We encountered a What?!?
or
Sometimes it's fun to run away
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got be a PC instead of DM the other day! Yay! It's not like I'm never a player, but it really is like a 90/10 split. So when I do play, it's a big deal for me, and I try to use it as a learning opportunity to become a better DM.
It may seem like I bagged on the DM's black dragon encounter in the last post for not quite fitting in with my plot/balance expectations, but that was just focusing on one particular nuance of the encounter. Another facet of the encounter, namely how absolutely scared s---less we were and how awesome that was, is highly praiseworthy. Let's recap:
The party is off to find a dangerous and evil orb in a cave. The party does indeed find an orb, but it hardly seems dangerous and evil. The orb is suspended by the spray of a magical fountain. It bobs atop the water, and the water is pure and refreshing. The party's paladin and cleric sense no evil. Runes etched into the ceiling contain references to Moradrin and Corellon - the antithesis of fearsome, evil deities (there are also runes for "undead" and "protection" but I just assume - correctly, it turns out - those are related to a trap).
At this point, we think it's the orb we seek, but it just seems too darn "good" compared to what we were expecting. I think too many of us grew up on Gary Gygax modules where the obvious often equated with death. So we decide to press on for a bit, to explore some more and be sure the "real" orb isn't hidden deeper in the cave network. It's still early in the day, so we meander through the cave network for over three 3 hours (big caves).
At this point the DM utters something like "a loud whoosh of air from massive, leathery scaled wings rushes over you" as he places a figure on the table. It's a Black Dragon. "In Draconic, the dragon says 'You have trespassed into my lair - I may yet allow you to leave with your lives.'" Almost everyone succumbs to dragon-fear.
The players begin to chatter amongst themselves (something our characters didn't do, but the DM let it slide) debating if we could take on the dragon, but it becomes clear there's a misunderstanding. "Whups, no - the only Black Dragon miniature I have is medium-sized. This guy is actually large. Here, this is better." as the DM swaps out the 1x1-based mildly alarming dragon for a 2x2-based figure of plastic-injection-molded terror.
Unfortunately, the only guy in our party who speaks Draconic is the not-terribly-bright Dragonborn paladin. While most of the party shakes with puddles of urine at their feat, he summons the courage to overcome the dragon-fear and speak (having worked with reptiles, I'm somewhat alarmed at what might be in the Dragonborn's undergarments). The paladin says something along the lines of "Mighty cousin, we have come here seeking a magical orb of great evil, do you know of this orb we seek?"
When combined with a poor Diplomacy check, the black dragon interprets this as something along the lines of "Cousin whom I insult terribly by speaking to as an equal, we think there is a magic orb in your treasure that we wish to take from you. You cool with that?"
The dragon's eyes narrow and it hisses "I know of many magic orbs, and I see one more that I shall add to my trove. Leave it and I will spare your lives." The dragon was looking at the magic orb currently being held by the party's wizard...
There was some back-and-forth where the wizard genuinely contemplated trying to palm the orb and use Prestidigitation to hand over a fake orb so as to save a few hundred GP and perhaps some dignity. Eventually, however, the sheer statistical improbability of pulling that off made him relent and hand over his orb. The party tip-toed out the way we came in.
That encounter was awesome.
As a player, I am generally expecting to be able to defeat anything we encounter, though sometimes it may be harder than other times. But we're still gonna defeat it. I generally only experience, erm, iris-puckering fear, as it were, when the dice have gone terribly wrong and we're losing to random luck, or perhaps we've made a stupid decision or missed an important clue that is making our fight harder. I never really expect to be just plain ol' outclassed by an encounter. It's frickin' scary.
Sure, we could have taken on the dragon and won, though somebody would likely have died, and if the dice went against us, it could have been a TPK. But it was so much more fun to be scared and to have to turn tail. I know it doesn't sound like much fun when you put it that way, but it was a really memorable encounter. I'm just glad no one did anything stupid. And the DM did a good job of playing up how menacing the dragon was, and gently coaching people about potential consequences.
I might add an encounter like that to my games. The two concerns I have are making sure the party has a realistic out and making sure the party knows what they're dealing with. I'd hate to have the party die due to some failed Diplomacy checks or saying the wrong thing. Likewise I'd hate for the party to die because one of the players unilaterally decides the party can take 'em. In other words, the problem with introducing something that can kill the party into the game is that just might happen.
9.09.2008
Notes from the Other Side (of the DM Screen) 1
I'm almost always the DM, I rarely end up being the player in a campaign. But last Sunday I got the chance to play in a friend's one-off 4e game. I'm in his 1/month main 3.5 campaign but it's on temporary hiatus due to scheduling conflicts and childbirth (or some such lame excuse), so he's cobbled together some of the players from that game and a couple other random people to run short "prequel" sessions in the interim. The results of these games actually have a minor effect on the main game. Pretty cool. The characters were premade - I ended up with the human rogue (level 3) - and the plot simple: fetch an orb from the nearby caves once inhabited by cultists.
Because I'm fascinated by game design and want to be a better DM, I made some observations from the player's perspective. In this post I want to address the sad fact that players will notice your adventure's plot holes and/or realism deficiencies.
This is unavoidable. Don't feel bad. It's just part of the game. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into your story arc, there is always going to be at least one niggling little detail which makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defense - in other words, none. And invariably someone will notice it.
If you have rats deep in a limestone cavern, someone will point out that we haven't found any organic matter in half a mile that could possibly support swarms of rats. There's a reason a rat infestation will be in your attic, floor, or elsewhere nearby - they live near their food, not an hour-long trek from it. If you run into a dragon as a random encounter (this happened, by the way), a player will invariably voice bewilderment that no one told them about the @$^%! dragon living 10 miles from town which, based on the size of both the dragon and its hoard, must have been feeding on cattle and travelers for quite some time.
