Post/Author/DateTime	Post
GreatSiron 12-17-05, 11:02 PM	..
flametounge 12-17-05, 11:16 PM	Well, it wasn't a broken mod for me, it was bad luck. We were playing an intro mod, and there was a Gnoll boss. So, our ranger goes around the corner, and the gnoll had a readied axe attack. He got 2 natural 20's, dropped the ranger to -10, then dropped the Paladin, and was finally defeated by a well placed sleep spell.
ezreal2001 12-18-05, 04:35 AM	A tiger? In Alyssa? It retires at the end of the year, so I won't go into details but that mod has the highest PC death rate my group has ever experiance
Kheldren 12-18-05, 05:42 AM	I would disagree with "A Tiger! in Ahlissa?!" - playing at APL 2 or 4 I think we trashed that module - the DM got upset that the enemy couldn't attack us effectively... Oddly enough the nastiest one I have seen (OK I have not seen many) was Gateway to Bright Sands which I DM'd. Apart from killing a character due to bad tactics (from him) and bad dice rolls from me (he took 2 crits from a longsword at 1st level) (actually one of the other players pointed out to me a few days later how I could have let him live) my problem was with the set-up. The following is a slight spoiler - but I actually recommend anyone playing this module to read it! Bear in mind this adventure is the second in the Bright Sands sequence and is likely to have brand new characters or ones with 1 adventure under their belt playing it (including Bright Lands Centaurs)... To get into the adventure characters need at least 30gp in cash - I almost played this with a character who would have been locked out before the adventure began - luckily I was unable to make the session. If you are playing a Centaur the chance of playing the module is pretty much 0 unless you are already associated with other characters. Yes you can pool cash to get one character in to brief the others - but only if you are "known associates". So either have 30gp, or be a pre-established group (if you are a centaur do both). I have also been shown stats for a module at higher level than we played. Put it this way, the author of the module cringed at the APL14 encounters (it was playtested at 12) - at APL4 we paniced - but actually managed it easily! APL matters a lot
Sieylianna 12-18-05, 10:26 AM	I would disagree with "A Tiger! in Ahlissa?!" - playing at APL 2 or 4 I think we trashed that module - the DM got upset that the enemy couldn't attack us effectively... When we played "Tiger" at APL 4, the assassin almost killed my 6th level druid playing down with it's death attack. Although I managed a 34 Spot check to avoid being surprised, the assassin had a 27 INitiative (I think it was a +9 modifier). I rolled a 1 to save, but survived due to "Not this Time". If I'd gone down, he could have cut through the rest of the party (2nd and 3rd levels). Ed
Sieylianna 12-18-05, 10:29 AM	Well I'm posting to complain about a mod I just played that nearly tpk'ed my group and left half of us with a curse that would eventually cause us to lose our characters. Now this was a regional mod that will retire in two weeks, so none of you guys will probably have to face it, but I won't give its name or the region I played it in. The What APL were you playing? It doesn't send like anything I've played and I've played modules from about 10 different regions. Ed
mendahu 12-18-05, 10:38 AM	For those interested, Tiger in Ahlissa does have an errate document somewhere that advises the DM how to run the final encounter to a less lethal degree (because the assassin mentioned is not the most lethal part of the module). As far as lethal mods go in general, try to keep your complaints focused. Bad luck, poor party tactics, bad party builds, and bad DMs are not the module's fault. Authors go through a lot of playtesting to try and ensure that their encounters are balanced, but unfortunately there are just some situations they cannot account for. -Jake Robins Edmonton, AB
GreatSiron 12-18-05, 01:03 PM	..
King Kashue 12-18-05, 01:14 PM	Tiger in Ahlissa = STILL LEGAL Quit with the spoilers you two!
GreatSiron 12-18-05, 01:29 PM	I reread my AR. Turns out if you recieve some kind of cert from my region's triad you can play your charater again, I think. But the guy's who got hit with the curse were not even from this region, and the curses have to be removed by a lvl 17 caster. (Not likely to find) No one has let his or her curse progress that far yet, so I don't know the details, and the triad member I know isn't telling. The curse still bites though. And I guess Im allowed to tell you that it was a Yeomandry mod.
Namarus 12-18-05, 08:02 PM	Well Im going to finish my rant from earlier. First off the first encounter had a super high SR, so the spell casters got to twidle their thumbs. The second encounter involved two animated statues that looked completely human, but had a hardness of ten (does any know what any of these things are, the first encounter came from Fiend Folio, I've been told.) Plus, when you tried to hit them, your weapon would break unless you made a fort save. Paladin lost his magic sword in this manner. The things knocked the spellcaster to -9 (they hit pretty hard) and the monk to -2. As we approched the final encounter, we were hit with a dispeling orb, and got to face a wizard, a shield guardian, an invisible familar armed with touch attack spells, and a very evil book that D-door's the caster whenever he is grappled, which screwed the monk, casted greater dispel magic as a counterspell action every other round, which screwed the caster (again). The wizard slowed the cleric and confused the caster (I felt really sorry for him by this time, and I was going to end up feeling much worse for him). Then the monk got the bright idea to try and destroy the book (which in the end wasnt such a bad idea, but me and the other rouge were standing right next to him, so it still would have sucked had we not made our saves) When he grappled it, the book went BOOM and dealt 10d6 to everything next to it, and at least 5d6 to everything in the room. Nobody died because the DM rolled the first 5d6 crappy and the fact that everyone near the book had evasion and made their saves. Turns out the book would have blown up at the end of the encounter anyway, when the party was weakened. (See this mod really sucks.) So we survived unscathed, or did we? We spent forever trying to find a way out. We didn't find one. We used detect magic and found that the wizard had a ring and an amulet that powered the guardian. The caster got the idea to use the ring to see if it would let us get out by the scry windows. It did. Too bad the ring was cursed. It was cursed with a minus 2 to enchantment saves and makes you the possible slave of a supposidly long gone lich. It was cursed and a party member had to don it to save the party! But I'm not through yet. Anyone that was knocked below 0 or took a critical hit from any construct in the mod had to make a DC 20 + apl Fort save or start turning into a construct! Each time the inflicted character goes below zero or takes a critical hit, they have to make a DC 12 + apl Fort save or turn further. First lvl is -2 cha +2 natural armor, second lvl is -2 to dex, third lvl is reduced speed, fourth is healing has only half effect, and fifth is bye bye character! I was saved by a miracle natural 20, but the other 3 who fell below 0 or were criticaled were not so luckly, including the already cursed caster. (That mod really sucked for him). Anyone have a mod experence that bad? Sounds like you faced Carytatid Columns. Which in my opinion are rediculously sick monsters to fight. Especially since they are designed specifically to destroy character's weapons. In LG that is horrific.
JohnduBois 12-18-05, 09:05 PM	A Tiger in Ahlissa is pretty bad in terms of challenge, but I would like to note that unlike many other mods with deadly encounters, there are skillful ways to bypass the truly deadly encounter and get full XP/GP. Caryatid Columns are pretty bad. I faced one in a regional mod (at the same time as a normal construct). Just hope they're not ordered to start sundering stuff, because that can get pretty insane quickly for their CR... I'm going to say that my least favorite module in terms of how broken it can be is a regional module (Furyondy) called Mysteries Below. The combats are extremely difficult with very questionable EL calculations (CR 8 + CR 5 + CR 3 is a pretty difficult EL 9 encounter, especially since it's APL+3 and the CR's 5 and 3 are modified to be significantly tougher than their MM entry to parties without the right weapons... also see CR 5 + CR 5 + powered-up CR 3 not equalling EL 7, although I guess that was only APL+1). The party may be suffering the effects of a curse that results in significant penalties throughout the module. All three combats take a VERY long time, causing a one-round module to run six and a half hours or more. The storyline (like the plot in all this author's modules) is excellent. I just left the table feeling that if I hadn't acquired a particular access-only weapon (which I got cursed for acquiring and, in retrospect, probably shouldn't have taken as it was an out-of-character choice) a couple adventures earlier, the party would have been in serious, serious trouble and probably gotten TPK'd.
beyowulf 12-18-05, 10:10 PM	Just played "Lasting Deeds" Grr.. Even at APL4 its annoying. From the setup of the final encounter, to the monster placements, and the requirements for winning....:nonono: :rant: Made it, though, but only barely.
DuctShuiTengu 12-19-05, 12:20 AM	Sheldomar Valley Metaregional by the name of Matter of Trust You get hit with an 8th level spell (that's not even from any of the books allowed in LG) at APL 6. I'd go into more detail, but the mod's still playable for the rest of this month.
GreatSiron 12-19-05, 12:57 AM	I just left the table feeling that if I hadn't acquired a particular access-only weapon (which I got cursed for acquiring and, in retrospect, probably shouldn't have taken as it was an out-of-character choice) a couple adventures earlier, the party would have been in serious, serious trouble and probably gotten TPK'd. Speaking of items that you'll regret having later, the "reward" for completing that evil mod were some pages from the book which, if studied for four hours by someone who makes a DC 30 Deciper check or reads magic, grants a +5 to the next spellcraft or knowledge(arcana) and gives arcane spellcasters access to any 3 spells from the limited list. (Which was the only good thing the caster got in that mod). Problem is the things radiate evil, and make you radiate it, even if they are in a bag of holding. Which in my region is a very bad thing.
JohnduBois 12-19-05, 01:15 AM	Whoa. Access to any three limited spells is worth radiating evil, though. And I'm saying that coming from a region fighting a never-ending war against Iuz (who, by the way, just stopped hating my PC from stealing said the earlier-mentioned cursed weapon yesterday).
solbergb 12-19-05, 02:34 AM	For those interested, Tiger in Ahlissa does have an errate document somewhere that advises the DM how to run the final encounter to a less lethal degree (because the assassin mentioned is not the most lethal part of the module). Yeah. I wrote that for LGDMS after consulting with the author on what he intended, as opposed to what he actually wrote. That file has floated around on other Yahoo groups too. There is one tactical paragraph that is extraordinarily poorly written and leads to the opposite result that was intended. Plus a lot of DM's don't think through the encoutner terrain, limitations of the monsters etc vs common spells used, so most of my "eratta" was just "if the Pc's do this, the DM should reward them with XXX because the monsters really are that limited". I didn't actually recommend changing the encounter or statblocks or anything. It was more "this could be bad, a Judge better be prepared for it and he needs to know of tactics that should work so he doesn't disallow or underplay their effects when used by creative players." When I ran it, that fight went ok both times, and when I played it, well, we had good tactics and my sorcereress had a kind of expensive mod in consumables, but we got through it. The encounter also suffered from an Andy Collins faq entry reversing a Skipism that affected the monsters in question and made them much harder to kill. On the flipside, if the DM actually read the tactical notes for the assassin encounter, it usually wasn't that dangerous, beyond somebody just getting very unlucky, similar to a "gnoll crit with axe at APL2". The worst encounters I've had were usually just plain bad APL scaling - there's one with 3 huge air elementals at APL8 in perfect terrain for them that is just fine an APL lower or higher (3 large isn't nearly so bad, and the monster changed at APL10). I've seen a couple mods ruined at a couple APL's by doing the "slaad advance" as you go up levels, which works fine until you hit the CR where death slaads are allowed, which are a lot more than 2 CR powerful than the next lowest slaad. I wasn't fond of a Y4 mod at about half the APLs because of a monster that had, just for fighting it, effects that would not only remove a character's usefulness for the rest of the mod, but couldn't easily be fixed even by the "powerful hiring NPC's" nor by anything you can normally buy on the LGCS spellcasting list for any price. This made worse by the fact that it was a 3.0 fiend folio monster incorrectly converted to 3.5, whose "character-removing" effect, when in spell form, was curable by normal means. But because it was in the mod rules text...it caused a big fuss. I also wasn't too thrilled with another mod where they give you "allies", put you in a dangerous situaton and have the "allies" totally uncooperative...and then bump the CR by 4 on the enemy because of your "allies". My favorite turkey is a metaregional that is retired now, Xerbo's Fury. You're on a boat at night, usually a couple PC's on watch, the rest below decks. Deep fog rolls in of course, so you can be surprised by the materializing boat that somehow perfectly maneuvers in the fog toward your ship. Rogues "zip-line" down from the "rigging" (kinda funny, since a ship that size would be lanteen sailed, not like the oceangoing clipper ships you see in pirate movies). These rogues are higher level than the party, and there were 6 of them. (yes, at APL4 there were 6 level 5 rogues attacking our two level 3 guys on watch, with the rest of the party waking up and trying to get out the hatch to help...). The mitigation for this EL+6 encounter? "If you drop two rogues, the rest flee". That's nice, except they have the potential to simply buzz saw the party one by one. We survived primarily because both of us could swim...after taking a few shots, and taking the first sneak attack (I'd found a corner, my friend failed to), we jumped into the water. We'd wounded one pretty bad, so the party did manage to take that guy out and grind away at another, with the druid summoning elementals from downstairs to help out. We had a TPK at its premier, and two of the players at that table didn't come back to LG. As for the fleeing rogues, well, when we caught up to them, we stood on top of a mountain and rained down summoned monsters, using missile fire to kill any who broke cover to try to flank the summoned monsters. We weren't happy...and we sure as hell weren't gonna risk close combat with them again. News flash to authors. A wounded high level monster is still a high level monster in offense. A high level monster that flees if you hurt it some, is still a high level monster in offense. At most these things are a 1 CR reduction, because the monster is capable of killing the party without losing half its hitpoints a lot of the time, if it outclasses the PC's by enough. Just look at how easily a PC party would dispose of an APL-2 encounter and think if any of THEM will go down, or even take damage.
Madfox11 12-19-05, 04:32 AM	Caryatid Columns are pretty bad. I faced one in a regional mod (at the same time as a normal construct). Just hope they're not ordered to start sundering stuff, because that can get pretty insane quickly for their CR... Never had much problems with them: send in the monk and the druid and you are fine. Start using non-magical items that can be repaired with mending or make whole and again no problem. Though I can see the PCs loose one weapon after a bad roll in the first round, PCs should stop using their expensive stuff once they realize what the thing does. As for sunder, that is always a problem... By the book sundering stuff is a bit too easy for my liking. Personally, I have found level draining monsters in APL 2 scenarios wrong simply because in theory the adventure could be played by 6 1st level characters. Many complaints I have heard about were either the result of miscomminication between the DM and players, or a mistake by the DM. Though there have been a couple of encounters that left very little margin of error for players and DMs...
Sieylianna 12-19-05, 07:29 AM	Tiger in Ahlissa = STILL LEGAL Quit with the spoilers you two! If you ask questions during the module introduction you find out that you are after an assassin. So I don't consider this any more a spoiler than something which is written in the blurb. I had the author running the module, so there weren't any issues with monster tactics in the later battle. Ed
gizmonster 12-19-05, 11:50 AM	I reread my AR. Turns out if you recieve some kind of cert from my region's triad you can play your charater again, I think. But the guy's who got hit with the curse were not even from this region, and the curses have to be removed by a lvl 17 caster. (Not likely to find) No one has let his or her curse progress that far yet, so I don't know the details, and the triad member I know isn't telling. The curse still bites though. And I guess Im allowed to tell you that it was a Yeomandry mod. I am from the Yeomany...I have played the mod...BROKEN. That's all I am going to say! I played it at a convention and got soooooo lucky. Here is how lucky I got. We couldn't figure out the first puzzle so we never really got into the mod. :) YEEEHAW. Other guys I normally play with were separated from me at the con and we ended up at different tables. Several of the guys I play with ended up with NASTY curses! You know it's got to be broken when you are happy you don't make into the mod.
ezreal2001 12-19-05, 06:01 PM	If you ask questions during the module introduction you find out that you are after an assassin. So I don't consider this any more a spoiler than something which is written in the blurb. I had the author running the module, so there weren't any issues with monster tactics in the later battle. Ed Must say there is an explicit warning which I regret say my party didn't take seriously. As to the other encounter well as written it's deadly. As an aside I do object to encounters where the bad guy's equipment takes tha form of one off consumables eg the Perrenland regional "dark waves" has a low APL encounter were the bad guys have spent almost all there cash on Wyven Poison. And while I'm rambling "Desecrators of the Lords' Tomb" rates a mention for a certain encounter where choice of APL has major impact the outcome - lets just say my Rogue/Ranger scored a Wight and a couple of neg levels while my buddy's mage got a Ghoul, was paralised after failing his forth or fifth fort save and killed shortly afterword.
solbergb 12-19-05, 07:36 PM	And while I'm rambling "Desecrators of the Lords' Tomb" rates a mention for a certain encounter where choice of APL has major impact the outcome - lets just say my Rogue/Ranger scored a Wight and a couple of neg levels while my buddy's mage got a Ghoul, was paralised after failing his forth or fifth fort save and killed shortly afterword. I liked that encounter, it was creative and the usual way it would have worked would have been a bunch of characters unable to participate in the battle due to fear or paralysis or whatever...but my opinion may be skewed because I played at an APL where what you "scored" wasn't as dangerous.
redgamer 12-20-05, 12:08 AM	Its funny how many "broken" encounters lead to no character deaths. That being said I hope authors read this section and use it to prevent future mistakes. A lot of people have mentioned A Tiger in Alhissa. I've played it and ran it a half dozen times and have seen it run by three different judges. Never felt it was deadly. Most group breezed through it. Two of the them thought they where close to a TPK but ended up winning handily. So long as you don't leave people to fend for themselves everyone should survive. The difficulty did change dramatically depending on which version of the faq the DM used. There's a year 4 Bissel mod with a gauth at APL 4. Makes me wonder if a gauth was less deadly in 3.0 because it has rather significant allies and the 3.5 gauth is a decent challenge for an APL 4 party all by itself. Faced a symbol of death trap. No way to go around it. The CR was correct but without a rougue you almost have to set it to advance in the mod. Everyone in the party must get past it and most character types have a poor chance to succeed at getting past it without setting it off. Once it is set off the party keeps making fort saves one at a time until x number of hp worth people die or the whole party makes a relatively high save DC. Again save or die spells are not uncommon at that APL but it was a short boring encounter that either consumed no resources or killed a character. Played another mod that hit you with trap that did enough average damage to kill many non fighters. Then another trap. Then a third. Then a fight. In quick succession. This was a good and interesting encounter because the party got a chance to be creative and save the trap springer and except in very strange parties the trap springer would be a fighter. Gave a good impression of danger with out being "broken" in the least.
JohnduBois 12-20-05, 12:25 AM	I'm going to side with the people saying that the final encounter in "A Tiger in Ahlissa" is WAY too deadly. When I played it, a diplomacy roll of 50 (including assists) at APL 4 was enough to skip the last two combats entirely due to role-playing reasons. Then I DM'd it after telling a couple friends it was safe to play even at. The only reason I didn't TPK the party was by holding back in the final encounter. Not holding back to an unreasonable amount, just... not using the parts of the stat blocks that I felt should have increased the CR's and didn't. On another note... I have found, in general, that a nice way to make encounters deadly is to use animated objects. You can make them out of anything you want without increasing the CR at all, from my reading of the Monster Manual. To emphasize the point: Let's say you have an animated object, medium size, that is a fake door that attacks anyone who tries to open it. I haven't seen this in a mod yet, but I would not be surprised if someone eventually did this just to be silly. That door would have the same CR whether it was made of wood (hardness 5; any fighter can overcome it or adamantine/starmetal tears through it like butter) or adamantine (hardness 20; unless you can deal more than 20 points of damage to it in one shot, just run because not even adamantine will scratch that thing on its own). Doesn't this seem like a really easy way to screw over a bunch of PC's without violating the constraints of the EL rules?
gomeztoo 12-20-05, 02:39 AM	And while I'm rambling "Desecrators of the Lords' Tomb" rates a mention for a certain encounter. Yes, that is a nasty encounter, but it depends greatly on the situation. It almost took Goy, our rogue. We were just in time to save him. Otherwise this scenario was a lot of fun. I don't think it is overkill, just very nasty if you have a bit of bad luck. I do think we were lucky at some crucial points though. A scenario I thought had a potentially deadly encounter (depending on party makeup) was War of the Dust. I also heared Frozen Spire is a meat grinder, we'll be playing that in a week, so I hope it is not as bad as people kepe telling me ;) The one scenario I really disliked, was Death By Luna's Light, a retired scenario (year 3, iirc). It pits you at APL 6 against a 11th-lvl flying, improved invisible wizard who has an addiitonal tactical advantage in that he splits up the party, and then targets PCs with spells such as Phantsmal Killer and Disintegrate. Killed my character (had to resurrect her), so I may be biased, but I considered that overkill. Gomez
draxynnic 12-20-05, 04:19 AM	On another note... I have found, in general, that a nice way to make encounters deadly is to use animated objects. You can make them out of anything you want without increasing the CR at all, from my reading of the Monster Manual. To emphasize the point: Let's say you have an animated object, medium size, that is a fake door that attacks anyone who tries to open it. I haven't seen this in a mod yet, but I would not be surprised if someone eventually did this just to be silly. That door would have the same CR whether it was made of wood (hardness 5; any fighter can overcome it or adamantine/starmetal tears through it like butter) or adamantine (hardness 20; unless you can deal more than 20 points of damage to it in one shot, just run because not even adamantine will scratch that thing on its own). Doesn't this seem like a really easy way to screw over a bunch of PC's without violating the constraints of the EL rules? Aye. And that's without making it something different from a door with special attacks. Personally, I think with animated objects they should have the CR for the base object at each size with no hardness (just in case the DM wants to attack a party with a foam animated object), the lowest move speed, and no special abilities, and then give CR increases (which may be fractional if appropriate) for the various enhancements. It's a system I've seen used for other beasties. And yes, I'd have to agree on Desecrators - it's badly scaled: there's one APL where, in the situation you face, any character would prefer to have the creature from the APL above. We had two deaths (basically the worst possible classes got it) and almost had a third... and our DM was being nice.
Sieylianna 12-20-05, 07:34 AM	Faced a symbol of death trap. No way to go around it. The CR was correct but without a rougue you almost have to set it to advance in the mod. Everyone in the party must get past it and most character types have a poor chance to succeed at getting past it without setting it off. Once it is set off the party keeps making fort saves one at a time until x number of hp worth people die or the whole party makes a relatively high save DC. Again save or die spells are not uncommon at that APL but it was a short boring encounter that either consumed no resources or killed a character. You don't have to set it off. Dispel Magic will take it down. A PC with a death ward spell can set it off safely and have the rest of the party wait more than 60' away until the duration is over (if you're not under a time limit and it doesn't reset). If you death ward your barbarian with a bunch of hit points (150 or less), it may not be able to effect anyone else in the party. Ed
redgamer 12-20-05, 10:32 AM	Thanks Ed. I'm not sure if you even need to death ward the barbarian if he has more than 150 hp. Without a rogue we couldn't search for traps and while we suspected traps somewhere no one through spacing the party 60 feet was a reasonable move. In our case the lvl 12 barbarian died (APL 10 mod) and the lvl 5 wizard made his save. The rest of us were immune because the barbarian soked up enough of the possible hps. Frozen spire is rather deadly. It used to be much more deadly but they changed the hardest part. You have to be cautious to survive. (minor spoiler below) One encounter was tonned down from ridiculous to merely hard. The first encounter ranges from near immpossible to easy depending on you're party makup but running is easy enough and i doesn't affect you're success if you do ( I think you even get full xp as the xp is for surviving the encounter and the first encounter has no treasure so no gold loss) Almost everything in the mod is deadly if you are unprepared or do something stupid but preparation is possible.
solbergb 12-20-05, 04:14 PM	Yeah. Frozen spire has one encounter where the template stacking with monster base abilites is perhaps over the top. While it wasn't too bad at the level I played it, with the party I played with, I could see it scaling badly if the same basic encounter was advanced or reduced to fit other APLs. The rest seemed ok, but then we played pretty cautiously, probably because our local judge pool had slotzeroed it at one of the "problem" APL's and it already had a bit of a reputation. Any situation where we could avoid having somebody roll dice, we took it, even if it took longer or was harder to do. To be fair to Tiger/Ahlissa, it was written and playtested before the FAQ changed the rules AND the author repeatedly tried to eratta the main problem with the third encounter, with no success from the powers that be. My experience with "bad" encounters is you won't notice them in just one playtest at a given APL. Luck, party mix etc can really skew the results. Around here, some authors lend me their stuff to "Beat up" - send a few random parties against the combats and give feedback on whether or not the encoutners look ok, or if not, what kind of party will have trouble. Pretty much if three random parties all have serious trouble with an encounter, there is likely a flawed assumption somewhere. Note though that even a "bad" combat won't always result in deaths. It's just that you get a situation where one party in three will lose somebody, and maybe one in 10 will lose several, one in 20 will TPK. This is a lot higher than the average for the campaign, so it will be noticed, and DM's will either softball it or leave a string of bodies behind. Think about how many encounters your characters have played and how many deaths you've seen at the table. It is a lot less than 1 in 3. Often all that is wrong with an encounter is that the characters blunder into it and spend a round either with the wrong assumptions about what is happening or don't take it seriously. Often all that is needed to fix something is to dish out a bit more information, or tweak the encounter terrain to give more of a "sizing up" period. The CR system builds in a certain "buffer" for bad luck. If a little bad luck routinely gets a party into trouble, or a party generally needs GOOD luck to prevail, then the mod is gonna be a TPK for a party that gets really bad luck, or is mildly unlucky but somewhat disfunctional.
