Problems a Plenty

Let me first start this off with a simple statement:

Large scale ANYTHING is a pain to say the very least.

Now lets elaborate some on this.

Last week, after a bout of end of semester finals (our psych major having to go through a stretch of presentations and thus indisposed) combined with fuel problems for some players, meant that no one really knew enough after a longer than a month break outside the GM that it was time to start over.   So the great question was put forward, what do you want?

It is amazing how this question can drag an entire group to a dead stop.  Shocks me every time.  I guess coming from the point of view of being a long term GM, I always have a clue on what I want but I also know the pain of trying to run what I want and getting no tangible reply from the players, who are mostly just treading water till something grabs there attention.  Too many years of just through the storytelling equivalent of a commercial fishing drag line of plot hooks out has taken it's toll.

So, the five of them are staring at each other and then look right back at me.  With the eyes that say 'Tell us what we want...'.   Well, I was not going to do that this time for them.  I have done that for them for years upon years and the campaign that was supposed to be my vacation collapsed so it fell back on me to run something.  This time, I wanted their opinion.  We all sat there quietly for like an hour...  oh, there was chatting and some music playing to keep the mood positive but no gaming was discussed.

I partially blame that on the fact that I am very punctual and have a very strict time table and we were going to see the Hobbit so the moment I have my pocket watch out, it means we are have an agenda...  so it derailed some of the planning.  In the waning hours before departure, talks finally broke out.

So what did they tell me?

They wanted a Renascence/Age of Exploration sailing/pirate game.   And they wanted it with DnD (Pathfinder actually but same genetic lineage here).   With airships and floating islands and black powder because... well... they know I like steam punk and Napoleonic/Victorian era type things.  Literally, half my gaming miniatures are pirates or people in Victorian/Napoleonic garb or specific NPCs in the past with very little in the area of the general traditional fantasy game roles.  So they know I like and that is ships and particularly the age of sail.

So here I am, scrambling to get something put together and I try to get an idea of how to really make the Age of Sail interesting.  To try and recreate a right and proper frigate or a galleon or ship of the line.

That is when I realized...  even the best rules in DnD (or any of it's derivatives) are sub-par the moment anything like a vehicle shows up.

What if I do want to recreate an engagement along the lines of USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere.   It becomes quite a pain to really recreate a roughly 205' (175' at the waterline) x 45' with four decks and all it's rigging.  Mind you, I know the numbers are off of Constitution (it is a nice middle range heavy frigate with well documented stats) but I rounded to easy to grid out for a game map 5x5 squares.   A first Rater wouldn't be much bigger than Constitution (Victory being only 225' long and 50' wide if I rounded to use a simple game mat) but with so many many more guns.

Okay, that is good for the big navy guys...  you know, the 'good guys' or major villains.  But my players want to be pirates.  So that means Sloops and maybe something a massive as say The Queen Ann's Revenge.   Still mind boggling compared to the average dnd ship in scale.   105' (103 actually but rounding, remember) by 25' (24.5' but again, rounding here).  3 decks not counting cargo hold.  All that rigging.   Plus the 30 guns.

Okay, they can't always have the Queen Ann's Revenge...  so we go to the 3 masted sloop.  Still 100' in length and 30' wide.   Only really the upper deck, the gun deck, and the cargo hold with only 16 guns now.   Okay, starting to enter the range of ships that the game can FINALLY recreate without becoming cumbersome

Yeah...  and they want these things to fly...  They want a Skies of Arcadia-esque game.


Joy.

Oh, how I long for a good game of Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, or Castle Falkenstein now.

I want a steam engine!

A recent post over on the Tao of D&D about steam power reminded me of a good deal of ideas that players have put forward over the years across various editions of the game to get a steam engine to work within the framework of D&D.  Now, assuming that the idea of a steam powered vehicle does come to mind... lets look at some of the technical limitations that can be bypassed with the wonders of magic and not need any form of super advanced metallurgy to be perfected.

Okay, so we need a boiler with a pretty standardized shape.   I know it is from 3.x D&D, we have the Shape Metal spell.   Like it's cousins for stone and metal, it can do a good deal for getting a perfect weld between two metal pieces far more efficiently than rivets.   Hey, we can even get the water and steam lines in this way.

