Role-Play This!

I read a blog post the other day that made me groan inwardly and let out a deflated sigh at my desk, once again requiring me to reassure my officemates that no one had died. I would post a link but that would mean diving into my twitter feed, and as you know I’m kind of lazy and prone to half-assing things. Oh yah I am on the Twitters now, you can follow me @middleageddm. I don’t really twat a lot…is that the right term? Is it twating or tweeting? Whatever, anyways it wasn’t like this article was a provocative flame war punch to the crotch; it was just the depiction of modern D&D that rankled me a tad. The gist of the post was about gamers retreat from the heavy rules focused editions of D&D back into the loving embrace of the OSR. The part that stuck in my craw was a statement that 4^th edition’s particular rule set and combat focused mechanics had eliminated role-playing from Dungeon’s and Dragons.    

I just find assertions like these a little rigid and myopic. Don’t get me wrong this has nothing to do with the OSR. I fully understand the desire to dust of those old 1^st edition texts on the shelf and head off into the bowels of the Moathouse, holy symbol in hand, to kick Lareth the Beautiful’s ass six ways from Sunday. When I hear assertions about role-playing and how 4^th edition discourages it or has an absence of it, I feel like that person is erroneously applying their subjectively held schema about what role-playing is for them in a weird sort of nerd pattern recognition.

Look I will grant you that the rules/mechanics can make combat pretty long in 4^th edition, which can be off-putting to some, but I don’t find that it reduces or discourages role-playing in anyway…well at least based on my subjective schema of what role-playing is. You see for me combat is or can be role-playing. It’s all there for the taking; you get character-character interaction, character-npc interaction, character-environment interaction, character-monster interaction, collaborative storytelling, and narrative descriptions of character actions/moves and the corresponding DM narrative moves. Combat itself can be a rich, flowing tapestry of smack down, that is if you want it to be. So are we then talking about a lack of exploration or interaction scenes? I don’t find this to be true either as these things seem more dependant on group play-style and taste, as games can have as much or as little of each as desired. Are we then talking about how the clearly defined and codified combat and pc mechanics stifle creativity? I haven’t really found that to be the case either, maybe even the opposite for some people as this allows for easy fluffing..er I mean re-fluffing (fuck why does my mind always go there first?) or re-skinning as desired. For example I had two wizards in my last game that weren’t even recognizable as wizards. One was essentially Green Lantern and the other was a dumb as rocks gladiator.

I think in reality I have found 4^th edition’s rule set to be the most flexible and inclusive of multiple play-styles. I have seen or heard about games that run the full spectrum of the continuum. On the forums one guy was describing his multiple 1-30^th level campaigns that don’t even have a DM and are a series of delves and completely combat focused. While at the other end of the spectrum I have heard many descriptions of peoples games were they proudly declare having an entire session without any dice being rolled.  As an aside this seems to be the gold standard seal of approval for grognards when championing the greatness of the older editions and the bastard demon spawn that is 4^th edition. This is something I don’t really get as I tend to get kind of jittery if I don’t smash something in the mouth during an evening of gaming, but that’s me.

Role-playing isn’t necessarily inherent to a system, unless were talking like a diceless system such as Amber or some heavy story game, it really seems more related to the individual people playing the game and what they do with the rules. Take Battletech as another example. That game is essentially a tactical Mech Fighting game but some cats have created such deep role-playing rich campaigns that would make some of my 1^st edition campaigns look like a game of checkers. So when people say that the older editions of D&D encouraged or had more role-playing in them I just don’t buy. My personal experience and anecdotal research shows that a lot of people just killed things and took their stuff through endless dungeon crawls back then just as much as they do now.

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A Dog’s Breakfast

Do you remember that little experiment I was planning? You know the one where I was going to thrust the socially reticent player into the collaborative story-telling spotlight. How did it turn out your wondering? Hmm I guess about as well as having some kind of rectal exam. Overall, it was one of the more garbled, incoherent, garbage sessions I have ever run.

