Everything important on the character sheet should come up during play.

It’s an easy thing to say, but not so easy to put into practice. However, I got a chance recently to plan a one-shot 4e game to be run on National Library Game Day. While I didn’t end up running the 4th level “advanced” game out of Dungeon Delve (all the players were new to 4e or close to it), I still got to go through the process of creating characters for the game.

In some one-shot games, the adventure is formed around the characters, as they all have links to each other and inform the story. Others, like the RPGA games, are more generic because you show up with a character. The adventure I was to run was a little bit of both: it was a non-tailored adventure of 3 linked encounters, and we also wanted to give people options of what to play. However, since they were going to be new or newish players, we had to provide the characters.

I made six 4th level characters. When making them I tried to follow the following principles:

• Don’t give them any items that granted them resistance to an attack type that wasn’t present in the encounter. This included both not giving them items of cold resistance if there were no cold attacks and no items that helped against grabs if none of the monsters usually grabbed.
• Try and give them powers and feats that worked with the other characters’ powers and feats. There was a Rogue in the party, so I gave the Sorcerer the feat that gave bonuses to attacking flanked targets at range.
• Give each character options for different scenarios that will probably come up. In other words, don’t make it so a character is specifically “stuck” in an encounter. I like, for higher levels, giving a few consumables to help out. While the Fighter may always want to be hacking apart a single bad guy in melee, he also has a jar of alchemist’s fire in case they’re just out of reach (and conveniently bunched up.)
• At the same time, don’t “metagame” your own adventure to let the PCs automatically win. Your job as the DM, especially so for a one-shot, is to make it fun for the players, which involves a certain amount of challenge and expense. Giving everyone “+1 Gnollslayer Bows” in your adventure with Gnolls means there won’t be a challenge. Giving one character a one use “wound a Gnoll” item, on the other hand, means the player will have an important choice of when and where to use it.

That may sound like a lot, but it was easier than you might think. You, as the DM, should know what’s coming anyway, it’s just taking that knowledge back to the character level.

There’s plenty more to be said about planning and developing one-shot games, but those will come in later posts.

We seem to be at an interesting crossroads when it comes to movies and video formats, with Blu-ray beating out HD DVD I assumed everything would transition over pretty quickly but it still seems that regular DVDs are the primary format for people watching movies at home. I have no doubt that given a little bit more time, Blu-ray would dominate but with cable companies offering HD movies on demand and netflix streaming online the digital medium might be changing the whole market. I have not yet made the jump to Blu-ray because of cost and a less-than-eager attitude towards re-buying hundreds of movies that I already purchased on DVD. In the end I think we will purchase new movies and maybe a handful of ones we already own that have stunning visuals we really want to see in HD (like the first Transformers movie). The results of this poll may be a bit skewed, because most of you are gamers and the PS3 has a built in Blu-ray player, but that’s one of the answers I’d like to get from this poll. With that in mind, I’m very interested to find out how many of you watch movies on DVD, Blu-ray, or digitally. I’ve included Beta and Laser Disc for the sake of being inclusive, and because the odds are if I didn’t someone weird would ask for them.

I knew after only three episodes that I was going to end up buying the whole season on DVD, and I was oh so right. Much to the pain of my finances, it has become ridiculously clear that the same is true for this season as well. This show speaks to me, to my current age, position in life, and memories of cartoons from my childhood in all the naughtiest ways. Even the episodes that you might consider sub-par for the course are still pretty damn funny, and just when you think some kind of over-arching plot is going to run things for a while something new hits you in the face completely out the blue. Just when you start to tire of whatever random or side stories they’re telling, the larger plot comes back into focus.� Oh, and lest I forget to mention, this show is completely freaking hilarious!

If you’re still in the dark about it, I summarized the show pretty well back in 2008 so I’ll use those same words again:

Venture Brothers is a very adult themed spoof of Johnny Quest type shows, it runs on Adult Swim which should give you some idea of what I mean when I say �adult themed�. If you liked the animated The Tick series, then you will most likely love VB because the main creator (Jackson Publick) of VB worked on The Tick as well. The show�s title might give you the impression that it focuses on the adventures of the appropriately named Venture brothers, but they are really secondary to their father, former boy wonder Rusty Venture, and his hilarious bodyguard Brock Samson (voiced by Patrick Warburton). The show beautifully blends several themes like fantasy, super-science, and campiness into a supple goo of episodic television content.

