A journey through a land of fantasy…

This comes from a discussion (read: argument) that Robert and I have every so often, and I’d love any opinions you might have on the subject.

The party is in town, relaxing, for whatever reason.  Let’s say that they’re in town for an extended period of time: Maybe they’re waiting a couple of weeks for the wizard to scribe spells and scrolls, or there’s no work to be found, or they’re just taking some time off.  It seems to me, most of the time, if you let the characters relax, the players say they are hanging out in the tavern, drinking and partying.

So, you decide to spice it up a bit and throw an encounter into the mix.  Maybe there’s a tavern brawl, or some big baddies bust in the door with swords drawn and scream for bloody revenge on the guy at the next table.  My question is, what equipment are the PCs carrying?

My take on it is that, without any combat on planned and with the party in a “vacation” state of mind, the party is probably not fully armed.  Maybe they’ve got swords on their belts and bucklers strapped onto their arms; the wizard always has a staff (great for walking with) or a dagger; the rogue has a short sword or maybe a short bow with him.  They wouldn’t have great swords (6-7 feet long) or long bows (as tall as the wielder) strapped to their backs, simply because they are cumbersome and you can’t really sit down with them.  They wouldn’t have their packs or large shields on.  Even the paladin won’t be in full plate mail (maybe a chain shirt).

Robert says, no, they’re adventurers; they’ll be equipped for any eventuality, and thus be fully equipped at all times.  Or, at least, certainly he will.  He insists that Vryn, who considers every person a possible enemy, is always completely decked out: great sword and composite long bow strapped to his back, mace at his hip, haversack and bag of holding strapped on.  He never “relaxes.”  He also generalizes to his other characters, that they’d always have all their possessions with them. 

In my opinion, this is ludicrous.  Yes, Vryn is suspicious of everyone, but it’s extremely difficult to even navigate a crowded tavern with all that equipment, much less sit down.  He also says that Vryn tries to look as average and “forgettable” as possible, but sitting in a tavern armed to the gills with multiple weapons and jealously guarding all of his worldly possessions would make him stand out like a sore thumb (this is something I plan to have fun with the next time they’re in this situation, by the way).  I suspect that his whole point is that he wants to keep all of his stuff within a Quick Draw free action or a Heward’s Haversack move action.

The flip side of this is that if I do require my players to figure out what things they have with them when they’re relaxing, that’s a lot more nitpicky things they have to do.  In general, nitpicky things aren’t fun and slow the game down.  But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s fair that they have access to everything they own, if I decide that it’s ridiculous that they have all their stuff with them.

I’d love to know how other people handle (or would handle) this situation.

The second part of the Tomb of the Fallen has been posted in the campaign journal.  In this session, I noticed (yet again) that even after two years of campaigning, the party has still not learned how to really fight together.  There are some basic strategies that they completely miss, to their detriment.  Rather than fight like a group that has been traveling together for almost a year now, each individual still fights like he’s fighting alone.

The party has taken some steps to fight like a group.  For example, they asked if they could develop a set of code words, so that they could tell each other what to do in a fight without letting the opponent know what’s coming (as in, saying “Vryn! Vroomfondel!” means “Vryn, I’m going to throw a fireball on your spot, so move!”).  However, they rarely use it; they rarely ever suggest to each other what the other might do, or tell someone to move out of the way.

Robert is the best strategist of them all, and he watches carefully what everyone’s doing and tries to work it to best advantage.  However, Vryn is too self-interested to take the first step in working with the group (he is definitely of the opinion that he will survive without any of the others).  Mac is a decent strategist, but his character Mahdi is also self-interested and chooses to look out for himself first, everyone else second.

Asia, Nathan, and Kyle, however, don’t work together.  Asia is a very smart, methodical person, and he always reviews what he can do and tries to choose to best effect, but definitely has problems thinking creatively, strategy-wise.  Nathan and Kyle are not creative — while it is true that fighter-types rarely have much more to do than hit things, they are not creative with what they choose to hit.  I can almost always rely on them to hit whatever happens to be closest rather than what’s most dangerous, and to not take five-foot-steps unless it immediately puts them into a favorable position (thus, if Sparrow happens to be next to Vryn fighting the monster when the fight starts, he won’t edge around to try to flank, unless Vryn moves to a position in which Sparrow sees that he can five-foot-step and flank right now).

In this particular fight, Vryn went first and attacked the wraith right next to him.  Sparrow, rather than ganging up on that wraith to fell it quickly, attacked his own wraith.  Falco also chose to attack the wraith that Sparrow was on.  As it was, when Osiris’ turn undead took effect, the closest wraith was Vryn’s, which had been beaten down to 10% of its health.  If Sparrow and Falco had ganged up on Vryn’s wraith, it would have been dead by that point and Osiris’ turn undead would have hit Sparrow’s wraith instead.  This was important, because a couple of rounds later, it was Sparrow’s wraith that killed Falco.