As I dissect the session in my head several factors come into play that contributed to this massive steaming pile of a session. The scene began with the players climbing out of the Tarek pit of pleasure after killing the pack of rabid –insert name for a Dark Sun lizard type creature- and earning the right to walk amongst the Tareks without being killed on sight. I gave a brief history of the Tareks transmitted through song by the head shaman during a campfire on the eve of the “Great Hunt”, a kind of Tarek bar mitzvah where they send the young out into the desert to slay a great beast and claim their place as an adult in the society. The song told of the great Tarekian empire during the green times and how society was split into three castes (warrior, shaman, and tinkerer/engineer). Much knowledge was lost as the empire was shattered during the brown times and Ranjaat’s racial cleansing war.

The newly reformed “empire” consists of several of the elder houses and the conclave of shamans. The major player’s involved were the Emperor, head Shaman, Tar Ugu (a former pc), and the Tarek player’s hidden brother. Each major npc had some motivations and possible moves. In terms of the emperor I went with the Son of Mogh story line from STNG where he had falsely accused the Tarek player’s father of selling the newly reborn empire out to the sorcerer king Kalak, thereby seizing control of the empire and having the player’s father executed and house stricken from the stories.

So what went wrong? Well overall my mood was a little off as I had just gotten word that I would not be accepted into medical school for the fall. I was a little bummed and it kind of took some wind out of my sails. Now in the grand scheme of life this is not a major disappointment. I already have a doctorate in clinical psychology and a full time job plus a part-time private practice, so it’s not like I am in my mid-twenties and trying to figure out what to do with my life or stuck in some dead end job that I loathe. I also only applied to one school so I new the odds were slim. None the less I was a little bummed with a sense of loss at missing out on a new challenge. So blabity blah blah basically I was a little flat.

I also think I didn’t frame the scene as well as I could have in terms of layout and positioning of the NPC’s and Tarek faithful. This made the exploration at the beginning of the night a little awkward as things became jumbled with people going off and talking to different factions. It also made coming up with a plan or strategy on how to deal with any potential threats or desired shenanigans more difficult and less clear. Sometimes I forget how dependent we have become on maps and tokens in 4^th edition, particularly when playing online, to set the scene adequately compared to the olden days. I can get a little lazy and forget to put tokens out to help frame the scene. Often this is because I haven’t planned anything out, partly due to said laziness and partly due to a desire to be reactive to player choice.

Now in terms of the socially reticent player who I thrust into the narrative limelight, he reads this blog and was game for it but….perhaps it was a bridge to far and we need more baby steps and supportive coaching. In improv terms he kept blocking himself at every turn, it was literally like he was pulling a gun on himself while shouting no. In one instance he stated that he was going to intimidate the emperor and before I could say anything he stated that wouldn’t work because the emperor was un-inimitable. He also had some good ideas but they mostly came off as incoherent and not fully formed. He had established that he was going to use the inherent psionic link that Tareks have to do something but then abandoned what he had started (later I would learn that he wanted to see if a member of the tribe had any memories of the betrayal that would be helpful). He eventual just rushed up and slapped the emperor which then prompted a battle royal in the middle of the camp that essentially ended with him being dead..again (unconscious and the emperor threatening to coup de grace him if the others didn’t stand down). In talking with him after the game he explained his intent wasn’t to fight the emperor but it was more of a klingon challenge type thing. Which my response was “awesome but how would I know that unless you tell me”. I think I really needed to ask more questions to try and draw his ideas out, but like I said I was a little flat. I think this is important to remember when trying to impose collaborative story telling on less experienced players or those that it doesn’t come as naturally to.   

Overall, I also think I need to be more prepared in terms of potential skill challenges, even though I loathe them. At a minimum I need to think/be prepared for the use of skills to overcome challenges or adjudicate player driven hi-jinks on the fly. I feel like I have sort of hit the proverbial wall in terms of running the campaign and need to bear down and push through it. I figure I have 6 to 8 session left to wrap everything up for the end of the heroic tier and I need to end strong…or at least crawl through the finish line like one of those depleted nut jobs at the end of an Iron Man Triathlon.

