5e Game - Part 17

(This is becoming a habit of mine - this post contains the report from the last two gaming sessions, again because there is not a lot of out of combat action going. And yes, again, because I am lazy and didn't get around to writing up the first session by itself. Part of this was that the first gaming session was only about half the time of a normal session as I was expecting the session to be the last of the year due to holidays cancelling out the last two weekend games of the year. So I threw my players a party, cooked them lots of good food and forced them to watch a favorite movie of mine from the '90s, PCU. Then we gamed with the time we had left, at which point I said, "happy holidays! see you next year!" and my players were like "no, we'll be back next weekend to game, right?" So we gamed. The things I do for my players. *sigh*)

The party moved on from the site of the chuul attack, the more adventurous of them munching contentedly on giant, lobster abomination claw (in butter and lemon). I've long said that Kenzer Co's Hacklopedia of Beasts for their Hackmaster RPG is doing it right, by providing not only the usual monster stats (hit points, armor, etc), but also a "yield" box that tells you what you get from the monster. For instance, the Owlbear (Common, Lesser, Great Horned, and Spotted) will yield up the following:

• Medicinal (what medicinal components can you gather from the beast) - Nil
• Spell Components - Although the Owlbear is a very magical creature, no magic-user has yet determined the possible uses of its fur, feathers, bone, horn, blood or eggs
• Hide/Trophy Items - Nil
• Treasure - Nil
• Other - Common Owlbear eggs are worth 200gp and the young are worth 500gp alive. Lesser eggs are 100gp and young are 300gp. Great Horned, 300gp and 700gp. And Spotted, 400gp and 900gp.

I have been planning on adding this to my own copy of the Monster Manual, Volo's Guide to Monsters, and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, if for nothing else than to make my own games quicker when the players go to plundering the bodies of the dead bad guys. In addition to all of the above, I would also add in Food, just to also note what monsters you can eat the flesh of and those you can't. Note, I am not here to argue cannibalism in a fictional game, or the implications of the psyche's of the players who may or may not have their characters participate in those acts in game. I am merely interested in trying to figure out which monsters are edible, and which are not. Plus, I like the manga Delicious in Dungeon, which is all about a party of adventurers living off of the monsters in a dungeon to make it through, if you hadn't heard of it before. I like the idea, iron rations are so boring (hey, I did my time in the US Army and MREs, the modern version of the iron ration, will fuel the fire, but definitely not as appealing as real food) and do weigh down the party that can't fit a pack animal into whatever environment they are exploring.

Anyway, enough of my rambling on about projects I wish I had time to complete, not just contemplate. The party continued on, drawing closer to the lake that now covered the capital city of the long dead empire. As the party drew near to the lake in the middle of the swamp, the ranger began using his Primeval Awareness to suss out the various baddies in the area. Unbeknownst to the ranger, the big bad of the area, also a ranger, was doing the exact same thing, and immediately began chain casting Pass Without a Trace on himself, covering his presence and those around him who the ranger was also detecting (humanoids and fiends, favored enemies). The big bad's spell covered only so much area, leaving plenty of uncovered space that included a watchtower full of hobgoblins and patrolling lizardfolk bands. Many little bands of lizardfolk, scattered around the lake.

"We are so close to leveling up," the party told each other, as they sat around my table, ruining the 4th wall meta and any sense of immersion any of us might have had to that point. "Let us slay the lizardfolk and level before we face the lieutenant in the middle of the lake." Yes, the muderhobo in my players took front and center stage at that point, as they had not even begun to think whether or not the lizardfolk were peaceful or working for said lieutenant (they were evil, these lizardfolk, and under full sway of the lieutenant, but the players weren't thinking about any of that beyond the XP gain). They sneak up and ambush a small party of the lizardfolk, easily dispatching the low CR creatures, and patting themselves on the back, say "this is an excellent plan! on to the next patrol, we still have a few more to reach next level!"

Onward the party traveled, sneaking up on two more bands of lizardfolk and slaughtering them in turn. One of the players did start questioning if they were being a bit overzealous and not even offering the lizardfolk parlay before offing them, but it was also about this time that the party started noticing a dragon (not very big, but big enough) flying around the center of the city. The ranger exclaimed that he was checking his Primeval Awareness again, and I informed him that now the band of hobgoblins he had detected earlier was gone, but a fiendish presence had now appeared in the city inside the lake. The dragon had been seen heading in the direction of the hobgoblins, and the party shrugged their collective shoulders, declared that the dragon had eaten the hobgoblins and forgot about it. In reality, the lieutenant, still with his magical protection against detection up had been moving about the city on his friend, the dragon, and giving orders to his underlings while the party was killing some low level lizardfolk. The party didn't wonder too hard at this whole change in the numbers of the bad guys, so I figured that meant the bad guy was wise to the party using his lizardfolk minions as XP boosters and so he gave out his marching orders.

I ran the first two encounters with the lizardfolk as normal, give the players the feeling they were doing something, but both of these fights were so bland that I decided the third fight went off without too many complications to skip past the boring and get to the good stuff. And good stuff it was. The lieutenant, while the party was busy slaughtering evil minions, had gotten word to all his remaining lizardfolk minions, ordering them to converge on the party's location and eliminate them with extreme prejudice. Flush with killing yet another little band of lizardfolk, the ranger turns on his Primeval Awareness one more time to find no less than 42 lizardfolk bearing down on their location from two different directions, a mere 30 minutes away. Suddenly taking this very seriously, the party gets their shit together and finally starts trying to act stealthy to ambush the lizardfolk. The ranger casts his Pass Without a Trace and the party sets an ambush. The lieutenant knows when the party disappears from his own Primeval Awareness, but what does he care about some mere lizardfolk?

The lizardfolk, knowing they faced a superior foe, spread out in a skirmish line at the edge of the lake and headed inland. Yes, the party had concealed themselves and removed their tracks, but the lizardfolk knew the boss goblin had moved the rest of his forces into the buildings at the edge of the sunken city, so if the party had gone that way, they were his problem. That left only inland (well, inswamp) from the lake, so inswamp the skirmish line of lizardfolk moved. The party launched their ambush, killing all but 8 of the lizardfolk (who ran away, terrified but still alive). The wizard fried many with a couple of fireballs, which attracted the attention of many lizardfolk, and he almost died. The paladin and his squire made as much noise as they could to attract attention, and attention they got, with the paladin going down from a triple critical strike in one round. The druid summoned an allosaurus, which occupied the attention of one flank for a bit before succumbing to multiple attackers. The ranger and the rogue killed their fair share, firing their bows from concealment. But, like I said, the party overcame and survived, even the paladin (just down and only one round of making death saves before he was healed) and the wizard (who never got to negative HP, merely coming awfully close).

Yes, yes, CR 1/2 creatures aren't terribly exciting for characters on the cusp of level 7, unless you throw 42 of them at the characters at the same time. It was either this or have them attack along with the lieutenant and all of his lackeys, which is going to happen next session and be bad enough. Dragon. Big bad ranger with the same powers as the party's ranger. Spell caster hobgoblins. Lots of regular hobgoblins who are going to engage with bows at range. An ettin. And ogre bolt launchers, because when I saw them in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, I couldn't say no.

I did not have the conversation with the player of the ranger like I thought I would in the last post (or couple of posts). I think he is realizing that always winning (at least, when winning is "doing more damage than the rest of the party combined") is boring and that there needs to be some excitement, some chance for failure. My next 5e campaign is going to be a lot different than this one but that is at least another 13 levels away in this campaign before I switch over, but this is good training for what I want to fix about the ruleset. No, the biggest problem I had was another player, the recent joiner of the playing group, the wizard's player.

This particular player is known to me, as we had gone to Iraq together as part of an Army deployment in the same Company back in '05. He had some issues in his life, and wandered about the state ever since we got back, just recently moving into the city I live in and joining the game. I thought he had left most of his life problems behind them, but instead, while he was good for the first month or so of game sessions, his old life issues have caught up with him, full force. The first session, he literally passed out for large portions of the game, and this most recent session, he was noticeably drunk - slurred speech, talking too fast, random changes in the conversation with no warning, and playing the game so badly I basically had to take over for him. On that last, I'm not saying he was playing tactically wrong or insultingly to any of the other players, but he was so out of it that he couldn't remember the initiative he had rolled, what spells he was going to cast or even if he had gone that round or not. I am unsure how to proceed. He had been going to Alcoholics Anonymous for a while, but has fallen off the wagon rather hard for at least 3 weeks now, going on 4.

Do not misunderstand, I am an adult of legal drinking age, and I too drink alcohol. But not all the time, I do not "need" it, and I only enjoy it when I am not required to do anything else. Plus it's been a very, very long time since I was what anyone would consider heavily drunk, like my player was. As long as it's legal (and yes, I think marijuana should be legal, it's about as damaging and addictive as alcohol is, but until it is legal, I do not partake), and you partake of it in such a way as to not harm others (no drunk driving, etc), then enjoy away. However, if you have altered your mental state enough that you are not functional, you are not being a good friend to the rest of the party (unless everyone is playing drunk, at which point, are you really playing, or just having a drinking party with your D&D books out?). If this describes you, damaging yourself and others with your addiction, seek help. There are many programs out there, seek one out and if you can't do it for yourself, do it for your friends, your family, or anyone else that matters to you.

