I'm running 4E in the style of an imaginary long-lost German console RPG called Untervolkstum II: Doppeleffekt (Underfolklore II: Twin Effect), complete with maps hacked together from Link to the Past, PC sprites from Final Fantasy Tactics, 8-bit custom-designed monster sprites, a chiptunes soundtrack playing in the background, and a storyline that continues from an imaginary original game (Untervolkstum) but 5000 years in the future.

I outlined the overall premise of the campaign over here.

Our first session was today and it was really cool. I posted the first AP up here and will continue to link to future APs and other stuff as we continue the campaign.

I'll try to remember to take some pictures next time because the maps and tokens that we're using are a major part of what makes it awesome.

Thanks, Andy. Here's the hacked map I used for the first encounter, in two pieces so you can print it out on two pages.

Love the map, and the concept of video game-y 4e.

Yeah, one of the gnoll huntmasters spent the entire fight raining arrows down on the party while perched on the tongue of the tomb entrance to the right.

Next session, moving platforms (already working on the maps)...

I did not but I will now! Thanks Jonathan.

Roger, maybe? I mean, I can imagine replaying an encounter if it one goes totally belly-up terrible. I don't think there are going to be specific places where the game is saved, though. Most likely, if we get a TPK or near enough that pressing on looks not so fun, we'll just rewind as far as the players want to. I'm intentionally designing encounters on the hard side, so it certainly possible that things will go badly.

Posted By: Eero TuovinenI don't know if this interests you at all, Jonathan, but it's what jumps up to me here: would you say that the fun in this game comes from the color elements and storytelling you guys do, or does the D&D game have something to do with it as well? (Fine storytelling, by the by; I like your video game fetish.) I'm asking because the 4th edition D&D doesn't seem like a system I'd choose myself for those purposes, so I'm wondering why you ended up with this combination.

4E is almost shockingly bad at heroic fantasy, and particularly at this strange subgenre of super-powered gonzo heroic fantasy that DnD has carved out over the years in my heart. But it is extremely good at old-school console RPGs. Let's look at some of the similarities:

-- Linear story lines with minimal room for variation. Crono Trigger had a grand total of 12 different endings, plus the "You Lose" screen, and that was considered amazing. 4E requires you to have actual maps combined with carefully orchestrated enemies to work well, and so your choices are "do the encounter as scripted" or "light the DM's prep on fire."

-- Extremely limited move set. While Gau in Final Fantasy 6 could do over 250 unique moves thanks to the Rage system, Sabin pre-Esper is limited to "punch a dude," "punch a dude with a special command input," "body slam a dude," "chi blast," "use an item," and "run like hell." In the Seiken Densetsu games (Secret of Mana is one), featured as a screenshot in the game pitch, you can attack, use an item, or use one of 8 spells. One of the three characters in Secret of Mana can't use spells at all! The Legend of Zelda originally appeared on a console with only two buttons on the controller. Meanwhile, in 4E, I seriously was able to copy all the text (fluff included) of all my moves out of a PDF and fit it onto a single side of a sheet of paper. The other side had my complete character sheet in one column and my backstory in the other.

-- Emphasis on local tactics rather than large-scale strategy or logistics. Console RPGs use maps and encounter setups that make high-level strategy impossible but small-scale tactics interesting - the encounters are probably random, the enemies don't even exist until the moment you find them, and Emperor Ghestal is going to screw the world over for power without possibility of recourse or reconsideration. The longest range attack in 4E is less than a football field, but holy crap is moving a couple of squares a big deal, and convincing the King to outlaw slavery is either impossible or an exercise in DM fiat.

-- Limited room for character variation. In both console games and 4E, there is simply not a mechanical base that allows you to do things outside of the particular niches that are already for you. In Final Fantasy 6, you can try to make Sabin into a mage, and you will succeed if you are willing to grind monsters endlessly, but it's not a very useful or optimal path. In 4E, you can try to make a Halfling Fighter with a 10 in Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, but you will be hard-pressed to be useful against level-appropriate enemies.

That all sounds awful by the usual standards I see on story-games.com. But, those old games are fun. I still think they're fun. I'm playing Final Fantasy 6 again now, and I first played it over 15 years ago. The extreme limits of space and technology forced writers to compress their stories into a form like haiku, compact and elegant, and there's good fun to be had there. Extreme limits can by liberating, in contrast to the tyranny of the empty page.

