I haven’t played WoW in a couple months. I just kind of dropped it. I got the urge to pull out some of my older games, like Diablo II and some first person shooters.

I used to have some interesting and fun characters in online Diablo II: a level 63 necromancer with an army of skeletons, a level 28 paladin with Aura of Thorns, and a sheer awesome level 32 barbarian. But those characters were deleted from the Diablo II servers for lack of playing. (If you don’t play a character for 90 days, it gets deleted.)

I really liked those characters, so I started trying to rebuild them. The level 63 necromancer was the most fun, and the easiest too. With a dozen skeletons to do my fighting, I could just stand back and watch. I didn’t have to constantly click on enemies. But building back from the ground up is long and tedious. It wasn’t as much fun as the first time.

So, I’m considering picking up Burning Crusade for WoW, and logging in again.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I want a group of adventurers that stick together and survive for long periods of time. I want stories and plots to unfold over time. I want a bad guy the PCs fought at 3rd level to come back to haunt them at 12th level. I want plots that the PCs first saw back at 5th level to be resolved when they are 15th level. I want the PCs to learn that the minor information they learned at 8th level is actually the missing piece of a puzzle they need at 20th level. I want the PCs to have back stories in and from the actual game play.

This storytelling* is what sets RPGs apart from other games. It’s the draw that makes me prefer an adventure RPG game over an adventure board game.

I’ve never had a single PC group/story that lasted more than about 6 levels. PCs die, singly or in groups. For instance, they make a powerful enemy at 3rd level, they encounter a big plot at 4th level, they have a history together by 5th level, then they die at 6th level. The enemy, the plot, the history are all dropped as a new campaign arises. I could keep the enemy and the plot for the new campaign, but the new PCs don’t really have any in-game connection to it as their predecessors had. I tend to hope to build new enemies and new plots that the current PCs actually build in-game histories with.

Or maybe they don’t all die at one time, but rather one at a time, over many game sessions, each dead character being replaced with a new character, such that by 10th level, there’s no original PC still in the group. That villain from 3rd level, the current PCs have no real history with him. That plot from 5th level, none of the current PCs have any connection to it. That piece of info they learned at 8th level, the current PCs don’t know it.

And bringing in a new 12th-level PC to replace the dead just feels so wrong; building a character up from low levels to high levels is a major cool factor of D&D. A highly experienced character just walking onto the set with no real in-game back story, to join other PCs, just seems so against the meaning of D&D. And starting a whole group at 12th level, a whole band of very powerful characters, with no real, in-game back story, just feels so fake.

I like looking at the 12th-level PCs and knowing they’ve been through hell together since low levels, and here they are “all grown up.” I don’t like looking at the 12th-level PCs and knowing that one leveled up from 5th level, that one from 8th level, that one from 10th level, and that one is just starting new with the group today, at 12th level.

I used to be content with the rotating door of PCs in a D&D game. The story went no further than the current dungeon. The PCs’ in-game back story went no further back than last game session. But now I want long-term stories, extended in-game histories.

I know some DMs cheat the game to make sure PCs never die. As a Player, I hate that. As a DM, I find it distasteful, but I also don’t think I’m good enough to do it without being obvious. I like seeing how things play out by letting “the dice fall as they may.” But that means deaths, and the end of stories. You can’t have it both ways, apparently. You can’t let the dice fall as they may and expect a long running story with long-term PCs. Are they just mutually exclusive?

I now find myself disappointed with playing RPGs. Character death really annoys me. Might as well play a board game where nothing carries over from session to session.

[* I don’t mean a “story” in the sense of a predetermined script, but just the natural story that evolves from playing the same characters over a period of time. Dungeon crawl to dungeon crawl creates a story just as much as following a plot path. Especially when elements of earlier crawls resurface or follow into later crawls.]

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I got a wild idea, this weekend, to run a sample combat for a group of AD&D1 characters (the base four: cleric, fighter, magic-user, thief) against some AD&D1 monsters using strictly all the AD&D1 rules, as written, by-the-book. I knew there were some rules I never used when running an AD&D1 combat, such as weapon speed factors and the weapon vs. AC chart, so I wanted to see how they actually worked in actual game play. But when I started rereading the AD&D1 books (PHB and DMG), with an eye toward running a combat with all the AD&D1 rules, I found that there are a ton of AD&D1 rules I had never used – some I never even knew about (or just don’t remember).