I honestly don't know what to do. I did what I could back when this player was still in the Army with me, but what responsibility do I have as a mere DM now that we're both out of the military? The game is suffering (it won't die, but the other players are going to kick him out if this continues), and if it was just a bad player, I'd ask them to leave. The game is held at my house, after all, and if you're not welcome in my house, you can't play the game. However, I think this would only worsen this player's situation, not improve it. He is on the edge of it, he's got no car (and due to many DUIs in the past decade, no legal vehicle for a long while), a job that's nothing special, and the game seems to be the only bright spot in his week. I need to have a talk with him, preferably before the day of our next gaming session so I can encourage him to show up for the game sober.

5e Game - Part 16

(This post covers three gaming sessions since the last session post, partly because the combats have grown so large that not many combats take up a significant portion of each session, and partly because I'm a lazy bastard and didn't get around to typing this up in time.)

The party was in dire straits - one bad round of combat saw the wizard down, several of the party's other big guns hovering close to negative hit points as well, and only a few goblins and worgs down on the other side, and those at the hands of a hobgoblin devastator, not the party. That last was a mistake on my part, I didn't read the stat block close enough and didn't realize that devastators can sculpt their spells to miss comrades, but in afterthought I realized the devastator, leader of this particular raiding band, was tired of the little bastards and their smelly dogs and wouldn't have sculpted the spell for them anyway. He probably would not have also hit the hellhound and chimera, but eh, they were still standing and the party was hurting.

As predicted though, the party rallied, got the wizard back on his feet and proceeded to mop the floor with the remaining monsters. They did receive some help in the form of the dire wolf that had been shadowing the party as they (particularly the ranger) amused the large wolf, who came swooping in to challenge the devastator head-to-head, keeping him from fireballing the party for even more damage. The devastator did return the favor, dropping the dire wolf (the druid healed him not long after, so no big deal) before finally dying himself.

The attack in broad daylight in front of the townsfolk, plus the attackers killing and burning many on the other side of the river, the once wishy-washy townsfolk are convinced and they are leaving. The party, heady with success, head on towards the north, see if they can't break the blockades on the northern trade roads, take care of this pesky lieutenant, and get the elves to throw in on the side of everyone else in the vale.

They travel through many little villages, some taking the storm warnings seriously and preparing for war, others scoffing at the very idea of it. The party drives on each day, passing out warnings everywhere but moving on no matter if the warnings are heeded or not. Eventually they find the blockade on the trade route north, a small, hastily constructed fort containing a few ogres and some hobgoblins. The druid summons giant owls, the rogue and ranger sneak up for ranged attacks and the lobbing of fire bombs, and the paladin, his retainer, and the wizard gallop up from afar to clean up. The hobgoblins and ogres did not stand up long to the onslaught, and the party, intent on unblocking the road to the northlands, burned the block house to the ground ending that particular threat.

Having also sensed other raiding parties in the wilds around them (thanks to the ranger's Primeval Awareness) and still having some owls conjured, the druid decides to use them to capture the party someone to question. The owls bring back a hobgoblin, leader of that particular raiding party. To question the hobgoblin and stay within the boundaries of most of the party's alignments (killing a bad guy, acceptable; carving bits of a helpless bad guy? not cool), the paladin stuns the hobgoblin and then forces it to drink - and I can't believe I've never thought of doing this before - a Philter of Love. The hobgoblin is male (I rolled for it, not a misogynist bastard, I'm just an asshole to everyone) and so is effectively charmed for the next hour, no save. The hobgoblin spills as much as he knows - the lieutenant is here (and a goblin, quite a feat for one so small to command hobgoblins and other dangerous monsters), there are ogres, and ettins in attendance, the local lizardfolk are working for them, and there's a dragon, because of course there is. The lieutenant is also breeding things, demon like things, in his lair, a horde to unleash on civilization. The elves in the area, isolationist, owl-riding wood elves who have been living in the swamps since the end of the last empire in the area, are also being avoided to keep them from joining up with the communities to the south. Having asked their questions, the party slits the throat of the hobgoblin and discuss their plans from here.

They head towards the swamps, hoping to find the elves and convince them to help in the war, but if nothing else, help them find the bad guys' lair and stop his plans. At the edge of the swamps the ranger detects something nigh fiendish (his Primeval Awareness again, pegging to favored enemies) that "smells" like a devil, but not quite, and it's nearby. The party creeps up to find what looks like a mutated abishai, a devil servant of the dark goddess Tiamat, something they have fought before, but this one is different - larger, more aggressive (if that's even possible), acid breathing, and amphibious. They slay the beast and find that it was feasting on a giant owl and en elf that it had slain. Detecting even more elves flying in, the party searches the area while waiting for them to arrive.

The elves arrive, the party gracefully placing their dead comrade and his owl in full view, along with the monster and their empty, non-threatening hands. The elves, suspicious isolationists long separated from other peoples, treat the party brusquely, but finally consent to guide them to their city in the swamp, fairly certain the party was not to blame for the death of their comrade. The party follows on their own giant owls while the elves gather up the three dead bodies, two to bury and one to study. The swamp elves ask the party to relax in their guest accommodations while they (the swamp elves) hold a funeral for their fallen comrade. The elves in the party immediately decide they're going to the funeral (they're elves too, not outsiders...) and everyone else watches, the druid as a squirrel in a tree and through the eyes of the wizard's owl familiar and a handy illusion spell. The party then wonders the next day why the swamp elves don't automatically drop everything they're doing and join them in hunting down the horde's lieutenant.

Having at least put their request to the elves for help, both for themselves and the other communities elsewhere in the vale, sincerely and graciously enough, the party does manage to secure a map to the location of the lieutenant and some boats to haul them through the swamps. The party begins their trek towards the lake containing the sunken city, capital of a long dead empire, and now home to the lieutenant they're hunting and possibly a breeding nest of dangerous devils, like the one they fought earlier. Along the way, they run into some chuul and kill them. The chuul weren't part of the original adventure's random encounter chart for this area, can't remember off the top of my head what they replaced, but whatever it was doesn't exist in 5th edition and the chuul can sometimes be found in swamps, so I put them in. It also has the added benefit of letting the players know that their adventure isn't the only game in town - chuul are escapees from the aboleth, former slaves run away from terrible masters. Where there are chuul, there is an aboleth (or are aboleths) somewhere not too far away. It was a random roll on the encounter table, but it did give an interesting flavor to the evening. Will the party divert from their current goal and see if they can find the aboleth(s) nearby, or will they stay the course?

Next session, I'll be talking with the party. Combat needs to speed up, drastically so, as we are spending a lot of time on small combats. I tried to adopt a faster initiative system to keep combats interesting, but the meta discussion before every action has gotten too much. On top of it, the next big bad they're to face, the lieutenant, is going to use a lot of the tricks they are using and the party is not going to get to sneak up on this group. Yes, I said group, this big bad is bringing friends to the party, and some of these friends can't be detected by the party's ranger, of which they have been relying on too much lately.

5e Game - Part 15

The party finally reached the giant's lair, a very aged keep in the woods. This particular tribe of stone giants had taken to the ways of the forests for several generations, but this last remaining patriarch was all that remained of that tribe. His descendants had left and returned to the mountains from whence they had originally sprung. He was still strong, the old bull, sickly and old yes, but still dangerous. He greeted the party over roasting giant boar, not caring if they stayed for dinner or died under his boots.

We come in peace, the party cried, handing over pilfered treasure from the keep, the magical, giant-sized gauntlet the former lords of the keep had hidden in their secret treasure room, lo these many years. The giant was intrigued, he cared not for the masters of the hobgoblin horde nor their goals, and impressed the party had the guts to come ask him personally. He would help the party, he said, with but one condition - you now own the keep, and I'm dying soon, bury my body in the courtyard of the keep. His father died to those in the keep (which is where the gauntlet came from) and many others of his family also died assaulting the keep, it would only be fitting to be buried there. Like I said last game recap, the deed to the keep would be more useful than the keep itself.

It was also this adventure that the wizard changed for the 3rd time. He was first a human war mage (that first player suffered a mental event and decided to leave the party), then for one session became a female dwarf evoker (that player thought they would enjoy the game, but didn't really try to fit in with the rest of the party, so I asked her to leave), then went back to the original character with a new player who had just moved here, and finally this game session we got that player in early and rolled up a new wizard, a human diviner. This is a very odd choice, but can be very powerful, as you'll soon see.