JohnduBois 12-20-05, 04:46 PM	Any situation where we could avoid having somebody roll dice, we took it, even if it took longer or was harder to do. Isn't that what repsonsible parties are supposed to do anyway? I mean, why spend all the resources fighting if you can talk or maneuver your way out of it?
Sieylianna 12-20-05, 05:26 PM	Thanks Ed. I'm not sure if you even need to death ward the barbarian if he has more than 150 hp. Without a rogue we couldn't search for traps and while we suspected traps somewhere no one through spacing the party 60 feet was a reasonable move. In our case the lvl 12 barbarian died (APL 10 mod) and the lvl 5 wizard made his save. The rest of us were immune because the barbarian soked up enough of the possible hps. The Symbol of Death affects 150 HP worth of targets, but can't affect anyone with above 150 hit points. So the trick is to death ward a PC who is very close to 150 HP because there aren't enough hit points left to threaten the other PCs. The DC to detect and disable a symbol of death is 33, so you were in trouble at APL 10 even if you had a rogue. Ed
ezreal2001 12-20-05, 06:35 PM	The Symbol of Death affects 150 HP worth of targets, but can't affect anyone with above 150 hit points. So the trick is to death ward a PC who is very close to 150 HP because there aren't enough hit points left to threaten the other PCs. The DC to detect and disable a symbol of death is 33, so you were in trouble at APL 10 even if you had a rogue. Ed <Stretches, leans back, Cracks fingers over head> DC 34 isn't that hard for a 10th level Rogue, When my Elven Rogue/mut was a 10th level PC he had 13 ranks of search, a Lens of Detection (1), int 16, so with an assist from one other player, he could take 10 and get 35. Removing a DC 34 Trap was more difficult, taking 10 with 13 ranks of Disable Device + int 16 + a masterwork Thieves Tool kit only gets DC 28 so a couple of assists plus a Fox's Cunning is necesary here. Nowadays, Imbue Spell and Devine Insight make the process laughibly simple. E (1) Lens of Detection turn up all the time - if your Trap finder doesn't have one of these by CL 10 he/she isn't trying
JamesMaissen 12-20-05, 07:33 PM	Well Im going to finish my rant from earlier. First off the first encounter had a super high SR, so the spell casters got to twidle their thumbs. The second encounter involved two animated statues that looked completely human, but had a hardness of ten (does any know what any of these things are, the first encounter came from Fiend Folio, I've been told.) Plus, when you tried to hit them, your weapon would break unless you made a fort save. .... Anyone have a mod experence that bad? I played the mod in question and it's a tough mod. We didn't play as smart as we could have, but were strong for the APL so it didn't get us. I will say two things on it: first you should contact the triad in question as there is an adendum to the mod in regards to the curse and ring (I got the later but not the former myself), and second that the dispelling screen you describe (and I neatly cut .. oops, sorry) is opaque and thus perfectly visable and possibly identifiable (and atleast easily something special). Its the second of the two that was being run wrong when I played it, but as I recognized its effect it was quick to be altered by a fair judge... but it could have been an undescovered error when and where you played it, so that would have made the last encounter worse than if you were prepared for it. As to mods that were worse I don't need to look far from my home region. In year 2 we had an encounter with 2 bedraggled orcs that were the remains of a fight between a dwarf patrol and an orc party. The two looked very much alike and there was nothing to distinguish them as anything special (other than it's LG and you are encountering them). The first one was an unleveled MM orc (which frankly was unique at the time for our region for them not to have levels and metagaming could have kicked in there). The farther one was a frenzied berserker. In the playtest I hear he had rhinohide armor, but editing at the circle/SRM level removed that. He did have improved crit with his greataxe as low as APL6.. so basically 1 in 10 tables would have atleast one death in the first combat round.. not to mention the rest of the FB fun to be had. Then year 3 we had an intro mod with a mimic hiding out as a chest that was reasonable to be searched by a rogue.. not sure how many newbie rogues that stopped cold. We also had a piggybacked encounter in another year 3 module. The second encounter was triggered by the first one and from off the board comes a true strike'd arrow of slaying (he only has the lesser slaying at APL 4, greater was APL 6 with both for higher APLs). This is through an arrow slit from a 'tower in the distance' that even the mod doesn't specify how far back it was. (As I was the poor guy hit by it, I'm still a little bitter although it's a combination of mod and judge running it). So yeah there's tough all around, what's wierd is the consistancy or lack thereof. For your region in particular until the mod you are screaming about it had been really really level and I considered it a great strength of the region for that fact alone. When most year 2-3 mod authors were playing the escalation game against the 'power' players your region seemed to draw a line on what was expected and reasonable and stayed there. It was admirable and refreshing to see, and really seemed to encourage a level of play on its own that other regions had to really struggle elsewhere to try to come close to. Anyway, yeah you had a tough module out of the blue with some nasty effects and some nice rewards tied in it. The more time you took to approach and prepare for things the better you would have done with it however, and that's not all that bad in a module. But experiencing some of those creatures for the first time always is rough.. it's just that alot of people have already gone through the painful part of the learning curve in regards to those three particular monsters (ie seen them before in other mods and learned how to deal with them). Take care, James
JohnduBois 12-20-05, 07:33 PM	Lens of Detection turn up all the time - if your Trap finder doesn't have one of these by CL 10 he/she isn't trying I wouldn't be so sure about that... I have a PC who thankfully isn't interested in a Lens of Detection, as he's halfway to level 9 and never seen it. In fact, I've got about 70 AR's between all my characters, and I don't believe I've EVER seen it. Be wary of saying an item "shows up all the time". I know players who are begging to get access to a Heward's Handy Haversack at any cost, and I've seen three or four with just one PC. Much of it depends on what your region and metaregion seem to like.
solbergb 12-20-05, 10:14 PM	Isn't that what repsonsible parties are supposed to do anyway? I mean, why spend all the resources fighting if you can talk or maneuver your way out of it? Time is a resource. Player time. Doing a 2 round mod at home gave us the luxury to do everything careful, explain to the DM the details, get our own party dynamics sorted out etc. Sometimes at cons or if someone has a hard time limit, you just damn the torpedoes and bull ahead, trusting to raw power to see you through. We'd had sufficient warning not to try that with this mod. As for access...my char with the best search is the guy who found the lens of detection, but it was simultaneous with eyes of eagle and he needed that more. With adventure access at level 5, he couldn't afford both. That's the only one I've found. My sorc has missed haversacks twice by being just a shade too low level, my archer found one (but no quiver) and nobody else has seen one. My monk has just about every armor enhancement in the DMG and several from other sources. Pity that wearing armor would ruin his primary abilities. *shrug*
TheBlackFlail 12-27-05, 02:48 AM	1. THE RULES, FOLLOW THE %*^$*@ RULES! Mod designers should feel bound by the rules, there are almost certainly more things you can do within the rules than there are discrete particles in the known universe. Why the don't feel bound by them is far beyond me. Spell effects that continue in an antimagic field NO!!!! Perfect hiding (no spot allowed) NO!!!! So many mods I have played have had some reverse deus ex machina (always geared in an attempt to jack with the PCs) device in them: QUIT IT!!! I don't care if they are inconsequential, or if the party can overcome the obstacle anyway: QUIT IT!!! 2. Look at the blasted DMG when you are setting up encounters, some of these encounters are so obviously out of line that it shouldn't require a genius to figure out that this encounter is a "no-go at this station:" EL 8 vs. APL 2? NO!!!! The DMG sums that up nicely "Players should flee, otherwise they will die! (paraphrase)" EL 8 in an ambush, in restricted quarters (players stuck on boat), against flying enemies, with damage reduction and spell resistance, at APL 2?!?!?!!?! Is there a question in your mind about whether or not this is fair? If so, then go directly to writer jail, do not pass go, and do not collect $200 (US), and, please, for the sake of this game, quit writing mods until you finish reading the 3.5 DMG (and adhere to the strictures therein). 3. Timeline: Adventure takes two TUs, adventure takes place over a period of months & months (no way to speed up the plot train, either). 'nuff said about that... 4. A Tiger? In Ahlissa? Never played this mod, haven't read it, either, but more people have told me out of the blue "Never, EVER play this mod," more people have told me of how they are forever cursed from this mod, more people have told me they will never, EVER play Living Greyhawk again because of this mod, than I have heard about any and all other modules combined (FOR SHAME!), and I haven't even played LG for most of the time this module has been available. 5. Mod writers need to think outside the box. The box being their clique of experienced friends, who they play with all the time and know inside and out, and who know them inside and out. The rest of the planet doesn't have the luxury of being them. P.S. If the tale of the mimic in the intro mod is really true: Way to go! Perfect way to introduce the new player into LG with a big fat FU. I hope Santa brought you a metric ton of lignite, it caught on fire in your house, and the EPA came and arrested you for the air pollution.
Simpi 12-27-05, 03:47 AM	So many mods I have played have had some reverse deus ex machina (always geared in an attempt to jack with the PCs) device in them: QUIT IT!!! I don't care if they are inconsequential, or if the party can overcome the obstacle anyway: QUIT IT!!!. Too many mods also have Deus Ex that can boot the players in the right direction if they are not smart enough to follow obvious clues. One local player joked he does need to investigate anything because the mod will eventually boot him to right direction. As authors we should also stop this. If characters are to fail the module, let them. EL 8 vs. APL 2? NO!!!! The DMG sums that up nicely "Players should flee, otherwise they will die! (paraphrase)" EL 8 in an ambush, in restricted quarters (players stuck on boat), against flying enemies, with damage reduction and spell resistance, at APL 2?!?!?!!?! And i've yet to actually see such an encounter that needs to fought in about 100 mods i've played so far. I hear many urban legends about such things but i've yet to see a 'cannot win' situation which clearly isn't a plot device to get characters moving away. If following exchange occurs in a table, who is to blame? DM: Over the hills, several hundred screaming and shouting hillmen start to run towards you. PC 1: Can I take cover behind some rocks? I need some AC boost to fight them. DM: Um, did you hear me. Several hundred raging hillmen. PC 1: Yeah, so? PC 2-6: We run away. PC 1: Cowards, they are all 1st level guys anyway, it would not be legal fight in any other case. (PC 1 takes few shots with ranged weaponry) DM: Ok, you others run away. John, they are getting awfully close and the few you took out with bow don't seem to impress them. PC 1: I stay and fight. DM: Look, come on, doesn't this situation look a bit bad to you? PC 1: I don't care. I want to fight. Come on, they should be close enough, start putting the miniatures on the battlemap. DM: Ok (pours a box of miniatures to the battlemap). They surround you and despite valiant struggle, you die horrible death and your entrails are taken as trophy by the chieftain. 3. Timeline: Adventure takes two TUs, adventure takes place over a period of months & months (no way to speed up the plot train, either). 'nuff said about that... So? That's more of the in-build system of LG than any fault of the author? Y3 Core 'Nine Lives' happens in duration of 15 minutes but still takes 2TU. At least module you are speaking of (Duke of Dust) does the effort in trying to show the traveling bit. I have more problems with a module that starts in one place and then assumes I want to walk half-way across Flanaess, instead of say, starting a bit closer to the adventure location. Duke of Dust is great because it actually shows the journey and that things happen during it instead of: Ok, you walk 1000 miles to your destination. Nothing special happens. Sure, LG could switch to '365TU' with each TU simulating a day in a year (and thus variable cost of adventures) but 52 TU keeps things simpler. 4. A Tiger? In Ahlissa? Never played this mod, haven't read it, either, but more people have told me out of the blue "Never, EVER play this mod," more people have told me of how they are forever cursed from this mod, more people have told me they will never, EVER play Living Greyhawk again because of this mod, than I have heard about any and all other modules combined (FOR SHAME!), and I haven't even played LG for most of the time this module has been available. No curses in that module, so I wonder what they are talking about and only real issue with the whole thing is that author kept the hardness of a certain creature same on all APLs, which means APL2 is struggling while other APLs can probably do all right. Author also corrected said mistake and urged people to run it differently and the 'nasty' bit also has a easy way of avoiding the whole thing. 5. Mod writers need to think outside the box. The box being their clique of experienced friends, who they play with all the time and know inside and out, and who know them inside and out. The rest of the planet doesn't have the luxury of being them. Believe me, I don't. Only thing I include in the mods, them being good example of local players, is the option for morally bankrupt (= Plot hook? Who cares, how much I get) characters to get into adventure and profit through their actions elsewhere in the module. S.H, the guy from Naerie
TheBlackFlail 12-27-05, 05:39 AM	Too many mods also have Deus Ex that can boot the players in the right direction if they are not smart enough to follow obvious clues. One local player joked he does need to investigate anything because the mod will eventually boot him to right direction. As authors we should also stop this. If characters are to fail the module, let them. I agree, though I have never seen Deus Ex used as such (more likely a DM nudge in the right direction), though I have simply sputtered out at least half a dozen mods (one was "The ranger only got a 26 on the track check? [apl2] Too bad, soo sad, you can't follow the tracks, horrible event occurs un-interrupted, mod over, all of the innocents die, here's your AR") And i've yet to actually see such an encounter that needs to fought in about 100 mods i've played so far. I hear many urban legends about such things but i've yet to see a 'cannot win' situation which clearly isn't a plot device to get characters moving away. Re-read the module you named (and shouldn't have, I didn't mention a name for a reason, it's still playable for 5 more days), ambush, at night on a river with nowhere else to go... Also, around these parts, assasins seem to jump out at us from hiding an awful lot, not exactly easily avoided encounters (often as total non-sequiturs, especially when said assassin is an actual ASSASSIN class in APL 4) So? That's more of the in-build system of LG than any fault of the author? Y3 Core 'Nine Lives' happens in duration of 15 minutes but still takes 2TU. At least module you are speaking of<snip>does the effort in trying to show the traveling bit. So it destroys a little bit of my suspension of disbelief (just a little though, on a scale of 1-100 that quibble rates about a 3). No curses in that module, so I wonder what they are talking about and only real issue with the whole thing is that author kept the hardness of a certain creature same on all APLs, which means APL2 is struggling while other APLs can probably do all right. Author also corrected said mistake and urged people to run it differently and the 'nasty' bit also has a easy way of avoiding the whole thing. A. I just am reporting heresay about the module. B. The inability of the system to be able to correct a mistake once it is out there is a big black stain if it is turning people away, like this mod has. C. I have never successfully completed any module by this author (played all at low APLs), though I have never been killed in any such module, it lends people's complaints about this one an air of believeability. Believe me, I don't. Only thing I include in the mods, them being good example of local players, is the option for morally bankrupt (= Plot hook? Who cares, how much I get) characters to get into adventure and profit through their actions elsewhere in the module. I did not mean to tarnish you or any other good mod writers out there by this generalization, sorry. Though 90-95% of mods I have played have been fair(nobody can create perfection all the time)-great, the persistent nature of LG , combined with the grab bag nature of choosing a mod (who knows what's inside?) gives the 5% or so of bad apples BIG BIG power to ruin things for people. On top of that, as a whole, mods often seem to be written with a very tight tolerance and little room for error. When playing with my routine group of friends, regardless of the DM, things often run smoothly (defined as I have only lost two characters to death this way :) ), however I dread playing with new players: the tight tolerances and consistently high end encounters mean that one new players mistakes (any player can make mistakes, new players just make a few more) can rapidly spiral out of control and quickly doom the whole endeavour. With the general difficulty level so high it is nearly impossible to cover a newbies butt without significant metagaming and extreme DM help. New players may be new and unwise to the ways of tactics, strategy and roleplaying, but they aren't dumb, and I see very few of them back after their first dismal failure, especially when their failure dooms (or nearly so) a group. A wee bit of give, especially in lower level APL mods, would alleviate this situation massively. Thinking outside their cliques would allow a lot of the more insular types to see this. I (personally) can stand failure, I can stand getting my brains occasionally scattered across the wall, I can stand running with my tail between my legs getting no XP or gold from an adventure. I can't stand frustration (sorry only ONE way to complete this adventure, too bad your group of four didn't have Skill 'X'), encounters that seem designed only with the purpose of seeing a PC dead (level draining monsters at APL 2; the unexpected, honest-john, prestige-class assassin CR 7 or 8 at APL4; etc...), and I really, really hate seeing dejected teenagers turned away from the game knowing I did everything I could short of stealing their character sheets and running them like cohorts (which would probably turn them away just as fast) to keep them alive and the adventure going.
Simpi 12-27-05, 06:51 AM	Re-read the module you named (and shouldn't have, I didn't mention a name for a reason, it's still playable for 5 more days), ambush, at night on a river with nowhere else to go... Also, around these parts, assasins seem to jump out at us from hiding an awful lot, not exactly easily avoided encounters (often as total non-sequiturs, especially when said assassin is an actual ASSASSIN class in APL 4) I never gave any details about 'Duke' other than there is traveling involved and something happens. The combat you descriped HAS been errated (available on LGDMs Yahoo Group). Instead of 6 creatures, you only face 2. S.H, the guy from Naerie
smerwin29 12-27-05, 08:21 AM	I (personally) can stand failure, I can stand getting my brains occasionally scattered across the wall, I can stand running with my tail between my legs getting no XP or gold from an adventure. I can't stand frustration (sorry only ONE way to complete this adventure, too bad your group of four didn't have Skill 'X') [snip] This is one of the main problems with sitting down and writing a mod. I've heard more than one player complain about a module and say something like this: "I just don't want to be frustrated." The problem is there are 10,000+ players, and each of them are frustrated by something different, and usually those frustrating things are opposites. One is frustrated by too difficult combats, the next by too easy combats. One is frustrated by too much roleplaying, the next by too little. One is frustrated by too linear a story, the next frustrated because the mod doesn't present a clear path. This isn't to say that a lot of the concerns put forth in this thread aren't valid. However, when you write a module you only have one opportunity to "get it right," and you have a whole spectrum of players as your audience, and you are fenced in by the inherent limitations in the format you have to work with and the rules of both d20, D&D, and LG. Regards, Shawn (author of a few mods in a few RPGA campaigns)
Kelez 12-27-05, 11:58 AM	Yeah....I Live in Michigan and I will play Mysteries below soon so I will be sure to not take that weapon (thanks for the spoiler!grrr lol JK). But if You've ever played any other Steve Yee mods then you will know what I mean that the first fight in "Broken Dreams" is horrible. I mean, having a Greater Advanced Barghest in an APL 4 table is total Crap. A Tiger in Ahlissa is pretty bad in terms of challenge, but I would like to note that unlike many other mods with deadly encounters, there are skillful ways to bypass the truly deadly encounter and get full XP/GP. Caryatid Columns are pretty bad. I faced one in a regional mod (at the same time as a normal construct). Just hope they're not ordered to start sundering stuff, because that can get pretty insane quickly for their CR... I'm going to say that my least favorite module in terms of how broken it can be is a regional module (Furyondy) called Mysteries Below. The combats are extremely difficult with very questionable EL calculations (CR 8 + CR 5 + CR 3 is a pretty difficult EL 9 encounter, especially since it's APL+3 and the CR's 5 and 3 are modified to be significantly tougher than their MM entry to parties without the right weapons... also see CR 5 + CR 5 + powered-up CR 3 not equalling EL 7, although I guess that was only APL+1). The party may be suffering the effects of a curse that results in significant penalties throughout the module. All three combats take a VERY long time, causing a one-round module to run six and a half hours or more. The storyline (like the plot in all this author's modules) is excellent. I just left the table feeling that if I hadn't acquired a particular access-only weapon (which I got cursed for acquiring and, in retrospect, probably shouldn't have taken as it was an out-of-character choice) a couple adventures earlier, the party would have been in serious, serious trouble and probably gotten TPK'd.
Kelez 12-27-05, 12:04 PM	Must say there is an explicit warning which I regret say my party didn't take seriously. As to the other encounter well as written it's deadly. As an aside I do object to encounters where the bad guy's equipment takes tha form of one off consumables eg the Perrenland regional "dark waves" has a low APL encounter were the bad guys have spent almost all there cash on Wyven Poison. And while I'm rambling "Desecrators of the Lords' Tomb" rates a mention for a certain encounter where choice of APL has major impact the outcome - lets just say my Rogue/Ranger scored a Wight and a couple of neg levels while my buddy's mage got a Ghoul, was paralised after failing his forth or fifth fort save and killed shortly afterword. Good thing I didn't take it but if you do the end wrong...You might as well as put your character away. That's all I have to say/
Kelez 12-27-05, 12:17 PM	I just judged this mod and if you don't have a combat high party at level one, then you are pwnt. I MEAN I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THE PERSON WOULD PUT AN EL 6 ENCOUNTER IN AN INTRO MOD. That just says "You should die and you are a stupid head so I'll put 48 skeletons against you". WTF!!??!!??! :weep: :weep:
TheBlackFlail 12-27-05, 03:02 PM	The combat you descriped HAS been errated (available on LGDMs Yahoo Group). Such things should never need errata, as they should never leave anyone's mind and get onto paper. The DMG explicitly says such an encounter is a NO-GO. A NO-GO encounter with no way out? One shouldn't even have to ask such a question. Also, I have never seen any DM use errata for LG adventures, and I didn't even know there were any. Obviously a lot of people haven't gotten this message and need to. This is one of the main problems with sitting down and writing a mod. I've heard more than one player complain about a module and say something like this: "I just don't want to be frustrated." The problem is there are 10,000+ players, and each of them are frustrated by something different, and usually those frustrating things are opposites. One is frustrated by too difficult combats, the next by too easy combats. One is frustrated by too much roleplaying, the next by too little. One is frustrated by too linear a story, the next frustrated because the mod doesn't present a clear path. Adventures with only one path to success, where that path cannot even be trod unless you have a certain group make-up or skill/feat set, are guaranteed (or your money back) to frustrate virtually everybody that plays such an adventure without hitting the party composition lotto (ranger, bard, 2 rogues, a fighter, and a cleric with skill 'x'? Ding! Ding! Ding!, you win!). There are various other features that will frustrate a majority of the people a majority of the time, as well. This isn't to say that a lot of the concerns put forth in this thread aren't valid. However, when you write a module you only have one opportunity to "get it right," and you have a whole spectrum of players as your audience, and you are fenced in by the inherent limitations in the format you have to work with and the rules of both d20, D&D, and LG. You do only have one opportunity to "get it right," but any mistakes you make will live on for two years and be thrust upon countless numbers of unsuspecting players. Considering the whole spectrum of players would help a lot of writers break out of their rut, when some mods are so obviously stuck in it. Not that you are necessarily the one stuck in the rut (don't think I have played any of your adventures), but LG adventures don't come stamped with big fat warnings on the front of them (Don't play at APL 6!!!, Must have Bard!, Need at least two tanks!, etc...) and thus the rest of us get to take the bad (or poorly thought out) with the good, and suck it up.
Simpi 12-27-05, 03:20 PM	but LG adventures don't come stamped with big fat warnings on the front of them (Don't play at APL 6!!!, Must have Bard!, Need at least two tanks!, etc...) and thus the rest of us get to take the bad (or poorly thought out) with the good, and suck it up. Some authors have cautioned me that if you put 'Warning, don't play up' or similiar things into it, people might actually be disappointed if they go for a nail biter and then don't get the 'moneyshot' (for a lack of better term) I did put a warning label to NAE5-01 because anyone who belongs to Scarlet Brotherhood would probably die if they played it, so there are exceptions. Other than that module was possible to succeed with any kind of party. Some might have it easier, some might have it harder but so far nobody has complained. Still, looking ar your criterias on what not to do, you might like TSS4-04 or TSS5-04. S.H, the guy from Naerie
smerwin29 12-27-05, 03:51 PM	You do only have one opportunity to "get it right," but any mistakes you make will live on for two years and be thrust upon countless numbers of unsuspecting players. And the other option is to have everyone be afraid to write any adventures at all for fear of getting roasted and insulted, and then there will be nothing to play so no one will ever have to worry about being frustrated. Listen, I understand that there are some bad mods out there. I play LG myself, and I understand what it feels like to sit through a module and say to myself at the end, "Well, there goes 4 hours of my life I will never get back." Writers in general should spend a lot of time during the development process thinking about the wide spectrum of players. More mod writers spending more time thinking about how to make a fun module would definitely be a good thing. What would also be nice would be if players, instead of coming out with a page-long rant and list of demands fashioned in a most condescending manner, acknowledged the hard work and time commitment went into creating a module. A thank you every once in a while would be nice. Maybe some constructive criticism when something wasn't right rather than accusations of either stupidity or malice or both. I always invite people who think the worst of one or more writers to sit down and write a mod. Spend the time trying to make it the best adventure it can possibly be for characters from levels 1-15. Really pour yourself into it. Then go to the convention where it premieres and just listen in to what the players have to say--especially the players who are impossible to please. For the sake of the campaign(s) I really do want mod writers to improve, learn from their own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, and put out a product that doesn't make those 4 hours feel wasted for the people playing. And one way to do that is too encourage them rather than belittle them. Just my thoughts from both sides of the fence. Shawn
Simpi 12-27-05, 04:21 PM	And the other option is to have everyone be afraid to write any adventures at all for fear of getting roasted and insulted, and then there will be nothing to play so no one will ever have to worry about being frustrated. One of the reasons I don't plan on writing Core modules. Regionals give me more leeway and it's much easier to get good comments from local people when you see them face to face. 9 people of out 10 can give good ideas for a module. Only 1 will actually sit down and put something to paper and that does not necessarily mean a completed module. That ratio is probably closer to 1/100. S.H, the guy from Naerie
Namarus 12-27-05, 06:01 PM	I did a regional adventure from year 4 that was a real pain in the arse. We worked out the BBEG plan right after the 1st encounter, and thus was able to avoid all the subsequent encounters to get to the final encounter. So because we were smart, we lost out on xp, item access, and gold. This taught me never to be smart in LG adventures because you screw yourself over.
