Before I go on, I feel compelled to talk about playing tabletop role playing games remotely. If COVID-19 had come about even a decade ago, it would have been much more boring for us tabletop gamers, as there was not as many options then as there are now. Oh, and also much harder for certain workers to telecommute, but we all know that middle managers hate not having direct control over their underlings, increased productivity be damned, and so that heady dream for many is not going to last much longer. But these days, if you want to play an RPG but not actually sit at a table with other people to do it, there are so many options for you. And it may be that you want to play a certain game but no one in your locale wants to do it, you can generally go to the internet these days and find someone who is willing to play that game with you. Better voice and video chat programs and VTTs are just the tip of the technological iceberg, with all kinds of options out there now to organize your in-person playgroup - set up a Facebook private group where the players and GM can share files, out of game conversations, and even keep the schedule posted for the group, and that's just one option available - or even help you find a group, or keep track of your lovingly crafted world with a wiki-like layout.
Back to the story - we had done it! We had vanquished the global pandemic and were meeting in person (mostly)! We had a schedule... a wonky one that was this Tuesday followed by Friday in the next week, back to Tuesday the week after, and again Friday the week after that. And it kind of worked, but it was hard to keep track of, no one really liked it, so we switched - one night a week (Tuesday), every week, same time, same place. Yes yes, one of our members had to leave two hours into the session to go to a bible study, but that was only every other week. This will work! Except that did not quite work for everyone, either. And so we made our final change, to the only other night that a majority of the group had available (Monday) and even moved it back to a later time to give certain members time to come in from work and others to get some more sleep in before their overnight shift... and we never had a full session in two months. Listen up, fellow DMs/GMs/Storytellers/Referees/whatnots - if the schedule of your game sessions barely work for you, they are not going to work for your players either. Yes, they are your friends, but it is better to establish a day and time that works for you, the person running the game, and if your players have life changing events that mean they cannot make the established day and time, well, if you really want to continue the campaign, you will wish them well in finding a different game and get someone else to fill their seat. Or you get what happened to me - I caved and adjusted the schedule and adjusted the schedule and adjusted the schedule, and now my campaign (which I had outlined to level 20 and PC retirement) is dead as disco and I am working up a new one. As the Beatles' famously sang, oh blah dee, oh blah dah, life goes on.
After whining on for two paragraphs (the middle paragraph above was more me being jealous of the toys you "young whippersnappers" take for granted, but at least I get to play with them, so less of a whine), all is not gloom and doom going forward. Okay, so I have to establish a day and time, see who in the old group wants to participate, and find some new players to fill empty spots at the table. Upside - I stand to be making new friends. This break also allows me to update my house rules as I was feeling a lack in certain areas, particularly in my critical and fumble tables. For my first campaign, I borrowed Seth Skorkowsky's tables, and no offense to Mr Skorkowsky, they are not as good as I had hoped they would be for 5th edition. As Seth has admitted that he prefers older editions of D&D, and these tables were meant for those editions and not 5e, the fault is pretty much mine for using them when I was warned not to. In their place, I am going to use the crit/fumble tables from Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else, a collaborative work over on the DM's Guild that looks to be a lot more interesting and was purpose built for 5e. I am also going to use the expanded Lingering Injuries table from Lost Notes. I am sticking with playing out combat on a grid and while I am working on my 3d printer to get more terrain going, I am also changing scale, going from the classic 28/32mm "heroic" scale to about half that and playing with 15mm miniatures. That is going to be a post in and of itself, more details there. I will be sticking with my 3' squares, though, as I do still like the finer detail it gives to combats and feels more realistic (at least to me, and my old rattan, metal, and leather habit).
