Tabletop Diversions: Planet Thirteen

Showing posts with label Planet Thirteen. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

DragonCon 2014 : Here's What I'm Running (So Far)

This is probably the first of several posts I will make prior the event itself because I'm really looking forward to DragonCon this year and find myself daily checking for updates.

Gaming event submission has been open for a few weeks, and registration to play is ~~going live very soon~~ live as of Monday 7/21. I decided yesterday to apply to run 3 sessions and all 3 were approved.

The Purple Worm Graveyard (Planet Thirteen)

I had a lot of fun with this when I ran it in December 2013. My concern, then as now, is that it could all end early depending on what choices they make. I may fiddle with the module a bit to prevent at least one of the possibilities. But I will have a second adventure on hand, just in case.

I chose to run this at 9AM, the Friday of the con.

I don't know if I'll get a full table or not, but last year the b/x game at 9AM Friday had 18 players (way too many) because people kept showing up with nowhere to put them, so I have hopes that I'll get my 6. I have been running as many as 8 with my open table campaign, and I find that is really the top end of what's fun. Four to six is the sweet spot; everyone has a better chance to get involved or perhaps, I just do a better job of involving everyone.

The Dungeon of Akban (S&W Quickstart)

I ran this in November 2013 and really enjoyed it. There's no way the players will complete the dungeon in 4 hours, but there are multiple paths they can take that will allow them to satisfy at least one of several possible victory conditions.

I know, I know, you can't win at role-playing, but for a one-shot, I think it's nice for there to be a sense of achievement, even if it's, "well we didn't find X, but we found Y and Y was pretty cool!"

When i ran it in November, I converted it for use with Labyrinth Lord (that took about 3 minutes). For DragonCon, i'm going to run Swords & Wizardry : Whitebox. That's how much I like Whitebox.

I might sign up to run one more slot (probably a 2nd Purple Worm Graveyard), but that depends both on what I sign up to play, and what else looks interesting on the schedule, and how much time I want to leave for the pop-up zine library. At this point, I'm only signed up to play D.B.A. (I've heard many times that the best way to understand these rules is to have someone show you, so that's my plan!)

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

How to Host a Dungeon Changed My Life

photo "borrowed" from Planet Thirteen Games.

The other day (week), I had a life-changing experience.

That sounds a little dramatic.

What I mean is, I had a paradigmatic shift in my approach to thinking about dungeon design, all thanks to How to Host a Dungeon, from Planet Thirteen.

I picked this up when I ordered The Purple Worm Graveyard because 1)it's about dungeons (duh, do you need a better reason?) and 2)it's a solitaire game. I was powerless to resist it.

In brief: the game starts with the land in a pre-dungeon state and takes it through several ages, from construction to manipulation to the arrival of The Big Bad and beyond if you desire. The resulting map and history can then be used to create a dungeon for use with your favorite RPG.

So, what exactly was so great about it?

For one, I rarely draw dungeons from the side-view (like the example of the Haunted Keep's levels in Moldvay Basic) but there is an obvious benefit for starting there - it's easy to see how the levels physically relate to each other and where the connections might be.

Second, it reaffirmed the benefit of something I've been doing lately: drawing maps on blank paper. The lines aren't perfect and the dimensions aren't precise(that can be hand waived as "settling" and such) but, importantly, it frees you from the stiff linear nature of graph paper. The resulting look can be more organic or in my case, it looks like the levels were constructed by drunken dwarves.

Finally, the game gave me a real sense of the history of the place. This is the part that really gets me excited.

Knowing why each level was constructed, it's easier for me to produce a traditional top-down map: I know what features to include on each level. I also know what may have survived from the earliest days of the dungeon, and what has likely been overlaid/built-upon/destroyed by successive generations of inhabitants. When I felt like sketching a few additional levels, i found it easy to justify their existence into the whole story.