Metals not strong enough to keep pressures contained?   Again, 3.x gave us a spell that doubles the strength and sturdiness of the materials used.   This is assuming that using common metals like iron or primitive steel are used and not some of the more fantastic metals, like Adamantine, renown for it's strength in setting.  Heck, that spell goes a long way towards keeping metals that can handle fatigue well across the machine...  though it would take experimentation to find which parts need the refinement and reinforcement.

Sustainable heat?   Well, assuming that you don't have a ready fuel source and are wanting to stay magical, we have the fun spell of Heat Metal.  Through either refinement or a permanency spell, you can keep the metal at a constant state of searing... what ever searing counts as.   I am shooting for honestly what I consider searing (IE, from cooking) of 150* C (300* F) Min to about 350 F.   Ouch.   This will get water boiling pretty good.   That would be a good means

Now that a heat source has been secured, how to control the heat?   It can't exactly be held now...  A ceramic (IE: magically enhanced bricks) covered platform with mechanical controls to lower and raise the platform into contact with the boiler.

A constant supply of water can be supplied by either... well, making sure water is available or if staying with magic being used and not needing a network of water towers everywhere or keeping track of where all lakes and rivers are...  we have our classic stand by of one or more decanters of endless water.   That is one of the single most useful items ever.

There are a few more problems that will need to be fixed over time and experimentation... like a steam release valve...  or actually figuring out how to harness this great new concept!  Someone will come along soon with ideas like blowing the high pressure steam across a light weight water wheel.   Refining it till you have a primitive turbine, Mithril comes in wonders here...  since the water wheel and the wind mill seems to be understood in a DnD setting more than a piston engine.   It won't be efficient but it is a good leap forward in giving mechanical power for crafting.

Will it be cheap?  No.   Will it be common?   Not till someone figures out how to refine it and make it cheaper.   Will it be revolutionary and bring about the industrial revolution?   Probably not change the setting in a single day or even a few years.   But it could be fun.

Eeeeeeh...   just a few ideas.   Just wanting to toss them out in the open.

This has been bugging me,

I know it should not but it does...

Someone made a stupid post on a certain forum board.   The post was to ask about how to get to a modern style world from a generic fantasy world to a modern world in only a few generations.   No.  Just no.  I know that The Tao of D&D has gone very in depth into such things as the impact of technology and development of the modern world from the fantasy.   He has done so much in depth work into it...

But...

Players always seem to ask this question though.   They are used to a modern world.   They want modern marvels and conveniences.  Their knowledge about fighting tends to be influenced by the modern world.   So of course when given the choice to be 'creative', they try to bring what they know forward.

I wish they would stop trying to be 'creative'.   I am running a mid to high fantasy world...  I am not running Warhammer 40k, not running Star Wars, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, Battletech, Shadowrun, or what ever else they want to rather be playing but don't tell me.    Trust me, I love hard and soft sci-fi just as much as I love high fantasy.   I will run a Conan the Barbarian low fantasy world just as likely as I will run a 'steampunk' Victorian sci-fi game... because Jules Vern was a fantastic inspiration and I love comics like Girl Genius for a modern take on the era.   They just need to ask me honestly.

But please...  Stop trying to bring blasters, mechs, the industrial revolution, tanks, guns, and the such to a fantasy game.    Or at least do your homework, figure out all the steps... and I mean ALL the steps...  and make a proposal that makes some form of sense, shows a realistic progression of thought from one step to the next, and a plan to get there... and maybe we can talk.  

Just coming to me to ask 'I want a Ford Mustang' when no one else has a car and the next best thing might be magic wagon wheels that move at a modest speed without horses but don't explain where the rubber wheels, the cast metal engine blocks, the body panels, the seats, and so on and so forth came from or where your character got the idea for a '98 ford mustang and I will probably just face palm and say go away.

So, it caught fire and burnt down.

As I mentioned in a post that shouldn't be too hard to find, the inevitable Age of Wonders has come and gone.  Like I previously mentioned, it is why we have rare artifacts...  and why we don't all have access to them and why they are legendary.