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The Midgard Bestiary for 4E D&D

This post is for all the 4^th edition players out there, or at least those of you willing to admit your still playing 4^th edition which has become the gaming equivalent of smoking while pregnant..not technically against the law but overwhelmingly met with shock, revulsion, and swift condemnation by others. I wanted to let people know that there is still awesome content being produced, not by Wizard’s of the Coast mind you (god forbid), but by others with a real passion for the system and who share the belief that it was thrown in the wood chipper a little to soon. I am not just talking about great fan generated content like Frothsoff 4e, but company generated stuff as well.

The Midgard Bestiary for 4^th Edition (Open Design) by Richard Green and Brian Liberage is one of these new products that really scratched an itch for me. I have written before that one of my major gripes with 4^th edition is that they didn’t get the monster math sorted out until later in cycle, causing the majority of the monsters designed for the system to be full of suckage and virtually unusable. When I flip through the Monster Manual 1 and 2 I actually feel embarrassed for the monsters, like I am embarrassed for them. It would literally be a crime to have them square off with the veritable plethora of twinked up pc’s I am frequently assailed by. Listen I know what your gonna say “the players don’t always have to be physically threatened, you can have alternative combat goals…blabity blah blah blah” Sometimes you just wanna smash the pc’s in the mouth and let them know you mean business.  

The Bestiary does not suffer at all from this monster impotence as it utilizes the updated damage progression. The monster ecologies and fluff are based, not unsurprisingly, on the Midgard setting, another Open Design project and originally Wolfgang Baur’s homebrew world. I enjoy reading fluff, you might even say that I am a bit of a fluffer (kidding), and the Midgard Bestiary really delivers in this regard. Don’t let this push you away from the product though, as the monster mechanics are not tied to the setting and are easily re-skinned. For example, I have used dudes exclusively from this book to stock the latest location in my Dark Sun game full of Tareks. In the end it is really the mechanics that matter most and the book offers some interesting and cool variations for a little freshness. I particularly liked the several different Hags and Babba Yaga’s Horseman.

I managed to snag this bad boy through a Kickstarter project. I got a full color soft cover print edition and a pdf (if you’re reading Wizards take some notes) for 25$, well worth it my opinion. Overall, I really like this product and find it refreshing to grab a monster book that isn’t the “Monster Vault” for a change when I am looking to make my players crap their pants

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Cannon Fodder

I’ve had Tareks on my mind of late. No, it’s not what your thinking, nothing sexual or erotic I can assure you. I just happen to have one in my Dark Sun game and, well, I think it is time for him to sort of step into the spot light a bit. I wouldn’t necessarily say he has been a bump on the log but if you just happened to be sitting on a log and felt something uncomfortable it’s probably not your hemorrhoids. When we did a bit of Q&A as he introduced his latest character (his 2 previous ones have been KIA) he stated that he was an orphan who had been picked up by the Muto Tieflings as a child and had lived outside their cave for most of his life, never traveling outside the area and having no ties to anything.  I kind of chuckled at this and then ribbed him mercilessly at work about the non-background he created. Even when one of the other players tried to collaboratively build him into the fiction and emergent story of the game he steadfastly clung to his history.

This player tends to stick to the rear in social interactions and collaborative story telling scenes (in fairness he does have a bit of social anxiety and often worries he will make a mistake or do/say something foolish) but that is all about to change because I am going to drop him squarely into the centre of a shit storm. In the “business” we call that exposure with response prevention (although in fairness it is going to be and feel more like flooding).  I am going to start the next session with the party in a large pit surrounded by the Dark Sun equivalent of wolves and a mob of Tareks looking down, cheering, hurling feces, cursing, and betting. Then with some Q&A we’ll try and sort out how this all came to be.

*Warning* if you are some kind of Dark Sun cannon purist then this next part might make you feel like I dropped trou and bricked in your mouth. I am going to model the Tareks on Klingons from Star Trek The Next Generation. They are going to be a nomadic collection of clan/houses lead by an overall war leader. Perhaps in the green time they had a larger nation/empire but where almost extinguished during the racial cleansing of the brown times. One of their motivations might be to create another great Tarek empire. I have been researching some Klignon terminology so I can mix that into conversations.