This is a problem - suspension of disbelief is important to RPGs. The DMing lessons I learned from this are to never use truly random encounters and to listen to your players and think on your feet.
By "truly" random encounters, I mean when the DM decides the players have been
* pissing about aimlessly and becoming bored to the point that playing Wii Looney Tunes Acme Arsenals begins to sound good (Why do I have this game? Oh, that's right - the guy I bought the Wii from gave it to me for free. Then he gave the sign of the Cross, muttered "Our Father..." and slammed the door in my face. It's that bad.)
* making so much noise that some poor monster trying to get some sleep is going to stomp all the way across the dungeon to tell the party to STFU
* willfully avoiding the GM's carefully crafted plot so that he needs to smack them around a bit to remind them who's the boss
so that the GM rolls on a chart or picks a random mini to keep things moving and/or punish the players. It's the "random" part that I don't like. Because you might end up picking an encounter like, say, a Black Dragon. This happens to present some glaring realism issues ("Dude, how the %^@$& did the mayor forget to mention this?!?") and also plot inconsistencies ("So the mayor is in a tizzy about an orb that might possibly be recovered by a presumably destroyed evil cult who could eventually use it to raise an undead horde that might some day raze his village. He is not, however, concerned about the scaly winged death that could raze his village tomorrow &#^%@ morning. Either the orb is more powerful then the mayor lets on, or the village idiot and village mayor are one and the same.").
If I have enough prep time, I prefer to roll up random encounters in advance and put in a little forethought about how these fit into the story and setting, making changes as appropriate. The technique I use is "3x Why?". Ask yourself "Why?" three times before including anything in your game. If you can't, or your answers don't really work with the adventure, ditch the idea.
For example, just in case I need a random encounter for next week's game, I'm rolling one up now. I put together a short list of creatures based on level and environment and I just rolled... a Shadow Hound encounter. Why is there a Shadow Hound here? Um, it's prowling for food and picked up the party's scent. Why? It got here by slipping into the natural world from the Shadowfell and is lost and hungry. Why? Hmmm... Longshadow's Eve was a mere three days ago. A player with Arcana would know that Longshadow's Eve marks the cyclical occasion when the presence of the Shadowfell is stronger than normal and beings can sometimes cross over. It also explains why there were paper lanterns hanging around all over town - a superstition for warding off ill luck around this time of year.
At this point, I probably won't roll any more encounters at random, but instead choose ones related to the Shadowfell. By asking three Whys, I've shored up the encounter plausibility. More importantly, it's forced me to take the time to think about the encounter and hopefully identify any other issues. As I'm going through the 3 whys I'm checking for logical inconsistencies. And it's given me a new idea for my games - I kinda like the Longshadow's Eve idea and think I'll work that one into my current game...
Back to my other observation - listen to your players and think on your feet. Look, coming up with great ideas all by yourself is actually hard. You know how sometimes you can spend hours and hours racking your brains about a problem, and finally you'll mention it to your wife or someone, just venting not really expecting any help, and within 2 seconds she'll say something like "why don't you try it this way?" and it totally works.
Yeah. As a DM, that happens all the time. At least once per session, a player is going to look at a situation and interpret it in a way you never would have thought of. And frankly, it's often better than what you thought of. If you can think on your feet, it's sometimes a good idea to shift gears and run with what the players come up with.
In our game, the mayor became more and more suspect in the players' minds. The chamber with the orb was clearly not evil, the orb itself seemed to have benign powers, the orb was much better defended where it was than it would be in the hands of the village mayor, and of course there's the little issue of not mentioning the [expletive removed] Dragon living in the caves. For like, years. What's going on? Something's not making sense, so we of course start looking for in-game excuses (as opposed to out-of-game excuses, like it's a only one-session game so the DM didn't go crazy with hours of preparation, so just cut him some slack, shaddup, and roll with it).
Now, I believe the reality was the mayor was a perfectly nice plot-giver and not a villain. The orb is actually a dangerous device in the wrong hands, it's just the way it was described that accidentally made it seem so benign. But as we sat about the table discussing our quandary, we started making a good case for the mayor to actually be a villain. Thinking back to when he sought us out for the quest, we wondered was he being secretive out of fear the terror-- er, sorry -- cultists might overhear? Or was he being secretive because he was furtively executing his own plot? And he clearly knew that only a Dwarven priest of Moradin could recover the orb - anyone else touching it would awaken the undead defenders. What else did he know that he wasn't telling? In our mind, only half-jokingly, we began to think the mayor was actually a cultist and that he was unable to recover the orb himself. So he needed to dupe a dwarven cleric and friends to do it for him.
Maybe I just play too much Eberron, but I think that interpretation is so much cooler than the classic "the mayor asks you to fetch him a nosegay" adventure arc. If I were the DM, I would have seriously considered scrapping my ideas and running with the players' interpretations. I've done that before and, while it's sometimes tricky to think on your feet, it can make for great games.
As a player, I definitely learned the importance of cutting your GM some slack. It's hard work to come up with even a single-session adventure, even without worrying about the ecology of rodents. If something doesn't seem right, unless it's important, let it go. Don't be the Comic Book Guy nerdy complainer of your group.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the game and the DM did a great job running it, especially how he played the monsters very true to their stats and background. He was able to keep things moving in a friendly, efficient way. This post is really more about playing "backseat DM" and wondering what techniques I would copy, and what I would do differently than criticism. It's a great exercise for every DM who gets a chance to see things from the other side of the DM screen.
Because I'm fascinated by game design and want to be a better DM, I made some observations from the player's perspective. In this post I want to address the sad fact that players will notice your adventure's plot holes and/or realism deficiencies.
