I had worked up a big interest in Spelljammer from reading the campaign book and a few accessories. I told my Players that I wanted to run a campaign of it, and they agreed. I told them to make up some 7th-level characters (2 each for 3 Players) using just the core AD&D2 rules. Given a week’s delay, I created a crystal sphere including the PCs’ home planet, the Rock of Bral, and 8 or 10 other planets. I was very happy and excited about this coming campaign – it was going to be SO COOL!

I created several encounters to sprinkle throughout the campaign, including ships of pirates, slavers, undead, etc. The campaign would start with the PCs leaving their planet (the first to do so for their nation) and heading for the Rock of Bral. An enemy nation had a ship in orbit to stop the PCs.

Well, when we all gathered for the first game session, things started to unravel immediately. First off, one of the Players had created “illegal” PCs. His two characters were a demi-human multiclass deal that my PHB said were not allowed. He showed me his PHB, and they were allowed in there. So there had been a change during the pub run at some time. I let him keep his characters as they were – it wasn’t a big deal.

The PCs’ ship took off and headed into space. Soon they were intercepted by the enemy ship. The PCs’ ship had only one ranged ship-weapon, and the enemy ship had two ranged ship-weapons (each a little more powerful than the PCs’ ship-weapon). The PCs had only a few crewmen (low-level types, not even in the same league as the PCs), but the six PCs themselves were a formidable force. The enemy ship was loaded up with a bunch of low-level marines.

My thoughts on the encounter and campaign start was that the PCs would close on the enemy ship to fight man-to-man, and then have a fun battle with the enemy grunts. We’d get all the PCs involved in a grand battle. Then the PCs would capture the enemy vessel. When they got to Bral, they could pool their ship and the captured ship together and then buy a really cool ship that they chose for themselves. (They started with a basic flying cog.)

But that ain’t how it went down.

The enemy ship was trying to close on the PCs’ ship (to get in grappling range), but the PCs kept things at range, even though they were taking more damage than they were dealing out. As hard as I tried, I could not get the PCs to see the folly of their tactics, and could not get the ships together.

Eventually, the PCs’ ship was whittled down to destruction. All that was left was for the enemy ship to sail in and capture the PCs from the wreckage. I stopped the game session at that point.

Right after this game session, one of the Players stated his desire to change characters. He said he didn’t realize what the campaign would be like – although I had told them in solid terms what the campaign was going to be like, and he had only seen one encounter at all – and he wanted to choose characters that would work better – his characters hadn’t done anything at all yet because the group didn’t engage the enemy ship except at ship-weapon ranges. So I don’t know how he made a decision that his characters weren’t right for the campaign.

A few days later, one of the other Players had to bail out of the campaign because of work issues. So I just dropped the whole campaign. This was my one and only attempt to DM AD&D2. (Although I played a PC in a many-month-long campaign with someone else DMing.)

Bullgrit

We were a newly formed game group, in our fourth game session (second session with me DMing). I was running a basic dungeon crawl in a moderate-sized dungeon. The Players seemed to be enjoying the play, but we were still getting to know each other’s play style.

As a DM (and as a Player) I prefer to let the dice fall as they will – I don’t like fudging for or against the PCs. I explained this to the Players before I started DMing.

The PCs (five 3rd level characters) had delved pretty far into the dungeon, battling through orcs and ogres and wolves, and a few other critters. They had left a path of death through the dungeon. Once the more organized denizens of the place discovered they had invaders, a large force went through the place looking to kill the adventurers.

The PCs had just battled a couple of ogres, and they were hurt and expended. They decided they either needed to head back out of the dungeon, or they had to find a safe place to hole up. They stepped out of the ogre room, intending to backtrack through the corridors.

They heard a lot of commotion down the hall from where they had come. It sounded like a lot of orcs. The orcs were following the trail of bloody battles through the dungeon.

The party had to get away, but they hadn’t explored further than were they were right then. In their worn condition, they didn’t think they’d survive a fight with a bunch of orcs, so their only option was to try to move through the unexplored halls to hopefully get somewhere they could evade or hide from the enemies coming.

They opened a door across from the ogre room and found a long hallway. They hustled through the door and closed it quietly behind them. They moved down the hall, coming to the end where they found what looked like a one-way secret door – secret from the other side. They heard the door behind them open and orc voices wondering if the invaders had gone this way.

The adventurers opened the door before them, and found it lead to outside the dungeon. They hurried through the door and out of the dungeon.

I could see in every Player’s expression that they thought I had just orchestrated – fudged – their escape. It was too perfect a set up, and too perfect an escape route – right where they needed it for the most climatic escape scene. There were even a couple of groans about how it was too perfect.

“Here, look,” I said. I used a couple of pieces of paper to cover parts of the [printed, not hand drawn] map they hadn’t explored yet, and showed them just the part they could recognize as the ogre room (a unique room with a pit trap in the center), the corridor where the orcs were coming from (with a penciled X where they had left a dead orc patrol), and the hall with the one-way secret door at the end.