With regards to my player (and the group) it should be interesting to see what they create. In my mind I have a couple of possible elements of fiction I can add such as the Warf story line from STNG where he is considered an outcast because his family was falsely branded traitors or if they survive the pit they might prove themselves worthy to be hunted ala  “The Most Dangerous Game”. Well whatever it turns out to be it should be interesting; I just hope it is not too traumatic for the Tarek PC

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Alternatives

I have been thinking a lot on alternative goals in combat lately. These are not “combat outs” (which were developed to speed up 4^th edition combat and reduce some of the grind that can develop) such as bad guys…”gulp”… actually surrendering instead of determinedly inviting the players to cut them down like shafts of wheat or monsters fleeing when bloody or underlings/minions dropping when the master is slain. What I am really talking about are goals that one or both sides can have in a given encounter that isn’t just curb-stomping the other into Valhalla. I don’t think this concept is particularly limited to 4^th edition, or new for that matter, but given the tactical nature of the combat these kinds’ goals can really make the game shine, particularly if you feel like you have fallen into a bit of a rut with encounters playing out in a predictable pattern of powers and feats each round almost like a combat assembly line. Although this maybe more of a DM issue than a player issue because when I am a player I looove stabbing things until their dead at which point I continue to stab them like I have some kind of stabbing Tourette’s..but I digress.

The alternative goals can be almost anything from needing to protect a high value target during an attack or transport to acquiring an item before time runs out. In the later example imagine a scene where an item is guarded by powerful opponents, perhaps much more so than the players where a straight up brewhahah could go either way. The players then have the option to either throwdown, hopefully survive, and acquire said package or do they have some players defensively engage the guardians while one player grabs the item followed by a measured retreat?

Alternative goals are meant to not only make choices interesting but also failure interesting. Take the former example of protecting a high value target during transport. Say the players are tasked with protecting the king’s daughter on a diplomatic mission to a warring neighbor. During the journey they are attacked and while perhaps they defeat the enemies in the traditional fight mode but fail to protect the princess because the attackers had the alternative goal of killing/kidnapping the princess and not necessarily wiping out the players. What are the consequences of that failure? Probably pretty interesting, particularly of your a sadistic mother fucker like me

I will give you an example from my Dark Sun game. I set up an encounter in the desert where the players were ambushed by the Muto Tieflings. I had several ground troops followed by some Muto’s swooping in on giant bats as I piped in Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries. The Muto’s had the goal of capturing one of the player’s (Quell) who they were calling the Muadeeb for a ritual sacrifice.  It played out rather nicely with the players adjusting strategy to try and protect Quell (I kept trying to have the bat riders grab him and fly away) and the associated tension/urgency it generated. The defenders were overjoyed as the Muto’s repeatedly violated marks to try and get at Quell.

One of the side benefits of having encounters with alternative goals is that you don’t’ need to be so neurotic with encounter balance or scaling (if that is your thing) because there is usually a win button that doesn’t involve total annihilation of the monster(s). A word of caution, like most things in life, with the exception of gaming and maybe porn, moderation is probably best with alternative encounter goals. I don’t think you want them in every encounter or your players might start rolling their eyes every time you frame a scene while fondly reminiscing about the good ol’ days when you could just kill things and take their stuff.

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In Brightest Day….

When it comes to genre blending in film, books, and rpg’s I tend to become very OCPD’sh in my need to have everything organized and separated out into their proper places; firm boundaries all around. It’s kind of the like the guy who can’t tolerate the different food groups touching or co-mingling on his plate, although in real life, I would bludgeon you to a bloody pulp Thunderdome styles for some chocolate smeared with peanut butter. I don’t know what to say, I just dislike guns in my fantasy worlds and vise versa swords in my sci-fi worlds (lightsabres being the obvious exception of course as I could accept and rationalize their presence in any and all genres. Hell I am playing a born again Jedi in my next D&D adventure). All of which makes it a little surprising that I have mixed in some superhero/comic book content into my Dark Sun game.

