Fools Rush In

We played the new game last night again. Again, I was expecting things to go differently.

 The PCs were Polish rebels in Nazi occupied Poland. Their convoy of weapons had been hit and they'd run through the night to evade their pursuers. While they managed to secure food, they were unable to start a fire in the cold, wet forest. As they pushed forward on little sleep, they stumbled upon two Nazi tanks and a cargo truck stopped in the road (both sides surprised each other). The "explorer" opened fire without taking any kind of cover and shot one of the tank drivers. The Nazi's opened fire and killed the explorer. The "sniper" took a few steps back into the forest (I gave him a +1 to AC) and shot two of the other Nazis. The Nazis then killed him.

 My first response to this was to change things up and give more hit points. I considered 1d6 per point of constitution (or hp die based on class).

 But upon second thought, they're only 1st level and they're not "playing smart". In this session they opened fire without taking cover and knowing they were outnumbered. In the last game, they got separated and still charged into combat. While it wasn't completely their fault last time, this time it definitely was. That's not a good test.

So I'm going to keep things as they are and forge onward. I have a few more things to try with this system and I don't consider these tests failures. Time will tell.

New Adventures

We played the new game I came up with and ran through the adventure I wrote. I was planning on it being a single session and it was, though not for the reason I expected.

The PCs were inquisitors in 1229 Languedoc (France) investigating reports of witchcraft. Several people have gone missing and the townsfolk have found mutilated cattle in their fields. The villagers say the devil lives in the mountains and he once visited town in the guise of a man.

The PCs investigate and head into the mountains. They're ambushed by some lizardmen and lose some resolve, but dispatch them with ease. They track the lizardmen back to a cave. As they approach, a scream issues forth from inside. They lose more resolve, their vicar faints, and their knave flees in terror.

The knight rushes in, only to encounter more lizardmen. Though he fights valiantly, he is outnumbered and luck is not on his side. He falls to the lizardmen's ferocity.

The knave eventually finds his way back to town. The villagers have not seen his companions, though they heard the frightful screams from the mountains and feared the worst.

The game played quickly and the players seemed to have fun. Since it was a one shot, they didn't mind losing characters and they all kind of bit it at the same time. I was surprised that only 1 player assigned 1 skill. I figured there'd be more of that going on. But in most cases, when they missed a roll, assigning a skill wouldn't have helped.

Start of a New System

Tomorrow I'm running a new game for the crew. I have a pretty solid idea for an adventure, so I'll probably start doing session recaps here each Wednesday. I won't give any spoilers though, since some of my players may read this.

The adventure is a little different, so I needed to find a system that would do what I wanted, namely have quick character generation, support multiple genres, treat death as a real possibility, and deal with horror/sanity loss. I decided to make my own, since it's just easier that way. So here's the basics. I'll add on as things progress.


Attributes

Roll 6d6. Assign each attribute 1 die result.

• Strength – Damage Bonus. Offsets AC penalty from Armor
• Dexterity – AC Bonus (10+AC Bonus = AC)
• Constitution – Determines HP
• Intelligence – Determines number of discretionary skills as well as skill bonus
• Perception – Initiative Bonus
• Willpower – Determines Resolve

Hit Points/Resolve

• +1 = 1d6+1 
• +2 = 1d8+2
• +3 = 1d10+3
• +4 = 1d12+4
• +5 = 2d8+5
• +6 = 2d10+6

Hit points track physical damage. At half your total hit points, you are bloodied and suffer -1 to all actions. When your hit points fall to 0, you die.

Resolve tracks emotional stress from horror, gore, and lack of sleep. When you have less than 5 Resolve, you must make a Willpower check when faced with stress or run away. When your resolve falls to 0, you faint.

When you make an attribute check, roll 1d20 + attribute.

Classes

Knave

• Damage = 1d6 + Damage Bonus
• +3 to Stealth (you may select Stealth as a skill normally, and this bonus is cumulative)

Knight

• Damage = 1d8 + Damage Bonus

Vicar

• Damage = 1d4 + Damage Bonus
• Faith = Roll Resolve dice based on your Willpower. You may restore this many points of resolve. To affect multiple allies, divide the points evenly. You may do this once. 

Skills
Initially, you have a number of skills equal to your Intelligence and the skill bonus is equal to your Intelligence. These skills may be selected before play or during play. If selected during play, briefly describe where you learned the skill. You may select a skill after you roll a skill check, but before the results are revealed.

When you make a skill check, roll 1d20 + skill bonus

Skill check difficulties are:

• Standard = 10
• Difficult = 15
• Very Difficult = 20
• Impossible = 25

Skills

• Aide (Healing)
• Archery
• Athletics
• Language (Choose one)
• Lie
• Heraldry
• Melee
• Read
• Religion
• Riding
• Stealth
• Survival
• Thievery

Equipment

Armor reduces damage by a flat amount, based on the armor type. The heavier and more protective the armor, the harder it is to move. Hence, the damage reduction also serves as a penalty to armor class. This penalty is offset by your Strength. For example, if you have +2 Strength and wear Chainmail (-3 damage reduction), your AC suffers a -1 penalty.