JohnduBois 12-27-05, 09:14 PM	Yeah....I Live in Michigan and I will play Mysteries below soon so I will be sure to not take that weapon (thanks for the spoiler!grrr lol JK). The weapon didn't COME from Mysteries Below. It came from Infiltration, a year 3 IUZ mod. Just make sure you plan about an extra 2-3 hours for Mysteries Below, though... it's a long one.
JohnduBois 12-27-05, 09:17 PM	I just judged this mod and if you don't have a combat high party at level one, then you are pwnt. I MEAN I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THE PERSON WOULD PUT AN EL 6 ENCOUNTER IN AN INTRO MOD. That just says "You should die and you are a stupid head so I'll put 48 skeletons against you". WTF!!??!!??! :weep: :weep: ...In this module, the text explicitly warns the PC's about what will happen if you try to do what your party did. Part of the point of the module is, "fighting will not always get you out". In fact, to my knowledge, in only one running of the module was the combat you speak of defeated. But I'm not going to add spoilers, as the mod will be available for a while yet.
Itsa_Trika 12-27-05, 09:47 PM	I'll try to respond to a number of threads just to keep my postings down. The first thing you all should be doing is paying attention to who the authors of these adventures are. Authors typically have their own style and will repeat that style consistently throughout their efforts. A Tiger? In Ahlissa? is not the only one of Chris's adventures to be errated and I doubt it will be the last. I don't play his adventures, which is a pity for me considering he still gets to write so many each year. Similarly, another core author wrote two adventures and I despised them both. When given a chance to play one of his meta-regionals, I passed. Not surprisingly, it has shown up in this thread. Pay attention, and you'll avoid some of these sob stories. Shawn is right, though, that people's preferences differ widely. In my very first adventure, I had 6 primary encounters, 4 secondary encounters, and 4 tertiary encounters (some of which had 6 subsets) because it was a heavy investigative adventure. The first criticism I received was "it's too linear." I know there are people who like my work. I'm equally sure there are people who don't. That's how this works. One other thing to keep in mind, authors don't always just try to break the rules to make things more difficult (although I know some that do). Sometimes they just don't know the rules. Sometimes this is inexcusable, sometimes they're mistakes we all make. Given the wealth of adventures LG turns out each year, it's not surprising that there are some real crappers out there.
Samwise 12-27-05, 10:49 PM	Adventures with only one path to success, where that path cannot even be trod unless you have a certain group make-up or skill/feat set, are guaranteed (or your money back) to frustrate virtually everybody that plays such an adventure without hitting the party composition lotto (ranger, bard, 2 rogues, a fighter, and a cleric with skill 'x'? Ding! Ding! Ding!, you win!). There are various other features that will frustrate a majority of the people a majority of the time, as well. This is a reasonable complaint, until you tie it in with the demand that the rules be followed. Unfortunately, the rules mandate some pretty significant things. Some examples: Track - If you don't have the feat, you can't follow Tracks unless the DC is 10 or lower. So either you don't include anything with a Track DC over 10, which means you just made a class feature of rangers totally useless, you include a deus ex machina alternative for the PCs, which you hate for the encounters and which is thoroughly unsatisfying, or you make the PCs work for it another way, which means they can still wind up short on the skills. Traps - All magic traps have a set DC. This DC is typically above what any rogue can manage without taking 20 below APL 4, and can be difficult beyond that. Now I know many players favor taking 20 at the drop of a hat, but that can mean protective spells burn out at an amazing rate if you take 2 minutes to go every 5', and of course that defeats any sense of "realism" as the bad guys sit and wait for you to inch your way through their lair. General Skills - Most skills have set DCs for various tasks. In a recent adventure, we came on an encounter that required a Balance check. None of us could make it reliably, so the whole encounter was rather ridiculous. As with Track, we are left with a choice of deleting all encounters where balance is needed, making the skill obsolete except for prestige classes, adding in weak or forced work-arounds, or just leaving some groups defeated by it. Undead - Some people have low Charisma clerics, who have few turn uses, and would have trouble turning the page if it required them to channel positive energy. Should we eliminate undead from the campaign because of them? Others could dust an epic nightwalker of legend with a slightly above average roll. They will feel rather useless if we do that. The list goes on and on, and it all comes down to the great variety of class abilities out there and tasks that are exclusive to them. The only way to cut that down would be to harshly cut the amount of non-Core material in the game, or to have active statements about what sort of party should play the adventure. The first will make people scream, especially those who are already upset about being denied anything in the expansion books. The second will make people scream that they are being "forced" to play certain characters. Or, as I said, you can just not use things based on 90% of the class features, skills, feats, and such out there, and just let the people who have built their character on them scream. And of course, if you don't include them, people who have them will insist on using them anyway. "Why can't I try to Track?" "Why can't I use Bardic Knowledge?" "Why can't I just break the adventure with my ability from a new book released and approved after that adventure was written almost two years ago?" Balancing such things is impossible. Someone is going to get left out in the cold. The best solution is for everyone, DMs, local groups, and regions, to make reasonable statements without giving out spoilers. I've told players not to try playing something with their group as they would be hard pressed to succeed with the group they had. It might be hard to get a replacement, but it is better than dying. It is better to skip a week of playing than slaughter a party just because they are there.
Madfox11 12-28-05, 04:31 AM	...In this module, the text explicitly warns the PC's about what will happen if you try to do what your party did. Part of the point of the module is, "fighting will not always get you out". In fact, to my knowledge, in only one running of the module was the combat you speak of defeated. But I'm not going to add spoilers, as the mod will be available for a while yet. Which is exactly, why I never accept a complaint on a scenario on face value. As an author and Triad member I have heard many complaints on both my scenarios and that of others. In a couple of cases the complaints where justified. I had made a mistake, I am after all human. I try to learn from them, and if at all possible I try to errata the adventure. In most other situations, the mistake was made by the DM or the players. Real errors can be amplified by DMs and player mistakes into truly breaking a scenario. For example, level draining opponents on APL 2 (and to lesser extend on APL 4) is wrong, but when the DM forgets to provide the PCs with the means to (a) realize what they are facing and (b) provide the means to counter most of the monsters powers, even though the scenario does give these, the mistake is amplified into a sure TPK. Note that this particular example is a bit of a conandrum for me. How do I as an author and scenario reviewer prevent DMs from overlooking vital information and can I design encounters that would be lethal without such vital information (and the PCs will always have that information barring DM mistake)?
Samwise 12-28-05, 01:55 PM	Note that this particular example is a bit of a conandrum for me. How do I as an author and scenario reviewer prevent DMs from overlooking vital information and can I design encounters that would be lethal without such vital information (and the PCs will always have that information barring DM mistake)? If you find out, be sure to let me know! Right now, I'm going with excessive redundancy. (Putting the information in the adventure summary, the encounter description, the tactics description, and as a DM note for the encounter or encounters where it is relevant.)
solbergb 01-01-06, 12:41 PM	A. I just am reporting heresay about the module. B. The inability of the system to be able to correct a mistake once it is out there is a big black stain if it is turning people away, like this mod has. I agree that the erratta process in LG is horribly inefficient. We have several examples from Y4 cores that were spotted within a month of release and were never fixed (in particular, the tactical directions and hardness of the constructs at the end of Tiger, and the completely-wrong-to-the-point- where-judges-just-had-to-guess statblocks in Tropical Intrigue). Thankfully a couple really broken things did get fixed (# of enemies was multiplied by 4 in some APLs in Duke of the Dust, for example) but mostly they just don't get fixed. C. I have never successfully completed any module by this author (played all at low APLs), though I have never been killed in any such module, it lends people's complaints about this one an air of believeability. That I think would say more about you and your party or even more likely your Judge than the author, since I've run all of his Y3 and Y4 core mods for a variety of party mixes in real life, plus did a lot of combat simlulations for each encounter. Chris Chesire (based on his Y3-Y4 Baatzu series) tends to have a lot of backstory, a lot of NPC's, complicated plots and such, which make his mods extremely bad to run cold, and often run long. In the hands of a prepared judge, I've found they can be a joy to run and play, due to the fact that the NPC's are INTERESTING, the plots (when discovered) are logically consistent and the bad guys are always there for a reason and make sense for the environment. They can even be done in a con setting, if the DM has his act together. Tiger had several flaws (investigative section that required the DM to give accurate descriptions and players to notice that descriptions didn't match as the primary clue, an assassin encounter that was often run contrary to the mod instructions by judges who didn't read the two pages of stuff that mitigates when, where and how he can attack, and a final encounter with a miswritten tactical section (accidental, not caught by editors who assumed probably that it was intentional) constructs whose hardness was based on their flavor text, plus the author not really understanding how animated objects have a "bad scaling" at APL6 until he saw it in action). The final encounter was also much more deadly if the DM ran it cold, ignoring the actual instructions for the constructs (especially "pretend to be an altar if you see no enemies" which neutered the encounter with glitterdust, fog, or even invisibility) and also prohibited the constructs from leaving the room (making disengagement not terribly difficult, and destruction of the constructs easy once the PC's knew what they were up against and had a rough idea how they'd behave). Of the four Baatzu mods, it was the one most likely to either break down in the roleplay/investigative section or in the final combat. All of the Y4 Baatzu mods were easier if you had faerie fire or glitterdust, but that might have been a coincidence. But even Tiger had some pretty good bits to it, especially a cast of really cool NPC's, some of which had bad things happen to them later and the PC's actually cared (and still care...maybe we'll be able to do something for Afronidius in Rauxes, which I haven't played)
GreatSiron 01-01-06, 01:09 PM	I just checked my private messages (surprised I even had any) and it turns out that the guy who wrote the mod I played in wanted the spoliers for his mod removed. Who knew that the one mod I would actually wanted to complain about was a member on the boards? Oh well.
Jesse Heinig 01-01-06, 07:15 PM	Perhaps someone should write a "guides to writing a good module" as a sort of meta-document. I recently ran into a module where I wanted to pick up the author and shake him and say: - Rows upon rows of empty rooms aren't fun. - If you have a locked door and nobody in the party can pick it or break it because the DCs are intentionally set too high for the APL, then you might as well just have a wall; nobody's going through it anyway. - When you use puzzles, you should have multiple completion points for clever players; most tables are not going to stumble across the one "obscure and oh so clever" way that the module writer envisions, but if the PCs cannot play the module, then why are they wasting their time at the table in the first place? - Non-damaging traps are only clever when they are combined with a time or pressure situation that causes them to make the players have to overcome challenges. If a trap is just there to do something "cutesy" and has no effect on the adventure . . . don't bother with it. It's wasting table time.
Sieylianna 01-01-06, 10:00 PM	I just checked my private messages (surprised I even had any) and it turns out that the guy who wrote the mod I played in wanted the spoliers for his mod removed. Who knew that the one mod I would actually wanted to complain about was a member on the boards? Oh well. Did he have any explanation/excuses? Ed
Arksorn 01-02-06, 08:00 AM	Authors get the short end of the stick. So many things can go wrong with an adventure that they do not have control over, but in the end, their name is on the adventure so the players blame them. 1. Editing can change things. 2. Con organizer can not recruit judges causing the adventures to be run cold. 3. Judges can not care and not bother to read and re-read the adventure. I just got back from a con where all three of the adventures I played were run by Judges who had not seen the adventure until they sat down at the table. All three were miserable experiences. It is good to point out things that writers can improve and I encourage it to continue, but we need to get better prepared judges. Without that, no adventure will be worth our 4 hours. I applaud the authors who do so much work for so little recognition and I hope this thread can provide some constructive criticism where an adventure failing was actually the author's fault.
Jesse Heinig 01-02-06, 08:56 AM	An editor's job is to clarify and correct language, not to change content. Editing should never be in a position of "changing things" in a way that makes a module different in terms of playability - it should simply improve the readability of the module. That said, I've noted that editing is apparently also very low on the RPGA standards side, as significant gaffes show up both in modules and in the various rules supplements. At least Living Greyhawk writing tends to be more solid than Mark of Heroes material.
smerwin29 01-02-06, 09:26 AM	An editor's job is to clarify and correct language, not to change content. I have worked at many editing jobs in many sectors (magazine, tech, publishing houses, game industry), and the job of the editor was not only different among each of those fields, but also different at each job within those fields. One publisher might expect you to work closely with the writer to give the writer the chance to make all the changes, and other wanted you to rewrite the content as much as you deemed necessary. As an editor (and a writer), I much prefer to let the writer make all the major content changes. That, unfortunately, takes much more time, patience, and energy. A best-case scenario for the RPGA would be that a writer turns in a final draft, an editor at the RPGA would proofread and make notes for the writer, the writer fixes the problems, the editor reviews to make sure the changes are acceptable, and then a proofreader would do a final pass checking for typos. This is certainly much less than an average publisher would do, but much more than game companies often do. Of course, I don't think the RPGA has the resources to do this, even with volunteers, since volunteers need to be coordinated. But we can always hope.
Samwise 01-02-06, 01:51 PM	An editor's job is to clarify and correct language, not to change content. Editing should never be in a position of "changing things" in a way that makes a module different in terms of playability - it should simply improve the readability of the module. What if the content is of poor play quality? In addition to just checking grammar and spelling, the editor has to consider whether any rules were forgotten or ignored, whether the encounters are balanced, whether "rows upon rows of empty rooms" get deleted, consistency with previous material (canon), and more. Yes, most of that is properly "development", but since the RPGA only uses the term "reviever", it gets lumped into the duties of the editor. So sometimes you have to be prepared for the editor to change things significantly in an adventure. That said, I've noted that editing is apparently also very low on the RPGA standards side, as significant gaffes show up both in modules and in the various rules supplements. At least Living Greyhawk writing tends to be more solid than Mark of Heroes material. The RPGA doesn't edit rules supplements, so you should direct any problems with that at WotC. As for reducing the problems in core adventures, we are working on it. Creighton just added two editors, and is adding more people just to check stat blocks. (Which, for adventures that don't use creatures directly from the books, can be as labor intensive as checking everything else in the adventure, and requires more technical precision.) So improving the editing in LG is a very high priority. Hopefully the improvements in the text will show as the year progresses.
solbergb 01-02-06, 02:50 PM	Well...my single data point of authoring kind of went like this (this was for a minimission) Deadlines were set. Submitted Outline on deadline. No feedback except "go ahead" Wrote the module, including all statblocks, xp and gold drudgery. Submitted first draft, and did two rounds of playtesting (one with just simulations and my wife running a whole party, one with the judges who'd have to run it at the convention). Because I'm kind of a nut, the simulations included 3 combats at each APL's with randomly generated parties (I keep characters of all levels handy for judge prep - your average character is "iconic" in power, but sometimes I mix in "real" characters from my or my wife's stable for variety...those tend to be a bit more powerful partly just due to familiarity with their best tactics) Got feedback from judges. Tinkered statblocks based on what I learned from playtesting - mostly shifting a couple spells known and some consumables. Finally got feedback from triad reviewer (they were busy with more important projects, stuff that would be around for 2 years, not just one convention). This included: 1. My take on the legal system was harsher than theirs. Pholtus is a good god and sneaks in stuff to protect those with good intentions into the Pale legal code. Legal sections needed rewriting. 2. I misunderstood the relationship between the Pale Patrol/Guardsmen and the Church Militant. The anti-arcane specialists turned out to live in the Police-forces, not in the Church, who specializes in Heresy and similar religious crimes. NPC's and boxtext/background had to change. 3. Discussion of NPC attitudes across subcultures - he didn't agree with stuff I wrote, we worked it out. 4. The mod had some structural problems with how xp was assigned. I thought it through, shifted some stuff to story award and roleplay, shifted other stuff to circumstance modifiers to CR in the main combat and chase scene and got it to work out "legal". 5. I just wrote too damn much in. Here I had to ask for help in what to cut. "A prepared judge will do that stuff anyway, an unprepared one will ignore all that stuff you wrote anyway" seems to be the main guideline. With the feedback, I fixed problems 1-4 and #5 took a couple iterations to cut it down by about 1/3 and tighten the whole thing up. Each iteration found minor bugs in statblocks, which were corrected. I *think* the final version had no statblock errors, but a 2-12 mission with complicated classed enemies is tough to get right. (I helped another author on a minimission, and with 3 playtesters plus authors trying to beat out the errors, we still took about 10 iterations to really get it clean...then the AR creator messed up two of the rewards *sigh*) I got a lot of help, but I only got it because I had the submissions in early and got the first playtest rounds in early (there were two more rounds of zeros/playtests, including some run by my triad reviewer which had time to affect the final result). I think people had fun although it turned out to have some fairly wild swings in outcomes (at least two tables had most of the bad guys escaping, and I think two had walkovers by the PC's that shortened the mod a lot, but mostly it seemed to go about as expected). I don't think it would have worked well "cold" though, and I was fortunate that most or all of the convention judges had been playtesters or slotzero types, so had a good feel for the intent of the mod, even if they didn't read every word. Had the first draft been the final one, it still would have been ok most of the time, but I think it would have been a lot harder to prep and the edge-results would have been more common, the expected result less common.
Jesse Heinig 01-02-06, 07:55 PM	What if the content is of poor play quality? In addition to just checking grammar and spelling, the editor has to consider whether any rules were forgotten or ignored, whether the encounters are balanced, whether "rows upon rows of empty rooms" get deleted, consistency with previous material (canon), and more. Yes, most of that is properly "development", but since the RPGA only uses the term "reviever", it gets lumped into the duties of the editor. So sometimes you have to be prepared for the editor to change things significantly in an adventure. If the content is of poor play quality then it's the designer/developer/writer's job to fix it. The editor may well point out inconsistencies but it is not the editor's job to try to fix the game material. The RPGA doesn't edit rules supplements, so you should direct any problems with that at WotC. As for reducing the problems in core adventures, we are working on it. Creighton just added two editors, and is adding more people just to check stat blocks. (Which, for adventures that don't use creatures directly from the books, can be as labor intensive as checking everything else in the adventure, and requires more technical precision.) So improving the editing in LG is a very high priority. Hopefully the improvements in the text will show as the year progresses. Hopefully we will stop seeing things like (over on MoH): "For example, if you use 'Off the Beaten Path' Campaign Card to take levels in warmage...more...," (Mark of Heroes Campaign Standards, p. 22 - yes, this rule just trails off with no further information!) Obviously, I can't lift quotes directly from LG adventures without spoiling some of them. I'm glad to hear that Creighton brought on some more editors. Perhaps I'll write some adventures myself.
Samwise 01-02-06, 08:14 PM	If the content is of poor play quality then it's the designer/developer/writer's job to fix it. The editor may well point out inconsistencies but it is not the editor's job to try to fix the game material. As I, and Shawn Merwin, noted, for the RPGA the editor is also the developer for RPGA adventures. So the editor does wind up fixing a lot of things, rather than just pointing them out and hoping the author will reply in time with corrections. LG adventures also have rather harsh deadlines, and the choice can be between cancelling the premiere of an incomplete submission or finishing it yourself. Yes, generally you want to have the author fix everything. For a many things it is simpler to fix them directly, and simply note it in case the author feels it changes something dramatically.
Arksorn 01-02-06, 09:08 PM	As I, and Shawn Merwin, noted, for the RPGA the editor is also the developer for RPGA adventures. So the editor does wind up fixing a lot of things... That illustrates my point number 1. Things can change in editing. Players who dislike something in a mod cannot be sure it is something the author included or something an editor added...but the author is usually the one that is blamed. I was once preparing a core mod to run at a convention, it is still current so I won't say which one. When reading it, it seemed like there were some big holes. I emailed the author and he said he was already in contact with those responsible for final edit and release, they had actually released an old version. I guess this is just a caution before we berate an author. We should point out errors or suggestions for improvement in a constructive tone, sometimes it is the fault of the author, sometimes editor, and sometimes judge. If we are respectful, hopefully the guilty party will read the feedback and learn something. To contribute to the discussion, as some others have pointed out, we should try to be careful at APL 2. It does not have to be a cake walk, but I think it should be relatively easier than other APLs. I would like to see more good players and judges playing LG if at all possible and I think it is important to make almost 100% sure a new player will not die in his first LG adventure (without softballing, I hate that as a player). The more good players and judges the better. I should point out that I am guilty of being coauthor on two introductory adventures that both included encounters that were too powerful. In one, we tried to get cute with a tough monster that had to be overcome through researching its weakness and using it. That is prone to failure from the start due to an unprepared judge running it. We also did a rather poor job of detailing it. Luckily someone pointed out the shortcomings on a board, and I have learned something from it and my future adventures will be better for it.
clannagh 01-02-06, 11:56 PM	I work with a lot of younger new players and new DM's attempting to introduce them to LG and D&D in general. New young players tend to have unusual parties often containing weird characterful mixtures of druids rangers and bards with no rogues or clerics and odd stats. Meanwhile new younger DM's tend to see themselves as playing "against" the party and will try to play the monsters in as intelligent and deadly a fashion as they can. Putting these guys into a mod designed to challenge a balanced party of powergamers is generally a recipe for disaster. It only takes one critical from an axe to kill outright a level 1 or 2 character and that may be enough for a new young player with only a few games up to quit playing altogether.
paigeoliver 01-03-06, 12:55 AM	I have seen that plenty of times. At the World Wide game day in November I played an intro-mod with a 16 year old kid playing his first LG game. His halfling ranger (with 8 CON) got knocked to negative hit points the first round of every fight. He left after that game and I never saw him again. And now that I think about it, MAN do the high school boys play themselves some elves and halflings. Pretty much every guy that age I have ever sat at a table with has had an elf or halfling, usually a ranger.
solbergb 01-03-06, 03:40 AM	Well, as for that, helping the newbies design a LG-ready character prevents more bad outcomes than any author can. Like...never ever EVER play anything with 8 constitution. There are viable 10 constitution builds, but it will be a handicap that you have to be aware of your entire career. On my lgchardiscussion yahoo board there was a thread of quickplay starting characters...how to design them so that 1. They don't suck at level 1 2. They don't suck later 3. They give the player the maximum capability to customize the character in later levels once they learn the system. While many good ideas came out of that you don't need to go that far. Just give a little advice before the first game starts. Just basic things like: Don't build a non-spellcaster with low strength unless he's a rogue. Yes, archers and monks need strength too, trust me. Don't take a low constitution unless you know what you're doing. Put at least a 15 in your spellcasting attribute if you are a primary spellcaster. Those 3 pieces of advice will generally produce a viable character, at least until the guy does weird things with his level 3 feat/class options :)
Arvagor 01-03-06, 08:50 PM	And now that I think about it, MAN do the high school boys play themselves some elves and halflings. Pretty much every guy that age I have ever sat at a table with has had an elf or halfling, usually a ranger.Too much Order of the Stick, and wanting to emulate Belkar? :confused:
Herrbard 01-03-06, 10:19 PM	Too much Order of the Stick, and wanting to emulate Belkar? :confused: I think over the last few years too much LotR and wanting to emulate Aragorn. I also start a lot of new high school age players, and probably 7 out of 10 say "I want to play that!" as soon as they hear the word ranger (especially the girls).
paigeoliver 01-04-06, 12:33 AM	Hmm, I have only played with two high school aged girls since I was that age. One's characters were all personality and what class or archetype they were mattered little to her. (Champions and Hero system games). The other I have ran into at several Living Greyhawk games and she seemed to favor barbarians.
