An Unheroic Death

I just released a session of Thunderspire Labyrinth to RPGMP3 in which one of the characters dies. Now I have been playing fantasy games long enough to realise that a death in the party does not really impact the players too much. Either they just drag the corpse to the nearest priest and pay a huge amount of cash or they just leave it (or if the poor fool is lucky, bury it) and move along after some simple words to whatever deity they are ripping off for powers.

In most cases the character in question has fallen to an unlucky blow from some huge creature or has died poking about in a trap or saving the rest as they fled from something nasty. But it was not what happened here...

Let me set the scene, it is a pretty standard encounter with some dueregar. The party have fought a similar group already and came out pretty well. They know all about the immunity to fire and the perchant for disappearing and popping up to crossbow them in the spine. There is a named duergar in this fight but essentially he is just a tough hit point machine rather than any real danger. More of a speed bump to drag out the combat a little more (I am still not seeing this streamlining I was promised BTW).

Anyway, the fight ensues and there is lots of running around and jumping about and the party manage to split themselves up between two doors rather than all rushing in through one and targeting their attack. I thought they had learned this lesson previously when they managed to TPK becuase they thought attacking from different sides was a good idea only to find that their movement was insufficient to close the ground and that the enemy has anout a gajillion hit points in 4e. That was mistake number 1. The Cleric, the Ranger and the Wizard fought in the northern room, while the Fighter, the Rogue and the Warlock took another. Unfortunately, the Warlock had encouraged the Fighter to kick the door in and not wait for the Rogue who was busy looting a nearby storeroom.

For some reason the combat with the Cleric, the Ranger and the Wizard took forever but no one really took many hits. The Ranger hates to get toe to toe and spends most of the combat dancing about like a fairy and occasionally peppering his enemy with arrows (when he can roll well enough). The Wizard complains bitterly about being in combat again and managed to conjure a Burning Sphere (as he is a fire specialist) and just make it a little warmer for the fire resistant dark dwarves and more tactically difficult for his mates. The Cleric runs in and toe to toes the bad guys and does a decent job.

The other fight is a lot more interesting. This is the room with the aforementioned hit point machine - lets call him Bob. So Bob's monkeys run in and start to fire their crossbows and dissapear as the scout type dueregar tend to do. The fighter starts to close the gap to Bob who is at the other end of the room and gets bogged down on some speed bump combat types with decent AC. The Warlock follows him in as he wants to move around and get his concealment bonuses for Shadow Walking. The Rogue is still stuffing his face with cheese and beer and just barely hears the strains of combat that have started without him. Sneaking becomes not an option and combined with indecision as to which combat to enter it takes him a good 3 rounds to get anywhere useful.

At some point in this fight, the Warlock takes a hit that knocks him down below 0 hit points and he starts making Death Saves. I don't think it was anyone special, just a standard guy with a standard attack. With the Fighter and the Rogue engaged with Bob and his cronies and the Cleric, Wizard and Ranger in a totally different room this put him in a position where rolling over 10 each round became a necessity for survival.

Now you might think that this Death Save busines might be exciting, "Ooooooohh, will his survive, will he not?", but it really isn't. As it is just another save at the end of the turn, like any other save, there is nothing special about it other than the consequences. Essentially the Warlock got knocked down by some faceless mook and bled out on the floor. I mean where is the heroism in that? I like my combat towards the realistic side but it just feels like a huge downer to me as a DM when this happens. I feel like I have not served the player well by giving his character such an ignominious death. I was surprised by how I felt to be honest.

I thought that in a system that seemed designed for cinematic combat that death would seem more of a big deal but it looks as if most characters are just going to bleed out on the floor. Just seems a bit of a let down really - I mean death saves are so 1970s :)

You can listen to the whole situation over at RPGMP3 as part of Thunderspire Labyrinth Session 5.

Audio Test

Just testing the MP3 upload and share site BooMP3

Boomp3.com

Hal

Hurricane Update

As some of you lot know, Lindsay and I live in Houston. Looking out of the window of our well battened down house it is starting to get cloudy and the wind is picking up.