Another major change to my game is less a house rule and more of how I want to be portraying my monsters and NPCs in battle - they do not necessarily ALL need to fight to the death. Like it says in this journal's subtitle, I am a grumpy old grognard, and it is hard to resist falling into the OSR trap of having every combat end with one side or the other being completely wiped out. Now I do remember early in this last campaign I tried to make a couple of low level monsters run after inflicting a little damage on the party, and the party chased them down and killed them. Pretty disheartening. Now, not all monster types will have a morale score - I am not going to spend my prep time giving one to every monster in the Monster Manual, but when I build adventures, I will be thinking ahead on where each monster type's breaking point is, if they have one - as some just do not seem, thematically, that they would. Undead and constructs will fight to the death, generally. Humanoids, giants, dragons, as beings who can and generally do have families and responsibilities and reasons to live, yes, they will decide a fight is not going their way and skedaddle. Then again, even in those broad categories of monster types, there will be individuals who are willing to die for whatever, just to keep the players guessing.
I am also still pondering Feats in the new campaign. Some are overpowered - Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter are very munchkin-y - but some, I think, add great depth to the game but are not used much. I believe that I will be allowing them, for several reasons. In my last campaign, I was very restrictive about which classes and races could be used, and also did not allow multiclassing. My group was mostly newer players and I was working on giving them an easier to understand learning experience. This next game I also believe that most of the group will be newer players, but I will be using an intro adventure (as a bit of an extended Session Zero) that is made specifically to teach new players and GMs how to play D&D, so we are good there. More on that intro adventure in the post about 15mm minis. No, instead of restricting the players to certain races and classes, I will be using fate to get everyone out of their comfort zone - every player will create their character at the table in front of everyone else, and they will roll for their stats in sequence. The traditional method is to roll up six stats and then place them where you want them so you can get the best {insert class here}, because that is what you want to play. No, when you roll in sequence, the first stat everyone rolls will be put in their STR score, the next in DEX, then CON, and so on. After that, then they will get to pick race and class. You may want to play a fighter, but if your STR is an 11 and your CON is a 10, but your DEX is a 17, you may start thinking about playing a rogue instead. Or you could go for fighter anyway, and see if you can make it work. That should get the players to think more of the RP aspects of the game and a little less of the combat, and also keep them away from min/maxing and abusing any feat, broken or otherwise, is harder if you cannot build a PC specifically to use said feat. That is my goal, but of course, if all the players refuse to follow it, I will change my mind and let them roll and assign their stats as they see fit. I think they would be missing out and really restricting themselves from not trying something new, but we shall see what tomorrow brings. Having said all of that, I am not a complete monster - if any of the PCs die once the campaign has started and that player wishes to continue with the group, they will be able to roll and assign stats as they see fit for the new PC.
I am still using the modified speed factor initiative system I used in the last campaign, as it kept our combats interesting, but we did fail (me included) to declare our intended actions before rolling every round's initiative, and I do intend to make the next group get into that habit early. I believe this method worked well for my group because the everchanging initiative every round gave the right amount of tension, and because the initiative order did change every round and is therefor tracked by the party at large, I as the DM never had to mess with tracking initiatives. When you can, make your party do some of the administrative lifting for you - not only did my group track initiative (at least, their own and any sidekicks, mounts, etc, they had) but they also tracked the damage done to the bad guys. This last had the added benefit of providing a reminder to the party of what they had done to who/what, and if any of them asked, I would state how battered each monster looked. In other words, I would not say "that ogre has 50 hp left and the other one has 25 hp left", but I would say "that ogre is bleeding but still looks otherwise fine, while the other one is starting to look for a way out of this fight as she is pretty beaten up".
And finally, probably the largest change from my last campaign is that I will be running my version of Eberron: Rising from the Last War, which I have been calling "Airberron". You can see my early musings of this modification to that setting here and here. Yes, my last campaign setting was of my own creation, which I do prefer, but as I also competed in the competition that led to WotC adopting Eberron as the new official campaign setting for D&D way back in the early 2000s, I have long been fascinated by it. Plus, the setting itself is different enough to your traditional, medieval European fantasy setting, it has really stuck out from the rest of the crowd, to me at least. More details on that campaign setting and my changes to it will be in a future post. With that, I bid you fair audience, adieu for now.
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