I mentioned before one major thing that I have never touched upon is the actual end of the age.  Well, I did finally.  Had to.   I made the general mistake of tying four different organizations to the various magical and technological disasters that have stemmed from the very long and agonizing death of the Age of Wonders and it's tortured remains that came afterwards...  in other words...  the 1300+ years that came after that...  IE:  My campaigns over the last 13 years or so in the same world.  

Trust me, I got the original map from 1998 that I colored with markers... complete with desert that disappeared because I got over-zealous with the green but I was not going to redraw the damn thing since it was on card stock.

Suddenly, every little problem and justification was dragged into the light.   At first, it was easy.  It was simple.  They were just ancient powerhouse organizations.  That is all.   Don't ask questions.   Wait!  What are you doing?   You actually want to know about them?  Okay... here is the pamphlet/Wikipedia stub about them.   That is enough, right?

I mean, one of them is an organization that hunts evil... think the harpers from forgotten realms meet the templars and decide to co-op with some paladin type refuges from Wheel of Time.   Toss in a bit of Imperium of Man Inquisition for fun and profit.

One of them searches the countryside for monsters.  They don't care about evil.   They just want to safeguard the people from terrors that lurk in the darkness.   They guard a massive wall and draw some inspiration from refugees from A Game of Thrones.

One is dedicated to the hunting of the dark and forbidden arts of technology and it's proscribed sub-sect, magical based technologies.   They detest the wonder weapons of the Age of Wonders and the rise of the Industrial Revolution that came in it's flame covered wake.

Another is an order of spell casters trying their best to police themselves, hoping no one remembers that at one time, it was their own kind... the god priests and terror inducing wizards who had brought the world to it's knees in the first place.   A self regulating body to prevent the rise of another lich king or similar wanna-be godling from rising from their ranks.   Think Psi-Corps... but for ALL spell casters...  divine and arcane.

The last is simply an order of warriors meant to be the counterbalance for the previous group.   Supreme warriors who hone their abilities without aid of magic or enhancement because the leader of the organization has access to five great artifacts that can negate all magic for a certain area.   When the mages fail or a truly terrible threat rises, the masters of this order sorte to solve it.

This was enough for months and months.

That changed.

That changed when suddenly players attached themselves to these organizations as former, disillusioned members.   Suddenly, I need to figure things out.   Histories, doctrines, and the such.   The lore that backs these details suddenly means something now.

I couldn't be happier.

It is just suddenly means I need to actually work again... because someone might actually stumble across a shred of truth and start actually assembling the great mysteries that have been laying dormant in my notebooks for years.   They occasionally stumble and solve part of them but never truly get it all... but suddenly, there might be a player who might start asking the questions as to the origins of the two worlds I run on...  and it might make sense.

For the first time in years, I might have someone who might be able to play the game on the level that I used to run on.    Not on the person on person level or the party on party level...  no, to debate policy with ancient powers, to give their versions of a B5 level speech and maybe even steal the keys the worlds from my hand to shape it to their will like the players of old that I have had the pleasure to run for.

I couldn't be happier.

3 month update for the giant Risk map

As with any good engine, there is a good deal of engineering that goes into it.  Trial and error... emphasis on the failure.

What have I learned from this process?

The rules I have created for province improvement and construction was well received.   It was simple and after a very minor bit of book keeping work on a seasonal basis in game, it was understood.   I ended up going with a seasonal basis for the game because it freed up the players to be able to still adventure and do what they want most with gaming... to play their characters.

They actually started to try to lay the ground work for a feudal system into play.   When confronted with weeks long travel times, suddenly the idea of why nobles had so much power as they did outside the control of a king became more apparent to them.   It was a beautiful moment as a GM to sit back and actually have them get nervous over picking who their regent or majordomo or the new lord of a newly claimed province.   The idea that they are not able to police or get to the entire width and length of their kingdom made them actually slow down their ambitions.

When confronted with the idea of such expansive kingdoms that might take a month and a half to just march an army from one border to the next, suddenly that 200 man garrison within a major city did not seem like it was much, even if it is enough to bring down an average adventuring party.  Time suddenly came into being important.   That LotR-esque multi-month foot journey on a quest to sabotage a rogue noble might give that noble time to do something mean to prepare.   Suddenly, that orc army from Return of the King seems less insane.

