Who is the captain of this PC ship?

A long while back I ran a very short stint for Traveller using Savage Worlds. The group ran a freighter and while most important decisions came down to a vote, they opted to have one player always break a tie as the captain of the ship. Ultimately, that person had more say in what would be the next course of action, whether they took a job or not, would they try and pick up passengers, etc.

We might be doing a spin off occasionally with a game in the Star Trek universe where I’ll finally be able to sit at the table as a player (yay!). We haven’t sketched out too many details, but we are expecting to be Star Fleet enlisted (or officers). Something that’ll likely come about from this will be planning out how we all work together and who will be the ship captain.

This got me thinking about other campaigns, especially military campaign settings. If you have a somewhat formal chain of command, how could that work with most ‘democratic’ groups? I would expect your typical fantasy adventure company settles everything with a vote. If everyone decides to relinquish this to a single player, say a captain of a star ship, how well would this work in the long run?

Granted you could have plenty of opportunities to get feedback from the other players. Likely get their opinions on certain matters and then make a final plan of action. However some times I would expect you could have that burden of decision making shift to that one player, after all they are the captain. Other players might decide to let more tricky choices not be their responsibility.

You might end up with a player calling most of the shots for the group. Things go to pot, they might get more of the blame. Some players acting as the leader might not enjoy being the continual decision-maker for the group. Likewise it could be very easy for some players to slip into a passive role around the table, letting someone else think up solutions for tackling problems, i.e. ‘Hey, I’m just a grunt following orders.’

So how could this play dynamic be altered? Have the GM be the captain. You are the person that makes the final decisions. You are the one giving the orders. You can ensure that everyone gives you an opinion on a thorny situation, have them plead their case on a plan of action, and you choose the plan of action. Note that not all players have to be the same ‘rank’ as the others with the same weight. One might serve as the XO having a bit more pull with their say. Some might just be subordinates to other PCs.

A big plus for this is you can direct the flow of events for an adventure and give immediate tasks to the group. You can directly influence the general direction of an adventure. One major tripping stone with this is the danger of railroading. It could be very easy to slip into forcing the other players into a story they are not interested in. I think a key point of avoiding this is to provide plenty of opportunities for independent action and allowing players to offer opinions on tackling problems. Rather than telling players they need to beam down to a planet, find information on the situation, and negotiate with aliens to approve a trade agreement, a more open approach would be needed. Instead I might say that the Federation needs a trade agreement with these aliens. You all have to make this happen in 3 days, keep me informed and utilize any resource to make this task successful. This allows for players to be a little more creative with how they handle the problem rather than following a laundry list of tasks to complete.

Another alternative to this would be to run an antagonistic officer. This person is either incompetent or just does not like certain PCs and wants to continually put them into situations that will make them fail. Consider a classic WWII drama, The Caine Mutiny, as a potential source. What would the PCs do if continually given poor orders? Would they go through with a bad order that would put other people at risk? Or would they stand up to the captain and potentially incite a mutiny?

To muck things up even more, maybe you (as the captain) are a competent officer in peacetime, but freeze up in combat situations. Players might have to agonize over willfully disobeying poor orders, even though in other situations you make the right calls. What would be the potential fallout from that? Could that erode any confidence the captain had with PC crew members?

I’m pretty certain the next game I run that has room for one PC being the leader, I’m going to take over that role. I don’t think it would work for a long campaign (much better for short term runs). Certainly railroading could be an issue and something I’d have to have to watch out for. However having a little more control on the flow of events would be great, and having that not continually fall on one PC’s shoulders would be even better.

malfirefly

Encumbrance in SW Dark Sun

brom3So a while ago I posted about me stepping into Dark Sun using Savage Worlds and fortunately there is a ton of stuff out there to help with the conversion. One particular thing that has been sticking with me is some type of encumbrance system. SW handles it though a strict weight limit, and I just didn’t want to bother with keeping track of how heavy everything would be. However, I did want something. Dark Sun seems to be that kind of setting where you need to worry about how much water and supplies you can carry. It seems to thrive on having that kind of detail.

