerable booty on his back.   The "witch-men" from the south and west, Katsu and Anu bring up the rear.

The first session of the Wilderlands 4E campaign is in the books.  Our party consists of Tekla, a flail-wielding Fighter, Anu, a Fey pact Warlock, Katsu, an Orb Wizard and my longship captain Harek.  (I dislike the Warlord Class name)

We are outside the city of Ossary searching a dungeon beneath some ruins for a patricidal villain named Skili Nightchild.  He is holed up somewhere in there with some goblins and has a bounty on his head which we aim to collect.

Our party had a fifth member named Sven.  Given the template of a campaign based around a traveling longship with an "away team," I arrived at the concept of having a "red shield" join us.  For ease of tracking and to build up an ongoing narrative of unlucky crewmates, Sven and future "red shields" have only one hit point (the Human Lackey minion from the Monster Manual).  These guys are going to be hard to keep around.  Over time I expect the crew members to arrive at the conclusion that serving under Harek is bad luck and that he is perhaps even cursed.  Could be interesting.

Sven didn't make it.  I was hoping he might survive a few sessions, developing a personality and a back story to give his passing more impact, but it was not to be; he stood in a bad spot and was attacked three or four times by goblin minions.  The last one connected.  His name provides the title to a record of what may be a long "Sven List."  The ship is a half-day away and we will not return until we find Skili so Harek will either try to find a safe place for his body or build a small cairn for him and wish him a swift journey to Valhalla.

Sven did help us save one of the PC's lives before he went.  He tied a rope to a pillar to allow Harek to descend safely into the pit Anu had fallen into (Katsu having just put the rat swarm in the bottom of the pit to sleep).  We will definitely have to learn our own capabilities as well as those of our teammates.  Anu desperately cast a spell at the rats in the hopes of getting lucky and taking them out.  Their opportunity attack took him down and he was bleeding out.  But he had earlier cursed a goblin that was almost dead.  It dropped to Tekla's flail before the round was over.  Had he been conscious, he could have used his Fey step power to simply teleport out of the pit to safety.  But none of us knew that to be able to remind him.  I expect a few such gaffes here in the early going.  No harm done so far.  Sven might disagree.

Impressions:

Fighters kick butt.  They especially kick but with a Tactical Warlord around that has the Commander's Strike At-Will Power.  Tekla was mowing through goblins like tall grass.  My Warlord is fun to play so far.  I have a giant copper d20 I hand over to Maizie (Tekla) for my Commander's Strike power.  It's fun to narrate how Harek is shield-slamming or distracting the goblins to give Tekla an opening for further mayhem.

It might be hard in a dungeon to line things up for our wizard to pull off his area of effect attacks.  It will take some practice and some delayed and readied actions for him to get a chance at taking out a couple minions at once.  Tekla got a lot of mileage out of her Cleave attack; Katsu wasn't yet able cast Thunderwave without hitting one of us as well.

It's neat to not have to worry about casting/shooting past friendlies.  That simple change makes a big difference for ranged attackers.

Diagonal movement always costing 1 feels is wonky but really opens up the battlefield and makes it easier to surround (or be surrounded by) opponents.

Runs of bad luck are scary and missing with Daily Powers could get a bit frustrating.  (This was my fourth and fifth 4E skirmish, and I haven't landed a Daily Power yet).  Our DM was hitting and rolling max or close to max damage pretty consistently and we were missing quite a bit.  I think both of these encounters were supposed to be "warm ups" in terms of how difficult they were supposed to me, but they were both pretty hairy.  Excitingly so.

Looking forward to the next session on Saturday.  Overall, 4E is a lot of fun so far.

Winedark's Daughter is nearly 30 meters long. Each tree used in the construction of her keel and hull strakes was felled by Brand Hareksson's axe, whereupon it was soaked for sixty days in the semi-salt waters at Hroeven Fjord. The ribs were bent and shaped by Brand, Harek and a dozen Hroeven kinsmen from single young trunks of trees grown in the Grove of the One Tree on Croy. After one year of drying, she was sealed and then blessed by Hjalmr, a Skandik highpriest of Thor.

Her sail, of rough wool, has traditional Skandik red and white stripes, red for the color of the Winedark Sea, white for the color of the One Tree. The sail is adorned by the two opposed green seahorses of Clan Hroeven.

The proud dragon figurehead at her bow was covered with gilt, most of which has flaked away in recent years. The purpose of the figurehead is to ward off the terrible sea monsters reported to inhabit the waters near Brezal Isle.

Though she can sail with as many as 70 men, Winedark's Daughter is current crewed and provisioned for long journeys. There are forty crewmen, not counting Harek, Brand, and the other party members. Near the coastline or on rivers, thirty-two of the forty man her sixteen oars, each seated atop their sea chests. She could be crewed by as few as twenty (with sixteen rowers), but it would be slow going. Fully crewed as she is, and with a good wind, she can travel at better than 8 knots (9.3 miles/hour). Of the forty crew, twenty are Clan Hroeven huskarls, ten are Skandik from other clans, and ten are Tharbrian mercenaries, some from Warwik. In poor weather or bad circumstance, some of these mercenaries refer to their boat as "Winedark's Whore, or "The Devil's Whore," usually out of earshot of her captain Harek.

Having spent the prior week walking around Manhattan and hanging out with a friend, I was already pretty tired as the convention got underway.  I overslept on Saturday and missed an opportunity at a Swansong game run by Clinton R. Nixon which had a couple players I'd played with last year and with whom I really wanted to play again.  And then I opted out of the midnight Dirty Secrets game I'd also been looking forward to.

