You, Me and the VTT

I have really been swamped lately and not by the things I should be swamped with like work, career development, and family (although the lack of sleep is beginning to cause brain damage me thinks) but by prepping for a new campaign in a new system. I pulled the chute on my Revenge of the Giants game and am gearing up to run the Kingmaker adventure path for the Pathfinder rpg. For those of you keeping score at home we have DM’ing my 4^th edition home game, DM’ing Pathfinder bi-weekly over skype, and playing in a bi-weekly 4^th edition Dark Sun game over skype. So you know…not nearly enough gaming but you gotta take what you can get I guess. I know what you’re thinking, why the hell are you running both the D&D’s at the same time? The answer: pure masochism.

With the demise of my Revenge of the Giants game I thought I might give a brief review of my experience with Wizards of the Coast’s virtual tabletop (VTT). Keep in mind that the VTT is still in beta and my thoughts are filtered through that lens and not what the end product will likely be.  Overall, I really like what I see in the VTT despite its beta limitations and the fact that some of those limitations pushed me to drop my campaign. What I found awesome about the VTT is the built in community and the ability to play “pick-up” D&D at the drop of a hat. On more than one occasion after the kids where in bed and mustering enough energy to do more than mindlessly watch images flicker across the TV screen, I was able to jump on and play in a one-shot or delve.

The way the VTT is set up now allows for a pretty flawless sync with the character builder and monster builder, as the files are translated into mini-character sheets and stat blocks on the right side of the screen complete with integrated macros. When I run on maptools I tend to be a little more old school in that while my players have macros for their characters I handle monsters, initiative, and damage manually with dice, pen and paper. I find that, for me, this is quicker than using a framework and having to point and click the shit out of everything.

The biggest drawbacks of the VTT at this time center on the voice chat and mapping capabilities. I don’t know what the deal is with the voice chat but it is definitely not like using skype. There is often a lot of interference, static, and weird sounds ringing through your headset. So much so that in all the games I have played in you have to set your microphone to off and have it linked to a key to open, almost like an intercom system. This makes for a bit of an unsettling experience, as it is sort of like playing D&D in an airlock. You have complete silence punctuated by crackling and overly loud or quiet voices popping in an out. I found that this contributed to a lot less role-playing (in the case of the giants game pretty much none) and little chatter and bullshitting. I found that this made the interaction a little awkward and stunted, so hopefully they will clean this up a bit before the official release.

Overall, I liked the mapping function as it reminded me of pymapper. The only issue for me was the relative dearth of tiles to use in creating maps. I ended up having to use the drawing mechanic to make a lot of the maps for my game, which is never a good thing as I have a hard enough time drawing a straight line with a ruler let alone using a computer. It also added significantly to my prep time. At this point there is no function that would allow you to just upload a map like in maptools. This for sure is due to the VTT being in beta and will likely change in the future, hopefully with access to the entire dungeon tile sets or even being able to upload maps from existing modules (edit-I just checked back and they have added more tiles, it looks like most of the tiles from the 3 master dungeon tile sets).

I can really see the potential in the VTT but I am left wondering how they will integrate this with their other digital offerings in terms of pricing and access.  For example will this just be a part of the regular DDI subscription or will it cost extra? It would be hard for me to find a reason to pay extra for the VTT, particularly when there are excellent free alternatives available. I can also see them going for a micro-transaction system where access to the VTT comes with your subscription but you have to pay to unlock certain features and contents like modules or map packs.  I think I am going to stick with running my games off of maptools for now until the beta shakes out a little more. I find that using skype allows for more contact with the people I am playing with out of session which in turn fosters familiarity and camaraderie that makes for a more consistent and entertaining game.

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Reflections on Revenge of the Giants and the Paragon Tier

As I am prepping for my Revenge of the Giants game tonight, which is being played out through Wizard’s Virtual Tabletop, I thought I would blog a bit about my thoughts on the module so far and playing at the Paragon Tier. The module itself is….okay. The production quality is fantastic (it makes me lament the fact that Wizard’s is not really publishing adventures anymore, I think we get one this year and the DDI stuff just isn’t the same). The story is fairly classic, with giantkind banding together to try and release an ancient primordial from its prison while wreaking havoc and laying waste to everything.  The adventure essentially plays out in a series of delves or crawls and is very combat heavy, punctuated by forced and sometimes mechanically awkward skill challenges.   There is a really weird section/delve where you travel back in time and lay some smack on Acererak before he became a lich. The hook is that you need to get some “sky metal” to make some potent magic weapons to aid you in your quest to defeat the giants. It left me thinking that if you can travel in time why not go back and alter the events that lead to the current predicament, but whataya going to do maybe that would violate the prime directive or something.