Quite honestly, I am astonished by how much of the AD&D1 rules I’ve never used, or never used completely or correctly. It turns out, in truth, I’ve never really run a fully AD&D1 game. My games could better be described as Basic/Expert D&D with Advanced D&D flavor. I used the AD&D1 ability scores, races, classes, and spells, but the actual game mechanics I used, it seems, were more Basic than Advanced.

I probably shouldn’t be so surprised; after all, I started my D&D career with Basic and Expert D&D. I moved up to Advanced D&D after a year or two. So my base understanding of the game mechanics was from B/ED&D. I guess I never actually read the DMG completely when I was running my AD&D1 campaign. I must have skimmed or skipped the info I assumed I already knew. Or maybe I did read all the rules and choose to ignore the more complicated stuff. I don’t really remember from 10-25 years ago.

For instance:

— I thought surprise was simply “roll a d6: a 1 or 2 means surprised for a round,” with just a couple exceptions, such as the ranger class, or a group of elves in the forest. The actual rules for surprise are much, much more complicated.

— I thought segments were just used to tell how quickly a spell caster could get off his spell in comparison/opposition to another spell caster. The actual rules require some pretty detailed segment tracking for almost all actions, not just spell casting. Including a 2-5 segment delay for a potion to take effect after being drunk.

And the biggest surprise I discovered in the AD&D1 rules:

Players must declare their PCs’ actions “precisely and without delay” prior to rolling initiative.

Seeing this rule absolutely floored me. I’ve seen this rule in Marvel Super Heroes (and I house ruled it out), and I’m currently playing with this rule in a Star Wars d6 game (and I hate it). I had no idea that this rule originated in AD&D1.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

In the 1990s edition of the Star Wars RPG (d6 rules), there is one die in your pool called the wild die. When you roll your Xd6, if the wild die comes up a 6, you get to roll it again and add the result (repeating this if another 6 is rolled). If the wild die comes up a 1, you subtract the 1 and the highest other die in the roll.

In our current SWRPG game, we are on a mission to rescue/ recover a crashed ship in a jungle. We landed our ship in a clearing about 20 km from the crash site, and had to travel on foot through the jungle. During this trek, we’ve been attacked by lots of big birds (size of large eagles), wolf-like predators, and a big green crab-thing.

In our first encounter with the big birds (attacking in flocks of up to 8 at a time), my wookiee hit four of them with a blaster rifle, but didn’t drop any of them. In fact, 3 of the hits were completely shrugged off (their 2D Strength roll was better than my 5D damage rolls). Everyone else in our group was dropping a bird with every hit (often killing them outright).

One PC accidentally shot an NPC in the back during the first fight. (The NPC was between the shooter and the target, providing cover.) Fortunately, the victim only took a stun wound.

Because the birds attack like a swarm, this friendly fire/crossfire thing comes up nearly every engagement with them.

Later, in two other fights, my wookiee got surrounded by birds. Instead of shooting them, I went all wookiee-fu with my 7D Brawling skill. Because everyone else in our party has higher Perception (we take our side’s turn in order of our Perception). My wookiee usually takes his actions last. So I’d declare like 4 attacks (taking me down to rolling 4D). But then all the other PCs would drop the birds with their blaster shots. I might, might, actually have a target left by the time my turn comes around. And then my 5D Strength kept failing to drop a bird in one hit.

Sigh, and double sigh. My luck has been totally sucking. I estimate that I’ve failed to drop a 2D-Strength target with 5D damage about 10-12 times in this adventure. (“Drop” meaning do more than a stun.) Everyone at the table is amazed by my bad luck in this regard.

Then, in our last fight with the damn jungle birds, on our way out of the jungle, I take a shot at a bird attacking the NPC (same one as above). Again, the NPC is between the shooter and the target. I roll a terrible attack, and hit the NPC. Then I roll great damage, and the 3D-Strength NPC rolls 3 ones to resist.

Oh my God!

Then, another PC ends up hitting my wookiee in the same way. Through our three adventures, my wookiee has been shot, stabbed, clawed, or bitten 28 times. (After getting hit 6 times in our first adventure, and shrugging off all of them, I started keeping track of how many times my wookiee got hit, just for the fun of it. He’s never taken more than 4 damage, minimum for a wound.) This was the 29th time, and the most severe (5 damage). I’m wounded and drop. Fortunately, I survive the fight.

All of us at the table were amazed at just how bad a run of luck my wookiee has had on this adventure. There is no GM hanky-panky or fudging (all rolls in the open), no house rules (or at least no house rules that we don’t all agree with/on, if some rule we use happens to actually not be in the book), and no bad feelings about anything (other than I’ve come to absolutely hate and fear the wild die).

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com