Best D&D game ever!

My son and I often pull out my D&D or Star Wars minis and play a little game. We play a skirmish-style Star Wars game, where one of us gets clones, or stormtroopers, or droids, or Rebel troopers, plus a couple of heroes. The object of the game is to get to a particular door, or blow up a console, or destroy the attackers. If we pull out the D&D minis, we play a quick little dungeon-crawl, no more than 3 or four rooms, and my boy gets to beat on some goblins or skeletons, or whatever monsters strike his fancy at that moment.

Today, we tried something a little different. I pulled out the Microlite D20 rules, had him create a character, and we played a little more sincerely. The adventure began with an old wizard coming to the home of his character ("Knight Smith"), asking for help to recover a crystal ball from an old castle. What happened next was gaming gold.

I described the approach to an old, ruined castle; there was a drawbridge, a dry moat, and an open doorway to the castle. I described a gnoll ("dog-man") sitting just beyond the doorway, eating soup at a ramshackle table, with an axe at his feet. My son told me his character would talk to him, asking him if he knew where the crystal ball was. He and the gnoll talked for a little while and, once the gnoll was convinced that my son's character wouldn't try to fight him, led him to the door to the dungeon. The gonll even offered some useful advice..."The goblins downstairs aren't really bright." My son thanked him and moved on.

One trapped hallway later (my son's character got through it by going back up and asking the gnoll if he was good at tripping traps), he made his way to a door. He heard goblins beyond. His solution to the problem...style:italic;">go back to town and get help!

Smart kid, this one.

One hired-gun cleric added to the party, and they went back into the dungeon. My kid's plan...knock on the door to the goblin lair and tell them, "Hey, we're a couple of goblins looking to join up!"

Once the goblins let them in...my we put down the minis and drew the dungeon on the battle-map. Things went really smoothly...the kid took well to the Microlite rules :)

Later in the game, the boy's character and his cleric-helper encountered the Goblin Chieftan and his bodyguards. Nearby was the magical crystal ball. The boy's plan went flawlessly: knock out the chieftain, and then declare to the bodyguards: "Your chief has been defeated! Give us the crystal ball, and we spare the rest of you!" he also made a proposal to them: let him leave, and promise never to attack the village, the the goblins could live in the abandoned castle. On top of that, he would tell the cleric to heal all the goblins that had been defeated!

So, by the time we were finished, the boy's character had made allies of a gnoll, added a cleric to his adventuring party, recovered a magical artifact, and gave a home to a tribe of goblins.

Eight years old, this kid.

Microlite D20: http://microlite20.net/

Weekend gaming recap, and some upcoming plans

Big gaming-filled weekend, so lets fill folks in on the highlights:

Friday:
Game: Dr. Who
System: D20 Modern
Have I mentioned how surprised I am that we've gotten D20 Modern to work for this game? The individual classes mean precious little to the players. The special abilities of some advanced classes do a nice job of giving the players the tools to do some high sci-fi wierdness (one PC built his own "K-9," while another jury-rigs high-technology with great results). I'm most impressed by how well the group works together, and how they interact with the setting.

I've thrown away some of the "modern" Dr. Who continuity, and focus on the settings and the characters. Every session is a mystery, with the players interacting as much with the setting as they do the NPC's. So far, they've visited a starship in the ultimately-distant future, a World War I battlefield, a U.N.I.T base in Montana, and a Dyson Sphere called, "New Skaro." They've encountered Cybermen, evil renegade Time-Lords, Daleks (the old William Hartnell-era Daleks that could only move on metal floors), and others. They totally immerse themselves with the setting, and bring alot to the table. Fast becoming one of my favorite experiences.

By the way, I've found a way to make the game progress nicely, and still make it "temporary" enough to give me the opportunity to run another game in the future: I don't award experience points. Every session or two (just about the end of every story, and each story really runs only a session or two), I tell them to just go up a level. Makes a good game.

Oh, and I told you I picked up Traveller, right?

Saturday: I spent most of the afternoon at Natural 20, one of my local gaming stores. I tried out games I've never gotten to try:

Wings of War: World War I bi-plane combat. Very fun, with a nice amoutn of strategy. reminded me a little of Robo Rally, to tell the truth. I'd be interested in playing again.

