Dungeon Master Musings: Running Two Campaigns at Once

When I decided to start running my campaign, I first decided I wanted to do it with people that don't get to play D&D or RPGs that often.  My two friends Amanda and Jackie, neither of whom had ever played D&D, were my first choices.  Next up was my wife, of course, but she plays D&D all the time, so that was cool.  We started, and everyone was having fun.

After a while, my Wednesday Descent group, Mark, Nick, Wally, and Matt, started expressing jealousy about the women's D&D game.  They wanted to play, too.  So, with 4 guys wanting to play, I decided to run them through the same game.

After a while, Wally's wife Cheri wanted to join in, so she joined the women's group as well.

And thus, the two groups were formed.

The Two Groups

The men meet every Wednesday, more or less, and play for 4-5 hours.  The women meet every other Saturday and play for 6-8 hours.

The men's group is full of highly experienced D&D players, and they tend to blast right through the game.  At every turn, they fought their way through obstacles, developed quick repetitive techniques for optimally getting through encounters, and employed lots of tactics in their gameplay.

Meanwhile, the women's group was half experienced D&D players, and half newbies that had never played D&D before.  This group was more cautious and thorough.  Each encounter they took as an opportunity to have discussions and role play their characters.

For me, the women's gaming group was a bit more satisfying, though that may be enhanced by the fact that I'm the only female in the Wednesday group.  I like the fact that they spend more time revealing in the encounters, and I appreciate their thorough searching and stuff.

The men's group plays about 50% faster than the women's group, on a per hour basis.  In reality, over a 2 week period, both groups get about the same amount of time, but the women's group goes a bit slower and averages slightly less time than the men's group.

Two Parties, One Adventure

It's a little odd to run two groups through the same adventure.  While many coarse details are the same, there are also many slight differences between the two experiences.  My preparation time serves me well for both groups, in that I can re-use material from one group for the other most of the time, but characters and specific events might change.

For example, the men assaulted the goblins and killed every last one of them in a single, concentrated assault through their lines.  The women, on the other hand, continually attacked, then retreated and recuperated.  My wife Jessica expressed appreciation for the "living dungeon" that I was creating, so every time the players retreated, I thought carefully about what would happen.  When they finally got to the center of the goblin nest, they found them on the verge of a civil war, that broken out moments after they arrived.

The little differences are what really stand out to me as challenging me to be a better DM.  Learning how to adapt the same source material and preparation material for two very distinct groups is forcing me to really focus on discovering what it is that the players want.

It's a delightful challenge, one that I'm sure I'll write more about in the future.

Retro Rerun Roots: Intellivision

My parents were gamers.  Big time gamers.  I often half-joke with people that my mother was playing Atari and Intellivision games while I was still in the womb.  We played board games as a family all the time, and when I got older, I got the neighborhood kids to play board games on my front porch throughout the summer and weekends.

As I've gotten older, and I've moved from place to place, I still carry this giant box with me everywhere I go.

This definitely looks like it's out of the early 80s.

It's the Intellivision.

What's... that?  You say?

Well, back in 1979, this video game console was released by Mattel Electronics as a direct competitor to the Atari 2600.  It never got quite the same following as the Atari did, but it had better graphics, and more control options than its more popular cousin.  Where Atari was an amazing console for playing basic arcade games, Intellivision enabled you to go deeper into games, with more complexity, more options, etc.

Since my childhood, I have carried this "Tele-Games Center" box with all of our family's old Intellivision games, instruction manuals, and controller overlays here.

The system I got off ebay a few years ago. The rest is from my parents.

These are the very games that my mother and father spent hours and hours playing.  I remember my mother talking about how she and my father played the knight and wizard of iMagic's Swords and Serpents for hours and hours until they finally beat it.  The ending was just a dragon and then some text behind the dragon, so they were surprised that mother further happened and actually wrote to the developers to find out if there was something they had missed.  They wrote back to tell them they haven't.

That's a knight holding a sword. Really.

I remember my sister, father, and I trying hard to work through Tropical Trouble, a side scrolling "Pitfall" like game with all sorts of hazards to navigate.  It was exciting and frenetic.  I loved it.

The red thing on the right are supposed to be your girlfriend's pants... I dunno either.