The party, having convinced the giants to help as they can, trotted off to find the bridge the hobgoblin horde was bound to take. Not only was it the logical choice, but having found intel pointing out several key pieces of the horde's plan, the party moved quickly to beat the horde to the bridge. Fortunately, they had not dawdled quite so much and did beat the horde to the bridge, but not by much, as the vast horde's campfires brightened the horizon as night approached, even from several miles away. They found an advance guard at the bridge, many hobgoblins, some hell hounds, and a wyvern. The plan was set - some of the sneakier PCs would get close and start off the show, and everyone else would pile in at that point - and the party executed. The icing on the cake was the diviner giving the archer-specced ranger a natural 20, which he used to wipe out the wyvern in one round of combat. Yes, we still use an alternate critical/fumble table, and not only did that nat 20 on the to hit roll give them a crit, they rolled on the table for quadruple damage.

Yeah, pretty anti-climactic, but that's the double-edged sword of a min-maxer - they can be so effective in a combat that they make it boring for everyone including themselves. Yeah, it means the party "wins" but if it's boring enough that no one wants to play anymore, did you really win? Let's talk about this player for a second, so you understand that I'm not just picking on him out of spite. This player is my biggest grumbler, and there's a reason for it - out of my players, he has the most experience of playing D&D, but it's more as a DM than it is as a player. Another double-edged sword of the game - if you have been a DM and go to play a game, you have to remember the game you are playing in IS NOT YOUR GAME. It's hard to separate the DM from the player, but it has to be done. Otherwise it's just not going to be fun for you or your DM (and possibly the rest of the party, too), at which point you'll leave and run your own game again, or be unhappy in another group. I'm still working on him, I haven't booted him right out of the group, as honestly it took me until now to figure out what the issue was with him.

After the wyvern fell, it was but a pittance to clean up the rest of the baddies, find the weakness in the bridge, and bring it down to keep the hobgoblin army from crossing the gorge. The original plan was for the party to discover the bridge's weakness and position themselves so the wyvern could bring it down for them, but my party went a different way and still accomplished the mission. And the ranger's player grumbled more because, as he put it, "I guess I'm only good at shooting stuff" when other players tracked down and slew the last of the bridge guards as they tried to escape back to the army. That's another issue you have to deal with as a DM or a player - not every character can be good at everything. Characters can be good at one or a few things, but they have to be bad at something. Yes, I realize that the ranger, out of your average party, should be good at tracking down prey, but this party also has a druid who was a dire wolf at the time, and again, if one character is doing everything, it's boring. After one-shotting the wyvern, the ranger would have been a better teammate by just letting the druid have their moment. 

That's where that session ended. Another very busy week passed out here in the real world and I didn't get this update typed up before another game session happened. The party, flush with success decide they need to tell the giants they have dropped the bridge and then get back to civilization to convince those idiots to run as far and as fast as they can. They arrive at the giant's keep, to find no one there and set up their protective magical sleeping area and take a long rest. Before they come out of the bubble, a very large, hirsute man wanders in and sits down to watch their bubble. They communicate through the bubble with the man who passes on the knowledge that the giants are coming and will harass the horde after it works its way around the now bridge-less gorge, and also reminds the party of their promise to bury the head giant in the keep they now own. The party says they remember, thank the man, and back the way he came he summarily disappears. After leaving bear tracks. My players still think he's a druid and haven't pegged to a possible lycanthrope which I felt was an interesting use of a werebear - he can't really hurt stone giants even as a bear and can't turn them into lycanthropes (at least in my world and in this edition... oh, how I miss 3rd edition's templates that made any monster so much more interesting - yup, wrote up my share of half-dragon vampiric ogres back in the day), so he finds hanging out with them less full of guilt - but it wasn't of direct import to the campaign so I let it slide.

The party immediately packs up and begins the day and a half march back to civilization. They run into a small band of raiders and lose even more horses (I've regularly killed the paladin's magical steed, and been whittling away at the party's supply of everyday, average horses) but kill them handily. They eventually make it back to civilization and present the evidence they have - "Look, here's the map from the bad guy's lair showing where the army is gathering at!" "Sure sure, looks like you made that one up, to me." - and even talk to a soldier who came from a different part of the northland with dire news of hobgoblin raiders and roadblocks in the area the party is looking to go next, but the townspeople are still just not believing the danger they are in. That's not me being difficult, that's just how the campaign is written and the party is playing it right - these people cannot hold back the coming horde and the only way they'll live is to fall back and regroup in the only city in the area with any physical defenses. But the campaign provides the final proverbial straw in a raiding force, which the party faced at the end of the session, taking much damage due to some really good initiative rolling on my part and some really crappy initiative rolling on their part. The combat only lasted one round, however, with the party wizard down but many of the goblins and worgs dead (from their own side, no less - friendly fire isn't, and hobgoblins give zero fucks about stupid goblins and their dogs) and a bit of damage to several other heavies. Looking forward to this weekend when we can finish out the combat. I may actually get a player kill, but I still doubt it. We roll initiative fresh every round - it slows down combat just a bit, but it makes every round more interesting as everyone's order in the combat changes constantly - so I expect the party to come back, swinging.

5e Game - Part 14

The party, having defeated all of the baddies in the keep, proceeded to perform those actions familiar to all dungeon-delving crews - loot the bodies, look for shinies and magic. They found plenty of both (the original adventure creators admit this is a bit of a Monty Haul windfall, as the rest of the adventure is a bit light on the treasure), lots of coin, nice shiny baubles, and even a few magic items. Oh, and the deed to the keep. Just icing on the cake, really, as the keep is quite a ways away from the fortified manor they are still building in the minor border province to the south, but the adventure tossed it in and I figured it would give the players a chuckle. Which it did, the paladin's player (the paladin being the only one of "noble birth" and thought it automatically became his) chortling about it the rest of the game and into our after game discussion. What is more interesting (to me as the DM, at least) is if the party is going to realize the deed is better used as some collateral on their current campaign than they are trying to keep it and make something of it from a distance.

The ranger's player has decided he wants to be the trickster of the group and the rogue, the original prankster, has decided it's just as interesting to let the ranger play the pranks and catch heat from the rest of the party. The ranger, having decided he doesn't like the paladin or his new squire, has targeted them specifically, first putting poison ivy oil in the back of the squire's pants a game session or so back, and then putting tiger balm (which he used to kill an aged halfling way back in the first session... that one needs further explanation, gimme a second) on the rungs of the ladder into the keep's secret treasure room. The paladin and the squire, having had quite enough, decided to chop down the tree the ranger was "meditating" in (remember, whatever you can do, elves can do better), and when the ranger started running, the squire who is an archer specc'd fighter planted a crossbow bolt into the ranger's spine with a devastating natural 20 critical hit. The paladin healed him back into life, but I doubt the ranger is going to let it go.

Yes, I am totally letting the ranger's player make the ranger as unpopular with the rest of the party as he wants. This game is about friends having fun together, and if you ain't having fun except by making your friends miserable, maybe it's time to move on to another group. But the players have to decide it on their own. I'm here to referee the game and tell a story, not make the players get along if they don't want to. It's a tough love, but it's fair. Besides, if they mess around enough, I get to run over a small collection of villages with 20,000 angry, violent humanoids. It's the small things in life that bring a DM pleasure.

Oh yeah, the tiger balm story. The first session, I tasked the party with escorting an old halfling to another country to act as ambassador there. The night they arrived was cold and snowy, and the old halfling showed like he was coming down with a cold. The ranger (a druid at the time) tries to help the ambassador by rubbing him down with tiger balm, who turns up dead the next day. He was going to die anyway, he was just a plot point to get the party to the other country to start up that arc of the campaign, but the party still believes to this day that the tiger balm killed the old halfling. Sad really, that old halfling (Master Teagallow) was this crotchety old grump who kept sending the party off on side explorations the entire trip, kinda hoping to kill the party off and kinda just to get them out of his hair. Still my most memorable NPC to date.

Anyway, the party found some more history about the keep and the surrounding area along with the treasures in the keep's basement. Namely they found bits of history that point towards the clan of giants that were driven to destroy the keep and kill the last lord. Having confirmation from the local guide, the party decides (after their long rest and almost-fratricide of the ranger) to go talk to the giants and see if they can get some help from them, as the hobgoblin army had not used any giants in their warbands to this point. And if nothing else, maybe they can convince the giants to stay neutral in the coming invasion. They trekked north while the ranger grumped that he had not run into any dire wolves. He stated he wanted one as a mount, but in reality he was trying to get a message to his long lost sister. I had explained that the party hadn't seen much in the way of any non-monstrosity animals since leaving the last vestiges of civilization - large numbers of hungry, blood-thirsty raiders tend to drive away animals as well as locals - but he still grumped.

I relented and let him run into a lone mated pair of dire wolves not fair off their path to the giants. "Dire wolves always travel in packs!" "Leave off, bud, you're lucky these two are too stubborn to leave their den with the rest of the pack. Roll your animal handling checks." Natural one, and natural one. Oh yeah, not an attack roll, so those aren't an automatic failure, but when you can't even meet a DC10 skill check with all your bonuses, it's not tragic, that's comedy gold right there. Fortunately (for him, I think at this point even I was ready for the ranger to be turned into dire wolf poop), the druid had accompanied the ranger and he intervened and the ranger eventually convinced the wolves to deliver a message down the "wolf chain" towards where his long lost sister was rumored to be. One wolf left with the message, and the other followed along, stating she wanted to watch the giant step on the party.