The storm is due to landfall sometime after midnight about 50 - 60 miles south of us around Galveston. Looking at the current track we may well see the eye pass over here. Lindsay and I are both going to try and update Twitter if the power goes out (assuming the wireless network stays up)

I just added a Twitter block to the left there so you guys can follow along - feel free to follow me as well and I might well follow you back :D

Anyway, my game books are as far from the windows as possible, as is my audio equipment. Hopefully we should weather this pretty well (apologies for the pun) and all the preparations will be unnecessary but who knows?

Just added a load of new audio to the website to tide over any periods of power outage (which are likely apparently). We will be back as soon as possible and will try to keep you guys updated as we go.

Downtime

Warning: The following post contains personal moaning and really has not a lot to do with roleplaying so feel free to skip it and move along!

It has been a while since I last put something up here. I am so slack with blogs that it frightens me sometimes. I start out with loads of good intentions and end up with huge gaps of time where I find it difficult to think anyone will care what I have to say. So I decided I might as well write for myself.

Today has been an odd one. Went to the gym for the first time in ages, finally trying to get rid of the extra bits and bobs I accumulated doing my unhealthy police job. Sitting still for 10 hours at a time really can screw you up. I remember being fit once so hopefully things will bet back ship shape pretty soon.

Went to see Tropic Thunder at the cinema. It was really funny. Some very good acting even if the plot is rather predictable. Some great one liners.

Ended up feeling really defensive and down about the site. I have been running it for almost 6 years and most of the time I feel really good about what I am doing. However it has increasingly become more and more like a job and less and less fun to do. We started this whole actual play business and now we are not novel any more. We are not even really tipped a wink as being the originators of this stuff. Due to the sheer amount of audio on the site now we are getting less and less compliments about the stuff we personally produce and to be honest we are catching more flack than praise.

Since moving to the states we have not had anywhere near the lively chat that we used to have on the site and with DnD 4e coming out we seem to have even more criticism. The Texan players are just very different from my old UK players. Sometimes I miss my old group a huge amount. We got on so well and just worked as a group. Lindsay did not have to berate anyone for cross talking or not playing in character and things just worked really well. It's been pretty strained around here of late; at home; and I was hoping that some things were going to sort themselves out. I can see us returning to the UK and being 10 times worse off than when we first left. I like it here but sometimes the changes are hard and I miss my old friends.

Lindsay has been great as always but she is hugely stressed as well. We need to get out of our current situation and move on with things but we are stuck. Trapped on my student visa unless one of us can secure a job that will support a work visa application and a green card. It is just such an uphill battle to stay here that sometimes I wonder if it is worth the effort. We could go back to the UK and just apply for jobs and that would be that. Our house would be smaller, the petrol and food would be more expensive but we would be treated like real people and not some kind of invader who just wants to leech things and mooch about.

I have started looking into trying to get a job sorted for when I finish my course. I should be able to work from January and would love to find something that I like doing. I don't think I have ever had a job that I have loved doing and I think that would make a huge difference. We need change soon otherwise things are going to turn stale and bad really fast.

I have been planning an update to RPGMP3 for years now (probably at least 3). I have some great ideas to set up a gaming community (not a fake one like Gleemax). A friendly place, where gamers can meet up and share things, listen to the audio games and contribute. Somewhere healthy rather than bitchy. Sadly I am running out of steam. The site is starting to take its tole. There is not a day goes by when I don't have to process an audio file or upload something, or pay some server bills. What started out as a bit of fun on the side of my hobby is starting to look a lot like work. The site is doing really well, people are joining every day, we have enough Patrons and donations to cover the fees.

I am just starting to wonder if I am becoming a weight around it's neck and maybe the limiting factor on the site is me.

Not sure where I am going with this. It sounds like I am moaning and I don't mean to. Things get me thinking and I have no idea how to stop them from spinning away from me. I have given a lot to the site over the years and I think that I have neglected things I should not have, Lindsay (who I love more than anything else on this earth) being the major one. I wish I could have the time again so that I could change things. I am heading towards something that I don't want to face and whatever happens I am going to lose something - I am just not sure what yet, or if there is a way to avoid it and come out whole on the other side.