My mother's favorite game had to be Bomb Squad, though.  This is a "crack the code" sort of game.  Some mad bomber has set up a bomb and you have to figure out the code.  You select various parts of the digit to see if they are or are not included in the digit, and then do a "mini-game" (depicted below) where you have to modify the circuit in some way to find out if it is included or not.  If you fail, you lose all information about that piece and can't continue.  What made the game delightful, though, was the fact that it used the Intellivoice module, a component dedicated to voice synthesis.  Throughout the game, phrases like, "20 minutes to blast!" and "The code! The code! Figure out the code!" and "Up more! Right more! WRONG PART!" are uttered.  These became part of our family lexicon.  If we had 20 minutes to get somewhere, my mother would quote this video game all the time.

I always thought that soldering iron looked like a duck.

My favorites had to be Space Spartans and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  Why?  Because these two games both gave me ample space to imagine myself in an alternate world, which was one of the primary motivators for me playing video games anyways.  In Space Spartans, you had control of a starship, and similar to the modern day Artemis: Bridge Simulator, you had to defend a series of star bases from attack.  You had various systems, and I would spend all day just turning the systems on and off to hear the Intellivoice unit tell me their status.

Pew pew pew!

AD&D was probably one of the first stealth/adventure games. You were trying to get to the misty mountain to retrieve a crown.  To get there, you had to find your way through various mountain dungeons.  Once you entered a mountain, you'd be presented with a screen like the one below, where you'd have to wander around looking for items to continue forward, like a boat to travel along rivers, and arrows to fight enemies.  As you wandered the maze, monster tracks and audible sound cues clued you in to what sorts of dangers lurked nearby.  I spent many a day listening carefully to the audio, in fear of the horror that lay around the next corner.  It actually is pretty exciting and fun, even today

You have no idea how scary this was.

As you can see, this game system is a small obsession of mine, especially since I have been carrying it around for ages.  I'll be getting an Intellivision Flashback unit soon, and I'll give a report on that possibly.  But until then, I have my old giant system to cart around and play with.

One of the first things most people notice when they look at the system are the controllers.

It's got hard edges and hard to push buttons, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!

For whatever reason, Mattel Electronics decided that the joystick was too simple, and instead decided to recreate that most ergonomic of video game controllers: A digital telephone dialing pad.  It was painful to hold and even more painful to play games with.  For "arcade" type action, there were four buttons along the sides of the device that one would press.

Honestly, although it sucked for arcade games, it was a delight to use for more complex games.  The little overlays I mentioned actually slip over the controller and give you a custom interface for every game you might want to play.

This was surprisingly hard and would often crinkle the overlays.

Frankly, I love it.  Whether I'm delving into dark dungeons

Count Arrows did an audible
count of your arrows.

or performing surgery as a miniaturized vessel inside a body

Surgery is SIMPLE!

or turning systems on and off on a space ship

Computer, raise shields!

What I loved was the amount of options and complexity this enabled.  Our family didn't have a computer at that time, so this was the next best thing for me.  I *loved* all of those buttons and would just play games to push them over and over again!

Atari may have had the better controller for playing games, but for sims and adventure games, this was much better, IMO.  It still could have used a lot of work, though.  But hey, this was pre-NES days.  Nobody knew what this stuff would be like yet. :)

Tuesday Tidbits: Kayaking

Last May, I went kayaking for the first time.  It was fun, and we ate lunch on the river.  But really, that was the first time I'd ever gotten sunburnt on my hands and feet.  Like, that sort of thing just doesn't happen normally.

Dungeon Master Musings: From old to new: Digital Tabletop

If you're one of the 4 readers that regularly reads this blog, you'll recognize that I tend to jump deeply into hobbies that I'm doing.  So while in the middle of a 5e Dungeons and Dragons game that my friend Nick was running a few months ago, I got the crazy idea to start a campaign of my own.

The idea was to take this campaign I made 4 years ago typing Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and run people through all of them in a big series of dungeon crawls, while converting the whole mess to Fifth Edition.  So, we started out normally, with the usual dungeon master screen and paper notes.

My DM area looked very similar to this person's 

But that, erm, evolved.  After a while, I realized that trying to get my players to draw maps of the places they've been was really challenging.  So instead of doing that, I grabbed a second laptop, installed MapTool, and started displaying the DM's map to the players.