Of course, the core gameplay of those console games, either menu-based or real-time, is the same gameplay we have today in modern games, and was executed as well then as now. Stabbing dudes in Zelda is fun. Stabbing dudes in 4E is also fun. It is a similar fun, and not very deep, but it holds up well to the test of time. So 4E also brings that to the table

Eero, interestingly, this doesn't seem like much work for me because I enjoy the genre and physical crafting of play components so much. Honestly, I've been searching for an idiom that makes 4E work for me, because the kind of roleplaying I normally like running is much more player-driven, narratively, and also relatively low-prep. 4E is neither, really.

The earlier encounters I was trying to prep just seemed overwhelming to even think about, especially making well-designed, full-color maps from scratch with interesting terrain. The commercial dungeon tiles are okay, I guess, but honestly seem pretty boring in many ways. They are not highly interactive, they have no moving parts, a lot of them are more or less the same, etc. Their most interesting feature is difficult terrain, it seems. But being able to hack old school video game maps (which are already layed out in tiles and are already well designed, with interesting features and clever layouts) makes all that a lot easier.

Also, I can rationalize the relatively low-level of player driven plots and limited narrative branching if I try to imagine the game as a CRPG or Zelda game. That seems easier to me than trying to force 4E to be much more flexible, just because I hate the idea of improvizing maps on whiteboards and the like, based on whatever the players decide to do. The game, in my mind, seems largely about moving colorful tokens around on full color maps. That's where the color and imagery lives. Doing it on a whiteboard would kill that dead for me, I think. So what I'd rather do is throw down some maps and let the players decide how to approach a fixed set of challenges (sneaking? throwing switches? frontal assault? intimidation? etc.). Again, this opens up small scale tactics while closing off large-scale strategy.

Similarly, small-scale character moments happen, rather than the players choosing large-scale ones like, um, "I'm going to hunt down the man who killed my father," and sending the game off in a different direction. For example, there was a mini-cutscene where Melia and Genia left Korin standing next to the plaque at the end of the first encounter. And Dev gave her a very short monologue of a few lines about the relationship between herself and her mysterious ancestor, the Gravesinger. That was awesome, as a form of player expression of character, but, yeah, much smaller scale than you see in most indie RPGs. "My ancestor is the Gravesinger? I wonder what that means for me..."

But, this was only prep and the first session. Hopefully these kinds of things will become clearer as we play more, including whether we can open things up a bit and make the game significantly less linear. I'm just worried that'll require me to prep a while bunch of different maps and components beforehand, whipping out the ones for whichever encounter the players decide to do first. Maybe if they decided what they wanted to do next at the end of one session, so I could design the components for the next session based on their decisions?

Map 4, Tomb Interior part 2 with a page of bits to go with it. The two lions block the central north passage until the PCs do stuff on either side. On the right side, cut around the left and right edges of the key-shaped blocks over the pit, then slip the floating platform under the key blocks, letting it slide up and down, carrying PCs over the pit. The blocks can, of course, push PCs off the platform into the pit, as can any enemies in that area (such as the included ghosts). The three switches in front of the platforms on either side must be pressed at the same time for, uh, something to happen.





P.S. This map's all about squeezing or being small.

Eric just sent me an email about that, actually. He was suggesting that the "mindless fights" be modeled off the combat grid, as skill challenges or other things, to prevent me from having to make maps for grinding or whatever. Personally, I always hated grinding, but there may be a way to simulate it, like, uh:

SKILL CHALLENGE: GRIND

Make any number of skill or attack rolls to grind monsters, expending At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailys as needed. For each target hit or each skill accomplished, gain XP according to the following chart. For each skill roll failed or target missed, take damage according to the following chart. Rests, healing surges, and items can be used to heal damage as normal. You can't roll the same skill or use the same power twice before deciding to end the skill challenge. AOE rolls can be made against 1D4 targets at a time, player chooses levels.

DIFF______XP______DAMAGE
15------------50------------5
18------------100----------8
20------------150----------10
etc.

Can you get your pics together and print onto overhead projector sheets*? Then you could overlay any layer you wanted, given the ability to pick up minis and tokens.

*EDIT: Transparencies was the word I was looking for.

April suggested printing on overhead sheets, but there's some stuff that needs to be transparent, like when a room fills with mist or smoke and the players still need to be able to see through it. And I don't know how to print semi-transparent stuff. The mist is actually the problem because I have, for example:

Slide 1. A room with a statue in it that the players can destroy.
Slide 2. Same room, with destroyed statue.
Slide 3. Same room, filled with mist.
Slide 4. Same room, with destroyed status and filled with mist.