The best part? I only completed the first two "Ages" of the dungeon and my brain was off and running! This is absolutely worth checking out if you're into solitaire games and/or dungeon settings.

Will this have any benefits at the table? I'll find out soon enough, as I'm going to be running a dungeon-based campaign (I'm calling it a "mini mega-dungeon campaign", an idea taken from Dyson's Delve) in this dungeon in less than 2 weeks.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Purple Worm Graveyard : Another Social Game for Strangers

Saturday, at Giga-Bites Cafe in Roswell, I ran my second old school one-shot featuring B/X.

Like last time, I decided to run a published adventure, rather than one of my own. This time, the players would venture into The Purple Worm Graveyard, a short module for low level PCs (1st - 4th) from Planet Thirteen. At just $6.00 for the print and PDF, you can't go wrong and the cover is too cool to not buy the print copy!

photo from Planet Thirteen site:
http://planet-thirteen.com/Purple.html

I had four players, three of which played in my last game (making the word "strangers" somewhat questionable) and one new, who had only played 4th ed. You can imagine his shock when he rolled up a character in under 30 minutes.

The party consisted of 1 elf, 1 cleric and 2 thieves. Not exactly the makeup of a party with "long term survival" oozing from them. In the first encounter, I almost had a TPK on my hands.

On their initial foray, they made their way down a hall to a chamber without a door. The elf moved to the front to use his infravision to check things out.

Despite hearing something singing Barry White, interspersed with gnawing and chewing (yes, i sang some of Barry White's I Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe and made flesh munching sounds), they decided to go SWAT team on the room's inhabitants. First a torch was thrown into the room for light, which by luck (i.e. the dice) didn't go out, and in their favor, they achieved surprise. This was followed by a hail of missiles after which melee was joined and rather vicious, as much for the PCs as the monsters.

The party survived due to a failed morale roll for the monsters, but then, as they searched the room and then discussed going to town to hire some retainers, i rolled the d6 for wandering monsters and up came a '1'. Fortunately, it was just a lone grub and bug infested zombie and the party made short work of it - a magic missile finally blowing it to pieces, scattering bone, dust and bug bits everywhere.

The added "muscle" (a gardener and a poet) wasn't much help, but, by a wonderfully creative solution, the party survived an encounter with a 15HD, 72 HP, purple worm with only 1 PC death (Sadly, the guy who has only played 4th ed. Well, we warned him that the game is deadly) and managed to make out with as much loot as they could carry.

I'm not going to tell you HOW the party did it, but it was pretty rad, required rolling the dice, and didn't succeed on the first attempt.

***

On the whole, I felt more relaxed this time, but I was lacking some energy - between having a cold that I'm just recovering from and not getting much sleep thanks to my 2 year old, I was worried i couldn't bring my A game. A Monster Energy Drink helped a bit with that.

I remembered to buy 2 waters right up front and I did better keeping track of initiative, although that's probably due to the general lack of combat (3 total, I think).

For the PC that died, the player rolled the damage die for the purple worm, so at least it put the chance of survival on his luck with the dice and not mine. That got a positive reaction and I think I'll try to work that in more often.

Everything was rolled in the open - if it wasn't, it was accidental on my part. I don't think this detracted from the suspense or the excitement. Instead, everyone watched the die roll and felt relief, or groaned, at the result.

My new GM screen worked well, but I still have trouble reading the To Hit table for monsters. When I start my campaign in 2014, I'll be sure have an easily readable copy on an index card with the values i'll need to look at most often on it - i.e. if i know the monsters don't have more than 3 HD, then i only need those lines of the table on the card.

Although I originally was thinking about some kind of actual sandbox world, or a mega-dungeon campaign, I'm now thinking an episodic campaign, in which I can work in various modules each session, might be fun.

As for the module itself, it's short (13 rooms and change). It could all end rather early depending on which way the party chooses to go at any given intersection. However, my only real issue was the lack of dimensions for the rooms and halls, but that was solved by tracing the map onto graph paper.

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