How this all took shape is actually an interesting example of collaborative story telling. The groups Thri-Kreen Warlord decided to sacrifice himself at the end of the last LIM. He hurled himself into a portal to the elemental chaos after defeating the BBEG (who was using it to summon his master from the 9 hells) before it closed. His reasoning being that he was taking the seed of life (recently acquired Thri-Kreen artifact and what he had established was the treasure hidden in an ancient vault) into the abyss where it would ignite and become the catalyst for a new Green Age on Athas. He then established that the area around the “muto” oasis began to grow lush with vegetation.

With Clikk Sandflea’s heroic sacrifice the player needed to create a new character for the game.  This is when he told me that he was going to make Green Lantern. I was like “..oh…okayyy, sounds interesting? (voice rising a few octaves at the end). He then described how the spark from the beginning of the new green age had awakened his character’s green wood ring (a family heirloom) and unlocked new and amazing powers along with a vision for the future. It sounded cool so I was interested in seeing where it would head. At the same time the player of “Nori”, the party’s female Mul Warden, established that his character had a connection to the next city the group was heading to. The player stated that Nori was a famous gladiator who ran afoul of a crooked templar for failing to throw a fight in the arena.

I took these bits of emergent fiction and decided to go balls deep into genre blending and embrace the comic book motif as I crafted the next location. I know it’s not as blatant as Gandalph shooting the Balrog in the face with a 12-gauge, but you know…baby steps. I decided to flesh out this crooked templar a bit. I modeled the city of Alturak on the series Deadwood and made the crooked templar the de facto ruler of the town. Then I was pondering about what to do with this new “Green Lantern” and I had an epiphany and thus “Sinestrago” and the Yellow Templar Corps was born, complete with yellow power rings.  I set to re-skinning and altering monsters to build the corps and narrated their powers as creating constructs. The guy playing Green Lantern upon hearing all of this decided to tie his background to Sinestrago by being a former student of his.

I think this highlights some of the benefits collaborative storytelling and how engaging it can be for the players to see the stuff they create come to life in the world. You can take a look at Sinestrago, he is essentially a re-skinned Beholder. I created a voice for him that is a cross between Foghorn Leghorn and Jesse Jackson; he is pretty amusing to play. I added a fear aura too him that will represent the Yellow Lantern Battery that is located somewhere in the town and drawing power from the populaces fear, even enhancing and creating it, and which the players might want to shut down before a final confrontation. Although that might be in a while as another player decided to have his character join the Yellow Templar Corps….did I mention he is the brother of the new Green Lantern

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Simulationists Annonymous

Hi I am the Middle-Aged DM and I am a recovering simulationist, it has been 322 days since I last made my players haggle with a merchant over the price of 50 feet of rope and dry rations….. Now don’t get me wrong I have no problem grabbing a 10 foot pole and a sac of chickens and BECMI’ng the shit up, it’s just that I am slowly getting a sense of what my preferred play style is both as a DM and a player. In some ways it is like going through a kind of gaming puberty or nerdberty if you will.

As a gamer I had been so accustomed to a certain way of playing based on early D&D and the prevailing attitudes on what constituted good role playing and you know a “proper” game. This really shook out as you talking, thinking and acting like your character while wandering around and interacting with the setting that the DM had provided. So if you were just entering a town after several hard days of travel you would probably stop and talk with the guards at the gate, possibly haggle over an entrance fee, then make your way to an inn where you would talk with the stable boy about caring for your horses and then into the inn itself where you would chat up the barman, flirt with barmaid/DM and probably get wasted; or similarly, traveling from the butcher to the baker and onto the candlestick maker gathering the necessary info to find the plot or move story foreword.

Now there is nothing wrong with this style of play, I had fun with it for years, but I always felt slightly frustrated with it, like the pacing was off or something. It is really hard to put my finger on it. Things started to evolve for me the more I read and heard about the so called “story games” with their emphasis on the narrative and collaborative story building. I started viewing the gaming session as a series of scenes, either generated by me or the players, for both combat and non-combat encounters, with Q&A filling the gaps in between. I think this is part of the reason I am still rather fond of 4^th edition D&D as its focus on set piece battles and narrative style works well with this kind of mind-frame, and why a lot of my fellow old-timers hated it so much.