The lower level of the Sunless Citadel

Of course, 13 pixels per square really doesn't cut it, and while we were having a good time, I decided to, well... learn to make my own maps...

My first attempt at drawing my own map

That first one took like 20 hours, mostly because I was trying to find tutorials and assets to use.  Plus, I have no knowledge of how to do that kind of stuff and was focusing on all the wrong things.  Since then, my maps have been improving in speed and quality.

So... that's all well and good, but since I had these really pretty maps, I really wanted to do something better than displaying it on a small 15" computer monitor at the head of the table.  I did some research online and came up with this setup.

I sit on the far left, with only my computer as a DM screen.

Here's the setup.  Atop an 80" camera tripod sits an LG PA77U projector capable of WXGA projection. It projects down to a normal whiteboard.  Both the DM computer and client computer run MapTool to handle hiding information and stuff.  Two bluetooth mice connect to the client computer to allow players to move their digital pieces about.

I'm on my fifth or sixth map now, and it's a blast.  It really improves the experience to have a setup like this, and the players really enjoy it and get more into the action.

In a future post, I'll post about what I've learned is and is not important for adding to these maps.  And maybe some tips I've picked up from others that actually know what they're doing.

In the meantime, I've got maps to make!

Retro Rerun Roots: Battle Masters

For those that don't know me, every Monday night, my friends and I get together for dinner and board games.  This week, I brought out my old copy of Battle Masters to bask in the deliciously over-sized glory of this ancient game.

We had to clear a lot of floor space to play this game.

For those that don't know, Battle Masters is a game that followed in the footsteps of Heroquest and Warhammer.  It was released jointly by Games Workshop and Milton Bradley, and features characters and combat systems similar to Hero Quest.  In terms of modern comparisons, I would deem it very similar in play style to Heroscape.  The key component of it is the needlessly huge battle map and oversized game pieces.  There was actually no reason to make the pieces this large, but it certainly gives the player a sense of scale and delight when playing the game.

Game Overview:

This is a 2 player strategy war game between the armies of chaos and presumably the armies of order or light or something.  You know the drill...  Humans on one side, orcs, goblins, beast men, etc. on the other side.  Also dark paladins or some such thing.

This is how and where I store my copy of Battle Masters.
The box doesn't close, so OMG DUST.

The gameplay is controlled by a set of cards that enables different groups of units to move.  Each unit moves and attacks on its turn.  Ranged units can either move or attack, and are great choices to put on top of the tower, that giant piece in the middle of the board.  Whoever is up there gets a +1 bonus on all attack and defense rolls, so it's really advantageous for ranged units.  Once a piece decides to attack another, the player rolls the unit's strength against the other unit's strength.  Skulls are hits and shields block those hits, similar to Heroquest, or games like Descent, Heroscape, X-wing Miniatures, etc.  Each unit has 3 hit points.  Once you've taken all 3 hits, that piece is removed.

Much like in modern games that are similar to this, you can choose to do all out battle where both players simply try to eliminate every piece of their opponent's army, or you can do various scenarios where start positions, capabilities, and objectives vary.  In general, I've always just done the all out combat.

Despite the fact that the game is extremely dependent on luck, there's something really thrilling about moving giant pieces over such a vast board and attacking.  The simple combat rules make it very accessible, and its easy to quickly explain the game to someone that is new to the game.  Relatively few loose tokens or pieces makes setup and cleanup surprisingly quick for such a big game.  Players looking for a challenge or a game that uses a lot of tactics should look elsewhere, but folks just looking to have a quick bit of fun will find this a quick pleasant diversion.

Strategy seems to involve running up to your enemies as quickly as possible and hitting them hard.  When your pieces get to go, and how well you hit your enemy, is completely dependent on luck, so even the best tactics will probably not get you much advantage.  Tactics that do exist involve positioning yourself so that your pieces are all mobile and can get to where they need to be.

Strategic Dorkability: Low
Fun Factor: Moderately High

Detailed Description:

There are 4 classes of units in the game:

• Foot soldiers
• Mounted units
• Ranged units
• Special units

Foot soldiers are basic grunts.  They are slow, and don't get as many opportunities to move or do anything special, but they're good in a fight.  The Chaos army has a huge number of Foot soldiers: 2 goblins, 2 orcs, 2 beast men, and 2 chaos warriors.  On the light side, there are only 3 Men-at-Arms.  So that's 8 foot soldiers on the chaos side to 3 on the light side.  The Men at arms are strength 3, but so are the orcs and beast men.  The chaos warriors fight at 4, while the goblins fight at 2, so it roughly balances out.