Itsa_Trika 01-04-06, 05:35 PM	An editor's job is to clarify and correct language, not to change content. Editing should never be in a position of "changing things" in a way that makes a module different in terms of playability - it should simply improve the readability of the module. You've obviously never actually been in the position of an editor, then, have you? Although the term editor is used frequently in the publishing field, Developmental Editors have a great impact on the work submitted to them. Authors often don't understand the greater context of the work they're doing, the market in which it is being sold, or the company for which they are writing. Editors most definitely do more than clarify and correct. You're thinking of a proofreader (or a copyeditor if the Developmental Editor has asked for a light review). As for the RPGA, 99% of authors are not writers but people who have always dreamed about writing D&D, even if they don't have the natural talent to do so. The editing process is an extremely important facet of an adventure's development and can range from extremely light to a near-complete overhaul of the event. In my 2 1/2 years of administrating living campaigns, I've found it's a rare author that is capable of following instruction to make the changes needed by the triad. It's equally rare for the triad to have enough time to send the adventure through multiple rounds of authorship. Better to simply make the changes yourself and ensure the accuracy and continuity that you're wanting and that the region deserves. As long as it's done consistently and you are up front about it, the authors that are willing to work with you will understand this is a part of the process and is in the best interest of the region.
Jesse Heinig 01-05-06, 12:12 AM	Actually, I've spent six years as a published game developer for mid-to-large RPG companies. In our structure, the flow was always: Developer - Creative director/initial outline/content management Writer - Contributor who provides material under the direction of the developer Editor - Technical clean-up and language usage improvements It sounds like the RPGA lumps together the "developer" and "editor" jobs, which is weird, but not unexpected considering that it's all volunteer work.
Samwise 01-05-06, 12:41 AM	It sounds like the RPGA lumps together the "developer" and "editor" jobs, which is weird, but not unexpected considering that it's all volunteer work. You should take a look at the descriptions of the campaign administrators. The Triad and Circle members are noted as being both developers (of background material and adventures), as well as editors of said material. Over time, as the Triad and Circle adminstration has become more coordinated through experience, it has become common to have one member of a Triad focus on overseeing adventures. For simplicty of titles, this person is typically just called an "editor". Meanwhile, at the Circle level, for purposes of releasing the adventures, the person is called a "reviewer", which might suggest he doesn't even do any spellchecking, and just makes sure all the pages format properly or something in pdf. As for weird job titles, we have "triads" (like the secret society criminal gangs) and a "circle" (named after a group of NPCs from the original author's campaign that he converted into the setting). And that doesn't count the one Circle member with a title derived a minor character in a single Horatio Hornblower novel! (Or am I too well read to come up with that one? :P ) So you should expect peculiar job titles in this campaign.
solbergb 01-05-06, 02:25 AM	Hmm, I have only played with two high school aged girls since I was that age. One's characters were all personality and what class or archetype they were mattered little to her. (Champions and Hero system games). The other I have ran into at several Living Greyhawk games and she seemed to favor barbarians. Funny...for me all the high school age girls I have run for in LG play rogues of various descriptions. Regional variation I guess :)
GreatSiron 01-06-06, 02:25 PM	Did he have any explanation/excuses? Ed He didn't need any really. I was extremely angry at the time and was far more detailed than I should have been. I have never tried to write a mod before so I guess I was ranting on something I knew nothing about. And then there was the fact that he was one of the region's Triad. :eek:
GreatSiron 01-06-06, 03:19 PM	I've been reading the posts and have decided that I might try my had at writing a mod or two. Does anyone have any suggestions so that my attempts won't turn into horror stories?
smerwin29 01-06-06, 03:43 PM	--Start by writing an intro mod for first-level characters. Writing for high-level characters, a wide range of character levels, or both can lead to countless pitfalls. --Avoid the future tense "will" verbs, using the present instead. "If the PCs run into the cave, the dragon attacks." instead of "If the PCs run into the cave, the dragon will attack." In a long module, you can cut a couple hundred words out by doing that. Oh, I just found this old list I made for Keoland mod writers, so I'll share it with you. It's old and I haven't re-read it in a while, so who knows what sort of tripe it contains: This list is one that I posted to the Keoland list a few months ago. I’ve added a few things. Feel free to make your own additions and comments, as you will: Too much irrelevant background - As a writer, it is often important to know the background of your module, even if it doesn't play a direct role in the action of the module. However, judges do not need a 7-page background if it is not directly relevant to the module. And since judges today are players in the sequel tomorrow, don't give away the whole plot of the series in mod 1. Over-complicated encounters - If the whole crux of the module rests on the bad guy being able to sneak into the PCs camp, steal the Artifact of Power that the PCs are guarding, replace all their water with poison, and then sneak away, then start another module. Or at least give some REALISTIC contingencies for what would happen when the bad guy gets caught. Over-complicated plots and encounters can be done, but they have to be done carefully. And I haven't seen many people able to do them carefully enough. Insufficient details - The PCs wander into the lair of a water naga. Great. What the heck does the lair look like? So much (especially in tactics-based 3E) is based on positioning and location. In so many of the modules I have edited, I have had to supply location details because the author hasn't. Lack of logic flow between encounters - There's nothing worse than preparing to judge a module, reading through the encounters, and then realizing there is no way the characters would even know how or why or where to get from encounter 5 to encounter 6. Lack of clues - Like #4 above, this is where the PCs are supposed to know something, but there are no clues. We ran into something like this in a playtest I ran, and the testers were very helpful in providing a number of obscure but sufficient clues. Lack of logic, period - This has already been mentioned, where NPCs and monsters can walk right through the trap, but PCs can't. Give tactics when possible - I sometimes like to leave leeway for the judges to come up with their own tactics, but most encounters that have complicated components should be written with at least a guideline for tactics. What spells will be cast when? Will the monsters try to flank? Will they go after one type of PC--heavily armored, spellcasters, missile weapon user? Boxed text - Boxed text should only provide descriptions of things noticeable by the five senses. It should not describe actions you assume the PCs will take. It should not describe anything related to the sixth sense. Try to avoid using the word “you” in boxed text at all. (At least once per mod I see, "You feel the presence of evil." What?! Is everyone a paladin now?) Boxed text 2 – Do not move the PCs with boxed text when they should be moving on their own. Do not say, “You are in the middle of a box canyon, so make Spot checks to see if you are surprised.” Most PCs would not just walk into the box canyon without scouting the perimeter first. If you want to get them there, trick them there. Let them tell you where they go and what they do. You just set the scene. Again, try to avoid using the word “you” in boxed text at all. Set the surprise conditions - What are the surprise conditions for the PCs? For the NPCs and monsters? What kind of spot/listen checks do each need to make? Aren't I a great writer? - This is a problem where the writer is trying to show off with all sorts of fancy writing, and then in the end the module is just plain not fun to play. The PCs are not minor characters in a play that you are writing. They are not there to admire your spiffy NPCs, or plots, or descriptions, or new monsters, or whatever. They are there to be heroes, to be challenged, to make choices and live out the results of those choices. Let 'em be heroes if they can, be corpses if they fail, but let them be the stars of the show. Don’t put the bad guy in the first encounter. Don’t put the bad guy in an encounter if the plot calls on him to be around in the last encounter. PCs have ways to knowing things and gacking the bad guy early. Think. Think hard. Think hard about contingencies that may come up in the flow of your module. Where would PCs be likely to go or what would they be likely to do in the situation you place them in? Would they gather information? Seek knowledge from a library? Visit a person you may not have thought to put in the mod? More stuff. When you are finished with the mod, run the encounters for yourself. In other words, take some stock characters and run each combat at each APL: --Does the situation and setting make the encounter too difficult or too easy? Although EL is supposed to be dependant on these factors, HQ has never, to my knowledge, altered an EL based on them. The EL has always been based on monster CR only. --Does some power or attack possessed by the enemy ensure defeat for the PCs? If the bad guy has a maximized sleep spell or access to 4 fireballs at APL 2, something is wrong with the encounter. If you are writing for anything above APL 8, consider the following potentially module-breaking abilities/spells: fly/windwalk, teleport/d-door, speak with dead, divinations of all shapes and sizes, detect evil, true seeing, etc. From Ernest Mueller on the LG Writers List: There are a number of critical mistakes that authors frequently make, which usually boil down to: Requiring something very unlikely to happen to further the plot Not taking into account something very likely to happen that would utterly derail the plot In the first category, I have seen scenarios make specific errors like the following: 1.1) Requiring a DC 25+ Search check to be made in one of five or so locations to search for clues, otherwise the single clue that leads to the next encounter is not found (and no other way for the plot to get back on track is provided). If you want something to automatically be found, just say that and don't make a check for it, especially one of a DC that could be failed. It's different if it's an obvious critical location (like a murder scene) at which PCs would doubtless take 20 to search. But if it's a random one of 5+ town locales the party can wander through that they have to make a high roll at, that's bad writing. 1.2) Requiring a successful Track in order to proceed along the scenario plot. Not all parties can track worth a darn, and Track checks can be pretty hard to make. Without the Track feat PCs aren't even allowed to try if it's over DC 10. 1.3) Requiring that attacking PCs wait and listen to conversing humanoids/monsters to gain the only clue that leads to the next encounter. 1.4) Requiring that PCs have a specific skill to interpret a clue that is the only link to the next encounter. Or a specific spell (e.g. a clue written in a foreign language, requiring either a PC to know that language or have a Comp. Langs spell). Make a flowchart of your scenario's events and take a look. Is the only way for the PCs to get to the next part of the adventure fairly unlikely to happen? If so, have you made any allowance for that? It's one thing to make PCs without certain skills or whatnot to do more work - but it's another to hang them out to dry. In the second category, scenarios make the exact converse of these mistakes. 2.1) Assuming PCs will not make a Spot or Search check. This happens a lot with lurking big bad guys and "surprise ambushes". Remember that min-maxed PCs might well have Spots in the +15 range - your lizard men hiding near the trail may very well be located (especially when all 6 PCs get a roll - one of them is likely to come up high). 2.2) Assuming PCs cannot make a Track check - same reasons. Someone with a high Track is a huge asset in most LG scenarios, as you can head right after the main threat with it. Expect it. 2.3) Assuming that PCs will NOT converse, Speak with Dead, take prisoners and interrogate, or otherwise gain info from your combat encounters. 2.4) Assuming the PCs do NOT have a spell or magic item suitable to their level. Fly, Detect Evil, Detect Invis, Invis... Players are quite innovative, and if you are relying on them to NOT achieve something that is quite reasonably within their powers you are making an error as an author. Try to have your plot robust enough such that it would not be utterly ruined by the PCs making an unlikely check. Sorry about the long post. Shawn
Sieylianna 01-06-06, 05:29 PM	-- Players are quite innovative, and if you are relying on them to NOT achieve something that is quite reasonably within their powers you are making an error as an author. Try to have your plot robust enough such that it would not be utterly ruined by the PCs making an unlikely check. Lots of good points there. Remember that players talk to each other as well as potentially overhear nearby tables and see the miniatures which are set up on battle mats. Try to ensure that if one player knows absolutely nothing about the module and another has been briefed by his friend; if they're at the same table, the chances of survival and reward should be the same. Ed
TMoonshadow 01-10-06, 09:22 PM	This is not tied to any specific mod, but any mod that features the sundering of pc weapons and items should, in my opinion, not be included in LG. Since pcs have to purchase their magic items, one sunder of a fighter's weapon (or major item, which is pathetically easy) causes a severe imbalance to a good number of that pc's future adventures. I understand that bad things can (and do) happen to characters, but why not disarm the pc? It has a very similar effect, just not permanent. In a home campaign, a good dm understands that if a pc loses items, the dm can always modify their future encounters so they are challenging, yet not overpowering. LG dms do not have this option.
Samwise 01-11-06, 10:33 AM	This is not tied to any specific mod, but any mod that features the sundering of pc weapons and items should, in my opinion, not be included in LG. The problem is, this is also a game balance issue. Most critters that have tactical notes about sundering weapons also have either the Improved Sunder feat, or a special ability that allows them to destroy weapons. While it is possible to exclude the second group, the first group include such common opponents as giants. Of course they could simply be assigned another feat, but that would involve mucking with the core rules, which is its own problem. So while sundering is bad, I'm not sure it can reasonably be excluded completely. It is a threat, like every other feat and special ability that must be accounted for and countered.
JohnduBois 01-11-06, 10:42 AM	Banning sundering also leads to other potential issues. If you say that creatures built with the Improved Sunder feat (let alone ones that have it as a bonus feat, like Thaskors) shouldn't use it because Destroying PC Stuff Is Bad, do you then not allow rust monsters to use their abilities? Do you stop putting babau in mods? The threat of destroying stuff is an inherent part of the game. It shouldn't be removed just because it sets PC's back on the gold scale. If that was the case, I would argue that my main character's two favors granting free Raise Dead should also be removed, as they would put the PC far ahead on the gold scale...
JamesMaissen 01-11-06, 10:58 PM	Banning sundering also leads to other potential issues. If you say that creatures built with the Improved Sunder feat (let alone ones that have it as a bonus feat, like Thaskors) shouldn't use it because Destroying PC Stuff Is Bad, do you then not allow rust monsters to use their abilities? Do you stop putting babau in mods? The threat of destroying stuff is an inherent part of the game. It shouldn't be removed just because it sets PC's back on the gold scale. If that was the case, I would argue that my main character's two favors granting free Raise Dead should also be removed, as they would put the PC far ahead on the gold scale... The problem is simply: Sundering is far too easy, while its ramifications in LG are far too harsh. The same problem exists with Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Personally I would figure something along the lines of allowing overcap gold to repair sundered items would be more than reasonable. Sure items could get sundered but you would get them back within a module or two. This would make the issue still annoying but not character shattering although you could be fairly well hit for the mod or two it takes to get it repaired. This would change things from being akin to loosing a familar (needing about a year to recover it) to loosing a Paladin's mount. Not quite down to loosing a cohort or animal companion. Which seems a reasonable place for it to be considering that it's not hard for it to occur. As it stands most DMs see sundering as inherently problematic and will, as a result, not sunder unless the PCs are sundering. This screams to me that as it stands currently things are wrong. -James
Jesse Heinig 01-12-06, 03:25 AM	This one, which is essentially the broad form of many complaints, should be in the absolute requirements for acceptance: Multiple entry point/motivator. In a module that's going to be played by hundreds of people, there's no predicting what will motivate a party to be involved, or which skills they'll use to follow the plot. Ergo, there should be a variety of ways to move the plot forward. Something that can only be followed with a Search DC 25 check will leave a lot of parties in the dust. A trick that is only bypassed by guessing the author's one "clever" way is going to wreck a multitude of groups. Different parties should have different potential solutions, and setting up scenarios designed to thwart everything but the "one right way" is a sure-fire route to gamer dissatisfaction.
vvincent 01-13-06, 08:16 AM	In a similar vein, players likewise need to be flexible in working with what's provided by the author. It's impossible for an author to account for every possible motivation, and for each and every alternative option - the module length is extended to accommodate those choices. I'm working on an adventure where the Introduction is four pages. It's not boxed text - the main Introduction is 3 short paragraph paragraphs. But the rest is options for alternative ways to involve characters. Multiple that by the near-infinite number of permutations of party motivation and get unwieldly pretty fast. In short - work with what you've been provided and trust that your judge will take care of any unforeseen situations. Vernon L. Vincent This one, which is essentially the broad form of many complaints, should be in the absolute requirements for acceptance: Multiple entry point/motivator. In a module that's going to be played by hundreds of people, there's no predicting what will motivate a party to be involved, or which skills they'll use to follow the plot. Ergo, there should be a variety of ways to move the plot forward. Something that can only be followed with a Search DC 25 check will leave a lot of parties in the dust. A trick that is only bypassed by guessing the author's one "clever" way is going to wreck a multitude of groups. Different parties should have different potential solutions, and setting up scenarios designed to thwart everything but the "one right way" is a sure-fire route to gamer dissatisfaction.
paigeoliver 01-15-06, 09:22 PM	In addition to the above bits about likely and unlikely actions, etc, I offer this. Make sure the adventure you are writing is actually fun. I recently played an un-named year 5 core module, and there simply wasn't a single fun thing to be had anywhere. It did (however) feature almost every hallmark of bad adventure design around. Vague introduction, with little reason for the heros to even be interested. Followed by taking heat and cold damage from weather. Might be realistic, but it isn't really all that much fun. Not even sure it is all that realistic either. Lets see, then there were the combats. From playing enough rediculous modules I have often remarked that the average Living Greyhawk fight consists of a single half-dragon kobold monk, locked in a chest, under 30 feet or water, under a foot of ice, using a scrying device to see the characters, and firing magic missiles at them from there. This module was much the same way. There wasn't a "normal" combat in the entire thing. The combats universally consisted of special terrain that the monsters were not effected by, but that the player's were. Bonus points for making half the thing squeezed tiny tunnels in a story arc that should be EXPECTING Centaur PCs. The actual layout of the indoor part made little sense, and there didn't seem to be any part of it that the included humanoid monsters actually lived in, just some tunnels they happened to be in. Trying to figure out clues from, making skill rolls on and getting paragraph long detailed descriptions of A DOZEN paintings in ONE room is not fun. It is background information overload. The players spent 45 minutes being bored to tears by boxed text, and at the end of which no one could remember any of it because there was just to much of it. This part is worth stating a second time, because some module writers seem to have a certain disease which causes them to either give the enemies a ridiculous situational advantage in every encounter or to give the PCs an equally rediculous situational disadvantage in every encounter, or both. The opponent might have darkvision out to 60 feet, but that doesn't mean that he sits around in total darkness al the time. I don't think I have EVER encountered a kobold indoors that wasn't sitting around in total darkness waiting to shoot a crossbow. Actually come to think of it, I can't ever recall meeting any opponent underground that wasn't sitting around in total darkness. Modules that do that sort of thing in EVERY encounter aren't fun. They aren't fun to play in, they aren't fun to GM. They just aren't fun period. Also, your box text, or encounters should never just be able to waltz through or defeat player actions by default. Time and time again I encounter this. Some of this I can chalk up to bad gamemastering, but I think a lot of GMs feel pinned down by the text of the encounter. For example. If you want a familiar to sneak into the characters room at the inn, or a thief to break in, etc. Then the encounter should start with the attempt, not with them ALREADY in the room. I have only been playing a few months and I have already had inn room fortifications (pushing furniture up against the door, setting up noisy stuff to wake the players if it opens, etc), mystically and completely bypassed by opponents who had no way to do so. I will also repeat what was mentioned above about auto-ambushes. It is darn hard to sneak up on an LG party. There seems to be a hyperactive elf with a +20 spot check at every single table, who should legitimately have a chance to spot them first. Now that I have harped on game mechanics stuff and fun I shall move on to the other important aspect of design. Making sure the adventure makes sense. Opponents that make sense. Living Greyhawk is particularly bad about opponents this due to the APL system. I have played plenty of modules that had great stories and such, but then fell apart when it came to the actual opponents. Most common opponent problem I see is "one trick pony NPC who just happens to have the perfect trick for the exact terrain and situation he is in". Things such as random guards set up in an area that includes a tricky balance section, who just HAPPEN to have 10 ranks in balance and skill focus balance. Funny none of the other NPCs in the complex have that, just those guys. Then there are the improbably opponents. Really, how many half-fiends, half-dragons, and half-troll-half-flesh-golem monks could possibly be on the entire planet. Then there are the opponents in improbable circumstances, such as the giant underground lair that only has 5 guys in it. Improbable opponent actions. Recently played a game in which the humanoid enemies managed to excavate four thousand square feet of dirt to create pit traps IN FRONT OF A HOUSE IN THE HEART OF A DEMIHUMAN COMMUNITY. I guess no one was watching??? That same group of opponents oddly enough had no pit traps at all in or around their lair. Now how about improbable NPC actions. Most common of which is the fabulously weathly and powerful NPC who needs the player characters for a desparate mission, but can't do a darn thing to help them. If you are the ruler of a nation then I am PRETTY SURE you might have a few healing potions laying around, or possibly an NPC cleric to help out the group you so desparately need (who has no cleric). I watched an NPC Paladin get killed by a player in one module because absolutely nobody in the entire party believed that the big and powerful organization they were from would send TWO GUYS to take on a nasty vampire problem. Back on the big and powerful NPC bit again. Whatever happened to having adventures where you WERE NOT hired or begged to do somebody else's mission? Whatever happened to the old standbye of hearing rumors of ancient ruins, dragons, and so on? You know, the stuff the game was FOUNDED ON. Is there ANY LG adventure out there that involves the characters taking the number one plot hook of all time (running after rumors of rich stuff)? If there is then I have never seen it.
redgamer 01-15-06, 10:26 PM	PC Adventurers go on so many adventures that straddle the thin line between impossible deadly and too easy to earn experience that D&D PC inherently strains belief. Its the NPC adventurers that face only foes not worth their time or that are uncompletable with their current skills. Therefore PCs have to face uncommon enemies. Did the fact that the NPCs (who should usually only have one or two tricks) got lucky enough to have their trick work in that situation as opposed to being useless and getting slaughtered by even the meekest PCs make the combats too deadly. A lot of what you complained about could (or even should) have been fixed by the judge. Still if you ever have that bad an experience with a mod you should explain your complaints to the author or triad so they can look out for those problems next time. They really do listen to e-mails. I'm glad you didn't mention the mod by name here because other people now still have a chance to enjoy it (and no matter how much you hate a mod some people will still like it), but you definately should tell someone.