That's four maps for 1 room, which seems like overkill, but the layering of the statue/mist makes it hard to do it any other way.

Glad you like it, Bret. I think you'd probably want to put something clear over your screen to protect it, if you're gonna try placing minis on a laptop screen.

"4E is almost shockingly bad at heroic fantasy, and particularly at this strange subgenre of super-powered gonzo heroic fantasy that DnD has carved out over the years in my heart. "

I have never had a problem running D&D 4E. In fact, I have greatly enjoyed running it. Its a shame the new game does not appeal to you but that is not what we are here to talk about. Personally, I like the Original poster's idea. I think its unique. Good work and have fun!

Another idea for mist, similar to Mark's: we could cut the mist pieces out of very thin colored paper (the kind that's nearly see-through, sold at art stores) or thin sheets of colored plastic (which I've also seen at art stores). I'll check it out and tell you if it looks useful.

Also, I'll be posting some examples of item cards that I'm making for the game.

First draft item cards are here.

Colin, I suspect that, in our game, having the players able to skip stuff the GM's spent time planning and prepping tokens and maps for would just be read as a big "fuck you" all around (because of how complicated and time consuming this is in 4E, especially if you're hacking together all your own maps and sprites like I am). Instead, we're attempting to simply cut out all the stuff that's lame or sucks, which is something that'll clearly take some time to work out, since both the players and myself are relatively new to 4E and it'll take us both a while to figure out how to approach encounters or encounter design in such a way that they're all-awesome all the time.

We finished the first dungeon today. It was pretty awesome. Here's a recap of the rooms, which you can map to the photo above:

Room 1 (far right): Mummies. Eric's tiefling warlock, Malia, snuck in first and set one on fire with her mind. Unfortunately, it lurked right next to the door and got an opportunity attack as Dev's dwarf warden, Korin, came in. We decided they did 7 damage instead of 5 when they were on fire. This encounter was great and was paced just right.

Room 2: Skeletons & Bats. Eben's gnome bard, Genia, was the hero of this one, pushing one skeleton into the pit and luring another into trying to jump across. The second skeleton failed and also fell in. All in all, this encounter was a bit slow and fairly static due to lack of room to move. Bats probably should have been minions with high AC/Reflex making them hard to hit instead of having 10 HP. Having three skeletons only worked because two fell into the pit. Malia teleporting to the other side of the pit was cool. As they polished off the remaining bats, the gnoll chieftain known as The Great Rondu and his bodyguard, Marshall, came in through the left skull door, bounded across the pit, and jeered at them before advancing through the dungeon ahead of them. Then Korin heaved Genia across the pit and Dev took 10 to leap his own character across.

Room 3, Part A: Right Side Ghosts. Since their way forward was blocked, the group decided to try the right side of the room first (since it didn't involve the pit and the moving platform). Both of the key-shaped strings of blocks were being circled by three floating dwarven ghosts moving at a speed of two along a fixed path. Genia and Korin approached one of the ghosts, tried to make a Diplomacy check, and rolled low. The ghost merely recited the rhyme it had been give to say:

This tomb was sealed in days of old
Once with amethyst, twice with rose
For those who seek what the Gravesinger stole
Once with amethyst, twice with rose

Having tried that, Genia decided to just trying walking past the ghosts towards the three switches and the treasure chest that they surely opened. Meanwhile, the Great Rondu and Marshall were trying and failing to get the chest to open, because they could only stand on two switches at the same time. However, as Genia moved past the first ghost, it turned and attacked her. Korin rushed to her defense and soon the group was fighting all three ghosts, because the other ghosts joined in the scrum as they came around on their fixed path and found their movement blocked. Unfortunately for the group, the dwarven ghosts were each 4th level skirmishers with 40 HP, because I figured the group wouldn't fight all of them. Oh well. They hacked their way through, though Dev had Korin drink the group's only potion (gained after the gnoll fight, I think). Once defeated, the three ghosts faded back into the three skulls hanging on the wall (which I thought was a nice little design touch on my part).

There was a short cutscene where the Great Rondu ordered Marshall, a minion, to attack the group, but the gnoll bodyguard was easily bested and the two gnolls booked a hasty retreat over towards the other treasure chest. Then the group opened the chest, stepping on the three switches, and gained the Amethyst Dagger, a warlock implement that grains the user concealment against everyone under the warlock's curse. Malia naturally equipped it right away.