Still, including four playtests, I played in seven games:  Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Grey Ranks, Kingdom of Nothing, Criminal Element, Giants, Burning Wheel, and In a Wicked Age.  Each of the games was run by their creators, excepting the IAWA game which I understood was being developed as a post-apocalyptic setting hack for that game, a "Project Bearclaw."  I might have this wrong; I was checking out of my room and arrived at that game a bit late Sunday morning.

The S7S game had too many players in it (seven) for me to really get a good sense of the system.  By the time we got an overview of the world and had created characters we only had one or two opportunities for each of our characters to interact with the mechanics.

Kingdom of Nothing was just a game concept at the Dreamation designer panel last year.  All the characters in Kingdom of Nothing are homeless street people who've lost their past.  It's got a Gaiman/World of Darkness vibe that takes some inspiration from Don't Rest Your Head.  I played a sixty-something scrap-metal-collecting alcoholic named "Rattle" that was inspired by "Bubs" from The Wire.  It was really cool to see how much work its creator had put into it since the panel and he was really open to all of the playtesters thoughts on where it might need some work.  Based on his latest playtests, it looks like Jeff is going to tweak quite a few things, including stripping out entire subsystems of the game.

Both Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies and Kingdom of Nothing show a lot of promise.  I really like what I've seen of their settings and look forward to their completion.

Criminal Element and Giants were two other playtests I participated in.  Both of these seemed closer to finished and I would be surprised if they weren't available next GenCon.

Like the S7S playtest, Criminal Element might have benefited from one less person; after character and situation creation we again only had time for a very short scenario.  Criminal Element allows you to play characters in a heist film like Reservoir Dogs or Heat.  I had browsed a draft of the rules several weeks before, and had even contemplated running a game of it before I ultimately decided I wouldn't be running anything at Dreamation.  I played a larger-than-life wheelman named Parker inspired by one of the characters from the Jock/Diggle comic book, The Losers.  As in all heist films, things quickly went pear-shaped for our group.  Despite the abbreviated scenario, everyone seemed to have a good time - lots of laughs all around.  I *really* like the Blackjack inspired conflict resolution mechanic in this game - it is very fast, yet still has interesting risk/reward decisions and tension and matches the genre perfectly.  When it comes out, I expect to add this game to a stable of low/no prep games that I can have ready to run at any time along with Dust Devils, PTA, Contenders, Don't Rest Your Head, and maybe In a Wicked Age.

Giants might be another such game; the group collaboratively creates the situation they will play in together right before play.  Using pre-generated characters each of us named and added our giant character's community and other towns and geographical features to a blank map.  We then proceeded to stride across our new-sprung land, engaging in titanic struggles against an enigmatic foe known as Firebringer.  I enjoyed this game for the opportunity to play with Shane Jackson again (he was in three of my games last year), as well as to play with Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue of Evil Hat, two of the three designers of my favorite game.  I met them last year but didn’t have the chance to play with them.  It was fun creating a map together, each of the players playing off of and adding to what the others had contributed.  Afterwards, I had a few ideas about some possible tweaks for the game, but preferred to listen to the geniuses of FATE offer their suggestions.  (Man, those guys can talk!)

The two heart-wrenching games of the convention were Grey Ranks and Burning Wheel.

Of all the games I’d signed up for, I was most anticipating the Grey Ranks session.  Follow the link for more information about it; I won’t dwell on the game much here.  I expect to find a way to play a three session arc of it sometime this year and post more about the game then.  It was extremely cool, but I especially felt the “pang of the one-shot” with this game.  By that I mean I’ve really begin to realize how much I prefer a game that goes for three or more sessions.  There was so much more to explore in the amazing characters and situation the players and the game system afforded, but no time or opportunity to do it.  The Polish child soldiers, Bear, Slaz, Mar, and the rest are lost portraits, frozen in time.  This was my favorite session of the convention as well as the session that makes me think conventions might not be for me.  I went to Dreamation last year and this year because I’ve had so few opportunities to play these small press games at all, much less on a regular basis.  I’m hoping this is starting to turn around with the development of the community of indie gamers here in Portland.

The Burning Wheel scenario, The Sacrifice, was equally poignant.  Each of the pre-generated characters’ beliefs is at odds such that a tragic end is almost inevitable.  I was glad for the opportunity to finally play Burning Wheel, one of the first small press games I ever purchased, but knew (and still know) that it’s not a system for me.  It just has too much “crunch” for my present tastes.  Its author, Luke Crane, is an energetic and talented game master who really projects his enthusiasm for his game and the hobby.  He went right for our characters’ hearts and throats and made us like it.

The Sunday morning game, In a Wicked Age/Project Bearclaw, was a little stilted and meandering.  We had rules questions and confusions.  I’ve read the rules three times and played it once and am still not quite sure how to play the thing.  The situation creating “Oracle” and the resolution mechanic at its heart are appealing enough for me to keep at it.  It could end up being an absolutely great game for me.  I think I’ll need to un-train myself from some of the stakes-setting instincts I’ve learned from similar games to play it correctly.

Even though the game was really bumpy, good players still made it fun.  John (jenskot) from the Mu game last year was there.  All the characters in this post-apocalyptic setting were interesting/funny.  I played a simple farmer named Loam Tilman with John played my blindly optimistic wife Emma, and Rob Donoghue playing a hard-nosed tin mine manager.  Kevin Allen Jr.’s accent and mannerisms for his collector/merchant character, Barnigut, had me in stitches, and there was a feckless charlatan inventor named Mr. Volts who somehow made good on his promises of creating a rain machine in the end.

So, I’m still not sure about conventions generally but this one has lots of neat people and talented role-players who are really bringing special qualities when they sit down to play.  At least as long as I have my good friend Eric in Manhattan, I don’t intend to miss out on Dreamation.