And that's where we ended. We already had one player step out two hours early, and another (who didn't show up until two hours after start because he forgot we were playing, even with my weekly reminder text) left an hour early, so I said this was a good place to stop.

Politics at the Table - The Nicer Discussion

A while back, I ranted and raved about forcing your politics down other peoples' throats. I don't suggest you go read it, mostly because it's out there, read it or not as you see fit, and I'm not going to convince you to read it (or not) at this point in time. If you must read, you can find it here.

Anyway, here are a couple of gaming-focused gentlemen who have this exact conversation without being a huge, raging asshole about it like I was. Or even mention that particular company or product, and never raise their voices, and talk calmly about the situation in a logical, well-mannered fashion.

Did you catch it? The scary thing about that conversation? It's the same thing I said about the ridiculousness of the whole debacle. That's the best word I can come up with, debacle. I enjoy Paizo's offerings so far, but really, trying to enforce your politics in a game should be the last thing on your mind as a game maker - you can't enforce anything the minute anyone buys your product, so don't waste your time or possibly piss everyone off trying the impossible. Focus your time, instead, on making as good a game product as possible.

And for everyone else out there who feels ostracized for whatever reason from playing tabletop RPGs, these games we play are about having fun with our friends. Go find some different friends, or make new ones, who do want to play with you.

Zero Session or Level Zero Thoughts

A recent post in a 5e DM's chat area has got me thinking, and we all know how dangerous that can be. The thought percolating inside my skull is, in addition to a Session Zero (which many of us agree is a good idea), you also run the party at Level Zero. Session Zero, as you may or may not know, is the practice of sitting the party down and hashing out the details of the next campaign (or series of campaigns) with them. What the flavor of the campaign is, what the party is going to consist of, how the party gets together, etc. Playing Level Zero comes after that - you run the PCs at Level Nothing to take care of introductions and give the players some more meat to latch onto. I did this to a limited degree in my last Session Zero, running each PC through a short little solo backstory session that gave them ties to the rest of the group and the campaign. It was pretty effective, but pretty specific to the campaign, as it tied the party to the Musketeers-like organization I'm using to fight murder hoboism in the current campaign.

Anyway, my thoughts on the subject. If you do want to use a Level Zero start to your campaign - for me I would use this if I wanted to start out the campaign with a story of aspiring adventurers coming together to go take care of a problem threatening their village or whatever - here is what I would do. First, everyone is level zero (d'uh, right?) of whatever class they're going to be at level one. Second, everyone rolls 1d6 plus their CON bonus (see below) for HP. Yes, rolls it, not "automatically gets 6 HP". Third, everyone has a proficiency bonus of +1, and only skills from their background. Fourth, if they are a caster class, they get whatever cantrips and ability to cast cantrips as if they were 1st level, but no more. Fifth, starting money is purchased with half their class's and background's starting money (and no magic items, like healing potions). This is a good time to let the Crafty McDIYertons in your party explain how they're making their own healer's kit and other useful bits they'll likely need but can't afford. Sixth, when rolling stats, they get their racial bonuses, but only if any human PC does not take feats. A zero level PC with even one feat is way out of balance. Seventh and last, each PC has -300 XP. You read that right, negative 300 experience points that they have to earn back to zero to reach 1st level.

After the party reaches 1st level/zero experience points, the members get everything that they normally would at 1st level - full HP, full starting money, full skills, all their class's abilities at that level, and any feats (though if you have a human PC and they took the racial ability bonus, don't let them trade it in for a feat). 

The Zero Level session(s) itself must be low level, low challenge - a few goblins, a few kobolds, very low CR humanoids or monstrosities or beasts, and never outnumbering the party (less than is preferable). It won't take many fights or monsters (basically 6 times the number of party members) for your PCs to reach zero XP, especially if you remember to award XP for non-combat encounters and provide said encounters. The most important part of the Zero Level is making this arc of the campaign pertinent to the forming of the party itself, and as an intro to the rest of your campaign. If you fail those two, hopefully you and your players can use it as the tutorial portion of the campaign, learn important house rules, get used to each other's style of gaming, that kind of thing. And have one more interesting/funny story to reminisce about.

Don't Be a Troll

On the internet, two things are unforgivable sins - not fully reading/consuming what someone has typed/produced, and not providing anything constructive (otherwise known as being a troll). Given that you can't make anyone click over to your content much less consume it in its fullest, and there's no real way to force someone to do so, there's not much you can do about the first one. Due to the anonymous nature of the internet, and the confrontational nature of humanity as a whole, being a troll is far too easy these days, but there are things you can do to curb the habit.

Before I get into the meat of this rant, let's talk about being a troll. I don't mind if you have a different opinion about anything than I do, that's what makes life interesting. I for one love fried okra, and you may not, but that's perfectly fine to have that opinion. However, if I say "I love fried okra", and you reply, "you suck, fried okra is nasty", you're being a troll. If instead you say, "I don't like fried okra, and here's why..." or even just, "oh, I don't like fried okra" without being nasty about it, that's not being a troll, that's just having a different opinion (and more yummy fried okra for me). The first part of that, being nasty just because someone has a different opinion than you, is downright silly because if you can't stand any idea that goes against your own, how do you honestly expect anyone else to accept your opinion on anything? Everybody's different, and if they want to believe whatever they believe in, as long as it doesn't affect your bank account, why do you care? The second part of that really only applies to the 'net - you can have a different opinion than I do, but as it takes too much effort to try and have a constructive conversation online, if you don't even try to explain your different opinion, why did you bother? Explain what you find wrong about my idea, otherwise you're not being constructive and should just keep your thought to yourself. I'll gladly discuss our differences, because I may be utterly wrong or may have missed something you've known all along, but just saying "you're wrong" full stop, is not going to change my opinion and is more than likely going to piss me off.

Here, I'll let Key and Peele work their magic on the subject:

What have we learned? You engage trolls, invite and encourage them to have an actual discussion, and you keep doing it. Either they open up and rejoin the rest of us in intelligent discourse, or they get scared and leave.

What brought all this on was I replied to a blog post by the Angry GM, which is very thought provoking, you should check it out. I'm not going to post my whole reply, you can find it in the above blog post, but in it I related one method I was already using, another possible method I vaguely remembered from a previous edition of the game, and another method that popped into my head on the spot. And someone replied to my comment. No, the names have not been changed, why anonymize those who already hide behind anonymity? Here's the replies to my comment.

Nerdsamwich - There are more elegant ways to take crafting out of your game, but I can think of few that would be as efficient at destroying player buy-in.

Angry GM - [[ Comment deleted as it was completely nonconstructive. Thanks for your input, Bill, but I’ll decide whether someone’s comments are useful or not and if anyone needs to be yelled at, I’ll do the yelling. This thread is done. Drop it. – The Angry GM ]]

Yep, Angry didn't reply to Nerdsamwich, I did, and Angry felt the need to correct me. From what I can remember, here is my original reply - Bud, don't offer up "constructive criticism" if there isn't any. If you have an issue with what I've typed, that's fine, but at least give some critique. What part specifically made you think I was "destroying buy-in"? Why? What would you have done differently? Because what you've done is the internet version of driving by and yelling at someone "you suck!"

Maybe I was a little harsh, but, well, you decide for yourself - who was trolling who here? Whose comment was useful and whose was merely noise? Whichever way you decide, I'll be glad to discuss it with you. Don't want to discuss it? Keep it to yourself. Please, give me discussion, but we already have enough noise on this information medium. Nerdsamwich, if you're out there, I'm still curious to hear where you think I "destroyed player buy-in".

5e Game - Part 13

The heroes trekked thru the wilderness. They must find the hobgoblin army to figure out its size and intentions, much less verify if it even exists. They traveled north, along the ancient trade road, avoiding trouble when they could, and fighting when they had to. They fought the ettercap and the giant spiders, and won. They avoided the trolls, deciding not to mess with the regenerating nuisances and instead sneak away from them. They negotiated with the old timer in the woods and gained a guide familiar with the area. The ambush came suddenly, the hydra rising from the swamp and threatening to charge. The druid cast his spell, bringing thorny growth up from the muck and blocking the hydra's path, so it went around (it passed its INT check, what can I say?). Right into the ranger who was scouting ahead of the party. The hydra, huge and menacing, missed many of its attacks on the ranger, and quickly succumbed when the paladin expelled all of his high level spell slots in one round of furious attacks.

The party continued on, an abandoned keep possibly harboring vanguard elements of the hobgoblin horde a mere few hours past the hydra's swamp. They were right, the hobgoblins were here, along with a manticore, a minotaur, worg riding goblins, and a bugbear sorcerer. The party waited until dark, because they forgot that most of those had darkvision and it didn't matter either way, but it at least gave them a chuckle when the hobgoblin in the tower started howling like a ghost and swinging a dead goblin around a magical light. Then they did the thing that all DMs want their PCs to do - they split the party.