I find that I have to balance my own strategy against the parties that I DM for.  The major problem is that strategy, especially turn-based strategy, is my strength: I enjoy strategic games and employing my character’s or troops’ abilities to their fullest extent.  I’m not saying that I’m the best strategist out there — I’m saying that of whatever skills I may possess, my best is strategy.  (Those are two completely different statements.)  Thus, when I get into combat and I’m using a number of different units, I immediately start to think, “How can I use them all to best advantage?”

There are a number of problems to this approach.  The very first one is that the units are rarely telepathic:  They don’t know what their comrades are going to do.  One might see another one engage the enemy and move to flank — that’s completely reasonable — but they can’t necessarily anticipate moves, such as, “He’s going to cast a fireball, so I’ll delay now and move in right afterwards.”

Groups can have fought together before and have set tactics, or have a good feeling for what their comrades can and will do, but you have to balance for it.  Units’ Intelligence scores are important here as well; stupid units may not anticipate his companions. 

The second problem is that the GM isn’t necessarily obligated to run his units like a well-trained army, and this could definitely detract from the fun for his players.  While D&D is a strategy game to a big extent, the strategy is within a larger context.  It’s always to the wolves’ advantage to choose to flank, but in context, wolves aren’t smart enough to do so.  Thus, while the party will want to minimize accidental flanking, their strategy should be based on the assumption that they won’t have to worry about it.  Perfect monster strategy detracts from the atmosphere and the game.

The other side of the coin, though, is that you don’t want the players to feel that you dumbed down the game for them, much like you don’t want them to find out that you fudge rolls or added some hp to the monster that had turned out to be too easy for them.  They want to feel that they beat the best that you threw at them, and obviously stupid moves on the GM’s part makes the combat disappointing.

In general, along with the adjustment of strategy that I do based on monster intelligence and background, I find I need to adjust for the strategy on my players’ parts.  What I try to do is balance between matching the level of strategy they use and showing them new things they can do, by having the monsters do them first.  Though, I have to admit, they still haven’t picked up on ganging up on one monster at a time, even though I tend to do that to them with the appropriate monsters, so maybe it’s an exercise in futility?

I have quite a lot of work to do today at my job, but I did promise an update on what happened last night, so here goes.

First, I have to admit I was quite a wuss.  I didn’t want to kill Sparrow, so I gave him all the chances I could.

I recapped what was happening, and underlined that Sparrow, alone of the rest of the party, had not indicated what he planned to do during the next two weeks (during which time two of the party were going off to get a magic item made).  Since the new wizard, Mahdi, was heading to his home in Silverleaf to take care of business and the party was going to meet there, Sparrow said he’d go to Silverleaf and “hang out.”  I asked him where he was staying and what he was doing, and he said, at a tavern, and he’d wander the town while he was idle.

At this point, I allowed Sparrow not one, but two Wisdom checks, one for specific danger and one for general danger, but as the dice sometimes roll, he failed both miserably.  (They were rolled without his knowledge and behind my screen.)

Mahdi asked Sparrow to come by his residence early in their stay in Silverleaf, because he needed his assistance with a few things, so on the day after they arrived, Sparrow showed up.  Now, Mahdi had a very interesting thing he needed Sparrow for, but I’m not going into that here; you’ll just have to wonder.  After they had a long conversation, I gave Mahdi an Intelligence check regarding Sparrow’s safety (there was something in the conversation itself that warranted this), which he succeeded at, and I told him that he is concerned for Sparrow, since the last time they were in Silverleaf, it seemed that the group’s reputation was pretty bad and Sparrow in particular had been wandering around in disguise.  Mahdi then brought this up with Sparrow, who assured him he was in no danger. (argh!)   Mahdi then contracted Sparrow to do some travelling around and meeting with nobles in the city.

During this travelling around, I gave Sparrow one last chance — a Spot check to notice that he was being tailed.  A natural 20 saved the day.  I informed him that he noticed that he was being followed, and after losing the tail, he was convinced that he was in danger, and he and Mahdi came up with protection and contingency plans.

After all this, and after the rest of the party arrived in Silverleaf, I gave them a speech, telling them that they need to be more cognizant of where they are and what they’re doing.  I told them that if any of them had been caught, that would probably have been the end of the character.  I suggested that they keep notes as to what happens in which city.  (It occurred to me later that if they did such a thing, maybe they’d start seeing some patterns…)

It turned out that Nathan had thought that the big fight when the Obsidian Guard had come to arrest Vryn, Sparrow, and Zoriya had happened in “some other city.”  I’m not sure I believe that, but I suppose that’s beside the point.  I also told the players that I’m sorry if I’m not painting the world black enough to make them feel the danger, but I did make a point to say that they need to pay attention to this kind of thing a lot more.  So, hopefully this will help.