In the aforementioned play examples instead of having the players haggle with the merchant I tend to skip that scene unless there is some sort of interesting complication or interaction to be had. Mundane equipment and dealings I let slide and just hand wave or throw it back to the players to tell me if anything interesting or noteworthy happened. Now if it is something more interesting like say poison or some gear for a scheme or job they got cooking then we might flesh that out a little more (cause I can certainly smell a complication percolating)  with some narration and Q&A followed by some skill roles and we see what happens.

I have also shifted to being more right out on front street with information and sometimes give it as part of the scene set up or through the Q&A or again asking the players what the information they a re looking for might be. I don’t really worry about breaking verisimilitude or immersion as both are again very subjective experiences and not necessarily under the control of the DM or other players. I find I get just as much or more “role playing” and character interaction as before with a little less awkwardness. In my last Dark Sun session I started the session with he players locked in battle (a little media res if you will) except I asked them who it was they were fighting and why? Then we built the scene from there and it set the tone and focus for the rest of the evening.

I guess what it boils down to is the age old debate of simulationism vs. narrativism, which is constantly being flamed back and forth over the forums and interwebs, often disguised and in displaced forms. People tend to argue this issue way past rationality into a black and white stance, when we are really talking shades of grey as simulationism and narrativism are opposite end points on a spectrum or continuum of play styles (with neither being superior). It comes down what your preferred play style is and I guess mine has shifted a bit to the narrativist side of the spectrum.

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Crotchety Old Man Rant

I am feeling very much the crotchety old man this morning as I hike my imaginary pants (I am actually wearing yoga pants) and reach for my metaphorical broom to bear and shake at all those pesky kids on my front lawn (I live in a major metropolitan city so I don’t have a lawn per say as much as it is a rock garden). What has my adult diapers in a knot you ask? I have been ruminating a lot about the state of Dragon and Dungeon magazines and the shity stewardship that WOTC has shown the brand over the past couple of years.

This rumination was really sparked by the announcement that beginning with Dragon 416 both magazines will once again be compiled into-well you know-an actual magazine instead of the individual article release that has been the standard M.O. for a while. I know what you’re thinking, well Mr. Middle-Aged  DM you must be super happy that WOTC seems to be listening to their customers and treating the magazines with some  respect. Well you might be right, but you would be forgetting what a pessimistic jerk-off I am as I could look literally look out over the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean and be like hmm seems like there should be more water there.

It was a dark day when WOTC announced they were taking back the reigns of the magazines from Paizo and making them digital only. I can understand that business decision based on the status of the print magazine industry today, although I say that as I fondly caress my recent issue of Kobold Quarterly. I can’t imagine Mr. Baur publishes his magazine at a lost, but then it is easy to see WOTC’s desire to funnel everybody through their online subscription fee. While I lamented the lack of a dead tree copy of the magazines for my morning constitutionals I was satisfied with perusing the articles as they were published online and then downloading the compiled issues at the end of the month to give a more thorough and focused reading on my ipad. This method of content delivery seemed to satisfy multiple consumer needs, which made their decision to suspend compiling the articles into a magazine format so egregious and bewildering.  I found the reasons given for this move somewhat insulting and an example of when I just wish a corporation would put aside the spin bull shit and be honest. Saying that it was too expensive to continue to compile the pdf’s into one file each month and that more people seemed to download the individual pdf’s anyways (one of the worst cases of circular logic I have seen and I treat mentally ill people) just really rings hollow. My suspicion is that having the issues compiled made it easier for people to poach the content either through a month membership to download all back issues or through torrent files. For myself, I found myself consuming less of the digital content once they made the move to no longer compiling the pdf’s.

Now that the magazines are being made whole again I find it hard to be happy (not necessarily WOTC’s fault, but I do like a good scapegoat) as the magazines are significantly reduced in content and filled with the bowl remnants of the current edition. I guess it is less expensive to compile half the number of articles per issue I really hope they get their act together for D&D Next as they sometimes make it very difficult to be an ardent supporter of the brand.