You can tell that this module was written early on in the life of 4^th edition before they had a fuller understanding of how the system really worked and potential pitfalls (another reason why I lament the lack of new published modules because most of the ones in actual print suffer from this). The only tweaking I have done so far is to swap out monsters for their current versions post Monster Manual 3 or updated the damage to the new progression levels.

With regards to DM’ing at the Paragon tier, I have to honestly say I have no fucking clue about what’s going on during the game most of time. Each Character has so many powers, magic items and abilities that whenever I do anything  2 or 3 voices chirp up over the interwebs calling out numbers that reduce attack roles, damage rolls, or trigger some kind of awfulness for my monsters. It can be very confusing. I have access to all their character because they are stored on the virtual table, but really it is too much to keep track of and I think you have to just trust your players.  It is even confusing for the players as some have crib sheets stored on the notes section detailing specifics or exceptions of how their characters work. Also, I can’t even imagine running this module or any paragon game without the new monster damage as it would be just a joke. Even with the pimped up monsters the party still hasn’t been really threatened. I haven’t dropped anyone unconscious yet and rarely bloody more than one person per encounter.

Here is the intro I sent out to the players as I wasn’t really feeling the initial hooks that were laid out in the adventure:

You are all members of the nation of Fallcrest’s Special Forces, some on the books and some off the books, whose mission has been the protection of your fledgling nation from the ever encroaching darkness.

Several weeks ago, tales began to circulate of a strange mechanical bird that flew into the throne room. After several minutes of just circling the room, the strange bird landed at the feet of the throne and began to address the king. Not all of the details of what was said have emerged but it is known that this strange bird addressed the King as “the mighty and benevolent ruler of Nerath” and repeatedly mentioned his duty to uphold “the Paragon Compact” and how the great city of Argent could not be left without champions as the world itself would suffer the consequences.

You have been ordered to equip yourself for deployment and present to his majesty in the throne room at first light.

When I had the king send them off to investigate the strange mechanical bird’s plea, I spoke as the King and asked if they had any questions. This was followed by nothing but dead air and the faint sound of crickets chirping. I then responded, as the king, “that’s what I like about you special forces types, all business no talk”.  Guess this is the right module for this job after all  ;)

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Campaign Post-Mortem

My online campaign imploded the other week faster than Charlie Sheen’s career, so I thought I would give a bit of a post-mortem. The game was running fairly smoothly as the party had just curb stomped Lareth The Beautiful’s face all over the moat house and were about to be paid a visit from some assassins sent by the Temple of Elemental Evil. What eventually killed the campaign was player turnover. I had managed to maintain at least 4 constant players, while occasionally adding a fifth for brief periods of time, but last week I lost 2 players, one to military deployment and the other to system fatigue. Over the 9 months the campaign ran I had 9 players, with 2 of them there from the start to implosion. I could have easily kept adding players but when I sat back and reflected it didn’t feel right adding a bulk of new players to an ongoing campaign in the middle of a story line that none of them had really shared. It just seemed too forced. So it was time to pull the shoot.

What have I learned from this little foray into the ether?

1. If you are willing to be the DM and run a game online you will never have a problem getting players, keeping them maybe, but getting them no. All you need to do is put out a “call to arms” on whatever message board you like and they will flock to you like children to the Pied Piper.

2. Unless you are playing with people you know in the real world expect player turnover. You will get no shows for sessions without a heads-up and people dropping out with less courtesy than you would expect from a four year-old child.

3. Wargames is a fucking douche

4. It is a little more difficult to run an open-ended /less structured game given the nature of the medium and tactical nature of 4th edition. I tried to combat this by making generic maps that I could load if needed. As the DM, rolling dice instead of using a framework made this easier as I could make monsters up on the fly or just open one of the monster books and go from there rather than be beholden to inputting the monster statistics into an online token.

5. You have to work at the game to prevent it from just becoming a tactical skirmishing video game. Role playing is very doable, but you have to put some effort into it, and it can be more difficult to foster and maintain than in a face to face game given the inherent nature of the medium. What I struggled with was the lack of eye contact, facial expression, and body language to communicate with and the sense of detachment that can occur.

