Working with Players to Make Them Happy

Working with Players to Make Them Happy

If you have been reading my blog you will see that recently there was a player death of a thief. The thief is dead set on not rezzing his character. Which is fine, then he throws in that he wants to play a Psionist. Well, to my recollection they were pretty OPed, at least in first edition of AD&D and I immediately said no (this was through an email correspondence). He said he didn't know he wanted to play then.

Later that night I called him and asked him to tell me about it and he gave me some information. The Psionists didn't sound to overpowered, not at level one, at least.

After an hour long conversation and some thought I agreed to let him create this character, but he said he wasn't going to until I read The Complete Psionists Handbook, so I went to Noble Knight Games and looked it up. They had one for $8 so I got it, and I will read through it once it gets to my house.

I am actually quite interested now in reading about this class because today, after looking through some psionic's pictures, it really got my imagination going. 

I guess the bottom line of this blog is, don't immediately shut down your players options. Go ahead and take time to learn about the class or whatever it is they are wanting and then if it breaks the campaign or not.

If you see that what they are wanting is going to break the campaign then explain how it will break the campaign to the player.

If it doesn't break the campaign or you are unsure if or how your campaign might end up broken because of it, then go ahead and allow for it and just see how it plays out (literally).

I myself, at this point, am unsure. I am just going to go with it and see what happens. If it starts breaking the campaign then it will be time to pull out the mind flayers and intellect devourers and see how he fairs against those.

Of course, you can keep their asses in check by retorting with other psionic monsters or npcs, or hell, even psionic weapons, armor, jewelry, places etc.

Could make for an interesting situation and role-play.

One of the reason's the psionist class would fit into my campaign is because it is a low magic setting so that is one of the reasons I am allowing for it. 

I will keep you all updated when we start playing again in late August.

Comment and let me know your experiences with Psionics, even if it is from a different version of D&D.

The Lost Mines of Phandelver AD&D 2nd Edition Version

When you get a module or a campaign from one system to use with another system, then you need to tune it and modify it to fit your game.

I am currently using the Lost Mines of Phandelver in my current campaign. How did I drop it in and what did I do to tune the encounters to 2E you ask?

Firstly, I took out the main characters and replaced them with Father Angus (Previously known as Marc Otter) and a grave digger henchman, Gildenstern. 

Rosencrant and Gildenstern are two part time grave diggers working under Father Angus. The players semi-hired them as henchmen to help explore the dungeons beneath the monastery because if you remember from a previous post, I told you how there were only two players when we first started playing.

Well, Father Angus and Gildenstern rode on ahead after asking the players to escort the cart to Phandalin which I renamed to Stratford.

But what about the part of the map? Hmm, yes, there are so many angles to play on this point. How did Father Angus find this map? 

Perhaps he found it in the dungeons while he was down there with the players and pocketed it without the players noticing. Maybe it has been hidden in the church for some time and he had sent word to another priest about it because the map mentions a holy artifact of great power, maybe even enough power to help the golden dragon close the breach to the nine hells.

Whatever the reason, Father Angus has it, and the dark powers being what they are, found out about its and now the ambush from part 1 has led the players to Cragmaw Hideout.

Using the stats for the goblins and bugbear in the 2E MM is easy, just jot those stats down on some notes, and as for any traps along the trail to Cragmaw hideout, just allow your thief to declare he is looking for traps and break it up, so for example, in our game he declared he was going to search for traps, his first role succeeded and so I said in a mile in you find a snare and then he disarmed it.

He declared again but didn't succeed and I said after a few miles you fall into a pit you didn't see.

He took damage and the players carried on. 

So as you can see, you can adjust a module to fit your campaign. Make the background of the module your own story so that it fits your campaign. Adjust creature stats and encounters (traps etc) as needed and things will flow together.

Of course you can't help it if your players make bad choices or bad rolls. Some game days are better than others.

Head Long Into the Ghosts of Gaming

Head Long Into the Ghosts of Gaming

I told a friend of mine several times over the course of several months that I was wanting to play AD&D and we had discussed which version. I had played 1st, 2E, 3.0, and 3.5. He was stuck in the past of playing 2E so that is what we agreed on.

Now I have little recent experience as a DM so I was needing to come into this game with this understanding from the players.

We finally started a group of myself my friend, and one of his friends. Three total at the beginning. I already had a dungeon from a previous Dungeons and Dragons Basic game I had ran about a year before with a friend and his son.

My friend was playing a thief, and the other player a fighter.

I had time to get the basic campaign setting setup, the players would have just arrived in a port city called Fisher's Bay and with the help of a printed sheet of NPC names and a sheet with Urban encounters on it.

Over the course of at least four sessions everything was going good.  I had to go back and bring the dungeon I had created up to 2E for the monsters.

Players were having fun and I was feeling good about my DMing. 

And then on the fourth session a friend had stopped buy. He stepped in to RP a priest, who had a Scottish accent and his name was Marc Otter, but Thor changed his name to Father Angus and hilarity ensued.

We invited him to create a PC and play with us so he started a Wizard and then left.

The next session my friend had brought in another person to play a priest which the PC's desperately needed. 

After we had helped him to create his PC (and the wizard) we started playing. I had bought the D&D5E starter set and I read the beginning of the Phandelver module and adjusted it for the campaign.

After I got the new players into the game, Father Angus needed the player characters to escort a cart of provisions to a poor town. Well after encountering a goblin ambush a few miles down the road the thief gave thee priest 600GP to go buy the best armor he could where, even though they had just met.

So the priest left and the fighter, the thief, and the wizard followed a trail back to a cave where the goblins had their base. The three players decided to go inside, though the wizard relunctly, he suggested starting a fire and smoke out the goblins but instead they all three went into the cave (without the priest mind you).

At one point there was a wooden bridge that had a goblin on it and the thief got up there and they both exchanged arrows from their short bows which have a ROF of 2/1 (2 arrows per round).

The goblin not only rolled high like four times in a row, his damage also rolled high.

The thief died and the player got pissed. He said that this module is imbalanced and that is why he doesn't like modules (though he owned a whole box of them that he used to run his players through *rolls eyes*).

The wizard had said that 2E was broken and we had a lot of house rules. He was disappointed. After my friend did some more grumbling I packed up and left (I had to go anyway).

I was disappointed in my friend for his reaction to his series of bad decisions and sad for the wizard player that his PC had died (he had also been taken out during the goblin ambush earlier but healed by the priest before he left to go back to town).

So what have I learned?

• The main thing is that I see where 3.0 had derived from. Its focus was to help insure the player character survival even at early levels. This has been a continuing focus with other d20 games that have germinated since 3.0.
• Player Character death is an ugly business.
• Players who are stuck on 2E and can't move on shouldn't get pissy when their characters die because look at the system you are using to play a RPG!
• 2E is very antiquated and this is even more apparent after reading and playing 3.0, 3.5, and reading 13th Age (which is even more modern and streamlined than previous d20 games).

In the end, if we continue, I already have a plan in place to bring back the dead characters. If they decide to play new characters then I am not going to dumb down the encounters for their sakes.

If you want to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E then you, as a player, must be ready to take on the consequences of your actions and the results it brings.