Half the party shimmied up the outside of the tower, and came down the stairs, taking out the lone guard pretending to be a ghost (if you're occupying a supposedly haunted keep, might as well enforce the misconception and keep the locals away), and continued on to find the keep's BBEG, said bugbear sorcerer. Having partially surprised him, the Sneaky McStealthertons sent one of their members back up to signal the others to rush the courtyard. Back in the tower, 2 PCs spent 4 rounds convincing themselves that beating up the bad guy's fists with their faces was a bad plan, but not before he got tired of their shenanigans and left to go see what the ruckus in the courtyard was.

Pulling back from the story a sec, let me relate some technical parts of this, and let me tell you, when the party wanted to pull a coordinated assault on a keep that was just a little too big to fully represent on my board (see episode 9 to see the board I made up), I panicked just a wee bit. But the players were insistent, and I remembered what Matt Colville said about it recently, so I let them split the party. I explained several things before they got started - this will all be happening simultaneously, but we are going to run this part first and then pick up the other, and finally join the 2 where it's natural for that to happen; and these PCs and only these PCs will be involved in the first part, and the rest will be in the other, so don't break the meta too much.

I didn't go as far as he does, but you get the idea.

The first part, the attack on the tower, I began tracking rounds from when the first half of the party signaled the 2nd half to begin their assault. When the BBEG got tired (bored, really) and left the tower, I stopped that portion and flipped to the courtyard assault, redrawing my map. The only real confusion was one player, in the first assault force, cast one concentration spell at the BBEG but wanted to be able to cast another concentration spell at the bad guy's in the courtyard. I saw that problem coming and warned him, drop the first concentration spell when you want to because you won't be able to cast the 2nd one until after the first is gone. Since we were playing out the 2 encounters separately, but treating them as happening simultaneously by winding the clock back (as it were) on the 2nd encounter. He finally understood, and not knowing how long until his 2nd concentration spell was desperately needed, he dropped the first early.

That last has to be confusing, so let me try explaining it this way. Round 1, the Sneaky Squad signals the other half of the party to attack, and pushes their own attack on the BBEG (though they had not figured he was the BBEG yet). The non-sneaky squad blow their hunting horn (alerting and hopefully drawing out as many bad guys into the courtyard as possible) and charge towards the keep. Round 2, the druid casts his concentration spell, but then heads away from the fight with the BBEG back to the top of the tower to support the assault on the courtyard. The outside team is still charging, and I've decided they will arrive next round. At this point, I have the conversation with the druid, and he finally decides he will drop his first concentration spell next round. Round 3, still focused on the fight in the tower, the Sneaky Squad fiddle farts around for this and the following 3 rounds with the BBEG, who finally gets bored and leaves. I redraw the map, and we wind the clock back to the end of Round 2, beginning of Round 3, and shift focus to the courtyard. If the druid had not decided to drop his first concentration spell in Round 3 back when we first ran it inside the tower, I would have been forced to deny him the opportunity to cast the 2nd concentration (man, that is a long word to type) spell until we got to the round in this half of the fight that he dropped it in the other half of the fight. Especially if his 1st concentration spell had done something positive for the party, there is no way I'm letting anyone pull a fast one and do something useful with a different concentration spell somewhere else.

So, TL;DR, if you plan on doing something like this, keep assiduous track of the rounds and what happens where and hope the stuff that happens in the 2nd half can't spill over into the 1st half. Otherwise you gotta rewrite history, and that's just a huge pain in the tukhus.

The 2nd assault party hits the courtyard, and receives the charge from pretty much the entirety of the keep. Fortunately, the wizard's ball of hot expanding gas takes out the hobgoblins, and the druid's 2nd concentration spell starts working over the stragglers, continuing to do so till the end of the game. Many rounds of  fighting here, the paladin's retainer falling multiple times, finally into the Land of the Almost Dead, requiring swift intervention from said paladin, before all the baddies (minus the BBEG) succumb to the party's martial and magical prowess. The BBEG immediately bursts from the base of the tower, puts a hurting on the wizard, blinds the druid, and is about to take Billy Bigsteps back to the horde when the party finally corners him and ends him.

We ended the session there, having run over our usual time limit by half an hour or so. Everyone seemed to have fun, though the player of the party's rogue who is out of state on business, missed his PC finally using his bag of 1,000 ball bearings, something he has been waiting for ever since he acquired said bag. The other players taunted him over text, as is only right. But I have to say, as much of a pain in the butt splitting the party was, I think it worked (not tactically, no, but in the sense of the players felt they had say in the game) and I'd definitely allow it again. They really seemed to like it, and other than a little boredom as we reconciled the part they weren't in and some rules discussions, I think they found it intriguing. How do you communicate between the halves of the party? Who is doing what, where and at what time? If you run into something too powerful (much more likely when you don't have your full complement, much less entire skillset) or something you just can't handle, what do you do? And of course, deciding what to do when the bad guy's just won't cooperate and do something you don't expect.

As for the tactics of the baddies, I played the BBEG smart and didn't engage the party except at an advantage to him. This is a very experienced and nasty spellcaster, I'm not going to let him stand toe to toe and trade blows with better armored and numerous foes, the party had to maneuver around him and finally corner him to finish him off. The rest of the baddies simply dogpiled onto the party and used numbers and advantage giving flanks to whittle away the party's HP pool. Do I feel any remorse for doing that? No. Another gripe of mine with 5th edition is how easy the players have it, especially after they get out of Tier One play, and it's true. A 6th level paladin, a 6th level wizard, and a 3rd level fighter (with a 6th level druid calling down lightning from a hidden position) faced down 6 hobgoblins, 4 goblins on a like number of worgs, a minotaur and a manticore, and except for the fighter going into negative HP off a lucky crit from one of the worgs (40 damage in one blow, we run the crit/fumble tables I stole borrowed from Seth Skorkowsky, who you should watch, he's funny and informative) and immediately getting healed by the paladin and not rolling one death save, the party was otherwise fine. Oh sure, low on HP, but really not breaking a sweat over the encounter.

This very combat is a fine example of how out of touch 5th edition's XP, CR, and building encounters by both of those systems really are. I didn't run the numbers before the game as I'm running an old 3rd edition classic adventure, and I ran it straight out of the book. But if you go into your handy-dandy DMG and look at page 82 for XP Thresholds by Character Level, this encounter (the baddies minus the BBEG) is an XP Threshold of 10,400. The four PCs (well, three and an NPC retainer) have a threshold of 6,000 for Deadly encounters. Yep, more than 1.5x the threshold, and that part of the party really didn't have a lot of problems with it. I have very little remorse for throwing all the monsters at the party, and have for a couple of sessions now. I have to admit, though, I have no fix for the CR or XP system in 5th edition - you're never going to nail down what skillsets are in a party, as there are far too many options out there, and even if you narrowed the option you can't keep a party from doing something strange like playing all fighters or rogues or whatnot. Because of that, I wouldn't try to fix XP, I'd develop tools to provide modifiers to XP depending on said party makeup. {hmmm} Going to have to think on that one. 

Tactical considerations - if the party is slinging a lot of AOE (area of effect) spells and don't have anyone with Sculpt Spell, make sure to line up the monsters so the party has to hit each other. Does the BBEG worry about that? No, that's what "chaotic evil" means, those other monsters are there to be ablative meatshields for the BBEG, they can catch a lightning bolt as long as it also hits an adventurer or two. High AC monsters need to be in base contact with the PCs, and flanking positions if there are multiple monsters. Low AC monsters need to use the high AC monsters as cover. Found a fascinating blog called The Monsters Know What They're Doing that does deep dives on individual monster tactics, you should read through it if you're looking for some help.

DMing 5th Edition for Dummies

Not that it's required of me, but I like tabbing my books to the important bits for fast reference. I use Post-It brand flags (this exact pack, as a matter of fact) and write on the flags what it is they're marking. Almost six months into my current game, and I've finally gotten around to tabbing my books and gotten done 5 out of my 6 main books (Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Volo's Guide to Monsters, and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) in a short amount of time, and my last reference, the Dungeon Master's Guide, has taken me the longest. The DMG has also used the most flags as I'm up to 60 and still have 80-some-odd pages to go, but that's neither here nor there. What bothers me most is that there is a lot of good info in the book for DMs, as you would expect, but it's so haphazard, and missing so much that should be in there, it feels like a huge missed opportunity.

I have talked about this before, and I am definitely not alone in my critique of the current edition in general and the DMG in particular. To me and others, this tome should be the guideline to all starting DMs, the expander of knowledge to the journeyman, and the honer of skills to the master. To that end, you would think that the DMG would start off with the small stuff - this is an encounter, the basic unit of all RPGs - but it starts right off with Building Your Gameworld, followed by the Planes, getting around to dungeons (which are made up of encounters), and then finally encounters themselves. Which they immediately screw up and only talk about combat encounters, leaving out exploration and interaction encounters entirely. This isn't new for WotC in this edition - the PHB puts the Options chapter (you know, the stuff that isn't a part of the game until the DM tells you it is) smack between character creation and the actual, not-optional rules, like Combat and Spellcasting. 