This is unavoidable. Don't feel bad. It's just part of the game. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into your story arc, there is always going to be at least one niggling little detail which makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defense - in other words, none. And invariably someone will notice it.
If you have rats deep in a limestone cavern, someone will point out that we haven't found any organic matter in half a mile that could possibly support swarms of rats. There's a reason a rat infestation will be in your attic, floor, or elsewhere nearby - they live near their food, not an hour-long trek from it. If you run into a dragon as a random encounter (this happened, by the way), a player will invariably voice bewilderment that no one told them about the @$^%! dragon living 10 miles from town which, based on the size of both the dragon and its hoard, must have been feeding on cattle and travelers for quite some time.
This is a problem - suspension of disbelief is important to RPGs. The DMing lessons I learned from this are to never use truly random encounters and to listen to your players and think on your feet.
By "truly" random encounters, I mean when the DM decides the players have been
* pissing about aimlessly and becoming bored to the point that playing Wii Looney Tunes Acme Arsenals begins to sound good (Why do I have this game? Oh, that's right - the guy I bought the Wii from gave it to me for free. Then he gave the sign of the Cross, muttered "Our Father..." and slammed the door in my face. It's that bad.)
* making so much noise that some poor monster trying to get some sleep is going to stomp all the way across the dungeon to tell the party to STFU
* willfully avoiding the GM's carefully crafted plot so that he needs to smack them around a bit to remind them who's the boss
so that the GM rolls on a chart or picks a random mini to keep things moving and/or punish the players. It's the "random" part that I don't like. Because you might end up picking an encounter like, say, a Black Dragon. This happens to present some glaring realism issues ("Dude, how the %^@$& did the mayor forget to mention this?!?") and also plot inconsistencies ("So the mayor is in a tizzy about an orb that might possibly be recovered by a presumably destroyed evil cult who could eventually use it to raise an undead horde that might some day raze his village. He is not, however, concerned about the scaly winged death that could raze his village tomorrow &#^%@ morning. Either the orb is more powerful then the mayor lets on, or the village idiot and village mayor are one and the same.").
If I have enough prep time, I prefer to roll up random encounters in advance and put in a little forethought about how these fit into the story and setting, making changes as appropriate. The technique I use is "3x Why?". Ask yourself "Why?" three times before including anything in your game. If you can't, or your answers don't really work with the adventure, ditch the idea.
For example, just in case I need a random encounter for next week's game, I'm rolling one up now. I put together a short list of creatures based on level and environment and I just rolled... a Shadow Hound encounter. Why is there a Shadow Hound here? Um, it's prowling for food and picked up the party's scent. Why? It got here by slipping into the natural world from the Shadowfell and is lost and hungry. Why? Hmmm... Longshadow's Eve was a mere three days ago. A player with Arcana would know that Longshadow's Eve marks the cyclical occasion when the presence of the Shadowfell is stronger than normal and beings can sometimes cross over. It also explains why there were paper lanterns hanging around all over town - a superstition for warding off ill luck around this time of year.
At this point, I probably won't roll any more encounters at random, but instead choose ones related to the Shadowfell. By asking three Whys, I've shored up the encounter plausibility. More importantly, it's forced me to take the time to think about the encounter and hopefully identify any other issues. As I'm going through the 3 whys I'm checking for logical inconsistencies. And it's given me a new idea for my games - I kinda like the Longshadow's Eve idea and think I'll work that one into my current game...
Back to my other observation - listen to your players and think on your feet. Look, coming up with great ideas all by yourself is actually hard. You know how sometimes you can spend hours and hours racking your brains about a problem, and finally you'll mention it to your wife or someone, just venting not really expecting any help, and within 2 seconds she'll say something like "why don't you try it this way?" and it totally works.
Yeah. As a DM, that happens all the time. At least once per session, a player is going to look at a situation and interpret it in a way you never would have thought of. And frankly, it's often better than what you thought of. If you can think on your feet, it's sometimes a good idea to shift gears and run with what the players come up with.
In our game, the mayor became more and more suspect in the players' minds. The chamber with the orb was clearly not evil, the orb itself seemed to have benign powers, the orb was much better defended where it was than it would be in the hands of the village mayor, and of course there's the little issue of not mentioning the [expletive removed] Dragon living in the caves. For like, years. What's going on? Something's not making sense, so we of course start looking for in-game excuses (as opposed to out-of-game excuses, like it's a only one-session game so the DM didn't go crazy with hours of preparation, so just cut him some slack, shaddup, and roll with it).
Now, I believe the reality was the mayor was a perfectly nice plot-giver and not a villain. The orb is actually a dangerous device in the wrong hands, it's just the way it was described that accidentally made it seem so benign. But as we sat about the table discussing our quandary, we started making a good case for the mayor to actually be a villain. Thinking back to when he sought us out for the quest, we wondered was he being secretive out of fear the terror-- er, sorry -- cultists might overhear? Or was he being secretive because he was furtively executing his own plot? And he clearly knew that only a Dwarven priest of Moradin could recover the orb - anyone else touching it would awaken the undead defenders. What else did he know that he wasn't telling? In our mind, only half-jokingly, we began to think the mayor was actually a cultist and that he was unable to recover the orb himself. So he needed to dupe a dwarven cleric and friends to do it for him.
Maybe I just play too much Eberron, but I think that interpretation is so much cooler than the classic "the mayor asks you to fetch him a nosegay" adventure arc. If I were the DM, I would have seriously considered scrapping my ideas and running with the players' interpretations. I've done that before and, while it's sometimes tricky to think on your feet, it can make for great games.