Enter Matt Rundle’s Anti-Hammerspace Item Tracker which is just genius. Basically characters have a finite number of slots to carry things in. All equipment and items are an abstraction of weight and space. The heavier the armor, the less slot space you have. While a spear may not be heavy, it is bulky, and likewise takes up more space than just considering the weight alone. I fell in love with it and had to use something similar in my game.

There were a few nagging details. One was I liked how Dark Sun had different types of coinage, something I wanted to reflect on the item sheet. Further, I needed to convert equipment and weapons into slots. In the end I created my own version of the anti-hammerspace tracker. Something that would also allow me to keep track of both metal and ceramic coins.

Lastly, I created my own weapons table including armor. I kept most of the stuff similar to the SW weapons in the rules but did make a few changes. All the prices are in silver (or pieces) and the weight is now listed as slots taken up.

The gang has really taken to this. Best of all, they know they can haul around only so many slots worth of water and supplies. Making it a trade off between having a lot of armor and gear, compared to being able to carry around enough food and water to last in the desert. Lastly, coinage is an issue and I’ve been able to bleed off some cash with poor exchange rates of silver to gold, or converting ceramic coins to metal. It’s a small thing, but helps add some realism to the setting, without being cluttered too much in simulation rules.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Here’s to hoping folks are enjoying the new year with friends and family. Things are ramping up work-wise and sadly I think it will be cutting more and more into my free time. Likely be blogging a bit less. Expect infrequent posts but I’ll be sure to keep throwing up stuff once in a while.

I hope everyone has a prosperous year. Cheers!

(I thought Frank Frazetta’s Conan the Usurper fitting given this Lunar Year).

Give DnDnext dials that go up to 11… and ways to turn it down to 8

One aspect that seems to be common in the buzz surrounding DnDnext is modularity. It seems that lots of alternate rules are in the plans. I think that’s a good thing.

Other rule sets dabble in this and it’s something I’ve always appreciated. Granted, I think just about everyone home rules their game a little. Yet I think for new DMs having some guidance is especially beneficial. It’s great to have these core rules, with a few sidebars of suggestions and alternate rules to make the game more complicated (or make things easier).

One thing that stuck out for me with 4E was the lack of official nods towards tweaking the game. While I always got the DM philosophy with 4E being, ‘It’s your game, make it the way you want’, having some options in the books would have been helpful. And the rules that were there could have been emphasized a tad more (pg. 42 DMG). You had this whole debacle of skill check DCs being high, then being cut in half, then shifting up to being close to the original values. Having additional ways to fiddle with the game would have done wonders in addressing errata for these codified rules.

I’ve always liked having the developers provide some suggestions on ways to tinker with the game. It saves me time having to think up and test out my own ideas when I could be spending that playing games. Plus I think having rules that are more fluid to different play styles gives the game room to appeal to more people. For organized play this can be an issue, however it’s something that can be worked around (there is always that option of using a ‘vanilla’ set of rules if needed).

One thing I am hoping for however, are not just ideas and tweaks to add complexity and make the game more challenging to players. There should also be options to streamline the game more and beef up PC power. While the core base of the rules should provide a challenge to PCs by default, having some options to put on the kid’s gloves would be nice. Some groups may not be full of super-optimized character builds and having the game locked into that default setting for mechanics can be problematic.

4E had encounter building pretty solid, however as the game progressed with different player options I think it began to slide towards altering core monsters to provide a challenge. It seemed the game sort of straddled trying to cater to the needs of power gamers and other groups with less optimized characters. The math of the game grew into being built around PCs having defenses of X and attack bonuses of Y at level Z. If you opted to work on other stats, you sort of shot yourself in the leg with player advancement. So having options of turning down the game difficulty should not be overlooked.