6. Despite its shortcomings, online gaming is still pretty awesome for what it offers. The ease with which you can find a game and play almost any system you can imagine is simply fantastic. I cannot overstate the convenience and flexibility online gaming offers, particularly for people that live in isolated areas or that can’t find a local game or if you are like me are saddled with young children. Being able to schedule a game after my kids are in bed and not having to travel or leave my house really allows me to play more regularly than would otherwise be possible and with way less wife aggro.

7. I want to kick my own ass for taking the campaign off the rails and making myself write adventures for this game. This is only an issue because I am already doing this for my face to face game and so the added workload was like a self-induced cock-punch. I also found running a weekly game a bit of a grind at times and think that perhaps every other week would be more in my Goldilocks zone.

So where do we go from here? Well I signed up to run Revenge of the Giants on Wizard’s Virtual Table Top on a bi-monthly basis. I did this for 2 reasons, one I wanted to fully test out the Wizard’s VTT and secondly I want to get a sense of play in the Paragon Tier. I put out the “call to arms” and already have a waitlist (see number 1 and 2). It also looks like I will get to play as well which is pretty sweet as one of the players in now defunct campaign is going to run something until the one cat gets back from deployment, at which time I will pick back up DM’ing something new. I also think that, aside from my face to face game, I am done with trying for the full money shot campaign and will stick to more mini-campaigns.

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Fourthcore Weekly Grind

The D&D gods must be smiling at me as I have been fortunate enough to actually play for change.  When Wizards started their open beta for the virtual tabletop I was able to snag an invite with some gentle prodding/ harassment. The VT is actually pretty slick and seems to integrate seamlessly with both the character builder and monster builder. The VT has its own forums with one sub-forum dedicated to helping people connect and play everything from ongoing campaigns to one shot delves to pickup games if you have some free time to kill.

It took a while to find something that fit with my schedule, you know after the kids are in bed and not too long or frequent to generate significant wife aggro. I’m pretty sure even Drax would be scared to tank my wife. What I latched onto was something akin to D&D encounters but all roided up called Fourthcore Weekly Grind. This is an amalgamation of a few things. Fourthcore is a design concept in response to a feeling that 4^th edition seemed to lack the difficulty level, challenge and lethality of the older editions.  The Weekly Grind 4E: Vault of the Wailing Prince is a Fourthcore adaptation of the Pathfinder Weekly Grind series, designed and currently run by Jason Bulmahn the lead designer of Pathfinder. It is essentially a weekly dungeon delving campaign where teams of players move through one deadly room at a time, collecting treasure, scoring points and competing against the other teams.

I have to say that I am enjoying this play experience despite having my face kicked in weekly. We are on the fifth week and I am already on my second character. I started out with a pacifist laser cleric who got nuked in the first encounter because we failed to figure out a number puzzle required to open the door to the next room. When we triggered the trap my poor cleric was shot by an acid dart that instantly disintegrated him. I thought that was a little lame as where was my save or die; it was more like just die. That’s okay it gave me the opportunity to bring in a new character to fill some of the holes we had in party makeup, such as traversing and Uber deadly dungeon with no one that could pick a lock or disarm a trap. Thus enter one Bruce Leroy, centered breath monk, on a personal quest to find the glow even if he has to travel to the pits of the abyss itself.

Each room or encounter has had a specific resolution goal that is not limited to laying some heavy smack on the monsters.  The difficulty is amped up through various techniques such as environmental hazards and traps, debilitating conditions, time limits, and pouring on the damage through ongoing effects, auras, and my personal favourite, automatic damage for hitting a monster. It has definitely made us paranoid of everything just like the old days. There have also been a lot of puzzles to solve which our party has largely sucked at. This has been in part because no one speaks abyssal (which I don’t think is even possible at second level or at least highly unlikely) and partly due to the inherent detachment of playing over the Internet. I personally have found it difficult to process and integrate the information needed to solve the puzzles due to the stunted and disjointed verbal communication that can happen when playing online.  I really need to be able to dive in and grapple with the visual clues while being able to hash things out in a give-and-take with the other players.

Overall, I am pretty jazzed about the experience so far. The only thing that I am missing is a little bit of role-playing as it is fairly tactics orientated, but beggars can’t be choosers can they? Perhaps someday I will get the chance to play in a more traditional campaign, although at this point it seems like the only way that is going to happen is if the universe  spontaneously creates an eighth day in the week or if I somehow stumble upon a pocket dimension were time flows much faster than in our world.

 

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