As a player, I definitely learned the importance of cutting your GM some slack. It's hard work to come up with even a single-session adventure, even without worrying about the ecology of rodents. If something doesn't seem right, unless it's important, let it go. Don't be the Comic Book Guy nerdy complainer of your group.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the game and the DM did a great job running it, especially how he played the monsters very true to their stats and background. He was able to keep things moving in a friendly, efficient way. This post is really more about playing "backseat DM" and wondering what techniques I would copy, and what I would do differently than criticism. It's a great exercise for every DM who gets a chance to see things from the other side of the DM screen.
8.29.2008
Analysis of a TPK
OK, technically it wasn’t a true TPK since one of the characters got away. So I think I can still say with a straight face that I’ve never had a TPK. But to the extent that it wasted a ton of the players’ character development efforts, and a lot of my campaign planning, it was pretty much a TPK. A campaign reset. This is kind of a big deal – it’s not fun for anybody, it wastes a lot of work, and may be reflective of a problem. It’s especially alarming since another character was killed a couple sessions previously (to be fair, that one was just a random crit from a BBEG for a truck-load of damage). So I thought I’d take a little bit of time to understand it.
The background:
The group consists of a bunch of guys who haven’t played an RPG in 1 or more decades, much less 4e D&D. Mortgages, wives, babies, careers, graying hair, the works (I’m the odd guy out – a regular gamer for years, no mortgage, no baby, no gray, and I don’t think you can call freelancing a career. Thank god I’m married though.). We sit around, grill, laugh, drink and game. Their characters are all level 2 and consist of a Fighter, Cleric, dual-wield Ranger, Wizard, and Warlock.
I’m running the players through the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the players get to the kobold lair (spoiler alert, don’t read on if you are planning to play). In the module, the party runs into a large cluster of Kobolds outside the lair, and presumably one of them escapes into the lair to sound the alarm. The party sends its stealthier members forward to spring an ambush on the unsuspecting kobolds, but unfortunately this goes awry as Tostig the Fighter slips on loose rocks near the creek-bed. The party sprigs into action and begins to slaughter the poor kobolds.
I think I play the kobolds as being pretty smart and cunning. They fall back and take cover leaving the PC’s long-range attacks without good targets. They dart out, hurl javelins, and then shift back into cover. Some kobolds start sneaking around the flanks. When the PCs get strung out of formation, they rush forward and mob a single character to maximize their mob attack bonuses, combat advantage bonuses, sneak attacks, and concentrated damage. But ultimately, the characters are Heroes and the kobolds are, well... kobolds. They get mowed down. But the Kobold Slinger gets away to raise the alarm. The party splits up to gather thrown weapons, search for loot, etc.
Red Flag #1: when the kobolds mobbed Tostig, they did a large amount of damage – managing to bloody him. This should have alerted both the players and myself that “Hey! Being surrounded by kobolds just might get you killed!” But other than that one incident, quickly rectified, the kobolds weren’t really a threat.
Red Flag #2: drinking. I definitely enjoy having beers while we game and so do the players. But I do wonder if that clouds our judgment too much and we miss important cues like the above.
Red Flag #3: metagaming. Everyone has now played about a half-dozen sessions of 4e D&D and has come to expect the post-battle recharge – regain all your encounter powers, heal HP, etc. They feel comfortable with splitting up and letting their guard down. What the players don’t know is that when the Slinger ran away, that started a countdown to reinforcements. They aren’t going to get a complete rest and they squandered some encounter powers in the first part of the battle.
A couple rounds later, the first wave of reinforcements comes streaming out of the cave. OK, those of you who have read the module know that I’ve deviated a little from the script. Mid-way through the battle I went back and reread the encounter description. Somehow I ended up with the impression that if one of the kobolds got away to raise the alarm, the kobold reinforcements came outside in two waves. Otherwise, the two waves were encountered inside. Oops. In the module the party is supposed to be able to rest after taking care of the kobolds outside. However, because the party was still kicking ass and taking names, albeit strange hissing- and yipping-sounding kobold names, I didn’t worry about it too much. And the party was already level 2 due to some earlier adventures and the module is intended for level 1 characters. In my head, I decided to weaken Irontooth a bit (those 100+ HP BBEG just get boring to fight after a while anyway) to balance it out.
DM Mistake #1: the first real outright mistake was not giving the PCs a rest between waves. Even with the party being level 2, they just didn’t have enough powers to wade through that many foes.
So, the first kobold wave comes streaming out of the cave. They split up, half engage the PCs directly, the other half move off a ways to hurl javelins at exposed targets. The party is caught out of formation and the kobolds gun for the “squishies” like the Wizard and the Warlock. Thankfully the players are able to get out OK and get the Fighter, Ranger, and Cleric up front. A back-and-forth melee ensues where the players continually cut down the kobolds. The players were continually mobbed by the concentrated attacks of the kobolds, and took a lot of damage, but nobody went down. So the second wave started off a little sketchy but the players rebounded.
When there were a handful of the wave two kobolds left, wave three arrived. At this point, the players were all still above bloodied and handling the encounter fine so I still wasn’t worried (in fact, I was vocally rooting for the kobolds because they were getting annihilated). But the situation went bad really, really quick. The party still hadn’t found a way to restrict the kobold movement. When possible, I had them avoid the axe-wielding armored horror that was Tostig the Fighter, and instead attack the weaker party members. The Wizard strayed too close and got sacked by a mob of kobolds – down he went. The Warlock was mobbed and dropped right after. A couple attempts to heal the fallen members were considered, but the party came to the conclusion that they’d just get immediately killed again, so the healing was reserved for those who were still standing. It was a moot point since the kobolds were finally able to completely surround Tostig and with the massive mob bonuses and concentrated damage, whittle him down. That left the Cleric and the Ranger who attempted to run. The heavily armored Cleric didn’t make it. Surprisingly, Irontooth took so long to wade into the fight that he had almost no impact – he only landed one solid hit.