If that’s not enough to get you to watch it, one of the first three episodes of the current season focused on a do-good superhero named Captain Sunshine that was voiced by the excellent Kevin Conroy. It’s great hearing his voice in a cartoon again, for me it is the same jubilant emotion created when hearing Peter Cullen’s voice in the new Transformers movies. Don’t know who Kevin Conroy is?� Here, this should help:

DC Game Day V

We were there both days, having made sure to be ready when sign-ups opened to grab the games we really wanted (and even then, ended up having to scramble to pick other games.) Here’s what we played, and a short write-up of each.

Time & Temp: Miss Him, Miss Him, Miss Him

One of the games that immediately grabbed my eye was Time & Temp, a new (and as far as I can tell, still unreleased) time travel RPG by the creator of Dread. Those two things were enough to hook me right there: I love time travel, and I love the rules of Dread. Then the only available session by the time I got to it was run by Kevin “Piratecat” Kulp (ENWorld Moderator, MC of the last two Ennie Awards, and most importantly, poster of one of the most awesome session recaps of his campaign) which sealed the deal for sure.

The concept behind Time & Temp is that you work for a corporation that runs trips back in time. However, important people disturb the flow of time, so they only send back the least important people they can: Temps. Before the game, we were asked to fill out our “resume” as character creation. I came up with an incompetent software engineer obsessed with the movie Hackers who was recruited out of time right before the dot-com boom. E came up with a musician that turned out to be too good to be a temp, so she changed her concept to street musician.

The system was neat, though more “gamey” than you might expect after character generation is so simple, since you begin to fill out a sudoku-like grid of numbers that you’ve rolled during the course of the game. Place your numbers well, and you get temporal harmonies that allow you to pull “Bill & Ted”-style time travel feats (”I’ll just go back and leave the keys here!”) Roll or place poorly, paradox happens and the universe begins to unravel. If this happens enough, everybody loses. (We were only one unlucky roll away from this happening.)

The scenario, adapted from an older time travel RPG, involved a menial task to retrieve a Commodore 64 cooling fan from Radio Shack… which then proved difficult when the party found out that World War 3 had broken out due to time paradox. The solution, which involved The Beatles, drugs, and more time travel, leading me to declare it to be Andy Looney’s ideal game.

I really enjoyed it, though going into it I was predisposed to liking it. The scenario was fun, the GM was great (he used all of his various British accents), and the other players were fun (one PC was Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes, leading to a lot of hilarity and brachiation.) I enjoyed the system, though I could see it being streamlined a bit, as some of the paradox mechanics never came up. Also more examples would help, like it wasn’t always clear what the difference between “setting an effect” and “setting the effort” was. Generally, though, if you’re OK with playing Jenga to resolve things during your RPG, you’re going to be OK with messing with a grid of numbers.

Deadlands (Savage Worlds): Trouble at Table Rock

Post Con Carolinas, I’ve been having a hankering for some more Savage Worlds, and it’s been a long while since I’ve played anything Western. Thus we registered for a Deadlands scenario run by Matthew Cutter (brand manager for Deadlands at PEG), and chose our pregen characters. I was Dr. August Chillingsworth, Scientist Extraordinaire, and E was Carrie Bellweather, the Rodeo Queen.

After a short recap of the Savage Worlds rules, we were off, getting the group posse together to investigate a group of cattle being killed by strange beasts. After being ambushed by some banditos (and having a conversation with them where I got to use most of my character’s hindrances), we followed the trail into Table Rock, and some botched rolls convinced us that it was “injuns” and not strange, terrible lizards, even after seeing evidence to the contrary. The finale? We fought a T-Rex (and one of our party members turned out to be a vengeance-seeking zombie), so what more could you ask for?