Either way, it looks like the intention of DnDnext will be to cover a lot of different play styles over a core framework of rules. A sound decision over just creating one base set of rules that tries to cover everything.

Nerd Poker – a fun D&D podcast

Just a short post today. A while back I stumbled across Nerd Poker, a D&D actual play podcast that I’ve been really enjoying. Hosted by the comedian/actor/writer, Brian Posehn, we get to sit in on sessions of a 4E game he plays with fellow D&D folks. There is a real chemistry in the group with a fun banter of friends that is enjoyable to listen to. Getting to hear some laugh out loud comments and remarks from the crew is a bonus.

The setting is outlandish and definitely does not start with your typical, ‘You all are sitting in a tavern…’ One particular thing I love about the show is that the DM gleefully throws rules out the window and let’s fun take over the wheel. It’s refreshing to hear a group play D&D less focused on adhering to the rule book, and more about making fun (or at times agonizing) decisions on the fly.

So be sure to drop in and hear about the exploits of the goliath barbarian, Amarth Amon, and his companions. A fair warning the podcast encroaches on NSFW language at times. Give it a listen though. It’s a hoot and an enjoyable departure from most typical D&D session podcasts.

Review: Zombicide

Likely one of the bigger splashes in the zombie board game craze came out the latter part of 2012, Zombicide, from Guillotine Games. It’s a 1-6 cooperative player game (yes, you can play it solo), where folks are survivors trying to keep alive in a zombie apocalypse.

The game itself revolves around 10 different scenarios (not including a simple tutorial) using different layouts and some variety in victory conditions. For the most part winning a scenario typically involves gaining specific objective tokens and/or getting to a specific location. However there are a few that mix it up, such as just getting one player to survive an escalated zombie danger level. Players can pick one of the 6 different survivors, that each have various starting abilities, and get access to different ones as they gain experience killing zombies.

The play is divided in turns. All players get a specified number of actions for their survivor. Then the zombies take their actions with more spawning at the end of the turn. A neat little part of the turn order is that a first player token continually passes to the left at the end of each full turn, meaning the person that went first will go last on the next turn (and could take a while before being able to act first again in a 6 player game). This structured turn order can hamper the player’s plans, as you might want to move a player out of an area first before another player can shoot up zombies. However with the locked turn order, this might not be possible making some hard choices.

Combat against zombies is a simple affair. Roll a certain number of dice trying to roll over a particular value. Players are dependent on finding weapons and can’t attack with their fists. So typically each turn, they will be searching areas for better gear. Different gear can modify some weapons, and particular weapons can be dual-wielded (allowing for more attacks in a single action). There is also a smattering of non-weapon gear to help (like a handy flashlight). Players can always opt to move out of an area with zombies, but each zombie present requires an additional action. Too many zombies means the player is stuck huddled among the walking dead.

Another factor to consider when using a weapon is the noise it makes, with some being silent. Smash open a door with a fireaxe instead of a stealthy crowbar and you produce excessive noise. These noise tokens can have a huge impact on the game during the zombie turn causing them to migrate to areas with a lot of noise. As such, players can even spend actions making excess noise if needed.

Lastly, the game is very unforgiving with ranged attacks. If using a firearm in an area that has both survivors and zombies, hits are always taken against the survivors first. While it might be tempting to unload those dual submachine guns into a pack of zombies surrounding your buddy, you can pretty much guarantee wiping that survivor out (along with the zombies). Players also have access to cars that are fantastic zombie-killing machines, but are also very indiscriminate with taking out fellow players. This severe limitation on ranged combat means you either position yourself carefully, or just accept friendly fire is part of the natural order in a zombie apocalypse.

When the zombie turn rolls around, everything is done as a list of steps. Zombies attack players in their current area. If there are no players to attack, they shuffle off towards players they can see. If no players are present, they move towards the areas with the most noise. At the end of the turn, more zombies spawn and all the current noise tokens are picked up.