Samwise 01-15-06, 11:02 PM	Vague introduction, with little reason for the heros to even be interested. While the introduction likely could have been enhanced, there was very good reason to be interested - at least for my character. This module was much the same way. There wasn't a "normal" combat in the entire thing. The combats universally consisted of special terrain that the monsters were not effected by, but that the player's were. I thought all the combats were quite normal actually, in contrast to many other adventures. As for the circumstances, they were hardly impossible, and I can think of several ways to totally trash it if thoroughly prepared. The actual layout of the indoor part made little sense, and there didn't seem to be any part of it that the included humanoid monsters actually lived in, just some tunnels they happened to be in. That is because there is no adventuring to do in those areas. (And they did exist.) If you want to try something truly dull and boring, try an hour or more of empty room descriptions, with suspicious players insisting on searching everything. I was rather pleased all those irrelevant areas were dealt with "off-camera" as it were. Trying to figure out clues from, making skill rolls on and getting paragraph long detailed descriptions of A DOZEN paintings in ONE room is not fun. It is background information overload. The players spent 45 minutes being bored to tears by boxed text, and at the end of which no one could remember any of it because there was just to much of it. I figured out the clue in about 15 seconds while playing, as did a person at the table I ran it for. It was not that difficult. (And I would have been exceptionally put out if it had been any more difficult.) As for the boxed text, I didn't read any of those descriptions, nor did the person who ran it for me. We both just passed the handouts around, and any player who cared to gawk was free to or not. (Represented by reading said handouts.) Otherwise you could use the opportunity to take 5 and get something to drink or make a relief run. That is pretty standard practice with all such, and I would encourage authors to replace extensive boxed text descriptions of similar things with such handouts. This part is worth stating a second time, because some module writers seem to have a certain disease which causes them to either give the enemies a ridiculous situational advantage in every encounter or to give the PCs an equally rediculous situational disadvantage in every encounter, or both. If the situation is figured into the EL, which is being done these days, then I don't really see it is a problem. Many encounters are taking place on a creatures home turf, and it is only reasonable for them to take full advantage of it. What is wrong is when the rules are ignored to do so, or the situation is explained too poorly, or the DM presents it poorly. I did not find this to be a problem at all in this adventure. Actually come to think of it, I can't ever recall meeting any opponent underground that wasn't sitting around in total darkness. Well, generally, it does mean they sit around in total darkness. That is why they have darkvision, because there are no lights down there underground, and they need to be able to see what is going on. Yes, that is a disadvantage for those without darkvision. So are light sensitivity and light blindness for those creatures that have them. Also, your box text, or encounters should never just be able to waltz through or defeat player actions by default. Time and time again I encounter this. Some of this I can chalk up to bad gamemastering, but I think a lot of GMs feel pinned down by the text of the encounter. No they shouldn't. And such text is on the permanent hit list of things to get sent back to the author for revision. However, it still remains a problem when DMs decide that because no Spot or Listen check is not detailed in the adventure that none is possible. This is incorrect. In the absence of an assigned DC, you default to the core rules. How to deal with that remains the issue. Most common opponent problem I see is "one trick pony NPC who just happens to have the perfect trick for the exact terrain and situation he is in". Things such as random guards set up in an area that includes a tricky balance section, who just HAPPEN to have 10 ranks in balance and skill focus balance. Funny none of the other NPCs in the complex have that, just those guys. Things like that have been added to the list of stuff to be checked for. Of course in some situations, only those who have to guard a particular area need specific counters for what is there. Then there are the improbably opponents. Really, how many half-fiends, half-dragons, and half-troll-half-flesh-golem monks could possibly be on the entire planet. Templates are cool! Authors love templates. So do editors and reviewers. They are evil and weird and funky and great to toss in just for the heck of it. But if it is any comfort to you, that concept came up in a non-LG chat discussion recently, when we questioned the stability of the ecosystem with an ever expanding roster of sentient races appearing to throng the world. Improbable opponent actions. Recently played a game in which the humanoid enemies managed to excavate four thousand square feet of dirt to create pit traps IN FRONT OF A HOUSE IN THE HEART OF A DEMIHUMAN COMMUNITY. I guess no one was watching??? That same group of opponents oddly enough had no pit traps at all in or around their lair. Again, on the watch list. Most common of which is the fabulously weathly and powerful NPC who needs the player characters for a desparate mission, but can't do a darn thing to help them. If you are the ruler of a nation then I am PRETTY SURE you might have a few healing potions laying around, or possibly an NPC cleric to help out the group you so desparately need (who has no cleric). Generally if they are desperate it is because they don't have things available. That's why they need the PCs. More, part of the point is for the players to prepare their characters with everything they need, and use those items during an adventure. I miss where the challenge would be if you were handed everything you need to make each adventure a cake-walk by the patron each and every time. Back on the big and powerful NPC bit again. Whatever happened to having adventures where you WERE NOT hired or begged to do somebody else's mission? Whatever happened to the old standbye of hearing rumors of ancient ruins, dragons, and so on? You know, the stuff the game was FOUNDED ON. To a large extent, they never existed. People like to think they did, but some contemplation reveals that very few were anything like that. As a summary: A 1-4 (Slaver series) Patron (Victim in the supermodule revision) C 1-2 (Ghost Tower of Inverness and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan) Patrons D 1-3 (Drow series) Patron G 1-3 (Giant series) Patron (or forced if you take the "be executed if you fail" background) I 1 (Dwellers of the Forbidden City) variable (Patron and treasure hunting both suggested) L 1-2 (Lendore Isle series) Treasure Hunting then Patron N 1 (Against the Cult of the Reptile G-) Treasure Hunting and Heroism Q 1 (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) Patron (continued from G and D series) S 1-4 (various specials) 1 Treasure Hunting, 3 Patrons T 1-4 (Village of Hommlett and Temple of Elemental Evil) Treasure Hunting at start, campaign goal to pick up a Patron later on U 1-3 (Saltmarsh series) Treasure Hunting for half the first, Patron from the rest UK 1-3 (Hold of the Sea Princes adventures) Patrons turning to Heroism WG 4-6 (World of Greyhawk series) Patrons You are correct, hearing rumors is the old standby. But that's all that it is, the standby. The real tradition is to work with a patron who can help you make the leap from two bit treasure hunting scum to respected member of the nation. Also, for of overall LG story development, as well as to help PCs become a more integral part of the developing storyline, the use of patrons, especially high ranking ones, is an important part of the campaign. (Not to mention that working "caravan duty" for Low Merchant Shlub Boy is really low on most player's list of career choices for their characters.) By providing these high ranking patrons, it opens the way to providing indirect benefits, like favors and influence, that can be used to open up various campaign options, as well as giving players an inside track on the campaign development. (Which of course tracks right back to your comment on masses of background material. It might be boring, but at some point you need to convey all this information to the players. And, while much can be assumed to be known to the oldtimers, there are also newcomers to accommodate. I knew about 3/4 of the material in the adventure you describe here, as did one person at the table of it that I ran. That is 2 people out of 10 who didn't need all the information on those handouts. Adventures will be very unenjoyable if they only include the background someone like me would need, and everyone else was left to fend for themselves.) Is there ANY LG adventure out there that involves the characters taking the number one plot hook of all time (running after rumors of rich stuff)? If there is then I have never seen it. Yes there are. Several involve a patron only very peripherally, and rely on the PCs to go for the hardcore heroics. However they can't offer the same degree of access or reward as other adventures, and are typically criticized for that as a result. "It was nice, but we didn't get anything for doing it." Most people like being so close to the halls of power, and picking up influence along the way. That being said, certain situations are on the watch list, and a patron must make sense or get sent back for rewrites.
paigeoliver 01-16-06, 12:45 AM	Hey, thanks for the detailed reply. I still don't believe that Kobolds sit around in the dark all the time. The monster manual lists their favorite clothing colors. Darkvision is black and white. If they sat around in the dark all the time then they wouldn't have favorite clothing colors. :P The particular one I talked about for most of the time had two fights. An extended one over a large section of squeezed tunnels. Better hope you have a gnome or halfling tank in the party. I haven't ordered the module to run for local players yet (went out of town to play it elsewhere, I'll be running it later), but when I played it the kobolds were also using tactics that were not rules legal. Second fight was flying creatures vs "PCs all squeezed together on a ledge. I actually managed to whip one of them out of the air with my Marshall (trip with whip) though, only time I smiled that whole game, and that was mostly because I had been wanting to whip something out of the air ever since I created my whip using marshall. But my essential point about locations is that I firmly believe that every adventure should have at least one fight that has the bad guys in a normal room or a normal outdoors area. That special terrain some writers favor is usually going to make at least one character in the encounter useless, sometimes more than one. Now, stick special terrain in every encounter, chances are fairly good that every other table will end up having a character that is nullified in ALL the encounters. Man, I bet that player is going to come away from that one feeling awesome. Only once have I been the guy who was useless the whole game (and that was more because I was playing Sympathy for the Baatezu at APL 6 with a level 2 halfling archer, I never did a single point of damage to anything) but I have seen it happen to other people enough times. Oh, and my actual vote for most broken mod? "War of the Dust". I played it at APL 4. Had a really weak table too (My halfling archer, a level 5 thief who had like NO real equipment, since he had been saving since level 1 for some expensive item, a 3rd level bard/ranger/Marshall who was only good at one thing, getting +35 on a diplomacy check, and a non-combatant type 3rd level cleric). The griffon fight could have possibly been bad, but I don't think the GM really understood how to run flying creatures, so that one came off pretty easily. Then there was the hill giant, which is a very tough (but doable) encounter for a STRONG level 4 party (CR 7 I believe). I on the other hand was stuck with two non-combatants and a thief played by a very young kid who spent half his actions trying to hide during combat so he could try to get sneak attack damage. Needless to say my halfling archer was killed when she was stuck facing off against the giant with no chance or running. I was knocked down to -28 hit points real quick. The judge was a softy though (or perhaps he didn't want to ruin a 2 round mod only a 3rd of the way through, because with my archer dead the module would have been over), and he said he made a mistake and that the giant was supposed to run away when it got to a certain amount of hit points, so he said that is what happened instead. Now a hill giant might ONLY be a CR 7. Which is LEGAL (albeit completely inappropriate for a 4th level party), but you have to also realize how such a creature interacts with a 4th level party. +16 to hit means he is unlikely to miss any of his attacks. 2d8+10 damage means 19 damage per hit, he will get one on you simply from an AOO before you can even hit him. Sure you can try to pick him off with ranged attacks, but he can simply pick an archer, close and kill the archer before the archers can beat his 20 armor class and 102 hit points. Now, how many hit points does a 4th level character have? I assumed 14 cons for fighters/Barbarians and 12 for everyone else, so I was generous here. Barbarian 41 hp. can take two hits from the giant, 3rd one kills him DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. Fighter 36 hp. Fighter goes to -2 with the second hit, significant chance of actual death since it is still the first or second round of the fight. Paladin/Swashbuckler. 32 hp Same as fighter, but goes to -6 higher chance of dying. Ranger/Cleric/Druid 27 hit points. Survives first hit, drops to -11 with second hit. Rogues 22 hp. The hill giant damage bell curve is harshest to the rogue, who has almost zero chance of surving. Since the giant has to roll really high on damage to actually manage to send him negative in one hit, however the second hit will almost certainly send him to -10. Average rolls has him at -16 with two hits. Wizard/sorceror. 17 HP. Actually the most likely to survive. Giant will send him (barely) negative with the first hit. Hopefully the party manages to kill off the giant in time to save the wizard. But the real kicker in this one was the ending, when the roof caves in and does more damage than the any non-fighter has to anyone with a movement rate under 30.
Jesse Heinig 01-16-06, 03:46 AM	After my experiences, I no longer trust GMs with whom I have not played before. In just the last two days I have watched: * An encounter with halberd-wielding medium monsters suddenly handwaved as "They have special halberds that threaten both 5' and 10' ranges" * A DM arbitrarily change the APL of encounters from 8 to 10 in a mod on the fly because "The first encounter was too easy" and then award APL 8 experience, treasure, and access at the end * A DM threatening to punish a cleric of St. Cuthbert with a note on his AR of "failing to uphold divine tenets" because said cleric, while preaching to and trying to convert another PC in a bit of roleplaying, did not physically beat the other character for damage with every sentence * A DM who gave enemies two rounds of surprise attacks on the party, with no Spot or Listen checks for the party, when the enemies had no rogue or ranger levels, or magical concealment, in a woodland encounter I have also experienced in the past: * A DM who ruled that (non-reach, corporeal) monsters standing on a wall beyond a doorway could reach out and attack characters in a hall beyond the door, without worrying about cover, but that the PCs could not attack back, even with cover penalties * A DM explicitly changing an Eberron module so that the party faced unending waves of monsters and were told that the method that is explicitly written in the mod to solve the encounter, doesn't work (the party was stuck in the first encounter for the entire four hours and then failed the mod because of this) I don't trust RPGA judges with whom I haven't already played. In a similar vein, players likewise need to be flexible in working with what's provided by the author. It's impossible for an author to account for every possible motivation, and for each and every alternative option - the module length is extended to accommodate those choices. I'm working on an adventure where the Introduction is four pages. It's not boxed text - the main Introduction is 3 short paragraph paragraphs. But the rest is options for alternative ways to involve characters. Multiple that by the near-infinite number of permutations of party motivation and get unwieldly pretty fast. In short - work with what you've been provided and trust that your judge will take care of any unforeseen situations. Vernon L. Vincent
Madfox11 01-16-06, 07:13 AM	Back on the big and powerful NPC bit again. Whatever happened to having adventures where you WERE NOT hired or begged to do somebody else's mission? Whatever happened to the old standbye of hearing rumors of ancient ruins, dragons, and so on? You know, the stuff the game was FOUNDED ON. Except that rumors as a start for an adventure do not work very well in a Living Greyhawk campaign. The author and reviewers do NOT know the PCs, and hence have no way of placing the right kind of rumors on the path of the PCs. What is more, a scenario can only include one adventure so players never can have the total freedom of the homecampaign where the DM simply switches to a new adventure if the players don't bite. The only way rumors would work is with an introduction that actually decides for the players that they are now exploring the Ruins of the Temple of Infinite Doom for treasure and glory. I can assure you that nothing peeves players off more then a scenario that simply assumed the PCs do something. Side-note: halberds do not have reach, so how can a DM arbitrarily switch them? In any event, if you think that a DM breaks the core D&D rules and you are playing at a convention you can step to the Senior DM who should intervene. I know a friend of mine who once saved a party of a TPK that way because the DM was making a total mess of the encounter.
JohnduBois 01-16-06, 08:19 AM	I do feel that there needs to be a system in the RPGA to report poor DM's. And when I say poor DM's, I don't mean DM's who run a table poorly because they get stuck at a table to high an APL for their experience (me) or DM's who have issues running mods because they don't know the rules for flying mounted combat (I didn't play War of the Dust, but I heard a lot of weird stuff). I'm referring to the judges who persist in making blatant rules violations that seem to have no purpose other than making encounters or adventures harder for the PC's than the author and campaign staff originally intended. If a DM is giving NPC's TWO rounds of autosurprise, arbitrarily raising the APL without consulting the players, or punishing players for not violating campaign rules (hitting PC's is almost always an evil act), and these issues show up more than once, that person needs to not be a DM in this or any other RPGA campaign. Period. I'm not sure how such a system would work, and it would certainly not be an LG-only system (thus not placing exta work on already overworked and harrassed Circle and Triad members), but something like this would at least allow RPGA staff to deal with the truly wretched DM's.
JohnduBois 01-16-06, 08:27 AM	However, it still remains a problem when DMs decide that because no Spot or Listen check is not detailed in the adventure that none is possible. This is incorrect. In the absence of an assigned DC, you default to the core rules. How to deal with that remains the issue. Wouldn't it be possible to add a sentence prior to combat encounters telling DM's to "use the rules on such-and-such pages of such-and-such book to determine surprise and encounter distance"? It seems like that would clarify what the DM should do, as well as eliminate the "what page of the DMG was encounter distance again" issue. As a DM who hasn't memorized the core books, I especially appreciated a year 5 module that specifically outlined when the PC's saw the villains based on their Spot check results. Incidentally, this is why I wrote my first adventure in a series of twisting tunnels. It made things a lot easier for me to have a situation of, "You can't see it because there's a corner here". Listen checks are still needed, but fewer.
Samwise 01-16-06, 10:04 AM	Wouldn't it be possible to add a sentence prior to combat encounters telling DM's to "use the rules on such-and-such pages of such-and-such book to determine surprise and encounter distance"? It seems like that would clarify what the DM should do, as well as eliminate the "what page of the DMG was encounter distance again" issue. As a DM who hasn't memorized the core books, I especially appreciated a year 5 module that specifically outlined when the PC's saw the villains based on their Spot check results. It is, but that would then beg the issue of DMs actually knowing the rules. Including sources for rules is standard, but it is usually only done for non-Core rules. It is expected that you don't have to tell people what page the rules for Spot on every encounter. Still, adding repeated notes has been suggested for certain encounters for those DMs who simply refuse to pay attention to the rules and adventure notes. I will note, this is somewhat irritating for an author to have to do a rewrite for those below the lowest common denominator.
Samwise 01-16-06, 10:21 AM	Hey, thanks for the detailed reply. Well, for those who don't know, I'm one of the people who will be editing Core adventures this year. (In fact I've already started, you'll encounter some of my work at Winter Fantasy.) So knowing what is driving people crazy is important to me. If I can catch things in the future, I can hopefully reduce threads like this to just complaints about poor DMs. (Not that that is good, but at least it means that people like the adventures. I still don't believe that Kobolds sit around in the dark all the time. The monster manual lists their favorite clothing colors. Darkvision is black and white. If they sat around in the dark all the time then they wouldn't have favorite clothing colors. :P Heh. Well that would be for a long involved article on the ecology of critters with darkvision. :) The particular one I talked about for most of the time had two fights. An extended one over a large section of squeezed tunnels. Better hope you have a gnome or halfling tank in the party. Yep. That's pretty much how it worked for me too, both as player and DM. As I said though, there are other ways around it, we just didn't have them available. I haven't ordered the module to run for local players yet (went out of town to play it elsewhere, I'll be running it later), but when I played it the kobolds were also using tactics that were not rules legal. That I suspect depends on the DM. The notes include specific tactics, but there is nothing inherently illegal about them. Whether a DM chooses to run it wrong is another issue. That special terrain some writers favor is usually going to make at least one character in the encounter useless, sometimes more than one. Now, stick special terrain in every encounter, chances are fairly good that every other table will end up having a character that is nullified in ALL the encounters. Man, I bet that player is going to come away from that one feeling awesome. No more so than rogues wind up being near useless when the undead or constructs start showing up. My wizard was near useless in the second encounter of that adventure, doing nothing more useful than aiding the power attacking fighter. However, I did it, since I won't sit around while other PCs get slaughtered for me. Now a hill giant might ONLY be a CR 7. Which is LEGAL (albeit completely inappropriate for a 4th level party), but you have to also realize how such a creature interacts with a 4th level party. As a general design/editing note, there are certain creatures that are just excessively deadly at their APLs and in certain situations. Sometimes they aren't identified until too late. Other times they are only deadly until you know about them. I have seen giants abused rather thoroughly in the Sheldomar meta-region unless they are loaded with character levels and other special boosts. So it is quite likely that encounter was related to differently by different people. Of course, it also seems that adventure is a prime candidate for complaints about the lower APLs. I ran it at a higher APL and didn't have any problems with it. Experiences can vary rather widely.
redgamer 01-16-06, 10:32 AM	If the DM made a mistake and thought halberd have reach (a very common mistake in my experience) would you really want him to restart the whole battle once he realized his mistakes. I bet there weren't any deaths or long term affect stemming from the improper use of halberds. Changing the APL mid-way through is inproper but his intentions where good and again I bet there where no deaths. The St Cuthbert thing makes no sense. The note on the AR would be meaningless because it would only come up if the triads where auditing your character and they all know that you can't attack other players. You should definately try to tell someone with the authority/persuasivness to explain to this judge his mistake. It is possible for enemies to do quite a lot to hurt you before you are physically able to respond in certain situations. You may have been subject to enemies with undeserved suprise. Usually when I see this it is when it would be difficult to properly determine suprise (see recent wizards article about the complexity of starting an encounter fairly) and the judge knows the PCs will destroy the encounter even is the enemies get a free action. Of course if any of these judges did this just to hurt the party they have no buisness judging a living campaign.
smerwin29 01-16-06, 11:51 AM	Well, for those who don't know, I'm one of the people who will be editing Core adventures this year. (In fact I've already started, you'll encounter some of my work at Winter Fantasy.) Shawn's translation: If you have any problem with my Core mods, blame Sam! :shifty:
JamesMaissen 01-16-06, 12:14 PM	Well, for those who don't know, I'm one of the people who will be editing Core adventures this year. (In fact I've already started, you'll encounter some of my work at Winter Fantasy.) So knowing what is driving people crazy is important to me. If I can catch things in the future, I can hopefully reduce threads like this to just complaints about poor DMs. (Not that that is good, but at least it means that people like the adventures. Best of luck to you. I was happy to hear you as one of the people getting this job as I'm sure you will do wonders in the role. Try not to burn out on it, and *never* ever think it goes unrecognized. My only suggestion as a player is the more the bad guys (and the situation as a whole) make sense the better the module normally feels for me, likewise to the contrary. For example, I don't mind darkvision creatures not living in lit areas (the rare lit area would be just that).. heck on the other side of the fence, I've required fellow party members to go without lights before as my dwarf. And once even tried to marshal a table with cries of 'darkvision?' rather than 'APL X?' when going into a dungeon crawl through a mine. But it is reassuring and comforting when you see the bad guys actually living there rather than simply waiting to encounter you. Not only having a place for them to live, but a sense of them going about thier business, however that feeling is conveyed. Summed up by the 50 cent word: versimilatude. The only other random piece of advice comes as a question: is there a reason other than intertia that we use these compact, hard to read at a glance, stat blocks? Well, again best of luck. I think by the nature of things, people will tend to get long winded when talking on the subject. If you can separate the chaffe from the wheat hopefully it will be of help though, Take care, James Maissen
Mommy was an Orc 01-16-06, 03:22 PM	Well, generally, it does mean they sit around in total darkness. That is why they have darkvision, because there are no lights down there underground, and they need to be able to see what is going on. Yes, that is a disadvantage for those without darkvision. So are light sensitivity and light blindness for those creatures that have them. There's a variety of reasons that Kobolds might actually use at least some light sources: They're reptilian, too in what are usually cold damp spots. The heat of a fire isn't a bad thing. Hide - you can't hide easily when your opponents are using darkvision and they appear at the exact same time they can see you. They hate everyone, not just humans and demi-humans. Flaming Oil - it is a lot easier to light flaming oil if you have something light it with ... Those with low-light vision and a torch can often see you before you can see them - range of 80' vs range of 60'... That which is on, can be turned off. If the party isn't holding a torch because there's sconces on the walls holding torches...when the kobolds spring their trap, they can build the trap so it simultaneously turns off the light sources. To a large extent, they never existed. People like to think they did, but some contemplation reveals that very few were anything like that. As a summary: A 1-4 (Slaver series) Patron (Victim in the supermodule revision) C 1-2 (Ghost Tower of Inverness and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan) Patrons D 1-3 (Drow series) Patron G 1-3 (Giant series) Patron (or forced if you take the "be executed if you fail" background) I 1 (Dwellers of the Forbidden City) variable (Patron and treasure hunting both suggested) L 1-2 (Lendore Isle series) Treasure Hunting then Patron N 1 (Against the Cult of the Reptile G-) Treasure Hunting and Heroism Q 1 (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) Patron (continued from G and D series) S 1-4 (various specials) 1 Treasure Hunting, 3 Patrons T 1-4 (Village of Hommlett and Temple of Elemental Evil) Treasure Hunting at start, campaign goal to pick up a Patron later on U 1-3 (Saltmarsh series) Treasure Hunting for half the first, Patron from the rest UK 1-3 (Hold of the Sea Princes adventures) Patrons turning to Heroism WG 4-6 (World of Greyhawk series) Patrons [/QUOTE] C1 is actually running from the authorities. All the C and S mods are timed tournament mods, which by their very nature involve being railroaded into a plot. Needing to roleplay an encounter at the start could put your group behind if you have a longwinded guy at your table. But, in the context of how a lot of those series started, particularly the low level ones, it wasn't some random group of adventurers who got picked out by a patron. It was the adventurers strolling into town because they heard rumors, figured out that there was some evil lurking, and then destroyed it. But in a day or two or month, something would happen showing it wasn't destroyed, and at that point, the patron would appear. The PCs had to work to gain the attention of the Patron. Having the PCs discover something evil ups the ante of a mod, because they'll feel more satisfaction from its destruction.
TheBlackFlail 01-16-06, 05:23 PM	As a general design/editing note, there are certain creatures that are just excessively deadly at their APLs and in certain situations. Sometimes they aren't identified until too late. Other times they are only deadly until you know about them. I have seen giants abused rather thoroughly in the Sheldomar meta-region unless they are loaded with character levels and other special boosts. So it is quite likely that encounter was related to differently by different people. Of course, it also seems that adventure is a prime candidate for complaints about the lower APLs. I ran it at a higher APL and didn't have any problems with it. Experiences can vary rather widely. I don't think it really takes all that much imagination or simulation to figure the most likely result of a Hill Giant vs. a typical APL 4 party (Splat!). Complaints from writers and other authority figures about how hard it can be to balance an encounter ring hollow to those of us on the recieving end when there is a nice, handy table in a big long section of the DMG about encounters that tells you all about this. Oh, as a bitter aside, the CR and encounters system is designed with monsters having average hit points and abilities, I tire of barely surviving a mod (or being splattered yet again), and reading afterwords how the encounter already several levels higher than the APL has monsters with near max HP and well above average stats.
paigeoliver 01-16-06, 06:05 PM	I know I played in a Verbebonc intro mod and I was looking the stats over with the judge afterwards, and one of the opponents (a Kobold Sorceror), not only has max hit points, and toughness, it also has an extra 5 or 6 hit points on top of that, with no explanation at all.
haferka 01-16-06, 06:22 PM	I know I played in a Verbebonc intro mod and I was looking the stats over with the judge afterwards, and one of the opponents (a Kobold Sorceror), not only has max hit points, and toughness, it also has an extra 5 or 6 hit points on top of that, with no explanation at all. More than likely those extra hp came from "False life" in his spell list. Somehow. alot of NPCs get Auto Buffs no mater what the duration, simply becouse its easier for the DM if the statblock reflects the changes than to have the DM figure them out on his own.
Samwise 01-16-06, 07:14 PM	Best of luck to you. I was happy to hear you as one of the people getting this job as I'm sure you will do wonders in the role. Try not to burn out on it, and *never* ever think it goes unrecognized. Thank you. As the announcement noted, I've been there, done that, have the scars to prove it. So I know what I'm getting into. (And which means I know I'm completely insane, so calling me that won't make an impression. :P ) My only suggestion as a player is the more the bad guys (and the situation as a whole) make sense the better the module normally feels for me, likewise to the contrary. . . . But it is reassuring and comforting when you see the bad guys actually living there rather than simply waiting to encounter you. Not only having a place for them to live, but a sense of them going about thier business, however that feeling is conveyed. Summed up by the 50 cent word: versimilatude. As it happens, I've been making myself thoroughly obnoxious to numerous people in positions of (relative) authority about that for well on 6-7 years. You can even find some of my rants on that at various places on these boards. I agree. I really don't like adventures that destroy the feeling of immersion with absurd situations, no matter how minor they might otherwise seem. This can be something related to the real world ("How do they all eat down there?"), or it could just be a disconnect from the background material. Hopefully I can manage the various small editorial suggestions to improve that. The only other random piece of advice comes as a question: is there a reason other than intertia that we use these compact, hard to read at a glance, stat blocks? As it happens, I asked about that when the DMG II came out. It appears that the response is: No. It is basically inertia and everyone being abundantly familiar with the old , and changing to the new version might require the editors (or the new stat block checkers) to completely convert them for authors, and will only make things better for about half the DMs out there as the rest will just be confused. Whether that will change will (most likely) be decided by the Circle and Triads as a group, and I'll just have to edit based on their decision. Well, again best of luck. I think by the nature of things, people will tend to get long winded when talking on the subject. If you can separate the chaffe from the wheat hopefully it will be of help though, Take care, James Maissen Fortunately I still have lots of time to lurk on the boards and check the comments. I'm more concerned that people will forget to keep spoilers out of their messages.