I know I should not have written this here, but I don't think many folks look at this to be honest. If you were looking for some light hearted roleplaying chat then I am truely sorry, and if you got this far down this post, thanks for reading.

Virgin Gamers Survival Guide - Part 1

OK - my previous post inspired me to write something for those folks out there who might be thinking about starting up their first ever game. Perhaps they have played an little and want to try their hand at GMing or perhaps they are interested in trying roleplaying but don't have a clue where to start. I was at that point when I started and I have had a lot of experience since then throwing games together.

Additionally, I don't think I can have a proper roleplaying blog without starting some sort of episodic post series to draw you all back in and keep you salivating, eagerly awaiting the next time I deem you worthy of my attentions. :P

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to get into roleplaying. Perhaps your friends do it but you have never had the opportunity. Perhaps you read fantasy novels and think it might be a cool and natural extension of that. Perhaps you have played some computer games, like Baldur's Gate and Elder Scrolls (or even World of Warcraft) and wonder about where this all came from. Perhaps someone just bought you a book thinking you would like it and you have no clue where to start with a Clanbook Brujah.

Whatever the reason you have a task ahead of you. If you are lucky, you will have a group of supportive friends who will be willing to give it a try with you and perhaps they will like it and they will thank you for introducing it to their lives. Sadly, most of use are not that lucky. We have to work to find a group of players, and this is one of the most common issues with gaming today. People are so busy, they travel so much (even to and from work) that it can be difficult to even get a group together for a character generation session, let alone a regular gaming night for a long haul campaign.

So where can you find players?

1. Your FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store)

You will hear that term bandied around the net an awful lot but they are often hard to find in a location that is nearby. Check your local Yellow Pages under Comic Books and Games Supply and see if anything comes up. Often FLGSs will stock comics or your local comic shop will have a friendly relationship with a FLGS and will happily pass on the details on the understanding that the FLGS owner will do the same in return for comics customers. Additionally, try a Google search for "roleplaying games your area" and see what you get.

Ideally, you are looking for a FLGS which has an area to play in and has regular gaming nights with experienced GMs and players who will be happy to welcome you and let you learn the games they are playing. Even if the FLGS does not have a place to play in the store, it is often a good place to try and locate players or a game you can join. The FLGS owner will most likely be happy to hook you up with other players and let you advertise games in their store.

2. The Internet

Clearly you have an internet connection, so get your monies worth and try joining some of the internet forums dedicated to roleplaying. There are lots, and quite often they will have a section where you can ask if there are any other gamers in your area. I heartily recommend giving RPGMP3 a shot for this. Mainly because I run it, but also because I think it is one of the friendliest gaming forums on the net and as long as you are pleasant the folks on there will be lovely and try to help you out.

The net is also home to wonderful blogs and webpages dedicated to gaming and you can bone up on some of the lingo. But to be honest just make sure you know what THAC0 means and you will be just fine.

3. Conventions

Somewhere near you there must be a town or city that will be holding some kind of convention. I live in Houston and there are about 8 or 9 minor cons throughout the year. Obviously if you can get to one of the big cons (Origins, Dragon*Con, or Gen Con) then you are good to go and all your gamer dreams will come true. Otherwise little cons are a good place to start and meet local gamers and businesses in your area.

If they are doing things right you should be able to find them with a simple net search. If they are not doing things right then you will need the blood of a virgin calf and the bones of a black cockrel on the night of the full moon.

4. Universities

Universities are little communities all to themselves. They even have a higher geek concentration than most "normal" communities. There is a pretty decent chance that any university or college nearby will have some kind of gaming society associated with it. The problem here is find it. Some universities will have a list of the socieites and clubs that they have and may even have contact details - others will not. If you find that the latter is the case for you then see above re. blood and chicken bones.

5. Beer and Pizza Bribery

OK. So you have tried everything else and you still can't find any local gamers. You are going to have to create your own. Now we are not talking digging up corpses in the middle of the night and performing some crazy ritual (that would require the "real power" and you are too low level at this point). So you are going to have to brainwash er.... persuade some of your friends that it is something they want to try out.

