Pathfinder 4 – Marathon session, marathon leveling

Oh, yeah. DM log. I should do that. 😀

So back on Sunday, we played our fourth session in the current Pathfinder game.

Characters present:

• Nox, the sex-changing, race-changing Changeling Swordsage
• Reza, the Dwarven Cleric, still getting used to this Cleric gig
• and Nonnie, the fast-talking, act-before-thinking Halfling Sorcerer

Still on the first adventure, we ended off last time after slaying the Quasit, and looting her tiny kingdom.

This time, however, we had a unique situation. Nobody had to work or go to school on Monday, due to it being Reading Week (Canada’s university spring break) as well as Louis Riel Day (Manitoba’s new February holiday).

So we did what any gaming group would do in that situation.

We gamed for as long as we could stand it!

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Awesoming up players and house rules in the CAB game and in the future

Ah, the Rule of Cool.

It’s been written about a number of times in the world of DMing blogs, and is one of my principles as a DM. It guides my play style, and (as you will see below) it guides my house rules.

The guidelines behind perpetrating this rule, however, are not laid out above, though people come out with new ways to do so every day.

Rather, the method for creating an atmosphere of cool was defined years ago, completely outside of the gaming arena. Three simple rules were laid out by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker magazine. Since then, they have been applied heavily in the marketing world, to explain why products succeed and fail. But they are useful in gaming as well.

The three rules are as follows, and are effective guidelines to use while attempting to “awesome up” your games.

• 1) The act of discovering cool causes cool to move on.

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Pathfinder 3 – In the Quasit’s lair

Sorry for the delay in posting. This week hasn’t been nearly as busy as last week, but an old friend of mine got into a disagreement with a bridge, and its good friend “the ice on the river” backed it up. She’s in the hospital, but is stable and doing well, thanks very much to passerby who stopped to help, especially to a firefighter friend of ours who happened to be there (they don’t know each other). Her sense of humour is still there, too. We all feel very lucky. Though I doubt she’ll ever read this blog, Lisa, we’re happy to have you here, and we’re all pulling for a full recovery.

But we did have a game this weekend. We were two players down, and will be for some time, for various reasons, but we played nonetheless.

This means our party is now down to three members:

• Nox, Changeling Swordsage who still has pink hair.
• Reza, Dwarven Cleric of Desna who is still getting used to this cleric thing, but is loving the Desna thing.
• and Nonnie, Halfling Psychopath… I mean Sorcerer. As you will see in the course of this writeup, Nonnie is definitely a method actor.

In any case, we started right where we left off, with the party about to head back down into the Glassworks’ basement and check out the smuggler’s tunnel that Tsuto’s notes had mentioned.

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Pathfinder 2 – Yay, we fought something that isn’t a Goblin!

Welcome back, whoever is reading this.

Second game was this past weekend. A bit too short, and a bit too disorganized, but still fun.

The characters present:

• Nox/Karen, Female Changeling Swordsage
• Elias von Rasenberg, Male Human Ranger, favoured enemy: goblinoids
• Mao Swiftpaw, Female Tibbit Rogue
• Nonnie Killing van Huttington, Chaotic Evil Male Halfling Sorcerer (“Killing is my middle name”)
• and introducing Reza, Dwarven Cleric of Desna

This game had some warning signs from the start. We normally start around 2:00-ish, but nobody arrived until almost 4:00. (Not due to anyone’s fault, as morning work schedules caused trouble.) Additionally, I had homework to do for uni that night, so the session wasn’t going to be a long one.

But we also had another player join this week. Now, our group is a bit odd, both demographically and socially.

Firstly, we have 5 players, 2 male, 3 female, for a 3:3 split including myself.

Second, the makeup of the group has been in flux for a while. A few years back, schedule conflicts mandated the change of group structure, and we brought in our Tibbit’s player. A short time later, there was a falling out in the group, and both Elias’ and Mao’s players ended up leaving for a while. Eventually, Raza’s player joined up with a couple others. Those others are too busy these days, and the falling out has been over for some time, so Elias and Mao came back since we had room.

Now, what this means is that while Myself, Nox/Karen, and Nonnie have played with everyone here, Elias, Mao, and Raza have not played together yet.

As such, the night became similar to the formation of a new gaming group, where players are beginning to get used to each other. Our friend ChattyDM would call it Storming.

Distractions came up too frequently, attention spans were short, and play time was limited. I was as guilty of this as anyone, of course, but it was all still there.