Samwise 01-16-06, 07:21 PM	C1 is actually running from the authorities. All the C and S mods are timed tournament mods, which by their very nature involve being railroaded into a plot. Needing to roleplay an encounter at the start could put your group behind if you have a longwinded guy at your table. Yeah, I confused that on C 1. Technically C 2 is a bunch of gallowsbait as well. S 1-3 aren't timed tournament mods though. A, D, and G were, and some others. And yes, role-play at the start can be an issue. But, in the context of how a lot of those series started, particularly the low level ones, it wasn't some random group of adventurers who got picked out by a patron. It was the adventurers strolling into town because they heard rumors, figured out that there was some evil lurking, and then destroyed it. But in a day or two or month, something would happen showing it wasn't destroyed, and at that point, the patron would appear. The PCs had to work to gain the attention of the Patron. Having the PCs discover something evil ups the ante of a mod, because they'll feel more satisfaction from its destruction. True. That has to be adjusted though by the nature of a living campaign. In those series, a party would be together for the equivalent of 4-10 LG rounds. More if you consider the number of encounters, and take many of them as 2-4 round adventures. Since LG tables are often formed spur of the moment, and as series are rarely played in immediate sequence, the patrons become a bit more forced. That is one of the difficulties in writing background for these adventures, as well as editing them from a "classical" viewpoint. In most cases, I think what is presented is the best compromise between the two.
Samwise 01-16-06, 08:09 PM	I don't think it really takes all that much imagination or simulation to figure the most likely result of a Hill Giant vs. a typical APL 4 party (Splat!). Well, yes it does. In one of the first Keoland adventures there was a sleeping, young, hill giant, when everyone was supposed to be 1st level. While it had hp and treasure and such, nobody expected anyone would do anything but die if they tried to take it on. And yet a number of people walked away with the magic sword it had. I've long since learned never to underestimate what players can do. Complaints from writers and other authority figures about how hard it can be to balance an encounter ring hollow to those of us on the recieving end when there is a nice, handy table in a big long section of the DMG about encounters that tells you all about this. Yes there is. And that table says you can expect a party in an APL+3 encounter to use 60% of their resources, including hp, spells, consumables and the like. As it goes, I rarely see that happen, as players struggle through 2-3 APL+3 encounters in a row, and yet still have most of their resources available. Apparently those tables aren't that helpful a guideline. I have run numerous adventures with encounters I thought would be walkovers that turned into gratuitous slaughter, and others I thought would be gratuitous slaughter that the players barely realized had occurred. Oh, as a bitter aside, the CR and encounters system is designed with monsters having average hit points and abilities, I tire of barely surviving a mod (or being splattered yet again), and reading afterwords how the encounter already several levels higher than the APL has monsters with near max HP and well above average stats. Monsters are being given higher hp because PCs have access to more ability points when generating their characters (28 instead of 25), and because they have access to significantly more feats, spells, and other gimmicks than most of the monsters did when originally designed. And it should be noted that monsters that are advanced, especially with character levels, will have enhanced stats. That is part of the advancement process for them. However, I have expressed my view that human "grunt" NPCs written up with overly optimized stats (specifically pumped up Str and Con) do make them overly dangerous for their CR, and the default arrays should be used.
Mommy was an Orc 01-16-06, 09:35 PM	Yeah, I confused that on C 1. Technically C 2 is a bunch of gallowsbait as well. S 1-3 aren't timed tournament mods though. A, D, and G were, and some others. And yes, role-play at the start can be an issue. Hmm...I happen to have had C1 in my bookcase(which is why I knew that), but I'm pretty certain S1 originally had a competition/time element in play. There was a list of prerolled red shirts in the back with a huge variation in levels. Just stats and items, wasn't there? True. That has to be adjusted though by the nature of a living campaign. In those series, a party would be together for the equivalent of 4-10 LG rounds. More if you consider the number of encounters, and take many of them as 2-4 round adventures. Since LG tables are often formed spur of the moment, and as series are rarely played in immediate sequence, the patrons become a bit more forced. That is one of the difficulties in writing background for these adventures, as well as editing them from a "classical" viewpoint. In most cases, I think what is presented is the best compromise between the two. I think what would probably help is having a fast encounter at the beginning of the mod that got the action going. Not necessarily a combat, but something that made the PCs curious about what was going on. If the PCs still have to be forced, they can be... An example might be the outlying farm where everyone mysteriously disappeared, there's dried blood everywhere, etc...the PCs can either report it, try to track it, or ignore it. If they pick option 1, the local authorities ask them questions and then introduce them to the patron. If they pick option 2 or 3, the local authorities show up, ask them questions, and request that they come along to meet with the patron. At which point, either the patron recognizes them or he doesn't(depending on previous mods), praises them for their good deeds and/or laments that the patron has no one available at the moment to search things out - likely due to events in the previous mod which can then be briefly summarized as it relates to the farm. The PCs are still being railroaded, but if that's done well, they won't feel like they are unless they basically ask for it. Jack on the TV show 24 routinely gets railroaded completely - he's got one and only one clue to track down - but because the overall motivation is good, it isn't that hard to overlook.
Samwise 01-16-06, 09:44 PM	Hmm...I happen to have had C1 in my bookcase(which is why I knew that), but I'm pretty certain S1 originally had a competition/time element in play. There was a list of prerolled red shirts in the back with a huge variation in levels. Just stats and items, wasn't there? Yep. But that was Tomb of Horrors. While it was run at tournaments, it was more of a "I've got a dungeon that can kill anyone" deal. So it was really just wander through for treasure hunting. S 2 is White Plume Mountain, so patrons. (Rich people in the City of Greyhawk.) S 3 is Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, so a patron. (The Grand Duke of Geoff.) S 4 is Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, which assumes various patrons looking for Daoud's Lanthorn. I think what would probably help is having a fast encounter at the beginning of the mod that got the action going. Not necessarily a combat, but something that made the PCs curious about what was going on. If the PCs still have to be forced, they can be... I'll keep it in mind for future introductions. :)
paigeoliver 01-16-06, 09:56 PM	Yes, but the difference between the patrons in the old modules and the patrons in the new modules is that in the old ones the encounter with the patron would be like one paragraph. These days it seems to take an hour of realtime.
smerwin29 01-16-06, 10:13 PM	An example might be the outlying farm where everyone mysteriously disappeared, there's dried blood everywhere, etc...the PCs can either report it, try to track it, or ignore it. If they pick option 1, the local authorities ask them questions and then introduce them to the patron. If they pick option 2 or 3, the local authorities show up, ask them questions, and request that they come along to meet with the patron. This is a great example of why writing a mod is so hard. Why are the PCs at this farm? Or why are they traveling on the road where the farm is? If it is a main road between two major cities, why are the PCs traveling there? What about the PCs who always teleport, or fly their winged mounts, or windwalk? That about the PCs who have options 4 - 10, options that can mean they never meet the patron in the first place. What about divination spells that can simply tell a PC exactly what happened and where the missing people are? This is the problem writers wrestle with continually. If you start the mod too quickly or obvious, you are accused of railroading or not being creative. If you start the mod with encounters that account for different PCs and motivations, you are accused to being too convoluted and slow. Much depends on player tastes, which run to both extremes. Some want the quick start to get them on the road to the first battle, while others want the roleplaying immersion of making the transition from start to first encounter very organic. A writer has to trust that the judge and the players can make the introduction work for each table in a way that makes everyone happy. But of course, making everyone happy is impossible, no matter how hard you try.
JohnduBois 01-16-06, 11:11 PM	On the issue of things that shouldn't be in modules, I have one to add from a module that I just finished playing. Don't, at the onset of a module, give the PC's literally three full pages of notes and information to read. Especially don't require them to make 3-4 Knowledge checks for each of the fifteen notes/letters. It usually leads to two things. Intense PC boredom, and lots of details being missed anyways.
paigeoliver 01-16-06, 11:47 PM	There is also a PERFECT solution to setting up the patron and starting the adventure. It was used a lot back in the old days, it could be used again. Blurb of module. You have been hired by the grand inquisitor of Fubu to retrieve the holy bag of doritos from the ancient temple of Doom. PROBLEM SOLVED. Stick the mission in the blurb. If the players aren't interested, then they can choose not to play, since they usually get to read the blurb before they sign up. Anyway, LG adventures are always a railroad in that aspect anyway. Either take the mission from the patron, or go home. Unless you have me (or someone like me), running. I tell my players, "If you don't want to take the mission, then you can go out and hunt wolves, or try to seduce barmaids or whatever you want. I'll run it, but realize you can only get gold and XP for stuff in the module. I really enjoy the roleplaying aspect of games as well as the combat aspect. But I don't enjoy the roleplaying aspect so much when I KNOW that it is a foregone conclusion that I am going to be given a mission by an NPC. Basically, I am a much bigger fan of "middle of the module" roleplaying encounters than I am of the module front-loading 30-60 minutes of roleplaying at the front of the module, especially when that roleplaying only really has one possible outcome. Also, I have always been a big fan of the "less is more" style of module writing, which was prevalent at TSR up until about the time Dragonlance came out. The super detailed style that came around with Dragonlance (and that LG still uses today), makes for wonderful reading, but they don't run as smoothly, require so much prep time, and often tie the GMs hands in many ways. The more detailed the module is the harder it is for the GM to fill in the gaps without accidently contradicting what happens to be present on page 36, paragraph 3. A good GM can do more with, Jed - Jed is the town blacksmith. He is secretly working for the big bad evil guy. Than he can with a six page description of Jed, his history and everything he might say or do. Now a BAD GM can do more with the six page description, but it still won't be much fun because it is a bad GM doing it. The one line description of Jed allows the GM a ton of freedom, yet still serves the exact same purpose in the module. If anything it is a bit of a bonus because overly detailed things can often end up getting "overheard" by people who haven't played the module yet. Using the less is more method means that those overheard bits are often going to be dead wrong. Sure when BOB ran the module you could count on Jed leaving his house at 2 AM to visit the BBEG, but when TOM ran it Jed would never actually meet with the BBEG in person, instead he would follow instructions brought to him by the BBEG's familar. While I believe all that makes for better gaming, it does require NOTHING but good GMs. And really, you can't even begin to count on good GMs all the time. But I do believe module writers could do worse than checking out the Basic and Expert level D&D modules from the mid 80s era. They struck a perfect balance between the sparse text of the 1981 era stuff and the novel sized modules of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance era.
Mommy was an Orc 01-17-06, 12:36 AM	In the context of PCs with options 4-10 at low APL, I'd suggest there's bigger problems than I realized... :) The farm's just an example and there can be numerous reasons why the PCs are there - low apl, they just passed through the town, someone made a spot check and noticed some vultures flying around - which would show up in the air as well for fliers going from one place to another. The patron heard some info and told the lazy teleporters to go check it out. Most divination spells won't tell you that kind of information unless the DM permits it to happen. That's not how the rules work, particularly when there's no bodies. And if there is a spell which lets you do that, I'd then suggest that is numero uno on the should be banned list. This is a great example of why writing a mod is so hard. Why are the PCs at this farm? Or why are they traveling on the road where the farm is? If it is a main road between two major cities, why are the PCs traveling there? What about the PCs who always teleport, or fly their winged mounts, or windwalk? That about the PCs who have options 4 - 10, options that can mean they never meet the patron in the first place. What about divination spells that can simply tell a PC exactly what happened and where the missing people are?
TheBlackFlail 01-17-06, 12:52 AM	Well, yes it does. In one of the first Keoland adventures there was a sleeping, young, hill giant, when everyone was supposed to be 1st level. While it had hp and treasure and such, nobody expected anyone would do anything but die if they tried to take it on. And yet a number of people walked away with the magic sword it had. I've long since learned never to underestimate what players can do. Claiming the statistical outlier results as "proof" that ridiculously difficult EL encounters will not frequently result in exceedingly poor outcomes is a faulty argument. Just because someone always wins the lottery is not an argument that it is financially advisable to sink your life savings into the lottey. Yes there is. And that table says you can expect a party in an APL+3 encounter to use 60% of their resources, including hp, spells, consumables and the like. As it goes, I rarely see that happen, as players struggle through 2-3 APL+3 encounters in a row, and yet still have most of their resources available. Apparently those tables aren't that helpful a guideline. I have run numerous adventures with encounters I thought would be walkovers that turned into gratuitous slaughter, and others I thought would be gratuitous slaughter that the players barely realized had occurred. Your argument here boils down to: Because my personal, anecdotal results differ from those of people who spent much time researching the subject and do this for a living, I will ignore their results and use what ever I feel is appropriate, and then sit in bewilderment when people complain about my encounters being too difficult, or claim bewonderment when statistically uncommon, but not rare results occur (and then claim them as the baseline). Monsters are being given higher hp because PCs have access to more ability points when generating their characters (28 instead of 25), and because they have access to significantly more feats, spells, and other gimmicks than most of the monsters did when originally designed. And it should be noted that monsters that are advanced, especially with character levels, will have enhanced stats. That is part of the advancement process for them. However, I have expressed my view that human "grunt" NPCs written up with overly optimized stats (specifically pumped up Str and Con) do make them overly dangerous for their CR, and the default arrays should be used. So three more points on your ability buy (which does not, necessarily, translate to three more ability points), must be compensated for by not only making an encounter that the DMG warns is likely to result in player death at the baseline statistics, but an excuse to pump everything up to near max HP and give significant stat bumps too? And yes, I understand that monsters with PC class levels are supposed to use the elite array of stats. I'm sorry if I come off harsh, but I am tired of seeing the indefensible defended. It is not a smear on all writers/editors/triad/circle members to say that a few wayward mods have very poor designed encounters. I wish those of you in charge would admit that instead of circling the wagons everytime the players (who are your effective customer base) complain, and then coming up with off the wall excuses for the inexcusable. Living Greyhawk is suppose be a challenging campaign, but it also has a high entry barrier, with many activites limited to those with higher level characters (meta-regional mods, etc...), yet many low level mods seem expressely designed as a bouncer, to keep people from gaining entry into the meat of the system. This is very off putting to players, and needs to stop, or eventually the campaign will end up getting choked off. D & D is very deadly at lower levels, characters are just a few hps or levels away from stone dead, yet this is where most of the problems seem to crop up in LG, it says to us hoi-polloi that new players don't matter.
paigeoliver 01-17-06, 01:32 AM	Three more ability score points in the buy likely translates to 2 more actual ability score points, which means a +1 bonus. An extra +1 bonus on an ability score somehow doesn't exactly make up for the opponents all getting 3 extra hit dice, above average hit points, situational benefits, and ability score bonuses far beyond what the players are getting. And of course to add insult to injury many modules seem to have far more experience and treasure written into them than you are actually allow to recieve, which means the players get to face extra dangers but with no extra rewards. Oh, and things like War of the Dust. Who approved THAT for APL 4 play? The hill giant alone has a high chance of killing someone off right at the start. Then the ending, where a near dead party (assuming they aren't already dead), is hit with 8d6 of damage that no one with a move under 30 can avoid. 8d6 damage equals 28 hit points. That is more than most 4th level characters have at full hit points. That would have killed the entire party at the table I was at, but the GM said it was rediculous and magically let everyone hop on the one riding dog I had forced the NPCs into letting me bring on the griffons. Also, as a GM I like to play smart monsters, not stupid ones. You can't even run your LG opponents smart, as they will likely kill half the party by the end of the module if you do. I see far too many GMs having to do the thing where the monster changes targets after every attack, because if he played them correctly then there would be dead characters everywhere. When I run things at home I run opponents that are actually reasonable opponents. Largely an opponent will attack a single target until it drops them, and then switch targets afterwards. That is the same thing the players do. Try doing that in LG when most characters can't survive 2 rounds against what they are fighting. What kind of thoughts are running through the opponents heads? "Hmmm, man, this party looks pretty tough. Ok, I got a good hit in on the warrior, another one would finish him off. I guess that means I should attack the cleric now. Ok, got one in on him, another one would certainly finish him off. I guess I better attack the rogue now." I also have another minor APL scaling quibble. That is DC classes of tasks that scale up at higher APLs for absolutely no comprehendable reason. I see far to many DCs set at something+APL. Sometimes that is appropriate, but many times it is not. Disarming a trap? Heck yes. Bluffing a guard, forging a document, finding the hidden item, making a BALANCE check. Heck NO!
Drezden 01-17-06, 02:00 AM	The whole EL system is designed to work for a party of 4 adventurers - a full LG table has 6. A good, balanced 6 person party playing at APL shouldn't have much trouble with most APL+3 encounters - excluding the improperly calculated EL, due to environmental factors not being factored in or - the LG special - automatic surprise rounds for the bad guys, and other cheesy stuff like that. But, those exceptions aside, most fights with a good, balanced party are a breeze. Kinda like the table Sam judged (and I played at) today, right Sam? :) Now interactives or Core specials are definitely usually a notch or two harder, but that is to be expected. Daren
TallGuy 01-17-06, 04:49 AM	Claiming the statistical outlier results as "proof" that ridiculously difficult EL encounters will not frequently result in exceedingly poor outcomes is a faulty argument. Just because someone always wins the lottery is not an argument that it is financially advisable to sink your life savings into the lottey. Not really. I've been playing Living Greyhawk for about 5 years now, and that's usually what happens. Especially when you have a balanced table of six people, they have a tendency to beat those odds. Sometimes someone dies, but that's to be expected. In all my time playing Living Greyhawk in The Netherlands, I believe I've heard of one (almost) TPK. There have been plenty of deaths (usually my front line fighter) though. Your argument here boils down to: Because my personal, anecdotal results differ from those of people who spent much time researching the subject and do this for a living, I will ignore their results and use what ever I feel is appropriate, and then sit in bewilderment when people complain about my encounters being too difficult, or claim bewonderment when statistically uncommon, but not rare results occur (and then claim them as the baseline). No, it boils down to: Because his experience meshes with the experience of a lot of the other campaign administrators (Triads, Circle), and because our average party has two more PCs at the table, we use the high end of the table from the people who researched it. Some people complain (but then, some people complain about an APL+2 encounter with 5 humanoid opponents (in thise case a full party of elves vs a group of 4 bullywug rangers with Favored Enemy (elf) and a cleric)), and you listen to the complaints, try to figure out why they are complaining, and adjust when necessary. If enough people complain, you know you did something wrong. If it's always the same people, it could just be them. So three more points on your ability buy (which does not, necessarily, translate to three more ability points), must be compensated for by not only making an encounter that the DMG warns is likely to result in player death at the baseline statistics, but an excuse to pump everything up to near max HP and give significant stat bumps too? And yes, I understand that monsters with PC class levels are supposed to use the elite array of stats. Yup. Especially if you add the extra bodies of the average table. It stacks up. I'm sorry if I come off harsh, but I am tired of seeing the indefensible defended. It is not a smear on all writers/editors/triad/circle members to say that a few wayward mods have very poor designed encounters. I wish those of you in charge would admit that instead of circling the wagons everytime the players (who are your effective customer base) complain, and then coming up with off the wall excuses for the inexcusable. There's some poorly designed encounters, surely. But sometimes a poorly made up party can make things a lot worse. It's hard to figure out whether it's the party make up that made it so much harder, or whether it's the encounter itself. An all rogue/fighter party against Wraiths is going to feel the hurt... That's life. We have to design for an iconic party, as in I think we can agree every party should have a tank, a cleric and arcane support. A rogue would be nice (and can be essential sometimes), and the rest is additional power. If you aren't able to fill those roles, you can expect to have a harder time with encounters. Living Greyhawk is suppose be a challenging campaign, but it also has a high entry barrier, with many activites limited to those with higher level characters (meta-regional mods, etc...), yet many low level mods seem expressely designed as a bouncer, to keep people from gaining entry into the meat of the system. This is very off putting to players, and needs to stop, or eventually the campaign will end up getting choked off. D & D is very deadly at lower levels, characters are just a few hps or levels away from stone dead, yet this is where most of the problems seem to crop up in LG, it says to us hoi-polloi that new players don't matter. In our region (Europe), our meta-regionals cater to almost all levels. There's occasional ones where the starting APL is higher, but that's because the story doesn't make sense for low levels. We've even had some meta-regional scenarios specifically targetted at level 1 characters. So it isn't universal, even if it's like that in your neck of the woods. Bas Vermeulen Sunndi Triad
Madfox11 01-17-06, 05:29 AM	The more detailed the module is the harder it is for the GM to fill in the gaps without accidently contradicting what happens to be present on page 36, paragraph 3. That is a matter of opinion. There are a LOT of DMs out there who are very afraid to come up with details on the fly because it either clashes with the setting (part time DMs who do not know the campaign that well) or previous and future scenarios. It is really difficult to run an adventure on the fly without solid campaign knowledge and a healthy dose of self confidence. The DMs that have those can ignore the details in the scenario because they know it by heart. The DMs that lack that knowledge love the details. In my 5.5 years of experience as an author, player and Triad member of this campaign I think that the DMs wanting more detail in Europe outweight the DMs that want less. Note: It is easier for a DM to quickly summerize an intro from an extensive one then to expand a very short one. I have start to add an alinea to my extensive introductions that a DM is free to paraphrase and summerize the stuff if there is either a time pressure or when the players show little interest in it. Such an alinea should not be needed, because a DM always has been free to do so. In my experience DMs are just too afraid to make minor alterations for the enjoyment of the players, but while there is not much space to manover they do have some. Note: When you are reviewing/writing the stat blocks for 6 APLs with tens of creatures there are bound to be mistakes. Don't be afraid to point out perceived mistakes to the Triad. If you were correct, they can change it and if you were wrong they can show you why they did what they did.
paigeoliver 01-17-06, 07:20 AM	A lot of the sparse vs detailed stuff really comes down to individual GM styles of course. I am a GM who is not afraid to fill in details. When I recently ran the Dyvers Intro Maraven Inn the single longest, most memorable and useful roleplaying encounter in the game ended up being with an NPC shipwright who wasn't even mentioned in the module text. Well, the shipwright wasn't mentioned past the idea that there were shipwrights, and a DC to gain some information. I'd say more about it but that module is still active for a long time. Equally, when I ran the Dyvers Intro "A House, a Door, A Dilemma" the extremely lawful good party was able to accomplish both goals in a way by running back to the Inn and subcontracting the NPC party they previously encountered to do the job they were originally hired for. The party had like 4 LG followers of St. Cuthbert (Clerics and Paladins), and they simply wouldn't accept letting the bad guys go, nor would they accept abandoning the (rather unimportant), job they had been originally hired to do. Since they didn't have time for both they just ran back to the Inn and gave away their original mission to the NPCs who missed out on it. I personally thought that was a genius way of accomplishing something the module text says isn't possible. In a recent year 5 core I played their were a bunch of baddies in this run down mansion. We knew there would probably be undead. I had a couple of strategies OTHER than just busting through the front door. I wanted to either first check out all the windows (and possibly go through one of them), or instead go through a back door or service entrance that probably wouldn't be as heavily guarded. But since the DETAILED module text said nothing about this giant mansion having any back doors, or windows, the GM said there were'nt any. My alternate plan (also very valid), was to set the place on fire and burn the baddies to the ground, since there wasn't anything we had to retrieve from the place, and it was falling apart anyway. The GM really disliked this idea, probably because he had no idea how to run it. So of course we ended up going through the front door. I was kind of ****** later when we came to the final room and the box text described the windows. The place also inexplicably had a pit trap on an upper floor that should have (according to the map we made), open up onto one of the rooms on the lower floor, but for some reason it did not. Perhaps the GM just drew the map wrong though?? I am not even sure where I was going with that, except that perhaps with a good "sparse" type GM the party might have been able to peek in windows, or set the place on fire and choppinate the bad guys one by one as they streamed out the only apparent door. But, I also totally agree with you in that the average LG DM either isn't comfortable with winging it, or hasn't done it in so long that it seems wrong to them. One of my number one roleplaying beefs, is when we are talking to an NPC and I ask the GM their name, and I am told they don't have one. Nameless NPC #6 can become very important if the PCs capture him, interrogate him, speak with him extensively, bribe him, recruit him, or something else the writer didn't envision. Yet so many DMs are scared to make up names and backgrounds for these guys when it does come up. Oh, equally high on my list of roleplaying beefs is the "captured NPC" that when freed from the BBEG's prison will not come with the party until they get to a safe place, but instead insists on navigating their way out of the BBEG's place all by themselves with no equipment. I have seen that AT LEAST 3 times in the past two months.