This is best done by endless pleading and resorting to bribery. Always let them know what they are letting themselves in for, but lay it on thick with pizza and beer (or at least some Mountain Dew).

If you are in this position, chances are you are going to be GMing all on your own from the start so you best look for a system that will work for you and perhaps thats what we will talk about next time...

Gaming Pedigree

After that mildly depressing post about who I am, I thought I would follow up with another about my gaming history and background. Lets kick off by saying I LOVE GAMES. All kinds of games from card games to board games to roleplaying games to war games. Love them all!

I always had a lot of games as a kid. Most of the traditional ones, Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, Ludo and other stranger ones and it was only a matter of time before someone bought me something that would lead me into paths less trodden. When I was about 12 or so, my Aunt bought me the Dragonlance boardgame. I had read the books and enjoyed them and was reading Tolkein and all that traditional gamer type stuff as well. At the same time I was reading White Dwarf (back before it became a catalogue for Games Workshop stuff) and this led me to a local game store in the neighbouring town of Whitehaven in Cumbria, UK.

In this store I picked up copies of the ADnD Players Handbook, the DMG, the Monstrous Compendium and a copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I am not sure which I managed to get hold of first but at the time I was pretty interested in roleplaying. Sadly I had no group up in the wilds of West Cumbria (there are more sheep than people). So I had to take matters into my own hands...

...My friends were quite cool; grungy but cool; and they were pretty happy to give the games a go. On popular vote (some of them used to play Fantasy Battle) we started with Warhammer and in leiu of an experienced GM I had to take the reigns and run a game I have run countless times since that day, The Oldenhaller Contract, from the back of the rulebook. No one was sure what was going on and I am sure we got some of the rules wrong but we managed to get through it, mostly in tact with only a few slight cases of Nurgle's Rot. From that point I pretty much ran Warhammer and DnD for the same group every Tuesday night and we even managed to get a little society set up at my sixth form centre (college).

Then I was allowed to play. There was another kid there called Newton who had also played DnD for ages and he was running a game of Dark Sun. It was the first time I had ever had a chance to play rather than run. I played an Elven Bard that was lucky enought to roll a decent psionic wild talent that meant he could make attacks at range with his mind and also meant he had the prerequisite of telekinesis and a reasonable pile of power points. It was a pretty standard game of slaves make good, but it was great and I loved it. I played lots throughout my college years and finally headed to university with a little experience under my belt.

The university had a roleplaying society. This was a good thing. It was also close to a large city that had a really big gaming store. I played in a good few long running campaigns, mostly Rolemaster, Vampire: The Masquerade and Rifts in my university years and ran a good few, namely Kult and some DnD. I was even President of the society for a few years and I still host their web forum on my webspace. My love of pretty cards also came to the fore during these years and I have since had to restrain myself from getting involved in collectible card games. I had a tendency to buy cards whenever I passed them and as some of you know one pack here and one pack there quickly adds up to a sizeable fort to hide in.

We were fortunate one day at the society that Lindsay had given Paul (who runs Yog-Sothoth.com) a conference microphone she was not using to test out his new Minidisc player. This was tested during my game of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and resulted in the birth of RPGMP3 with the first ever recording. It was pretty ropey but it seeded an idea and we have been running with it ever since.

Every gamer had ever spoken to had story about games they had played in and excellent times they had had. Moments that formed legendary events of their formative years. Obviously these were just stories told over and over and over again at conventions and down the pub, but why did it have to stop there? Why couldn't we record these stories and let others listen to them. We started with a couple of one offs of Call of Cthulhu and then finally progressed to AEG's The Worlds Largest Dungeon. At this time we started to podcast the recordings and were pretty much the first with any kind of gaming content. we did finish the World's Largest Dungeon and the little character in the title bar of this site was actually an Ogre NPC from that game kindly drawn my one of the folks on the site.

Since then I have run and recorded a lot of games. Mostly DnD as this is the backbone of the site but I also have a strong interest in indie games and always run a Christmas Special using some set of indie rules. I have to say I have a very soft spot for My Life With Master and have run it numerous times. Currently I am running DnD 4e and Rolemaster and playing nothing as I rarely get a chance to play any more. I guess through my gaming "career" I have GMed far more than I have played but I don't really mind that.