Zombie attacks are particularly vicious. Each attack will automatically cause a wound and force a player to lose a piece of equipment. Suffer 2 wounds and it’s zombie chow time with the unfortunate player being eliminated. That means if a player is stuck in an area with at least 2 zombies, they are toast. Compound that with particular runner zombies that take 2 actions instead of one (move and attack, move twice, or attack twice), and you’ve got some situations that are very deadly for survivors.

As zombies shuffle towards survivors, different paths may be possible of equal distance. When these situations arise, if the group can split evenly they do so. If not, more zombies are added to the mix to evenly divide the groups. This constant spawning of additional zombies means survivors are trying to prioritize a single route for the zombie horde.

Spawning of additional zombies are also done randomly using a deck of cards. If there are not enough zombies to bring on the board, each zombie of that type takes an additional action. This can create absolute havoc in the game. A player that might have had enough actions next turn to slip away from a group, could suddenly be zombie lunch due to that extra action, or switch from being a safe distance from a horde of walking dead, to being surrounded with no clear way out.

A cool aspect of the game is the various levels of danger for spawning zombies. As players kill zombies and complete objectives, they gain more experience. On the plus side, they gain more abilities and actions to take during their turn. The huge minus is that the danger level increases, adding more zombies to spawn areas. An important rule to this is that zombie danger levels are totally dependent on the player with the highest experience. Say the group has been cautious and trying to use stealth keeping everything in the blue level. It just takes that one crazed player with a submachine gun, quickly dispatching a horde of zombies, to suddenly ramp up the difficulty.

This creates a very powerful draw to the game. You can only hide and be stealthy for so long. As there is a limit to the different number of zombies, when there are not enough to put on the board that extra zombie action can rear its head. This can suddenly snowball with a survivor being overwhelmed, to players being forced to wipe out a horde. Have 2 players cut through a group, they’ve bumped up the danger level. While those 2 might be zombie-killing machines, the other survivors without many kills (and less experience) will be less able to handle the increased zombie spawns. Things build, and build, until it becomes this chaotic mess of crawling undead with players frantically trying to figure out what to do on their turn.

The Good – It’s a very fun zombie game where players find a decent balance of trying to be stealthy and hacking into zombies when needed. There is a fair number of scenarios in the book to give the game some replay. The rulebook explains the nuts and bolts of the game pretty well with lots of diagrams, examples, and there is a great, single sheet, quick overview of the rules included. I particularly like that everyone is working together and the zombies are handled without needing a player.

I’ll take a moment to also talk about the components. They are fantastic. The boards are double sided and, like the tokens, made of nice, thick cardstock. The cards are just the right size and seem thick enough to be handled without worrying about nicks and marks. The artwork in the rules, cards, and board pieces are very well done and evoke that feeling of being thrown into a zombie horror game, without being overly gory and avoids being too cartoony at the same time.

The game pieces are also amazing. Nice single plastic pieces with great detail and variety. Each of the survivor pieces are a different color, which is a nice touch (I’m looking at you Descent). The figures are also packed in plastic eggshell trays, meaning if you take the time to paint them up, you don’t have to fret about figuring out how to store them in the box. The sculptures of the figures are great and really capture the zombie theme with the survivor minis having a lot of character.

The Bad – Sadly, there are a fair amount of flaws with the game. It can be brutally unforgiving with how zombie combat, and player ranged combat, resolves. I think of the two, the ranged combat and friendly fire is particularly aggravating. The game also does not scale well with different number of players. Granted some scenarios state that they are best with a certain number, most still seem very difficult with less than 6 players

While the zombie turn is pretty well explained, as it is a step-wise automated turn, some odd situations can arise. This is compounded with the players having different abilities and gear. This can lead to some head scratching while flipping through the rules (expect to also print out the FAQ on the game). Not to mention one scenario being completely broke to the point of allowing survivors to cruise to an easy win (again, a revised version of the scenario is available online).