In the same vein, it does not look good when, instead of tabbing two whole sections, I used one of my flags to lock off those sections. Why? It's the Traps and the Downtime Activities sections, which were so bad that WotC has already replaced them/updated them with passages in XGE (and I at least have gone one farther and given my players the Downtime section of Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign Guide, because the expanded activities in XGE still don't go far enough), so I don't need to stumble into those sections at all.

Having worked further into the DMG, I found social encounters! They're buried back in Chapter 8, Running the Game, between Exploration and Objects, followed immediately by Combat, so they kinda do have all the D&D encounter types in one (or two) places. Exploration and social encounters are both anemic entries and need some serious improvements. Again, combat gets more love than exploration or social (and is in an even bigger section than the first one), but that has been an issue with D&D (according to some) since before even my ancient bones entered the world. Combat is easy, it's exciting, it really is the focus of the game, and there are other RPGs out there that are made from the ground up to handle exploration or social interactions better. That's still not an excuse as WotC has had plenty of time (near two full decades and 3, almost 4, separate editions of the game) to improve this lack.

If I was in this to make a living off of (sorry, had to go have a 15 minute roll on the floor while clutching my sides, laughing), or even had the time to do more than pop in here and rant every now and then, I'd be tempted to write a DM's Guild release called, oddly enough, Gamemastering for Dummies. Yup, couldn't title it like I titled this article as that violates WotC's IPs/TMs/copywrites/etc (this article is free, so I'm claiming fair use here), and not only that but if I wrote it as deeply as I want, they'd also get me for copying huge swaths of their work. Don't mistake me, the DMG is flawed, but there is a lot of good information in it, I just wish it had been laid out better, focused on rules over flavor bits, and improved many of said rules. Oh well, I definitely won't be writing the treatise out and selling it long form, but that won't stop me posting bits and pieces of it here. Stay tuned.

Hobbies and Our Pursuit Thereof

The wife and I received a bunch of free tickets to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival and since we couldn't use them all I offered them up to my current gaming group. Even if we could go multiple weekends to use them up, we don't want to. While the RenFest is fun, it's fun in small quantities for us as we are former SCAdians and we've "been there, done that" A LOT. Offering up the tickets to my friends, I was reminded why many hobbies are a lot easier than playing RPGs around a table. I've seen the following exchange happen anytime I have offered up RenFest tickets, or a day that I was going to play paintball, or run a D&D/CP2020/Rifts/Champions campaign, or go see a movie, or go to a book signing, or go to a Con (gaming, comic, or otherwise), or any other geeky pastime.


A month before the event - "You're doing what? Dude, I have ALWAYS wanted to do that! Count me in, I'll be there!" All of that I'd hear from about 10 people.

Three weeks before - "I'm still down, can't wait for it." But now I'm hearing this from only about 8 people.

Two weeks before - "Well, I really need to mow the lawn and give the cat a bath, but if I get that done early, I'll be there." And now we're down to only 5 people.

The week before - "I've been fighting a cold, and I've been meaning to visit my mom." Now 7 out of the original 10 people won't talk to me at all, and the last 3 are really cagey when I do talk to them.

The day of - One person (or none at all, which was always far more likely) shows up to join me to do whatever it was.


You may scoff and think that's not true, but I've seen this over so many years for so many different activities, that this is how I played paintball for a solid decade: I'd put it out when and where I was going to play, and then I'd go play with no one joining me. I'm just lucky that I was living in a city that the local paintball fields had decent enough "rec" or "walk on" players that I'd still get to play. If I had to count on my friends showing up to play, I'd have been out there all by my lonesome because for the longest time, it was whoever showed up at the field, and none of my friends who said that they always wanted to play and this would be the best weekend to give it a try, blah blah blah. I learned long ago, that if I depended on others to pursue my hobbies, I would be sitting at home most weekends, not doing much of anything.

Which is a huge problem to play tabletop RPGs - you kind of need other people to show up to play or run an RPG. Oh sure, these days you've got Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds to play RPGs online, not forgetting MMORPGs and solo play videogame RPGs, but if what you want is that face to face connection, good luck getting a group of folks to show up consistently for long periods of time. What do you do? For me, I run as many games as I can and try not to be the one that is texting everyone the day of the game to say "sorry, can't make it, see you next week". I have had to do this - had to do it this past weekend, in fact, but I already had one player out of state, another who could only be there for 2 out of 5 hours due to a wedding, and still looking for a replacement for the 5th member of the group, so when I really didn't feel ready to run the game I dropped the text to everyone - but whether I've been a player and especially when I'm the GM/DM/whatnot, I just keep trying to be the most dependable of the group.

Please, don't get all disheartened and think it's something beyond your reach, otherwise none of us would have a gaming group to play with/run a game for. Just realize that people are never as brave to try new things, or as desirous to go live an experience, as they first profess to be. And for your other hobbies or geeky pursuits, those that you can pursue without your friends, you have to understand that even though you find them the most fun ever and said friends may even profess to want to do them with you, said activity may not be actually enjoyable to them and you may have to form new friendships in that hobby. Have no fear, you will make new friends, it may take some time, but it will happen.

To the rest of you out there, please, if you were excited about doing or trying something a month before, just go do it. As long as it's legal.

Is There Anything in 5e That I Like?

I seem to be very negative about the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and, well, I do find that it is not as fantastic as I hoped it would be. It has too much of 4th edition in it (and not the cool stuff that 4th edition brought out), and seems to be on easy mode, and it's very easy for players to make overpowered characters, and on and on. Is there anything, at all, that I do like?

Yep, there is.





What? Okay, fine. But before I get into what I like about 5th edition, you have to know that I used to participate in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and that in that organization, I used to fight. In most places I would have to amend that I fought "heavy" but I generally forget that since I lived and fought in the Kingdom of Calontir and they never adopted the "light" style of SCA combat. If you're not familiar with what the SCA is, or what SCA "heavy" combat is, then I invite you to watch the following video from NBC News about the Society:

I retired most of a decade ago from the hobby, but I still feel that it's appropriate to mention that the SCA is not all about fighting, but it is the one activity that tends to be the most exciting to watch. With that, understand that I find that D&D's combat rules have been lacking in some particulars. Yes, yes, I enjoyed my time in armour, hefting a shield and swinging chunks of rattan at my friends, but I fully realize that even the SCA is not 100% accurate when it comes to recreating medieval armoured combat... but it's close, a lot closer than D&D is and has been in the past. Yes, yes, (I say that a lot to what I imagine to be your unvoiced questions, don't I?) D&D is at best an abstraction of armoured combat, and more worried about appearing more cinematic than realistic. But even knowing that, I've seen a few things in 5th that make my black, shriveled heart happy.

Oddly enough, what I've found recently that have made me want to play and not merely DM in 5th edition, are two feats. Many people seemed to take great umbrage with feats in 3rd edition, but I rather liked them (and Prestige Classes). 5e's feats have been "meh" at best, and too overpowered at their worst, but I've run across two that I really like - Dual Wielder and Polearm Master.

Polearm Master (found on page 168 of the 5e PHB, for those of you following from home) isn't as overpowered as, say, Great Weapon Master (basically, take disadvantage on your To Hit roll to double your Damage, and two other bonus bits on top of that? yup, overpowered), it simply makes the use of glaives, halberds, and quarterstaves more realistic. You get a bonus attack with the opposite end of the weapon (a simple 1d4 Damage), and a reaction attack whenever an opponent enters your reach (not just leaves it), both of which are very realistic. Fighting with polearms as long as I did (and I was fair to middlin' with them, not knight level, but deadly enough that people treated me with respect when I held my "boat oar" slashing spear in my hands), I learned to use the weapon's reach to my advantage by striking at ranges they couldn't reply, when possible, but also to be able to fight with a 6 foot weapon at ranges best described as "belly to belly". In fact, training to fight with polearm, and training others, I oft repeated that first contact with polearms is done with the sharp pokey bits, like a spear; the next step in is done with the sharp slashy bits, like a long axe; and the last step in is done with the butt spike (not totally unknown in period, but not terribly common), like daggers with 6 feet of handle on them.

If you want to see someone who is REALLY good with polearms (in other words, better than me) teach their techniques, you should watch the following video, and the two that follow it.

The other feat I particularly like in 5e, Dual Wielder, makes fighting with two, one-handed weapons viable in D&D. 3rd edition had decent rules and made florentine or "two stick" fighting possible, but did so with some very involved and complicated rules. Dual Wielder (page 165 in the PHB) as a feat makes the base Two-Weapon Fighting (page 195, also in the PHB) much more realistic and far simpler than 3rd edition - you can use non "light" weapons, you get a bonus to your AC, and something about drawing/stowing your weapons normally (which is nice, but not really important). Two sword fighters in the SCA, at least those who are good at the style, are whirling dervishes of thrown shots, counter-blows, mobile walls of sharp steel constantly attacking and fading.

