Sunday, May 30, 2021

How I Prep: Rambling About Refereeing

I talk to a lot of people into the idea of tabletop gaming, but when it comes to game mastering, I seem to get a lot of hemming and hawing about how much difficult work it is. I won't dispute that it is work, but it doesn't have to be this monumental task where you sit at the table with a proverbial sword of Damocles above your head, waiting to strike as soon as a player gets frustrated. Figured I might as well detail how I like to prepare my games and link to some resources that may help some people. This isn’t specifically for OSR or sandbox games, it’s just a general idea of how I prep.

Try Not To Overthink.

Don’t overthink it. No matter how large or expansive you make the world, the players will only be able to see a small slice of it. You control the content and the rate you deliver it to your players, so as long as you have a good idea on what the characters would like to accomplish for the session, you should be able to stay one step ahead. Even if you have no idea what your players want to do, an improv-session focused on roleplay can help build up to the actual adventure itself.

Overthink Anyways.

When you have a general idea of what you can prep for the next session, now’s the time to brainstorm ideas around the adventure. If your players wish to pull off a daring heist to steal a magic scepter from a noble’s manor, you know you’ll need to prep the layout of the noble’s manor, but you may also get ideas on incorporating guard shift rotations, which of the house staff can be bribed, and secret passageways to move about the manor undetected. A showdown with an ancient lich will mean you will have to prepare the lich’s necropolis, his undead servants, the magical defenses incorporated into the structure, a cackling villainous speech for the final showdown, and a back-up plan when the players fireball the lich before he finishes the first sentence of that cackling villainous speech. Because these elements are what the next session will focus on, it’s okay to fully detail them. Likewise, it’s okay if the players skip right past some of these elements because you can either incorporate them into later events or leave them behind entirely. It’s not a videogame, you don’t get an achievement or hidden costume for 100% completion.

Find Your Inspiration.

We all have the various forms of life experiences and media that influences us. One of my favorite videogames growing up was Deus Ex. While the story was way over my head, I absolutely loved exploring the nooks and crannies of the various hub worlds and missions, discovering hidden locations and alternate ways to accomplish objectives. This gives me a tendency to approach building sandboxy locations with overlapping plots both major and minor. Inspiration might strike from odd places as well: I would not have made Drakkenhall in my 13th Age campaign into a facsimile of 1920s Chicago had I not been replaying Timesplitters 2 due to nostalgia. In fact, you should always be on the lookout for inspiration. If you see something you think is cool, grab it and see what you can incorporate into your campaign.

Don’t be afraid to research into topics, either. If you have no idea how something is supposed to work, and it’s relevant for the next session, there’s lots of resources online and at your local library. Don’t try to hook it up mechanically to your game, either, unless you absolutely have to. Hell, read your dang books! All those monster manuals and lore books are great to mine for inspiration for your own worlds and adventures. If you find a monster, location, or even a throwaway line of text that inspires you, note it down and where you found it so you can find it later.

Get Organized.

Get index cards and an index card organizer. If you prefer digital tools, try a desktop wiki like Zim, Cherrytree, or Tiddlywiki. Set up folders for Locations, Allies, Enemies, Plots, and other categories you might think you will need for your game. Keeping your notes organized will help immensely in the long run, especially when your game is 20 sessions in. Best do the work now before you have a bloated mess of scattered notes scrawled everywhere while the rest of the game’s details are stuck in your head just waiting to be forgotten.

Rule of Thirds.

When you’re starting out, keep it to three items per category. Three major locations, three helpful allies, three scheming villains, three macguffins, etc. If need be, you can even split them down further: The triumverate of witches all have three of their own strongest minions, which all have three squads of minions each. The three dungeons could all have three levels, with one dungeon having three sub-levels leading to three more dungeons.  The three macguffins needed to seal the dark lord could be split into three pieces each, and the players need to go on a round-the-world journey to join all nine pieces together. You don’t have to limit yourself to just three items, but it allows players the freedom of choice while keeping your prep constrained.

Effect, Then Cause.

This one can be difficult to do. When planning an adventure, start at the end of events and work your way backwards. If the adventure is about investigating an abandoned fortress, ask yourself why it was abandoned and use it to fill out areas in the fortress. Once you have the basic idea, asking “why” to events and taking the first idea to come to mind will help fill in details. This is also when turning to generators can help. Generators also help for names and small details like room dressing. If you’re stuck on a detail, or a name, put in a placeholder and come back to it later.

Start Small, Link Upwards.

Conversely, as players progress, you should logically progress the scale of adventures. Clearing out bandit holds and kobold dens can be tiresome if there’s no upward progression from there. You can foreshadow larger threats by adding clues around your adventure, even if you have nothing more than a name and idea. You’ll be able to flesh things out in greater detail later. Just remember, if you foreshadow something, expect to follow through.

Hooks and Daggers.

When starting a game, make sure everyone is on the same page about the kind of game you want to run. Tell them outright what you are looking for in characters, be they daring adventurers delving ancient deeps, deep space explorers discovering new planets, or hard-boiled investigators in 1920s Chicago. Look at the characters your players have created. Chances are, they’ll at least have focused their character on an aspect they’d like to participate in, or furnished a backstory and hopefully a character motivation. Grab these elements and write them down on index cards, as they become your daggers. When prepping, pull out these cards and look to see if you can use it to hook characters into the adventure. Even if there’s no obvious pull, there could still be character-specific rewards or chances to develop the character further with inclusion of certain elements of a character.

A Strong Start.

While this doesn’t have to be every adventure, the starting adventure should thrust players into an inciting incident. Even in a sandbox campaign, starting the players out with an investigation, an ambush, or even a prison escape provides player characters with a strong motivation and an immediate jump into the game. Even better, you can link this inciting incident to one of your antagonists or locations, encouraging the players to investigate further. Lost Mines of Phandelver does this pretty well, with the goblin ambush an inciting incident linking to the greater plot happening around the area.

Upkeep.

After running the game, you should write up a summary of what had happened. It doesn’t have to be detailed, just enough to reference. Next, you should look at your list of NPCs, friendly and unfriendly, and figure out if the actions of the characters influenced them. Perhaps the murder of a slum lord causes a power vaccuum that culminates in gang warfare in the streets, or the party’s assistance in resolving a farmer’s goblin problem has the farmer recruit his friends to build a log cabin for the PCs to use as a home base. Lastly, you should note down things like experience totals, loot acquired, or updating the progress of long-term projects.

An End.

An ending of a campaign can be obvious, but most game masters do not have the energy or time to commit to a years-long campaign spanning from first level to max. If you’re running a linear story-oriented campaign, an easy trick is to break down the campaign into ‘seasons’ of a handful of adventures each. You can then link each adventure to one another, building up on it, but still have a satisfactory story arc if you have to end the campaign early. I highly recommend beginner game masters to try short campaigns and self-contained adventures first before jumping into the deep end of intricate sandbox plots.

TL;DR

  • Start small
  • Have a strong start
  • Three locations, allies, and enemies
  • Foreshadow upcoming threats
  • Steal liberally from backstories and inspiration
  • Write notes, update characters

 

Recommended reading

Saturday, May 29, 2021

ASE: Session 14

Date: Lapin 19th
Weather: Overcast

Party:
Aria (Priest / Duelist)
Cedar (Warrior / Beastmaster)
Laguna (Elementalist / Healer)

Cohorts:
Jenny
Raymond (Axebeak)
Rex (Wolf)
Zord (Zard)

Summary:
As the party explores the manor, they come to a conclusion: The death knight who keeps following them more than likely has a black candle they need. After finding the death knight, they directly confront him. This results in an exciting duel on the front stairs between Aria and the Death Knight while the painting of the former owner of the house looms over them. Cedar manages to steal the candle off of the knight and tries to run off, but gets trapped in a bone cage! Laguna then uses his elementalist talents to light the candles, causing the knight to boast about how it will take more than that to seal him away! He raises his immense axe and slashes at Aria, a fatal blow that would surely kill her.. Except the magic of the house keeps her soul here, like with everyone else.

Aria shakes off her sudden incorporeality, managing to distract the knight just enough, then manages to possess the magic sword she acquired and plunge it straight into the death knight's heart. Cedar manages to hack his way out of the bone cage and Laguna stabilizes Aria's body. Aria then tries to get back into her body and succeeds, and the party figures this would help Lisbet and Helmut.

Before that happens, they decide to blow up the sarcophagus and subsequently the museum.

Lisbet's and Helmut's bodies are healed up and their souls are reunited, and are both told that as soon as they can move they should leave and never come back here. Both agree. As that's settled, the party moves to the last mystery: The bandaged man who happens to be in all the portraits and even in the mirrors. They slowly tracked him down to the smoking room, watching through the mirror as he's seen slicing off bits of his fingers into a jar, then placing it on the shelf. Laguna then reaches for the jar, and becomes possessed! Dr. Elias Fenwick was now in the bird's body, and he was about to go for a pleasant jaunt before Aria stopped him. A casting of Hold Person froze her in her tracks, but Cedar managed to wrestle him to the ground! He acquiesced to their demands to let Laguna go, but gave them a stipulation: Learn when the next Blood Moon is happening, and bring him there. He then goes back into the mirror world, always a reflection in the bird's eyes.

The manor is now theirs, but they have new problems to face...

Treasure:
-The Manor of Willowby Hall and all its deathly servants

Rumors:
-Odd cultists are gathering in the nearby forest
-A hole has opened up in a large oak tree, with a lot of strange things within
-There's a strange bottle being sold with a sandy coastal beach trapped inside

Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 4/14)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 5/7)

Experience:
Aria (lv 3, 9 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 14 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 8 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 3, 6 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 4 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 10 xp)
Mars (lv 2, 4 xp)
Mia (lv 1, 2 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1 xp)

My Thoughts:
It's a shame to put this campaign on hiatus right when something like this happens, but life is getting in the way a little too much and I'm feeling rather burnt out. I hope to pick the game back up in the future, but I will be focusing on other things and possibly other future campaigns!

Saturday, May 22, 2021

ASE: Session 13

Date: Lapin 19th
Weather: Overcast

Party:
Aria (Priest / Duelist)
Cedar (Warrior / Beastmaster)
Laguna (Elementalist / Healer)
Mars (Healer / Thought Noble)

Cohorts:
Jenny
Raymond (Axebeak)
Rex (Wolf)
Zord (Zard)

Summary:
The party returns to Willowby Hall for another go at it. With the giant dead, his corpse is an unsightly lawn ornament the party strolls past as they enter the double doors to the manor. They decide to start moving the harpischord from the music room to the guest bedroom, as the ghost of Lavinia requested. As they get upstairs, they're stopped by a ghostly apparition. It's soon revealed that it's the ghost of Helmut Halfsword, whimpering and confused. The party reassures him and moves his body to one of the servant quarters as they finish moving the harpischord. As the door closes, they can hear soft music playing throughout the hall.

The noise drew the attention of the death knight, which started its way upstairs. The party hid in one of the servant rooms until the knight left, then started to investigate the dressing room and bedroom, where they saw that same figure in the mirror going about his day. Cedar mused that the balcony would make a great place for him to stay when the place was cleared out, but the party wanted to move on and started to investigate the library. The ghostly librarian allowed them to check out a book on ritualistic alchemy (and a picture book for Mars), the former book allowing them a wealth of information, including notes written in the margin on the black candles being able to seal away the death knight and the owner's progression to unlife. It seems like he hadn't been able to keep his body together, so he took to bandaging and embalming his body to preserve it.

The party investigates the house, finding one of the black candles, heading downstairs to the dining room to see skeletal servants preparing meals for the day. Pushing past them, Mars found a ghostly apparition who would play blackjack, and he managed to win a strange key which he gave to Aria. They then moved on, finding the hunting room. Giving the stuffed owlbear a wide berth, more investigation was done, Mars finding a way up to the roof via the chimney. He checked it out, lit a fire, and while that happened the party got into a scuffle with some zombies. After the scrape, some investigation revealed a secret door behind a weapon cabinet, revealing a room covered wall to wall with mushrooms. This shroomy shelter showed a shadowy shpectre, which upon later inspection was the ghost of Lisbet. As they agreed to help her either move on or somehow return to her body, Mars then ate a mushroom and got incredibly drunk, rendering him useless when the party fought more zombies, finding Lisbet's body atop several tombs.

As they explored upstairs, they run into the death knight once more, who gives them chase! The party ran out the back of the mansion, regrouping in a safer spot. Once they felt they were safe, they started to inspect the roof a little more, discovering that they could climb up and down the chimneys. Laguna fell into boiling hot soup, but as the bird was inured to the elements he found it more an inconvenient location for a spa. Aria got deposited into the pantry, but Cedar somehow found his way into a secret room! He managed to throw down a rope to let Aria climb into it, discovering the inner sanctum. They found the magic circle drawn in chalk, and Aria managed to open the locked cabinet. Now the party has explored nearly all of the mansion, they have two of the black candles, and they know the death knight has the last. They'll have to figure out the mystery of this bandaged man and the death knight before they can have a swanky manor to call their own!

Treasure:
-A book on necromantic alchemic rituals.
-A picture book, of The Little Prince variety.
-30 sp
-An old brown cloak
-A wand of lightning bolt
-A grappling hook
-A rifle (unloaded)
-Herculium potion (Effects unidentified)
-Liquid childhood (Effects unidentified)
-Gift of the Worm potion (Effects unidentified)
-A strange diary that writes the past of the person holding it
-Two black candles

Rumors:
-Odd cultists are gathering in the nearby forest
-A hole has opened up in a large oak tree, with a lot of strange things within
-There's a strange bottle being sold with a sandy coastal beach trapped inside

Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 4/14)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 5/7)

Experience:
Aria (lv 3, 8 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 13 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 7 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 3, 6 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 4 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 9 xp)
Mars (lv 2, 3 xp)
Mia (lv 1, 2 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1 xp)

My Thoughts: My players enjoyed the haunted house a lot more without the giant present. It went from a frantic race against time to a more interesting and thematic haunted house dungeon. I think if a referee wanted to run a haunted house, Waking of Willowby Hall could work wonderfully well if they removed the giant and instead made it so the hall would slowly wake up and get restless as the players explore. As it stands, I'm getting at least three sessions and a player hideout from this module, which I would say is excellent value.

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

ASE: Session 12 (plus a review!)

Date: Lapin 18th
Weather: Overcast

Party:
Aria (Priest / Duelist)
Cedar (Warrior / Beastmaster)
Celica (Necromancer / Skinshifter)
Laguna (Elementalist / Healer)
Mars (Healer / Thought Noble)

Cohorts:
Jenny
Raymond (Axebeak)
Rex (Wolf)
Zord (Zard)

Summary:
After a bit of time away from the party, Aria comes into possession of a deed to a mansion in the town of Tarryfield. All the party had to do was exorcise the spirits within and it was theirs. Of course, things rarely work out that way.

The party arrives at the mansion, starting to poke around. One discovers a ghostly apparition playing piano, and after some questioning they feel a bit more at ease... Until three people come running through the front door, with a giant chasing after them.


Helmut Halfsword, Apocalypse Ann, and Lisbet Grund, at your service.


The party is confused, until the giant catches up. After learning that the adventurers stole the goose of this giant named Bonebreaker Tom, they set out to try and find the thieves before this giant brings the roof they just got down on their heads! After splitting up to search through a few rooms, Aria finds a small locked chest underneath a bed, Laguna and Celica get ideas to fashion dummies to distract the giant, and Cedar goes off searching the upstairs. Aria eventually opens the door to where two adventurers, Apocalypse Ann and Lisbet Grund. Celica catches up, and while Lisbet tries to explain the situation the goose Ann was holding bites her and runs off.