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Muto-Tiefling Beach Party

This is a continuation of my previous post on LIM’s and will be outlining an example from my Dark Sun campaign utilizing that design. I apologize in advance for being “that guy” talking about his campaign, even though that is kind of what I do on this site, but this just seems way more out there on Front Street and with no dick jokes in sight. I also apologize for the roughness of the material as I mostly cut and pasted from my notes.

I centered the LIM on an oasis that backs into a natural outcropping of caves that is several days from civilization. One of the goals I had with this adventure was to give some spotlight time to the guys playing the Tiefling Psion and Thri-Kreen Warlord to allow for further character development; hence the title of the LIM “Muto Tiefling Beach Party” Quell is the psion that died a couple of sessions ago and who’s consciousness is currently subjugating an old, grizzled human gladiator. Clickk Sandflea is the party Warlord whose previous clutch was killed and has currently adopted the party as his new clutch mates.

Grimm Portents:

The party was traveling through the desert on the way to the city of Alturak. I had a trusted NPC that was traveling with them mysteriously fall ill followed by a not to distant conflict featuring powerful arcane magic. The opening scene was outside the oasis in the recent aftermath of a battle between the Mutated Tieflings and Thri-Kreen. There were scattered bodies of Thri-Kreen and mutated Tieflings riding Kanks (think Road Warrior). I started the action immediately with the players facing off against a pair of elementals summoned by one of the Thri-Kreen’s dying acts as they approached his body.

Factions:

Muto Tieflings

• have been living in the caves for several generations, Dmongous arrived about 5 years ago and assumed leadership of the settlement.
• within the last year or so members have started to become sick, or displaying mutations
• group is tight lipped about worship, some are wary of Dmongous others are fanatically loyal
• being hideously mutated by Dmongous through water and rituals (tainted by the abyss)

Dmongous, leader of Tieflings

• well muscled wears a mask with horns protruding reddish hew to skin
• arrogant, charming, charismatic
• mutters to self at times like he is having a conversation with Someone
• Worships Asmodeous

Tiefling Names: Sorrow, Abscess, Demonstrous, Muadeeb (abyssal for skin shifter aka Quell)

Motivations:

• Release devil through ritual
• Eliminate Thri-Kreen and gain entrance to Thri-Kreen tomb to get relic (could be used to open portal to abyss)
• Expand cult
• Sow destruction and anarchy

Moves:

• attack party
•  Try and get the pc’s to attack Thri-Kreen
• Launch an attack at Thri-Kreen
• Try and trick quell and others to attend sacrificial ceremony
• Try and recruit Quell into cult
• Try and kidnap/abduct Quell (could be used as sacrifice to open portal to abyss)

Thri-kreen:

The Torh-Kreen are a species of Thri-Kreen with bright red carapaces who tended to build and live in settlements. There are rumors of great civilizations north of the Tyr valley. The Torh-Kreen inhabited the caves at the oasis during the Green Time. These Kreen are descendants of the Torh-Kreen and have light reddish tinge to carapaces.
Pack leader has the key to tomb but unaware of its presence or function.

As Clickk approached the oasis I also had his character experience a psionic vision showing the Torh-Kreen living in the caves during the Green Time. I also gave another psionic vision when/if he entered the caves showing the Torh-Kreen placing some item in a tomb and sealing it followed by scenes of battle and use of defiling magic. I left it to the player to tell me what the vision meant and what the item could have been. Clickk felt that the item was probably something called a Seed of Life, an artifact from the distant past used for preserving and creating life.

Motivations:

• Recover ancestral home
• Cure leader who became sickened after meeting with Dmoungus
• secure survival of the pack
• struggle for dominance, hunter/prey mentaility

Moves

• Attack players
• Attack Tieflings in force
•  Have land sharks attack players/trap
• Change in leadership/coup, internal strife
• Challenge players for clutch/pack membership

Thri-Kreen names: Krik Krik (pack leader), Chituk, Tic Tac

Thri-Kreen language:  Clutch of one, larva (insult meaning naïve), Send to the circle (kill someone)

I have been pleased with the LIMs results thus far. I have run 2 sessions and will probably eek out another 2 to 3 more from this location. I haven’t had to do much since the initial prep except to add some minor things based on emergent story elements. Next thing I have percolating, after chatting with one of my players, is making desert travel more of a lair assault type challenge, but will see.