DM Mistake #2: I don’t yet know 4e well enough to know when the players are in trouble before it’s too late. It’s easy to know the party is in trouble when half of them are bloodied or dead. A good DM knows this is going to happen several rounds in advance, and can take action accordingly (even if it’s only to remind the players that they can attempt to run away).
PC Mistake #1: never let cunning foes get at your squishies. They know this from nearly having lost the Wizard once before. There are a couple chokepoints on the map that the players never tried to occupy that could have limited kobold movement.
PC Mistake #2: party composition. I got the impression that the party had very little battlefield control. There was only one Defender, so the front line wasn’t very “sticky”. Both the Wizard and the Cleric focused more on direct damage powers than they did on control or healing powers. And only one of the characters was a truly melee character, with decent AC and HP. The Wizard and Warlock were of course ranged attackers, the Cleric was OK in melee but had better ranged powers, and while the Ranger had the AC and HP to support a more “front-line” role he preferred hit and run tactics. So this created two major issues: the kobolds could get at the more vulnerable party members fairly easily, and the single melee character was simply overwhelmed without support.
PC Mistake #3: maximizing short-term damage over concentrated fire. This may not be an entirely accurate recollection, but I swear I saw the party members repeatedly choose to make attacks that dealt the most damage to different foes, rather than concentrate fire on a single target till they drop. For example, I believe the Ranger and the Warlock repeatedly attacked targets that were closest to them so they could get the extra damage, rather than attacking the more distant kobold that Tostig had hit. Likewise, on a significant round the Wizard opted to do an AOE attack on a cluster of kobolds, which certainly was a nice amount of damage, it would have been better to pick off some of the wounded ones already engaged in melee. On any given round, the 5 players would seemingly attack 3 different targets.
In summary, I think I made a big mistake, but it was exacerbated by the fact that the players are still learning how to play 4e. They don’t yet have good tactics and party synergy. Interestingly, none of us had much warning that the encounter was going to go so bad – it happened very suddenly. The party went from slaughtering the kobolds to getting slaughtered in the course of two rounds. I think it was a combination of decent rolls and the party running out of steam (encounter/daily powers). Because it happened so fast, the party didn’t even know they were in trouble until it was too late.
I hope you find this review useful. Take the time to review your games, especially when they go wrong. I learned a lot by examining this. As a DM or a player, you will make mistakes. Learn from them.
The background:
The group consists of a bunch of guys who haven’t played an RPG in 1 or more decades, much less 4e D&D. Mortgages, wives, babies, careers, graying hair, the works (I’m the odd guy out – a regular gamer for years, no mortgage, no baby, no gray, and I don’t think you can call freelancing a career. Thank god I’m married though.). We sit around, grill, laugh, drink and game. Their characters are all level 2 and consist of a Fighter, Cleric, dual-wield Ranger, Wizard, and Warlock.
I’m running the players through the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the players get to the kobold lair (spoiler alert, don’t read on if you are planning to play). In the module, the party runs into a large cluster of Kobolds outside the lair, and presumably one of them escapes into the lair to sound the alarm. The party sends its stealthier members forward to spring an ambush on the unsuspecting kobolds, but unfortunately this goes awry as Tostig the Fighter slips on loose rocks near the creek-bed. The party sprigs into action and begins to slaughter the poor kobolds.
I think I play the kobolds as being pretty smart and cunning. They fall back and take cover leaving the PC’s long-range attacks without good targets. They dart out, hurl javelins, and then shift back into cover. Some kobolds start sneaking around the flanks. When the PCs get strung out of formation, they rush forward and mob a single character to maximize their mob attack bonuses, combat advantage bonuses, sneak attacks, and concentrated damage. But ultimately, the characters are Heroes and the kobolds are, well... kobolds. They get mowed down. But the Kobold Slinger gets away to raise the alarm. The party splits up to gather thrown weapons, search for loot, etc.
Red Flag #1: when the kobolds mobbed Tostig, they did a large amount of damage – managing to bloody him. This should have alerted both the players and myself that “Hey! Being surrounded by kobolds just might get you killed!” But other than that one incident, quickly rectified, the kobolds weren’t really a threat.
Red Flag #2: drinking. I definitely enjoy having beers while we game and so do the players. But I do wonder if that clouds our judgment too much and we miss important cues like the above.
Red Flag #3: metagaming. Everyone has now played about a half-dozen sessions of 4e D&D and has come to expect the post-battle recharge – regain all your encounter powers, heal HP, etc. They feel comfortable with splitting up and letting their guard down. What the players don’t know is that when the Slinger ran away, that started a countdown to reinforcements. They aren’t going to get a complete rest and they squandered some encounter powers in the first part of the battle.
A couple rounds later, the first wave of reinforcements comes streaming out of the cave. OK, those of you who have read the module know that I’ve deviated a little from the script. Mid-way through the battle I went back and reread the encounter description. Somehow I ended up with the impression that if one of the kobolds got away to raise the alarm, the kobold reinforcements came outside in two waves. Otherwise, the two waves were encountered inside. Oops. In the module the party is supposed to be able to rest after taking care of the kobolds outside. However, because the party was still kicking ass and taking names, albeit strange hissing- and yipping-sounding kobold names, I didn’t worry about it too much. And the party was already level 2 due to some earlier adventures and the module is intended for level 1 characters. In my head, I decided to weaken Irontooth a bit (those 100+ HP BBEG just get boring to fight after a while anyway) to balance it out.
DM Mistake #1: the first real outright mistake was not giving the PCs a rest between waves. Even with the party being level 2, they just didn’t have enough powers to wade through that many foes.