What follows is a wild goose chase.

Honk.

The party is split once more attempting to locate this goose. Cedar even tries to communicate with it, but is told by the goose to, in no uncertain terms, "Feck off." Aria, distrustful of the two adventurers, brings them to the main hall by sword-point, about ready to push the two out into the giant's mercy. Cedar and Celica find the last adventurer, Helmut Halfsword, but they're stopped by a death knight rising from its tomb. A fight ensues, but they're forced to run as the knight cackles and begins raising more skeletons to fight for it.

Amidst the chaos, Lisbet and Ann go missing. So does the goose. The party forces a whimpering Helmut to help them look for the other two, but Helmut ends up meeting the business end of a rather angry-looking owlbear.


The party decides to take their chances with the giant.

Incredibly enough, with some choice poisons, they actually succeed, felling Bonebreaker Tom. Amidst the chaos, Ann escapes with the goose and kills Lisbet, but the party, weary, is glad they only have to deal with an exorcism now.

Treasure:

-A golden egg worth 300 sp
-Set of traveler's clothing
-Grappling hook
-4x bombs (3d6 damage in 10 foot radius)
-A red alchemy book
-Xanthippos' Incontrovertible Proof of Diagonal Commesurability
-A pigeon nest with three chicks
-Fist-sized ruby worth 2000 sp
-A magical blade with "Patricia" etched into it
-A stolen church bell

Rumors:
-Odd cultists are gathering in the nearby forest
-A hole has opened up in a large oak tree, with a lot of strange things within
-There's a strange bottle being sold with a sandy coastal beach trapped inside

Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 4/14)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 5/7)

Experience:
Aria (lv 3, 8 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 13 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 7 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 3, 6 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 4 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 9 xp)
Mars (lv 2, 3 xp)
Mia (lv 1, 2 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1 xp)

My Thoughts: This was a chaotic session. The party split multiple times, with lots of different actions being taken and lots more details being forgotten. The time limit Bonebreaker Tom inflicts pressed the players into urgency, so they didn't really seem to have much interest in checking out any of the fun things the mansion could offer. WWN PCs definitely have a higher power level than straight B/X PCs, as they managed to shred the giant in two rounds.

The adventure itself, The Waking of Willowby Hall, was fairly fun to run, though I kept getting mixed up on details such as when and where the giant would move when he activates. I feel the PDF would have benefited greatly from bookmarks, though the room numbers being page numbers and the spacious layout helped quite a bit with "at a glance" information. I'd be confident in running this module with no prior reading done at all.

With my attention split three ways and a lot of different things going on, it was hard to have the NPCs assert their own agency, and thus they were threatened to submission in short order. Additionally, the PCs even tried to negotiate with the giant, though that didn't go quite as well. The goose was a lot of fun to roleplay, and I used her to hint at various things the PCs could also do (going down chimneys, grabbing one of the black candles, poking at secret passageways, etc). Were the giant not their greatest concern at the moment, the hall would have provided a lot of fun puzzle-solving, and I believe I will be using it in a follow-up session as well!

Additionally, I felt like some of the magic items seemed a little bland. I spiced up the staff Apocalypse Ann carries, if you'd like to use it for your own WWN game:

Apocalypse Staff. As a Main and Move action, charge the staff by taking a minimum of 3 System Strain. It then fires a high-impact blast to any point in sight within 60', exploding in a 20' sphere of hellfire. This destructive force deals 1d6 damage per system strain committed (Evasion save for half), and can even punch through structures lesser than solid stone. As a consequence, this also knocks the user back an amount of feet equal to the damage dealt, requiring an Evasion save to avoid being knocked prone by the blast (and taking the resultant fall damage). For battlemap grids, round up to the nearest 5 feet.