• Damage Reduction -0 = No Armor
• Damage Reduction -1 = Leather Armor
• Damage Reduction -2 = Brigantine Armor
• Damage Reduction -3 = Chainmail Armor
• Damage Reduction -4 = Scalemail Armor
• Damage Reduction -5 = Platemail Armor
• Damage Reduction -6 = Full Plate Armor

Weapons don’t define your damage, your class and Strength do. It doesn't matter if you wield a knife or a long sword, use your class damage die.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

How do you deal with hearing and noticing in games that don’t have general rules for it?

For instance, D&D and AD&D both have a thief skill called hear (or detect) noise. Obviously this gives them an advantage when listening. But how to other characters hear things? What if a fighter listens at a door. How do you determine if he hears the guards talking on the other side*?

Sure, you could just hand wave it and say, “yeah, that’s loud enough that anyone could hear it.” But where do you draw that line?

Do you have another mechanic that you use? Give non-thieves a 1 in 6 chance to hear? Give them the base, 1st level thief chance? An intelligence check?

I'm curious how other people handle this. 

*It looks like AD&D uses the base thief chance (I never knew this, I just looked it up). I don’t see anything for Basic D&D. 

Followers

In several games (particularly D&D and it's clones), as you advance in levels, you obtain followers.

This, I think, is a great idea. It gives you a new "toy" to play with, ties you explicitly to the setting, and is literally a game changer. You're no longer a schmuck delving dungeons, you're a lord or lady with new problems and new abilities. The rules are telling you, "Good job! Let's change it up!"

The problem with this is that it's just not supported in the materials. How many 9th+ level published adventures have you seen where you're already established in a keep, have followers, and are expected to use them to complete the module? I haven't seen any. I'm sure they exist, but I doubt that WotC (or TSR before them) or even the more prominent 3rd publishers wrote them.

Instead, what you get are bigger monsters, harder puzzles, and save or die traps.

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a time and place for that. But I think those types of adventures should be saved to change up the domain style adventures, not the other way around.

I get that it may be tough to write something like this. You've already (theoretically) carved your place out in the world. You may have resources (or not) that make it hard to plan for.

But you get the same thing with lower levels and dungeon delves. Who cares where the adventure takes place? You're all just hanging out in an inn anyway. And the adventure can't know that you got that ring of wishes (or staff of the Magi or vorpal sword) 3 adventures ago and it's going to give you a shortcut to the end (or a magical tool that renders the adventure moot).

Surely there's a domain equivalent of "so you're all in a bar when..." Can't we just say "as you're feasting on owlbear quiche for the third time today, you receive word of a..." and get on with it? Can't we provide threats to a domain (or group of domains) that are generic enough that they could be set anywhere? Treason? Invasion? Rebellion? Disease? Famine? The dead rising from the grave? Something that you can't face alone, or as a party?

Yes, there are occasionally large scale battle rules. And these are nice when needed. But what about problem solving? What about wizard spells that explicitly reshape the world around you? Or cleric spells that protect the masses from widespread disease, sin, and possession?

So here's my question, folks. It's in three parts. A) Have you ever seen a published module/adventure written with followers in mind? B) Have you ever played or run an adventure (published or otherwise) where you used your followers. C) How did/do you use them?

Adventures for Parties (of any levels)

I was going through my old D&D Expert book today and I ran across page 40 and the "Adventures for Parties (of any levels)" section. Man, I loved that section. And I used it often. It's probably one of the top 10 things that shaped me as a DM. 

If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a set of 12 adventure hooks. Each one is a paragraph of maybe 5-7 sentences that gives you a place to start an adventure. It sets you up with a situation and occasionally some immediate action. You could easily write a whole adventure around each one, but I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy when it comes to running games, so I'd just take one and run with it. 

My favorite involved the well known blind beggar who suddenly wants to meet with the PCs at a posh hotel. Turns out he's a polymorphed gold dragon with a problem. 

I used a variation of this decades later when the PCs had befriended a powerful noble. Said noble sent them on missions, offered them rewards, and helped them out a few times. She ended up foisting her rebellious nephew on them, hoping that the PCs could teach him some respect. What they didn't know was that he was a polymorphed gold dragon (and so was his aunt). This was made more pertinent by the fact that dragons had been hunted nearly to extinction by the kingdom, putting the PCs and the noble in a difficult situation. 

So what are your favorite adventure hooks? What's something you've always wanted to run? And what's your favorite source for hooks?