Room 3, Part B: Left Side Ghosts. On the other side of the room, the group quickly tried to formulate a plan, but ended up largely winging it and not having things go off exactly as they wanted. The floating platform could be moved one space in any direction as a minor action, but only by characters currently on top of the platform. Initially, Malia stepped on and moved it towards the far side, running straight into a ghost, but planning on avoiding the attentions of the other two by moving quickly. Then Genia leaped onto the platform and spent another minor action to keep moving it forward. Dev had Korin move around to the small opening on the right wall, planning on squeezing through once the platform was in position on the far side. However, Korin ended up being right next to the path of one of the ghosts coming around the corner (small oversight on the group's part) and, soon enough, Korin had marked both ghosts and was drawing them out of the path of the third. Another slog ensued, but doing away with two ghosts was easier than three.

Once again, the Great Rondu told Marshall to kill the party and once again Marshall was easily driven back. This time, the gnolls leaped over the wall (which they can do as computer-controlled characters) and hid behind the lion statues. The characters opened the second treasure chest and obtained the Rose Baton, a bard-implement (sense the pattern?) that grants +2 damage bonus to one ally after a rest.

to be continued...

That first post was all we completed in the second session of play, partially because of the slogfest with the ghosts. Today we completed the following:

Room 3, Part C: Mini-Boss Fight (M. Tiger). The players proceeded up to the lion statues, which also had the ghost's poem written on the base. Malia stood right next to one statue and touched it with the Amethyst Dagger while Genia stood a ways back and waved the Rose Baton at the other. Both statues exploded, doing 5 fire damage to Malia (which she soaked, being a tiefling) and bringing the characters face to face with the gnolls once more. Retreating back into Room 4, the Great Rondu told Marshall to once again kill the party but reminded the gnoll bodyguard to "drink your potion this time!" Marshall complied and sudden swelled into the giant tiger-looking sprite you see neat the top-center of the photo. Eric suggested that the mini-boss's name be changed to "M. Tiger," which sounded great to me.

This fight was actually way cooler than I anticipated. I based super-Marshall's stats on the Fae Panther from the MM, which gave him a teleport 5 move action that the players initially had no idea about and a charge attack that knocked victims back 2 squares. So M. Tiger began by charging forward and knocking characters steadily backwards down the narrow, 2-square corridor in the center of Room 3. Genia and Malia, seeing how this was going, backed into Room 2 and shot at M. Tiger through the door with ranged attacks. Korin initially braced the door by herself, figuring that the mini-boss would have to squeeze to fit through the door, giving combat advantage. However, M. Tiger then used teleport to enter Room 2 and all hell broke loose.

Genia leaped across the pit and started sniping at the boss from the other side. Korin moved around to the right of the mini-boss, hoping to bullrush M. Tiger and knock him into the pit. However, his bullrush sputtered and the mini-boss's attack knocked him back in the far corner with Malia. Of course, since Korin had marked M. Tiger with her warden class ability, that meant the mini-boss was advancing on both of them, rendering Malia's concealment and invisibility powers increasingly moot. Luckily M. Tiger was finally dispatched before things got even thornier for the party.

Room 4: Secret Tomb Puzzle. Moving into the next room, they encountered the ghost of one of Svartalfaheim's ancient kings. He informed them that, having unlocked the amethyst and rose seal, they were entitled to the greatest treasure ever known to dwarvenkind... but he couldn't really remember where it was. Something about a secret chamber that could only be reached by fire. Genia and Malia quickly set about lighting the torches in the four corners of the room, but the king said: "That's better, but not quite enough, I think. Clearly we need even more fire." They tried to light the skull-shaped stone blocking their path on fire, but that really didn't work. Since there wasn't much else in the room, Korin picked up the rug and looked under it, but there wasn't a trapdoor or pit there. In the end, Malia set the rug on fire with her mind and the flames leapt up, forming a burning doorway in the form of a flaming portrait of the king.