So, the first kobold wave comes streaming out of the cave. They split up, half engage the PCs directly, the other half move off a ways to hurl javelins at exposed targets. The party is caught out of formation and the kobolds gun for the “squishies” like the Wizard and the Warlock. Thankfully the players are able to get out OK and get the Fighter, Ranger, and Cleric up front. A back-and-forth melee ensues where the players continually cut down the kobolds. The players were continually mobbed by the concentrated attacks of the kobolds, and took a lot of damage, but nobody went down. So the second wave started off a little sketchy but the players rebounded.
When there were a handful of the wave two kobolds left, wave three arrived. At this point, the players were all still above bloodied and handling the encounter fine so I still wasn’t worried (in fact, I was vocally rooting for the kobolds because they were getting annihilated). But the situation went bad really, really quick. The party still hadn’t found a way to restrict the kobold movement. When possible, I had them avoid the axe-wielding armored horror that was Tostig the Fighter, and instead attack the weaker party members. The Wizard strayed too close and got sacked by a mob of kobolds – down he went. The Warlock was mobbed and dropped right after. A couple attempts to heal the fallen members were considered, but the party came to the conclusion that they’d just get immediately killed again, so the healing was reserved for those who were still standing. It was a moot point since the kobolds were finally able to completely surround Tostig and with the massive mob bonuses and concentrated damage, whittle him down. That left the Cleric and the Ranger who attempted to run. The heavily armored Cleric didn’t make it. Surprisingly, Irontooth took so long to wade into the fight that he had almost no impact – he only landed one solid hit.
DM Mistake #2: I don’t yet know 4e well enough to know when the players are in trouble before it’s too late. It’s easy to know the party is in trouble when half of them are bloodied or dead. A good DM knows this is going to happen several rounds in advance, and can take action accordingly (even if it’s only to remind the players that they can attempt to run away).
PC Mistake #1: never let cunning foes get at your squishies. They know this from nearly having lost the Wizard once before. There are a couple chokepoints on the map that the players never tried to occupy that could have limited kobold movement.
PC Mistake #2: party composition. I got the impression that the party had very little battlefield control. There was only one Defender, so the front line wasn’t very “sticky”. Both the Wizard and the Cleric focused more on direct damage powers than they did on control or healing powers. And only one of the characters was a truly melee character, with decent AC and HP. The Wizard and Warlock were of course ranged attackers, the Cleric was OK in melee but had better ranged powers, and while the Ranger had the AC and HP to support a more “front-line” role he preferred hit and run tactics. So this created two major issues: the kobolds could get at the more vulnerable party members fairly easily, and the single melee character was simply overwhelmed without support.
PC Mistake #3: maximizing short-term damage over concentrated fire. This may not be an entirely accurate recollection, but I swear I saw the party members repeatedly choose to make attacks that dealt the most damage to different foes, rather than concentrate fire on a single target till they drop. For example, I believe the Ranger and the Warlock repeatedly attacked targets that were closest to them so they could get the extra damage, rather than attacking the more distant kobold that Tostig had hit. Likewise, on a significant round the Wizard opted to do an AOE attack on a cluster of kobolds, which certainly was a nice amount of damage, it would have been better to pick off some of the wounded ones already engaged in melee. On any given round, the 5 players would seemingly attack 3 different targets.
In summary, I think I made a big mistake, but it was exacerbated by the fact that the players are still learning how to play 4e. They don’t yet have good tactics and party synergy. Interestingly, none of us had much warning that the encounter was going to go so bad – it happened very suddenly. The party went from slaughtering the kobolds to getting slaughtered in the course of two rounds. I think it was a combination of decent rolls and the party running out of steam (encounter/daily powers). Because it happened so fast, the party didn’t even know they were in trouble until it was too late.
I hope you find this review useful. Take the time to review your games, especially when they go wrong. I learned a lot by examining this. As a DM or a player, you will make mistakes. Learn from them.
8.14.2008
SE1: first attempt is a failure!
Huh. You know how I said the timing of the Oracle in City 1 and the completion of the Forge in City 2 is crucial? Yeah, it's a pain in the keshik. Let's review the final steps in the gambit:
1. Acquire Priesthood
2. City 1 whips a building to completion that had been previously halted with 1 turn of construction remaining
3. City 1 begins building Oracle, benefiting from the overflow of step 2
4. City 1 whips/chops to finish Oracle quickly
5. Choose Metal Casting as the free tech
6. City 2 whips another building with 1 turn remaining
7. City 2 begins building Forge
8. City 2 whips/chops to finish Forge WITHIN 6 TURNS OF COMPLETING THE ORACLE (this is why pre-chopping the forests is so important)
9. City 2 tweaks its population so that it has an Engineer Specialist
10. City 2 will eventually spawn a Great Engineer
11. City 2 begins building Pyramids
12. 'Pop' the Great Engineer to build the Pyramids
13. Convert to Representation, Caste System, drop your Research Slider to 0%, maximize city populations (without starvation/unhappiness) and use tons of Scientist Specialists
Congratulations. If you did it right, you should know be cranking out tons of research, and making good money to boot. Great Scientists will be popping out like crazy. And you can do this all by 1000 BC!
Or you can be like me and pull it off by 325 BC... Not so good then. Even though I got Priesthood and access to the Oracle in 2000 BC, I could not get the Forge built in my second city for quite some time. I hadn't been growing the population fast enough in City 2 to allow for two whips in rapid succession and still have population left over for an Engineer Specialist. I also needed a mine in my second city - once those forests were chopped down, there weren't a whole lot of hammers around.
A little late?
The other issue I encountered is the population of my first city would occasionally increase while I was waiting for the Great Engineer to spawn. This new pop would invariably be a Scientist and if I didn't catch it right away, it would destroy the careful Great People Point (GPP) planning. I would end up with a Great Prophet spawned in my first city (from all the GPPs generated by the Oracle) rather than the Great Engineer. This is also the same reason why you must finish the Forge and assign an Engineer within 6 turns of completing the Oracle - if you take even one more turn, your first city will generate enough GPP to create a Great Prophet first.