What have I really learned?

I need a better way to utilize armies effectively.  Or at least run their battles.

There is no other way of saying it.

No matter how well I model the feudal system (or more accurately, it self-organizes itself), no matter how indepth I put the politics or the intrigue that goes behind the game of thrones, the moment the armies hit the field, it falls apart.

Player psychology puts themselves as being a cut above the rest and who doesn't think this way?   We all want to be Conan the Barbarian, slaying all those who stand before us or fight like Aragorn.   But there is a disconnect the moment that there is a marching band of 800 men, banners flying in the air.  

Yes, they are a mass of level 1 to 3 NPCs.  They are all powerful characters.   They have butchered goblin or orc warbands that attack wildly in the dark of the night but suddenly, when faced with an organized army in an open field with their own special units attached to it and an intelligent commander, all the adventurer tricks went right out the window.

I have done this before, in an earlier campaign setting, when a player who was playing a shape changing berserker charged an entire motorized infantry company and their support vehicles.  It took most of a day to roll out all the attacks of that combat.   All 200 or so plus their supporting vehicles and support weapons.   It was an odd campaign honestly... glad I laid that game to rest.

The long and the short of it is this...   while he managed to kill a few and disable one of the vehicles, he was brought down...  but it took four hours to run 3 turns of combat.  And he wouldn't run away...  he was depending on the idea that he could do the impossible, that he was invincible only because he had an incredible AC and a TON of hit points to soak what was a few pin-pricks at a time.   Problem is... 200+ attacks per turn over 3 turns was just too much for one man to do.

Yet I still want players to feel like they can do something during a major battle.   I want it to feel incredible for them.   It is why we tell the stories and tales, yes?   To feel like we are part of some epic fight?    Yet how do I divorce players from thinking they are playing a table top version of the Koei made Dynasty Warrior series?

Because that is what I think they are thinking when they think of their characters verse an army.

Some mighty incarnation of Lu Bu capable of shattering ranks of infantry by merely charging into their ranks or pulling some Baron Munchhausen style insanity, thinking it will actually turn the tide of battle.

How else do you term riding a catapult bolder into battle and using feather fall to not die from the impact?   All to get surrounded by foot soldier company.

Because they are not fighting disorganized orcs who don't know how to fight but groups of proper centuries, ordered and disciplined...  and not just one century but a full on cohort... plus auxiliaries!  Sorry, anything short of Hercules or Thor is going to be stop the power of a single cohort... let alone a full on Legion.   Which is what sometimes is hanging on the wings.

Now, I can always just take it as my players (and players in general) are arrogant and think that since they can bring down a dragon or slay a lich or survive a trap filled dungeon or decode a mysterious legend that they are pretty capable.   But put a roman-esque legion in their way or a mechanized SS grenadier company or what ever... and they think tackle them like it was a simple orc horde.

Oh well...  this is the next great challenge in improving the system.

Do I keep the armies as mere set peices, fighting their great wars in the background while the players lurk about sabotaging supply lines, assassinating commanders, stealing plans...  in essence, being commandos or James Bond special agents fighting small skirmishes with a few people at a time...

or do I figure out a way to put the players in situations akin to the storming of Normandy or Iwo Jima, the battlefields of El Alamein, the bloody fields of Agincourt, or the narrows at Thermopylae...

without dragging the game down with a million dice rolls that detract more than add...  no game should ever be each player gets to roll their 2 or 3 attacks or 1 spell and then the GM has to roll 1000 times for both the player's allies and the enemy.

Hopefully I will get an update that ISN"T 3 months from now... but prep work always sucks up so much time.

Return to Risk

I was wrong to call what I was creating Risk.   Only about 2/3 done with the massive map's provinces...  not even started naming them.  It's not Risk, it's Birthright.  Except I don't want that cluster fuck of rules.   God did it suck and digging out that horrid module, it leaves a whole hell of a lot to be desired when compared to the last decade and a half of empire building game advancement from 1996 to today.

What did my players want to do immediate when they got land?   They wanted to develop it.  To pour countless tons of wealth into the land to turn each province they had so lovingly stolen from the minor nobles in isolated lands to turn them into real cities.   They wanted to do what they do any game of Civilization or Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri or Hearts of Iron 3...  or any of the later Total War series games.