I placed the map tile for the secret tomb on the table and then placed a copy of the flaming portrait on the wall, opposite the king's ghost (which had moved to the secret tomb when the portal opened) and a treasure chest that stood in front of an alcove holding the king's bones. Malia jumped through the portal first, not afraid of some fire damage. Korin jumped through after, getting singed a bit. Genia waited in Room 4. Malia tried to open the treasure chest first, but it was apparently sealed against all evil, demonic things and, being a tiefling, she couldn't open it. But Korin did, obtaining the Skull Hammer, which dealt +1 necrotic damage and, as an Encounter power on a successful hit, half the original damage as Wall 3 thunder damage, proceeding as a shockwave from the first target.

On a successful Arcane roll, Malia learned and explained that the Skull Hammer was effectively the "Master Sword" from the original Untervolkstum game, a weapon of great evil obtained and tamed by the Gravesinger before they fought the evil sorcerer. During the original game, the Gravesinger cleaned out this dungeon, which originally contained a great evil, and turned it into the royal tombs, but some evil had managed to sneak back in through the cracks in the 1000 years since the original game ended. In any event, Korin was able to use the Skull Hammer to destroy the skull-shaped stone blocking their path, and they proceeded to the boss-fight in the final chamber.

to be continued...

BTW, here's the flaming rug and portal made of fire connecting to the secret tomb. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

That's going to be a pretty interesting product you're making, I imagine.

cc, really?

You do such good work and you're going to do that?

Room 5, Part A: Boss Teaser (The Great Rondu). As they entered the final room, the gnoll chieftain was standing before the large tablet on the raised platform, cackling that he was merely moments away from unlocking godlike powers... but he might as well take the time to destroy the party first. Rondu jumped down the stairs to attack, but his stats were basically those of a Gnoll Clawfighter from MM, so he was very easily dispatched. Because of that and because they clearly hadn't beaten the final boss (they hadn't leveled up!), the players became very wary.

Malia read the small plaque near the line of skull blocks (hard to see on the large map above), which said: "In case of catastrophe, break floor." Dev had Korin break one of the skull blocks, only to find a cracked floor tile underneath. Smashing the tile, Korin uncovered a gaping pit like the two they'd previously discovered in the dungeon, not really a useful exit. Then Genia made an Arcane check to decipher the tablet, which had a keyhole and an inscription that said, if opened, a magic force would be unleashed that would wash the tombs clean of evil influences. Not wanting to leave the skull blocks, in case she needed to break more, Korin tossed the Skull Key (passed down from her father) to Genia and the gnome opened the tablet's seal.

Room 5, Part B: Boss Fight (Fae Rays). Instantly, magic water began pouring into the room at an alarming rate, filling the room and, in fact, filling the entire dungeon up to the characters' waists, making the whole thing difficult terrain unless players made a successful swim check. There were two currents in the water, pulling characters either towards the door they came in (towards Room 4, where the flaming portal had been doused by the water) or towards the hole in the floor that Korin had broken open. Dev had placed Korin right in front of that hole but luckily, as a dwarf, Korin could decide whether to be pulled or not (that was not something I'd thought of and was, in fact, pure awesome). Then, along with the water, three giant fae-touched stingrays swam through the pouring water into the room. Two of them looked normal, but one had a black-widow-style diamond symbol on its forehead. The boss had finally arrived!

The boss fight was, in general, pretty cool, though not quite as eventful as the mini-boss fight. Genia hopped up on the raised platform, Malia hopped up on the skull blocks, and Korin was the only character slugging it out in the water with the rays, but, as a dwarf tank, that was ideal for her. The rays (who, between the three of them, had the stats of a Young Black Dragon) were threatening without being a slog, but the coolest part, I think, was the way I handled damaging them. Just like you would expect in a console game, hitting one of the rays caused it to flip over on its belly and flail around helplessly until its next turn, when it flipped back over and could attack you again. While a ray was flipped over, it was subject to the currents -- just like the characters -- and could be hit on a mere 10 vs. AC/Reflex, rather than it's normal high scores. Conseqently, over several turns, both of the lesser rays managed to get flipped over and sucked down the hole in the floor near Korin. And, by keeping it flipped as much as possible, the party smashed its way through all 110HP of the main boss ray. Victory! Massive hearts dropped from the sky and everyone leveled up.

And that led into the next puzzle and skill challenge: getting out of the water-filled tombs. But I'll wait and post about that tomorrow. Here's some recreated pictures of the boss fight (not from actual play, sadly). The first is the room filling with water after Genia broke the seal...



... and the second is Korin getting swarmed by two rays while Malia and Genia stab one of the flipped-over ones (which never actually happened, but could have).