I continue to enjoy Savage Worlds for convention games and am impressed by its versatility in genres and situations. However, I still have the feeling that I probably wouldn’t want to play it in a long term campaign. I also formulated my own theory of one-shots: if it’s important on the character sheet, it should probably come up during the game. I was happy I got to show off and play each of my character’s mental disadvantages, but disappointed that I did not get to perform any acts of Mad Science.

D&D 4e: The Caprian Foreign Legion Goes to Tea

Did I mention that Piratecat writes epic recaps of his 4e campaign? Yeah, so getting into one of his 4e games was my top priority.

Thanks to the awesomeness that is driving into DC, we were late both days, and so by the time we arrived everyone had already claimed characters. Fortunately, the two left fit us quite well (and were both Rogues.) I grabbed “Tusker”, a half-orc ruthless ruffian rogue (a build I would probably never play myself) and E grabbed a Goblin Rogue who was multiclassed into Druid who could shapeshift into a giant rat.

The scenario cast us all as members of a forgotten military unit, the first RPG game I have played that used the “French Foreign Legion” trope, which seems obvious to use in retrospect. As you might expect, we were unlikely heroes cast into a situation that only we could handle in our own special way.

I’m hoping that if you read this blog you know about the 4e system by now, but what I enjoyed here was a 4e adventure being run as a convention one-shot (and not part of a delve, living game, campaign, etc.) Each of the characters had connections and opinions of each other, as well as roleplaying advice. This is definitely a technique I plan to use when I start running some 4e games at conventions… and would love to see used more often.

Lady Blackbird: Adventures in the Wild Blue Yonder

This we jumped into knowing almost nothing about it. And I know it’s based on an existing system, but I couldn’t tell you what it was! What I can tell you is that the adventure is downloadable for free and it’s a steampunky/science fiction adventure featuring a cast of colorful characters. I played the captain of the good ship Owl, E played a stowaway on the ship.

After taking on a mysterious passenger, the Owl was captured by a ship that bore some semblance to an Imperial Star Destroyer. We worked on the classic breakout to get back to the ship and escape, with some game mechanic-induced flashbacks all the while.

The style of the game was definitively “story game”, with Tom “Madwabbit” serving more as a facilitator then GM, and making sure that everyone was getting their spotlight time. I had fun, though I thought more control of story could have been given over to the players, despite there being at least one player who was clearly in a more “D&D-style” mindset for playing. I believe the adventure is only the first in an upcoming series, so I look forward to playing the next installment… I like playing the Captain!

Lessons Learned

• It IS possible to attend an RPG convention and play all games with primarily people I don’t know and not have any bad games or bad GMs!
• Be sure to check with the GM at a convention game to make sure he or she is cool with Twittering during the game or other similar activities that might take your attention away. It might work for some groups, but be distracting for others.
• When I play a one-shot game with pre-generated characters, I want to use everything important on my character sheet during the course of the game.
• It’s never a good idea to drive to DC, no matter what time of day it is.
• People who I like online I tend to like in person, and people who I dislike online I tend to dislike in person.
• According to a TPS report filed, Shia LeBouf is part ape.
• DC Game Day is a lot of fun, and I look forward to going again next year.

How often do you play?

Speaking of game nights, I’ve gotten into more and more games lately, joining new campaigns and trying to settle back into a grove for old ones. So far, the three games I’m in campaigns of are all 4e. This is great and gives me the chance to DM and then play 2 very different characters. However, I own a fair number of games (over 200 board and card games, and a bookshelf full of RPGs) and so I get cravings for other games. 4th Power is one out-cropping of it, but recently, a few of us have decided to embark on a mission to mix in some other games into our busy schedules, focusing on one-shot adventures and such to experience a wide range of other games.

Our focus for this is going to be those things we call “story games” or “indie RPGs“, a term that I cannot myself fully define, and have a little experience with but not enough to call myself an expert by any means. There’s also a world of politics and such around it that turns me off into getting too much into it, but I continue to pick up the stuff that seems interesting and try to seek out convention games that sound good. All that has meant that I’ve built up a number of games that I have never run or played but have been itching to try, and I’ve found a few others in the same situation, and so we’ve finally decided to do something about it.