I don't attend anywhere near as many cons as I really would like to and I must improve on that front. I am a little slack with regards travelling, but I did try to attend Dragonmeet in London every year when I lived in the UK. Not really found anything in Houston and perhaps thats what the world needs... A BIG Texas-sized con! I even have a web address picked out! What do you think?

Rainy Rainy Day!

I live in Houston at the moment (though I originally hail from the UK). We (my wife Lindsay and I) came over here after she completed her archaeology degree and I decided my job working for the wonderful Police of West Yorkshire was leading nowhere. Additionally the job with the Police was rolling shifts and severely ate into my social life and game time. My parents had moved out the US about 6 - 7 years earlier with my Dad's job and I thought it might be nice to come over for a while, so I took on a Masters in Instructional Technology and we moved over just before Christmas 2006.

All in all it has been an interesting experience. A lot of things we were promised could happen have changed or were never correct in the first place. My course is pretty good and I have met some decent people through it. Lindsay had come over on the understanding that she could open a vintage clothes shop but found out that the red tape involved with a non-US national trying to do that were not worth the effort. She has been honing her skills with her sewing machine, she has learned to drive and I am very proud of her.

It is coming to the end of my time on the Masters and we are looking at options at the moment. If we choose to stay I will have to secure a job that will transfer me onto a working visa so that we can apply for a green card. There are some pretty tight time frames involved in things but apparently having done a Masters here puts me in good stead. While I am talking about me finding work I might as well use this platform to point folks to My Portfolio which contains a copy of my CV / Resume and other stuff I have been doing recently. If anyone knows of an appropriate job for an archaeological instructional technologist who loves games feel free to pass my details along or drop me an email.

Lindsay has signed up to do a course in Theatrical Costume and Fashion Design starting at the end of this month (assuming we hear back about her change in visa status). Otherwise she will have to wait until the next intake in at the start of next year. She has had nothing but issues with the international office at her college and it is starting to get a little tiresome I suppose.

On the gaming front, we met some really great gamers when we arrived here in Houston and we have been educating them slowly to the world outside of DnD. The original game shop we found has closed down recently due to some very bad business decisions and some bad personal decisions even though it was the top store with Wizards in the city. Its a shame. If I could have worked here at the moment I might have considered trying my hand at a FLGS. There are rumours of some of the regualrs opening a couple of new stores but neither of them have much experience in retail and pretty much know nothing about the gaming industry outside of playing the odd game of Dungeons and Dragons and butchering Vampire Dark Ages. If two stores open as close as I believe they are going too they are just going to put each other out of business.

I have thankfully found a very nice (and pretty stable) FLGS about 35 miles away across the city and have been buying my DnD supplies from there recently. I love that the internet is a great place for bargains but with a game that requires face-to-face interaction I think we all should support our local stores. Too many have been dropping like flies round here due to bad cash flow or bad decisions and it would be awful not to have a store nearby. I am a browser, what can I say?

I am not going to say that moving to Houston was the best choice we could have possibly made, but it has opened some doors and firmly closed some others. If we can manage to get me a nice happy job and get set up as real people I think Lindsay and I will both be much much happier and so will Ruby the Pug (eating a Hydra nearby). I always felt guilty that the decision to move over here was more mine than Lindsay's so hopefully it will pay off soon.

Anyway, there we really not a lot about gaming in this post, but I felt that a little introduction was in order. Feel free to have a look through my portfolio, which I really must updated, and drop any jobs that look good my way. I can work from January without many restictions. Going to watch Lindsay play the Sims 2, I always find that theraputic and I have been a rather neglegent husband of late, what with all the files I have been adding to my website and the start of the redesign project.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the first post :) I will try and keep talking and pull it back to a more gaming track tomorrow. I have managed to weather out Tropical Storm Edouard today and only had to go out into the garden once to dig trenches to get the water away from the house. I like the rain but sitting inside without the option of heading out has made me a little cabin feverish.