Well, I mean, "make maps for your game at home" is a thing. It's the most important thing! I don't really know what substantial benefit it gives you or anyone else to allow consumers to redistribute their assemblies.

I'd love to see people share tilesets, though...

Next session, we're going even more isomorphic.

Any chance of a mini lesson on how to hack the tiles and sprites to D&D scale? I would love to do this with NES Dragon Warrior game.


ara

Jonathan,

I am sad 4E didn't work out! I know you probably meant this, but I'd like to add for the sake of clarity that the above statements should have "for me" added to them. There's not fundamental problems in the game as a factual thing that we can point at and say, "Yep, fundamentally busted," but there are things that are fundamentally busted for what you wanted. Is that a fair statement, or do you mean actually fundamentally busted? I ask only because I'm having a really fantastic time in both my 4E games, and they're all using basic, un-hacked level-appropriate encounters.

It may be too late, but my advice for the slog of combat is *more monsters.* I've been disappointed with the pacing of combat involving few monsters myself, so I took to having 5-7 monsters for most of my encounters. To keep the exp in line they have to be lower level, which means they each individually die faster, *and* having so many monsters on the board generally gives the players more to do with tactical positioning and moving around. That, or just arbitrarily cut the hitpoints of monsters in half and see how it works out.

"The slog of combat" is an interesting thing, though; I've definitely felt it at times. My best understanding of it is that when a battle is decided but still ongoing, it gets that feeling. In an brawl where the monsters were all standing after an hour but there was still uncertainty as to the outcome, still genuine tension, I didn't get that sloggy feeling. Only after the tension is resolved and the combat enters the "mop up the rest" phase do I feel it, and I've been working on ways of structuring combats to eliminate or reduce that as much as possible. My guess is that the tension of combat is probably variable between groups, and so for one group what is an exciting combat could be a drawn out slog-fest for another.

To Jonathan in particular, though, I just want to say thanks for sharing all these pictures! They've definitely inspired me to be more creative in my own environment prep.

My bulletpoint synopsis of the session:

We wash ashore, at alternate corners of an isometric map. n.b. the water is a corrupted/acidic red. (Basically, two cityish areas connected by two bridges.) Korin + Genya are on side, while Melia is on the others; both areas are connected by a bridge. A bit of free play ensues. Melia knocks on one door, where she finds this odd knight do asking Melia whether his blood sacrifice has arrived. (AWKWARD. She walks away.) Korin + Genya are surrounded by some illithids, who ask why they look so alive, given that they are the dead. Obviously, Genya bluffs that they too are among the dead, and just have some sweet illusion spells going on.
The Illithids believe K+G (?!?!) and lend two of their number of help "search for the lost living one" that followed them. Melia, meanwhile, pings the Deathknight with witchfire, which doesn't do nearly enough. Therefore, she runs away, getting the attention of Genya. There is some confusion, as the Deathknight follows on the bridge, and so our clover is a bit blown. It comes out (through the previous cut scenes and during the fight) that the Deathknight has been forcing the Illithids to obey him, while they would rather prevent the Corruption from reaching the living if possible. We initially fight the Illithids, but they soon turn their attentions to the Deathknight. Melia witchfires the bridge, dropping the Deathknight below. ("Glug...")

The Deathknight reappears riding a weird mutated Ray, which is a sort of huge ray merged by several dying rays, with a new "Lure" creature attached to it. (So here we have basically three creatures at once.) The Deathknight rides to shore and immediately starts pinging Genya and bothering the Illithids around it. Korin gets the bright idea of charging forward to land on the ray (I suggest to JW that I stretch the value of my "Mountain Lion Step" to allow for a leap to get me there, and he went with it", and I did an AoE attack that blinded several of its eyes. Soon, the Ray trashed its way to the middle of the bay, while I hung on and did various damage.

Because I'm a bad D&D player who focused a bit on my own tanking and my own combos, I can mainly report on the story of Korin and the Mutant Ray. I hung onto that thing, and while the Lure had an attack for knocking me off the ray / immobilzing me / etc, a combination of good athletics rows / good saving throws / the dwarven ability to ignore 1 sqauares worth of pushes allowed be to basically hang on, continually marking it and doing some damage. I realized I destroyed several eyes with my first strike, so I tried to destroy the rest of them with some other AoE damage (JW went with the idea that my Ice Area Effect would basically finish blinding the creature). Once the Ray was basically blinded, there was some one-and-off damage I did to it, but it was less threatening for Korin, and further away from my squishier allies. The Illithids tried to harpoon the bugger and pull it ashore; it ended up shaking that off, but was a cool effect I would have liked to see more of (especially if I was still ashore). Eventually I got ashore, basically as the Deathknight was finished off.