I’ve been working lately on two articles:  one about the first adventure and one about the politics of the realm.  As I prepared for my game this week, I realized how far I have yet to go to describe the world that my player characters live in.  There’s so much going on behind the scenes, and the PCs see so very little of it… at least so far.

I’m writing today, though, because of something that my PCs seem to not see at all, and I wonder if it’s because I simply haven’t painted the picture well enough for them to feel it.  Or maybe they’re just not paying attention.

The scene:  Three of the PCs, Sparrow, Falco, and Mahdi (the wizard that replaced Zoriya) are returning to Silverleaf.  Mahdi hasn’t been in the party long enough to either know about any dangers or to be linked in others’ eyes with Sparrow and Falco, but Sparrow and Falco have made a name for themselves in Silverleaf.  They helped save the city from an incursion of demons, and have also spent the last winter here. 

However, the last time they were in town, the Obsidian Guard (also referred to as “kingsmen”) attempted to arrest Sparrow, Vryn, and Zoriya for actions they took in another town.  Falco had attempted to prevent the incident by talking to the kingsmen a few days beforehand, telling them that Sparrow and Zoriya had important information about the missing Crown Prince and that he had been tasked with getting them to divulge it; he told the kingsmen that his mission was more important than theirs. However, the kingsman responsible for bringing the three PCs to justice had no proof that what Falco said was true and decided to go ahead with his own orders.  During the ensuing melee, Falco defended his friends, thus turning on his kingsmen employers for the first time.  The group managed to drive off the guard, but decided the best course of action would be to leave as soon as possible.

They’ve been gone from the town for at least three months, during which time the Obsidian Guard did their own research and put two and two together, suspecting that Sparrow was indeed the missing prince.  The kingsmen’s orders, across the board, are to find the prince and kill him (for the reason why, stay tuned to later episodes in this blog).  Falco is completely aware of these orders.  And lastly, of course, in this area, the kingsmen are also tasked with finding Falco, the one who turned on them in the last fight.

So now, while traveling through the region, two of the party have gone to a different city for their own reasons.  Mahdi is headed to Silverleaf because he has set up a magic shop there and wants to check in on it, and Sparrow and Falco decided to head there to wait with Mahdi for the other party members to join back up. 

Therein lies the rub.  Neither Nathan nor Kyle have shown any concern that there might be kingsmen lying in wait for them.  The kingsmen’s tactics are very typical of their kind: Find their prey, wait for him to be alone, then surround and kidnap.  In the case of Falco, he’ll be knocked out and transported secretly to Nemeril (the capital) for punishment (or, more likely, torture and death).  In the case Sparrow, he’ll be taken out of town and killed, and the body burned.

What this leads to, then, is a session in which the two players go somewhere, waiting nicely for the other party members, and get summarily eliminated.  In the case of Sparrow, it’s likely that the party will scrape until they have enough to case a true resurrection on the Crown Prince (and thus the party ends up paying for Nathan’s oversight), but it’s not likely they’d do the same for Falco.

I’m of two minds here.  On the one hand, I feel that if the players cannot get it through their heads that yes, they are wanted and yes, this town is now very dangerous for them, then they deserve what they get for not being careful.  On the other hand, if there’s even the possibility that their lack of taking the danger seriously is due to the GM not presenting the danger well, then their fate is hardly deserved, and certainly not fun.

My worry might be all for nothing — Nathan and Kyle might be very careful when they enter Silverleaf, donning disguises and keeping out of sight as much as possible — but I won’t know until the session on Wednesday, and I need to prepare for the possibility now.  Right now, my plan is to see how they enter the city, and give them a Wisdom check if they don’t take any precautions.  If they still don’t, and Sparrow gets caught, I have a deus ex machina in mind: One of Vryn’s people lives in the town and I’ll have him save Sparrow, though not his equipment.  I’m not quite sure what to do about Falco, but it might turn into a separate adventure, “Save the Scout!”  He will likely also lose all his equipment, and certainly won’t get any experience the party gets for saving him.

Well, we’ll see how it goes.  I’ll let you know on Thursday.

I’d like to take a moment to address a side issue that my husband and I were discussing this morning.  (Coincidentally, it postpones my discussion of his character in my campaign, which is going to be a doozy.)  What do you do when the party gets wiped out prematurely?