This last point sticks in my craw a bit, likely because some of the funding for the game was so public. Zombicide was an enormously successful Kickstarter project. You figure with all that money there was enough playtesting to make sure all the scenarios worked well. Or how about another 4 printed pages to further explain the rules and provide a few more explanations?

Player elimination can also be an issue. It’s possible with a bad draw and positioning to get a player eliminated early in the game. Some of the games can get a bit longish, especially if several objectives are to be picked up and survivors need to reach an exit. While the game can handle 6 players, I’ve found having less more ideal (with players handling multiple survivors), as that extra survivor can be shuffled off to a different player if needed.

The Verdict – I cannot recommend buying this game. There are many pluses, tremendous pluses, to this game. It is fun. It does capture that feeling of things slipping into absolute chaos being overwhelmed by zombies. There are meaningful choices and strategies players need to tackle in the game. The components and figures are fantastic. However out of the box, along with the $70+ price tag, I would hesitate recommending it. There are a limited number of survivors to play and with a set number of scenarios. I think a feeling of sameness can creep into the game.

The game has rule quirks, forcing players to slip into set tactics and strategies. You have to try and level everyone up equally. When a door is opened to a building, you have to resolve spawns of further zones first and work towards the doorway (otherwise if forced to take extra actions due to not having enough zombies, you can be overwhelmed instantly). The friendly fire from guns is particularly damning (we’ve opted to ignore it, instead all misses are rolled and a 1-2 hits a friendly).

Granted, Guillotine Games has done a lot to address these negatives. They have additional scenarios online. Not to mention a decent FAQ and reprinting of some rulebook scenarios fixing the broken victory conditions. There are additional survivors that can be printed out, allowing for some variation in player choices.

At the heart of it though, I think Zombicide slips into the same problems as Super Dungeon Explore. There is a great game at the core which is saddled down having too much of the price tag going towards the components, rather than the rules. The minis in Zombicide are great. They absolutely scream to be painted up. But I keep wondering if most of the zombies were cardboard tokens instead. If the price was dropped down to about $40 and a tad more tweaking with the rules (say an ‘easier’ variant regarding gun combat, and a ‘hardcore’ option as per the rules). Maybe another 2-3 more scenarios or survivor cards to boot. Would that bump this game from being a decent board game to being a must have? I think it would.

Zombicide is a fun board game. If you have a group that loves the idea of fighting off hordes of zombies, it is very much worth getting to the table. However if you are a group of players that want a game out of the box that doesn’t require a bit of house ruling, and are not particularly endeared to the walking dead, I would pass on this one. I am a miniature fanatic. I love to paint minis. However as a strict board games fan, Zombicide is a tad lacking, and likely the miniature components bump up the price to just nudge it into that category of a no buy.

Free MMO soundtracks for your game

I never really was into having music in the background while I play RPGs. However it’s something I’ve begun to dabble in. I don’t go for making a specific playlist. Rather I started using soundtracks. I can typically just put it on a loop without having to worry about the music being a hindrance to play.

MMO soundtracks are pretty good sources for background music, and one of my favorites of late has been the Age of Conan Soundtrack. It just fits my Savage Worlds hack of Dark Sun very well. Just the right touch to give the session a little ambiance and not be too distracting.

Massively is a MMO news site that recently posted a gold mine of links for free MMO soundtracks. It’s a bit of a pain to go through as many are individual tracks. However I think you can easily have a ton of tunes to mix and match for your game. The links likely cover a pretty wide spread of ‘sci-fi’ themed stuff to your typical fantasy music. Hope folks find this useful for their games.

Creating dungeon tile maps with Pymapper

I’ve picked up dungeon tiles but haven’t been utilizing them much in my game. One of the nagging points was being able to effectively sketch out a map while planning an adventure. I’ve got a fair number of tiles, printed on both sides, and even if sorted into different containers I’d need to spread out almost the entire lot to fully see my options.