So, I must have reloaded from 2080 BC and made tweaks 10 times. The best I could get is the Pyramid at 325 BC. I suppose I could have reloaded earlier to around 2700 BC and done a better job but I got rather frustrated and would rather start over.
This was a fun experiment, and is highly recommended. It was very cool to move the Research Slider to 0% and still crank out research points like crazy.
1. Acquire Priesthood
2. City 1 whips a building to completion that had been previously halted with 1 turn of construction remaining
3. City 1 begins building Oracle, benefiting from the overflow of step 2
4. City 1 whips/chops to finish Oracle quickly
5. Choose Metal Casting as the free tech
6. City 2 whips another building with 1 turn remaining
7. City 2 begins building Forge
8. City 2 whips/chops to finish Forge WITHIN 6 TURNS OF COMPLETING THE ORACLE (this is why pre-chopping the forests is so important)
9. City 2 tweaks its population so that it has an Engineer Specialist
10. City 2 will eventually spawn a Great Engineer
11. City 2 begins building Pyramids
12. 'Pop' the Great Engineer to build the Pyramids
13. Convert to Representation, Caste System, drop your Research Slider to 0%, maximize city populations (without starvation/unhappiness) and use tons of Scientist Specialists
Congratulations. If you did it right, you should know be cranking out tons of research, and making good money to boot. Great Scientists will be popping out like crazy. And you can do this all by 1000 BC!
Or you can be like me and pull it off by 325 BC... Not so good then. Even though I got Priesthood and access to the Oracle in 2000 BC, I could not get the Forge built in my second city for quite some time. I hadn't been growing the population fast enough in City 2 to allow for two whips in rapid succession and still have population left over for an Engineer Specialist. I also needed a mine in my second city - once those forests were chopped down, there weren't a whole lot of hammers around.
A little late?The other issue I encountered is the population of my first city would occasionally increase while I was waiting for the Great Engineer to spawn. This new pop would invariably be a Scientist and if I didn't catch it right away, it would destroy the careful Great People Point (GPP) planning. I would end up with a Great Prophet spawned in my first city (from all the GPPs generated by the Oracle) rather than the Great Engineer. This is also the same reason why you must finish the Forge and assign an Engineer within 6 turns of completing the Oracle - if you take even one more turn, your first city will generate enough GPP to create a Great Prophet first.
So, I must have reloaded from 2080 BC and made tweaks 10 times. The best I could get is the Pyramid at 325 BC. I suppose I could have reloaded earlier to around 2700 BC and done a better job but I got rather frustrated and would rather start over.
This was a fun experiment, and is highly recommended. It was very cool to move the Research Slider to 0% and still crank out research points like crazy.
8.13.2008
SE1: to 2000BC
Wow, the past millennium just flew by. Not a ton happened. I continued to explore but alas, only one more goodie hut (48 gold). Peter is indeed waaay to the north, so I can ignore him for a while. No religions discovered in my hood apparently.
I built Bombay on my chosen spot and built a Fast Worker. My two workers are rapidly roading and pre-chopping according to plan. IMPORTANT NOTE: I misread the worker's estimated time to completion. When it says 3 rounds to chop down a forest, that means [The Current Round] + [Next Turn] = Finished. So to do this right, cancel the order the very next turn. I had to reload after I accidentally chopped down my trees ahead of schedule.
In fact, I'm really learning to save often - I also nearly missed my chance to stop work on the Barracks in my capital before it was done. If I'm having trouble watching 2 cities, I'm in deep doo-doo once I expand...
Unfortunately, the Civ4lerts mod doesn't seem to be working. In theory, that is supposed to show a blurb whenever your city is about to have an angry or unhealthy person, or the population is about to go up. With the SE strategy, micro-managing is important so it'd be really nice to have...
My research has churned out Bronze Working, Meditation, and Priesthood (just this turn).
Here's my current situation:
Not bad. I'd like to snag those Horses and Copper quickstyle so I can shift to offense.
Next Steps
1. Reseach Pottery, Masonry
2. City 1: queue Oracle after Barracks, whip-finish Barracks to give overflow to Oracle
3. Continue pre-chops and roads
4. Build 1 mine in each city to boost hammers (if time)
5. Chop down forests around Oracle to finish
6. Build Warriors while waiting for research to complete
7. Use Oracle bonus to get Metal Casting
I built Bombay on my chosen spot and built a Fast Worker. My two workers are rapidly roading and pre-chopping according to plan. IMPORTANT NOTE: I misread the worker's estimated time to completion. When it says 3 rounds to chop down a forest, that means [The Current Round] + [Next Turn] = Finished. So to do this right, cancel the order the very next turn. I had to reload after I accidentally chopped down my trees ahead of schedule.
In fact, I'm really learning to save often - I also nearly missed my chance to stop work on the Barracks in my capital before it was done. If I'm having trouble watching 2 cities, I'm in deep doo-doo once I expand...
Unfortunately, the Civ4lerts mod doesn't seem to be working. In theory, that is supposed to show a blurb whenever your city is about to have an angry or unhealthy person, or the population is about to go up. With the SE strategy, micro-managing is important so it'd be really nice to have...
My research has churned out Bronze Working, Meditation, and Priesthood (just this turn).
Here's my current situation:
Not bad. I'd like to snag those Horses and Copper quickstyle so I can shift to offense.