Of course, everyone immediately thinks of wielding two swords (one in each hand), which is the classic definition of "florentine" fighting, but seeing this rule, I immediately thought of fighting sword and spear, or sword and axe, two classic Viking/Nordic/Norman/Anglo-Saxon fighting styles. With sword and spear, shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry (which commemorated the 1066 invasion of Anglo-Saxony by the Normans), you fight with a sword in your "on" hand (if you're right handed, right is your "on" hand) and a 6' or similar length spear in your "off" hand, the stabby bit pointed down. Holding your weapons in this way, you can stab at your opponent all the way at the end of your 6 feet and more of reach with the spear and use it up close as a very tall, thin shield, or choke up on it and stab at something closer to you. With sword and axe, you generally use a longer handled axe, generally 4' long, like a footman's axe or Danish bearded axe or even a shorter bardiche (use the stats for Battleaxe), and one with a butt spike on it. Like sword and spear, you fight sword and axe with sword in "on" and the axe in "off", using the beard or the scallop behind the bit in a bardiche as your handle, both to protect your "off" hand and to more easily punch with the axe blade. The butt spike you use like you would a spear, keeping your opponent at range. Both of the "off" weapons are versatile, and can be used two-handed without the sword.

The added bonus of using polearms, axes, and spears is that it is more realistic to use those weapons than swords. Yes, yes, when people think of armoured knights beating on each other, they think swords... but swords aren't really good against armour. Swords (both the iconic European longsword and Oriental katana, plus just about any other sword out there you can think of) were mostly used against unarmoured opponents, and everything else - spears which every civilization out there used because it's so easy to put a sharp point on a long stick, polearms which are all farming implements repurposed into medieval can openers, and axes got turned from chopping wood to chopping people - was what you used when you were facing someone with a decent amount of armour. Don't believe me? Check out any of the medieval arms manuals (Talhoffer is popular), or S.M. Stirling's fantastic Emberverse series of novels. If I were to rewrite the D&D rules, I'd focus more on spears - spears as the yardstick against which all other weapons are measured, spears doing more damage than swords (European longswords were used more as piercing weapons than slashing weapons back in the medieval period... why? because it was more effective that way), magical spears by the dozen, and replacing as much sword-bearing art with spear-bearing art as I can get away with. The iconic 5e fighter (seen below) is not bad, but still too much sword and not enough spear.

Click the image to learn more

Enough of me prattling on, I'm sure you want to watch cool action videos of people in armour wailing on each other. So here goes, an example of sword and axe (he doesn't stab much with his butt spike because he's facing a leftie so the shield is already in place to block that particular shot):

And an example of sword and spear, featuring my good friend and former squire brother (he kills his opponent with a quick thrust of the spear, you can't see it because it's on the other side of the fight):

And the first of some fantastic instructional on fighting two swords or "florentine". Yes, these are old, low quality vids, but you can hear what he says and see well enough to tell what he's talking about.

The more I talked about "realism" in D&D combat, the more I wished they had added to the Shield Master feat a bonus attack with that item, as shields were as useful in the medieval period for bashing your enemies as they were for blocking sharp bits of metal intended to go into your body. Ah well, can't have them all.

The Game You Game Master is For You As Well

I have seen from some other RPG gurus out there that I am being a "bad" game master for restricting my players to certain races and classes in my home brewed campaign world. Something about I'm keeping my players from enacting their fantasy desires, but I'm not buying it, not changing my house rules, and not feeling terribly bad about it. And neither should you. Remember, your enjoyment in the game world is just as important as your players' enjoyment, possibly even more so due to the game can run minus a player or two, but is a bit hard to happen without the game master. However, you can't drive off all of your players or there's not a game there, either, so if you are going to stomp on their dreams, do so in a limited fashion and have good reasons for what you are doing.

What? That's it, go home, nothing more to see here.

Fine, here are the restrictions for my D&D 5e game world and my reasons behind them, give you an idea of what I'm talking about. All of these are from the base books only, as anything beyond those books has to be brought to me first, and my players just aren't quite that deep into the game yet.

Classes - I don't allow the following classes:
     -Barbarian. I don't have anything against Barbarians, but due to me fighting "murder hoboism" by making the PCs agents of the local government, Barbarians and their whole "all civilization is bad" vibe just doesn't fit. There are Barbarians out there, but for now, the PCs can't choose this type of character.
     -Bard. Yep, I'm an old school role player and I hate bards. Show me your favorite Bard character, and I'll show you a PC that can work just as well as ANYTHING else, just with a proficiency in a musical instrument thrown in for flavor. We don't have Chef as a character class, nor Carpenter, nor any other menial task, so why do we have "singing prat"? I do have a player who insists that he could play a Bard so awesome that I would be forced to admit the error of my ways and allow Bards back in, but since I haven't killed his PC so he can bring forth "teh awsum", I haven't seen any proof yet.
     -Monk. My game world, at least the part of it my players are in right now, is medieval European themed, not Oriental themed. And yes, the Monk is very much Oriental themed, don't fool yourself that they're not. "Oh," you say, "they had monks in medieval Europe that trained to fight." Yes, they did (we call them Clerics in D&D, btw), and they trained with weapons as well as their hands, because hitting someone who is wearing metal armor with your fists and feet is stupid. Similarly, my players can choose to be a Samurai archetype Fighter, but it has to be called something else (Knight of the Order of Garglefarg) and they don't use katanas. Why? Katanas are fantastic swords... as long as the bad guys aren't wearing any armor, otherwise they suck, and again, keep your Oriental fantasy out of my European fantasy.
     -Sorcerer. There are Sorcerers in my game world, but that's because all the Sorcerers are Dragonborn (see below). I have been thinking to allow other Sorcerers to appear, but if/when they do, it'll be in a different part of the world than what the PCs are currently in.
     -Warlock. This class has always bothered me, partly because it became really popular in 4th edition and is here in 5th due to nostalgia for that crowd (of which I never was a member of). Mostly for me though, is that the Warlock is inherently greedy - I needed help or I desired the esoteric knowledge or whatever, and something out there answered - and so Warlocks don't really need any other party members, except when their patron compels them to do something and they can't handle it on their own. Plus, the most interesting part of any Warlock character's story (the part where they gained their powers) happens outside of the normal game, in the player's mind, or just between the DM and the player, or even in a Session Zero with the rest of the party merely looking on. I am tempted to begin allowing Warlocks in my game world, but only as a multiclassing option, and only then when the party is on the verge of a TPK.

Races - I do not allow the following races to be PCs:
     -Dragonborn. Here's another 4th edition nostalgia-fest that just grates on me. Why, why WotC, did you give us this race to play? The game itself is called Dungeons & DRAGONS for fuck's sake, why would you want to play anything other than a Dragonborn? It's way too fan-service-y of a race, so I made it important to the backstory of my world and while they exist in my game world, you can't play one. And to be honest, I would have far more been handed the half-dragon template from old 3rd edition, or be given half-dragon stats of the four base races from the outset.
     -Gnome. Yet another race I've long had no liking of, Gnomes have never been well defined in the game, as depending on the edition you're playing they are described as even shorter Dwarves, tall Halflings, really short Elves, or a confusing mix of the above. Listen, in my game world, you get Dwarves and Halflings, and Elves are taller than Humans, and that's it, don't need another race that's too much like the others and confusing to everybody.
     -Half-Elf/-Orc. Oh, good old John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, your estate sued the crap out of TSR for infringing on your work, and while Gygax and company claimed otherwise, these two races were the proof in that pudding. We don't have half-dwarves or half-gnomes or elf-dwarves or halfling-orcs in D&D, because JRR didn't have any of them in his works. I'm down with that, I've already kicked out one race for not having enough of an unique flavor (Gnomes) and wouldn't mind having every possible combination out there - and this is the important part - ONLY IF THEY HAVE THEIR OWN UNIQUE FLAVOR. Trying to not only balance all the benefits and detriments of these new races, but also coming up with something that feels different enough from the core races? Way too much work for too little outcome, so better to just slim down the choices to the iconic races from the beginning. Plus, every Half-Elf turns out to be Tanis Half-Elven from Dragonlance (I hate my parents, both humans and elves hate me, oh woe is me), and every Half-Orc seems to be the result of a horrible rape.
     -Drow/Duergar. Not only am I such a bastard that I restrict classes and races to my players, I also have restricted the sub-races (Lightfoot Halflings, Hill Dwarves, and Wood Elves), at least if their PC is a native of the central empire that the story revolves around. It gives the empire a theme, and also gives me competing kingdoms of the other sub-races to use as a counter-point to the party. Drow and Duergar just fall into this category - if all of the players wanted to play as Drow or Duergar, I would allow it, but one Drizz't knock-off is too many, and I'm not allowing that.