Except you can only do the most rudimentary of upgrades in Birthright.  There is nothing to allow a person to develop a backwater province and turn it into a powerhouse if they pour enough roads and make it attractive enough.   It assumes in the rules that you go in with the idea that using their maps and regions is the only way to play!

Screw that!


I am a die hard empire builder and I know at least 2/3 of my players want to also build an empire.  They want to know their money is doing something.  I want their money to do something.   They are also patient.  They are playing long lived races and are more than content to take a decade or two to build up a nation from next to nothing and into something that might eventually make a stand against ancient powers.   The satisfaction of knowing they took disparate provinces no one cared about on the frontier and turned them into a Prussia or better.   Some dream bigger than that.

This means I need to throw off the cheap way out and start to work to help fuel their desires, to help stoke the fires of ambition and see where this takes them.  Will they build something that will last or will they try to reach too far too fast and end up in ruins, an occupied shell under the rule of an empire?  That means newer and better rules.

Simple rules that can be easily understood but big enough to cover the level of detail they request... like their armies, infrastructure, crafting capacity, income makers, and critical resources...  but avoid the minute details that would bog it down too much under paper work.   They are to be kings, not accountants... that is what the Hand is for.  Btw, that's me.

But it is a neat experiment honestly on my part to see what my players when forced to make the BIG choices do.   They have been adventurers across a number of campaigns for years.  Now, they have to take on the mantle of being something far, far more.

All because a simple map with silly names was put before them and they could for once actually plot out their actual size of their tiny holdings and think.  So glad I listened to my room mate that day and spent the time working on it... even if I was distracted with the Ninja Warrior marathon because the main entertainment was knocked out thanks to the hurricane knocking out the web servers.

Risk and D&D

Hillariously, I was digging through my shelves not too long ago and I stumbled across a whole slew of empire building games.  You know the kind...   Risk, Shogun, that sort of game.   So pulling out some simple blank paper, I started laying them out over the reversed side of the board.

There I was, standing there, looking at a blank game board.  Nothing of note there when my room mate spoke up and said I should draw my game world map on it.   I kind of blinked a few times and asked, "Which one?  There are two."

"The one we are currently in.   It would help us out in our mass scheming."

Then it sank it.   He was right.  I have drawn hundreds of maps over the years.  Each time redefining the political borders of the world as time has advanced and changed or where the predominate language and dialect is spoken.   I've even redrawn them to show the environmental effects of massive cataclysms that the players failed to stop or were responsible for themselves.  Ruined and lost cities, ancient relic locations that have long been lost to time.   In fact, it is odd pulling out a bit of parchment from folder and tossing a stack of unlabled maps that I know what they are that only show a year... sometimes two or three hundred years out of date and watch players pour over those maps for clues or a fragment of information that might lead them to where the villain is or where a lost item of power is at.

But never have they had a giant map they could push counters across like it was a Risk board or one of those battle maps you see generals and world leaders standing over in movies, documentaries, and photos.  I have so many silly old games no one plays anymore...   the version of risk I have still uses the old three pointed and five pointed counters for the armies and not the molded figures you see today.   So nicely generic.   Lord of the Rings Monopoly...  odd christmas gift because they thought since I liked fantasy... but it still has money in the original rubber bands BUT it did have tiny forts and castles instead of houses and hotels.   Shogun?  Hundreds of tiny color coded samurai and two stage castles.

I got nearly everything I need honestly to do something up for my players.   I just need to pick up a couple medieval or civil war standard bearers to represent major generals in the world and get to painting them up with the major house banners and I am set.

It is odd though how the moment a massive game board comes out, people's perceptions change.  I am currently using the back of my never used World of Warcraft: The Board Game map as the future backing of the board... something that had only given me an infinite supply of cheap D8s to pretty much throw about or use as the cores of dice buildings and tons of cheap monster stand ins in the years since I wasted money on it.   Glad to see it get one more use out of it.   Now, if I can get a use of the cards, I will have scavanged it for everything it is worth.

Well...   I'll try to post updates as I go on this...  going to have to start marking out the province borders properly of the surface and the two major underdark regions.