vvincent 01-17-06, 08:07 AM	I know I played in a Verbebonc intro mod and I was looking the stats over with the judge afterwards, and one of the opponents (a Kobold Sorceror), not only has max hit points, and toughness, it also has an extra 5 or 6 hit points on top of that, with no explanation at all. Paige - feel free to email us stuff like that if you think the mod is incorrect. We can look into it and let you know if it was the case. Vernon L. Vincent Verbobonc Triad
zigspatty 01-17-06, 11:44 AM	A lot of the sparse vs detailed stuff really comes down to individual GM styles of course. ... In a recent year 5 core I played their were a bunch of baddies in this run down mansion. ... I had a couple of strategies OTHER than just busting through the front door. I wanted to either first check out all the windows (and possibly go through one of them), or instead go through a back door or service entrance that probably wouldn't be as heavily guarded. But since the DETAILED module text said nothing about this giant mansion having any back doors, or windows, the GM said there were'nt any. ... So of course we ended up going through the front door. I was kind of ****** later when we came to the final room and the box text described the windows. As a GM, I would far prefer to have more info than is necessary than to have to make stuff up on the fly that may or may not mesh well with what the author had in mind. If an NPC has a name and at least a short description that gives him some motivation or personality, then I can run him. But mods sometimes don't even give me a name... I still remember running a mod where the PCs wanted to get into a house whose front door was locked and the rogue failed to pick it. So the PCs went around to the back. Looking at the map I saw no other doors & the windows' locks were detailed, so the PCs climbed on the roof and sent the halfling rogue (unwillingly) down the chimney to open the door. Imagine my chagrine a good while later when the PCs went into the kitchen and I read the box text describing the back door which was ajar and hanging by a single hinge. I had goofed because I relied on the map to detail important features like doors. Fortunately, the players forgave me. :) Good maps make it so much easier to run scenarios, but it's important that they accurately reflect the encounter. Patty
Samwise 01-17-06, 12:26 PM	Yikes! You go run one 2-round adventure, and a thread gets completely out of control. :P Anyway, multiple replies: JohnduBois: Don't, at the onset of a module, give the PC's literally three full pages of notes and information to read. Especially don't require them to make 3-4 Knowledge checks for each of the fifteen notes/letters. It usually leads to two things. Intense PC boredom, and lots of details being missed anyways. I agree. I also dislike separate rolls for each of a half dozen or more sigils, or similar things. While I don't get to make the rules on that, I'll be suggesting consolidating such the next time I see it. paigeolivier: I also have another minor APL scaling quibble. That is DC classes of tasks that scale up at higher APLs for absolutely no comprehendable reason. I see far to many DCs set at something+APL. Sometimes that is appropriate, but many times it is not. Disarming a trap? Heck yes. Bluffing a guard, forging a document, finding the hidden item, making a BALANCE check. Heck NO! As it happens, that's something I dislike greatly as well, and is on my list of things to try and remember to look for and suggest be altered. paigeoliver again: Three more ability score points in the buy likely translates to 2 more actual ability score points, which means a +1 bonus. An extra +1 bonus on an ability score somehow doesn't exactly make up for the opponents all getting 3 extra hit dice, above average hit points, situational benefits, and ability score bonuses far beyond what the players are getting. As I understand the intent, it just translates into more hp. It is the 6 character default party size that results in the rest. paigeoliver yet again: And of course to add insult to injury many modules seem to have far more experience and treasure written into them than you are actually allow to recieve, which means the players get to face extra dangers but with no extra rewards. That is a combination of two main elements: 1. Within the core rules, the default equipment for NPCs with character levels is always above the default treasure for their encounter level. So any such encounter will either be over the limit on loot, or the NPCs will be underequipped. 2. Players hate not getting full gp for an event. Players also regularly miss something. To keep players from regularly complaining, many authors and editors (Triad and Circle) will overstock the bad guys to cut down the chance of players coming up short. Total meta-game reason, but there you go. Also, related to that but not as critical, going over the cap allows adding more item access. So yes, if you do whup on everything you wind up "leaving" half the loot behind (or tithing it, or giving it to the poor, or wassailing beyond belief, or getting ripped off, or however you want to look at it), but it allows a safety net for any losses. and again from paigeoliver: Oh, equally high on my list of roleplaying beefs is the "captured NPC" that when freed from the BBEG's prison will not come with the party until they get to a safe place, but instead insists on navigating their way out of the BBEG's place all by themselves with no equipment. I have seen that AT LEAST 3 times in the past two months. Once again that is a metagame artifact. Do you require the party to decide to leave the encounter area; Or do you require them to send the NPC off by himself? Either way can cause problems for a party to deal with, so many times the choice is made by the author, and the party gets to accept it. I agree, it isn't always very elegant, but it is one of those elements that can quickly become a significant issue when it isn't supposed to be one. Drezden: But, those exceptions aside, most fights with a good, balanced party are a breeze. Kinda like the table Sam judged (and I played at) today, right Sam? Heh. Indeed, a strong case in point for what can happen with thoroughly excessive characters. And I will note, they had a rather unbalanced party. A more balanced group would likely have trashed the place twice as fast. As a final note: A lot of the things I'm discussing are meta-game design notes. And many of them are based on my experience, observations, and information from being out of the loop for 2 years. They aren't intended to be "justifications" of anything, mostly because I don't think most of these things need to be justified. They are explanations. And when reading them, I will expand on Bismarck: "There are three things people should not see being made - laws, sausages, and RPGs." A lot of very legitimate concerns have been raised. Some are mistakes that need to and can be corrected. Some have to do with DMs that I can't do anything about, and even the campaign staff is limited in dealing with. And some are game design issues that it does help to understand, but which is often off-putting when you learn the answer. I believe in sharing them because I think it will help people deal with them better when playing. If you know the APL+2 encounter is standard and the APL+3 encounter is just "difficult" because of table size, you will, hopefully, be more aware of what you can encounter, and take appropriate steps when mustering. (The archetypes Bas mentioned, not playing up as often, accounting for whether you are in the third or fourth fight before unleashing every spell you've got, keeping in mind the possibility of adverse environmental conditions, and so forth.) To use another phrase: Knowing IS half the battle. I'm looking to inform, not to fight. My answers won't always be the ones you want to hear, and they won't always be right. But hopefully they will help you when you prepare for your next LG adventure.
Samwise 01-17-06, 12:45 PM	I'm sorry if I come off harsh, but I am tired of seeing the indefensible defended. It is not a smear on all writers/editors/triad/circle members to say that a few wayward mods have very poor designed encounters. I wish those of you in charge would admit that instead of circling the wagons everytime the players (who are your effective customer base) complain, and then coming up with off the wall excuses for the inexcusable. Bas covered everything else rather thoroughly, but I'll address this as well myself. First and foremost, it isn't indefensible. You may not like the answers, but they are direct and reasonable. And it comes down to the simple fact that no matter how good a job the Core rules may have done trying to reduce the entire game to computer calculation, quality game design and development is still very much an interpretative art form. You take the elements, mix them together, and hope it comes out right. Second, I do take offense at your phrasing. I've noted several things I don't consider proper design that I've either already pointed out as things to be changed, or that I intend to point out as things to be changed. I'm not here to excuse anything, I am here to disccuss and exchange views. But I'm also not going to let good authors and campaign staff be put down because of an error in design they are eager to correct in the future, or errors of DMs that they can't control. (Which have been mentioned commonly in this thread.) Or, as noted regarding one adventure, because of a mere difference in opinion, where I regard the challenges as completely expected, if something I wasn't properly equipped to handle, while someone else found it to be too much. As such, we have different views on the quality of the adventure. But I don't think either of us is "wrong." If that isn't enough, then you'll just have to continue to be disappointed in my responses. Hopefully others won't be, and will take advantage of the opportunity to help me keep in mind what to look for in the future.
ridgeline 01-17-06, 03:46 PM	You've stated (indirectly) that a lot of your difficulty was rooted in the fact that your character is a whip using Marshall, and, in the later example, a halfling archer. Having played in LG since year 1, I can tell you that you have two choices in this campaign: You can continue creating and playing the fun characters with excellent roleplaying potential that you've always played (and likely die before you get too attached to said character), OR You can suck it up and create a functional character that can perform a role within a given table (i.e. heavy fighter, support cleric, item creation wizard, tumbling/flanking bonus rogue, summoning druid, or buffing bard) and pray enough players are available to fill the roles you're NOT filling in the mod. It's sad to say, but LG mods aren't so much "broken" as they are written for the worst common denominator in the gaming community: the guy who has nothing better to do than sit in his basement and create a half-orc barbarian with a 40 AC who can dish out 105 points of damage per hit. I applaud you for playing your whip weilding marshall. I'll be sitting right there with you with my non-combat limerick performing bard, and we can both die together at the hands of the fiendish half-dragon Hill Giant Barbarian/sorcerer in full plate. Yes, some LG mods are "broken", but it's mostly because of the "broken" players in the campaign. It's a hazard of the game that us "roleplayers" must contend with. See ya a the tables, Larry
redgamer 01-17-06, 04:52 PM	What makes you say his halfling archer is an exceptional roleplaying opportunity. You know nothing about the character except that many halfling archers are below average in combat. For me my most twinked character is my best roleplaying character. My least interesting (by a lot) character to roleplay is also the character whose class and race provide the least reassurance to a mustering table. Oddly my most powerful character is not my most twinked character but he has gotten great access to equipment at the same time his power curve peaks. He will be weaker later on but he is too unique to scrap and I won't feel bad because he will never be one of those character who is so weak it strains credibility that any adventurers would willingly travel with him as I have seen in some characters. You really shouldn't call powergamers the least common demoninator as D&D is clearly intended to be a mix of combat and roleplaying (heck good players roleplay during combat). There are other activities you can do that let you pretend to someone you're not. LG and the vast majority D&D is designed to let you roleplay (including the fighting) an adventurer. If taking steps to make you character more adept at combat lessens the fun you have consider taking steps to make you as a player better at combat to cover for your characters inability to survive the dangerous life of adventuring with good tactics.
ridgeline 01-17-06, 05:49 PM	Perhaps I misspoke when I referred to munchkin "roll-players" as the lowest common denominator in our hobby. I didn't intend to imply that that type of gamers was a lesser being than anyone else. But, as D&D is, and always has been, a "Roleplaying" game, this type of gamer IS responsible for making what began as a cooperative storytelling hobby into something more dicey (no pun intended). Now, I wasn't present at the premier of Living Greyhaw, nor was I involved in the campaign until much later that year, so I can't say for certain if someone there managed to tweak a 1st level character who mowed down giants at will and who caused the naecent Circle to step back and say, "Gee. Maybe we should have given the baddies a few more hit points." What I do know, and it has been my impression for several years now, is that the presence of certain types of gamers in the campaign has caused a sort of nuclear escalation in the mods written for the campaign. Whether this is a "chicken-egg" kind of thing, I can't say. But, anyone who's ever made their usual home-game style character and sat at a battle interactive will agree that sometimes those types of characters are just grist for the power-gamer mill that LG has become. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying it's the case and anyone wanting to experience any longevity in the campaign should be aware of this and adapt (either by joining the munchins or, as you've said and I've done, adjust your playing style). Nothin' but love. Larry
CSHunt68 01-17-06, 07:17 PM	Actually, D&D started out NOT as a "role-playing" game. It was mostly what it is now - miniatures, combats, tactics, and dice-rolling. The goal was to cooperate and survive, not to act a role. It has _evolved_ into what some people think of as, first and foremost, a ROLE-playing game. In actual fact, it has in recent years returned to its roots, what with miniatures, battlemaps, skirmish rules, ... I'm not sure this is necessarily such a bad thing. I get as annoyed by people who insist on playing their "role" to the hilt as much as I do by the power-gamers. Both sides have their extremes. Play. Have fun. Try not to infringe on other people's fun. (And keep in mind that PC success and survival plays a LARGE part in those last two directives.) That's all. :) Regards,
solbergb 01-17-06, 07:24 PM	. Then there was the hill giant, which is a very tough (but doable) encounter for a STRONG level 4 party (CR 7 I believe). I on the other hand was stuck with two non-combatants and a thief played by a very young kid who spent half his actions trying to hide during combat so he could try to get sneak attack damage. The hill giant was rather easy to spot, and wasn't very good at spotting you. Our party actually had a scout, so we knew what we were up against. We kept the battle in ranged combat, with the squishies using the boulders for full cover, and the main ranged hitter (my L5 archer) taking potshots and getting buffs/heals from the others, while the other ranged hitter was standing up behind low cover, casting a spell, dropping prone under full cover. The most tense moment was when he went down and we weren't sure he was faking so somebody had to go and look. We could have had an even easier time had we waited for nightfall... I'd say that an APL4 party composed of a suboptimal archer (at L2, a halfling archer with BAB 1 isn't going to do meaningful damage at APL4), two noncombantants and a selfish or clueless rogue will get mauled most of the time and SHOULD get mauled most of the time, and especially in any module with the word "war" in the title, since you've got to expect hardcore fighting in it. In an investigative mod, you might not be as bad off. I'd see if there was a way to play to APL2 instead of 4 with the described party, maybe getting the highest level support guy to play a new level 1 instead or something. Frankly 1 hill giant at APL4 is no worse than the 4 ogre encounter I've seen. You would be equally hosed with the described party. Strong melee monsters are pretty awful if the party is all noncombatants or weak combatants. As for roleplay, I consider it poor roleplay to have a character that has no business having 3 combats a week, because that's what a LG adventurer does. Mechanical strength and roleplay hooks are orthagonal...the one has nothing to do with the other. A party as described (halfling archer playing up, selfish/cowardly thief and two "noncombatants" - probably support casters) should look at themselves and say "hmmm, this isn't as strong a group as I'd like to have...the support casters have nothing to support so they're going to have to contribute to the offense, and we'll have to recognize that we might encounter a challenge we can't beat." I have nothing against weak parties attempting to do a module. It's actually something of a vice of mine, in the last few conventions I attended I had quite a few "APL7 parties playing APL8" or "4 person parties barely at APL or slightly below", including one party where one of the 4 died in the first encounter, so we had to complete the mod with 3 people. But when I do that I recognize I may not get full gp/xp for the adventure, that my character might die and that I might even experience my first TPK. I tend to do those with my character that has a "get out of module free" favor - she can even take others with her. At a convention, those weak tables quite often have somebody due to either build or player skill, is contributing a couple levels below that of his character level. I play at these tables because a weak table is sometimes more fun because of the contortions you have to go through to accomplish anything, but also because even a partial success is 4 hours of doing something fun, and it beats not doing anything for the round. I also enjoy 6 person balanced tables of 6 solid players - but I tend to expect some walkovers in those mods, and don't judge how tough an encounter is by how those tables play. When playtesting, I assume 3 party mixes: 6 people mostly "playing up" 5 people roughly at APL 4 people mostly "playing down and I randomize the character mix - there is almost never a "balanced" party, but generally all my bizzare parties do in fact manage to cope with all of the encounters. If one really struggles, I sometimes run it again to see if it was luck or party mix, and if party mix, I shuffle it around to get a feel for the problem. Some things are just tougher than expected (final encounter of Tiger in Ahlissa, for example, and one where we had 3 huge air elementals at APL8) and I raise flags, both with author and with the local judges at the premier during slot zeros. Some encounters are only tough at some APL's (those air elementals, for example), others are tough at all APL (Tiger's encounter with hardness 10 constructs, one of which grappled)
paigeoliver 01-17-06, 07:46 PM	Wheee, stuff about my characters. Yes, I do make roleplaying characters more than roll-playing characters. But I make sure all my characters have something good to bring to the table, and before we start I check to see what everyone else is playing first and select the character based on that. My whip using Marshall has an 18 CHA (will be 20 next module when he buys that cloak of charisma), so his Marshall auras are just plain nasty. He uses a whip because it is the one item that allows him to actually do things in combat other than just provide auras for everyone else. In this case he can disarm really well. If there is nothing to disarm and no small sized enemies to trip then he will provide assists to other characters. Said Marshall is crippled in a few areas though, mainly his 8 STR, 8 Con and 8 Wis. But his +12 Initiative bonus combined with the "Grant move action" he is about to receive allows him to really change the face of things on the battlefield. I only play him if there are six characters at the table. If there are 4 or 5 I play my halfling archer. She is a pretty solid fighter, and has so far never spent any money on consumables, so she is pretty well equipped. Her armor class (23) is better than most tanks at her level (4), and she has pretty good hit and damage bonuses and hit points as well (18 DEX, 14 STR, 14 CON, weapon specialization, magic bow and all that). But 8 INT combined with the fighter class means that she has almost no skills points at all, and what skill points she has are stuck in ride and handle animal. I am supplementing those two with a more straightforward beast of a human tank. Even he is a roleplaying character, but his "rolls" are also going to be pretty nasty as well. Oh, my archer was level 4 when we played War of the Dust. I did most of the damage to the thing by myself, but eventually it got up to me and then it was all over.
solbergb 01-17-06, 08:11 PM	Ah..at L4 a halfling archer can do fine yeah. The difference between your experience and mine is teamwork. The hill giant didn't ever get to attack the support guys, the support guys kept me on my feet (and if I had gotten into a danger zone I would have dropped under cover and healed myself). Our DM looked at our layout and decided on a ranged duel...we had plans for if he charged (we were spread out a bit, and due to terrain any attempt to close would take two rounds of movement even if we stood still...and we would not....whomever he chased would have run even further). It did help that all of us were capable of self-healing, so anyone caught by a boulder could hide and heal and not risk the killing blow. Had he actually caught up to somebody, that would have been bad, but to do it would involve a long chase while the other three were plinking away. Had we fought him solo, as 4 individuals, our experience might be more like yours. If we'd had a different party - say with a barbarian as the primary hitter - our tactics would have revolved around trying to close with the guy and trying to take away his club somehow (grease, sunder, truestrike disarm, command spell...something) to cut down the offense, then supporting the barbarian both offensively (flanks and such) and defensively (healing on him and debuffs on the giant). Most APL4 LG parties could cope with that encounter. Those that could not could disengage, since the giant wasn't inclined to leave his guard post and there was plenty of cover. As EL+3 encounters go, it wasn't that bad. Tough, requiring some teamwork and thought, but not broken.
JamesMaissen 01-18-06, 02:27 AM	It's sad to say, but LG mods aren't so much "broken" as they are written for the worst common denominator in the gaming community: the guy who has nothing better to do than sit in his basement and create a half-orc barbarian with a 40 AC who can dish out 105 points of damage per hit. I applaud you for playing your whip weilding marshall. I'll be sitting right there with you with my non-combat limerick performing bard, and we can both die together at the hands of the fiendish half-dragon Hill Giant Barbarian/sorcerer in full plate. Yes, some LG mods are "broken", but it's mostly because of the "broken" players in the campaign. It's a hazard of the game that us "roleplayers" must contend with. See ya a the tables, Larry I find this somewhat offensive but I'm having trouble pinning down what bothers me the most here. First is the animosity to those making strong characters as if that's somehow inherently wrong or synonomous with cheating. That they are ruining your game that they aren't playing correctly unlike yourself. Second the assumption that mechanics of the character somehow either enable or disable the roleplaying of said character. The kind of thinking that sees a barb2/ftr1/ran1 as 'less pure' than a ftr4 regardless of how the two are played. Lastly the idea that those directing the game are powerless to shape it. If you want the powerlevel of the game to be at a certain point that is where you place the bar and keep it there. People will respond to that.. it will take time but when that's what they expect they will gravitate towards it. People will make superman that soars above or slugboy that can't tie his shoes and both will complain that the modules aren't tailored for them. But if the campaign knows where it wants to be it can remain (reasonably) constant in the expected level and content that it's doing right. Now in the past it failed to do so and entered into an arms race to it's detriment. I think that's been somewhat realized by now and the resulting sporatic attempts to compensate have brought us to the point where the past few years have seen a hodgepodge of power mods and cake walks without a clue as to which the next will be. I think as LG continues to mature (and it does although slowly and only through direct trial and error) it will slowly grow out of these reactionary and counter-reactionary stages and finally find a place where it is happy. I think the addition of semi-permanent reviewers like Sam here will go a long way in helping to bring this about. Until he burns out that is.. anyone care to let me in on the pool? -James Maissen
Mortepierre 01-18-06, 02:43 AM	Second the assumption that mechanics of the character somehow either enable or disable the roleplaying of said character. The kind of thinking that sees a barb2/ftr1/ran1 as 'less pure' than a ftr4 regardless of how the two are played. Eh, I played at a table recently where two of the players had half-orc barb/ftr. Their dmg output was so high, they laughed when the cleric of the team suggested waiting for him to enchant their weapons so that they could bypass the DR of the critters they were fighting. The same characters had boosted their Str/Dex/Con so much that Int/Wis/Cha had been left at 8/8/6. Yet, I didn't see them "role-play" their characters as.. ah.. less "keen" at catching things, or with less common sense, or just plain ugly. That's the biggest problem I have with the system. People min/max their characters but, unless numbers are involved, conveniently "forget" the disadvantages they selected for themselves.
Mortepierre 01-18-06, 02:53 AM	Hopefully others won't be, and will take advantage of the opportunity to help me keep in mind what to look for in the future. Sam, as long as we have your attention, there is something specific I would like to bring into the discussion. Both the PHB & the LGCS (v4.2) state that to command an animal requires a move action, and to "push" it is a full-round action (less than that if you're a druid or a ranger). The problem is that the intro of every single adventure I've run so far states "This is a free action (spoken command) that may be attempted each round" (in the LG Levels of Play section). Now, I know this is probably some generic text all authors are supposed to copy/paste in the intro to their adventures but if it could be modified to finally reflect the "true" rule, I would appreciate. I am fast growing tired of having to argue about that with players whenever I run a game.
Simpi 01-18-06, 04:52 AM	Three more ability score points in the buy likely translates to 2 more actual ability score points, which means a +1 bonus. An extra +1 bonus on an ability score somehow doesn't exactly make up for the opponents all getting 3 extra hit dice, above average hit points, situational benefits, and ability score bonuses far beyond what the players are getting. Now you also forget PCs getting all weird favors and boons from their ARs which make them much stronger as well as cheesy cards that RPGA sends out and which enable players to bend the rules. A creature plane shifts to attack PCs who don't see it coming because they lack true seeing or equivalent. Yet with 'Feign Cheese Surprise' they can actually act before the creature is even there :confused: S.H, the guy from Naerie
paigeoliver 01-18-06, 05:18 AM	I guess that is true. But I don't have any of those cards, and I personally have never used a single thing off any of my ARs. Never used a favor, never used an access, nothing. I do have +2 save vs fire/heat from one of them, but it hasn't actually come up yet. =) Although I do fairly cheese out the positioning of my character. My halfing archer (Julie), is ALWAYS rear guard (last in marching order). I guess there are both realistic and metagame reasons for that. Realism says you don't want your archers up in front, and metagame tells me that we were only attacked from the rear one time out of the last 17 modules played. Julie has been the last fighter type standing in a lot of fights, by the time the bad guys knock over the other fighters and get to me they are usually in pretty bad shape, while I am still at full hit points. Oh, and if the fight is outdoors and the baddie is a tough one you can bet I will do a single move away from the bad guys every round. Composite longbow has a nasty range and there is no reason for me not to take advantage of it. If I am on my riding dog and the baddies doesn't have a ranged attack then I can kill pretty much anything (provided it doesn't start out right next to me, or have DR 10 of a type that isn't magic). Too bad all the fights aren't outside. If I get stuck using my halfling greatsword I usually end up on the ground at negative hit points. Actually I end up that way whenever I am the only fighter. Probably has something to do with the fact most GMs will send the monsters after the fighters first (because the casters are too easy to accidently kill with a crit). My other guy (Gerald Vincent, my 8 STR, 8 CON Marshall) is exceptionally squishy and decently heroic. Only reason he hasn't died yet is because he has never been played at a table with less than 6 people. His usual tactic is to run right up behind the tank and either assist his attacks, disarm, or trip as appropriate (since I can't actually damage anything with a whip). Now you also forget PCs getting all weird favors and boons from their ARs which make them much stronger as well as cheesy cards that RPGA sends out and which enable players to bend the rules. A creature plane shifts to attack PCs who don't see it coming because they lack true seeing or equivalent. Yet with 'Feign Cheese Surprise' they can actually act before the creature is even there :confused: S.H, the guy from Naerie
TallGuy 01-18-06, 05:40 AM	Now you also forget PCs getting all weird favors and boons from their ARs which make them much stronger as well as cheesy cards that RPGA sends out and which enable players to bend the rules. A creature plane shifts to attack PCs who don't see it coming because they lack true seeing or equivalent. Yet with 'Feign Cheese Surprise' they can actually act before the creature is even there :confused: S.H, the guy from Naerie How would the creature know where to planeshift exactly? Plane Shift brings you 5 to 500 miles away from your intended target. Same goes for Scry/Teleport (And Detect Scrying will bite you when you try), and various other mechanism you can think of. My wizard always has a detect scrying up, and can easily make the intelligence check to see the sensor. In case a sensor is spotted, anticipate teleportation will hurt the monster coming in a lot. The way I handle Feign Surprise is by giving the characters a 'spider sense'. So they know something is up, but since they don't know what, they either delay and go after the bad guy, or buf themselves and be not flat footed.