The above races are all from the Player's Handbook and are considered core, but the following are all from Volo's Guide to Monsters and considered optional from the outset. I may let the players eventually play some of these, but for the most part, they'll have to earn the right by making it through this first overarching campaign I have them in, first.
     -Aasimar/Tieflings. Yet again, 4th edition nostalgia fest. There are representatives of both of these half breeds in the game world, but the players can't play one, as even the ones that are extant are more focused on what their Celestial/Infernal forebears are doing than what is going on in the mortal realm.
     -Firbolg. Do exist in the world, but like the Barbarian, very anti-civilization, so don't fit with the party real well.
     -Goliath. Simply don't exist in the world. We have Firbolg, why did we need another playable mini-giant? Is this another 4th edition nostalgia-fest? Probably. Feh.
     -Kenku. These are kind of neat, but with the description of the race as a whole, this is definitely for experienced players only. So for now, not player accessible.
     -Lizardfolk. I also like to lump in with the Lizardfolk all the other nigh-Human monstrous races - Orcs, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, and Goblins - and don't think that all of these are automatically evil in my game world, but until the situation is just right, the players are not going to play any of these. That right situation would either be the whole party playing as a monstrous race, or it could be a PC dies near a tribe of one of these races, and that PC's player decides they're playing a monster that joins in with the rest of the party as a replacement PC.
     -Triton. I'm actually okay with these, but since we're playing land-locked adventures, these really don't make much sense. If we take the campaign to the high seas, these will definitely be allowed into the party.

Remember, if the world makes sense to you, stick to your guns and either the players will hate the restrictions too much and leave, or they'll learn to deal.


EDIT: I somehow missed Tabaxi, sorry about that. Anyway, Tabaxi also not currently allowed, not because I don't like them or think they're too advanced for the table, but because I wanted simple. I'd prefer not only to have Tabaxi (cat folk), Kenku (bird folk) and Thri-Kreen (insect folk), but also a dog folk and rat folk to keep the

5e Game - Part 12

Two sessions have occurred since last I typed about the game, but mostly a lot of RP'ing (that's role playing) happened between the two sessions, and only one big fight. The party spent the past two sessions finishing up the last campaign arc - I've got them lined up to go to level 20 for the overall campaign, so the first arc was levels 1 through 6 and involved the 3.5 adventure from WotC, The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde - and starting the next arc of the campaign (another 3.5 adventure from WotC, The Red Hand of Doom), so mostly talking to me as various NPCs and each other as they figured out what to do as reports of a coming horde of hobgoblins were invading the not-a-kingdom, loose alliance of independent townships immediately to the north of where the PCs were located.

With all of the RP'ing we've done the last two weekends, I'm reminded that my players are more "roll" players than they are "role" players. But, they muscled through it, talked to NPCs as their characters would (I want to, but won't, point out to my players that while it may be funny to make many "asshole" PCs, this practice is keeping the party from earning extra XP for getting good results from said conversations), they got the necessary information, and moved towards the next point in the story. Yes, I am not running a true sandbox, open world campaign, as I am trying to fight murder-hoboism by giving the party clear, government-desired goals (and running prepared adventures), and mostly succeeding.

The biggest issue we had was trying to introduce a new player into the party that didn't really want to play the game as much as they first professed. I'm all for new players, and understand when they're shy, unsure of themselves, as all but the most talented of us started out this way (if I told you I was the best player ever, right from the beginning, would you believe me? I have this large chunk of ocean-front property in Missouri I'd like to sell you...), but complete disinterest in the game, poor attitude towards the other players and me, the DM, and just generally not allowing themself to have any fun? There comes a point where you jut have to sit down with said new player and say "okay, this wasn't fun for you, it's not much fun for the rest of the party for you to be such a downer, maybe the game or the party just aren't for you" and seek out a replacement for them. It's never fun, and more than a bit disappointing because of the expectant joy you feel as a DM when you welcome someone new to the table and then that all just goes away, but it's unfortunately a part of the game. How do you fix that? Act the adult - talk to the player, in a calm and non-threatening manner, as this is not worthy of aggression. If someone just isn't interested in D&D, they haven't necessarily wasted your or the party's time, it just didn't work out with them. For lots of playing groups, sometimes even one play session is one session too many.

It was not all bad, the one combat we held between the two sessions was rather big (two waves of 7 hobgoblins apiece, 2 hell hounds, a hobgoblin captain and a hobgoblin devastator) due to it being the only planned encounter between two long rest periods. The encounter was hard, the players were sweating a little, but overcame the bad guys in the end without any of them dropping to zero HP.

There was an accusation of "murder hoboism" in the after game review - yes, I am a former Army Sergeant, after every game I ask my players if they had fun, and what needs to be improved and what needs to continue happening in the games, it's an unbreakable habit - but from a game several months past, where the party's paladin started to let a wererat (who had just witnessed his buddy get toasted and had NO interest whatsoever in fighting) get away and then proceeded to guide the druid as a dire wolf to hunt down said wererat and kill it. The player who accused the paladin of murder-hoboism may think that's exactly what he saw, but I need to sit down with him and explain that it's not - it's completely different to start to allow an enemy escape and then kill him/it/her, and what murder-hoboism is. Did it violate the paladin's alignment? Well, because the paladin's alignment is Chaotic Good (paladins in 5e don't have to be Lawful Good, they just can't violate their Sacred Oath) and he took the Oath of Vengeance, no, not even a little bit. The problem isn't murder-hoboism or even the paladin breaking their alignment/oath, but the player (the accusatory one) didn't like it, and instead of playing it out through his PC at the paladin PC, he held it in and brought it out of the game, player to player.

The Adult Questions

How adult is your game world? PG? PG-13? R? X?

Before you get too worked up about this, hear me out. However "adult" you want your game world to be, as long as it is enough for you and your gamers, you are correct and doing it right. I'm just here to pose questions, discuss some options, and you can pay as much or as little to this as you wish.

Does your gameworld contain rape, slavery, homosexuality, bastard children, cannibalism, adultery, prostitution, and poly-marriages? How about abortion, orphans/adoption, child abandonment, transgenderism, spousal abuse, rape ("you said rape twice" "I like rape"... which used to be a funny joke in an even funnier movie, but now just brings screams of misogyny and trigger words), alcoholism, and drug abuse/addiction/trafficking? How do people in your world deal with birth, child rearing, marriage, divorce, and death?

I know, I know, I call all this "adult" but what we're really talking about is how real your fantasy world is. At its base, D&D and the like are fairly unreal, high fantasy - most of what I asked about above are rarely touched upon, if ever, and the game is kept rather mild... once you discount all the murdering, foul language, stealing, and physical/mental assaults that happen in a normal adventure. Opposite that, in the real world, today and more so in our past, we know that all of the above existed, and depending on the place and time period, were considered the norm. So how adult is your game world? Do you let your morality or the morality of your players influence what goes into your game world?

Of course you do, we all do. If we didn't, the games we play would be too uncomfortable to be fun. But a little discomfort, a little squeamishness, a little bit of nervous laughter around the table, it can make your game more interesting, more exciting. Notice I used the word "can" and "little", as you as a game master have to figure out what "little" means for your group (and it's different for every potential "adult" theme) and when "little" turns suddenly into "way too much". And sometimes "any" turns "can be fun" into "no fun at all".

What should you include in your game world? As I said, your average RPG, modern, futuristic, or medieval in setting, already contains murder, robbery, phsyical/mental assault, and for most groups, foul language. Beyond those, it's up to you and the makeup of your group. What could send one group spiraling into outright anger and hate could be seen by another group as everyday, same old same old. That's why I included homosexuality and poly-marriages in my list above, not that I believe those who practice either are inherently evil, but as it wasn't all that long ago that homosexuality was not only viewed as morally wrong but was outright illegal in many parts of America, and poly-marriages, while becoming more acceptable in mainstream America, is still not legal. You have to gauge the feelings of your players (not their characters, but the players themselves), and avoid venerating any of the above with groups that find that subject or act utterly abhorrent. No matter what you purport your PCs to espouse or embrace, if they do something you the player or game master find utterly taboo, you will not like yourself at the end of the day. Definitely avoid any subject that your players have experienced in real life, for instance, someone who is a victim of child abuse is probably not going to have fun at the table if you include child abuse in your game world... or might enjoy it too much by getting vengeance on anyone they see performing it, and derailing the game for everyone else in pursuing their new quest.

I am not going to rant at you about my own views of everything I have listed above, but let me pose these questions to you to help you define for yourself what any of the above topics mean to you.
     - Why does this make you uncomfortable or why do you see it as taboo? Is the reason you find it distasteful tied to the fact that it was taught to you as part of a religion (whether you still follow that religion or not)?
     - Are there any situations where this would be acceptable to you in real life?
     - Are there any of the above that used to be taboo in your real life but are now fully acceptable? How about the opposite?

Please note that all of the above may already exist in your game world, but when you "include" any of these, you are bringing that idea or act to the attention of your players. Your game world may be ultra realistic, X-rated already, but what you are showing your players is only the PG level stuff. Any of these that you decide could spice up your game world also requires you find a moral justification for the NPCs in your world to not also find it immediately abhorrent.