I’m not talking about those times when you wipe them out with monsters that you thought were appropriate but turned out to be way too strong for them.  In Robert’s old campaign, he presented us with a fang dragon, which proceeded to dismember the fighter in one round.  He took 15 minutes and deleveled it, and it still killed the fighter in one round.  After a couple more attempts at trying to get the dragon to be a reasonable fight, he finally changed the encounter so that it became a diplomatic encounter (the dragon ended up sending us on a quest).

The case that we were discussing is when the party dies through their own stupidity.  Sadly, the group that Robert was leading was quite prone to very stupid acts.  For example, at one point, when we were attempting to kill off a bunch of intelligent monsters holed up in a cave, we sent the thief to sneak in and scout out the defenses.  He walked into the cave, waved at the monsters, and left.  I’m not kidding. 

During the course of Robert’s campaign, the party got wiped out three times.  Here are the situations.

1.  The party encounters a group of … I don’t remember what they’re called.  These monsters drain wisdom points when they attack.  The party gets wiped out due to player stupidity, including such things as the monk refusing to move out of a position in which he’s flanked, because he’s sure his AC is good enough to protect him.  (It wasn’t.)

2.  In a tower from which there is no escape until the party solves the entire thing, we entered a room with blank walls.  When the party cleric (me) steps on the switch that reveals a logic puzzle, she gets turned to stone (because I wrote the puzzle for Robert).  It’s a “figure out the number sequence” puzzle, and when the players narrowed it down to two sequences, they decide to guess which is the right one, rather than pasting the numbers back into the clues and see which one fits (the wrong sequence would be obvious this way).  They choose poorly.  The only thing they can do is reactivate the puzzle by destoning the cleric and trying again, but they can’t figure out how to do so.  Finally,  at the next session and after two hours of the party desparing of its plight (and me sitting in forced silence, since I’m stoned), Robert (not knowing how bards work) looks at the bard’s spell list and points out to the bard in the party that break enchantment will destone the cleric.  When the puzzle is reactivated again, without checking if the numbers in the puzzle have changed (they have) and before discussing anything with the rest of the party, the bard enters the second sequence and fails again.

3. The party is on a deserted island in the middle of a vast ocean, trying to recover an artifact from a temple.  There is a horde of millions of mechanical spiders that have just landed on the island and are coming into the temple, destroying anything organic in their way.  We get to the room with the artifact, but must destroy a huge sentient crystal which summons 1d6 defenders every round.  We identify the crystal as the main threat after about three rounds, and I tell the fighter to get to the crystal and kill it.  He gets to the crystal … and decides that the defenders are bugging him and attacks them instead.  (Robert confirms that if he had attacked the crystal with a full attack, it would have been destroyed.)  The next round, I’m killed, so the fighter yells for retreat.  The wizard casts teleport and chooses as his destination the entrance to the temple … where millions of mechanical spiders tear the party to shreds.

No one wants their campaign to end prematurely, but what can you do, especially after the party does it to itself multiple times?  In the first case, since the monsters only wanted to eat wisdom, the party woke up in slavery, having been found by, unbeknownst to us, our archenemy.  In the second case, the solution was presented in the story itself: The GM had to research the bard class and tell the player how to play his own character.  In the third case, the GM, possibly out of pique, could not come up with any way to save the party and ended the campaign.

The first solution, I feel, was particularly elegant.  It took the situation and turned it into an adventure of its own.  In a way, though, Robert feels that this rewards the characters for being stupid, partially because it sets a precedence for the GM saving the party from dying, and partially because they got a whole new adventure out of it.  (Granted, we did lose all of our stuff, including some quest items.)

Robert is a big fan of reward and punishment.  If a player plays well, he should be rewarded.  If a player plays poorly, he should be punished for it.  On the other hand, his concept of “well” or “poorly” sometimes can use some work.  He’s fond of saying, when designing a new encounter, “If the party doesn’t do exactly this, you’ll all die!  This is great!”  I’m not sure I agree with this school of thought. 

But I digress.  What other ways are there to save the game from a total party wipe due to their own stupidity?  I have to admit I’m out of ideas.  I do have one plan already in place for an accidental party kill in my campaign.  Since Sparrow is trying to take the throne and is making allies here and there, he has one backup plan (the player doesn’t know this, though).  One of his allies has been amassing funds, troops, and equipment, and Sparrow instructed him that if he doesn’t hear from him every so often (at least once a year), he should start doing divinations to determine if he’s dead and use a true resurrection to get him back if his is.  Since it will take some time for him to get the funds, if this ever does happen, the story will be moved to the future by a few years, changing the entire political climate.  And, of course, Sparrow will then have to work on resurrecting the rest of the party.  However, this won’t work twice: At some point, his ally is going to decide that it isn’t worth the cost.

So where does that leave the campaign?  How do you save the party without rewarding them for their stupidity?  When do you decide that sorry, the party is dead and the campaign is over?