That’s not to say we didn’t have a good game, however.

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Pathfinder – Starting a new Campaign

Well, despite the crazy week I still managed to get enough prepped for a good 3-4 hours of play, after character generation was finished.

The characters present:

• Nox, Female Changeling Swordsage (goes by the name Karen in human form)
• Elias, Male Human Ranger, favoured enemy: goblinoids
• Mao, Female Tibbit (halfling-cat-thing) Rogue
• and Nonnie, Chaotic Evil Male Halfling Sorcerer with Black Dragon ancestry

Yeah, that’s right, a chaotic evil halfling sorcerer. My players tend to play good characters, for ease, but we figured this would be interesting. He’s definitely playing up the “self-preservation” aspect of CE, and turning into a little spellcasting Belkar.

So we started out with introducing the swallowtail festival, a reconsecration of the newly built church, after the last one was destroyed in a fire. Before I had droned on long enough to bore people (I think), the local priest signaled for everyone’s attention, and goblins attacked.

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Adventure Prep – Starting the new Campaign

Been a busy week, so sorry for not updating lately.

Starting the new game in 1/2 hour. I’ll be running Paizo’s excellent Pathfinder series. Thus far, I’ve been extremely happy with what I’ve read.

Characters in this game:

• Changeling Swordsage (trying out the Book of 9 Swords rules for the first time)
• Halfling Sorcerer (with an emerging draconic heritage)
• Tibbit (Halfling-cat-thing, from the Dragon Magazine Compendium) Rogue
• Human Ranger (archery focus)
• Dwarf Cleric of Desna (starting next game)

I’ll let you know more after the session. Time for some last-minute prep-cramming.

Redefining Alignment

“Do you think you know what the word Chaotic means?

Really?

Are you sure?

Care to place a wager…”

– Andy Collins, RPG System Design & Development Manager, Wizards of the Coast R&D

A while back, I got into a discussion over on Andy Collins’ message boards regarding alignment. It was called Redefining Lawfulness, and was created because the Law/Chaos axis of the D&D alignment system is not nearly as well-defined as the Good/Evil side.

Despite the focus on Law/Chaos, I felt the Good/Evil definitions were also very vague, and far too wordy. So pretty early on in the discussion, I proposed a new set of simple, yet complete, definitions for all four axes. I’ll be using these as my own guidelines when alignment questions come up in my new game that’s starting soon, and I’m going to share them with you now.

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Throwing/Returning – a Variant

Image Credit: Green Ronin’s Hammer and Helm.

One of the more fun and flavourful enchantments for a weapon in D&D is the ability to take a normal weapon and make it a throwing weapon. Battleaxes, Longswords, hell even Greatswords. There is little scarier than a huge piece of metal flying at you.

But while it’s fun, it’s ultimately not that useful, and doesn’t increase the effectiveness of a weapon by a whole lot. It doesn’t alleviate the need for a bow, as the range on Throwing weapons sucks. Usually, it just means you don’t need to reach for a dagger to hit a flying enemy.

Add to that the fact that the Throwing property is almost never used on its own, and we have ourselves a small set of rules that need a rewrite.

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Killer, Cyborg Ogre Ninja

Holy crap! I’m actually posting things!

That’s right, exams are finished for the semester, so expect a few posts from me this week.

This one is going to be very crunch-oriented, and mostly to prove a point. But watch later this week for something on adventure design, and adventure prep as I get ready for my group’s next game.

Okay, so over on ChattyDM‘s message board, the “complaints” section is staffed by a Cyborg Ogre Ninja named Killer. Of course, this resulted in people statting him up, including Phil himself.

So what point am I trying to prove? Simple.

I can make a better Cyborg Ogre Ninja than him.

Or, more accurately, d20 Modern can make a better Cyborg Ogre Ninja than D&D.

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Away in a Dungeon…

Well, I’ve been kept busy these past few days, what with the semester ending and finals coming up. Expect more from us in the future, once things settle down.

Though I did manage to get one big thing accomplished this weekend. Our christmas decorations are up. And they are slightly geeky.

For instance, this is our wreath:

Yes, those shiny bits are what you think they are. Click the image for a larger view, if it’s difficult to tell.

But we aren’t the only ones geeking out at politically-correct-generic-holiday time. Behold, from For Tax Reasons, unrelenting christmas nerdery!

IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR