rpg

Given my nature, it's really hard for me to withhold information from my players. This leads me either to share too much or too little with them. Either way, the end is the same, the players aren't quite sure what to do and I feel the need to nudge them in a particular direction. For this week's game, I wanted something a bit different. During the previous session, the players revealed that a character they had heard very little about, Robert Haskins, was pretty deeply involved with the kidnapping of the Darkmagics. Hoping that he would have information on where to find Sirius Darkmagic, the PCs wanted to track Robert down and interrogate him.

This sounded like a perfect skill challenge to me. Fortunately, Jeff from the Tome Show already had asked me to do a segment on skill challenges with him and Mike ( @slyflourish ). The thought was that they would help me build a skill challenge for my game. So I sent them a quick update on where we were in game terms and we recorded a 15 minute conversation about the topic on Monday.

Originally, I was thinking there would be one, well-prepped, event where the PCs could run into Robert and attempt to capture him for interrogation. At some point, someone, I believe Mike, suggested that maybe there would be multiple opportunities and the other skill challenges would help decide which of those opportunities the PCs took. This would help the whole challenge feel a bit less linear. With that in mind, I came up with a list of three possible end scenarios.

Depending on which rumors the PCs get, they may attempt to talk to the different NPCs to gather more information/develop a plan. There are three main ways the PCs can attempt to accomplish their goal. The first, and by far the hardest, is to break into Robert's study during the party and attempt to find information about Sirius' location in Andernach. They can exploit the information about the cake, extra staff and special delivery in order to get themselves into the party without trouble. What happens once they are inside is anyone's guess.

The second, would be to leverage the information about the mistress to either extort Robert or get her to set up a meeting with Robert. Since she operates out of the seediest part of town, if it's the latter, he will have a fair number of his guards on him, but not as many as the 1st possibility. For the former, who no one ever goes to these sorts of meetings alone.

For the third, they can attack the night of the guard's birthday bash. If they get too rowdy, the town's guard will probably deal with the drunken ones, leaving just Robert, the disgraced guard and perhaps 1 or 2 more guards in the house. To help make sure the party doesn't end early, they can help the distributor get more beer.

Right away I thought it was a really good idea but I also wanted to give it a twist. Why not start off the night with a random rumor table. They were going to be seeking out information anyways and the information in the rumor table could help me show, not tell, them their options. So I thought about some rumors that could help them figure out the scenarios and easily came up with 10 of them.

1. Robert's 10-year anniversary is coming up soon and he has the finest baker making him and his wife a cake.
2. Robert has been seen leaving his home late at night and heading to the Pete's Tavern, a tavern in the seedier part of town..
3. The head of Robert's guard has a birthday coming up soon and his friends are planning a huge bash.
4. Robert and his wife's anniversary is coming up soon and his staff will be hiring some extra help for the festivities.
5. Robert's senior guard have a weekly card game at the Painted Pony.
6. There are whispers that Robert has a mistress who works out of Pete's Tavern.
7. For their anniversary celebration, Robert's wife is having a gift brought special from her homeland.
8. Robert's guard own the Painted Pony because they've been thrown out of every other bar in Newham.
9. Robert's wife is highly jealous of her husband. While Robert's family may be the richest in Newham, her family in Jesery is far richer.
10. The last time the head of Robert's guard had a party, the whole group of them ended up in the brig after drinking their favorite drink, BlueMoon Ale.

From the rumor table, I created a list of likely NPCs. I tried to give them some very basic background and traits to cut down on the amount of improv I would need to do at the table.

Aiden - Being an arrogant SOB, Robert hires his guardsmen based on friendship rather than skill. His head guard has been his friend since childhood, as have most of the rest of them. He's not incredibly bright but he is overconfident in his abilities. (Easier to bluff than intimidate)

Lady Alexa - Known more for her "specialties" rather than her looks. (Easier to bluff than intimidate, although she's quite "knowledgeable")

Horace the Black - Robert isn't completely stupid. One of the Darkmagic's former guards was fired when Aurora Darkmagic went missing a few years ago. It wasn't the guard's fault and he's been looking for a way to get back at his former bosses for years. He's an excellent guard even if Robert keeps him in the lower pay grades. Knowing Robert's plan to get back at the Darkmagics is payment enough.

Merton - Robert is ordering a rather large cake. Ordering is not quite the right word for it, a better word might be extortion. The flour alone is putting the poor guy out. (Easy to both intimidate and bluff. Oh and easy to bribe)

Gordon - The distributor of the (in)famous BlueMoon Ale. He is low on product however, and needs more if he's to fill the order for the big birthday bash the guardsmen are having.

To start of the session, I had them do something slightly different. Everyone got to roll a d10, with those trained in Streetwise rolling an extra d10. After giving them the corresponding entries from the random rumors table, I told them that they could additional streetwise checks if they wanted. Finnan, the halfling rogue decided to go for it. His check was over 30 so I gave him 3 more rumors.

With the rumors passed out, the players started planning how to use them. This put the story in their hands which was great. Like any group would, they went through several versions of the plan before settling down on something they felt comfortable about. They really liked the idea that most of the guards would be at a birthday party and drunk and/or locked up for the night. However, they put their own twist on the story, saying if most of the guards were off-duty for the night, Robert was more likely to visit his mistress, the Lady Alexa. I had not thought of that option but it made a lot of sense so I went with it.

From there, they decided to do a few little tasks that would make success in their overall plan a bit more likely. They forged a letter from Robert to include with the beer encouraging the celebration. One of the party, the male dwarf paladin, played by my female coworker, went into the den of iniquity to convince the mistress to help the party. In the end, the paladin convinced Lady Alexa, with money and diplomacy, to tie up Robert and leave him for their interrogation.

As a whole, they did really well with their skill checks and the skill challenge wasn't that challenging. To be honest though, that wasn't the point. We had a night where we spent 2.5 hours gaming and 1.5 of them were spent role playing. The loose framework of skill challenges in general but of this one in particular gave me easy tools to organize the game and keep it moving along. The small mini-challenges provided a way to spotlight a few of the characters while keeping that time fairly brief. Overall, it was a huge win and everyone, including myself, had a ton of fun.

Oh and they thought of the perfect end scenario for themselves. They left poor Robert tied up in the tavern, bereft of possessions including his wedding ring. That they sent to his jealous wife with a nice little note on where she can find her husband. Then the party decided it was time to leave Newham.

Yesterday, one of my gaming friends pointed me to an interesting series of posts on a meetup group forum. He told me how a woman posted that she was looking to start a gaming group made exclusively of women and/or homosexuals. The overall response was less than positive with people confusing comfort with maturity. To be honest, I've thought of trying to do a girl's only session myself but haven't tried partly because I'm worried about a similar reaction.

First, a little background. At least 75% of my friends are male. I've always enjoyed doing activities that are seen as boyish: playing sports, spending hours outdoors, woodworking, etc. When I was in middle school, the joke among the adults was that if you ever needed to find me, just look for the large group of boys, I would be in the middle. (I'm still not entirely sure what that means.) So being around a group of guys is second nature to me at this point.

One might think that, given all that experience of just being one of the guys, I would be perfectly at home in all male gaming groups. Unfortunately, that's not entirely true. If I know the guys really well, like my current group, I feel comfortable and am willing to rib and joke with the best of them. For instance, I knew that I would be fine gaming with my regular group when I was willing to joke back about strippers. And one of the things that made me feel comfortable the night we played at Asgard was that I quickly discussed with one of the guys at the table whether or not to cock block one of my players. Those exchanges signaled to me that I was seen as a peer and instantly made a bunch of my anxiety go away.

When I don't feel that levelness, it's really hard for me to game. Gender roles and politics come into play, if only in my own head. I worry about seeming bossy or bitchy or stupid. In terms of decision making, I defer to the guys until I get more comfortable with the group. In addition, I get really quiet and focus on things that are "safe" like tactics. The guys often go through a similar feeling out period. There are fewer swear words and jokes and, to me at least, there is a sense of tension.

While these sorts of things happen in every gaming group, to me they feel amplified by the gender dynamics. That uneasiness sometimes makes me wish I could find a group where I would not have to worry about gender roles. The maturity of the group isn't really the issue, but rather the whole list of things I have to worry about in mixed group situations. Sometimes I want to bypass the whole issue and just be myself right away. I don't want to worry that I'm not fitting into some neat little stereotype of how a woman is supposed to act or talk or that my character's exploits are going to get me a reputation. The thought of gaming with fellow women just seems...simpler.