Additionally I’d need the tiles recorded somehow before playing to quickly get them on the table. It’d be best to have them put aside and be ready at a moment’s notice, but I don’t have the table space in my household to do that. Not to mention reusing some tiles as I don’t own multiple sets. I think a snapshot with a digital camera would work, but still somewat a convoluted solution.

Enter the free program, Pymapper. This handy mapping program allows me to easily move tile sets around on a gridded area. I can limit my selection to tiles I own, and even allow for duplicate sets. It keeps track of tiles I use (effectively removing them from the pool of tiles available). Best of all I can see all the tiles from each set I’ve chosen, improving my selection of tiles for an encounter map.

Finally, I can export the image in a few graphic formats (including your handy JPEG). So I can print out a hard copy if needed, or plop it down into a document file. There are some nice options to alter the background also if I want something a little more fancy. A neat feature if I wanted to hand out a player map as a prop.

There are some other nice features, including being able to add map icons representing monsters and other notable items. A fair way to record everyone’s position at the end of a night if you’ve got to wrap up a game in the middle of a fight. You can add simple annotations to a map (or link it to a text file for more detail if needed). You can stack tiles which is very nice for the more set piece tiles like pits and statues. Creating a group of tiles of a specific size, you can also make a set of geomorph tiles. Using this set you can quickly generate a random dungeon which is another very nice feature (plus they have some pre-made geomorph sets available).

Lastly, there are a group of tile set files that you can download. While I’ve messed around with some other encounter builder programs that allowed me to make maps, getting the tile sets was a bit of a chore. It’s nice that this program has them available.

Pymapper is not perfect. Moving tiles around once they are on the map can be a little clunky at times. However I’ve found the program very intuitive, and after learning 2-3 keystroke shortcuts and menu icons, I was able to select (and exclude) groups of tile sets, and whip up a few maps with stacked tiles very quickly. Best of all, I could export these maps and print them out, so I’d have a handy reference to help arrange the right tiles needed for an encounter during a game. Pymapper is a great little program and free of charge. Be sure to check it out.

Comments and spam

I get a fair amount of spam comments. Seems my blog has been picked up as a regular target for ecommerce sites. Sadly, I have not been keeping up on my spam folder and was surprised to find people leaving great comments, but they were flagged as spam. Figured I was supposed to be getting notifications on comments being shuttled to that folder for moderation.

My apologies to folks that have left comments but never saw them in the post threads. I’ll be sure to keep up on my comment folder regularly in the future to rectify that oversight.

Terran battle cruiser and fleet complete

So a long while back I had assembled and primed my terran fleet for Firestorm Armada. It’s been slow going but I got around to completing them and thought I’d post some sequential photos of the battle cruiser as it was painted up.

For my terran fleet, I went with a 2 color scheme over a metallic base coat. I wanted a little contrast with these models compared to my sorylian fleet (which were effectively different shades of green).

I managed to pick up some inks finally and gave the entire model a black ink wash. This really added depth to the metal base coat. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with inks and some of the raised surfaces are a bit too expansive and flat. Took up as much excess as I could muster, but still got some pooling on the flat raised portions of the model.

Wasn’t too worried about the ink pooling much as I intended to give the areas a thorough dry brushing. Usually I drybrush the base paint coat, or possibly a shade lighter in tone. This time (as with my cruisers) I opted for much lighter tint. It gave the ship a really weathered look and especially brought out the blue sections.

Here is my assembled fleet. You can notice a big difference in the shading with the three cruisers as I didn’t use inks with them (just a wash of black paint). I think the inks really carry a lot more intense pigment and add a fair amount of depth to the minis.

I’ve gotten a bit burned out with ships as I cranked out two complete fleets. Not to mention my Sorylians took forever as I painted the frigates a few different base coats to get the final paint scheme I wanted. The terran fleet has a more ragtag, battle-worn look compared to them. Overall though, I’m happy with how they all turned out. Now I need to get some game reports in sometime!