Thus, that is my long, rambling way of asking you how experienced you are with these types of games. Again, there’s no hard and fast definition that’s going to work here to define “indie/story games” but a part of my own definition would exclude D&D, World of Darkness, GURPS, and most of the other big games. My definition includes games that I own such as Dread, Dogs in the Vineyard, Mountain Witch, Primetime Adventures, and so on.

Any insight into your experiences (try to keep it friendly) would be appreciated as we dive in.

It was actually pretty funny to see the site in the default wordpress theme again, which is the same layout we had back in the Fall of 2005 when we started the site (but with spiffy and cool changing banners). After the next few days if you happen to notice something that’s still broken or missing let us know! Please bear with us as we sort these things out, and everything should be back to normal and better than ever by the end of the week!

The editorial for this issue is a testament to the quality of KQ, discussing the one gold and three silver ENnies that were won, including a silver ENnie for Best Website which was a category filled with great candidates (haha)! Snarky bits aside, this should be enough on its own to tell you exactly what to expect from the publication. One of the elements that surprises me the most is precisely how much effort has gone into making it feel exactly like an old school gaming magazine, right down to having a letters column early on that really gives you a feeling of the RPG community as a whole when you’re reading it. It’s a shame that much of the discussion has to do with which edition of D&D people want to read about, but even despite that it’s still great to read other gamer’s thoughts and for gamers to have another platform to be heard from. No matter how prevelant blogging or forums become, a letters column in a magazine will always have its own unique flavor and associated tingly feeling that comes along with it.

The articles themselves present you with a literal truck load of interesting ideas for you to use in your games, even the system specific articles come with so much written material in addition to the mechanics that you can easily gain something from nearly all of them no matter what you play. There’s an interesting take on adding sanity and mental disorders into your D&D games, which is a concept very near and dear to our hearts (and seeing the Red Eye of Azathoth ad right beside it only increases that excitement). Another article introduces the Uvandir, a different take on the classic fantasy dwarf race followed by one that brings lycanthropy to your PCs with some very enlightening takes on it from both a player’s and a GM’s perspective. Considering the issue’s release in the fall, it should be no surprise that a werewolf article is followed up by an in depth discussion of vampires – their physiology, psychology, societies, and naturally the best methods for their extermination.�

The article that spoke to me the most in this issue is easily the GM round-table titled “Running Across the Screen”, which features the highlights from a Q&A with many of the best GM’s in the business including Monte Cook, Robin Laws, Mike Mearls, Chris Perkins (DM to the stars), and James Wyatt. To put it in the most simple terms, I have yet to NOT learn something when any one of these guys talks about running a game, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon. Reading their answers to even simple questions like “What does being a GM mean to you?” or “What’s the most difficult part of being a GM?” can lead to all kinds of interesting revelations and new ideas for running my own games. For this article alone the issue would probably be worth it, but just to add some more value stack on top of that a handful of book reviews not just about fantasy books but all kinds that would interest people like me (including one written by Guillermo Del Toro) and an article by Monte Cook about how rules interact with roleplaying with a funny anecdote thrown in.

This issue isn’t done yet, oh no! There’s also an introduction of the wish spell back into D&D for your 4th Edition games, as well as a great discussion of bringing torture and fear into your game and your player’s heads with some great random effect tables for Pathfinder and 3.5. Another article provides some alternative forms of treasure to spice things up instead of just giving out magic wands and potions, followed by a handful of racial paragon paths for specific races like the minotaur, kobold, and hobgoblin. This still isn’t all of the content in just one issue of KQ, but I do have to mention the Pathfinder spell-less Ranger class simply because of the hilarious quote used at the beginning, “Aragorn didn’t cast spells.” You’re damn right he didn’t!

A new issue of Kobold Quarterly comes out four times a year, one for each season, but you can also check out a ton of great and original content every week on their website. I’m a big fan of the magazine and highly recommend that you check it out!