Ranged units fire 2 or 3 spaces away depending on the unit, and thus are great for helping another unit fight.  The chaos army is at a deficit here and has only 2 archer units at strength 2 while the light army has 2 archer units at strength 3 AND a crossbow unit at strength 3, with a range of 3, 1 more than the archers.

Mounted units typically move quickly and often, get many opportunities to fight, and can get special bonuses, like double moves and charges, that boost movement or attack power for that turn.  This is another area where the light side excels over the chaos side.  The chaos side has their Champions of Chaos, horseback mounted soldiers at strength 5, and 2 Wolf Riders at strength 2, but these are bested by the light side's Lord Knights, a single unit equivalent to the Champions of Chaos, and 3 Imperial Knight units, attacking at strength 4.

Ignoring the special units for a moment, in my experience, this creates a generally balanced game.  The Chaos army has slightly more units and moves than the light side, but the light side has superior units with better odds on the dice.  Typically, the light side has an advantage in the game, in my experience, but luck still drives most of the game.

One of my favorite things about the game, though, are the special units.  In the flow of the game, simply marching the other units up to each other and hitting each other is fun, but could easily become a bit samey-samey since they all fight the same way.  The special units add a bit of variety into the mix and add special moments of excitement, as you wait to see what will happen.

On the chaos side, you have the Ogre.  At first glance, he just seems to be another 4 strength foot soldier.  But then you notice that he has special combat cards.  Every time he takes a turn, instead of moving once and attacking once like every other unit, he instead moves 3 times and attacks 3 times!  However, the order in which you can do this is determined by a set of 6 cards: 3 move cards and 3 attack cards.  Every time the Ogre's turn comes up, you shuffle those cards and deal them out one by one.  This creates some exciting moments where the Ogre is a space or two away and you are hoping that the attack cards come up before the move cards get the Ogre to your Imperial Knights.  In addition to this powerful ability, there's also the fact that the Ogre has 6 hit points, unlike every other unit.  However, each point of damage reduces the number of cards you draw for him by 1, making him less and less effective at fighting as he soaks damage.

On the light side, you have the cannon.  This unit is a special ranged unit that can fire long distances.  You pick your target, then shuffle several circular disks that represent the path the cannon ball follows.  Each disk is flipped over to reveal the cannonball flying through the space, bouncing at that spot, or exploding at that spot.  A bounce does a point of damage to any unit at that location, while an explosion destroys anything at that spot and stops the cannonball from continuing.  But if the cannonball reaches its destination, the enemy target is completely destroyed.  You can even use the cannon to destroy the tower.  3 hits to the tower obliterates it into a pile of rubble.  To compensate for the power of the cannon, you might also misfire.  If the first piece you flip over is an explosion, you might hurt your cannon.

Conclusion:

There's not a lot of strategy or tactics to this game, but for being a fun game with moments of excitement and tension, it's a blast.  The huge pieces and game board make it a delight to experience and/or watch.  Frankly, the size is mostly a gimmick, intended to attract young boys of the 1990s to beg their parents for this game at Christmas.  It came out around the same time as other giant games like Fireball Island and Crash Canyon, so I imagine it was all about increasing the desirability with little regard for creating a quality game experience.  Nonetheless, it does what it meant to do quite well.  It's an exciting, simplistic dice fest with enough tactics and strategy to keep you from being completely bored.

This picture was taken moments before my utter demise.

Tuesday Tidbits: Intentions

I really want to be blogging again.  So here I am.  Blogging.  Blog blog blog.

I suppose that the modern blog wants lots of pictures.  Here's a photo of some wiring in my house.

There.  Isn't that nice?  It's a modern blog with modern images showing modern things.  MODERN!

Heh.  I'll put more up here eventually.  I just need a place to muse on my various hobbies.  Gaming, tech, programming, baking, etc.

I'll probably put up a bio and stuff at some point too, if I get into this enough.

If you're reading this, congratulations.  You're the one.