Next Steps
1. Reseach Pottery, Masonry
2. City 1: queue Oracle after Barracks, whip-finish Barracks to give overflow to Oracle
3. Continue pre-chops and roads
4. Build 1 mine in each city to boost hammers (if time)
5. Chop down forests around Oracle to finish
6. Build Warriors while waiting for research to complete
7. Use Oracle bonus to get Metal Casting
SE1: to 3000BC
The first big event was a goodie hut with a Scout in it. Sweet. Followed by a second goodie hut for 46 gold. Then a 3rd goodie hut which gave him XP, and he's now a speedster woodsman blazing through the northern jungles, trying to find more huts and enemy civs.
Reseach-wise, I think I've made good progress:
3680 BC: Agriculture
3280 BC: Animal Husbandry
3000 BC: The Wheel.
I'm now on track to get Bronze Working shortly.
On the diplomatic front, I found my neighbors. Mehmed II is on my west, while Peter is somewhere to the distant north or northwest. This will be interesting. I think both are moderate but not great trading partners, and both are moderately but not exceedingly belligerent. I will try to court Peter and focus on crushing Mehmed as he's the closer threat.
The geography is pretty good. I appear to be in the lower corner of a continent with a big jungle barrier to the north. I can use that jungle as a buffer as I consolidate the south.
Most importantly, how is progress on the gambit? Well, I'm not totally stoked about options for my 2nd city. If you look below, I'm leaning toward the space directly NE of my capital. It'll overlap on a couple forests, and has some +3 Food squares. I think it'll work. My Fast Worker has finished up making a Farm on the Wheat and a Pasture on the Pigs and is now making roads in the NE Forests.
Next Steps
1. Finish Settler
2. Worker builds roads
3. Settle NE site
4. City #1 begins a Barracks but stops just 1 turn shy of finishing
5. City #2 begins a Worker
6. Workers pre-chop 3 Forests pre city (esp. around City #2) but stop 1 turn shy of finishing
7. Research Meditation
8. Research Priesthood
Reseach-wise, I think I've made good progress:
3680 BC: Agriculture
3280 BC: Animal Husbandry
3000 BC: The Wheel.
I'm now on track to get Bronze Working shortly.
On the diplomatic front, I found my neighbors. Mehmed II is on my west, while Peter is somewhere to the distant north or northwest. This will be interesting. I think both are moderate but not great trading partners, and both are moderately but not exceedingly belligerent. I will try to court Peter and focus on crushing Mehmed as he's the closer threat.
The geography is pretty good. I appear to be in the lower corner of a continent with a big jungle barrier to the north. I can use that jungle as a buffer as I consolidate the south.
Most importantly, how is progress on the gambit? Well, I'm not totally stoked about options for my 2nd city. If you look below, I'm leaning toward the space directly NE of my capital. It'll overlap on a couple forests, and has some +3 Food squares. I think it'll work. My Fast Worker has finished up making a Farm on the Wheat and a Pasture on the Pigs and is now making roads in the NE Forests.
Next Steps
1. Finish Settler
2. Worker builds roads
3. Settle NE site
4. City #1 begins a Barracks but stops just 1 turn shy of finishing
5. City #2 begins a Worker
6. Workers pre-chop 3 Forests pre city (esp. around City #2) but stop 1 turn shy of finishing
7. Research Meditation
8. Research Priesthood
Specialist Economy attempt 1: Pre-game
And now for something completely different. There's a crazy way to win at Civ4 where your research slider is at 0% for most of the game. All your research comes from scientists. It's called the Specialist Economy and much info on it can be found at the CivFanatics website.
This as totally piqued my interest so I'm going to try it, preferably using the equally intriguing Oracle/Metal Casting/Pyramids Gambit. This gambit aims to get a Forge super-quick, use an Engineer specialist to then get a Great Engineer, use him to build the Pyramids, and then use the Pyramids to get Representation really early. To pull this off requires ridiculous timing and min/maxy sacrifices with Slavery and pre-chopping of forests.
Game settings
Version: Warlords v2.13
Difficulty: Noble
Game Speed: Normal
Map: Continents
Size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Civ: Indian
Leader: Gandhi
To help with micro-managing, I'm also trying out the Civ4lerts mod.
I choose Gandhi because the starting techs are perfect for these strategies. Philosophical appears necessary for a Specialist Economy (SE). I plan on switching Civics a lot to maximize timing of Theocracy/Vassalage benefits for war.
Here's a screenshot of my starting position:
I think that will work. I have lots of 3 Food tiles, lots of Forests, and it appears that I can position my second city on the opposite side of one of those forest clumps.
Here's my initial plan:
1. Research Agriculture
2. Queue & Build Worker
3. Explore
4. Set Worker to prepare gambit
5. Queue & Build Settler
Next post will cover how it all goes...
This as totally piqued my interest so I'm going to try it, preferably using the equally intriguing Oracle/Metal Casting/Pyramids Gambit. This gambit aims to get a Forge super-quick, use an Engineer specialist to then get a Great Engineer, use him to build the Pyramids, and then use the Pyramids to get Representation really early. To pull this off requires ridiculous timing and min/maxy sacrifices with Slavery and pre-chopping of forests.
Game settings
Version: Warlords v2.13
Difficulty: Noble
Game Speed: Normal
Map: Continents
Size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Civ: Indian
Leader: Gandhi
To help with micro-managing, I'm also trying out the Civ4lerts mod.
I choose Gandhi because the starting techs are perfect for these strategies. Philosophical appears necessary for a Specialist Economy (SE). I plan on switching Civics a lot to maximize timing of Theocracy/Vassalage benefits for war.
Here's a screenshot of my starting position:
I think that will work. I have lots of 3 Food tiles, lots of Forests, and it appears that I can position my second city on the opposite side of one of those forest clumps.
Here's my initial plan:
1. Research Agriculture
2. Queue & Build Worker
3. Explore
4. Set Worker to prepare gambit
5. Queue & Build Settler
Next post will cover how it all goes...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)