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Location In Motion (What’s your Notion)

So what exactly is a Location-in-Motion or LIM for short? It’s a style of adventure design derived from Dungeon World (DW) concepts and hacked for use in some 4^th edition games that I am involved in, although the concepts are generally applicable to most RPG’s.  Certainly these concepts are not new or revolutionary, and I can’t take any kind of credit for their development or implementation. I first became aware of the LIM from a cat in my home game that was playing a ton of DW and had decided to create a little one-shot 4^th edition adventure utilizing some DW concepts.

The way I think about LIM’s is that they are essentially mini-sandboxes. The DM picks a location that is kind of closed and then stocks it with various factions. Each faction is then given some over-arching motivations/goals that drive their actions and reactions. Following this is a list of “moves” for each faction that suggests potential actions a faction could take depending on the situation or to drive the game forward. Moves can be really general or very specific based on personal preference and whatever would be most helpful to you. For a faction consisting of Mutated Tieflings (from my Dark Sun game) a move could be very general and abstract like “sow destruction and anarchy” to more specific “attempt to kidnap Quell”.  The idea is that if there is a lull in the action or the players do something you can look at your “moves” and either react to the players or use them to spur action.

The initial session starts with the players at the LIM and preferable in the middle of some action. This can be a good place to get some collaborative story telling going by asking the players what happened on the way or how they got where they are. Grim Portents is another concept that helps frame the setting and get the action rolling, usually a threat of some kind that may potentially happen without intervention. At this point the characters are left to interact with the location and factions as they see fit, prompting reactions from the factions in a very organic free flowing way.

Depending on the style of game you are running this frame work allows for a lot of narrative control to be given to the players such as adding motivations or goals to factions or adding story elements they want to see happen or accomplish. The DM is then able to build this into the story, perhaps even adding to the encounters and possibilities within the LIM. For example the DM in the game I was playing in mentioned that there was a temple with a hidden treasure on the island. The Githyanki warlock stated that the treasure must be a Spelljamer helm leading to the conclusion that there must be a ship hidden somewhere on the island that he could use to blast off to the astral sea. The DM was then able to incorporate this into the story adding encounters and motivations/goals to the factions that involved a starship. The “motion” part of the LIM comes not only from the fluidity of the collaborative story telling but also from the idea that the factions continue with their goals and motivations if left to their own devices which can have consequences (good or bad)for the players. If ignored a faction cam become a “front”, essentially a major pain in the ass that can continue in future adventures. For example, not stopping the cult who was planning on opening a portal to the abyss could have major consequences that could play out for a while or become a recurring motif in the game.

In terms of DM prep, this approach is frontloaded and takes some work to set up, but after that you can get multiple sessions out of that prep. With my Dark sun game I am looking at getting 5 to 6 sessions out of the initial prep which included creating factions/motivations/moves and generating a couple of maps and stat blocks. I think the discrete nature of the LIM makes it slightly more manageable than a full open world sand box style, although it is not that different from those types of games that start in a town then progress outward. The idea is that you can then string one LIM after another to create an ongoing campaign.

I think what spawned the LIM was some of the frustrations that can arise with plot-based linear adventures; namely railroading and lack of player choice and the associated awkwardness that can occur as players stumble around trying to find the plot or when the DM is invested in the outcome of an encounter/event in order to drive the plot/story forward. I think what is cool about this approach is that it’s not set in stone, in other words you can’t be accused of doing it wrong.  I picture it like a spectrum with DM/player style dictating where on the spectrum in terms of narrative/plot control the LIM will fall in.

This post is getting a little out of hand, nothing like trying to articulate abstract concepts to make you want to jab something sharp in your eye, so I will end this one and continue next time detailing the LIM I set up in my Dark Sun game.

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