Formula De: Formula One racing. Absolutely a blast! Most fun time of the night. There's a nice amount of complexity which makes moving little plastic cars around a track engrossing. Stragtegy involves knowing when to shift gears up or down, to maintain a safe but winning speed. Problems or poor strategy can result in blown tires, busted engines, or blown brakes. Loved it, will definately play again. My only complaint is that it really seems like a game you need at least 4 players to do it justice.
Settlers of Cataan: Hated it the first time I played (a year or two ago), but enjoyed it much more this time. Not much more to say about it...time was really just a blur at that point.

Bought some Bretonnain Knights (and will start painting them this week, I think).

Sunday: My D&D game in Grayhawk: Wow.

One combat, and alot of role-playing. The combat: an infernal beholder.

The really big thing about that game is that its coming to an end. Its been going on for about a year and a half, and has been in "endgame" for the last couple of months. The PC's have gathered enough intelligence about the evil protagonist and his minions, and are ready to take him on. They are just one teleport spell away from their final conflict. They did a good amount of planning Sunday, and will make the Big Jump next session (in two weeks).

Oh, I have to show some shots from the game (especially since I got to use some of my Master Maze kits from Dwarven Forge):


The party makes their way to the door (note, the druid has performed his standard "turn into a bear when wandering around a dungeon" protocol):















You know, in most D&D games I've played in, the fighter is the one to open the door...not the druid. Then again, when you have a druid who is more comfortable walking around as a bear...

I have some mixed feelings about ending a campaign. I've really enjoyed writing for this game, and the players and I have invested alot of time and energy into it. But all stories have to end. Now, they've all gained a good amount of followers and cohorts, so there's always the option of coming back later to this campaign world (providing it survives the next session) with fresh, level 1 characters. I'd like to do that in the future. Right now, though, I'm a little burnt out with D&D, and am excited about what the group would like to do next.

The group and I talked, and it seems like they'd like to do a Star Wars campaign, set just at the beginning of the Galactic Civil War. They'll play as a small squadron of starfighter jocks (and their support) just starting their campaign against the Empire. I'll have more campaign notes about that later.

Tomorrow (or Wednesday): my review of the Traveller character creation system. Good stuff!

The Challenge of Higher Levels (a topic I'll probably return to again and again)

I'm running a D&D game with some friends right now, and they've made it up to 12th/13th level. One player told me he doesn't care for higher-level games of D&D, and claimed that at those power levels, each encounter is either an absolute victory or an absolute failure; you're either well-prepared to handle that challenge rating of an encounter or you're not. I thought about that a little bit, and considered how I create encounters for my higher level games.

I don't believe that, at higher levels, an encounter is any more an absolute victory or absolute failure any more than at lower levels. But then again, many of my encoutners aren't the traditional D&D kick-in-the-door, deal-with-the-monster encounters. Here are a few things I do to mix up my encounters, to make even slightly lower-level creatures a higher-level threat:

1: I'll play with the battlefield. A dungeon encounter may include traps along with the monster, blockades, or nuisances that can slowly deplete characters' resources while in a combat. for outdoor encoutners, I'll use buildings, foliage, and geographical features to augment the creatures' abilities.

I had one encounter that spanned the interior and exterior of a run-down inn, which included, if I remember correctly, 2 ogres, a goblin sorceror. The sorceror hassled PC's left in the inn, used cover, and threw spells outside to PC's combatting the bigger guys. The ogres were steamrollers, destroying any cover the PC's were using.

2: Social combat always makes things interesting. Obvioulsy, not every encoutner has to be combat-oriented. We've had one session that was just the players negotiating with a dragon NPC, and making it out safely (with tons of information relating to storyline in the campaign). Some levels of social interaction tend to spice up encounters that are even 'destined" to become combat encounters. They keep all the players' attention, and still give the opportunity to use characters' skills and other resources.

3: The stakes get bigger. Lets face it: in D&D, fear of character death isn't a terribly huge motivation. There are too many opportunities for Raise Dead-style spells. Once the players begin to care abou the campaign world, though, any threats to the world itself become a bigger motivator for the game. The trick is, getting the players to care.

That's always the tricky part. I'm lucky that, as of right now, I have players that do have their characters care about their campaign world. When they don't, then its back to some old-school GM tricks: they probably care more about their treasure. So its time to undertake quests to remove curses from their magic items, etc.

None of this is new or revolutionary. Everybody who has played or GM'ed in a RPG has figured alot of these techniques out. I find it interesting, though, how much you have to remind yourself about them for D&D. Its like they're easy to forget, once you start mapping a dungeon or rolling on the treasure tables. The trick is to not let them go, I reckon.