The Players looked at the map and saw that I had not fudged any of it for their escape. They laughed, one hooted, and a couple high-fived. The escape scene had happened naturally, and fairly.

That was a critically important moment, for me, as a DM. For those Players, and for me, that was a very fun scene only because it wasn’t orchestrated to be cinematic. It defined our relationship as DM and Players – they knew things in the game would happen naturally and fairly.

Strangely, I’ve met Players who don’t want to “see behind the DM screen” at all, ever, even to prove things are “fair.” I’ve met Players who want the DM to roll dice behind the screen so they can’t see the results. I’ve actually had another DM tell me that showing the map to the Players in the game above was wrong.

Bullgrit

Looking through an old Dragon magazine the other night, I re-read some letters to the mag about the craziest D&D campaigns. I’ve seen a few crazy wild game sessions, but I’ve played in only one crazy wild extended campaign:

AD&D2, early 90s — Our PCs started at 5th level, and eventually made it into the low 20s. In less than a year of playing, my cleric made level 23. I remember taking my war cleric, alone, (just me and the DM at the table), into the mountains to ambush hill giant war parties, just to build up xp outside our regular weekly group game sessions.

As a group, we literally built a metropolis using magic — repeated, daily use of wall of stone, move earth, wall of iron, etc. We quickly built up a huge population, and defended them from all kinds of crazy mighty threats.

A couple of PCs went on an adventure by themselves one time, and accidentally opened a gate to Hell. Devils started gating in and the PCs retreated. From then on, that mountain range was literally crawling with all kinds of devils. We could kill them by the dozen when we ventured into that area, (again just for the xp).

We fought ridiculously powerful foes. In one battle, three PCs (including my own) leapt through a prismatic sphere to get at the archmage inside. We all three survived and killed the enemy.

The wizard’s guild was literally on the moon above the planet. You had to have teleport without error to reach it. (We had two magic-users in our party.)

Now, this may not be that crazy to some people, but for me, it’s the only time I’ve played “epic” levels, and the stuff going down in various battles (and outside of battles) was so far beyond anything I had ever experienced before (or since) that it boggles my mind.

Bullgrit

My gaming group finally got around to giving the latest edition of D&D a trial run. I’ve had the Player’s Handbook for many months, and I’ve read most of it. Reading it just didn’t turn me on to the system.

Reading the rules gave me one main feeling: this ain’t D&D.

The rules/mechanics — races, classes, abilities, etc. — seem well balanced, but there’s a lot of stuff that just feels like a new game system than D&D. But I withheld real judgment of the game until I could actually play it.

Well, now that I’ve played it, I have one main feeling: this ain’t D&D.

I know “this ain’t D&D” is an inflammatory statement among D&Ders, and I fully understand how and why it will completely piss off some of 4th edition’s fans. But it’s an honest feeling from me. Just too much has changed, too much is drastically different from the game’s predecessors. It feels like a whole new game system, not a new edition of D&D. I don’t see an evolution, or even a revolution. It’s just, different.

There are some things that I just don’t want in my D&D, like dragonborn and tiefling player character races. There are some things that just seem alien to D&D, like 1st-level characters having two dozen hit points (and goblins having equal combat lasting power). And there are some things that seem to go counter to making D&D “better,” like so many character abilities and even more things to keep track of.

But when I look at the game system as a new game (rather than an evolution of D&D, specifically), I still see problems. For instance, the 1st-level characters have half a dozen abilities. (My pregen tiefling warlord had 7 abilities to choose from each round.) That’s a hell of a lot of stuff for beginning players, with 1st-level characters to deal with. (It was a lot for me, an experienced gamer, to keep up with.)

I like some of the concepts the designers said they were trying to incorporate into, or eliminate from, the game. Like make the characters abilities work well with a group of allies, and give the characters the ability to keep going beyond the 15-minute adventuring day (after expending their big daily powers). But many of the systems the designers put in place really didn’t solve the problems, or worse, made things more problematic.

I thought the new edition was supposed to make the game easier and smoother, especially when running combat. But what it really did was make combat more complicated and longer. Absolutely not an improvement.

Playing the game felt like trying (but failing) to mimic D&D with an entirely different system not actually meant to be played as D&D. It felt as weird as playing in the Star Wars universe with the Marvel Super Heroes rules set — a bad fit.

Now, I don’t hate this game, though I do see some flaws in the design (especially when I consider what the designers said they intended to make better). But it really does not feel like D&D. A new edition of D&D should be like coming home to find your spouse has dyed their hair, lost weight, and put on sexy new clothes. 4th edition as D&D is like coming home to find a new person there, posing as your spouse. No matter how good they may look, it ain’t what you know and love, and want.

Bullgrit