Obviously, I don't speak for all women. I just wanted to share some of what goes on in my mind when I play in case someone finds it useful. In the end, I love playing with guys and I don't think that's going to change any time soon.

When I design encounters, both story and tactics come into play pretty heavily. Since I'm running a homebrew campaign right now, the base layer is always the story. Where do I think it's going? Who might have issues with the PCs actions? For instance, last night's encounter involved a street fight between the PCs and henchmen of a man in town by the name of Robert. Their recent activities have put Robert's plans in jeopardy and he told his men to be on the look out for the group. Since I knew that my group would be shopping, having the encounter occur near the shops made sense both in game management terms, only one map was needed, and in story terms, a back alley behind a bar and shops seems the perfect locale.

When picking the monsters, I try to visualize the scene. For last night's encounter, I also had 2 new players new to town. I figured a few medium level henchmen might approach them and attempt to recruit them to Robert's side. For this, I picked the King's Sword fighters. Figuring that was a good start, my next thought was that the would probably have some lower level guys there as additional muscle to help the process along. A few minions coming in from the outer fringes of the map sounded like a good idea so I chose some human thugs. Wanting someone who was a bit more of a leader, I then chose Rolf the Butcher as the boss. I figured that the swords and the thugs would be able to help give him and each other combat advantage during the fight. Worried that this group would be ineffective against our swordmage and to give our psion some of his favorite enemies, I added a human hexer into the mix. Finally, I added a few archer minions to the roof tops as further support. I won't lie, running this many different monsters is difficult. However, I knew that there were going to be some new people in our game and I wanted to provide a bunch of different monster types to make for a challenging, potentially scary, but winnable encounter.

With the monsters chosen, it was time to draw the map. From my story, I knew some things that would have to be there, a bar, some shops, an alley way and from my monsters, I knew that I needed a place for the archers and entry points for the monsters that would show up in later rounds. Once I added those elements to the map, I started thinking about things my players might want to do. For instance, I could totally see our halfling rogue wanting to go up to the archers and take them out. So I added some crates to make it possible for him to pull an acrobatics stunt to do that.

So there you have it, how I went about designing a street fight scene. I know there is a ton more that I could have done but I think it came out pretty well for the time I had to spend on it. How do you guys do it?

My players asked for a bit of a recap of their current adventure. I thought I would share it here in case anyone wants to steal one of my ideas for their own campaign. I have a few notes I want to share, so I'll append them to the end of each item.

• The crew started off at Brock's Bar and Grill run by Adeliz and Raymond Brock in Barmouth, Newham Shire. A favorite among the sailors in part because just about anything one wants can be obtained there. Barmouth itself is a rather thriving port city and its wealth is causing some tensions between it and the capital, Newham. They find a job posting from one Hallomak Stromm. They travel north of Barmouth to meet him. On their way, they are attacked by some undead outside a temple to Melora.

  [DM Note: Yes, you can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant, excepting Alice. This starting sequence is the beginning of the long list of reasons I hate starting adventures in taverns. But I was brand new and didn't know any better. :-) Hallomak Stromm is a name mentioned in the 11th level Dungeon Delve. We had started that one as a one-shot when my brother was in town and a number of my players were very interested in who the character was. Also, the players found the concept of a temple to Melora strange. The encounter was adapted from the Graveyard Exterior encounter from Keep on the Shadowfell Side Treks in Dungeon 155.]

• After defeating the undead, they meet Hallomak. His office is full of very old things including a set of books on the History of Arcadia. When they look at the books, they get the feeling that the information in the books is much older than the handwriting and the handwriting in the books change. He also has a globe on his desk that looks a lot like the current world but the names are all different. The halfling, Finnan, sort of recognizes the name of Arcadia, but he knows it as the land of milk and honey. Hallomak asks the group to retrieve a ring from the ancient tomb of a tiefling empress. He fears that a necromancer is searching for the ring right now and that is causing the undead attacks on the local people. They go and retrieve the ring, killing the necromancer in the process.