Simpi 01-18-06, 06:46 AM	How would the creature know where to planeshift exactly? Plane Shift brings you 5 to 500 miles away from your intended target. Same goes for Scry/Teleport (And Detect Scrying will bite you when you try) Perhaps I should be more clear. In this case with Plane Shift I was supposed meant creatures that live in Ethereal Plane and can make Ethereal jaunts. S.H, the guy from Naerie
TallGuy 01-18-06, 08:31 AM	Perhaps I should be more clear. In this case with Plane Shift I was supposed meant creatures that live in Ethereal Plane and can make Ethereal jaunts. Which doesn't give you auto-surprise either. See Invisibility lets you see into the ethereal plane. My wizard loves extended See Invis (3.5 hours at a time). But, like I said, I see the Feign Surprise card as a tingling spidey sense, not as an automatically successful spot/listen/whatever check.
Samwise 01-18-06, 12:25 PM	Sam, as long as we have your attention, there is something specific I would like to bring into the discussion. Both the PHB & the LGCS (v4.2) state that to command an animal requires a move action, and to "push" it is a full-round action (less than that if you're a druid or a ranger). The problem is that the intro of every single adventure I've run so far states "This is a free action (spoken command) that may be attempted each round" (in the LG Levels of Play section). Now, I know this is probably some generic text all authors are supposed to copy/paste in the intro to their adventures but if it could be modified to finally reflect the "true" rule, I would appreciate. I am fast growing tired of having to argue about that with players whenever I run a game. Hmmm . . . Never noticed that myself. I'll bring it up.
Lomiat 01-18-06, 12:59 PM	The LGCS4.2 also states that animals specifically trained for war, such as riding dogs and war horses, can be directed to attack as a free action, requiring a DC 10 Handle Animal or Charisma check. Perhaps the confusion results from this campaign-specific ruling.
Lomiat 01-18-06, 01:25 PM	As a player, I've yet to encounter a "broken" mod, and as a DM, though I've handed out a number of character deaths now, I've yet to hand out a TPK, even to my regular group of players, who are vastly less powerful than most groups of coordinated number-crunchers I've played with or DMed. The closest I came to administering a TPK was in a mod where only 4 players attended. One of them went down. The NPC villains offered the others a chance to surrender, but one of the PCs immediately swung into his attackers, killing him and cleaving into another. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough, and that character died. The PCs who surrendered lived, though they were stripped of all their weapons. As a player, the worst encounter I experienced was an underwater encounter with 6 beefy villains, so that our party was completely surrounded. These villains could dish out 40 or so HP of damage a round, each, and everyone else at the table was playing up (I'd made them buy war animals just so that with the animals' impact on APL and the 6-person table bump we could get to APL8). It wasn't a TPK because my character lived, but it taught my character a lesson: 3rd level characters shouldn't assume they can survive with me. If there's a point here, it's that the "broken-ness" of adventures is almost entirely circumstantial. I played both Tiger and War of the Dust and found neither truly difficult. No one in my party in Tiger had adamantine, but I could power attack with my 5th level character, at APL 4, to do 25 or so HP of damage per round. Everyone else just had to survive, difficult enough, but they managed. I barely even remember War of the Dust; it wasn't challenging. And that's the part of this discussion I find most overlooked: As a player and as a DM, both, I appreciate the "backs to the wall" tension of a truly challenging, but defeatable, encounter. The APL+2 encounters offer little challenge most of the time, and many balanced parties with which I've played have had little difficulty in defeating APL+3 encounters, even with all of the environmental obstacles, etc. As others have said, the main obstacle to success in such situations is the party's ability to balance themselves. 4-person tables should generally play down or at APL, unless they're confident of success for some obscure reason. That said, as a new author for modules, I look forward to providing players with some memorable "challenges." Even so, it's a difficult task because the APL+X system doesn't work all that smoothly as PCs level up. At higher levels, PCs can easily dismiss monsters even 5 CR above their rating (I've seen it) because the GP scaling runs ahead of other power scaling. Even in antimagic, where most of that GP stuff falls apart, AR favors can hose many encounters. Yet at lower APLs, where monsters more accurately fulfill their CR, they can still be nerfed by spells with high save DCs or maxed-out turning clerics, or the one critical hit from the half-orc Bbn/Ftr. So there are tactical decision-making, party balance, circumstance, luck, and design--not to mention the DM's handling of an adventure--all wrapped up into a mod's "broken-ness" or "balance." There are times we might like to decry a mod as broken because it felt that way, yet we played with only 4 people, made a couple tactical errors, had a small string of bad luck, and suffered--what?--two character deaths? That's not broken, yet. When a good number of people, from various play groups and various situations, submit rational complaints about a module or encounter, then people can sift through the variables and try to make sense of things. Mind you, I think the nastiest encounter I've faced thus far was the mind flayer in the astral plane that got a quickened Psionic Blast leading into another Psionic Blast, two will saves DC 19 in one round at APL6. But of course another table completely hosed the illithid because of more favorable initiative rolls...
Simpi 01-18-06, 01:32 PM	The LGCS4.2 also states that animals specifically trained for war, such as riding dogs and war horses, can be directed to attack as a free action, requiring a DC 10 Handle Animal or Charisma check. Perhaps the confusion results from this campaign-specific ruling. New LGCS could also clear things about 'war trained' and 'ridden in combat' parts. I've always assumed that being able to succeed in training animal DCs with take 10 I can do this with my animal companion. S.H, the guy from Naerie P.S: I wonder what happened to my signature....
Mortepierre 01-18-06, 05:08 PM	The LGCS4.2 also states that animals specifically trained for war, such as riding dogs and war horses, can be directed to attack as a free action, requiring a DC 10 Handle Animal or Charisma check. Perhaps the confusion results from this campaign-specific ruling. Excuse me for asking but could you give a page number? I've read the LGCS several times and the problem I refer to is found on p.34 (2nd § under the domesticated animals entry). I've yet to find any sentence (but, hey, I would love to be proven wrong) stating that it's a free action (apart from that sentence found in every adventure's intro).
JamesMaissen 01-18-06, 05:11 PM	Eh, I played at a table recently where two of the players had half-orc barb/ftr. Their dmg output was so high, they laughed when the cleric of the team suggested waiting for him to enchant their weapons so that they could bypass the DR of the critters they were fighting. The same characters had boosted their Str/Dex/Con so much that Int/Wis/Cha had been left at 8/8/6. Yet, I didn't see them "role-play" their characters as.. ah.. less "keen" at catching things, or with less common sense, or just plain ugly. That's the biggest problem I have with the system. People min/max their characters but, unless numbers are involved, conveniently "forget" the disadvantages they selected for themselves. I'm sorry but I don't see how one is related to the other. Individuals may do many things, but stereotypes are not good form regardless of your own experiences.. especially if you group together independant factors in so doing. That the fighter/barbarian was mechanically competant had no bearing on how much (or little) the player roleplayed the character. Or do you think if you played that character that you could not roleplay it properly because of some game-mechanical choice the other player made for that character? I'd be curious to know exactly what that was. What about the way the character is designed makes it impossible to roleplay? One of my favorite characters from a roleplaying point of view was my 6 int 14 wisdom 1/2 orc barbarian. He was *extremely* simple minded but at the same time *very* methodical. Once he learned something he would robotically try to apply it again and again. It was great fun, especially when it ellicited sarcasm from fellow PCs as he took it as kindly advice and applied it very seriously. All of this has precious little to do with how he is made from a mechanical game system perspective. -James
Arvagor 01-18-06, 05:30 PM	Excuse me for asking but could you give a page number? I've read the LGCS several times and the problem I refer to is found on p.34 (2nd § under the domesticated animals entry). I've yet to find any sentence (but, hey, I would love to be proven wrong) stating that it's a free action (apart from that sentence found in every adventure's intro). You won't find it in the LGCS because it's not there. The passage at the bottom of column 1, page 40, states: Domesticated Animals:Most animals you can buy and adventure with are trained to some extent. These animals include those listed on Table 7-8 of the Player's Handbook v.3.5. The Handle Animal skill can be used to further train these animals. Almost all of these animals (except donkeys and mules) can perform the basic attack trick, detailed on page 74 of the PHB under Handle Animal. You must be riding a horse or a pony in order for it to follow the attack command. Commanding an animal to perform a trick is a move action and pushing an animal is a full-round action (see Handle Animal for more details). A druid or ranger can command an animal companion to perform a trick as a free action and push it as a standard action.In fact, the only other place the LGCS mentions free actions, is in describing how a caster can move within the images formed by the mirror image spell...
redgamer 01-18-06, 10:30 PM	(playing to devils advocate to montierre previous post) Well charisma does not equal good looks and even if they did how should an orc roleplay bad looks? 8 int is not that low. I know many successful people with slightly below average intelligence. Even if they are playing too smart that only balances out the people whose characters are far smarter than them. I'm not even talking only the super genious 26 int wizards. My friends 14 int fighter is in all honesty likely twice as smart on the D&D scale as he is. Are you going to tell someone with brain damage or someone too new to the game to know what a smart D&D player would do can't play a wizard or a defensive based fighter. Again 8 int does not equal dumb as a rock. I've known more than a few 8 int people who are successul in jobs that take more intelligence than adventuring. Since we only get a minuscule portion of the sensory information our characters recieve I would guess that the majority of gamers are physically incapable of truely roleplaying the insight of our characters with a positive wisdom let alone the preternaturally wise clerics and druids.
ithardin 01-19-06, 03:25 AM	The most broken mod I played was one that had a night-time attack by invisible Duegar at APL 2. If you have a low spot sentry, you are looking at in an your sleep TPK-which almost happened to us. This same mod had a RIDICULOUS trap that amounted to an impossibly sized gelatinous cube in a pit. At a higher APL another gelatinous cube falls on you from the ceiling after you fall in the pit. The amount of time and gold it would take to get even one of those boys up to size was staggering (we figured it out after barely surviving the adventure. And as always, the tried and true statement in regards to broken mods is: "Friends don't let friends play meta-regionals." The most broken chararacters I have seen are those with 2 and 3 prestige classes. How "prestige" is it if you have 2 or 3 of them (and if there is 30 of them in the active playing pool). Some regions are even granting access to certain prestige classes (like Reaping Mauler) just by belong to the "pit fighter club" meta-org.... The MOST broken however is my friend Tom's 1/2 Marshall/Bard who at present is like +30 on his diplomacy checks at 4th level.
Simpi 01-19-06, 03:31 AM	(playing to devils advocate to montierre previous post) Well charisma does not equal good looks and even if they did how should an orc roleplay bad looks? Not only good looks but (from SRD): Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. So if I DM someone who has charisma 6 character, I expect that said player will not try play his character like he would be an agitator on par with Hitler/Lenin or sophisticated as James Bond unless he has ranks in appropriate skills. S.H, the guy from Naerie
Mortepierre 01-19-06, 04:06 AM	You won't find it in the LGCS because it's not there. Exactly as I suspected. Thus, I was right and the problem remains.
Mortepierre 01-19-06, 04:19 AM	I'm sorry but I don't see how one is related to the other. Individuals may do many things, but stereotypes are not good form regardless of your own experiences.. especially if you group together independant factors in so doing. That the fighter/barbarian was mechanically competant had no bearing on how much (or little) the player roleplayed the character. Or do you think if you played that character that you could not roleplay it properly because of some game-mechanical choice the other player made for that character? I'd be curious to know exactly what that was. What about the way the character is designed makes it impossible to roleplay? One of my favorite characters from a roleplaying point of view was my 6 int 14 wisdom 1/2 orc barbarian. He was *extremely* simple minded but at the same time *very* methodical. Once he learned something he would robotically try to apply it again and again. It was great fun, especially when it ellicited sarcasm from fellow PCs as he took it as kindly advice and applied it very seriously. All of this has precious little to do with how he is made from a mechanical game system perspective. You misunderstand me. I am not saying their characters (there were two of them, after all) couldn't be role-played. What I am saying is that they min/maxed their characters and then didn't role-play them as they should have. Now, before you all jump on me for acting like the rp police, what I mean by that is that IF you choose to have a PC which is less intelligent than an average human being, has less common sense, and has the appeal of a badger (literally), then you shouldn't play them as if they could solve problems as well as the supra-intelligent wizard, debate philosophy as well as the educated priest, or move crowd as well as the silver-tongue bard. I am NOT saying those characters couldn't have a stroke of genius once in a great while or that, by luck or magnificent role-play, they couldn't do wonders once a year, just that it shouldn't happen on a daily basis. Were I to run a game with such characters and should said game include solving an enigma (for instance), you can bet that I'll force them to make Int check before they are allowed to share ideas with the rest of the team. Why? Because it's only fair. If the low Str/high Int wizard wanted to pick up a big rock, he couldn't because of his Str score. Thus, I see no reason why I should allow a high Str/low Int barbarian to do better than the wizard just because "solving intellectual problems" isn't tied to any actual skill check! And let's leave the "real" word aside here, please. This is not meant as an insult to people with low IQ or anything. I am purely speaking about game mechanics and how they tie to role-play.
paigeoliver 01-19-06, 06:40 AM	I thought Tom's character was a Marshall 1 / Bard 1 / Ranger 1 (so he could diplomacize animals). If he is level 4 now then what was his 4th level as? Man I hope he spent some skill points to learn how to speak "giant", that would have really helped in the last module I played with him. Hope it was another Marshall level. Tom might be in trouble if he tries that with me. ;) It might work for him all day long before the fight starts, but in mid battle I am going to be applying some serious situational penalties (you know, like -10 for every one of his allies that are currently attacking the monsters he is trying to talk to). :D Basically, it might work easy if the people aren't fighting, or if his allies aren't attacking, but it just wouldn't realistically work when all his allies are attacking the various creatures he was trying to diplomacize. I can't even count the times he has spent actions diplomacizing kobolds whom Julie would immediately shoot one initiative count later. =) She is seriously suspecting that he is a kobold at this point, since it has happened in multiple modules. For those not in the know. This scene has happened multiple times. Julie (with her 8 INT) is on a mission with people, including Kissn the Marshall Bard. Again and again she keeps seeing situations where all of us charge in and attack the bad guys, except for Kissn, who is saying things to them in strange voodoo languages that she cannot understand. Strangely all the bad guys leave him alone, and afterwards he isn't able to give much explanation other than "He wanted to talk to him. So, Julie thinks Kissn is a Kobold in disguise. The most broken mod I played was one that had a night-time attack by invisible Duegar at APL 2. If you have a low spot sentry, you are looking at in an your sleep TPK-which almost happened to us. This same mod had a RIDICULOUS trap that amounted to an impossibly sized gelatinous cube in a pit. At a higher APL another gelatinous cube falls on you from the ceiling after you fall in the pit. The amount of time and gold it would take to get even one of those boys up to size was staggering (we figured it out after barely surviving the adventure. And as always, the tried and true statement in regards to broken mods is: "Friends don't let friends play meta-regionals." The most broken chararacters I have seen are those with 2 and 3 prestige classes. How "prestige" is it if you have 2 or 3 of them (and if there is 30 of them in the active playing pool). Some regions are even granting access to certain prestige classes (like Reaping Mauler) just by belong to the "pit fighter club" meta-org.... The MOST broken however is my friend Tom's 1/2 Marshall/Bard who at present is like +30 on his diplomacy checks at 4th level.
paigeoliver 01-19-06, 06:49 AM	I thought Tom's character was a Marshall 1 / Bard 1 / Ranger 1 (so he could diplomacize animals). If he is level 4 now then what was his 4th level as? Man I hope he spent some skill points to learn how to speak "giant", that would have really helped in the last module I played with him. Hope it was another Marshall level. Tom might be in trouble if he tries that with me. ;) It might work for him all day long before the fight starts, but in mid battle I am going to be applying some serious situational penalties (you know, like -10 for every one of his allies that are currently attacking the monsters he is trying to talk to). :D Basically, it might work easy if the people aren't fighting, or if his allies aren't attacking, but it just wouldn't realistically work when all his allies are attacking the various creatures he was trying to diplomacize. I can't even count the times he has spent actions diplomacizing kobolds whom Julie would immediately shoot one initiative count later. =) She is seriously suspecting that he is a kobold at this point, since it has happened in multiple modules. For those not in the know. This scene has happened multiple times. Julie (with her 8 INT) is on a mission with people, including Kissn the Marshall Bard. Again and again she keeps seeing situations where all of us charge in and attack the bad guys, except for Kissn, who is saying things to them in strange voodoo languages that she cannot understand. Strangely all the bad guys leave him alone, and afterwards he isn't able to give much explanation other than "He wanted to talk to him. So, Julie thinks Kissn is a Kobold in disguise. The most broken mod I played was one that had a night-time attack by invisible Duegar at APL 2. If you have a low spot sentry, you are looking at in an your sleep TPK-which almost happened to us. This same mod had a RIDICULOUS trap that amounted to an impossibly sized gelatinous cube in a pit. At a higher APL another gelatinous cube falls on you from the ceiling after you fall in the pit. The amount of time and gold it would take to get even one of those boys up to size was staggering (we figured it out after barely surviving the adventure. And as always, the tried and true statement in regards to broken mods is: "Friends don't let friends play meta-regionals." The most broken chararacters I have seen are those with 2 and 3 prestige classes. How "prestige" is it if you have 2 or 3 of them (and if there is 30 of them in the active playing pool). Some regions are even granting access to certain prestige classes (like Reaping Mauler) just by belong to the "pit fighter club" meta-org.... The MOST broken however is my friend Tom's 1/2 Marshall/Bard who at present is like +30 on his diplomacy checks at 4th level.
ithardin 01-19-06, 12:49 PM	I typo'ed and didn't put "elf" in my original post. Kisn is a 1/2 elf. I think he might have a ranger level now. But when I first played with him (the infamous "three bards and a dwarven cleric" party), he was only first level and had his diplomacy in the mid-twenties. I still want to wag my finger roughly at the fella who dreamed up that gelatinous cube trap...
JamesMaissen 01-19-06, 04:01 PM	You misunderstand me. I am not saying their characters (there were two of them, after all) couldn't be role-played. What I am saying is that they min/maxed their characters and then didn't role-play them as they should have. It's a fair comment, just it doesn't need to be tied to how they are built, which was my original point that you responded to with this anecdote. Now there's a side bit that I did want to react towards: Were I to run a game with such characters and should said game include solving an enigma (for instance), you can bet that I'll force them to make Int check before they are allowed to share ideas with the rest of the team. Why? Because it's only fair. Most puzzles are done in the megagame rather than in character. The player is challenged by them rather than the character. Some people like puzzles and others dislike them, but as it's been done puzzles and word games are left to the player and not the character. Most puzzles are not presented to the character by giving knowledge checks to figure out clues (although this has been done, it is not the norm), but rather the player is given the puzzle and expected to out of character figure it out (possibly with clues granted by knowledge checks or the like). However your point in general is that people should reflect what they have built in how they play their character. How they play thier character should fit the framework so provided. If they have a 28INT wizard they probably should not be speaking in monosylabic slang just as much as Thog the 6 int barbarian should not be mistaken for William Buckley. And that's fine and probably something you might wish to tactfully broach with whomever you come across that seems to be oblivious of it and see if they've considered this about thier character. But I'll end with that there is no relationship between the mechanics of one's character and how one chooses to (or not to) roleplay it. People tend to make an association with the two and I think that is most unfair and worse, it is incorrect. -James
paigeoliver 01-19-06, 06:22 PM	I always enjoy trying to play my characters mental scores correctly, but I don't mind terribly much when other people don't. That 6 INT/6 CHA Half-Orc Barbarian could very well just have great verbal skills and the ability to speak rather eloquently, but that still doesn't change the fact that he is a half - orc and has those low scores. He might speak well, but doesn't really have the smarts to actually back it up (which is why all his INT checks are going to fail), and he is still a half orc, thus his social skills are going to be dealing with the fact that he is a half orc, and the fact that he might be terrible at non-verbal social things and such. Basically the ability scores cover a very wide range of things. Intelligence in D&D seems to equal both IQ + knowledge. While wisdom, feh, I ignore wisdom for most characters. I assume that going off and fighting monsters is inherently unwise and I dump wisdom to 8 in every non-cleric character I have. Meanwhile charisma is a mix of social skills, general attractiveness, strength of personality and mystical strength of personality. Have you ever met a really bright grade school child who speaks in a very adult manner and such? I know I have. Yet in reality those same kids still have INTs, wisdoms and charismas in the 5-8 range. Your half orcs, dumb fighters and such might be exactly the same way, with their particular bit of the ability scores focused on the surface aspects. Equally, you often see high charisma characters who seem to exhibit no personality at all. I always assumed those characters had more of the good looks/mystical strength of personality rather than the traditional strength of personality. High INT characters played by normal to low INT players obviously can't play them smarter than they are, which just means their character has more "knowledge" than "ability". Basically the mental scores cover SO many bases that plenty of variation is allowed.
Mortepierre 01-19-06, 06:36 PM	But I'll end with that there is no relationship between the mechanics of one's character and how one chooses to (or not to) roleplay it. People tend to make an association with the two and I think that is most unfair and worse, it is incorrect. -James Then it's something we'll have to agree to disagree about <shrugs> Note that I am not saying I would - were I the DM - force, for instance, the player of a barbarian with Int 6 to speak only in grunts during the game (silly example, I know, but it serves its purpose). I would, however, limit his in-game ability to contribute to the team's intellectual debates. I am perfectly aware that puzzles (to take only one example) are meant to be solved in metagame, not through skill checks. But I don't find it fair that players are limited in-game by the "physical" stats (Str/Dex/Con) of their characters but not by the.. ah.. "abstract" ones (Int/Wis/Cha) (beyond skill/save modifiers, that is). That said, I'll admit it's an equally tough challenge to role-play someone with a genius-level Int, the wisdom of Buddha, or the charisma of Lancelot.
ithardin 01-19-06, 06:55 PM	I'm going to have to agree with Mortepierre. If a player decides to give their PC an advantage physically at the cost of lower intellectual stats, then they should be subject in-game to those intellectual limitations. I always allow my players to make intelligence checks. I mean if you have seen a holy symbol of Rao five times in the last year, why should only those with knowledge (religion) be able to roll to recognize it? However, when you have the low int/low wis PC figuring out how an intricate puzzle, etc is done without having to make some kind of intelligence wundabar check it cheats those PCs who sacrificed physical prowess to be able to have knowledge/diplomacy/etc. The example of picking up a large rock is illustrative of this point. Ability scores and RP are closely related in my opinion. Does it mean you are bound to them and they are immutable? No. I have seen some great RP examples that uses ability scores as a guidepost. One should at least try to relate one's RP to the scores they selected, rolled, etc or else I think you do a diservice to the spirit of the game and the people you play with.
MaxDog 01-20-06, 03:30 PM	I always allow my players to make intelligence checks. I mean if you have seen a holy symbol of Rao five times in the last year, why should only those with knowledge (religion) be able to roll to recognize it? Sure -- that's why recognizing a holy symbol of a locally big diety should only be DC 10 (at most). Anyone can make an Int check for Knowledge (whatever) checks with DC's up to 10 ("I'll take general knowledge for 200, Alex.)
Reylance 01-20-06, 04:04 PM	I've written a lot of puzzles in adventures, and after a while started to put clues into the puzzles, to give to the players of characters with high Intelligence. (This was back in 2nd edition, before skill checks.) The clue reflects that the smart PC would have an idea how to approach the puzzle, and the really smart one should know exactly what steps to take to solve them. Clues don't work well for most riddles, though. Take this puzzle: "Two adventures respond to the city's call to dispatch the gnolls threatening the town. They slay a number of gnolls, and receive a gold piece bounty equal to the square of the number of gnolls slain. The bounty is paid in platinum pieces and fewer than 10 gold pieces. The adventurers are none too bright, and count out the bounty: one platinum piece to the first adventurer, the next to the second, and so on until all the platinum pieces are given out, the last one to the first adventurer. The second adventurer takes the gold pieces, but is still short; how much less gold does he have?" Some clues might be: Int 13: You should try writing out all the possible amounts the bounty could be (all the square numbers). Int 15: You weren't given the number of gnolls, so you must not need to know that to solve the puzzle. Int 17: You weren't given the number of gnolls, so you must not need to know that to solve the puzzle. You know the bounty has an odd number in the 10's digit. The answer is derived from the fact that all square numbers with an odd 10's digit end in 6 (36, 196, 256, 576, 676), so the second adventurer is 4 gold short.