So meanwhile, Genya and Melia were splitting attention between the Deathknight, the Ray, and occaisionally the Illithids (but generally the first two once it was clear they were no longer hostile). They pinged them at range repeatedly (when possible). There was one really saavy teamup between Genya and Melia, stacking some supporting actions + bonuses + curses + a daily attack + a good plot moment ("Melia pulls back her hood and reveals herself, and the Deathknight realizes it was Melia who killed her in the previous game"), and yet Eric rolled a natural 1, whiffing an otherwise cool finishing moment and stretching the fight out longer. Alas.

Some further grinding/pinging finally took down the Deathknight. We talked with the Illithids as they revealed their involvement with the Deathknight, and basically struck a peace (also opening up a town where could trade if we continued the adventure).

Sounds like Jonathan is where I'm at with 4th edition, now. Such a promising game, but I'm sort of happy that I don't have the time to play it at length this year.

My standard solution for the combat grind issue in this game has been to entertain some fighting morale rules - have each individual monster try to escape (or at least make some sort of will save) when they get bloodied, and have the whole group escape or surrender when it becomes clear that they have nothing more to gain in the fight. Ideally this means that all but the most important fights end in a round or two, after we've established that the heroes are superior and can basically kill their opposition in exchange for some immediately healed hp loss.

Last night, I was pondering a couple hacks.

FF-style: No roll to hit, just roll damage (a bit like 3:16), with strike bonuses becoming damage bonuses and armor soaking damage ala WW.

Zelda-style: No damage roll, enemies are killed in X successful hits, where X=their level or something and Encounters + Dailys do multiple hits. Generally speaking, monsters would be at the PCs level or slightly lower.

Shreyas, sure, you're definitely right abotu that. But I don't think that's too hard. Marking could just be like: make target monster do half damage to anyone else. And in a damage-less game, strikers could do double hits to targets they have combat advantage against or something.

Hmm, I knew of Savage Worlds but had never really looked at it until I read the "Test Drive" version just now. Interestingly, I can immediately see how it influenced Danger Patrol (stats measured in dice, 4+ successes). I like some things about it, like the ruler-based minis combat, but I worry that it's a bit too fast-and-loose for console-style games, which have very specific power builds for characters and the like. I'll have to flip through a full edition of the game to know for sure, though.

Posted By: Jonathan WaltonOkay, question:

I made a map for the final dungeon encounter that's a bit too complicated to print out. It doesn't have a giant boss with multiple moving parts (next time), but just has a bunch of layers showing different aspects of the environment changing as the fight progresses. If I have to, I can print it out, it'll just take a lot of pages to have all the different possible combinations of layers, just in the rare event that we might need a weird one (the boss is on fire and frozen at the same time!).

An idea I had was just to pull up the map in Photoshop, on my laptop, and manipulate it there during the fight, having PC and monster tokens on separate layers and moving them around during the fight. The only problem is that having the players cluster around my shoulders and point at my laptop screen doesn't sound that exciting. John Harper said I should get a projector and I thought about getting a video cable and plugging into a TV, so it would really look like we were playing a console game, but both of those are hard to do at Pandemonium, the local game store where we play. I could also just put a piece of clear plastic over my screen and we could gently place tokens on the computer screen itself, but my screen is only readable from certain angles, unlike a TV.

Thoughts? Suggestions? I guess I want to see how much of a pain this kind of thing is before deciding whether to use it again in a future boss encounter. If it's too much of a hassle, I'll stick to stuff I can just print out. The cool thing about it is that I could export an image after each turn and keep a running set of slides of the encounter, which would be like stop-motion video of play, more or less.

Those mythical iTablets can't get here fast enough. They would make all this so much easier.

http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tutorials/tabletopprojection/

Someone sent this to me two years ago. This setup requires a projector to be hung overhead, pointing down at the table, but I thought that their results were beautiful, and well worth the trouble.

Jonathan,

Have you checked out Vincent Baker's Storming the Wizards Tower. I think that game would work well.

ara

Who loves ya?

Jaywalt's Guide to Making 16-Bit Maps

Let me see what you cats make, too. I'm definitely interested.