  [DM Note: I just ran them through the level 5 delve from Dungeon Delves. The players wanted to know what sort of evil ring it was. I decided that it bolstered one's confidence without increasing one's ability. As for the books, I was going for the flavor of how books were copied and preserved before the printing press. In this case, the Stromm family hired scribes who would copy the books over and over again to make sure none of the information was lost. They also tried to make sure no one person copied too much of the books to make it harder for someone to figure where Arcadia was and return before the appointed time. Unfortunately for them, their system did not work. A scribe with the last name Darkmagic was able to gather enough information from the other scribes to determine where Arcadia was and bring a group of humans there to found a town.]

• Returning with the ring, they talk to Hallomak. He invites them to stay for a while especially since school is not currently in session. He has some business to attend to in Barmouth and leaves his right-hand-woman in charge, Hannah. The adventurers spend some time looking around the dormitory and find a secret door triggered by the book, The Owls of Newham Shire. When the bookshelf moves, they hear rattling from below. After killing the a large rattlesnake, they continue to explore the underground area. Their exploration reveals that the tunnels lead from each dormitory to the main house.

  [DM Note: I created the snake encounter so they could learn about the tunnels to the house, hopefully in a fun and interesting way.]

• That night, their sleep is interrupted by the sound of someone moving outside. They find people attempting to break into another one of the dormitories. The gnome leaves to warn Hannah in the main house while the rest attempt to take down the robbers and their ravenous attack dog. They are able to knock out the would-be burglars but the dog got away.

  [DM Note: While it made sense story-wise for one player to run off like that, his decision hurt the party quite a bit. I felt a bit stuck on how to make the experience better. My hope had been that the players would think that perhaps the burglars knew about the tunnels as well and would try to head the off down there. I know I made it way to complicated. But the snake and the robbers were the first encounters I ever created on my own.]

• Some friends of Hallomak's show up. They all decide to try to find the dog lest it harm some of the other locals. Its trail leads them to a hideout in the woods. Upset that anyone would starve a dog, they decide to attack. Eventually, they knock all of the enemies out, including the brutes Hans and Franz, the sorceress/cook, Sabrina, and the leader, Reginald. They interrogate Reginald and find out that he is part of the Free Arcadia Now (FANs). The organization is attempting to overthrow the Darkmagic regime, in part because of the laws restricting access to ironwood in the forests to the north. Currently, ironwood is important to the ship building enterprises of Barmouth and provide a fair bit of income to the loggers in the north. Unfortunately, it is also a source of tension between the humans and the elves, gnomes and other woodland creatures. When they bring the FAN members back to Hallomak's, they find out that Reginald is his son. Upon Hallomak's return, they also find out that according to an ancient accord, Hallomak is the human protector of Arcadia. His son thinks this means that Hallomak should also be the ruler, but Hallomak doesn't see it that way.

  [DM Note: Finnan decided to make the attack dog into a pet and named it Chompers. They have great fun together with the halfling performing acrobatic stunts with the dog from time to time.]

• With the necromancer dead and the local FANs defeated, there isn't much for the adventurers to do around Hallomak's. Hannah tells them that she is worried about her niece, Margaret, who is expecting her first child. The soon-to-be mother seems sad of late. To cheer her up, Hannah has crocheted a baby blanket made from special wool from the north. The sheep there drink from springs fed by glacial lakes filled with the water left by the magical glaciers that once covered the land. She hopes the blanket will provide comfort and protection to the mother and child. However, Hallomak offers the gnome artificer a chance to stay. Currently, Hallomak is developing an alternative to ironwood and he really could use the gnome's help. Given that the gnome's home was destroyed by loggers because it was made of ironwood, he is more than willing to stay and help out.

  [DM Note: The blanket is a magic item based on the amulet of protection. I created the story line about the ironwood alternative because the group felt a bit uneasy with the gnome. Between the gnome leaving to warn Hannah during the encounter and his attempt to coup de grace one of the robbers after being insulted, there was a lot of tension at the table surrounding the character and it was decided that it might be best to retire the him in a respectful manner.]

As a further note, those of you who read my description of the Earthen Guard paladins on the Dungeons & Dragons community blog might notice a resemblance to Hallomak. I based the Earthen Guard on him although he is much more moderate in his outlook and he uses diplomacy in a proactive manner rather than destroying things in reaction.