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

Continued from here.

The next PC lineup:

Player 1 = fighter, fighter (new)

Player 2 = thief (new), magic-user (detect magic)

Player 3 = magic-user (magic missile), magic-user (sleep)

Note: the below is an overview of how the adventure went. I’m leaving out a lot of little details.

The PCs re-entered the dungeon, walked up the entry corridor, and again opened the west secret door (the spike holding it open was gone, now). They followed their previous path part way, and then went through a door they had only opened and looked beyond before.

They ended up in room 21 — the meeting room with lots of benches — but it was empty of monsters and treasure. They spent a lot of time searching around in there, but there was nothing to find.

They left that room and walked back the other direction, going round and round the spiral, until they came to the center, where a single ghoul was waiting to pounce on them.

I was looking forward to this ghoul encounter. Three attacks and paralysis — I knew it was going to make things interesting. But:

Round one: party wins initiative. Fighter kills ghoul with one shot. Combat over.

<sigh> Using the stats in the book, the ghoul only had 6 hit points even though it had 2 hit dice. But at least I placed some treasure in the ghoul’s “nest.” Among the module’s treasure list is a silver mirror and a crystal goblet.

By the book, the mirror is “of exceptional quality” and valued at 90gp, and the goblet is 15gp. Because I wanted more treasure in this adventure, I upped the values to 400gp and 250gp respectively.

The module text doesn’t give the mirror a size, so I, just off the cuff, described it as two feet by three feet (thinking of a mirror hanging in our home). The Players discussed the treasure and figured it was unlikely these fragile treasures would survive dungeon exploration and combat, so they decided to take them out of the dungeon. I don’t blame them — this was their first real valuable treasure. They didn’t want to take the chance of loosing the gold and xp.

So the party backtracked their way out of the dungeon. It was almost 11:00 at night, so I called the game session at that point. We all gathered our gaming stuff and got up from the table to move to the living room for our regular after-game gab session.

The subject came up that we might try D&D 4th edition next week. There was a couple of mentions that this Basic D&D game session had been fun, but I could tell no one was really excited by the game. It seemed to be an interesting game to try, but not interesting enough to continue.

I don’t really blame the Players for feeling that way. I mean, it was bad luck that they ended up spending all their time basically just wandering the bare halls of the dungeon. In an email a few days later, one of the Players asked if the dungeon had any set monsters and treasure, or if it was just a big dungeon with wandering monsters.

I replied:

It’s a big dungeon with pre-set monsters and treasures in specific rooms/corridors. There are almost 40 rooms on that first level of the dungeon — you found 3 of them. Through no fault or bad decision on your part, the direction you went through that secret door (which is a one-way door, so it was good for you that you spiked it open) took you to the “maze area” of the dungeon where it’s mostly just long corridors and random wandering monsters. Bad luck.

Had you discovered and gone through the secret door on the other side of that entry corridor (or gone straight ahead), you would have found lots of rooms with set monsters and treasures. Bad luck.

I had spent a couple of hours reading over that module, deciding on and placing monsters and treasures, and through just pure bad luck, they encountered one placed monster and treasure.

Well, at least I didn’t have to describe a lot of rooms to them — finding and reading room descriptions from the wall of text can be difficult. This is a problem I have with many old classic modules — back before boxed text came into use. Check out this typical page from B1:

So I’m disappointed. Not in the game or in the module, but just that my first (and now probably only) chance to run a Basic D&D game for my group turned out so relatively boring, just because of the direction through the dungeon the PCs ended up taking (through no fault or mistake on the Players’ part). I would have loved to play through the whole dungeon — I see, now, that’s really the only way to get a true feel for classic D&D. A one-game session shot just isn’t enough.

Although, had the PCs gone a different way, and discovered some of the rooms and monsters and treasures, I’m sure the Players would have been excited enough to continue another game session.

Bullgrit